Echo Online 2

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  Or a text.

  Or a letter.

  I was a chef, email was just a thing I needed to get onto most websites and have on my records for reasons I’m sure didn’t all have to do with the NSA.

  Conspiracy theories aside, I got home at around five somehow, the mix of traffic and the meandering routes I’d taken to try and avoid said traffic somehow managing to eat up a full hour.

  Weirder still, the process of having a shower, getting dressed, and going over to Jane and Sam’s somehow ended up eating up another half hour.

  “I thought you’d ended up caving and doing a full shift,” Jane said after letting me in with a kiss on the cheek for the umpteenth time that day, “how’d it go?”

  “Good, good,” I replied with a smile, making my way over to the kitchen, “earned myself a fifteen minute early finish that I can use whenever I want.”

  “Ooh, lucky you,” Jane laughed before turning semi-serious, “wait, is that a big deal?”

  “Little bit,” I chuckled, “kind of like getting to leave school early if you got all your work done.”

  “They let you do that at your school?” Jane asked.

  “Well… yeah?” I replied amusedly, “This was the nineties, bit less panicky about abductions and such.”

  “Ah,” Jane let knowingly as I went to work on dinner, “I think if they did that at my school they would’ve gotten sued out the ass. Anyway, everything okay after the whole Carl thing?”

  “Hmm?” I let out dumbly midway through preheating the oven, “Oh, yeah, that’s all good. Didn’t really talk about it at work.”

  That seemed to throw Jane off, but she was quick to shrug it off, “So what did you talk about then? Echo?”

  “Ripper, actually,” I replied, “bit of Echo, but only in relation to Ripper. People are really addicted to this thing, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘addicted’,” Jane murmured, “although I suppose an addict probably wouldn’t… I don’t know, it’s just really fun, and while I’m not a huge fan of microtransactions, there’s something just so rewarding about opening the packs and supporting the dev. And you can unlock packs just by grinding through battles and doing dailies and weeklies.”

  The idea that there was a game out there that people actively wanted to support through microtransactions seemed kind of weird to me, and not just because microtransactions were pretty damn taboo at that point.

  “You want me to set it up for you while you get dinner ready?” Jane asked with clearly more desperation than she intended.

  “Sure,” I replied, pulling my phone out and tossing it to her, “anyway, how was your day?”

  “Pretty good,” Jane said, setting my phone down on the bench, “got a ton of work done, cleaned up, checked out the forums. Hey, did you know we have a hostage?”

  “Yeah, didn’t I tell you that?” I asked, getting an uncertain look in return, “Well, yeah, there was a tussle with some Angels and I managed to nab a guy that can teleport in and out of the city pretty easily. Surprised they haven’t grabbed him back yet.”

  “They’ve tried,” Jane replied with a cocky smirk, “turns out without a shield-person thing they get corrupted or something.”

  “Or something?” I chuckled, “What exactly happened when they attacked?”

  “I wasn’t there, and the forum users aren’t super clear,” Jane explained, “although, from what I gathered, they basically get close and go all ‘wololo’ on each other.”

  Initially I was kind of weirded out by the concept that the game could take away their agency, though that wasn’t hard to get past once I remembered what happened with me and the initial task of opening the dome.

  “You want to see for yourself?” Jane asked after a few seconds of silence that mostly had to do with me figuring out the best layout on their stovetop for two pans.

  “I do,” I replied, “but first, we eat. How long do you think ‘til Sam gets home?”

  “Shouldn’t be long,” Jane said with a shrug, “five, ten minutes maybe? Sometimes she gets held back, but she would’ve called by now.”

  “How long did that take to get used to?” I asked, glad to be focusing on the real world and break away from my steadily building fixation with Echo.

  “What do you mean?” Jane replied confusedly, “Like, her being held back late, or..?”

  “No, just…” I trailed off, struggling to find the words as I tossed the steaks in the pans, “I don’t know, you working from home, her going out. The two don’t seem super conducive of one another.”

  “Oh, well, wasn’t all that hard,” Jane chuckled, “I mean, there were some growing pains. She felt like I wasn’t doing anything, I felt like I was working all the time while she had the luxury of weekends, but we eventually hit a point where we just sort of talked through it.”

  I smiled at that, their functionality as a couple.

  It’s not like I expected anything less, but it was still one thing to know they worked well together and another to learn about their past.

  Plus, I was still playing catchup.

  “You have a bunch of email notifications.” Jane giggled, pulling me away from the food for a second, “Do you just not check them?”

  “I will,” I replied, rolling my eyes, “why’s that funny though?”

  “I don’t know, I guess to me it’s kind of like not making sure your car’s locked before you go shopping,” Jane, again, giggled, “anyway, what’s your lock thing?”

  “Sort of an S shape.” I said, “All the way across, then down, then across again.”

  “Hmm…” Jane murmured after attempting and failing, “Like… that?”

  “No,” I huffed amusedly, “chuck it here, I’ll do it.”

  “Cool, I’ll check my email while you do that.” Jane sighed as she walked over to her desk and found her phone, “Not trying to be weird or anything, I’m just always worried I’ll accidentally lock people out of their phones.”

  “I totally get that,” I replied after failing to unlock the screen for a third time courtesy of my slightly wet fingers, “I grew up being paranoid using just about anyone’s electronics but my own.”

  “And now we leave our laptops wherever.” Jane joked.

  “You know what I mean,” I chuckled, “my boss let me cycle through his music at work today on a phone that’s probably worth more than my TV, and neither of us thought twice about it.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Jane replied, growing increasingly distracted by whatever she was doing, “we’re a bit more focused on our privacy these days though.”

  “Are we?” I scoffed, “People jump when they find out someone’s gone through their photos, but how likely were we to have pretty much all of our personal information in something that could fit in our pockets twenty years ago?”

  I think Jane zoned out completely somewhere around halfway through my little speech, though it could’ve been earlier.

  Not that I minded, I was actually kind of happy to get the opportunity to pour all my energy into making a relatively simple meal, something special.

  After all, you can’t spell T-bone without TLC.

  Okay, so that’s a lie, but it’d be kind of cool if it wasn’t.

  16

  For the somewhere between twenty and forty minutes I cooked, my mind having trouble keeping track of time as I operated on Optimal Steak Time, or OST for us fancy pants.

  Jane played her game, I eased into a calmness I only really felt when cooking, and Sam drove home.

  I mean, I assume, with the way she burst through the door, she very well may have made her commute Roadrunner-style.

  “You’re playing it too?” Sam exclaimed as she zoomed through the apartment right up to Jane, “Everybody’s playing it.”

  “Buck’s not playing it,” Jane replied before pointing at me, “and he doesn’t seem particularly interested in doing so.”

  “Hey, don’t you go sicing her on me,” I half-joked, “I can’t be dealing wi
th dinner and… this.”

  “It doesn’t matter that he’s not playing it, everybody else is.” Sam practically cried out before becoming sullen, “Almost everybody.”

  “And that’s… a problem?” Jane asked, reflecting my confusion.

  “No, not at all,” Sam laughed semi-maniacally, “that is, it wouldn’t be if I could find the guy who made it.”

  “Why do you want to find him?” I added, exaggerating my slightly genuine concern, “Do you want to hurt him, Sam?”

  “Haha,” Sam belted out with all the force of a Skyrim-style shout, “seriously, I’ve been trying to track him down all shitting day. My boss said if I could get us in with him, I’d get a promotion.”

  Needless to say, I was even more confused.

  “But aren’t you guys all about giving people money in exchange for pieces of their company or whatever?” I asked, “And seeing as he’s already making a bunch of mon-”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m so freaked out.” Sam snapped, “Sorry, but yes, again, that’s why I’m panicking. We can help him in a ton of ways outside of the financials, particularly with scaling up, but if he’s doing well enough on his own…”

  “He won’t bother signing anything, got it.” I finished, a wash of realization rolling over me as the oven’s bell rang, “You reckon a full stomach might help?”

  “Certainly couldn’t hurt.” Sam huffed with a half-smile as she came over and practically flopped on the bench, “Your phone’s blinking.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of emails I’ve got to go through,” I replied, relieved that she’d found something to distract herself with, “you got any chicken stock?”

  “Maybe in the cupboard,” Sam sighed before straightening up and grabbing my phone, “mind if I sort ‘em out? Could use the mental break.”

  “Knock yourself out.” I said as I started looking through the cupboard, finding no sign of anything remotely resembling herbs or spices, “Should be able to just follow the smudge line.”

  “That doesn’t seem safe,” Sam replied distractedly as she unlocked my phone, “digital security-wise I mean.”

  “It’s not always like that,” I chucked, quickly popping up to shift the steaks off the heat and turn off the oven, “and how would anyone make it like that permanently?”

  “I’m sure someone out there has managed it.” Sam muttered amusedly.

  And just like that, I lost another woman to technology.

  Thankfully, the fries still had another few minutes to go, and the steaks-

  “Buck,” Sam said with a burning intensity, halting my thought processes, “what is this doing in your email?”

  “What’s what-” I went to ask as I turned to face her to find a phone an inch from my nose, “Well, it’s kind of hard to tell from this close.”

  “It’s an email,” Sam practically snapped, pulling the phone back to her instead of letting my eyes adjust, “a whole bunch of emails, actually.”

  “That’s not surprising, it’s been going off all day.” I replied before turning back to the food, “You want me to season your steak for you?”

  “Do you even know what these are?” Sam muttered, her voice trembling with something akin to rage.

  “Yes, emails,” I said, “now, do you want pepper and stuff on your steak?”

  “There’s a contract and numbers and…” Sam trailed off in response as a curious Jane came to look over her shoulder.

  “Woah…” Jane gasped, “and is that-”

  “Looks like it, yeah.” Sam confirmed.

  “Are you even hungry anymore?” I chuckled as I started plating up, earning me a failed attempt at a calming breath from Sam.

  “Buck,” the mildly irate Sam said as coolly as she could manage, “why do you own ten percent of Ripper?”

  Unsurprisingly, that question confused me some.

  “I mean, I shouldn’t,” I replied, moving the newly meat-laden plates to the bench, “it’s probably just spam.”

  “This guy calls you by name several times throughout each of the emails, Buck,” Sam explained, “and at no point does he ask for bank details or your social security or anything like that.”

  “You said there was a contract, right?” I said, “Isn’t there a chance whoever this is is just trying to get me to sign over my soul or something?”

  “Spammers don’t tend to work like that,” Jane chuckled, “besides, from what I’m seeing this is a legit contract. Simple enough, too.”

  “She’s right,” Sam added, scrolling through what I assumed was the contract, “three pages of boilerplate crap that he’s probably auto-filled with a template followed by a space for you to countersign. We have stuff like this at work for when we don’t want to actively pursue a project but are willing to jump on in a small way in case it does something.”

  Not trying to sound like a complete idiot, but I was still a little confused.

  Well, I suppose ‘confused’ is the wrong word, ‘waiting for the punchline’ is probably more fitting.

  “Alright, so I own ten percent of Ripper, how popular can it be really?” I asked, preparing myself for the worst but quietly hoping for the best.

  “Based on the various screenshots and selfies he’s sent you, a lot.” Sam replied, her tone softening as I came around.

  “Hundreds?” I suggested, expecting that my lowered anticipation would make the universe grant me thousands.

  I was wrong.

  Kind of.

  “Of thousands.” Sam replied, my overly excited brain only hearing the second word at first, “Bordering on millions.”

  “Bullshit.” I laughed with disbelief, “Seriously, bullshit.”

  “Alright, so maybe that’s how much he’s made in the past, what, day? But I sincerely doubt you’re far behind.” Sam said with a smirk, “How’d you manage this?”

  It honestly took me about ten full seconds to remember the Elf and his desperate quest for funding, and then an additional five seconds to decide whether or not that was just a little bit lame.

  “Met him in Echo,” I finally said, “threw him some dollars to get the app published.”

  “How much?” Sam asked, a palpable tension settling over the room as she did.

  Again, I was stuck.

  I didn’t want to devalue the Elf’s product, though at the same time I didn’t want to lie to the girls.

  “Couple hundred bucks,” I replied with no shortage of apprehension, “he wasn’t going to be able to publish it otherwise.”

  For a while Sam simply blinked at me, her lips locked shut and eyebrows high, but that eventually gave way to a seemingly unending stare.

  She wasn’t angry or confused, at least as far as I could tell, she’d simply frozen like she had the worst case of stage fright ever.

  “You mean to tell me-” Sam started then stopped so she could swallow some ball of emotions, “You mean to tell me that you own part of what is very, very likely to be a multi-million dollar property for, what, less than a week’s rent?”

  I was naturally hesitant to answer, hoping that in the brief pause the girls would smell the slowly cooling steaks beneath their noses and start eating and stop asking mildly scary questions.

  Alas, I was not so lucky.

  “I am.” I said confidently, a smile on my face, “Let’s eat.”

  Predictably, Sam looked about ready to explode, but again, she didn’t appear to be angry, more like a pressure cooker that had been left on too long, not wishing anyone ill will, but still potentially dangerous and sure to make a very loud noise.

  She didn’t though, no, instead she opted to clear her throat rather violently and force a smile, “I’ve been trying to reach this guy all fucking day and you manage to get in touch with him because he found you after some viral video of you stabbing a chick to death?”

  I realized everyone in that room was present for the attempted assassination, and I was confident they knew I didn’t do it for no reason, but I kind of wished Sam had
added just a little bit of context there.

  “Okay, to be fair, this happened before the Damned Legion.” I clarified, widening Sam’s already terrifyingly wide eyes, spurring me to add something extra, “And I only found him because no one was keeping an eye out for potential developers in the game.”

  “I-” Sam got out before drawing another calming breath, “I suppose that’s fair. But, and I’m not trying to be a dick here, how the shit did you find him when no one else can?”

  “Just dumb luck I suppose,” I replied with a shrug, “if it’s really that important, why don’t you just email him? You have his contact information now.”

  I’m not sure if the thought hadn’t occurred to Sam yet or if she’d simply assumed I’d never be up for her using my email, but whatever the reason, her switch from unrelentingly tense to unfathomably baffled was so quick I actually wondered if I’d had a mini-stroke and lost a few seconds.

  “Seriously?” Sam asked after a weird few moments.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said before finally digging into my fries, “might be an idea to pretend to be me first, like I’m giving him your contact info.”

  Sam was still shaken.

  “Unless that’s weird or unprof-”

  “No,” Sam interjected desperately, “I just… I didn’t think… Do you want to sign this first?”

  “I just started eating.” I joked before setting my fork down and accepting my phone, “Speaking of…”

  That’s all I needed to say for both of the girls to start ripping their steaks apart with a ferocity I’d assumed was only in the animal kingdom.

  You know, if animals had utensils.

  “There we go,” I said, handing the phone back, “you think there’s a chance you’ll be able to get him?”

  “Trust me, I’m good at my job.” Sam replied between mouthfuls of meat and potato, “But clearly not as good as you, apparently.”

  “Right?” Jane chimed in excitedly, “Did you sneak crack in here or something?”

  “Only enough to hide the burnt taste.” I chuckled while Sam went about the apparently incredibly awkward and difficult task of pretending to be me.

  Have to say, it was pretty damn funny watching Sam spend a few moments writing something, only to shake her head, eat some more, backspace everything, and then try again.