by Jon Auerbach
Guild of Tokens: Trainee
Jon Auerbach
Copyright © 2018 by Jon Auerbach
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover: Meir Srebriansky
The girl was late. Ordinarily, Beatrice Taylor would not have cared. She wasn't a stickler for people following her Quests to a T, and could deal with a bit of improvisation if the Quester got the job done. “Results-oriented” would be on her resume if she still had a normal job. But this morning was different. This morning, her usual sitter texted her at 6:15 saying that she had been up half the night sick. And, the last-minute replacement looked more suited for changing tires than changing a diaper.
Beatrice sighed and took another sip of her coffee. She watched the throngs of people on Bleecker Street pass by and she envied the carefree mornings they were probably enjoying. She wished she could return to those days, when all she had to worry about was where she was going to meet her friends for brunch or when Garrett was finally going to propose. But that had been a lifetime ago, before the baby, before Garrett had started sleeping with his analyst, and before she had discovered the Quests.
“I’m so sorry I’m late!” A chipper brunette wearing a pink backpack sprinted up to Beatrice’s table in front of the coffee shop, and took the empty seat across from her.
“It’s fine. I take it you have the book?” Beatrice studied her latest trainee, who had clearly ran the last few blocks, as her face was flush and her breathing heavy. Good, she thought. She liked it when her trainees were afraid of displeasing her.
The jury was still out on Kate, a sophomore at NYU from Nebraska. The girl fit the new profile perfectly - enthusiastic, hard-working, a desire to please, and most importantly, no strong attachments to family.
“Yep!” Kate dumped her backpack on the table and began ruffling through it, finally withdrawing a leather-bound book.
“Excellent. How is the old professor? Still a disgusting lecher? I hope he didn't leer at you too much. You’re just his type.”
Kate’s eyes widened.
“Wait, how did you know that he had… Oh. This was just a test. Again.”
Beatrice smiled. At least this one was perceptive.
“Of course. You think you’re ready for the big time already? Do you read the book?”
“I did. Was up all night. Then tried to take a quick cat nap but slept through my alarm. That’s why I was la-”
“Then you know that this wasn’t something I would leave to the likes of you if I didn’t already know I could get it back.”
The trainee’s face turned sour, her achievement quickly undermined by a few choice words. But Beatrice preferred it this way. Last time she had let a trainee get a big head, things had gotten ugly, and with a baby to take care of, Beatrice didn’t really have the time anymore to keep starting from the beginning.
“Oh don’t be so sensitive. You did well regardless. Here’s your reward.”
Beatrice set the stack of iron tokens on the table and took the book. Kate stared at the tokens for several seconds before finally grabbing them and stuffing them in her backpack.
“Thanks.”
The girl’s earlier perkiness had faded in short order. Kids these days. They wanted a pat on the back, a trophy, and to be enthusiastically congratulated for doing what was expected of them. Kate should be grateful that she was even getting this chance to be her trainee. Did the girl know how hard Beatrice had worked to get to where she was? Of course not. But she had to play with the hand she was dealt, even if it meant a little extra coddling here and there.
“And because you were up all night, here’s something extra.”
Beatrice withdrew a small green square wrapped in plastic from her pocketbook and slid it across the table.
“What’s this?”
“A little something to help you next time you need to finish a paper. It lasts only a couple of hours, so don’t waste it, but it’s one of my better buffs, if I do say so myself.”
The girl stared at her blankly.
“You don’t know what a buff is?”
Kate shook her head.
“OK, fine. Think of it as a magic version of the Adderall you’ve been dealing in your dorm for me. Which it is.”
“Oh. OH. Wow, thanks!”
“You’re welcome. Don’t waste it though. I don’t hand those out to everyone for free you know.”
“I won’t. So, what’s my next assignment? Do you have the next volume of the diary? I have so many questions!”
“Easy there, tiger. I’ll be in touch. Go get some sleep. You’re beginning to sound like a chipmunk.”
The girl nodded, grabbed her stuff, and left the coffee shop. If there was one thing Beatrice had impressed upon her trainees, it was that she didn’t much care for small talk. She wasn’t there to be their friend or their mother. Speaking of, little Jack Jack would be waking up soon. Beatrice sighed again, finished the last dregs of her coffee and headed back uptown to her “normal” life.
The apartment was finally quiet and the wine was flowing. Tonight’s selection was a pinot grigio that Garrett had brought back from his trip to Rome last year. Beatrice was relaxing on the couch in the middle of her second glass and Garrett, as usual, was late. But she didn’t particularly care. It gave her time to catch up on how her latest batch of Questers were faring.
She logged on to the Quest Board and flipped over to the inbox, expecting to see a bunch of messages asking where the Questers could pick up their tokens. But it was empty. She frowned. Maybe she had just been unlucky. It happened from time to time. She would post her standard set of Quests and the luck of the draw would bring her an utterly incompetent set of noobs who shouldn’t have even been told about the Quests in the first place. It was so frustrating, but also necessary, if Beatrice wanted to keep her pipeline fresh, to have a replacement for Kate far enough along if the need arose.
Maybe it was the wine, but tonight she was in no mood to let these idiot Questers continue on for weeks attempting to complete the simplest of tasks. She opened another page on the Board, clicked on her active Quests, and cancelled them all. Then she brought up the new Quest page and reposted the same ones she had just cancelled.
“I need a handful of blueberries, a tillandsia, an orange popsicle, and three pounds of 80/20 ground beef from Chelsea Market? Leave in the windowsill of 194 W. 9th Street. Thanks! Reward: One wood”
This was the standard opener, a modification of the first Quest she had ever done. None of the items alone or in combination did anything, she had later discovered, but it was a good exercise in attention to detail. She couldn't count how many times she had received the wrong mix of beef or a flower that was not a tillasandia. Also, the building on W. 9th Street had been abandoned for many years, so it was a good drop location.
“One Central Park pigeon. Preferably dead. Well, actually, definitely dead. Reward: one iron.”
Pigeons and rats were the bread and butter of a good alchemist. The spleen of a freshly killed pigeon was an excellent source of prima materia and you could never have too much of that. Beatrice made a mental reminder to check her stock of preservatives at the downtown apartment. There was nothing worse than going through the laborious (and messy) process of extracting organs only to find that there was nothing to keep them in, and any off putting smell would most certainly result in the old lady across the fifth floor landing calling the super, or worse, the police.
“Three leaves from a khat plant. Dried. Reward: Eight wo
od.”
Those outside the Questing world knew that chewing khat leaves produced an Adderall-like high. Amateurs. Those within the Questing world, at least the ones that Beatrice had come across, did not have the creativity to come up with any new transmutations. So that had let her and her chemical engineering degree run rampant, combining all manner of ordinary matter with prima materia to get fantastical results, giving her a nice slice of the market.
Two markets, actually. One version of her offerings she diluted down and sold to regular college kids and 20-somethings as black market hangover cures, Adderall substitutes, and other mind-enhancing offerings. It brought in a steady stream of real money that gave Beatrice a degree of independence and also let her rent the downtown apartment with Garrett none the wiser.
The other version she sold to Questers for tokens. It was a much better method of accumulating wealth than what she used to do, when she herself was a newbie Quester. Sure, she liked going on raids and piecing together what the Questing 1% were up to, but she worried that her continued success would make her a target eventually, and she wasn’t ready to go toe-to-toe with the Guild or the Council. Yet.
The last Quest went live just as the door to the apartment opened, and Beatrice quickly closed her laptop and turned to greet Garrett. It was 10:45.
“Honey, you’re home,” she said, mustering a phony smile. “I was beginning to think you were spending the night in the office again.” Garrett dropped his briefcase unceremoniously by the front door and walked into the living room.
“Sorry I'm late,” he said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek and taking a seat on the couch next to her. “This new deal is killing us. Hopefully it’ll calm down after we close.”
She looked at her husband. His red hair was slightly out of place, his shirt was wrinkled, and his eyes were bloodshot. The rigors of the private equity grind, she thought. Or maybe the aftermath of a quickie at his analyst’s apartment in DUMBO. Beatrice preferred not to know.
She had her secrets too, her own past transgressions that she had never owned up to. And it wasn’t like she was trying to snoop around, but Garrett had stopped trying to hide what he was doing a while ago. Plus, his analyst was a step up from herself looks wise and ten years younger to boot. If he was going to cheat, and Beatrice long ago accepted that he was, then she would have preferred that his dalliances were with girls who were on the same level as her.
“But then you’ll just move on to the next deal,” she said. Beatrice knew that in addition to the cheating, this was what she had signed up for when she agreed to marry Garrett, even though it had taken him seven years to actually pop the question. These late nights bought her a big apartment on Madison Avenue with a view of the Park, a week in the south of France, and the freedom of not having to have a day job. Sure, she had her tutoring business to keep up appearances before she had Jack Jack. She would work with a couple of rich kids once or twice a month, blow the money on cabs and coffee, and spend the rest of her time devoted to the Quests.
“Anyway, I hope you don't mind, I cracked open the bottle early, wasn’t sure if you were even making it home tonight. Want some?”
Garrett shook his head.
“Not tonight, B. I need to get some sleep. Have a 7 AM call with Taipei.” He got up from the couch and walked down the hall into their bedroom, leaving Beatrice alone again with the wine and her thoughts.
The subway car was crowded. Beatrice hated riding the subway, and normally she wouldn’t be caught dead riding it during the morning rush. But that wouldn't do for today's errand, as Beatrice had decided to bring Kate along to get her some on-the-ground training. She also wanted to see how the girl’s skills measured up first-hand, to see how she was progressing.
They had met up near the W. 4th Street station, and it was two transfers in before the crowds thinned enough before Beatrice felt comfortable talking shop out in public.
“Today’s raid should be simple,” she said. “We get there, buy the requested items, and get the hell out of there before we run into anyone else.”
“Why’s it called a raid?” Kate asked. The girl’s chipper demeanor had returned, and Beatrice suppressed the urge to roll her eyes before answering.
“Because it’s meant for a group. The task is harder, but the reward greater. Also the members of the Council must have all played Everquest back in the day and they think they’re being cute.”
“What’s Everquest? Some sort of match-3 puzzle?”
“Never mind. How is your research coming?”
She had sent Kate deep into the bowels of one of the NYU libraries, ostensibly for a paper for her American history class, but actually to transcribe a set of rare 18th century manuscripts. Beatrice had tried multiple times to get access to the same collection without any luck, but Kate’s request had been granted within days. It was one of the reasons she now liked using college students as her trainees: no one took them that seriously. Plus they helped push her wares without her having to hang out in Washington Square Park all day.
“Good! I’ve been indexing the Valley Forge journals. The library’s records are pretty terrible, so it’s slow going, but after that’s done I’ll cross-reference those with the entries in Rita’s diary and hopefully that should give us some insight into what-”
“Excellent progress,” Beatrice said, cutting off the girl before she could start blabbing too much about the project. She wasn’t the paranoid type, but she never liked discussing things of a sensitive nature out in public, in case this was the day that someone was actually stalking her again.
“When you’ve gotten a bit further, we can discuss in private.”
“Oh, sure,” said Kate, clearly disappointed that she wasn’t going to get the chance to impress Beatrice with her meticulous research. “By the way, I took that buff you gave me the other day to help finish the research. Got the rest done in 20 minutes, then did a bunch of my friends’ papers, then some random freshman’s problem set, and then it was only 1 AM, so I-”
“Glad you liked it. Packs a punch, doesn’t it?” Beatrice made a note to dilute the next batch she made. It wasn’t supposed to cause such a strong reaction, but maybe Beatrice had misjudged how intense Kate was.
“Definitely. Umm, say, you wouldn’t happen to have any more of those, would you?”
Red flag, red flag, thought Beatrice. The last thing she needed was her trainee to go on a bender and end up being fished out of the East River naked.
“You’re in luck,” Beatrice said, reaching into her bag and pulling out one of the “regular” buffs. “It’s my last one. Waiting for some new raw materials to make another batch, so don’t waste it.”
She handed it to Kate who eyed it greedily before stuffing it in her own pocketbook. Beatrice regretted her generosity immediately, but the regular-strength version was only a hare better than a regular Adderall, so the girl wouldn’t get in too much trouble. At least she hoped.
The train screeched to a halt at the elevated station, and Beatrice beckoned Kate to follow her. They climbed down the stairs in silence as Beatrice checked her watch. 1:10. They were going to be late, and late meant not only a squandered opportunity but a ding to her reputation on the Raid Board. She had come close to failing a raid, once, but repressed that memory. No need for unnecessary negativity.
“Come on, it’s not much further,” she said to Kate as she quickened her pace.
“Where are we going anyway?” asked Kate, who matched her brisk strides.
“The Requester wants us to procure certain items from an estate sale,” Beatrice said.
“That’s it? Couldn’t they have gone themselves?”
“Sure, but when you’re flush with tokens, why would you stoop to such labor yourself when you can sit back in your comfy chair and let others do the dirty work for you?”
When she first received access to the Raid Board, Beatrice was beyond ecstatic. Her years of fetch Quests would finally be over, and she pictured grander Quests uncov
ering ancient magical objects and the like. But her enthusiasm was tempered during that first visit to the Board, when all but a few of the raids were just more elaborate fetch Quests. Plus, she hadn’t realized that the raids required more than one person.
That was when she had begun her trainee program, and it had mostly been an unmitigated disaster thus far. The hours Beatrice spent seeding the Quest Board in search of potential partners had been too many to count, and all she had gotten for her efforts was a handful of abject failures.
Her first attempt she could chalk up to inexperience. He was a dorky engineer, the kind that had littered her undergrad classes and who had quickly become infatuated with her to the point of obsession. Not that Beatrice was the second coming of Helen of Troy, but she had the rare combination of attractiveness and approachability that made all manner of nerd think they had a shot with her.
After that unfortunate ending, she had made a rule: women only. But her next attempts suffered from the wrong power dynamic - they were older women who came to the Quests later in life and didn't like taking orders from someone 20 years their junior. Most ended up going out on their own, which saved Beatrice from any real unpleasantries. Now she hoped she had identified the perfect candidate pool for future prospects, but the jury was still out on that.
“We're here,” said Beatrice. They had stopped in front of a five-story walk-up with a rusty fire escape, the kind that littered the streets of Bed-Stuy. She hit the buzzer for 5A, and a few seconds later, the outer door clicked opened.
The lobby was deserted, and so Beatrice ventured cautiously toward the stairs, stopping at the bottom.
“What are you doing?” asked Kate.
“Listening. Shhh.”
If anyone had gotten there ahead of them, they weren't making a lot of noise. Beatrice retreated and walked towards the mailboxes at the back the lobby, and began rummaging through her purse.
“Why aren't we going up?”
