The Goddess Quest

by Lawrence Ambrose

  Derald sipped his coffee with an even shakier hand, avoiding her gaze. Alex turned to the door once again.

  "You know what," said Derald. "Fuck it. I'm in."

  Chapter 16

  SIXTEEN HUNDRED MILES OF driving offered copious time for conversation. Alex felt blessed indeed to leave that task mostly to her avatar, who answered Derald's endless questions and addressed his concerns with perfect, programmed patience. During her brief periods of Dionysus-occupancy, Alex thought her avatar represented her with fair accuracy if not her patented aplomb and wit. But Derald seemed mostly satisfied.

  Alex used the two-day trip, requiring minimal conscious presence, for much-needed rest and recuperation. She exercised, did some desultory research, watched some TV, got some sun, visited with her mom and Brandon, and even went on a "workout-movie" date with Bradley (her description). James Cameron's eternally awaited AVATAR 2. It didn't seem as fresh the second time around, but it had its moments.

  Speaking of fresh, Brad's hand strayed to her knee once during the movie.

  "I hope you're not expecting me to go down on you in a theater?" Alex asked in an unmuffled voice.

  Brad's hand slunk swiftly back into his lap as several interested people glanced at them.

  They had dinner at Earthly Delights, Jefferson's sole vegan restaurant, and Alex plodded through an eggplant-avocado-tofu-mushroom concoction and some sour red wine. A glum choice borne of digestive necessity. Only so many times in a week would her body tolerate steaks, hamburgers, fries, pizza, chocolate Sundaes and other foods that actually tasted good. Her diet had been slouching off the path of nutritional righteousness a bit too often of late. Nothing like stress to make you long for something wicked.

  Alex had been reluctant to share her Reservoir Dogs exploits with Mr. Peacenik, but he'd pestered her into giving him the cramped nutshell PG version that painted Alex as a hapless fugitive – a runaway from authorities rather than a slaughterer of them. Bradley was content not to press her on details. She'd never even told him who her avatar was or that it was male. His interest in her gaming life was, thankfully, pro forma at best.

  "How are your classes going without my genius help?" she asked him.

  Brad's smile curled down at the edges. "I'm doing okay. Missing your unique insights, but yeah, hanging in there."

  Alex took a sip from her red wine. Sad to say, it and its small buzz was the best thing about this meal. And resveratrol was her friend, in theory.

  "Mostly I just miss you," he said. "Seriously miss you."

  "When are you not serious, dude?"

  He chuckled softly. "Yeah, I know, I'm pathetic."

  "Word to the wise: girls don't find self-deprecation particularly charming."

  "I'm even pathetic about being pathetic."

  "Though being doubly self-deprecating is kind of witty. Anyhow, I'm not a girl, so you're safe."

  "You're not?" He viewed her with mild concern. "What are you?"

  "I'm not sure. What day of the week is it again? Right now, I feel gendersuperfluous."

  He gave her a small smile. "How does that feel?"

  "Unnecessary. Yet liberating, somehow."

  Brad laughed. "I want to be sympathetic to all these genders, but I have to admit I struggle with it a bit. It's hard enough to figure out what cisgender women want."

  "It's not hard at all. They want a big, handsome stud like you regardless how much they babble about gender-correctness."

  He raised a napkin to his face, as if that blocked his blush. Of all the subjects that fascinated Alex – all the conundrums and mysteries that made her wish she had a dozen lives to explore – "relationships" didn't make the list. She felt like a stranger in a strange land when it came to that. All the people, especially young people, making everything so complicated. As if navigating hetero or homosexual relationships weren't hard enough. No, they had to proliferate the possible pairing categories to the point where you needed Livermore's Vulcan supercomputer to match them up. Thank Zeus she stood comfortably outside all the insanity. Her life was more than insane enough as it was.

  "It seems like there's a bit more to it than that, Alexandra," said Brad.

  "That's because you're overthinking it as always."

  "What about you? Thinking because you have a disease you can't be with someone?" Brad startled her by reaching across the table and covering her hand with his. Alex resisted the temptation to jerk her hand away. He said quietly, "Maybe you're overthinking things, too?"

  Dionysus grant me strength. What a terrible battle it was for her to be kind in this moment when she wanted to slap him silly.

  "Brad," she said, avoiding his earnest, puppy-dog eyes, "the truth is, I really like you. So please remove your hand before I'm compelled to stick a fork in it?"

  His hand retreated to his side of the table. He forced a stoical smile.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "No means no. I'm supposed to respect that. I have no business harassing you."

  "It's not you, Brad, it's me." She snickered out a sour laugh. "Sorry, but that god-awful cliché is actually true this time. I want you to think for a moment how much energy a relationship costs. I'm talking a young-people relationship, not old fuddy-duddy married couple rocking on the front porch."

  "I don't know. A lot, I guess. They always drain the heck out of me, but I suspected that was because I was doing something wrong...or something about us was wrong."

  "It's draining, period. Even for a healthy person. I'm not a healthy person, Brad."

  "I hear what you're saying. I never thought of it that way, I have to admit."

  "What I do drains me to the max as it is. Now another girl might be fine with going to school and spending most of her time batting her eyes at her girl or boyfriend, but that's not me. I guess you could say I've got another, perhaps higher, calling."

  Brad nodded solemnly. "I would never want to come between you and your bliss."

  "On top of that, I don't have the desire. Not for anything you'd call normal sex. I don't know if it's because of my FA or if I'm just wired that way."

  "You have sex as an avatar, don't you?"

  Alex's sense of satisfaction with her explanation vanished. The warmth had fled Brad's understanding eyes. It had taken him a while to add up two and two, but the day had finally come. Not that she had any reason in hell to apologize to Brad.

  "Yeah," she said.

  When she offered no further explanation, Brad raised his hands and parted them in a frustrated, pleading shrug. "Uh...well...is it with men? Women?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "I'm just..." He appeared to take stock of himself – of his clenched fists and tense frown – and sat back and relaxed his body with a visible effort. "Just curious. I mean, what it's like to have virtual sex."

  "It's good."

  "As good as the real thing?"

  "I can't really say. I'm pretty much a virgin with the real thing. And since I have sex exclusively as a male virtually I definitely can't compare it to any real experience."

  "Your avatar is male?" He looked relieved.

  "Yep. And if it's any consolation, you were one of my models for him."

  "Oh." He rubbed his face, a half-smile poking through his scowl. "Really?"

  "Really. Though my avatar looks like a Greek god and you only rate as a demi-god, no offense."

  "None taken. I guess I should be flattered."

  He was actually smiling, the big goof.

  "It's almost like you're saying..." Brad met her eyes. "You want to be me."

  "No 'almost.' If I could have your body, I'd take it in a nanosecond. Keeping my own brain, of course."

  "Of course." His smile drooped a little. "What's it like? Being a guy, I mean?"

  "Great. I don't know how well it compares to the real thing, but if the real thing is much better it must be fucking fantastic."

  Brad shrugged. "I doubt there's one generic experience. I'm sure it varies from person to person and time to time. If yo
u're talking about sex. The overall experience of being a man? I can't compare it to being a girl, obviously."

  "Maybe you should give it a shot sometime? On a decent rig, that is."

  "Sex? Or being a girl?" He grimaced out a smile. "Having sex as a girl?"

  "All of the above."

  "I don't know. Virtual reality isn't really my thing. Besides, I couldn't afford an AFIRM like yours or even a decent MEM."

  "You can rent AFIRMS or MEMs. With a good MEM it takes about a day to calibrate it to you well enough for a decent experience."

  "Around a thousand dollars for an AFIRM, right?"

  "Roughly, yeah. I might be able to set up something better with Brandon and his dad at Oink. I'll spring for it in any case."

  Brad shook his head. "I've read that some people get something called 'gender dysphoria.' They get confused about their sexual identity."

  "Some people get confused tying their shoes."

  "I guess I don't see the point for me."

  "Broaden your perspective? Maybe learn something new?"

  "I'm happy being who I am – sexually, at least." He peered at her, his brow crinkling. "Maybe that's what happened to you, Alex. You've been living in virtual reality since you were a kid. You grew up in the Omniverse. Maybe you never found out who you truly are, sexually, in the real world?"

  Alex wanted to slap him – and it wasn't lost on her that she felt such an impulse probably because he'd said something that might be true in some slight but obnoxious way.

  "I know what I am in the real world," she said, her voice low and deadly, a subsonic snarl. "I'm a fucking gimp."

  "A fucking gimp with a sky-high IQ."

  Alex drooped in her chair, her anger deflating. "I guess it could've been worse. I could be an average, unquestioning moron – plus a cripple."

  Brad dabbed his soft, golden, wispy beard with his napkin, still studying her in a riddle-solving way.

  "Are you going to win?" he asked.

  "I think so. I'm in the lead right now, unless something's happened I don't know about."

  "What happens if you do? I've never quite been clear about that."

  "I'll have a lot of power in the Verse. Plus fifteen million OD."

  "About three million in real cash?"

  "Roughly. Depending on what the exchange rate is at the time."

  "But with your new power...would you have the ability to change the Omniverse? In a substantial way?"

  "I'm not sure. I haven't thought about it much." Alex felt an uneasy twitch. "Probably not in any fundamental way. I can't see the Gamemasters letting that happen. The whole world is set up to keep things on an even keel, to resist big changes."

  "It's homeostatic?" Brad smiled. "We've been talking about that in one of my physiology classes."

  "That's a good word for it."

  Alex finished her wine, a slight case of dyspepsia setting in. What an irony it would be if she fucked up her favorite place in the world. Heck, her favorite world. Well, nothing to say she couldn't constrain herself even if the GM were dumb enough to award her powers that could bring the place down.

  Assuming she did win. What if someone else did?

  Alex dismissed that awful thought with a shudder. If the Verse was going to have a god, it had better goddamn well be her.

  SOUL CITY, North Carolina was monumentally anticlimactic for Alex. Even knowing what to expect, it still felt downsized from the tawdry tales of million-dollar government grants, corruption, and failed Pollyannaish dreams: empty cul-de-sacs and vacant buildings interspersed among a few modest, single-family homes. Derald followed a winding loop of roads through town, his older pickup and leaky muffler drawing a few curious looks.

  "Doesn't seem to be much here," he said.

  Alex watched an elderly man guiding a rider mower in a slow circle around his lawn.

  "Anything special you want to see here?" Derald asked.

  "The cemetery."

  The cemetery consisted of an acre or two of grass and a single gravestone in the shape of a pedestal. Alex climbed out and approached the stone while the pickup and Derald idled. The top piece read:

  I TOOK THEIR LIVES IN BETRAYAL OF MY SACRED OATH

  One name had been carved into the attached pillar below:

  Barry D. N. Manson

  Rest In Pieces

  Born: February 11, 1963, November 18, 1975, August 2, 1946, March 24, 1994, September 30, 1954, February 4, 2018.

  Died: July 12, 2021, June 6, 2017, May 8, 2021, December 12, 2016, October 15, 2016, February 17, 2021.

  While Alex coped with a severe case of shivers, Derald walked up to her side.

  "Anything?"

  "I'd say so – "

  Alex's gesture to the dates dropped in mid-motion. In a blink, the inscriptions changed:

  Lived Our Lives With Courage And Conviction

  MCKISSIK

  Ford Bixler

  March 9, 1972

  April 25, 1991

  Evelyn Williams

  August 19, 1923

  October 1, 2004

  "Maybe they were the founders of the city?" Derald ventured.

  "Yeah," said Alex. "They were."

  "You were starting to say something?"

  Alex closed her eyes, summoning her near-eidetic memory, seeing the dates and words from moments before. The GM had provided her plentiful clues about the wrongdoings hereabouts.

  "Let's go to Manson," she said. "What I'm looking for is probably there."

  She filled him as they drove. Saying the dates aloud sealed their memorization. The more she said the more Derald looked to be suffering from motion sickness.

  "You're saying these 'Gamemasters' can give you secret messages and alter our reality whenever they want?"

  "Of course," said Alex. "But they vastly prefer allowing the Verse's neural net to evolve naturally. They usually limit themselves to small, temporary alterations in a game in a Reality One world like this one."

  "Reality One," Derald grumbled. "What about us? Can they make us do whatever they want?"

  "Yeah. But again, they prefer to let the algorithms work on their own. Kind of like the Deist's 'Watchmaker God.' Sets the clock, then sits back and has an eternal beer. Except for the occasional divine intervention."

  "No free will, then. We're just cogs in the machine."

  "Zeros and ones. But yeah, pretty much. If it's any consolation, the programmers usually don't see all the details or even know how they'll turn out."

  "Great."

  "What can I say? Sometimes the truth sucks. Right now, I'm more interested in what's happening in the doubtless drab little metropolis of Manson."

  Derald drove a while in mournful silence. The nearby town, perhaps her ultimate destination in this stage, slouched into existence ahead. Manson. Home to another killer, it seemed.

  Manson didn't appear to be a town at all, but rather a smattering of houses stretched out on a few roads that looped through the countryside and alongside Kerr Lake. Consulting Google maps, Alex directed Derald to New Hope Cemetery. They drove to what looked to Alex like an unmowed field in which someone had planted a few haphazard gravestones. But in one corner, a grey flag waved sluggishly in the breeze. Derald parked and they walked over to it.

  From a few meters away, Alex spotted the white stag on a smile granite headstone. A winged white stag flapping its feathery wings beneath puffy white clouds. Fancy art for a modest gravestone in a scruffy graveyard. The name on the stone read: Lilly Schuster. Our Little Angel. Ride In Heaven Forever, Baby Girl. The dates indicated she'd died at age three a few months ago.

  "That's where the clues or whatever are buried." Derald looked as glum as a pallbearer. "In this little girl's grave?"

  "Looks that way."

  "Now what? We dig it up?"

  "I'd say so." She looked at him. "Is there still a 'we'? You've done your part. You're welcome to take your cash and go."

  "Yeah, thanks." He didn't budge from his gloomy regard o
f the gravesite. "You know, I always thought of myself as some kind of truth warrior, someone who's not afraid to face things that scare other people. Now I'm not so sure."

  "You could always go back to your life with Fast Fred fixing farm implements or whatever and forget about me."

  "Too late."

  "Jesus. The programmer who created you must've been depressed."

  "The funny – or sad – thing is, I'm starting to believe you. I'm one of those rocks rolling downhill who thinks he's making himself roll. It is depressing." He lifted his gaze to her. "You're depressing. No offense."

  Alex felt a twinge of defensiveness but chuckled over it.

  "At first, I thought it was great getting the answers, or possible answers, to all the questions I've been thinking up, but when I got those answers..."

  "They weren't the answers you were hoping for."

  "I don't know. Maybe I didn't want the answers. As long as I didn't know for sure, it was okay to think daring things."

  "I've often thought people prefer keeping things they believe warm and fuzzy," said Alex. "That way you avoid thinking anything too unpleasant. Unfortunately, that's never been an option for me."

  "With your disease, I guess you had to face hard truths from the start."

  "Something like that."

  Derald made a sound like a frustrated fish burbling up oxygen.

  "Why don't you stop anguishing and drive your truck in here and block the grave from the road? That should help keep anyone from seeing what I'm about to do."

  "We could wait another hour or so until dark."

  "Nope. I want to see what I'm doing. Doesn't seem to be anyone out here anyway."

  With the pickup planted between the grave and nearest road, and Derald watching for surprise visitors, Alex set about plying her mind over matter talents. She imagined the TK shovel blades penetrating several feet, and then severing the square of dirt along its base. When she tried lifting upward, about half of the block of dirt she'd envisioned rose obediently. She set beside the square hole with a small smile of relief, and proceeded to plunge her invisible shovel blades deeper, repeating the process until a faded blue coffin rose along with a final layer of dirt. She deposited the dirty coffin in the back of the pickup and the soil back into the gaping hole, topping it off nicely with the block of grassy dirt. The place hardly appeared disturbed. Sweet.