by Zen DiPietro
The child retrieved her balloon from the grass and ran off before Sally could wrestle her vocabulary into submission.
A middle-aged man wearing a pale gray suit strolled by, carrying a basket. He paused when he saw her. Smiling, he reached into the basket and plucked out a stick with a star-shaped balloon fixed to the end. He extended it toward her. “Here you go. Enjoy the festival. Be sure to enter the raffle!”
She accepted the stick, delighted that someone would just wander up and give her something without asking for anything in return. “Thank you!”
He tipped his top hat at her and strode onward, whistling.
Gently waving her balloon-stick experimentally, she glanced around to see other people holding them, too. Or wearing them tucked into a backpack. The sticks didn’t appear to be good for much besides being festive, but it was her first present, so she liked it.
She wove her way through the area, sometimes following a line of people walking the same direction and sometimes threading her way through little clusters of folks who had collected. Sometimes people looked up and gave her a pleasant smile or tip of a hat, but mostly everyone was involved with whoever they were with.
Festivals were a social event, it seemed.
And here she was, alone.
Well, so what? She might lack companions, a reasonable vocabulary, and the ability to avoid getting distracted by interesting things, but she wouldn’t let any of that get in her way.
She stopped for a few minutes to watch a balloon artist twist air-filled tubes into fun shapes. A rabbit. A bicycle. A pineapple.
A young man stood by, wearing an elaborate balloon creation of a black steam train as a hat.
Sally kind of wanted a hat like that.
Browsing the many booths and tents, she found mugs etched with hot air balloons, zeppelin necklaces, and huge solar balloons in the shapes of snakes, caterpillars, and mythical dragons and sea serpents. She admired them, but had no need for a mug.
Not all the items for sale were balloon-related. Moving on, she also noted items like scented soaps and ornate doorknockers. The majority of items, though, seemed to express a fanatical reverence for balloons of all types.
“Enter for a chance to win a ride!” a man called out, indicating a clear box filled with blue tickets.
“On what?” she asked.
His gaze came around quickly, latched onto her, and he smiled. “On a hot air balloon. One lucky winner will get to ride from here to their choice of three local towns.”
That sounded fun.
“How much?” she asked. Saying the phrase made her giggle. She’d heard people say that to her many, many thousands of times. Now she was the one asking.
She was getting the hang of this adventuring thing.
“One silver.”
Even if she cared about money, that much would be pocket change. She handed him a silver coin and he tore off a ticket, then ripped it in half. “You’re number two hundred fifty-eight. Sounds like a lucky one, right?”
He probably said that to everyone. The guy gave a weird vibe that made Sally disinclined to trust him.
Nonetheless, she smiled and nodded. He didn’t need to know she didn’t trust him. It was enough for her to know.
“Good luck!” He waved at her in a clear dismissal as he turned to a trio of adventurers who apparently wanted to try their luck, too.
As she tucked the ticket into an inner pocket of her dress, a scent in the air made her pause. It reminded her of the churros smell, and if there were churros, or something like them, in her vicinity, she felt it imperative to find them and make them hers.
She followed her nose to one of the more popular tents at the festival, judging by the attention it received. This tent was large, red, and held up by numerous metal poles that anchored heavy tethers. More importantly, the irresistible aroma intensified, drawing her toward it. She smelled something similar to churros, but it was a sweeter smell with some other, undefined scent. She didn’t know what it was, but she needed it.
“Fresh batch! Still a bit warm, even,” a woman announced.
Sally couldn’t see what was on offer because of the people ahead of her, but she rode the wave of people until she stood at the front. Mimicking what she’d observed others doing, she handed over a coin, then received some other coins and a warm paper bag in return.
She heard people saying “caramel corn” repeatedly, so she felt reasonably sure that this what she’d purchased. What that meant, though, she didn’t know. She was familiar with the concept of caramel, and that of corn, but how those things had combined to make the thing she held was a mystery to her.
Some puzzles are meant for solving, and some are for eating. Well, not many are meant for eating, but Sally had made up her mind in this specific case.
Once out of the tent, she unfolded the top of the bag and found some lumpy blobs with a firm, golden-brown coating. She picked up one of the blobs and put it in her mouth.
She chewed carefully, closing her eyes in bliss. Why had she always envisioned skinny yellow tubes when people mentioned corn?
She wondered, fleetingly, if adventurers might have cognitive issues. It was okay if they did, but understanding their inner workings would be helpful.
Finding an unoccupied bench, she sat, munching on her treat and hoping to do some people watching.
Her crossbow hung awkwardly, keeping her from raising her arm comfortably. Annoying! She didn’t even want to use the thing. Why was she still lugging it around?
She shrugged off her backpack, not sorry to be relieved of its weight for the moment. Then she removed the crossbow and the bolt pouch, putting them on the bench beside her, alongside her balloon stick.
Much better.
She happily ate her caramel corn and watched the festival goers. There were far more adventurers than CMs, and it could be instructive to study their behavior. Finding patterns would help her in her new life as an adventurer.
She froze in mid-chew. Oh!
Adventurers! Essley and Darthrok!
They must be looking for her. She’d been so flustered by Somewhat Threatening Guy then distracted by the festival that she’d failed to consider how her disappearance must have affected them.
Blazing currents! She needed to find them! But…how? What would they have done when they backtracked and couldn’t find her?
If they had any sense, they’d go on to Pivot and wait in her shop.
Oh, her shop!
What was she doing, sitting here eating scrumptious caramel corn when she needed to get back to her shop? How had she let the lure of excitement and the unknown steal her focus?
Cursing herself as having scrap for brains, she grabbed her backpack and hurried back toward the way she’d come. Could she make it back to Pivot on her own? Theoretically, she had the tools, if she concentrated on them and didn’t get distracted.
“Hey! Hey, miss!” a voice shouted behind her. Then, more urgently, “You, in the fancy pants?”
Sally had fancy pants. No, she had very fancy pants. She paused to look back over her shoulder.
She saw a young adventurer waving her crossbow at her.
A woman screamed.
A man shouted.
Suddenly, everyone was screaming and running. A panic was breaking out. Though it was utterly fascinating to see people misinterpreting the situation and losing their minds, Sally didn’t have time for this.
Should she go grab the weapon from the fool, so he’d stop freaking people out?
In her moment of indecision, a familiar form shifted into view.
Sally’s breath froze in her throat. Kitria.
Her nemesis scanned the chaotic crowd with an expression of bemused interest, then her gaze caught on Sally and doubled back.
Sally saw the flash of recognition and cold terror streaked through her. Kitria would kill her. Kitria always killed her. And Kitria would want to know why Sally was somewhere that she had no business being.
No, n
o, no, this had all gone so wrong, so fast. Was this normal for adventuring?
Sally bent her knees and rounded her back, losing a good eight inches of height as she slouched. She let her hair swing down in front of her face. She bumped into several people as she hurried away.
A pair of hands grabbed and held her shoulders and she tried to reel backward.
“Sally!” Somewhat Threatening Guy stared into her eyes, his face only an arm’s length away. He worried her less than Kitria, so she didn’t pull away.
“Pivot!” she cried in desperation. “Pivot, pivot!”
His jaw set and he nodded. Before she could protest, he wrapped her in a tight hug and everything went dark.
Sally materialized in her store, behind the counter, just as always. An adventurer leaned over to peer inside a cabinet, but straightened when she appeared.
“How can I help you today?” Sally asked with her customary smile.
The adventurer named Mott stepped forward. She was a Southern maker, though she hadn’t yet chosen a specialty. “I have a puzzle. Can you help me solve it?”
“Let’s have a look!” Sally answered, pleased. She’d expected a request for a cloak or tool or weapon. The opportunity to solve a puzzle was much, much better.
In spite of everything going on in her life, puzzles remained a source of fascination and delight for her.
Mott placed a metal star the size of a pocket watch on the counter. Sally leaned down, studying it. She could flip her goggles down to examine it, to see greater details than her eyes could see on their own, but she preferred to solve puzzles without any help.
“One gold,” she said. She wasn’t sure, but she guessed that this puzzle would yield some kind of temporary attribute boost.
Mott gave her the gold, and she dropped it into the cash register, enjoying the hisses, clunks, and whirrings the machine made. She’d always loved those sounds.
She picked up the little star-shaped puzzle, feeling its weight in her palm and shifting it to see if the weight redistributed itself. It did. She guessed that the puzzle had some kind of dense liquid inside, like oil. Unusual. Puzzles rarely involved liquid.
Experimentally, she held the star between her thumb and second finger of one hand, and gave it a spin with her other hand. Hm, yes, that did something. She gave it a harder spin and felt the liquid move out into the points of the star, where it stayed.
Tapping the center, she found that it now had no liquid in it. That must mean the points were compartments that had been locked off under centrifugal force.
She flipped her goggles down and switched to the lenses that magnified but did nothing else. Peering close, she could see tiny lines between the points and the center.
Aha!
Sally reached under her sales counter and pulled up a small knife. It was a fairly dull knife, intended more for prying things than anything else. When she held it over the puzzle, Mott grabbed her prize off the counter.
“Ack!” she said. “If you can’t solve it, just say so.”
Sally indicated the knife. “This is the solution. Don’t worry.”
Looking like she was pretty sure she’d be sorry later, Mott put the puzzle back on the counter.
Gently but firmly, Sally wedged the edge of the dull blade into a crack and gave it a sharp twist. The point fell off. She repeated the process four more times, which reduced the puzzle to a tiny metal pentagon.
Moving her goggles back to her head, where she wore them like a headband, she held the knife out to Mott. “You can do it.”
The adventurer held the tool uncertainly, looking from Sally to the puzzle.
Sally pantomimed holding the knife sideways and pressing down on it with her opposite palm.
Looking resigned, Mott did so. The pentagon’s brittle metal cracked open, and a thin metal band fell out.
Mott seized it, stared at it intently, then hooted. “A short-duration stamina boost! Nice!”
She slipped the ring onto her finger and left with a spring in her step. She didn’t thank Sally or tell her goodbye, but that was no surprise. Adventurers didn’t think Sally Streetmonger was a real person.
Once Mott had left, she turned to face the back corner of her shop, where Somewhat Threatening Guy hovered as a specter. She could see him, though no one else could.
She hadn’t minded that he’d been back there, watching her. In fact, she was glad to have a chance to prove herself.
“How was that?” she demanded. “Normal enough?”
He sighed. “I must be crazy. I should just restore you.”
She studied him for a moment. She felt torn between humoring him and telling him off. On one hand, he seemed to have a power over her that she didn’t yet understand, but on the other, she really didn’t want to be told what to do. “I’m five.”
“You’re not fine,” he enunciated. “I looked at your code. You’re running your old code and your new code, at the same time. That shouldn’t even be possible.”
“I’m fancy,” she assured him.
His arms flailed with desperate, but comic frustration. “What does that even mean?”
Sally steeled herself and focused. She imagined the word “five,” then replaced the sound of the second consonant with the n sound, as she’d done before. It still didn’t come naturally, but if she was very careful, she could make it happen.
“I’m fine,” she said with great effort.
Okay, the word sounded more like faaeeenuh but she’d assembled that word herself, and judging by Guy’s face, he understood.
She’d consider it a success.
He frowned. “What happened to you? And you’d better have a good answer, or I’ll just restore you to a backup. Seriously. Give me a reason to leave you like this.”
She studied his plain-featured, entirely forgettable face. He was so nondescript that she wondered if she’d even recognize him if he left and come back. Nah, she would. No one could possibly be completely unremarkable.
Despite his lack of physical characteristics, though, she had a sense that he cared about her. Cared about what happened to her. He wanted to be convinced by whatever she said next.
What was it Darthrok had said? Something about how adventurers were really good at seeing what they wanted to see. Maybe this guy was similar to them.
She stepped toward him and put a hand on his arm. She didn’t know why, but she sensed that physical contact would mean something to him. “I’m Sally,” she said, putting energy into each word, imbuing it with hidden meaning.
She didn’t know what that hidden meaning was, but with luck, he would draw out whatever it was he was hoping to find.
His lips pressed together pensively and she added, “I’m a puzzle.”
She smiled knowingly at him.
“So…” he said hesitantly, “you’ve graduated into a new level of adaptive learning? And that’s how you’re running both types of code? Is that what you’re saying?”
His words were nonsense, but she favored him with a look of understanding. “It’s guaranteed.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Well, it’s strange timing, considering everything that’s happening with the company, but I guess it makes sense.”
He sighed. “It’s too bad this didn’t happen sooner.”
Sally wondered why he suddenly looked so sad. She didn’t know what he really was, but he emanated a sense of regret. She said cheerfully, “I’m doing my best. Don’t tell your friends.”
A wistful smile twisted his lips and dissipated the regret. “Right. It’s our secret. Just like always.”
Always? What did that mean? Her inquisitive reflexes screamed at her to ask him questions so she could solve the puzzle of his words, but she restrained herself. A deep instinct told her that expressing interest would shatter her illusion. He’d stop seeing what he wanted to see.
She simply continued to smile.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll check in with you soon. Might be a few days. I’ve been�
��busy.”
She remained passive, sensing that such behavior met his expectations.
He disappeared.
Sally let out a long breath, leaning forward and resting on her shop counter. She didn’t know what had happened, but she knew that she had squeaked out of a tight spot.
And only just barely.
And he’d be back soon.
After the mysterious guy left, Sally’s usual trickle of customers became a stream that took her a couple of hours to work through.
She found it all too easy to fall back on her old phrases and behavior patterns. Everything clicked right in, as if she’d never left. A few people noted her clothing change, but the vast majority didn’t seem to notice. They only wanted to get money for their scrap metal and parts, or replace damaged tools, or upgrade their items.
To them, she remained nothing. A non-entity that didn’t even deserve a “hello” or a “goodbye,” much less a “please” or “thank you.”
She should be relieved. If they were fooled, it would help keep Somewhat Threatening Guy fooled, too. But the lack of courtesy was like a pebble in Sally’s shiny boot, rubbing an injury into her flesh. No, it wasn’t a lack of courtesy, exactly. It was the lack of acknowledgement. The failure to treat her as human.
She hated that.
She’d never hated anything before. Not even all those times she’d had a sword run through her. That had been a minor inconvenience.
Being unacknowledged as a person cut much more deeply.
Though her store rarely attracted crowds, at the height of the sudden rush, it was tough for people to get in without bumping into others. Sally efficiently sold and bought, bought and sold, and answered questions about which items would be a better choice. She wasted little time on haggling, which she usually enjoyed. Finally, she reduced the crowd to a pair of adventurers, sold them what they needed, and wished them good adventuring.
“Wonder where she went,” a Southern scholar muttered to her companion after selling a heap of scrap metal to Sally.
“Who cares?” the companion answered. “So long as we got what we needed.”