by Reapers
Everyone moves away from the discoball lizard with wings. She settles, shakes her tail, flairs her nostrils as the dust settles. “Well?” she asks, in dulcet tones reminiscent of Dr. Girlfriend. “Where is he?”
“Steamboy?” asks Rocket.
“Yeah, honey, where is the bastard that took me under his wing? See, I make jokes.”
Me: Tell her I’m feeling sick.
“He’s sick,” says Zedic. “We went out for Vietnamese food and the nuoc mam didn’t agree with him, I guess. Anyway, he’s running at both ends, if you get my meaning and just didn’t feel up to coming today.”
“I had that happen once after eating a couple of Chiup Hogs,” she says as she farts pink sparkles and then sits on her haunches. She pats her belly, just below the stretch of scar tissue where the orcs had ripped out her mirrored scales. “Talk about some heartburn, but you don’t see me skipping out on a date.”
Frances laughs. Mirror looks at her like she’s some sort of insignificant varmint that probably wouldn’t taste very good and snorts noxious-looking, zombie-green smoke at her. Frances abruptly shuts up.
Sophia floats forward. “Droga brakhyakh ni temakha!”
Me: I really need to get a Thulean dictionary if I’m to understand this high falutin’ pretend-talk.
Rocket: Not anymore! I installed a hack yesterday. Point at Sophia, scroll to Mirror. Translations will appear.
I do as instructed. Luckily for me, Mirror still hasn’t responded to Sophia’s command, which is now visible on the screen with the translation beneath it: Don’t make trouble, dragon.
Mirror lifts her barbed tail, finally speaks in a low, whispery voice: “Doka duchaka.”
Prepare to die.
Me: Sophia, stand down! Mirror will fry your ass!
I watch on the holoscreen as Sophia steps forward with her hand raised. “Doka matachaka.”
Relax, calm down.
Me: Is she crazy? She’s trying to talk down a dragon?
Zedic: That’s sort of her style.
Sophia: Quiet Quantum, you’re breaking my concentration! Dealing with dragons is all about proving one’s authority.
Mirror growls, “Chai ni vekhlava, ni vekhlava.”
You are not my master.
“Master?” I scroll my finger over to Mirror to see her hit point and notice for the first time that there is a green star just above her name. Pressing the green star reveals my name, or at least the name assigned to my profile, Steamboy_889.
Sophia says, “Vonyaika, ni tohracha. Yhai chain tohracha genkhacha.”
The translation appears: I understand, I am not your master. I am your master’s friend.
Mirror stares her down for a minute, finally says, “Tohracha ni genkhacha. Mookhnig igjig igyakh cha!”
My master has no friends. He is a moody little angry man.
Me: Tell that damn dragon to quit her yapping and get to flapping!
Sophia: I don’t know how to translate that.
Me: Well, figure it out.
She thinks for a moment and finally says, “Droga dundun, genkhacha bandro!”
Bad dragon, help his friends!
“Where is Chrono?” Mirror asks in the common tongue. “I see the igyag mage, the black guy, the almost ninja, the NPC, some new chick, but no blacksmith… “
“I’m not angry,” says Veenure. She turns to Rocket and grins. “See, I told you my Thulean was getting better. I understood at least half the conversation without any translator hacks.”
Rocket smiles. “I can tell you’re getting better.”
Me: Don’t blow smoke up her ass just to get a few brownie points.
Rocket scratches his nose with his middle finger.
Me: Keep it up, smart guy.
Zedic answers Mirror’s question. “Chrono is busy, sorry.”
“Poo! He was my favorite, so muscly and hairy. I like hairy player characters.” She bats her eyes, runs her tongue over her sharp teeth.
Aiden steps up. “If you want a big, burly guy, I might know someone.”
“Is he an NPC?”
“Yes,” he says.
“I only date player characters, sorry.”
“But you’re an NPC.”
“Whatever,” Mirror says with a haughty huff. “I guess Chrono is too busy for me. There are other blacksmiths in Hyperborea.”
“We want to go to Polynya,” Frances says.
“Don’t we all, honey.” She bares her teeth. “Hyperborea is about as much fun as a bad case of Dragon Cooties.”
“Droga mikchoo,” says Sophia.
Mirror rolls her eyes, or at least it looks like she has rolled her eyes. Hard to tell with the sunlight reflection off her in every which way. “We get it, honey, you speak the language. Big deal. Anybody with a couple of weeks to kill can get fluent in Thulean. My last boyfriend picked it up in a week, he knew all the dirty words too.”
Me: Can you imagine what date night with a dragon must look like?
Rocket: (x)_(x)
Frances Euphoria: Barfaroni.
Zedic: Hey, there’s somebody for everybody and everyone’s into something…
“We are continuing our … ” Frances glances to Veenure, “ … our adventure, Mirror. We need to get to Polynya so we can level up and then travel to Ultima Thule.”
“And Steamboy knows about this?”
“Of course he does,” says Sophia. “That’s how we have your necklace. He’ll spawn in Polynya tomorrow, once we’ve settled. I have a home there too, by the way, in Valhalla.”
“Ooooooh, aaaah! The la-di-da princess has a home in Valhalla, by the way.”
“I’m level sixty-one, so technically, I can already travel to Ultima Thule if I want.” Sophia huffs.
“Do you guys always have to put up with her bragging?” Mirror asks.
Frances nods, Zedic and Rocket don’t say anything. Aiden looks to Veenure and shrugs.
“I’m not bragging,” Sophia grits. “I’m just informing you.”
Mirror stretches her neck and blows a golden smoke ring. She snorts a few smaller puffs of red, white, and blue smoke and gently propels them through the big gold ring. “All right, all right. Everyone hop on, and no cowboy stuff. Got that? If I so as much hear even the slightest yippie ki yay, I’m dumping all of you into the Endless Sea.”
Me: Frances, I’m transferring my white rhinestone cowboy hat, item 34, to you. She’ll love that.
Frances Euphoria: ☺ You’d better hold off on that, dragon master.
Sophia: Your dragon is so disrespectful by the way. I knew I should have borrowed my friend Shadow’s dragon – now there’s a dragon that has respect for player characters.
Me: Save it for your diary, Sophia.
Sophia: I don’t have a diary – I have a vlog!
Me: Of course you do!
Chapter Five
Up, up and away they go towards the next floating continent, Mirror climbing and circling like a giant reflective condor catching the thermals. Not gonna lie – watching everyone have fun in Tritania ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, there are worse places I could be – the morgue being the first place that comes to mind, with the Intensive Care Unit a close second. My predictions on Rollins were correct – a fat-ass, zit-faced, pear-shaped haptic couch potato; a disaffected, socially inept, sideways-shootin’ muffin top who’d gotten all his vicarious tactical training from TV and the movies.
Dumbass.
Still, for Strata to use the kid to come after me – well, that’s just plain evil.
And yeah, there’s a lot that needs to be done about that. The team was so anxious to get going – or maybe I was so anxious to get them going so that I could have a moment to sit on my tookus and ponder life and shit – that we’ve barely discussed what happens next.
Naysayers be damned, the video shows what happened last night and the Baltimore PD declined to file charges anyway. He came at me guns a-blazin’ and I killed the little bastard.”
; Frances Euphoria: You’re awful quiet – getting jelly?
Me: Jealous of what? Riding around on a damn dragon? Been there done that, Sugar.
Sophia: Sugar? Is that your nickname for her or is it an actionable workplace usage of a disembiggening twentieth century misogynistic slur?
Me: I forget everyone can read this. I call FE sugar because she’s sweet. Nothing derogatory about it. She’s calls me Bitter and I call her Sugar.
Frances Euphoria: Right, Bitter, right.
Mirror lifts even higher into the air, the whole team tucked into various spaces on her head. Rocket has his back pressed against one of her horns, Zedic has done the same, Veenure is sitting close to Aiden, both of whom have found a little cranny just above her ear. Sophia and Frances are in what I would consider the driver’s seat. The wind is blowing all around them, but the sensation is lost on me.
It hits me as strange that what they are experiencing is so real to them, that the sensation of racing through wispy clouds on the back of a cantankerous mirrored dragon is as valid as any out-of-vat experience. And here I am, watching it all take place, sofa quarterbacking. This is life in the twenty-first century. From drone operators to crypto asset traders; from Proxima addicts to doctors who tele-operate on remote patients – everything is disconnected in some way. Everything about this century is ripe with disconnect.
Frances Euphoria: Talk to me, Bitter.
Me: Just thinking.
Frances Euphoria: What are you thinking about? This is a private message by the way, so others can’t read it.
Me: Take a wild guess.
Frances Euphoria: What happened last night wasn’t your fault. Look, I know we have a busy schedule today, and if you want to just go back to my office and crash on the couch for a while, no one is stopping you.
Me: Look, Frances – I’m okay with it, really. And if I go take a nap, who’d be the in-game monitor?
Frances Euphoria: We’ll be okay today.
Me: Why do we need an in-game monitor anyway?
Frances Euphoria: It’s one of the rules you and Strata enacted when you started the Dream Team. Besides, they provide data that isn’t available in-world.
Me: Sounds like more of his type of rule than mine. Do you think he uses in-game monitors for his Reapers?
Frances Euphoria: That’s a good question – probably yet another job for the orphans he exploits.
Me: I wish it had been him last night. I’d feel even okayer about it, and it’d solve a number of our problems too.
Frances You don’t feel bad about any of that?
Me: Nope.
~*~
Mirror touches down on a dragon dock at the Port of Porthos, amidst hundreds of dragon docks, all of which extend far into the sky. Dragons are banned from cities, hence the barely visible wall of fire that separates the floating port from the city proper. The fire burns clear, but the heatwaves distort the view of the city.
Me: Any plans on where to start the search?
Sophia: My home in Valhalla.
Me: Valhalla?
Sophia: It’s like the Manhattan of the city.
Me: Gotcha. Why would we search your home for Strata’s son?
Sophia: You really didn’t read the briefing points I sent you yesterday, did you?
Me: I was busy with my FDA Monitor and saving my own life.
Sophia: I sent them in the morning.
Me: Rocket installed a hack that limits what comes into my inbox. This is clearly something he overlooked. I’d say it’s his fault.
Rocket:╭∩╮(-_-)╭∩╮
Me: What the hell!?
Rocket: Sorry, I meant this: (¬_¬)
Sophia: Just admit you ignored it.
Mirror ruffles the scales on her tail. She scowls at another dragon on a pier across from the team, turns her back to it to give the dragon a good view of her rump. Aiden has already moved away from the group to provide reconnaissance. They’re sitting ducks right now on the dragon docks and good ol’ Morning Assassin knows it. Zedic joins him, pulls three arrows and gets in the ready position.
Me: All right, I ignored it. Why are we going to your home?
Sophia: Empress Thun is coming to my residence to meet privately with me. She’s visiting all three districts today, and she’ll stop by my place in about thirty minutes from now.
Me: Empress Thun? The same Empress Thun we tried to rescue back in Tritania to get EXP?
Rocket: Yep. The one who was taken by the Frog King.
Me: She’s in Polynya now? I thought she was in Hyperborea.
Sophia: She maintains residencies on all three continents. Think of her like the First Lady of the US. She goes around visiting people, raising morale, listening to issues. Her husband does other, less diplomatic things; right now he is on a hunting trip somewhere up north.
Me: She’s an NPC?
Sophia: Yes, and I’ve pulled some connections to arrange a meeting with her. It will be brief, fifteen minutes tops, but she knows ways to locate players that are not accessible to ordinary NPCs, like your assassin buddy Aiden, who isn’t even from here.
Me: He is now. Alrighty, last question, I swear. What have you told Veenure about our mission today?
Zedic: Rocket and I told her we’re trying to locate an old friend who may be on Polynya or the hardest to reach continent, Ultima Thule. If he’s on UT, we’ll have to level up here for a few days, as you know. We need to be past level thirty-five to travel to UT.
Rocket: Forgot to tell you – I’ve been trying to dig up data on Veenure; I’m getting nothing. I’ve put some of my buddies on it.
Me: How do you find time to do this and your other duties when you’re making digital babies with your Steam gf?
Rocket: ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I got mad 5k1ll5.
Me: So, no data on Veenure.
Rocket: No, but that’s not uncommon with a Proxy addict like her. It would take someone weeks to figure out my various handles and how they’re connected. Consider it twenty-first century phreaking. As for the crew? We’re quantum-encrypted yo. I wasn’t just hired for my good looks.
Me: Finally, something we both agree on. So it’s time to meet the Empress?
Sophia: It is. Save any questions you have until after I’ve spoken to her and we’ve gone through a few customary rituals. I don’t want you distracting me or the rest of the group.
She steps forward, places her hands out again. “Everyone lock arms.”
~*~
Royalty – what’s the big deal? You’re better than everybody else based solely on whose birth canal you popped your head out of? Yeah – that’s a sound foundation for a system of government, although I personally prefer the watery tart hurling scimitars method.
I’ll also never understand some people’s need to slavishly fawn over it. Me? The only Kings and Queens I need are in a deck of cards.
So it’s hard for me to watch Sophia go into full royalty-visiting mode once the crew arrives at her home in Porthos. Her place is well-maintained, the flowered walkway is especially vibrant. Even with the chillier temperature in Polynya, as evinced by a few icy patches in sun-missed places, there are bees a-buzzing, neon-winged butterflies butterflying, and if I zoom in, I can even see ants doing whatever it is digital ants do. Another advantage of a Proxima World: the critters don’t have to match the weather.
Sophia’s place is half Spanish villa, half two-bedroom bungalow with a large room in front surmounted by a clay tile roof. Also not quite in-tune to the frigid weather are the exterior walls, which are covered in vines and puffy little marigolds. While the rest of the guild waits inside, Sophia stretches her fingers out in front of her, stripping all the flower petals from the vines, instantly reminding me of something Dolly would have done. The burnt orange and yellow form two straight lines, and then they scatter, lining the walkway leading to her house.
Sophia says something guttural in what I can only assume is Thulean, or possibly Mandarin, or maybe even Klingon, and the butterflies
in her garden multiply until there are thousands of them. They turn with their wings towards the walkway and form a living canopy of purple and neon. Another incantation and the front steps of Sophia’s mostly wooden house transmute to finely finished white marble.
The front door swings open and Sophia enters. Like a B-drone, I follow over her shoulder, parking my digital tookus in the highest corner of the room to get a bird’s eye view of what’s happening. At the snap of her fingers, the living room expands, the furniture disappears, which causes Rocket – who was sitting on a couch – to land hard on his hiney.
Behind him, Veenure pays little or no attention to his spill, so fixed is she on the magic spells Sophia is throwing around like candy from a Mardi Gras float. Talk about grandstanding, she flicks her fingers left and the hallway pushes outward, filling with Greek statues. Her fingers go right and a different hallway appears, this one filled with East Asian antiquities.
Me: Pulling out all the stops, eh?
Sophia: She’s royalty. I want to make sure she feels at home. I paid extra for this place because of its ability to tap into the OMIB, allowing me to expand in this version of the world by taking space from that version. It all boils down to orthogonal matrixes – remember me saying this?
Me: Is this bizarro space you keep referring to the reason NPCs like Aiden can simply appear and disappear?
Aiden ain’t the only one with the wherewithal to utilize this other realm. I recall Strata Godsick doing this very thing in the summer cottage that Dolly created. He simply stepped out of a ripple in the fabric of the world and appeared behind her.
Me: Human players can do this too, can’t they?
Sophia: I can.
Me: Can you teach me?
Rocket: Me too. Then I could make sure my gf isn’t cheating on me.
Me: Pretty sure she is.
Sophia: Later. I am busy preparing for the arrival of Empress Thun.
Frances Euphoria: I know what you’re thinking, Quantum. Can it.
Me: There isn’t a can big enough in our world or any Proxima World to contain the amount of bullshit I associate with royalty.
Sophia: The American has spoken!
Me: You’re American too, we all are.
Rocket: Except Chrono.
