by Vic Connor
“Heh heh,” he chuckles. “Funny, aye?”
This would be the right time to face-palm, I’m sure, if we had no witnesses.
Instead, I turn my attention back to the mapmaker. She scans each of us from head to toe; my pistol-toting left crutch nor Miyu’s naginata seem to catch her attention, but she stares at the zig-zagging blue, black, and red patterns on Juanita’s poncho for a few moments, and studies Abe’s dirty bandana for long enough to make the pirate shift his weight from one foot to the other, as if feeling nervous.
Then, her glittering blue eyes hold my gaze. Their roguish spark matches the impish smirk on the bald gnome’s face, as if these two are sharing a private joke at our expense.
“Introductions, my child,” Juanita whispers at me.
“Excuse my manners,” I say, attempting another rigid bow, a part of me wondering if I’ll raise my Awkward Courtesy skills should I keep doing this long enough. “My name is Jake Russel…” did she narrow her eyes, as if my name sounded familiar? “…and these are my companions…”
“Abraham Blackwell, me lady.”
“Juanita Russel,” says Juanita.
“So, you two are family?” Van der Kaart asks, eyes jumping between the witch and myself, always glittering mischievously.
“In a way…” I reply.
The blue spark fixes on the onyx beads behind Miyu’s mask. “Welcome again to our humble shop, Kasuya-san,” Van der Kaart says.
Whoa. What?
Miyu bows stiffly.
Juanita seems as surprised as I am. This isn’t something I’m failing to remember, then, but a new piece of information for us both.
“You two have made business before?” I ask.
Van der Kaart seems about to answer when a brief hiss from behind the Noh mask pierces the air like a dart.
“Perhaps,” she says after a short pause, “you should discuss that with Kasuya-san in private, ja?”
The hatless bald gnome appears to be enjoying our exchange immensely, his playful smile stretching wider still.
Hmm. I wonder if… “It may sound like an odd question, milady,” I say, “but have you and I made business in the past?”
Van der Kaart narrows her eyes. “Not that I recall, no.” She glances at my crutches, then at my face. “I’ll not claim to remember every single customer who has ever entered our workshop, but you are too young for us to have conducted business so long ago for me to forget.”
She turns around and whispers to the bald gnome, who shakes his head. “Nimmer,” he replies.
Van der Kaart comes nearer. She’s slightly taller than me, and her many years have decorated the skin around her eyes and mouth with countless small creases. “Now that we are properly introduced, Mister Russel,” she says, “what do a seasoned sailor, a fearless samurai—”
Miyu’s hiss lashes out again. “Ronin,” she corrects.
Van der Kaart nods. “—a fearless warrior that serves no lord, a wielder of the pagan dark arts, and … a gunslinger, if I were to guess…?” She glances again at my gun-packing left crutch. “What brings such odd companions into my shop, Mister Russel?”
Your reputation precedes you, milady. We were curious about you and your work.
We need a map of this island; we were told we’d find one here.
We are looking for a map—quite a specific map.
Something about how the mapmaker and the bald gnome keep looking like they are sharing a private joke tells me that, while politeness may open the first door, flattery will not take us much further here.
“We are looking for a map,” I say, getting straight to the point. “Quite a specific map. We believe it’s in your possession.”
She nods. “Interessant.” Her smirk dissolves as her eyes narrow. “Most of our customers are very specific about what they want on a map, yet it’s not so common they know the exact map they want.”
I look at Juanita.
“A map of Isla Hermosa,” she clarifies. “Ancient and worn out.”
“’Bout three feets tall, an’ same feets wide,” Abe adds, mimicking with his huge hands the unfolding of such a map.
“We have several maps like this,” Van der Kaart says.
“You bought this one a couple of days ago,” I tell her. “In Villarica.”
“I hardly ever walk farther than a few streets away from our workshop,” she informs us. “Let alone leave our beautiful Duurstad. I find the sun’s heat and the jungle’s humidity … unsavory.”
I sigh. “Then one of your hirelings bought it for you there. Or someone bought it there, brought it here, and sold it to you.”
She turns again and whispers to the hatless gnome.
“Degene met de letter,” he says.
“Ah,” she says, as understanding dawns in her sparkling eyes. “That map.”
Show it to us.
We’d like to see it.
Would you be so kind to let us have a look at it, please?
Piece of cake, this one.
“Would you be so kind,” I politely request, “to let us have a look at it, please?”
“Nee,” she says. “I will not.” She cocks her head to the right, not unlike Miyu’s Noh mask does occasionally. “A single look at a map may be all you need to locate whatever there is in that map you wish to see.” She gives me a crooked smile. “And how will I sell the map to you if you no longer need it?”
[Threatening] I can assure you, it’s in your best interest to show us the map.
[Easygoing] You don’t expect us to buy something without having seen it first, do you?
[Plain] We won’t buy what we cannot see.
Never mind.
No way I can bluff the mapmaker with the threat of violence. Even if I could utter the words with a straight face, anything louder than a sneeze from these two would alert the soldiers guarding the Opzichter’s tower across the street.
And Van der Kaart’s sniffy smug says: ‘I know that you know that I know those two soldiers would wipe the floor with you all,’ no doubt about that.
“Now come on, milady,” I say nonchalantly. “You don’t expect us to buy something without having seen it first, do you?”
“But you have seen it. Have you not?” She shifts her sparkling blue eyes to Abe. “The seasoned sailor who travels with you,” she says to me, staring at him, “looks like he knows this map well. Does he not?”
Memory Unlocked:
Dark Alleys (2 of 2)
“What an awful way to go,” whispers one of the looming adults to another as I approach the closed coffin, the heavy air clinging to my throat. “Mugged like that, for a piece of old paper.”
“I warned him,” replies the other. “I told him, many a time: Beware of London, and its treacherous, thieve-ridden dark alleys.”
Casting his eyes down, Abe again shifts uncomfortably under her gaze.
“We have all seen it,” Juanita intervenes. “Since it was ours, until it was stolen from us.”
“We’d like to buy it back,” I explain. “If the price is right. And if we can confirm with our own eyes that what you have for sale is the map we’re looking for.”
“Still, if you need the map,” she says, “it is surely because there is something in it you fail to remember. Do you not?”
[Threatening] I can assure you, it’s in your best interest to show us the map. Now.
[Plain] We won’t buy what we cannot see.
Never mind.
It’s a trap. Clear as day, the threatening option is the game trying to trick us into getting ourselves into some deep shit.
“We won’t buy what we cannot see,” I say dryly.
“Stop er mee,” says the bald gnome to Van der Kaart. He’s still smiling, but there’s a trace of something like sadness in his voice. “Stop met spelen,” he adds. He raises a folded sheet of paper, old and ragged, and looks at me.
“It is your map, Jake Russel,” Van der Kaart confirms.
“How can you be so sure?�
� I ask.
“Because your name,” she says, pointing at the sheet of paper between the gnome’s fingers, “is on the letter—”
Memory Unlocked:
The First Letter
I’m swallowed by a leather armchair too big for a child like me.
I can barely see over the imposing mahogany desk, across which Mister Huffington sits.
As solemn as a priest, as stern as Fate, he reads to me from a letter he has on his desk.
“—attached to the map we are haggling about,” she finishes.
The little bald man extends his arm for Van der Kaart to take the folded sheet of paper, which she offers to me.
I read…
Dear Jake:
I am truly sorry if you are reading this, my son, for if you are, then I have died nine years ago, during my trip to London. I guess the Atlantic was as savage and stormy as I was advised, and the White Pilgrim not as sturdy a ship as Captain Wallace claimed her to be.
It saddens me more than you will ever know, not being there with you to celebrate your eighteenth birthday. All our family possessions will be yours today. I hope they are an adequate gift to compensate for my absence during all of these years.
If our ship was sunk on our returning voyage from England, and all souls and cargo were lost, the dark waters have swallowed what I went to seek in London and, whatever that was, it is now lost forever. Think not about it any longer, then, and choose what you will do tomorrow and each day afterwards according to your own calling and preferences.
On the other hand, if we perished while en route to London, then Mister Huffington will have a second letter for you today.
Whether or not you heed that second letter’s contents shall be entirely up to you, my child. Make of it what you will, live your life as you see fit, and never give too much weight to the wishes of a dead man.
Truly yours,
Dad
Holy sh…
Dad?
“Is that a good enough proof of provenance, Mister Russel?”
“I don’t like this shit,” I wheeze through clenched teeth. “I don’t like the look of this. I don’t like it at all!”
“Take it easy, Jake,” Sveta said. “Breathe.” Her voice brimmed with concern.
I rubbed my temples, eyes closed shut, trying to control the air going in and out my lungs. “I’m okay,” I told her.
“You don’t lo—”
“I said I’m all right. Okay?”
She kept quiet.
I took a deep breath…
…exhaled slowly…
…opened my eyes.
She was looking at me with warm, worried eyes. I forced my lips to smile. “I’m okay,” I said. “I really am.”
“Too close to home?”
“Oh, you think?” I blurted, bitterly. I took another deep breath. “Sorry.”
She went to the coffee table, giving me time to compose myself, then brought me a glass of crystal-clear liquid. “Just water.” She smiled. “You’re in no shape for vodka, boss.”
I gulped the water down while she returned to her seat. It was ice-cold, soothing and refreshing. I placed the glass on the desk, wondering for a fraction of a second whether the moist base of the glass would damage the surface. With a dry chuckle, I reminded myself this was all digital, anyway.
“Yes,” I said. “When so immersed in a story, a letter a dead man wrote to you could be a little unsettling. Doubly so, if the deceased author happens to be your old man. Ten times more so if, hey, I’m actually here to…” Deep breath again. “If my goal here is to, you know, avoid having to go through something like that in real life in about six months.”
Her emerald eyes peered at me with what felt like compassion.
“You told me the single-player part was unique to each player, correct?”
“That’s right,” she said. “I don’t know for certain how different, but I know it’s custom-made.”
“Bespoke content, as it were…”
She nodded.
“So, this could be on purpose, right?” I said. “The game tailoring its content and quests to my current situation?”
“As far as I know, yeah, it could be.” She studied the bird’s-eye view on the desk, which showed my party bartering with Van der Kaart and Inktmeester in their workshop. “This is part consensual hallucination, and part collaborative storytelling between you and Istoria. If I had to guess—” she leaned forward on the desk, hands flat on the wooden surface “—you’re a lot more into feudal Japan, Aztecs, and the golden age of piracy than, say, ancient Greece, Vikings, and dystopian Sci-Fi, right?”
It was my turn to nod.
“So that’s about it,” she said. “Part of what you’re playing through is brought forth in collaboration with your own memories and your own imagination; part is Istoria weaving together story beats it had learned from the gazillion books and games and movies Maneesh and his crew have fed into its algorithms; and part is your own choices as you play through. The letter you’ve just read is a combination of all that.”
I stared at my party down below, frozen in time as my character read over Dad’s letter. “I can’t go back there. Not right now.”
She agreed with an understanding look. Then, she waved at her screen while she leaned back in her chair, Razor’s grin appearing on her face as her mannerisms shifted from playful corporate assistant to the tough, no-nonsense dysto-punk merc. “Got that green light you were asking for, Hardcore.”
I looked at her, confused.
“Forgot to take your memory pills?” she asked, her smirk twisting her lips in mock contempt. “You asked me ‘bout my previous jobs. About the other players I assisted, back in Alpha and early Beta. Remember?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, I remember. Can’t blame a guy for wanting to know if he was your first, can you?”
“Didn’t know you had a thing for rookies, Hard.”
“Rookies deserve their beginner’s luck. And any rookie would be lucky to begin with me, that’s all I’m saying.”
She laughed. “Fortune hasn’t favored my rookiness, then. You’re my fifth.”
I imitated her posture and leaned back in my plushy hover chair, as if saying, ‘I’m all ears.’
“The first guy was a pro,” she explained. “Real pro. Elite Top Ten from Die with Honor.”
“Holy crap! Who?”
“Can’t tell you that, Core. The green I received isn’t that green.” She smiled. “I can tell you that NozGames threw a metric ton of cash his way to bring him over during the first Alpha, then buried him under another metric ton of NDAs. But if you check the DwH forums, it’s not so hard to guess who he is. Anyway, that was the first Closed Alpha round, and he was the first player I assisted. And, for him, the single-player part was pretty much your run-of-the-mill FPS. Only with Istoria-level realism.”
“What was the setting?”
“Some sort of Max-Sec Off-World prison. He had to shoot everything that moved—first, guards and other inmates; then experimental cyborgs being developed from those on Death Row. No dialogs, no other party members—”
“A whole different skill tree, then?”
“There were no skills, in fact. He could choose from some implants and mods to adapt his builds, but there were no character skills, no skill points, no VPs… Nothing of that sort.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Although the lack of other NPCs to talk to makes sense. That part must have been still in development so early in Alpha.”
“That’d be my guess, too,” she agreed. “My second was also a Top Ten, this time from HellSquad—”
“I’m not that much into MOBAs, I have to say.”
“Well, if you were, you’d know who she is, because their community was up in arms with NozGames ‘stealing her,’ as they put it. Fan-fueled drama aside, Istoria for her was set in an alternate timeline in which Egypt had been the center of the world for about 7,000 years. Really messed up, that setting. We had to deal with cyborg
mummies, Anubis’ High Priest running a high-tech Megacorp, and my player having to find out why Ra had vanished and the sun had stopped moving.”
“Heh… Not exactly Duurstad and the Caribbean, you mean?”
“Not quite. But that second game was mostly dialog. There were lots of skills, and she focused all of them on manipulating, cajoling, and sweet-talking the NPCs.
“Then, there was my third player, some obese moneybag who had bought his way into the last round of Closed Alpha. His single-player campaign looked like a proper cookie-cutter High Fantasy RPG, but guy quit on me a few hours into the game.”
“Odd…” I commented. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he changed his mind, maybe he had some emergency elsewhere—that guy was checking his emails constantly. He asked me to unplug him from the capsule for a few hours, then next I know, he’d quit. Guys like him are weird. Anyway, last but not least, my number four—”
“Don’t let Miyu hear you say that number.” I winked.
“Good catch.” She chuckled. “My next-player-after-my-third, then. She wrote for a popular gaming portal, and I’m sure you’ve read her articles. This was the first Closed Beta round, and she played in a wickedly dark Cthulhu-esque Victorian-era steampunk nightmare, set in an endlessly big city that seemed always to be at night, either because it was night or because the smog and grime were so thick that we never saw the sun.
“She was a Sherlock Holmes clone trying to solve a murder case related to the Crown’s heir apparent, and you could feel that a steam-powered clockwork version of Jack the Ripper was about to jump at you at every corner, though we never met him.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “Sounds nerve-wracking…”
“It was awesome!” She laughed. “I’m not lying when I say I was a tiny bit disappointed when you and I got a tropical island rather than being back in that endless city. But you could say that, mechanically, her game was sort of close to yours. She had two other NPCs riding along with her, there were dialog choices and skill trees, and she earned VPs by questing. There was little fighting, though; or at least the way she went about it was mostly either diplomacy or stealth.”