by Aaron Jay
Remus began barking which didn’t help my state of mind. It felt like I was buried in sand. It pressed down on my chest so hard I couldn’t breathe. I began to panic.
Even if I found the stomach to do this again there was no way I was going to be able to meditate and chant to make it possible. I needed to recover. I should be completely hale and healthy after being revived but clearly something was wrong. Was this all in my mind? Was the strain giving me panic attacks?
Deep down I knew it wasn’t a panic attack. Your lifestyle is all wrong if you find yourself hoping that you are merely suffering from panic attacks induced by repeated drownings after weeks of deadly solitude. I had been avoiding acknowledging that this had to be from playing in hardcore mode. I was pretty sure that my symptoms were what you might get if you nearly drowned. Or, in my case, were drowned and then brought back to life.
I needed to go see my father. I did the one thing that all the traps and high-level mobs and the Eastmans couldn’t get me to do. I logged out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My lungs were filled with the taste of being eaten by locusts. My cough sounded like the color of steel wool. The disorientation of logging out was beyond anything I had experienced before. For one horrible moment, I thought that I was still drowning and that these were just the confused thoughts and sensations of a mind starved for oxygen and dying. In its panic and confusion my brain started wondering if maybe the game was the reality and the idea of logging out to a safer place was just the final fantasy of my desperate drowning panic. But after what seemed an eternity I was back in my pod.
I threw up. The sour stomach acid was assimilated as quickly as it hit the rest of the nano. I cupped a handful of nano and poured it over my face and chest. It ran off like mercury across felt cloth, leaving me clean. Setting aside the post-apocalyptic totalitarian society it forces upon you, modern technology was really convenient. Not having to clean up vomit almost made up for its downsides.
I flopped out of the pod, clothes forming around me. Modern lifestyle scores again. Coughing, I messaged my father. ArchE answered.
“Miles! Good to hear from you,” he chirped.
“Hi, ArchE.
“You are assuming he is in. Maybe he is out for a run,” ArchE said.
“Stop with the stale jokes already. I need to see him,” I said as another wave of coughs wracked me.
“You don’t sound well, Miles,” ArchE stated in a different tone of voice.
“Yes. I seem to have come down with swimmer’s lung or something. I was hoping to see if my father could help me with whatever this is.”
“We’ll be expecting you,” ArchE replied.
Carefully I made my way down the stairs and headed out to my father’s house. Stepping out of my apartment building I stopped, stunned. The sky! The sky was above me! And I could see on and on when I looked around. My vision wasn’t blocked by gritty stone or darkness just yards away from me wherever I looked. I could see down the blocks into the distance. Everything lit by the light of the sun. It felt so good that for a while I forgot about how my lungs felt. I simply stared upwards, feeling the sun slightly warming my face. The faint breeze was delicious. Another coughing fit broke my reverie and I moved along.
My feet trudged along. I didn’t even need to think, they knew how to go to get to my father’s house. Before I knew it, I was in front of the steps of the old brownstone.
Before I could climb the steps and ring the bell a hand fell on my shoulder.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” a voice said.
Turning around, I saw GM Dave Arneson in all his official glory. His partner, Patricia Pulling, was a bit down the block by their vehicle.
“GM Arneson. Back from your little vacation?” I said.
“Yes. Thanks for asking.”
“And what? What do you want? I need to see my father,” I grunted. I was too damned sick and tired to deal with this.
“I bet you do,” he accused.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“We know what you have been doing.”
“Yes? And what have I been doing?”
He looked at me like he couldn’t believe I was ballsy enough to try to play dumb. What he was on about I didn’t rightly know. Whatever he was up to it looked like his partner was keeping at least some distance from it. That didn’t bode well.
“Really? You have the gall to stand there on your father’s doorstep and play innocent. You really are a piece of work.”
“That’s funny. I am thinking just about the same thing about you. That you are a piece of work. That you have a lot of gall bothering me on my father’s stoop after our last encounter. You seem to have something you want to say to me so how about you just say it so I can ignore it and go see my father.”
“You damned well won’t ignore me. I got you, Boone. And your father has to be in it up to his eyeballs.”
“In what? And are you even here in an official capacity? Strike that. It is impossible to tell the difference between you doing your job and you doing Tasha Eastman’s bidding. Why is your partner skulking back there? She ashamed to be seen with you or something?”
“You two-bit little shifty cheater,” Arneson growled.
“Right. So, you say I am a cheater. We’ve done this dance before. And while you certainly stuck me in a hole for a month it turns out you are the one without ethics. You got a whole month’s unpaid leave and a note in your record to prove it. Not that this did a bit of good. You are here pulling the same gag so Q.E.D. You are a whore, a lackey and an incompetent one at that.”
Arneson seemed to be struggling with himself. Half of him wanted to follow his anger at me for giving him lip. The other half seemed to be enjoying me giving him lip. That it made the prospect of dropping the hammer on me feel better and better the more I told him what I thought of him. It seemed like the decent thing for me to do was to help one side of him out. I chose to go with continuing to tell him what I thought of him in the hopes it would get this over with so I could go talk with my father.
“It’s just you and me here, Arneson. No reason for you to go through this ridiculous song and dance. If you are going to bring false charges against me again then get to it. Otherwise I need to see my father,” I said turning to go.
“You don’t talk to a GM like that,” he snarled and pulled me back again. This set off an uncontrollable coughing fit. He ignored it as he twisted my arm and kept lecturing me. “This is going to feel so good. Pulling refused to go along. Let’s see how she feels once it comes out how your dad helped you cheat your way through the mines.”
He waited to see if I was going to respond but all I could do was cough and gasp.
“A lot of folks respect your father. Pulling isn’t alone. But now she and all the rest will see that he isn’t any better than tthe Party. When it was his kid he broke the rules just like everyone else. It will be a hard lesson for her but it is about time she grew up.”
“What are you talking about?” I got out between coughs.
“You have been clearing the instance. Might be almost be done,” he accused.
I didn’t see the point of denying it at this point. He clearly knew somehow.
“And?” I stated tersely.
“And? And? You solo a dungeon set at three times your level and you want to pretend you didn’t cheat? What you did was impossible, Q.E.D. you are a two-bit little cheat and it had to be your father who helped you do it.”
I could see how he jumped to this conclusion but I wanted to know how he even knew how I had been doing with the instance. He sure liked to hear himself talk and brag. That is helpful in a foe.
“How
“A-ha. That is why you thought you’d get away with it. Jude Sandoval. What? You didn’t notice him rejoining the party once in a while to check in on you? I don�
�t know why a good kid like that with real prospects still cared enough about you to see what you were doing. Said he got concerned when you never opened your pod despite being trapped in the instance. Maybe you forgot your party members can still rejoin. Maybe you thought he wouldn’t care. You lost a good friend there. Well, now he can move on. A lot of people are going to move on from you Boones once this all comes out.”
I tried to laugh but my cough was endless. Goddamned Jude. If only I’d kept my party menu open. They knew I had almost finished clearing the instance. What is the great detective’s old line? It was really hard to focus as I was having trouble breathing. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. But they hadn’t eliminated the impossible. I had almost finished doing the impossible or at least the improbable. Father always loved reading those books to me. My father. I needed to see him.
Looking down at the hand I had used to cover my mouth and cough I saw it was specked with frothy red fluid. That can’t be good. Why wouldn’t this son of a bitch just let me see my father?
My legs gave out and I slid down. I could hear GM Pulling shouting as she ran over.
“I didn’t do anything to him, Patty! He just started coughing and collapsed. I half think he is faking or something,” Arneson pleaded at her accusation.
“He is coughing up bloody mucus. I don’t think he is faking,” she said.
I looked up at her pretty face filled with concern. She was probably really beautiful considering that she looked pretty good even in her uniform. What would she look like in civvies? Of course, I had just spent who knows how long trapped in a cave so I wasn’t at my most objective. Also, I thought I might be dying and that was going to make you a bit emotional. I couldn’t even manage to stay angry as I looked at Arneson’s frustrated and confused face. It was just nice to see some human faces after weeks of darkness and the snarling visages of kobolds. Even the face of a pathetic excuse for an official like Arneson. His face actually seemed more human than hers. An angry confused face of someone who wished me wrong seemed like a better symbol of humanity as my vision started to grey out. Even his face seemed precious to me as death came. I knew better than others what drowning felt like and I was drowning. It would have been nice to see my father again.
The last thing I heard was ArchE’s voice and the beginnings of an argument as darkness came for me.
It was more surprising than perhaps it should have been to wake up in my father’s house. You would think that repeatedly dying in the game would train people to look at death in real life as something they expect to respawn from. After all, if you die and die again and again and get to respawn in a virtual world then when the grim reaper finally comes for you in the real world the habit of dying you have built up should take over, shouldn’t it? It didn’t in my case. I was pleasantly surprised to wake up in my old room.
Looking around, my old room hadn’t changed. I didn’t bring much of anything with me when I moved out. The walls were still covered in gaming posters and classical art from the beginnings of gaming. A Frank Frazzetta illustration of John Carter had pride of place. Hardcopies of classic editions of Tolkien, Moorcock, E. Howard and the rest were on the shelves. My father had steeped me in the references that inspired the games that inspired the games that made the Game. Basically, my bookshelf held an expanded collection of the volumes found in Appendix N. It would have seemed adolescent, or the room of some sort of man-child to someone living in an earlier time. In our screwed-up world it was the room of someone seriously preparing to fight on behalf of humanity. I figured my father and I qualified on both counts.
Standing up I braced for a new spate of coughing but everything felt normal. I took a breath. Once again normal. I took a deep breath and still nothing. My father had cured me. That was good news. Time to go see my old man.
Opening the door to the hallway I was stopped by a pair of GMs. My encounter with Arneson came flooding back to me. GMs in my father’s house was something I never thought I’d see.
“Miles Boone, you are being detained under authority of the GMs for suspicion of manipulation of the Game’s architecture or adjusting nano out of legal parameters,” said one of the two.
“Where is my father?” I asked.
They looked back at me and I realized that this was sort of a stupid question. My father was down in his room like always. Even with all our modern conveniences moving my father was not a small undertaking and what would be the point? He had long since lost the ability to flee. Confining him in a cell somewhere was redundant.
“I mean, is my father under detention? Does he know that you are accusing me of these crimes?”
“Numitor Boone is aware of our presence in his residence. We have been tasked with waiting for you to awaken,” reported the one on the left.
My father’s voice bellowed out from downstairs.
“Miles. Please join me in my office. We have things to discuss. If the two apes who have the gall to intrude upon our abode do not allow you to join me they should ask their superiors--or rather their superiors’ superior’s superior--if they should interfere with me conferring with my child. They will be informed that the Boones are not people to be trifled with!”
I started moving past the GMs.
“Well you heard him. He is my superior as well as my father. I don’t have to ask my superiors’ superior’s superior. I got it straight from the top to me. You can see it doesn’t get that much better when you are close to top of your organization. Are you going to stop me? No? Then excuse me,” I snarked.
The ape (in my father’s parlance) on the right started to tense up and not let me push by but his partner gave him a nod. He moved just slowly enough to let me know he could have kept me in the room. Well, he thought he could have. I might have made it tougher for them than they thought.
I made my way down the stairs and through the hall into my father’s room. His giant frame was on the bed where it always was. His keen eyes took me in with concern.
“Dad…” I began.
“Stop. Those infernal enforcers of the Game are inside the house. I will be weeks insuring that my privacy is actually private again. It can’t be helped though. Join me in my office. ArchE will ensure we can have a proper discussion there,” he growled.
I looked around and saw that ArchE wasn’t there, which never happened. If ArchE was on the job I could trust we had privacy. Allies like ArchE were one of the many reasons people like the Eastmans feared to push my father too far. I dropped into the red leather chair. The dish with the red pills was where it always was. I took one, swallowed it and joined my father in his office.
“Dad, what happened…” I began.
“Stop. We don’t have much time. First, report to me everything that happened since last we spoke,” he interrupted.
That is just like a genius. He gives me some unexplained nano and I almost die but he expects me to satisfy his curiosity first. I love my father but difficult doesn’t really begin to tell the story. It was no small part of why I decided to move out.
“But…” I tried.
My father banged his hand down onto his desk.
“We don’t have time for this, Miles. I understand that things have been difficult and perhaps a bit confusing. In moments we are going to be meeting with all the clan heads who make up the Party under seal of their tame AI Amulius. Now I ask you, do we have enough time for me to tell you everything I know that we will need to negotiate their attempts to traduce and nullify this family? There are decades of politics to say nothing of the technical details of the hardcore game mode and how it relates to the basic architecture of the Game. There simply isn’t enough time. Report!” he commanded.
Damn him for always being right. Once again, I was going to have to just blindly trust my father. Growing up I never could understand how even after he was bedridden he still managed to know better than I what would happen.
So, I reported to him. Quartzite
and my trades, which brought a slight rise of his lips that could have been a smile. My experiences with hardcore mode. Meeting Remus. The scorpion. The GMs coming to my apartment and subsequent imprisonment. Learning how to engage the magic system under hardcore mode under Mordecai and Lemminkäinen. He grunted and closed his eyes when I got to the part about returning to Quartzite and meeting Professor Brady. He had me go over the exact wording of the contract between the Eastmans and Brady twice. I told him of Maddie and the ritual and my eyes in and out of the game, and he showed no surprise. I found it comforting that whatever was happening to me was something he expected.
He nodded twice when he learned of Arneson’s mistaken assumption that the last mob I took out was a Desert hare instead of the scorpion mini-boss. I finished telling him of my weeks stuck alone in the instance set to almost three times my level.
I almost never saw my father angry. But my brief description of working my way through the dungeon brought him to it. You don’t have to spell out to a genius what weeks of solitary confinement is like in what is for all intents and purposes a death trap. When I made my short, clipped report of a few sentences to explain my weeks of grinding his eyes took me in. His eyes searched for scars physical or psychological. He seemed reassured by what he saw, which in turn reassured me. If he thought that my experiences weren’t doing something terrible to me then I must have been ok.
The report finished with me on his front stoop, Arneson, and coughing my way into blackness.
“Satisfactory, Miles. Very satisfactory. You did very well. You had some help from the arrogance and laziness of the GMs, but arrogance and inefficiency are the hallmarks of those we contend with. Their basic character was going to manifest itself at some point. I believe you would have overcome them in any event,” he expounded.
“Sure. It was nothing much with all their arrogance and inefficiency,” I said dryly. His confidence in me felt good but at a certain point his assumption that I would have inevitably beaten the odds seemed to minimize all I had done.
