Geekomancy

by Michael R. Underwood

  Someone’s grumpy, Ree thought. She let it go and returned to the Media Database from Heaven. He had Six-String Samurai, Trolls 2, the Remastered (but not Special Edition) Star Wars, and the complete works of Roger Corman—all on just one column of one page. What kind of organization structure that was, Ree couldn’t say, but it was impressive. She browsed for five minutes until Eastwood emerged from the stacks and told her to hurry up and pick something.

  “What would I get from Hellboy II ?” she asked.

  “Invincible Hand, probably.”

  Meh.

  Seeing an old favorite, she asked, “Do you have a rapier I can use?”

  “Sure.”

  The Princess Bride it is. She double-clicked and sat back as the film started to play on Eastwood’s 3x3 cluster of monitors. Her reverie was occasionally interrupted by a clunk or thud as Eastwood stomped through the stacks. By the time Buttercup went out on her ride, Eastwood had finished assembling his bag and taken a seat beside her, sorting a bag and half-watching the film. He handed her a disturbingly familiar prop rapier that she couldn’t place, which she balanced on her lap while watching. The Princess Bride was, by many rubrics, a near-perfect film. Adventure, romance, fencing, monsters, miracles, pirates, torture, everything. She must have watched it a hundred times as a kid, sitting on her mom’s lap.

  As soon as the duel at the Cliffs of Insanity was done, Eastwood stood up. “Okay, that’s enough. We need to go.”

  “But . . . Fezzik! The poison!” She felt approximately five years old, complaining like that, but when Eastwood narrowed his eyes, she merely sighed, standing up. “Do you have a belt for this?” she asked, holding up the rapier.

  Eastwood fished something else out of the bag and presented her with a slim black belt, complete with a black-leather-and-crushed-red-velvet sword hanger.

  “Schweet,” Ree said in her Cartman voice as she pushed the sheathed rapier through the loops of the hanger, then put on the belt, tightening it a few notches past its most worn point.

  “Yes, so don’t lose it. Now follow me, and don’t talk unless I’m talking.” Eastwood punched a code into a keypad on the wall, which produced the “secret door opens” sound from Zelda. A door swung open where Ree was sure there hadn’t been a door before. It revealed a dingy, dimly lit hall that reminded her of far too many slasher flicks.

  Eastwood gestured to the hall. “First stop, Grognard’s.”

  • • •

  The tunnel was dank, moist, and dim. It was lit only by dust-covered incandescent bulbs in cages spaced every fifty feet. Eastwood and Ree each had a flashlight, but Eastwood had told her they’d save them for if the lightbulbs went out, which wasn’t at all ominous.

  The weight of the rapier tugged at her waist, but she felt comforted when she put her hands on the cool, oiled handle.It just felt . . . right. Like she was doing what she was meant to do. A fantastic mélange of genres and wit rolled around in her mind, and she kept herself entertained by choreographing fight scenes as they walked.

  Eastwood broke the uneasy silence. “There are more critters down here than bedbugs in a Queens apartment, and most of them are attracted to light. They’re used to the lightbulbs, but if we give them more to go by . . .”

  “Got it. Just how much time do you spend tromping through tunnels?”

  Eastwood quirked an eyebrow. “I never really thought about it. This is the safest way to get to Grognard’s.”

  “Through the tunnels that are infested with monsters?” Ree asked.

  “Monsters I can handle. The gangbangers who pretty much run the neighborhood above us, not so much. I have a handful of things that can stop a bullet, but they’re damned hard to come by.” Eastwood held up his lightsaber. “Weapons like these things have a nostalgia battery, and when it’s used up, you have to wait until the people’s investment in the object recharges the psychic energy. It has a daily limit, more or less, like the Furrymancers. Lightsabers would recharge almost instantly, except there are so many of them around, the energy gets divided up.”

  “And then I woke up and went back to having a normal life.” Ree pinched herself, shrugging when nothing changed. She let her mind slip back to The Princess Bride, keeping the energy moving, hoping it would stay with her longer if she kept excited.

  “You’re going all the way down the rabbit hole, chica. It’s time to get over the shock and start following the Eat Me and Drink Me labels.”

  Ree tapped Eastwood on the shoulder with her flashlight. He stopped and turned to face her. She said, “Call me chica again, and I will beat you into a bloody pulp and sell your blood on the Internet as mana potions. Got it?”

  Eastwood gave her a predatory smile, then closed in, crowding her back against the wall. “I’ve faced down things so terrifying that if you looked at them through a TV, you’d lose all of your hair. If you heard their voices echoed down an endless hollow, you’d claw out your own ears. A single touch from some of these things can sap every ounce of youth and vitality from your skinny body, and it wouldn’t be more than a crumb of sustenance for them.”

  He leaned forward into the light, which washed out his face even more. “I’ve faced down horrors older than time itself, creatures that, were they to wake fully, would drag the world down into a cold sea of tormenting ab-existence to be slowly digested, body and soul. I’ve faced these things and I’m still here. I could have retired a decade ago, but instead I’m on the front line of the war to keep this frakked-up world running so you and your friends can fritter away your lives.”

  Eastwood stuck a finger in front of Ree’s face. “Understand that you are an ally at best, an amusement in practice, and cannon fodder at worst. If you raise a hand against me, I will put you down so fast, you won’t even have time to consider whether your death is more Jango Fett or Red Shirt #2. Get it?”

  Daaaamn. Ree felt the musty and rough concrete wall behind her and Eastwood inches from her face, his pupils narrowed and eyebrows hard-set. Until that moment, she’d believed he couldn’t possibly deserve the name he used. Not anymore. Ree raised her hands in surrender. “Got it.”

  Eastwood stepped back and smiled, the Rar-Face gone. “Good. You’ll need to toughen up, chica. That was too easy.” He turned back and continued walking, the shadows shifting around him from the various light sources. “Plus, I don’t kill people. People who are people, that is. And you’re still people.”

  “What kind of people aren’t people?” she asked after a second to shake out the fear. I can’t tell if I was actually threatened or if I was just To the Pain–ed.

  “The ones who’ve traded their souls to demons, or anyone who delves so deep into magic that they lose track of their humanity, go off the deep end, and become monsters themselves. Those are the things to look out for.” Eastwood shuddered. “Luckily, they’re pretty rare, since folks in the Underground are good about self-policing. Anyone gets too close to the edge, we have an intervention. And if that doesn’t work, we have to put them down.”

  Wow. This guy needs to get out even more than I do. “You’ve had to do that?”

  “Sadly, yes.” Eastwood’s voice was soft, sad, far weaker than it had been a minute ago with his threat.

  “Like the fur-suit guy?”

  “Maybe. I picked up his scent earlier but never caught up with him. I think he figured out he had a tail aside from the rubber one and beat it.”

  Ree was unsure what to say as they continued walking through the tunnel. A song popped in her head. I am slowly going crazy, 1-2-3-4-5-6-switch. Crazy going slowly am I, 6-5-4-3-2-1-switch.

  Eastwood stopped at a door Ree hadn’t noticed, and she walked up beside him. It had been red at some point but was now faded and stained, and a third of the paint had flaked off to reveal coarse wood below.

  “Here we are. Don’t talk back if anyone gives you flak. Let me handle it. These are mean old bastards, and Grognard is the meanest of them all.”

  Ree raised an eyebrow but nodded when Eastwood
stared at her. He opened the door, and they walked up a flight of stairs to another door. Eastwood opened the second door to reveal . . .

  A game store. No, wait, a bar. Somehow it was both. Someone had crossbred a pub and a game store and succeeded. It was a split-level arrangement, the bar a short flight down from the game-store section. The upper seating consisted of metal folding chairs around game tables that had undershelves loaded with terrain and figures. The lower seating was sturdy wooden chairs around cherry and walnut circular tables. Ree saw game books and miniatures packs lining the walls.

  The patrons were mostly older men, complete with grizzled gamer beards and paunches. There were also men with Gamer Body Type 2: tall and lanky, trench-coat-enabled. There were ponytails and faces pocked with acne scars, ancient black T-shirts sporting the logos of obscure games from the ’60s and ’70s, only half of which Ree could identify. It was Gamer Cheers.

  “How have I not heard of this place?” Ree stage-whispered to Eastwood. She had to restrain herself from skipping up the aisles to fondle the merch.

  “You can only get here if Grognard wants you to. This place is as much social club as bar or store.”

  “How does he stay in business?”

  Eastwood walked toward the bar, beckoning Ree to follow. “His customers are very, very loyal.”

  Even hunched over, the man behind the bar was more than six feet tall. He had a full beard showing more salt than pepper, but his head was bald. He wore a leather jacket that was so worn in, it might as well have been his skin.

  The bartender huffed approvingly and grabbed a lean glass to pour a pint of dark beer. “Good to see you, Eastwood. How’d the oni gig go?”

  “Done and done. I had to get Morrison on him, though. Speaking of which, this is Ree. She’s new. I’m invoking my guest privilege.”

  Grognard rolled his eyes. “You remember what happened last time you brought someone here?”

  Eastwood settled his weight onto one hip. “I do. And she’s not that stupid,” he said, turning to look at Ree.

  Not knowing and not wanting to know what incident they referred to, Ree smiled. “This place is amazing.”

  In response, Grognard huffed.

  Eastwood smiled. “You are twenty-one, right?”

  Ree stepped up to the bar and looked at the liquor selection. She spent several seconds appraising, then said, “Macallan 15, just a drop of water.”

  Eastwood nodded approvingly, and Ree hoped she wasn’t imagining Grognard’s near-twinge of a smile. The older man turned, plucked a bottle off the wall, and poured the Scotch with deliberate grace, taking up the well tap and kissing the water button, pouring enough into the drink to release the taste of the Scotch. It was a trick she’d picked up long enough ago that she’d forgotten who’d taught it to her.

  Grognard slid the drink down the bar to her. Ree picked up the glass, took a sniff, then a sip. As good as ever. She flashed Grognard a smile, and this time he grinned in earnest.

  Eastwood pulled out a tablet computer and spun it around to show to Grognard. “I’ve got a shopping list. Hope you can help me out.”

  Grognard picked up the tablet and rubbed his face, thoughtful. The big man led Eastwood away from the bar and into a back room.

  Eastwood turned at the door and said to Ree, “Don’t touch anything.”

  Too hell with that. The interdiction nearly compelled her to mess something up, but instead she downed the rest of the Scotch and walked into the store section of the lair. She found the vintage RPG section and lost herself in D&D supplements from the ’80s.

  Looking up from a Rules Cyclopedia (which was technically a ’90s supplement, but Ree had played Cyclopedia with her first gaming group, and they all used their older brothers’ books from the ’80s), she caught a glimpse of something that made her double-take. Amid the middle-aged and unimpressively shaped customers, there was something of an oddity.

  He wore the Gamer Standard-Issue Trench Coat™, in brown instead of black. He was shorter but not round, therefore defying both of the Stereotypical Gamer-Boy Body Types. His dirty-blond hair was cut in a professional style, and he wore jeans, brown boots, a vest over a white collared shirt, and, incongruously, goggles. They were strung loose around his neck but looked like they belonged on the 1st-place podium in a Steampunk costume contest.

  Priya would shiv a nun to see those, Ree thought, taking mental notes to relay to her friend, if she could figure out a way to do so without revealing too much else of what she was involved in.

  The man caught her staring and strode over. He wore well-oiled brown leather gloves, removing one as he extended his hand to her.

  “Greetings, mademoiselle. I do not believe I have seen you at this fine establishment before.”

  Is he for real? Ree met his hand and shook while giving him another look.

  He gave a formal bow. “Drake Winters, at your service.”

  With a name like that, he did belong in the D&D section.

  She found herself dropping into a curtsy to match his bow. William Goldman, you punk.

  “Rhiannon Anna Maria Reyes.” She added, “Call me Ree.”

  Drake spoke with all the bombasticity of a cast-off from Marvel’s Asgard. “It is always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a beautiful woman, Ms. Reyes. What brings you to Grognard’s? Tomes of knowledge, figures of power, or merely a chance to let down your hair and mingle with fellow keepers of the light?”

  Ree laughed. She had to think actively when speaking, since what was coming into her mind was all Princess Bride–flavored. “You can drop the LARPer act, man. I haven’t played since college.”

  Drake straightened up. “It is no act, Ms. Reyes. I am . . . displaced, you might say, from my original context.”

  Ree narrowed her eyes. “Run that by me again?”

  Drake took a breath, then said, “I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1864, and while I was battling the Kadel torture-ships across the skies of great Avalon, my Aetheric Rifle had an unforeseen effect upon the Kadel gravitic drive, catapulting the ship into the deepest reaches of Faerie. After years of adventures with My Mistress, the Contessa of the Lapis Galleon, I found myself in the twenty-first century, far from home.”

  Ree knew her eyes couldn’t get any narrower and take in light, but it wasn’t enough to convey her doubt. Still, he didn’t look like he was lying. “Are you serious?”

  Drake leveled a severe look at her. “One must always be serious when speaking of the beautiful dangers of Faerie.”

  Ree shifted her weight, continuing to work on the puzzle that was this man before her. “And what do you do these days?”

  Drake smiled. “I do what I’ve always done. Protect the innocent, punish the wicked, seek to find the light of truth amid the dark cloud of ignorance.”

  “So, super hero?” Ree asked.

  His expression seemed to say not quite. “I have read the exploits of some of these super heroes.” He thumbed through a bin of back issues and pulled out a Batman comic. “I find the Dark Knight to be quite compelling—one man pitting his cunning and determination against the forces of corruption. Very inspiring.”

  Ree nodded, finding it easier to speak in her own voice now that she was conscious of the Princess Bride energy pushing her to act differently. “I’ve always been more of a Spider-Man girl, myself. Do you know Eastwood?”

  He nodded. “A stalwart if somewhat morose figure. Are you his apprentice?”

  “No. Well, maybe. Has he had apprentices before?”

  “None that I know of.”

  Drake was charming in the same way that a Cinnabon roll was sweet. A little goes a long damn way, and a lot quickly becomes too much to stomach. “Do you know anything about the recent string of suicides in town?”

  That eyebrow quirk said no. “I had not heard of such a thing. I admit I am not good at using thinking machines for news. I prefer the texture of the daily paper.”

  Fair enough. “Well, that’s what we’re work
ing on. If you hear anything, can you drop me a line?” Ree fished a business card out of her purse—it was her “Rhiannon Reyes—Screenwriter” card, because why in the nine hells would someone ever make a business card that said “Barista”?

  “I certainly will—I have acquired a mobile telephone, thanks to the infinite kindness of our dear host.” Drake produced a flip phone at least four years out-of-date, though she supposed that for a nineteenth-century throwback, it would be slightly less of a Future Shock while still being totally alien.

  “So, what do you think of the twenty-first century?” she asked.

  Drake paced back and forth, talking with his hands. “Everything is very clean here, except in certain neighborhoods which are rather more like the streets in Avalon. Technology has advanced in so many directions and fashions I would have never imagined. However, I find the everyday approach to technology rather impersonal.”

  Drake threw back his coat, revealing a collection of gadgets on his belt and strapped to the inside of his coat, like a fake-watch-salesman-turned-vigilante.

  “I made every piece of my gear by hand and know it inside and out.” He closed his coat and held up the phone. “But this phone. I couldn’t start to tell you how it works, where it was made, or how to repair it, and I feel that I am not far behind the average citizen in that regard.”

  Ree shrugged. “Clarke’s Third Law.”

  “Beg pardon?” he asked.

  Right, Ree thought. “Arthur C. Clarke was a writer of scientifically based fiction. His Third Law states, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ I.e., for most people, technology might as well be magic, since they understand it so poorly.”

  Drake nodded approvingly. “So it would seem, and it was much the same way in my day for those not among the privileged. I cannot say I am comfortable knowing that little about the technology I use, but adequately covering more than a hundred years of technological advances to bridge the gap of knowledge has proved difficult.”

  Ree shifted her weight, taking in the sight of Drake Winters and his aggressive oddity. “I bet.”