by D. Rus
I shut up midword and grabbed at the bone armrests as the dragon banked in a steep turn and began to land. She zoomed down onto the tower and flapped her wings, damping the speed with their power field. Softly she landed onto the ancient stones.
A powerful surge of emotions threw me out of the saddle. I switched off. No idea how long I was out. When I finally came to, I was sitting on the flagstones with my back against the rough rampart. Lena was fussing around me, shouting, about to raise her hand for an encouraging slap on my cheek. I caught her hand in mid-air and shook my head, returning my thoughts to their usual places. I must have missed something, anyway. The dragon sat on her nest brooding like a chicken, the two fat-bellied chicks squawking happily under her wings.
"How's it going?" I asked, my throat dry and coarse.
"Fine! It's you I was worried about. You just collapsed flat out."
I tried to swallow. "It's all these phantom emotion generators assaulting my brain. I'd love to know why those idiots don't classify emotion amplification as mental attack."
"Excuse me?"
"Never mind. I was talking about an ability I have, a very useful one, too, shame it only works when it wants to."
I pointed at the baby dragons. "Did they cry a lot when I was gone? And by the way, where are all the Dragon's Tears? I thought the tower would be knee-high in them by now?"
"Almost none left!" she beamed. "A couple still left in the corners, maybe. I found how to calm down the chicks so they didn't cry any more!"
"Eh? Oh, shit. You really shouldn't have. So they'd have sniffled for another half-hour, big deal. That was millions in gold which," I glanced at the cutest chicks, "which we'll never have now."
Lena shrugged, disinterested. "At least they didn't cry. They forget everything when they eat! So I remembered you normally gave baby chicks the egg shells for calcium or whatever, so I gave them some. They gobbled it down like there was no tomorrow!"
"Eh? The egg shells? The gray ones with a funny pattern?"
"Yes! They ate every single bit of them and licked my hands afterwards. How's that for a waste-free production?"
I groaned. "Lena, sweetheart. I had plans for them myself. Really, really big ones."
She shrugged again. "You should've told me. I'm not a mind reader. You should be grateful I've kept your gold and silver. They very nearly ate that, too. It was a good job there was a lot of scrap metal in the nest, so I distracted them with that."
"Which scrap metal?" I grabbed at my head with a groan. I already knew what she meant.
"Sort of purple. Some bent helmets, pieces of tank tracks and a handful of cartridges—they kind of explode in their mouths with those little flames going everywhere, it's so cute. I called the chicks Draky and Craky. You'd never think those tiny things could go through two tons of metal. Only then I noticed that they'd grown double in less than five hours."
I fumbled around me for something to satisfy a sudden urge. The gods in their eternal kindness had sent me exactly what I needed: a long rod (no idea what stray wind had brought it up here). Grabbing it, I scrambled to my feet and offered Lena a knightly hand to help her get up, then gave her a hearty lash across her perfect backside.
"Ouch! What's that for?"
"For those stupid quests of yours!"
"Ouch!"
"And this is for your lack of subordination and attempts to take control!"
"Ouch! Uncle Max, that's enough!"
"For those goddamn eggshells!"
"Ouch! I'll be angry with you!"
"And that's for the two remaining Tears and for the millions lost!"
Shhh, one of the chicks opened a purple eye watching us. A powerful surge of emotion—that felt more like a baseball bat—knocked me over.
"You see, Uncle Max? Now you hurt yourself. You could have fallen off the tower, you know."
"Come here, you! I still owe you for that silver. And another one for the scrap metal. And I'm not your uncle!"
"No way!" she stuck out her tongue. "Don't be so mad, Max," she added with a nice smile. "We all know how kind you are. Thank you so much for finding their mom, we were worried about her."
Quest completion alert: Request of a &#ç$ Priestess. Quest completed!
Reward: a new skill %*#@$#@$$@ ##@$$# @@$$%
"Er, Lena, how do you do it? What kind of skill is that? I can't read a thing."
She shrugged. "No idea. It just happens. I'm off, anyway. Dad needs me."
"Wait!" I managed but she activated her bracelet and was gone with an artful glint in her eye.
"Spare the rod, spoil the child," I whispered. "Discipline is gold."
Enough for today. Time to crawl back into my castle. Bedtime. The rest had to wait till tomorrow. Okay, collecting the Tears probably wouldn't. So collect them I did.
I teleported to the Temple and rushed up the stairs to the inner rooms. Soon I was back in my apartment. Peeling my armor off and stuffing it into my bag, I staggered to the bed and collapsed on top of the comforter.
Weeeeeoooo! the wretched White Winnie squeaked from under my backside.
I jumped straight back to my feet directly out of the prone position. The wretched creature lay in a tangle of sheets, blinking his sleepy eyes at me. Oh-kay. He couldn't have found a better time.
I lunged forward and, not believing my own luck, managed to grab the scruff of his neck. I flung him in the air and gave him an almighty kick that sent him flying like a sleepy football through the window. There! I didn't miss. I'd never managed to do this trick in real life. The receding stream of interjections was broken not by a slap against the flagstones as I'd hoped but by the popping of a portal. Apparently, he'd woken up in midair. Shame.
Was he really hoping to become an unwanted lodger in my bedroom and sleep in my bed? I didn't think so. My picture-perfect idea of family life didn't include any peeping fluffballs. It was time I brought him down a peg.
The clinking of coins dropping into my account awoke me the following morning. I'd forgotten to mute the internal interface. Actually, I found the sounds of gold rather pleasing. I might install them as the alarm clock tone. And in any case, who was it sending me money at 6 a.m.?
Apparently, it was Doc: Here's a hundred grand gold for the Wing Two repairs, plans and drawings attached.
Who did he think I was, his foreman? I forwarded the message to Lurch: Rebuild and refurbish according to the cost sheet. Hire whoever you deem necessary, you know, carpenters, masons, decorators and electricians... What do you mean, what are electricians? Ah, never mind. Were those children ever going to shut up?
Wait. I sat up in bed, listening. Children? That's right. Their thin voices and occasional laughter were coming through the narrow window—so narrow it had been a miracle how I'd managed to hurl Winnie through it last night. The walls' stucco moldings in combination with abundant foliage prevented me from seeing what was going on at the foot of the donjon. I donned some clothes and rushed down the steps.
I walked out into the yard and froze.
About a dozen quiet children between two and five years old were walking, crawling, running and rolling around amid the lush greenery of the inner court. Some were chasing butterflies while others sat quietly studying a flower or just listening to the gentle song of the colored bluebells. One especially brave boy was cuddling a puppy that he'd somehow—no idea how exactly—taken from its Hound mother. Surprisingly, the Hell mother was nowhere to be seen.
Lena's father sat on the porch, chin in hand, smiling vaguely as he watched the children. I sat next to him. We shook hands. We didn't say anything. Finally, I asked,
"What's that, Doc?"
He shrugged. "Not what—it's whom. It's children."
"I had a funny feeling they were not gnolls. Why? Where from?"
He glanced at me. "Did they tell you what kind of doctor I was?"
"No. Does it change anything?"
"I'm the chief physician at a children's hospice."
If he was wai
ting for my reaction, he didn't get it. "Sorry, I don't know what that means."
"That's good. I just wish fewer people had ever heard about them. A hospice is a place where people come to die. Not all diseases can be cured. Some have a definite prognosis that comes with a rather limited life expectancy."
I shuddered. It was so alike my own story.
"We accommodate terminal patients from all over the country. All we can offer these children is love, care and attention. Then they die, usually quickly. Our mortality rate is over 98% and average life expectancy, two months. These kids are some of the worst cases. In real life, most of them are hooked up to IV drips after all the radio. The're given pain killers and antidepressants by the handful. Legally, what I'm doing now is a crime. But I'm sick of burying children. First thing when I arrive at work every day, I ask the doctor on duty, "Who is it?" And almost every day he gives me a child's name. You probably heard it before that every doctor has his own personal cemetery of the patients he's lost. Mine has twelve thousand one hundred forty-three graves. You might not believe it, but I still remember every single name. I'd love to forget them but I can't. That's the funny way that the mind is wired. Even brandy doesn't help me switch off. Soon I might start pilfering their morphine."
I looked at them with different eyes now. Quiet and clumsy, so amazedly happy. Doc was completely different, too. What a giant of a man. How was he even pulling this load?
"My wife and I, we sold our apartment and bought ten FIVR capsules with the money. I installed them in the hospice cellar. Our admin is human, too. He helped me hack them. This is all I can give these kids—one last chance."
"But how are they going to live here? They're only two or three years old! At least you could have chosen older bodies for them."
He squinted at me. "Would you be prepared to take their childhood away from them? I'm not even talking about the potential mental problems of a three-year-old in an adult's body. I'm only talking about their chance to have the happy childhood they've been deprived of. All they know is a chain of hospitals and operation theaters. I did my research. I know there're children here. Not many, a few, but they do exist and, more importantly, they do grow. Provided they want to, of course. So will my kids. Once they're fed up with being so small in a big world where they can't even reach the door handle, they'll start inching up. Where there's a will there's a way."
I wrinkled my forehead trying to grasp the enormity of what he'd just told me and all the potential scenarios it implied. I needed to decide what to do with the whole nursery. "But what about their names and stats? How did they manage to create their characters? And how are they going to choose their skills if none of them can even read yet?"
""Well, Sasha over there can. And Jana knows the alphabet and can count to ten."
My face must have turned crimson because he gave me a reconciling smile. "Calm down. Our admin has tweaked the settings allowing us to control the capsules remotely. I sat at the server computer helping them to generate their characters. I trusted my hunches to choose their classes. I chose the human race to limit any psychological discomfort. I deposited their characteristic points into endowment accounts until they reached level 100. By then, they will all learn to read."
I shook my head in confusion. "What endowment accounts? There was no such option available when I created my character."
He shrugged: lots of things that weren't available then are available now.
I rummaged through Wiki looking for the answer to this rather vital question. I quickly located the section I needed and started reading. And once I'd read enough, I couldn't help swearing.
For some reason, the AlterWorld admins had limited the number of upgrades to a bare minimum and switched their focus to non-gaming initiatives: things like offline activities, gaming merchandise or more initial character-generating options. The bank service mentioned by Doc fell into the latter category and was now aggressively marketed as a hardcore pro option for those who've outgrown standard gaming challenges and were quite prepared to put their balls on the table today for a vague promise of potential future bonuses.
Now they could save some of their characteristic points and store them in a bank until reaching the level of their choice. The level number was the actual percentage bonus. For instance, if you banked 10 points for the duration of 20 levels, you earned yourself +20%, pocketing 24 points. Not much but still. Naturally, it made starting off that much more difficult so a money injection was a must. But he'd blocked all their points till level 100!
"Doc, tell me you only banked the starting 25 points."
He shook his head. A bad premonition clutched at my heart.
"All of them, level 1 to 100. Call it a junior savings account, if you want. I ran a simulation, and the dividends were mind-blowing. And most importantly, it'll prevent the kids from making stupid mistakes like investing everything they have in useless agility."
I groaned. A hundred levels without any growth! Potentially, it gave them a monumental advantage: about 350 free points to play with. But how were you even supposed to ever get to them? You could easily get stuck for life somewhere at level 30. It was too obvious the Admins had come up with a nifty way to milk millionaire players forcing them to inject real money simply to keep their handicapped chars in game.
One of the kids waddled toward us. He had the most piercing blue eyes. "Doctor, can I have a puppy too? Sasha won't share his with me."
Doc nodded, pointing at the Temple doors. "Go through that big gate over there past the big toothy men with spears. Inside there'll be a big bald doggie. Ask her to give you a puppy."
The boy waddled off. I knitted my brows in disbelief. "She won't!"
"Oh, yes. The Hounds are all emos. They don't sense any threat in the children. I believe they view them as puppies."
Still, I had my doubts. "I'd rather we went there and kept an eye on them. I don't want the Hell Hound to scare the boy into becoming the first virtual stutterer."
He shrugged. "Go ahead, then. I have to admit I'm afraid of them myself. When they see me—the Hounds I mean—they start shaking. They line up and bare their teeth at me. They can probably sense all those thousands of graves behind my back."
His gaze glazed over. Stooping, he stared into space. I had to shake him back to life before it was too late.
"Doc, wake up! What's wrong with you, man? You've finally got the chance to save a good dozen kids! This isn't a hospice any more! This is somewhere totally different!"
He seemed to have bucked up a bit. His eyes brightened up. Reaching out, he caught a tiny girl running past, her clothes generic, her eyes beaming with joy. He tousled her hair and let her go. Laughing happily, the little mite ran off to chase a butterfly. The children seemed to be perking up. Their voices grew louder, their laughter more frequent.
"Okay, Doc. Yours is a holy cause. I'll do what I can to help you."
He shrugged. "You will, no question about that. Accept them into your clan, enter them onto your books and let's start raising them. If this year we manage to digitize two or three hundred, then my life is complete. No matter how long I live, I'll never do something as good as this.
I shrank back. "Doc, what are you saying? What clan? These are Dead Lands! This is the Valley of Fear, not some Little Lambs Nursery! These children need saving, I agree. But we need to do it collectively, all of us—not drag this millstone all by ourselves! We could buy a house in the city or introduce some kind of non-mandatory tax for the clans."
Doc forced a smile. "Didn't you say that this was the safest place for your clan members? Go ahead, then, grow the new generation of AlterWorld denizens. My wife will soon move here permanently to join our daughter and her friend. I'm laying the groundwork now with some of the parents. I'm sure that after the initial shock of losing their child, then realizing that it's alive and well even if unreachable, many of them will be able to understand and help us. Some financially, others might go digital themselves.
"D
oc!" I groaned. "In another three months this place may be sheer hell. It's war we're looking at!"
He stared at me, uncomprehending. "Who would dare attack a children's home? On the contrary: they're the best guarantee of the castle's safety."
I shook my head. "What planet are you from? When did it stop big kids from trampling the little ones' sand castles when they ran around playing at war? Also, I'm not some scumbag to hide behind toddlers' backs."
Lena came out of the Temple gates leading the boy who was already clutching a puppy to his chest. She clapped her hands, attracting the others' attention,
"Children! Who wants to feed the baby dragons with me?"
Screams of joy and a forest of raised hands. She smiled. "Then we'll go now to that big heap of purple scrap metal and each of you may take a tiny piece. Baby dragons love it. Then we'll all line up and march on to feed Draky and Craky."
I couldn't take it much longer. "Lena! Stop wasting mithril. Can't they just eat some normal metal, there's plenty lying around?"
She shook her head sternly. "Steel gives them colic. What difference does it make, anyway? It's either us or Vertebra brings them a whole tank turret again."
I clutched at my heart. "Which Vertebra? Which tank?"
"The big dragon, I mean. She's a Bone Dragon, isn't she? So I called her Vertebra. The tank—well, I don't know much about them. She brought them this turret with two really delicate guns. It's really nice... was. Vertebra says mithril is very good for them. They're at that age when their bones and scales are forming. They grow them out of whatever they eat. Vertebra said they're going to be the first mithril dragons in the world, imagine!"
Oh, no. Some people had rats in their grain barns. I had dragons. What the hell was going on?
Lena clapped her hands again, "Attention, everybody! In a moment, you will see a small square window right in front of your eyes. In it, you'll see two buttons. You must will yourself really hard to press the one that's on the left. Everyone remember where your left hand is? That's right! Are you ready? Press it!"