by Rue Vespers
“Is your body still alive?”
“No. I caught pneumonia while I was in the hospital. Luckily, I uploaded to one hundred percent before my body passed away.”
Ocelo. Jenner knew that voice, too.
He was resting in his underwear atop a bed of kelp. Rolling over, his foot hit the floor. The pool was only four feet deep where he was. Ocelo was skimming through the water on the other end, lazily kicking a mermaid’s tail at the surface to propel herself along. All she had on was a shell bikini top. Rosy was hopping along at the rim of the pool to keep up as they chatted.
“How many times have you scrambled?” the teacup asked.
“I don’t keep track of that either.” At the wall, Ocelo dipped beneath the surface and reappeared heading in the other direction. “Or maybe I did in my other forms, but it’s hard to maintain any interest as a mermaid. There was the time I was a werecat, running along the rooftops of Galadras, I remember that well; the time I was a bear in a forest; the time I was a dwarf with my hammers in the bowels of the earth; the time I was a human and the time I was an elf; the time I was a demon, paranoid of everyone around me; and there must be more times I cannot recall. I think I was once a troll quite far back, perhaps when I first began to play.”
“A troll! You were a troll! What was your name? What kind of troll were you?”
A burble of laughter. “I’d have to call up my game history to tell you. All I remember of those days is smashing my fists through the thatch roofs of cottages and chasing villagers around, which is strange to me as a mermaid, but I suppose as a troll I found these activities pleasurable. That life left such little impression that I believe it was quite short before I was scrambled.”
Ocelo floated along, her brow furrowing in thought. “An ogre, too, but that was a Halloween event one year. I was an ogre in Haunted Castle, and a ghost for a Christmas event. You can sign up for those events to earn extra gold and merit trophies.”
“What’s the difference between an ogre and a troll?” Jenner asked.
They turned in surprise, Rosy shouting, “Kid!” and Ocelo dipping underwater to swim to him. She surfaced at Jenner’s side, kelp lacing her hair, long before the teacup reached them.
“How did I get here?” Jenner asked.
She shook off the kelp. “I carried you to my home as you flickered. But you are well now, as well as you can be for one in dire straits in the outer-world.”
Rosy hopped onto the kelp and slipped between the strands into the water. Catching the cup as it sank, Jenner pulled it above the surface. “Hey, Rosy.”
A stream of water was spat out against his chest. “You dumb fucker!” the teacup roared. “I thought you were dead! Don’t tell me we did all of that work to get you better nets just for you to give up the ghost before they could do you any good.”
His voice trembling, because he felt it in his gut that Duo had not been honest about the ACT3 net, Jenner said, “Character upload percentage?”
Permanent Character Addition
You are being uploaded to the game. Check in at any time for an update.
Current Upload: 39.9%
“Oh my God! Oh my God! 39.9%!” Jenner shouted. More like screamed.
That was a huge jump. Mom had gotten him a spanking, brand new ACT2; Duo hooked him up with a used ACT3 in very good condition; now he just had to earn enough money to replace that last ACT1 net. Although it was undoubtedly the fastest of the three ACT1s he was given, it wouldn’t hold a candle to a second ACT2.
Then he just had to stay alive for a little while longer.
Ocelo mentioned Christmas . . . and he knew what that was! Not just the tree and the lights and the presents and the stockings, but he had his memories of past Christmases. Putting up a wreath on the front door, wrapping little gifts for his mom, listening to the church group of off-key carolers that always walked past their apartment building. He remembered last year at work when the cashiers rebelled against Corporate for demanding they push tiny Santa hats for cats on customers checking out; he remembered the joy of the last day of school before winter break, everybody pent-up with excitement and staring at the clock. Even the teachers.
Gingerbread cake, his favorite. Eggnog. The gift card to the game store that Mom put in his stocking when he was thirteen years old . . . It was his first time in a pod and he went out of his ever-loving mind when he opened the envelope, Mom laughing at how excited he was. Laughing yet sad since she wanted to give more than three hours, but Jenner was over the moon because all of his friends had been in pods since grade school and he felt so behind. When January rolled around, he could at last join the chat about what game he liked to play best, what character he was fashioning, his adventures and battles.
He had been himself when he opened his eyes on that first morning in The Queen’s Crown. Now he was just more of himself, his building blocks stacking into place behind the finished product.
He kissed Rosy on the handle. He kissed Ocelo on the cheek. Then he dove beneath the surface, kicking his feet and snapping his arms, needing to burn off this jolt of adrenaline. 39.9%!
It was nothing less than a miracle.
He heaved himself out of the water and sat on the edge of the pool. “This is your place, Ocelo? It’s beautiful. Do you need to have a pool when you’re a mermaid?”
Ocelo’s scaly green fin slapped down. With Rosy riding about on her chest, she swam out of the kelp bed. “It’s not a need for me to be in the water. Just a very powerful want. The price is a little steep, but I make enough in the gladiator clinic and through side quests to afford it.”
“Calls? Did I miss any calls?” Jenner said. The blocks did not respond, so he assumed that he hadn’t.
A beat later, though, they flew into view.
Congrats! You have earned a merit trophy for Swimming With A Mermaid!
Emergency Alert (OPTIONAL): Dwarves, demons, elves, human warriors, shifters, and all others Level 1 and up in Galadras and the surrounding cities, towns, villages, and forests are summoned to Sundown Castle for battle instructions and fortification readiness.
Inner-World News: Good morning! Select a headline below to read more.
Blue Mountain Trolls Slam Through Wizard Defenses
Emergency Alerts Changed To Mandatory For All Players Above Level 10
Non-Essential Services In Galadras Shuttered As Troll Invasion Moves South
Missing Oasis Located Deep Underground; Dwarves Blamed For Illegal Mining
Achoo! Highly Contagious Virus Spreads Through Eastern Talvenor
Notable ‘Deaths’: Magus Canopus, Magus Archello Sung, WhipItGood
“There’s something wrong with the game,” Jenner said. “It’s giving me another morning news when I just got one this morning.”
Rosy jumped up beside him. “There’s nothing wrong. It’s tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon. You were out like a light, Gramma.”
“Since yesterday?” Jenner said in appall. “Shit! I need to get to the gladiator lounge. Maybe if people needing subs see the green dot, they’ll be more likely to hire me . . .”
Ocelo shook her head. “The rings should be closed.”
“What?” His jaw dropped. “They can’t be! I need to keep earning money! If I can get a few more bids-”
“It’s a non-essential service, I believe. Most of the city has closed down. If you click on the first headline, there are videos from the battlefield at the bottom.”
Jenner pulled up the headlines again and skimmed the first article in agitation. Under the command of Magus Archello Sung from House Oramedes, three thousand wizards took a Portal from the Peak to the Flooded Lands. The trolls blasted through the legions with little trouble. As the wizards naturally expected to win, however, they had left the Portal open behind them in order to return to the Peak once victory was achieved.
“What the fuck?” Jenner exploded. “The trolls made it through the wizards’ Portal?”
“Transporting them much farther south in a h
eartbeat,” Ocelo said dreamily as she paddled about on her back. “Where they ravaged the wizard reinforcements at the Peak before moving on to the Plains of Araholle. That’s where the fighting is now.”
“How can the wizards have been so stupid?” Jenner clicked on a grainy video of a chaotic battlefield. Robed figures ringed thick, bluish-brown tree trunks, spells firing in colorful spurts from their wands. The camera panned up two trunks and they were legs, the legs of a troll standing thirty feet tall and roaring as the spells bounced off its hide. With a kick, it sent several wizards flying away. Then it stomped on another one, doubtlessly scrambling the man under that giant heel.
Jenner scrolled down the rest of the videos and clicked on the very last one. The camera swept from right to left through a forest of those tree trunk legs, lifting higher and higher until the Portal appeared. It was the twinkling of a star caught between two real trees. A dozen wizards protecting the star were losing the battle to keep the trolls at bay. Knocking them aside, the trolls stormed through the light and vanished.
Jenner swallowed over a suddenly dry throat. “How many of them made it through?”
“All of them,” Ocelo said. “The wizards were fighting too hard on both sides of the Portal to be able to close it down. The estimate is fifteen thousand Blue Mountain trolls in total.”
“But they have all of the higher-level elves and shifters at those plains,” Jenner protested. “They’ll take the trolls down.”
Rosy looked torn halfway between concern and delight. The concern was for Jenner, or so he presumed, and the delight was at the trolls’ audacity in using a wizarding travel mode against them. “If they’re calling in Level 1 and up, even if it’s optional, then this is serious, kid,” the cup said. “Nobody calls in Level 1 players for anything.”
This was ridiculous! Jenner did not have time for a war to happen in the game. Angry that his avenue to earning money had been cut off, he burst, “Why did they just send three thousand wizards for a troll army of fifteen thousand? What did they think would happen?”
“They had to work with what they had, and most of the wizards were fucking around on the way there,” Rosy said.
Jenner couldn’t argue with that when he had listened to those two wizarding women talk outside the wand shop about reporting to battle as slowly as possible. God almighty! Wizards were the most powerful players in the game, but they were so self-absorbed and useless. They might kill Jenner with their uselessness! By the time the trolls were defeated, would anybody remember The Teacup Guy? His fifteen minutes of game fame would be over.
“It should have been enough,” Ocelo said. She had that faraway stare again. Jenner trusted it now; the mermaid was looking right into the code in these moments. “Three thousand high-level wizards have unfathomable power. But something is making these trolls stronger than they should be. They’re whispering . . .”
She listened.
“What? WHAT?” Rosy shouted in agitation. “What are they whispering?”
“Shh,” Jenner hissed.
“They’re whispering about witches,” Ocelo said, gazing away from them to another vista outside of this room. “They’re whispering about sorcerers. The wizards should have triumphed in the Flooded Lands, but they were brought low. They should have stopped the trolls at the Peak, but instead they were overrun. Who made these trolls what they are? They did not, could not, achieve this on their own. And now they come. Now they come for Galadras. The wizards whisper that demons are using the trolls to wrest control from the High Council.”
“That’s brilliant!” Rosy exclaimed.
“Rosy!” Jenner scolded.
“It’s brilliant for the demons! Oh, what do you know?”
Stung, Jenner said, “I’ve learned a lot in a very short period of time.”
Rosy jumped back and forth over his lap. “Then you know that demons have a lot of trouble organizing themselves for large-scale rebellions! Their plots fall apart as fast as they stitch them together. But if they could make these trolls bigger and badder and let them do the attacking . . . it’s brilliant for the demons, like I said! Now the question is which demons are responsible. Hey, psychic mermaid chick! What are the demons thinking?”
Jenner’s clothes and several towels were folded neatly upon a lounge chair. He hurried over to it and skinned himself of his soaked underwear. As he dried off and dressed, he decided to go to the gladiator rings anyway. Maybe they weren’t closed. They couldn’t be! The lower-level players especially needed to gain combat skills before they charged off to the battlefield, so it made sense to keep the rings open for business. And it wasn’t even like they needed real players to sit in the announcer’s chair or supply opponents!
“Where do you think you’re going?” Rosy asked.
“The rings,” Jenner said. “They aren’t like a clothing store! They’re essential.”
Ocelo leaped out of the water, her fin changing to feet as she landed beside him. He turned away to give her privacy, as she was nude from the waist down. A greenish hand went past him for a fresh pile of folded clothes suddenly sitting upon the chair.
Rosy jumped from Jenner’s foot to his hand to his shoulder. “Gramma, everyone is going north.”
“They can use NPCs in the rings for opponents,” Jenner said.
“Yeah, they can, but you need someone in the outer-world to hire you first, and they’re headed north to Sundown Castle. I watched out the window earlier while you were asleep.”
Jenner ignored the cup. Slipping on his boots, he rushed for the door.
The moment he stepped outside, though, he knew.
He knew even though he didn’t want to see the truth in front of him.
In the worst weather, or the dead of night, there was still some traffic going this way and that upon the roads of the city. Customers entering a shop or tavern, drunks getting tossed from a brothel, a horse clopping along before a wagon or carriage, it was an exceedingly rare street that sported nothing. And even if there was truly nothing down on the road, lights were on in the windows of the inns as people passed back and forth behind the glass. Galadras had a constant, low-level hum, a buzz kicked up by its thousands upon thousands of inhabitants.
Today there was nothing.
The city was an empty shell as Ocelo guided Jenner and Rosy back to the rings. Curtains were drawn over all of the inns’ windows. Stores were locked up and dark inside. Even the NPCs were largely gone, because not everybody that Jenner usually saw around him could be a player. Only a few elderly people remained, along with a younger woman in a wheelchair.
Ocelo heard his unspoken question. “Yes, the old are NPCs ninety-nine times out of one hundred.”
Had the rest of the NPCs gone north, too? That was the only explanation. NPCs had names and levels, even if the game determined them and they didn’t advance like a real-world player or perma-added character. They went to Sundown Castle to defend Galadras.
The gladiator office was dark, just like everywhere else. Jenner pulled at the door and pounded on it, but nobody responded. Running over to the rings, he was unable to enter any of them. The way inside was clear, but an invisible wall blocked him from going in.
Voices.
Hopeful that people were coming back to the city already, he spun around. A rattling wagon was turning at the corner, loaded down with players riding in the back. Ocelo was flagging it over.
“What are you doing?” Jenner asked.
“It’s a war wagon headed to Sundown Castle,” Ocelo said. “We’re going.”
Jenner almost pulled out his hair in frustration. “I’m not going anywhere. I can’t do this right now! This is a game, get it? Just a game!”
“He has trouble with this part of it,” Rosy explained.
Jenner looked at the cup in betrayal. “No, I don’t!”
Rosy leaped over to Ocelo’s shoulder. “Yes, you do. Just like when we were in the Fortune Islands! This is a game, but it’s also the real world. In the real wor
ld, it doesn’t matter to anyone if Stupid P. Fuckface needs to earn money for a net. In the real world, you aren’t important, kid. You’re not a mover or a shaker. You have no power. You’re a Level 5 nobody. This is the world, and the world is at war. You can’t stand apart from the world.”
Gritting his teeth, Jenner said, “This is not the real world.” He swiped for the cup to return it to his own shoulder, but Rosy jumped on top of Ocelo’s head.
“Maybe not,” Rosy said as the wagon slowed in the road, “but it’s the only one you have now.”
“And you’re going with her?”
“It’s the only world we have, too,” Ocelo said quietly.
“Well, I’m not!” Jenner exclaimed, casting a dismissive look over the low-level players seated in the wagon. They were babbling to each other about battles and weapons and skill points. “I’m not playing pretend with all of you that any of this is actually happening! I’m going to . . .”
What was he going to do? Stand here outside the rings and run at the invisible wall? Break into the office and go downstairs to hang around an empty gladiator lounge? Wait for calls that wouldn’t come?
Ocelo and Rosy boarded the back of the wagon. He shook his head when the driver asked if he was getting on. Then he stood there, alone, watching the wagon pull away.
He had to think about himself. Protect himself. This war might only last a day or two, but if he got scrambled while fighting it, then what? Even if he respawned as a human player, he was back to Level 1 and minus his grakel scales. It was doubtful that anyone would drop five grand on him in that state.
He had been a nobody in the outer-world, too. Just another face in the crowd, just another person who wouldn’t make any difference. A cog in a machine. Two hands on a broom. That was reality.
But look at what he had done here in only a few days. This inner-world was different from the outer-world. He could gain power here. He just had to live long enough to do it!
