by Vic Connor
“This is my office in the city,” he says. “Mobile and office numbers are on there. If you ever get stuck with something, ever need any help, or just someone to talk to about the old country, you give me a call. Okay, Somera?”
“Thank you, Faisal,” she replies, genuinely grateful for his kindness. “Thank you for everything.”
Chapter Six
As Somera is going through security at San Francisco International Airport, a young man in a uniform intercepts her. Earlier, Somera noticed a few people from her flight being taken discreetly from the queues and led away. Puzzled, she asks the young man what is wrong.
“Please, ma’am, just come with me now,” he replies, looking at her with rather blank, bored eyes.
“But why?” she insists.
“Ma’am, step this way, or do I need to restrain you?” comes the young man’s reply, his eyes lighting up a bit now.
“No, no, it is fine, I will come,” Somera says hurriedly, her pulse beating faster and faster. The young man takes her arm and leads her away from the queue from her plane, leaving them all behind. He walks her down a side corridor, and then another, before they finally reach a room with a frosted glass window marked SECURITY: INTERROGATION.
A woman sits inside at a table, and a few pieces of furniture fill the bland room that Somera doesn’t particularly register. “Ma’am, if you’d please take off your scarf now, that’d be great,” the woman says after the man shuts the door, leaving them alone.
“What for?” Somera asks.
“Ma’am, this’ll go a lot quicker for us if you’d just co-operate,” the woman says. There is another door into the room, opposite the first, and another woman enters, pulling on a pair of gloves. She greets the first woman and fixes her eyes on Somera, one brow raised.
“Your scarf, ma’am, if you’d be so kind,” the first woman says.
Somera unwinds her scarf and slips it down over her shoulders, leaving her head bare. She shakes out her hair, curled up and as wild as it always gets.
“And your other things please, ma’am,” the second woman instructs.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ma’am, please take your clothes off, put ‘em in this this tray here,” she says.
In what seems like no time at all, Somera has gone from beginning a new adventure by exiting the plane to standing naked in a room with two strangers, for no reason she can think of. She shivers, cold and sick and nervous, and realizes as the two women look her over that the tears are once more rolling down her cheeks.
“No need for any of that, now, ma’am,” one of the women says, looking at her tears and softening slightly. “This is all just routine stuff, there’s nothing to worry about.”
As the woman searches her, the other takes Somera’s clothes and disappears into the next room for a few minutes. Though she returns promptly enough, Somera had been briefly panicked, wondering if she’d ever get the clothes back. She had considered what she might do, what she would be forced to wear.
“Do not take your headscarf off, do not let them change you,” her parents had warned her.
“That’s all fine for the moment, ma’am,” says the woman who is searching her, while the other comes back in carrying the clothes. “You can get your things back on now.”
Somera dresses quickly as the two women leave, and then sits alone in the room, hunched in an uncomfortable chair over an interview table. “You wait ‘til we’re back, now, ma’am,” the women have told her, so she does. A half hour passes, the second hand on a wall clock ticking off every tiny moment. Then an hour, then a full ninety minutes.
Is this America? she wonders. She’s shaking badly and still crying. Is this what I have come for? She feels besmirched, dirty, violated… Strangers’ eyes have taken in the intimacy of her naked body, today. The thought sickens and exhausts her, draining her of the ability to even kick up a fuss when someone eventually returns to the room.
A couple of men come and go over a period of half an hour, each asking questions—trying to trip her up, she thinks, by asking the same questions in several different ways, returning to them time and again. They want to know who she is, where she is coming from, what she is here to do… They want to know about her religious observances, her habits at home, her intentions in the US…
“But it’s all there in my passport,” she tells them. “I have a visa to study. My paperwork for school is in my bag—you searched it already, you have seen it. What more do you—”
“Ma’am, we’ll be asking the questions, if you don’t mind,” one of the interviewers replies, snapping.
And they continue, on and on.
By the time they let her go, three hours have passed and she’s exhausted, too tired even to be angry. She just feels … violated. She’s not used to being treated with such suspicion. She is not used to being treated like a criminal. I’m from a nice family, a family who obey the rules and do well in society, she thinks as she finally collects her belongings and leaves the interrogation room. The agents have advised her to take off her headscarf when out in public, and she cringes away from the thought, away from the theft of her identity by these strangers.
Am I truly such a pariah now? she wonders.
“Do not take your headscarf off, do not let them change you,” her parents had warned her.
I will not, she thinks. I bloody well will not.
At the arrivals area of the terminal, Somera spots a couple of young men. They’re dressed casually, one in jeans with an Arkhart t-shirt on, showing the Arkhart crest and a dramatic scene from the game spread out across his chest and stomach. The other is in a baseball cap and jogging bottoms with a t-shirt printed to look like a tuxedo. The two of them look bored from waiting, both kicking their heels and looking like they’re on the verge of giving up. The one with the tuxedo t-shirt is carrying a sign which reads: WELCOME AREMOS!!! He holds the sign idly in one hand, tapping it against his thigh while the other young man plays on his smart phone.
They have come to greet me, Somera figures, surprised. It’s a nice gesture, a sweet thought, and no doubt very helpful as they’d be able to give her a lift to her rental place. But she ignores them, tucks her chin down and walks straight past, pulling her suitcase behind her as she almost jogs out into the fresh air beyond the arrivals lounge.
She doesn’t want the attention, she can’t deal with it right now. And besides, she wants to keep quiet. She doesn’t need people knowing that she’s Aremos and distracting her. Or worse, turning on her like Carrie, Ash, and Saba have done. No, best to go incognito, to keep herself to herself.
Once outside, Somera logs her phone onto the airport’s Wi-Fi and opens up a search browser to look up ‘how to get a cab San Francisco.’ The numbers for a dozen minicab companies spring up in her results and she selects one with a good rating, types in that she’s at the airport, and is told a car will be with her in ten minutes.
The driver is taciturn, which suits her quite well. They both sit in silence as the miles pass by and Somera has her first look of America. Everywhere is golden, everywhere is bright… The roads are gray and horrible and there are ugly steel signs everywhere, and they hit patch after patch of fumy congestion which reminds her of being in the cities at home, Karachi or Islamabad. Beyond the ugliness, though, there is great beauty in the natural world. Green trees and verdant fields and high, lush hilltops roll away from her in every direction under a pristine blue sky.
It looks unreal, she thinks. It looks like somewhere from a fantasy, from Arkhart itself perhaps. No wonder the Makers gave their world places of such beauty: Anyone living here must be able to.
When they reach San Francisco itself, the streets wind and climb at impossible angles, the steepest hills she has ever seen in any urban area. The cab shudders and chokes as it climbs and then freewheels quite alarmingly on the other side of every hill, spinning down amongst other cars, a million cyclists, and what the driver points to and gruntingly calls “street cars,” jang
ling away on their tracks. Everywhere is bustling, and everyone looks busy and healthy and robust.
Under her mother’s careful scrutiny, Somera chose a guesthouse run by an old Pakistani couple from Lahore. The cab driver finds it after a little searching. He doesn’t offer Somera change from the notes she passes him, but he does at least swing himself out of his seat long enough to help her pull her suitcase and bags from the trunk of the car. Then, he zooms off without another word and she finds herself alone, standing before a restaurant above which her home for perhaps the next three or four years waits to greet her.
It’s all happening so fast. Her head is in a whirl. Her concept of time has halted for the day and a great wave of confused exhaustion threatens to overwhelm her as she stands looking up at the restaurant’s front. It’s Punjabi, of course, and the aromas of that region’s cooking waft out, catching her. It’s familiar enough to tempt her in, to bring with it a deep, pitted sense of home which aches within.
The restaurant door opens with a jangling while she stands before it and a man steps out, gesturing to her. “You are Somera, yes?” he asks, smiling.
She jumps, her nerves still raw and her heart still wrapped in upon itself after her interrogation, but the man’s smile calms her. His hair is thinning slightly on top of his head and his pot belly sits comfortable before him, straining at his shirt.
“Y-yes,” she replies.
“I’m Altaf,” he introduces himself, coming to stand in front of her.
She smiles up at him. “That’s my brother’s name,” she says.
“Then you can call me your brother.” Altaf smiles. “At least, your brother away from home in this damned place.” He bends to pick up her bags and leads her inside, shouldering the door open and waddling a little under the load.
“Do you work here?” she asks.
“Ha! Work here? I bloody run this joint,” Altaf tells her. “My parents own it—the restaurant and the apartments above. You will have spoken to my mother?”
“Amanroop?” Somera offers.
“That’s her. The peaceful one. But she and my father doze in the afternoons while I run around like a lunatic, so I’ll show you up. Come down this evening, please. I can make you some chai and kulfi and you can meet them then.”
“Yes, please,” she replies. “That would be lovely. Thank you.”
Altaf barges through another door and she follows, carrying a couple of smaller bags as he hefts the suitcase. There is a slim corridor and a staircase behind the door which they climb, first one floor and then another. It’s shabby and the paint is all cracking, but it is clean—spotlessly so, she thinks.
“This is your apartment,” Altaf says, stopping before a discolored door. He puts the suitcase down and rummages in his pocket for some keys. Finding the right set, he unlocks the door and opens it, allowing Somera to go in before him.
Where the hallway was shabby, the apartment is nice. It has been recently painted, she notes, and the furniture is all neat. There is a sofa against one wall, a single bed in the far corner, and a desk with a chair. Doors from the main room lead to a small kitchen and a bathroom, both a little cramped but as clean and tidy as everywhere else.
“It’s perfect,” she says honestly.
“Well, then,” Altaf says, bringing her bags in and leaving them beside the bed. “No doubt you’re tired after your journey. Make yourself at home, get some rest, and perhaps I’ll see you tonight.” He picks up a sheet of paper from the desk and hands it to her. “Everything you need. Wi-Fi code, local numbers—it’s all on there. And these,” he says, passing her the keys. “These are yours now. Welcome to your new home, little sister.” He smiles, bows out through the door and leaves her alone once more.
What a whirlwind, she thinks. America is strange, and she expects she’ll take a little while to figure out her place amongst all the strangeness. But she has a home of her own, she knows the campus is just a short bus ride away, and she’ll have the first portion of her stipend coming into her account tomorrow.
“It’s all so real,” she whispers to herself, shivering.
Then, first things first, she reaches down for the casings sent to her by the Pixel Academy. Her rig and laptop are inside. She unpacks these first and spends the next half hour setting them up until they’re good to go. She tries to forget the airport—busying herself with these little manual tasks to keep her hands busy and her mind free.
Altaf is right, Somera thinks. I need to rest after my flight: For now, let Aremos do the work. She plugs herself in, sets the headpiece in place and closes her eyes.
Nobody at all wants Aremos on their team, he learns. He’s stuck in a gray area. After roaming the map for nearly an hour, striking up conversations in various taverns and market squares, he leaves defeated. Everybody was friendly enough—they all wanted to hear from him, to know his stories, to be seen talking to him. But nobody wanted to go on a quest together.
They all gave various excuses, but it boils down to the same thing time and again, Aremos believes. He has teleported to a seaside town and he walks through the dusk, enjoying the ocean breeze well enough, yet feeling melancholy, thoroughly downhearted. He was the ultimate victor: He won against the Makers’ Wyvern and is now famous throughout the Seven Realms of Arkhart. But the prestige he has won rings hollow. The players yet to prove themselves in Arkhart—those with levels below the twenty-five threshold at which convention dictated they had shown themselves to have experience, to have staying power—are intimidated by him. They don’t want him on their quests, for fear of being upstaged. He’d make their adventures too easy, and he’d win with too much style, entirely stealing their thunder. Even those between levels twenty-five and forty—the mid-tier players who should be his own immediate contemporaries—fear this, as his old warband have proven. They’re all at a stage when they can take part in some of the harder quests and they want to shine themselves, not be accused of taking the easy option by having “Aremos the Great” accompany them, doing all the hard work.
The next group—those above level forty, who number so few and whom Aremos met in the Great Hall—are still dismissive of him. Fame is momentary, they seem to think, unimpressed that he has proven himself only one single time, in such a show of bravado. They want consistency and they want greater power than he currently has. They are embarking on the elite-level quests against the toughest opponents, facing the fiercest odds, and he’s not yet up to scratch. Indeed, they have their chat rooms, which are closed to him and anyone else below level forty. Because of this, he can’t even talk to them in any meaningful way, bar running into one of their number in the street.
So I can’t win either way, he thinks as the sun sets over the distant water. A blood-red glow ripples outward over the waves as street lights blink into life all around him. As far as he can see it, he only has one option. He must take on a few higher-tier quests, on his own, to earn himself further recognition and gain the levels required to put him in the big leagues. Right now, he’s a level thirty-one. That means he needs another nine levels before they’ll even talk to him: Hard to do, unless he can pull off something really big.
That’s why he has come here—to this small, out of the way town on one of Arkhart’s most distant coasts.
He enters a tavern and, ignoring the patrons as they all turn to stare, as they all whisper about him, he walks up to the notice board where the local quests are posted. The usual chaff is here: A local baron is raising an army to drive off marauders from the Badlands and all recruits are welcome… A mountain chimera has been stealing livestock and needs to be driven off… A gang of corsairs have been seen and a warband with naval experience is needed… All rubbish, all beginner stuff. He ignores it, passing it over until he finds what he has been told is here. A contact up north said this was where a few of the more ambitious mid-tier gamers like him were heading with their warbands. Now, as he searches, he finds the notice showing what all the fuss is about.
There is enough
XP and other perks up for grabs from the quest to raise a warband of five by a level or two a piece. For a solo act like himself… Three levels, he thinks. Possibly four. A few miles out to sea from the town’s port lies an island on which a single, solitary tower stands. A powerful sorcerer had raised the tower many years ago and has lived there ever since, aiding the local baron with his magics and keeping the coast safe from supernatural incursions. Eighteen years ago, this sorcerer had a daughter, though nobody knows how… No mother was ever seen, no warning was given, the child had simply appeared one day, and the locals were forced to accept it. Such a being as this sorcerer could act mysteriously without the common folk prying. However, ruination has struck the tower, and the daughter has been reported missing. Broken in spirit, the sorcerer has no strength himself to pursue those responsible; instead, he’s offering a great deal of gold, alongside a choice pick from his horde of magical artefacts, for any adventurers able to find his daughter, exact revenge upon her captors, and return her to him.
Perfect, Aremos thinks, reading the notice. He saves the details and clicks ENTER, activating the first part of the quest. He’s to visit the sorcerer in the ruins of his tower to receive the further details of the case and begin his hunt. Several warbands have tried this quest and, so far, few have been successful. Not a single person has managed it on his or her own.
I wonder why, he thinks. The captors must be formidable indeed to intimidate a powerful sorcerer like that and to deny victory to so many.
I’ll be playing in the big leagues in no time at all, Aremos tells himself. He opens a portal, walks through, and finds himself stepping out onto the lone island, sea spray and wind whipping him as he walks along a stretch of bare rock. Up ahead, the remains of the once-proud tower lie smoldering, glowing with a faint light as their magic ebbs away.