by gipsika
“Most of this is food,” he explained. He filled the basket with products, explaining to her what each one was, and then putting them all back.
“What was the point in that?” she asked, perplexed.
“I have no money,” said Mike. “So I can’t buy any of this.”
“Wait,” said Nadisda and reached under her maroon t-shirt. “I have some coins.” She produced some solid gold ducates from the Realms. Mike’s eyes stretched.
“Whoa, fairy,” he objected. “Can’t use those! They use other kinds of money here.”
Nadisda concentrated. Turn into whatever is in use here, she mentally instructed the ducates. The next moment, she was holding a hundred-dollar bill.
“That would sort it,” said Mike with a grin and snatched the money. “Come. Let’s put that food back into the basket!”
“There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” said Nadisda as they carried on along the road, with all the provisions stashed into Mike’s backpack. “Why do you people buy your food? Can’t you simply grow it?”
“We probably could,” said Mike, astonished. “We should! You’re right! But it will take time though.”
“Maybe,” said Nadisda. “But doesn’t it make more sense to stick to the natural order of things? You wouldn’t have to go hungry when you have no coins. Or... papers, in this world.”
“You have a point,” said Mike. “Anyway, here we are.” He led her up the steps of an old building with double-doors. A bronze plate announced it as the “Detroit Public Library”.
Nadisda followed him into a large room packed floor to ceiling with bookshelves. The shelves almost made a forest in which one could get lost. She felt the spirit of the woods still coming from the pages and the wooden shelves.
“Here,” said Mike and led her through the labyrinth of shelves, to a section at the back. He pulled a book off the shelf. “Natural Magic.”
Nadisda accepted the tome. She opened it. “Nice drawings.”
Mike peered sharply at her. “Damn,” he said. “We’ve got to do this again! Oh man, this whole trek!”
“Why?” she asked, confused.
“You can’t read,” he said through gritted teeth. “Damn! Should have thought of that! Fairy, hang tight. We’re going home.” He stuck the book into his backpack. “Come!”
The sensors at the doors screamed when the backpack with the book in it passed through them. Library staff came towards them and demanded that Mike unpack his backpack.
“This is just – dammit,” he swore. “I wasn’t thinking! And now there’s going to be commotion and all sorts of stuff – last thing we need! Damn, damn, damn!”
Nadisda stared at him. She could actually see the features of the evil villain overlaying his young face.
The stolen book came out of the pack.
“I was going to book it out,” insisted Mike to the security guard who had come to clamp his huge hands around the teenager’s wrists. “Honestly! I just forgot! Was lost in thought!”
“Right, we’ll believe that,” growled the guard. A second guard grabbed Nadisda’s arms and turned them on her back so that she couldn’t move. One of the librarians left through a door behind the counter.
“Damn! She’s calling the cops,” muttered Mike as the security guards were holding onto his and Nadisda’s wrists. “Last thing we need! Going to get a record! Crap!”
“Valentine,” said Nadisda gently, “be calm. You did nothing wrong.” She inclined her head, and her guard let her go in confusion.
“Sorry, Miss!”
“No harm done,” she said sweetly, pushing some strands of hair out of her face. The other guard let go of Mike and looked at him with concern.
“Are you alright, kid? You fell. Look, everything in your pack fell out.”
“I’m fine,” said Mike gruffly, flexing his wrists and hands and watching in astonishment how the guard crouched down to repack his pack for him.
The librarian who had left, came back through the door, looking a bit perplexed.
“What was I going to do?”
“You were going to help these two borrow that book,” one of the assistants replied in a bored voice, barely glancing up from her workstation.
“Right! Do you have a library card?” asked the librarian.
Mike looked beleaguered.
“Fill in this form,” invited the lady and pushed a paper towards him. Nadisda saw how Mike hesitated.
“I have one,” she said and held out her hand. The librarian accepted the glamour spell that turned into a library card in her hand.
“Ah! Nadisda Woodsworth,” she muttered and smiled at the fairy as she put the book through the system. “There, enjoy, Miss. Just remember to return it in two weeks.”
“I will, thanks,” smiled Nadisda and led the way out of the library with a bounce in her step, the Villain scrambling to catch up with her.
Once they were well down the road and out of sight of the city library, Mike grabbed Nadisda’s arm.
“What the hell was that?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you, Valentine,” she said.
“I asked you not to call me that in this world,” said Mike.
“Oh, but you are him!” replied Nadisda. “You steal, don’t you? You’re a practised thief. I should have seen it earlier.”
Mike pulled a face. “Don’t half have a choice. We have to live.”
“How do other people manage?”
“Other kids have parents,” he said. “They haven’t run away from a hostile system. The parents make sure the kids have something to eat.”
“You’re hardly a child, Valentine,” said Nadisda.
“Alright,” Mike conceded. “We’re all over sixteen now, I guess we could work. But it’s too late. The kind of jobs people like us would get, are useless. They don’t feed one. I’m a programmer. I learnt that by hacking into people’s bank accounts, but I can’t do that at the moment because the police have their tabs on me and if I stick my cyber-nose out, they’ll catch me in a jinx. So I’m lying low. But...” he smiled.
“Yes?” prompted the woodlands fairy.
“I’m working on a program,” he said. “We are. Me and Jen. She draws the world and the characters. The other two are beta-testers, and friends. We’re playing this game together to test it, and I’ve thrown it online for other beta players to join in. It’s going to be our breakthrough. It will make us rich and we’ll never have to steal again. But here’s the catch. When you throw a game online for others to test, you’ll always get some evil guys who try to crack the code and steal it. We’re up against the nastiest hacker from New York that the cyber world has ever seen. And he’s in my game, and he’s trying to hijack it.”
“Who is he?” asked Nadisda.
“The same bloke who threw a spanner in my own hacking,” said Mike. “His name is Connor McNaught. He’s a cop. And a hacker. He’s the reason I can’t nip tiny amounts out of people’s bank accounts without them ever noticing. I mean. C’mon! I’ve never taken more than the bank itself does.” He sighed. “Guess you didn’t understand even a third of what I said now. Don’t worry, I’ll fix that too.”
“You’re still a villain,” she smiled. “That cop – whatever that is. I think I know who he is.”
“You do?” asked Valentine.
“It’s obvious.” laughed Nadisda. “Hero Hugo.”
6: The Game
It was midday when Nadisda and Mike arrived back at the ramshackle house in which the gamers were hiding. Nadisda took a look at the garden.
“It’s just not right. I should tidy it up.”
“Don’t,” warned Mike. “The house will stick out from the others and people will wonder. Next thing we have the police on our tails.”
“Police?” asked Nadisda quizzically.
“Don’t worry, all will become clear,
” replied Mike. “Actually, if it makes you feel better to garden, there is a large area behind the house. You can try that. Nobody will see it from the street.”
“Thank you,” smiled the forest fairy. “Show me?”
Mike took her through the house and opened the kitchen door to the outside. A large, weed-overgrown back garden lay ahead.
“Oh, you’re right, this will never do,” said the fairy. She knelt down and spoke to one of the weeds in a whisper. Then she stood up. “The plants have agreed,” she stated cryptically.
Nadisda took some time to wander around the back garden. She created an enchanted grove under the trees in the back half of the garden, complete with moss beards on the trees, air plants, and mysterious undergrowth. She added more trees, and an old fallen log covered in green mosses and ferns, and closed the whole grove off with more trees and dense thicket so one could not even see inside it from the house. Then she used the rest of the space to plant food: Potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables, and fruit and nut trees. With a breath of her fairy magic, all of it came into life, grew, flowered, and started bearing fruit.
She turned to Mike who stood watching her in riveted fascination.
“Come, I want to try something out!” She took him by his hand and walked with him all around the food garden. Not a single plant wilted.
“One more place,” she beckoned and led him into her forest grove, and made him sit down on the mossy log. Nothing wilted, whatsoever.
“See?” she said triumphantly, “you’re not that evil!”
Mike laughed. “I’m not evil at all in this world, fairy!”
“You are a little bit evil,” she corrected him. “For stealing from people. But I forgive you, provided that you stop that. You don’t need to. You’re better than that.”
“I don’t need to while I’ve got you around,” he agreed with a smirk. “You just create some of those beautiful money notes and we can buy everything we need.”
“If you think it is necessary.”
Mike stretched, his face splitting into a broad grin.
“Oh man, life is good when one’s got magic!”
“One more thing,” said Nadisda. “We’ve got to find that Hero Hugo and convince him that you’re not a hacker anymore.”
“What?” Mike jumped up from the log. “You’re kidding, right? He’s going to lock me up for stuff I hacked in the past! And then he’s going to steal our brilliant game, and...” he peered sharply at Nadisda. “How are we going to keep your magic a secret?”
“Why must it be secret?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? You’re like a rare blue diamond here! People are going to kill each other to get their hands on you, and on your magic. They must not find out!”
“So your friends can’t even see the food garden? How are they supposed to use it then?” She thought for a second. “Ah, no, wait. I’ve got it.” And she closed her eyes and waved her hand. “Now, only you and I know that it was magic.”
Jen looked out of the kitchen window, marvelling at how wonderfully the food garden was bearing. Everything seemed to be in fruit. The garden had been partially there when they found the house; she had added a lot of extra food into it in this past year as they were hiding out here. And how rewarding that had turned out!
She sincerely hoped that nothing would go wrong this time. They were doing well, hiding here. She wanted to stay as long as she could before they had to run again.
~
“Valentine,” said Nadisda, “you keep on sending me to sleep. I don’t think I can sleep anymore! I’m so replete with sleep, I’ll start rotting if I sleep more.”
“Just this once more,” requested Mike.
“But why do you need me to sleep such a lot?”
“You’ll understand later,” said Mike. “Just humour me, one more time? Please?”
Nadisda sighed and retreated to the room she had been assigned, lying down on that mattress on the floor with its luxurious fittings. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on dozing off, but a part of her stayed awake.
She was aware that Mike brought his strange, electric-fed box with the vines into her room, sat down against the wall, placed the box on his knees and started rattling away on it.
Her head felt funny. She tried to relax, but as she was about to doze off, suddenly something came to her. She remembered having visited this world before. In fact she had spent years here, as a child, attending school, learning to read and write, learning math and how to use a computer. She remembered a lot about computers and the internet. Everything came back to her. It felt as though her brain wanted to burst with all these newly recalled memories. There were so many of them!
She opened her eyes and found Mike gazing at her over the top of his laptop screen. He smiled roguishly.
“Wait,” she muttered, sitting up. “You’ve just given me new memories? How? Mike, out with it! What the heck is going on? And how did you cure my sewer-fever?”
“I built a virus killer into you,” he replied with a grin.
“But – you make it sound as though I’m just a bit of...” she gasped, and stared at him. “I am, right? I’m only a character in your... but... Are you saying you created me?”
Mike got thoughtful.
“I thought I had,” he said. “Me and Jen. Her art is the reason you’re so beautiful. But... then how the hell could you end up here, in the real world?”
“So maybe you didn’t really create me?” she asked with a superior little smile. “Maybe I was really born from a star? Maybe I really am pure magic?”
“I’m beginning to believe it,” said Mike. “But in the meantime it’s nice that I can give you extra memories and abilities.”
“Abilities? You can give me extra abilities?”
“Sure! I’ve just given you reading skills! Try reading that book now.”
She got up and picked up the library book from where he’d put it down on the floor, and opened it. Everything made sense. Not only that she could read it all; she also knew from her own experience that it was all true. She paged through the book, skimming everything in it.
“But this is only such a small part of magic,” she objected, putting the book of arcane magic down in disappointment. “There is so much more! I should teach you.”
“I’m not magical,” said Mike. “I’m just a common human. My magic,” and he flexed his fingers demonstratively, “lies in my programming. C’mon, fairy. Now that you understand this world better, it’s time I introduced you to my team.”
She followed him uncertainly into the front room, where the curtains were still drawn despite it being mid-afternoon. Jen was in the kitchen, cooking something over that small flame of the gas cooker. Nadisda observed this with a strange dual reality in her head. She wanted to create a magical fire for them that never had to go out; at the same time she wanted to restore electricity for them so they could have their hot water and run their computers without having to use a car battery. Which she couldn’t see anywhere.
“This is Jen, my genius sister,” said Mike, indicating. Jen raised a hand in greeting. “She’s the artist who draws the backgrounds and worlds and characters and everything in our game. And over there is Nancy.”
The other girl with the mid-brown hair falling in artificial-looking coils down her bare shoulders, was lounging on the couch in the main room reading what looked like a glossy magazine. She wiggled her foot lazily, instead of greeting. A foot that was embellished with tattoos and had its nailtips pedicured black; as were her fingernails. She was wearing what looked like black underwear to Nadisda. A far too short little skirt, and a top that wasn’t much more than a lacy boob tube with straps.
At that moment the front door opened and Ben stepped inside with the car battery.
“Got it recharged,” he said. “Ready for tonight’s session.”
“This is Ben,” Mi
ke introduced him to Nadisda. “He can fix anything that works with electricity and electronics.”
Nadisda appraised Ben critically. He might come in very handy!
“So our patient is up and running?” asked Ben with a broad grin. “Is she joining the game, tonight? We can all get back on level one to give her a decent chance.”
“We’ll see,” said Mike with a secretive smile.
That evening, Mike moved over and allowed Nadisda to observe how everyone logged into the game.
“We’re live,” announced Ben triumphantly. “Here we go!”
Nadisda watched how some beautiful splash-screens appeared.
“Jen’s art,” said Mike proudly. Nadisda glanced appreciatively at the honey-blonde. And then she focused on the screens again.
“C’mon, Ben,” said Mike, “what say we rig the old Dell for Nadisda so she can be a full player?”
Ben obligingly got up and dug an old laptop out of a box and put it together, part by part.
“It’s still good, just a bit slow,” he apologized. “We’re all going to slow down a bit tonight, and the fellows online as well.” He took some time putting it together for Nadisda, who watched with more intelligence thanks to her newly implanted memories.
It took a few more minutes, then the game appeared on Nadisda’s screen too. Ben gave her a mouse and explained the controls to her, briefly. She thanked him and sat down. Ben, with his huge blue eyes and long stringy hair gave her a lopsided smile and sat back down at his own screen. Mike was attacking his keyboard at top speed.
“Look, Nadisda, I’ve programmed a character for you,” he said with a grin. An animé rendition of herself appeared on her screen, along with analytics.
“See, I’ve set your magic to 100%,” he said. “Maxed you out on all magic, elemental, alchemy, white, mind – only the black magic suffers a bit, you don’t quite have enough stat points for that.”
“Mike, you’ve given her the forest fairy!” exclaimed Jen. “Is that even legal? The fairy is an immutable part of the game!”
“Well, it’s a character that suits her perfectly,” replied Mike. “Don’t you guys think?”
They all looked closely at Nadisda.
“What’s that forest fairy’s name again?” asked Nancy suspiciously.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Mike glibly. “I’ve made it Nadisda, for now. You okay with that, Nadisda?”