by Deck Davis
And now, after everything that had happened, I would have given anything for Dad to measure my height again. Hell, I’d let him mark my height on the wall every hour of the day until I was sixty-five if he wanted, but that was the problem, really. We have these thoughts when we’re kids, that we’re too old for stuff and that our parents’ weird traditions are stupid. By the time we’re mature enough to take those thoughts back, it’s too late.
I connected my avatar to the mainnet and waited for it to sync. From outside the house, somewhere else on the ranch, I heard Dylan shouting after Bennie. He’d be here soon, and I was looking forward to seeing him. I got a beer from the fridge, the last in a four-pack of Cool Blue, and popped the cap. As I took my first swig, I tried to engage my rational mind. The adrenaline of battle had left me long ago; two train rides will do that to you. World conflicts could have been solved by taking the leaders of different countries, sticking them on a train, and then sending them in a circle and waiting for the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the train on the tracks to lull them into a drowsy state.
Trains made me think about Sootstein, and when I thought about the battle, a quote came to mind—one that I’d learned in school: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
It seemed apt for me. Here I was, home again after losing a battle in a catastrophic way, waiting for my avatar to sync up so that I could see what damage I’d taken. Only, the more I thought about the quote, the less it seemed to apply to me. After all, the Bernli debacle hadn’t really been my fault, had it? I couldn’t have seen Lucas’s intrusion and my team’s betrayal coming.
Sootstein, on the other hand, was completely my doing. In the VBR, I’d been too headstrong to admit that I’d screwed up. I had let Lucas get the better of me, and I had taken a stupid risk in battle. Now it was time to see how much it had affected me. My avatar made a dinging sound, indicating that it had synced. The gel spread on the wall displayed the oval icon of my avatar. A text box appeared.
Battle Report: Sootstein
Place: 10/100
Reward: 190 bits
Experience: 12% [88% to Level 2]
Injuries sustained:
- Broken Ribs
- Dismemberment
Cost to heal: 2019 bits
Time to heal: 6 months
I had to laugh. Six months to heal a dismemberment? That didn’t seem so bad, put like that. Once, Mom had broken her leg on stage, in a play that called for her to vault over a car prop while evading the police. She snapped her bone in two places, and the doctor said it was one of the worst bone breaks he’d seen. It took six months of healing and physio just for her to hobble around. Compared to that, half a year to recover from getting your torso severed from your legs was a godsend.
Still, it put me in the same position I’d been in before. I couldn’t afford to pay to heal my avatar, and I couldn’t afford to wait. I was going to miss the VBR.
Then, a message appeared on my screen, uninvited.
I-Sure Insurance: Peace of mind for your avatar
Sick of avatar injuries? Ever feel like it always happens to you? No more exorbitant fees, no more healing times.
Starting from 1000 bits per month, I-Sure can ensure you never get stung again.
Yeah, avatar insurance was a thing. We’d even kept a team account with a company called Eagle Avatars. Then, when Vorm shattered his right arm in a dozen places and was looking at a 2500-bit bill, Eagle shafted us. They said that ‘upon reviewing the battle feed, we have found that Mr. Vorstlav Vorm acted erratically. Thus, we will not be honoring your claim.’ Insurance was a racket, and paying to heal avatar injuries was an even bigger one. Everyone needed to make their bits, though, and that meant VBRers had to fall in line. My little act of rebellion was that, from now on, I’d never pay those insurance crooks a single bit.
The door opened, and Dylan walked in. Bennie trailed behind him. The giant wolfhound hovered in the doorway, his marble-black eyes fixed on me. His whole body seemed tense as he waited for my lips to move, with his fur shaking slightly as though he was vibrating, and the tag on his collar flicking back and forth. I put down my Cool Blue, made sure nothing breakable was around me, and then looked at the hound.
“Come on, boy!”
He was on me in a flash. He was disciplined enough to know he needed permission to come into the main house, but once the magic words had been uttered, any sense of restraint left him. He pounced on me and gripped me in the kind of hug only a dog can give you. I ducked my head left to right like a boxer’s as I avoided the slurps of his tongue, and then I let my face sink into his slightly farmyard-smelling fur, and I let my burdens and tension drift away. I patted him on the back and pushed him away. “Okay boy, enough hugs for today.”
Dylan slapped a gigantic foam dog bed on the floor. “Lay down, Bennie,” he said.
Bennie rushed over and splayed himself out, his legs and arms spread as though he’d had the hardest day ever. He opened his mouth and set his giant teeth around a corner of the bed and nibbled on it.
“Want a cool Blue?” I asked Dylan. “Oh, damn. I had the last one. Here, take mine.”
“I’m good,” said Dylan.
He was wearing a brown prot-coat that was slightly too big for him around the sleeves. It had been Bill’s originally, but I’d told Dylan to help himself to Bill’s things. Although I hadn’t changed the house much, I didn’t treat it like it was holy or anything. If Dylan needed something and it was freely available in Bill’s room, then he was welcome to it.
“Been in town?” I asked.
He nodded. “Needed more food for the beasts. I stopped at the Red Duke while I was there.”
The Red Duke was one of the only two taverns in Duisben. The other was The Snatched Snail. While the Snail was an old-fashioned place where the stubborn owner point-blank refused to have gel spread across his antique walls, the Red Duke was a haven of gel monitors, mainnet sockets, you name it.
“A few of the guys in there were talking about your VBR,” said Dylan.
“Bernli? C’mon, Dyl, I don’t want to tread old ground.”
“No, Sootstein. One of them said you were a bad-ass for running at the tentacle thing like that. Another dude said you were an effing idiot… Oh, and the girl apologized to me in the end.”
“Apologized to you?” Then I realized that Dylan had skipped forward a beat. It must have been his mind-chip again. “Dial it back.”
“Sorry. A girl pushed into me and spilled her drink, and she lost her mind and blamed me is all.”
“What were they saying about Sootstein, then?”
“Some of them think you were right to go for the side quest, but a few fellas said you were foolhardy.”
“And what about you, Dyl?”
“Yeah… You did good.”
“Bullshit. Tell me what you really think. C’mon, pretend you were in the VBR, in my shoes.”
Dylan squinted. I could tell he was trying to apply the theory of VBR fighting to practice, but he didn’t have a big enough bank of experience. I’d fought with him one-on-one in VBR map that we cast using Dad’s old kit. I’d tried to teach him what I could, and then I’d encouraged him to join one of the public non-pro friendly matches.
“I’m not ready,” he’d always say. “Maybe next week.”
Truth be told, I think Dylan liked the idea of VBR fighting more than he liked the actual thing. He was like a kid who wants to be a footballer until he realizes that 90% of any sport is work and sweat, another 5% is dealing with agents and contracts, and the leftover 5% gets divided between sleep and glamour. In reality, I think Dylan enjoyed working with Bennie and Retch more than VBR fighting, but, until he told me otherwise, I’d keep on trying to train him.
“You really want to know what I think?”
I nodded.
Dylan grabbed my bottle of Cool Blue and took a drink. What is it with people taking my drinks?... Oh, yeah. I said he could.
“I’m listen
ing,” I told him.
“So…your bard. I looked up bards. Not so hot in battle. And in Sootstein, you were in pretty good shape, with only ten left, but you’d leveled-up like an ass. No offense.”
I grinned. “None taken.”
“When the side quest came up, you should have let a few of the others go for it. They’d have killed each other trying, and an extra few places up the ladder means a lot in terms of bits.”
“You’re wise beyond your years, Dyl,” I said. I walked to the mainnet connection and disconnected my avatar. I held it up. “And now, because I didn’t listen to my instincts, this thing is more useful for skimming on a lake, than for VBRs.”
“Injured?” asked Dylan.
“I got cut in half. It’s gonna take a bit of time to heal from that.”
In the corner, Bennie rolled onto his back in the universal dog-language way of asking for a tummy rub. I walked over, crouched by him, and gave the beast what he wanted. His giant hind legs spasmed.
“What are you going to do?” Dylan asked. “The New Eden qualifiers are next week.”
I shrugged. I felt like the full weight of the consequences of Sootstein had not fallen on me yet. For some reason, their emotional impact was absent right now, but it would come. I was a guy walking down a street, unaware of the ton of bricks waiting to fall on me just ahead.
“I don’t have the bits to heal it,” I said. “I guess the only other thing would be to buy a new one at O’Reilly’s. I can probably scrape enough bits together for that. But it just doesn’t sit right with me. He pretty much admitted most of his stuff was stolen.”
“You could always have mine,” said Dylan.
“What?”
“Take my spirit-archer. I’ll deregister it, and you can have it.”
His offer floored me for a few seconds. When Dad and I would work on the Autumn Steampunk map, Dylan always used to watch us through the window. He was six back then, so Dad wouldn’t let him in the studio. Dylan peeked through the window frame, ducking out of view every time Dad looked over. To be honest, I think Dad knew he was watching but just pretended not to see him. From then on, Dylan couldn’t stop talking about VBR. He wanted his own avatar so bad that he used to carry around a rock with him and stick it to his wrist with gum, pretending it was real. When he was eleven, he got a job in Duisben washing pots in the kitchen of the Red Duke tavern. While most kids with side jobs spent their bits on candy and the like, Dylan saved his, every decimal of it. Then, when he was fourteen, he got a job at the s-bus station behind the desk, issuing tickets and giving out information. Again, he saved every bit he made. By the time he was seventeen and everything happened with Mom, Dad and Bill, Dylan had saved up 75% of what he needed to get his first avatar.
“I’m gonna need you around the ranch from now on, buddy,” I had told him.
I noticed the very second the realization dawned on him that he’d have to give up his job and give up saving for an avatar. To his credit, he didn’t protest. He just nodded. While Dylan had all the energy and enthusiasm of a normal teen, he was mature beyond his years, even back then.
“Don’t worry,” I had said. “Dad had been saving to buy you an avatar. He was going to surprise you. So, I have the rest of the bits for you.” I was lying, of course. Every bit Mom and Dad earned went to house expenses, Dad’s studio costs, and Mom’s acting lessons. The extra 25% was coming out of my own savings account, but it was worth it.
Now, though, after all those years of saving, Dylan was ready to give his avatar up for me. The more I thought about it, I started to believe that Dylan didn’t like taking care of the hounds more than practicing VBR, or that his desire to get into the leagues hadn’t dropped. He was just scared. That was why he was delaying it. He was scared that if he took the step up and fought in a real VBR, that somehow his dream would come crashing down on him. Maybe I was just reading into things too much, though.
“I can’t take your archer,” I said. “Out of the question.”
“But—”
“No way, Dyl. Not gonna happen. Never. No chance, no how. You worked too hard for it, and I don’t exactly have a good record with avatars lately.”
Did relief pass over Dylan’s face then, just for a second? I wouldn’t have blamed him if it had. I sighed. “I’m just gonna have to think of something else.”
Dylan took another hit of Cool Blue, draining the bottle. He looked like he was working his way up to saying something. “There is one thing,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“You said I could take whatever I needed from Bill’s room, right?”
I nodded.
“Well,” said Dylan, “You also said that you never found his avatar after he died.”
“I figured it would be laying around somewhere,” I said. “It never turned up, though.”
Dylan looked a little nervous. “I was reaching for a pair of trainers from under his bed. When I put my hand down, the floorboard shifted. It was loose. So, I dug my fingers in and pried it up. Bill had stuff hidden under his bed.”
I smiled. I’d never thought of that. How could I have forgotten? You see, I wasn’t the only one who’d purposefully pried a floorboard loose from under my bed. Bill had done it first. I’d seen him do it, and like any younger brother, I copied him. As the years went on, I didn’t really think about Bill’s hiding place. I thought he’d grown out of using it. After all, he was twenty-two at the time of his accident, and he was getting ready to leave home.
“What did you find?”
“Cigarettes,” Dylan began, “a paper copy of a bit wallet. A knife…”
Hmm. So, Bill had still been using his childhood hiding place, except he had been using it for adult things. I guessed it was as safe a placemat as any to hide a bit wallet—but the cigarettes? Dad frowned on smoking, but Bill was old enough to make his own choices. And the knife? Why did he have that? I guessed I would never really know.
“And that’s not all,” said Dylan. Rather than skipping ahead a few paces in conversation, Dylan seemed to be really drawing this out.
“C’mon. Out with it,” I said.
“I found Bill’s old avatar.”
Chapter Twelve
Stepping into Bill’s room was like walking into a museum exhibit centered around my brother. Everything was set out to have the maximum nostalgic impact, from the old-style CD player in the corner, which he and his friends would play CDs on while telling each how much more authentic discs were compared to music streams, to the perma-gel squares on his walls that flickered between posters of his favorite movies. These, mostly horror movies, he would sometimes let me watch with him when I was growing up, on the condition I didn’t tell Mom or Dad.
It was a little weird opening his door and not hearing him shout ‘Get the hell out, Har!’ It wasn’t that I’d never been in his room since he died. I just didn’t go in if I could help it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t avoid it forever. The first time had been a few weeks after the accident, when I thought about stripping the house. That was what you did when people died, wasn’t it? You kept a few mementos, a few possessions that meant something to you, and you got rid of the rest. I’d taken two steps into the room, and then everything hit me. Late night wafts of tobacco that he thought he was safe to smoke once Mom and Dad were in bed, acid rock playing from a gel stereo drawn on his wall, with the globs of gel pulsating when the bass hit. It was like I could see, hear, and smell it all. I turned around, the plan abandoned. I didn’t go in there again until half a decade later, when I heard a bee buzzing in the house. It was a constant drone, a never-ending rattle that I just couldn’t shut out. I went from room to room before finally realizing it was in Bill’s. I ran in, opened the window, and shepherded it out.
Neither time I had been in the room had I spent longer than a few seconds in it. Now, I had no choice. I pushed open the bedroom door, shoving harder when it hit the section of floorboard that, for some reason, was a little more raised than the rest. When I
took a few strides into the center of the room, two things hit me. The first was an overpowering musty smell, the kind that accumulates in closets where clothes hang untouched for months on end. I pushed open the window and then turned back to face the second sensation to hit me: an incredible sense of nostalgia.
Here, in this eight-by-eight-foot room, was everything I’d aspired for in my childhood. It was a haven of treasures that, for the most part, were forbidden thanks to Bill’s mantra of ‘Don’t go poking around in my room when I’m not there.’ I’d looked up to Bill in the way every little brother looks up to his big brother, and maybe more. I copied his speech patterns, the way he moved, the little slang terms he picked up in school that got me in trouble at the dinner table when I repeated them—well, until doing that landed me in trouble, anyway. I was eight years old, we were having a family meal, and Mom said, “Honey, we’re out of mayonnaise.”
