by J. T. Stoll
From inside, her mom called, “Vero, what you doing out there?”
She watched a car drive past. The speed of it felt… funny. Time slowed. No, that wasn’t quite right. Time moved the same, but she could take in and process more details. At the same time, she felt empty, hollow. Somewhere out there—a couple miles away under a blanket in her room—waited this thing’s other half. The armor felt almost… mournful, and the blaze inside her seemed weaker than the night before. She could feel the rough direction and distance to her axe.
Her phone vibrated. “So, planning to fight a war?”
“No, but I don’t think we can ignore Jed. He promised to kill us.”
Her fingers flew across the keypad. The autocomplete on her awful phone hadn’t kept up. Well, at least there was something good about this whole mess. Super texting powers.
“Speak for yourself.”
Mom called for her, again. Vero walked to where another building’s wall provided some concealment. She leaned on the railing, hopped, and balanced on her hands, legs stuck in the air, nearly to the ceiling. Even with her armor weak without the axe, she barely felt her own weight.
Something shifted in her pocket. Out of the corner of her eye, her phone tumbled over the balcony. She darted like a frog’s tongue to catch it, but the motion threw off her balance. She fell face-first onto the cement walkway.
It didn’t hurt at all. She stood up, perfectly fine.
Jed might be lurking out there, nursing his wounds, but Vero and the others weren’t powerless. They weren’t helpless.
Wearing a little more jewelry could be good for her.
5. Neil’s Designs
A white-haired lady watering her flowers glared as Pieter parked the White Lady under a lit street lamp. Pieter waved; she didn’t. It wasn’t the first time she’d given his ride that look.
Pieter locked his car and walked to Neil’s place. This neighborhood, built sometime recently, had a fresh, new feel to it. Five short, parallel roads of idyllic, identical homes rose at the foot of grassy hills on the south side of town, not far from school. Neil’s dad practiced optometry, and his mom did software development, so they could afford one of these pricey, three-bedroom houses.
Pieter knocked on his friend’s door. It cracked open, and Neil’s eye peeked through. “Come in… quickly. You weren’t followed, right?”
“I don’t know,” Pieter said. “That grandma down the street gave me a pretty suspicious look.”
Neil opened up the door. “Nothing new there.”
Part of the reason Pieter did the double date was to get some time together with his old friend. With Neil going the gamer route, the two didn’t see each other much anymore. More and more, their friendship began to seem like a “for old time’s sake” sort of thing.
Pieter waved to Yuko, Neil’s mom. She kept her eyes on her laptop screen at the dining room table, phone to her ear. She’d moved to America as a kid. Pieter only heard her use Japanese when Neil did something really stupid.
“It’s Title Media Service again?” she shouted.
“They just had a big release today,” Neil said. “Huge mess.”
“Hello,” called Hiroshi, Neil’s dad, from the couch. He sat watching TV.
“Hey,” Pieter replied.
“Friends over? You finish your homework?” Hiroshi asked his son.
“Yeah,” Neil said.
“Haha, good. What the motto?”
“One more year to USC,” Neil said rather dryly.
They started up the stairs. “Still heading for the home of the Trojans, eh?” Pieter asked.
“Yeah,” Neil replied. Every year, he seemed to grow less exctied about the prospect of college.
“And still computer programming?”
“Yeah. You know what Dad says. USC is the best. I’ll get a job like Mom’s, if I’m lucky.”
“Kill it! The database is thrashing,” Yuko shouted from the kitchen.
“Some kind of luck,” Pieter muttered.
Neil closed and locked the bedroom door. Posters of Star Wars, some anime with a cat girl, and the Avengers movie covered the walls of his room. Novels and DVDs covered a tall, black bookshelf. The Wheel of Time series had its own shelf. An enormous monitor rested on his desk, and his tower roared like a fighter jet. A laptop sat on the other computer’s tower. A sword—a replica from the Lord of the Rings movies—hung on the wall. Well, at least his parents wouldn’t ask questions about adding a mace to the collection.
Neil lowered his voice and sat in an office chair in front of his desk. “Finally.”
Pieter plopped down in a beanbag chair on the floor. “Hey, Vero needed me today.”
“And she doesn’t need you right now, after what happened?”
“Her family hijacked her,” Pieter said. “Trust me, she’d much rather be with me at the moment.”
“You didn’t get hurt, right?”
“No, he didn’t notice us.”
“So, far as you know, it had nothing to do with you? He was just in it for money?”
Pieter nodded. “From the news, it sounds like he held up a few different stores. Guy’s gotta eat, right?”
Neil swiveled back and forth in his seat. “Perhaps. We don’t know anything about their biology.”
Pieter laughed. “You think they photosynthesize?”
Neil spun a full circle. “It’s possible. Have you looked through James’s bag yet?”
“Yeah. Found a sheath for my sword and a strap to cover Vero’s blade. Plus some clothes. A little bit of dried meat and some crackers. Some other odds and ends and, get this… a flashlight.”
Neil stopped spinning. “A flashlight? It works?”
“Yeah. It’s metal, has a clear switch on it and everything. I even managed to get the battery out—at least, what I assumed was the battery. It’s not exactly double-A.”
“Flashlight, flashlight,” Neil muttered. “Why a flashlight?”
“Uhh… to see in the dark?”
“No, I mean, they use swords and axes and stuff for weapons. If they had that kind of technology, shouldn’t they have guns or something?”
Pieter shrugged. “Well, if you hadn’t noticed, it’s not exactly your normal sword. I think with Croga, I could take somebody with a gun.”
“But it’s a full-blown fantasy world! I totally had them pegged at a medieval technology level.”
“Umm… Neil? What’s the big deal?”
Neil snatched his laptop off his other computer’s tower. “Yeah, but the more advanced they are, the more threat they pose. Anyways, I’ve been drawing up plans since Saturday night.”
“Plans?”
Neil set his laptop on his knees and tapped the keyboard. “I just finished installing hard drive encryption software on both my boxes.”
“For…”
“Security, of course. And don’t use public email services for communication. They’re too easily accessed by law enforcement. As the dimensional barrier becomes breached more and more often, we all know that the three-letter agencies will end up involved. Did you know they took the field off the market?”
“What?”
“I drove by today. Not for sale. And they’re building a chain-link fence.”
Pieter shrugged. “So they sold it.”
“This exact weekend? And now they’re building a fence? Don’t call that a coincidence.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Pieter said. “But don’t call it the FBI.”
“CIA, more likely. Or some agency we’ve never heard of. But that tipped me off that somebody else knows about this. So I set up a secure email server in Panama. I’ve already deleted my Facebook account and suggest you do the same in about a week—not too close to mine.”
“Umm… You wake up yesterday with a hangover, too?”
“I’ve never had a hangover, but yes. It’s obvious that using the soul armors drained us, as it will probably continue to do.”
Neil tapped on his laptop.
“I’ve outlined three scenarios. In number one, we’ll grow used to the devices and eventually function normally when using them. In numer two, we’ll continue to experience exhaustion. In number three, the strain on our bodies will eventually kill us.”
This is what Neil had been up to? Pieter was really, really glad to have a girlfriend. “So, what’d you think of Gloria?”
“Don’t we have bigger things to worry about right now?”
Not a particularly surprising response. Nothing during the date had convinced Pieter they’d work as a couple.
Neil slid his finger over the track pad. “Anyways, let’s at least get your email set up.” He handed the laptop to Pieter. “Enter your password. You’re [email protected].”
Despite thinking that a secure email was the least of their worries, Pieter typed mashup, the password he used for most things. Bright-red text appeared on the screen, explaining how the password wasn’t long enough.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Neil said. “Make it longer. Throw in some numbers and special characters.”
Pieter stared at the password screen. “You’re sure jumping into this quick.”
“Of course. You think that waiting is going to make our problems vanish?”
“No, this is all just… weird, you know?”
“Weird’s an understatement. What difference does ‘weird’ make?”
Pieter typed Mashupmashup@ for his password. The server accepted it. He bitterly swore not to use this email.
“So, think it’s real?” Pieter asked.
Neil planted his elbows on his desk, cupped his face, and began idly bouncing his nose back and forth between his index fingers. “Parts. I’m not sure how many lies James mixed in. But I know he’s from another world and there’s some kind of war going on, a war where we have to choose a side.”
Pieter grabbed a little piece of paper and wrote the password. “Exactly. How is that not weird? And how can you just accept it?”
Neil snatched the laptop back. “Of course it’s weird. But look at the facts. You saw what these armors can do. Either it’s some kind of super-secret military technology, or James really comes from a world of magic. We saw two guys kill him last night. The quicker you accept the facts, the quicker we act on them.”
A glint of passion shone in Neil’s eyes. Easy for him to say. He was just… different. His mind worked a million miles a minute. It took ideas and information, processed them, and then just believed “the facts.” Something like a robot. It helped him in school, but it probably, somewhere deep down, also explained his perpetual singleness.
“Then, what don’t you believe?”
Neil folded up his laptop and tossed it onto his bed. “I’m not sure which side to join. I mean, James seems to work for someone named Rolland, but who’s to say Rolland is the good guy? Consider this story. James, servant of the tyrannical King Rolland, was tasked with a mission to begin a brutal campaign of guerilla warfare against the heroic revolutionary, Terian. Injured during the journey and with his companions slain, he gave their weapons to the first people he found on Earth to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
“Furthermore, he came up with a story about the ‘evil prince’ to get us to begin his guerilla campaign for him. Thus, when Terian comes to Earth to seek help in overthrowing his despot father, we will take up arms against him. Different story depending on who tells it, eh? Given what we know, do you see any reason that’s impossible?”
“Jed still tried to kill us.”
“No, we tried to kill him. Maybe he was just defending himself.”
“You just had to make things hard, didn’t you?”
“Of course. You don’t question enough. America doesn’t need an autocrat like this so-called King Rolland. Or maybe he’s the good guy. At this point, who knows?”
And that was the problem with Neil’s brain. Just as easily as he could believe the facts, he could argue himself into a circle.
“Okay, so how about we just back off and watch what happens? Getting killed would, you know, spoil my senior year,” Pieter said.
In his mind, Jed taunted that he’d kill them all.
“No good. We’ve got a bad guy who knows our faces and maybe overheard our names. In a town this small, he might find us. If you want out of this, we have to do something about Jed.”
“You sound like you already have a plan.”
“Scenarios,” Neil said. “Scenario one: path of the chicken. If we ignore Jed and Dek, they either kill us, or when Terian finally comes through—evil prince or not—he knows who we are, and we get sucked into this thing. Running away doesn’t keep us out of the battle.”
Pieter stared at him.
“Come on, Pieter. You’re not an idiot. You have to see the logic behind this.”
Idly, Pieter flipped around in his hands the piece of paper with his password on it. “I do, but…”
But it was a lot to think about. And after making a password for an email server in Panama, he couldn’t tell what parts of this conversation came from Neil being paranoid and what parts came from Neil being smart.
“But? Wait, Pieter, did you write down your login and password?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“You can’t do that! Someone might…”
“Neil! No one cares about an email server in Panama! It’s not what we’re worried about.”
Neil turned a pouty face to his laptop screen. “Well… you should be. Fine, take your password. But memorize it. Then burn it later. Now seriously, you get why we can’t just ignore this whole thing, right? It won’t ignore us.”
Sure, it might not, but that didn’t make it easier to handle. That didn’t make it easier to want to take action. The joint in Pieter’s car sounded really nice right now.
“Okay, so what are the other scenarios?”
“Scenario two: Zip the lips. We kill Jed and his sidekick before more highlanders come through. Then we go back to our quiet lives.” He said it so casually, as though planning a raid in WoW. The thought of real violence—so unlike the video game imitation—made Pieter shiver. The night before had been enough to last a lifetime.
“Or scenario three: Save the world.” Neil grinned as he said it. “Kill Jed for secrecy then do exactly what James asked: Fight a guerilla war against Terian and make Earth a graveyard for his forces. Make sure Rolland wins then get rewards and glory. And the girls.”
“Assuming Rolland’s the good guy.”
Neil swirled back and forth in his chair. “Well, if the prince shows up with an army, it’ll be pretty obvious, yeah?”
Pieter stared open mouthed at his friend. “Are you joking?”
“Usually, I’m the one asking you that question.”
Pieter glanced at the sword hanging on the wall. “So, you been… waiting for this or something?”
Neil swiveled and stared dead on at Pieter. “What, expect a portal to open in my backyard and somebody to come out and tell me I have to save world?” He breathed heavily. His eyes had an impulsive, agitated look. Pieter hadn’t seen him this excited since the first WoW expansion, back when they’d hung out a bit more and been better friends.
“You sound like you’re enjoying yourself,” Pieter said. “Like Bad Guy Destroy.”
Neil stared into the distance, an absent, pleasant look on his face. They both remembered it, meeting as kids living in the same neighborhood when they were four, right after Pieter’s family moved to SLO. Their parents had made them play outside in the park, and the two became best friends. They invented Bad Guy Destroy, a game that involved turning every toy into a laser, bazooka, or sword and blasting imaginary bad guys. Co-op, not versus. It was something like Halo back before their parents let them play violent video games.
“Enjoying myself? Of course not.” Neil spun away from Pieter. “This isn’t a game. It’s real danger, real pain and sweat and blood. Excited? No.” But the wild look didn’t vanish from his eyes.
“No, of course not,” Pieter muttered. He knew which scenario Neil was rooting for. And he didn’t like it.
6. Algebra
Pieter lightly jogged through an empty, locker-lined hallway. It wasn’t that this weekend’s excitement had caused him to sleep in; it was that every weekend’s excitement caused him to sleep in. Now that he drove himself to school, his mom didn’t bother him in the morning.
Pieter slid into a seat near the back, directly behind Gloria, just as Mr. Miner finished the roll call. “Pieter Walters.”
“Here,” Pieter called out. Every once in a while, his last name came in handy.
Mr. Miner, a tall black man wearing floating math symbols on his tie, leaped into a lecture on quadratic equations. The bleary-eyed students slowly felt the freedom of the weekend drain away. Pieter stared at the back of Gloria’s head.
South Obispo High was about ten years old and lay spread across a hillside surrounded mostly by undeveloped land. Unlike the older SLO High across town, South Obispo drew students from nearby county land and a couple towns down the freeway. Pieter heard some of the teachers who’d grown up elsewhere talk about how they loved the small town feel of the school and how they never wanted to teach anywhere else. He couldn’t wait to leave this parochial village for somewhere fun.
At the same time, he recognized most of the students. They’d grown up together, and he brought spice to their life. They appreciated his humor, if he did say so himself. Barriers of cliques didn’t bother him; no label defined him. He was Pieter; he got along with everyone from Neil to the football players. From the potheads to the church kids.
“The four of us should meet and talk,” he whispered to Gloria.
She jumped a little at the sound of his voice. “Yeah, you think?”
“Hadn’t heard from you since that night.”
“It was a lot to take in, and…”
“You slept about twelve hours yesterday?”
“Yeah,” Gloria said.
“How about after school?”
