by Isaac Stone
“I want you to keep this in mind, sir,” he continued. “Because there is no way we can care for every child out there we run into. I know you meant well, sir, but there are more born every day like him. How are we to take care of them all?” I could the frustration build up inside him.
“We can’t take care of them all, sergeant,” I told him. “But I can take of this one. I’d like to think that means something.”
Grom didn’t say another word to me until we reached the fortress. When we checked in with the sentries, he told me that we should meet that evening. We could make sure we knew exactly where we would travel on the next day. Of course, I agreed with him.
The colonel’s orderly was there to greet me when I entered my quarters. As I expected, he bowed low, avoided my eyes and handed me a note.
“I need to see you in my office immediately,” the note said. It was signed by the colonel.
The orderly waited for me to splash some water on my face out of a carafe. I knew what this would be about it. I’d left the compound on my own and adopted a foundling on the first day. Something told me this was not part of the original game narrative, so I decided to check in with the VR team to make sure I wasn't pushing the narrative too hard. Look at me, beta-testing like a boss.
The communicator in my pistol handle was easy enough to access. All I had to do was slide it back and there was the blank screen. This time there were two buttons beneath it. A green button to turn it on and off, followed by a red button. The red button was for an instant retrieval, so they had provided me a way out in an emergency. I pressed the green button and waited.
Thirty seconds later, the screen was illuminated and, once again, as expected, I found myself in the presence of Rhonda.
“Why doesn’t this surprise me in the least bit?” I asked her image on the screen.
“What can I say?” she responded. “The offer was too good to pass.”
“Didn’t you sign some kind of contract too?” I asked her again.
She grinned. “I’m going to let their legal department handle it. Heath claims his lawyer can beat-up Jack’s lawyer. Anyway, how is everything going?”
“It’s proceeding according to the game,” I told her. “Did I cause some crisis by adopting that street kid?”
“No, they planned for it to happen.”
“Are you serious?”
“Serious as a heart attack. They figured you might do something like leave the fort on your own, so they had to scramble to create the city you’d encounter and a way to get you back to the fortress. You would not believe me if I told you how many designers are working on this game at any given moment, across the globe. The street kid who saved your life was a random factor. No one thought you’d take him home. No one except me and I should thank you because the bet I won made Christmas possible this year.”
“Thanks, Rhonda,” I said to her. “I knew I could count on you for an honest assessment.”
I thought for a minute about what this whole incident said in regards to “free will”. Where we simply computer programs running inside one big cosmic game? It was a little creepy to contemplate that everything you did was managed in advance. However, I did have to keep in mind that the VR team didn’t know what I’d do in regards to Manish. They’d set up the scenario and let it play out.
“Any other news I need to hear before I get on with the game?” I asked her.
“The team wants to see you use the logbook more often,” she told me. “And make use of the character sheets. They put them together for a reason. No, I can’t tell you how they roll the dice and decide who wins, but you improve your odds by knowing the skill levels of what you’re going up against right now.
“It would be a lot better if they gave me the complete scenario in that logbook instead of feeding it to me a bit a time. It’s hard to know what do when you were given the character stats two minutes before it attacks.”
“But that would take away the challenge,” she let me know.
I told her I would be in touch and broke the connection. It was a simple matter after that to slide the cover back on the pistol handle.
Then it was time to see the colonel.
I followed the orderly back that held the door open as I walked inside. This time he didn’t enter with me, but waited in the hall on a bench. I assumed he had his ear to the keyhole in the door.
“Sit down, captain!” the colonel indicated the chair next to his desk. I did as I was told.
He stayed at his desk and didn’t move from the chair. “What is the meaning of this?” the colonel demanded. The office was lit by oil lamps as the darkness had crept into the fortress.
“Meaning of what, sir?” I asked him.
“Don’t duel words with me, captain,” he thundered at me. “You know what I’m talking about. How dare you leave this fort without an escort? Are you not so dense as to understand this is the final outpost of His Majesty’s Empire? You were nearly killed by those ruffians! I thought you’d served your time in Africa and would know better.”
“I was aware of the situation in this town,” I told him. “But I was not aware it was so extreme.”
“No one has ever conquered these people and survived it for any length of time! Even the Pashtuns can be tamed, but this city is under our control only because we keep the maharajah happy. His subjects, on the other hand, would like to see the foreign devils all dead. You walking out of the fortress by yourself gave them that opportunity.”
“I apologize, colonel. I didn’t think the situation was so grave in this town.”
“It’s always grave for whoever is running it but them. Before we came here, it was occupied by Tibetan troops who were no more loved than we were. I think they handed it over to the maharajah and us because the Tibetans were tired of losing so many men. At least we have the sense to stay inside and only emerge when needed. I allow the local constables to do most of the patrols in the town. They only summon the British troops when needed."
“And I understand you’ve adopted a local child for you expedition?” he continued.
“It seemed the decent thing to do,” I responded. “After all, he did save my life.”
“Very well, see that you take care of him and bring this boy back. I don’t need rumors in town that we’ve started to kidnap local children. It’s too much, I tell you, and what you did, no matter how well-intended, won’t make things better in the long run.”
I started to say something, but there was a knock at the door. “Come on in,” the colonel yelled at it, expecting it to be his orderly.
Instead, a short local woman entered the room in a sari. She had dark eyes and skin to match with a large gold ring on nostril. She stopped and looked at me, then looked to the colonel.
“Please forgive me, captain,” he said. “But this is my wife, Ayesha. You can go now and do be out of here early in the morning when the train leaves. If you miss it, this will cost you another day. And then you’ll do something else to cause me trouble no doubt.”
The colonel’s wife, a good deal younger than he, walked over to his desk and took his hand. As I left, I caught a glimpse of her pulling him across the office into the side room which Grom and Tommy told me about earlier. I noticed the clock on the wall and it read 8 PM. Apparently, she worked on a schedule.
As I emerged from the office, I nearly tripped over the retinue that was positioned on the outside of the door. Joining his orderly where three women armed with swords, all of his children, accompanying nursemaids, and a few other women who appeared to be relatives of his wife.
“Not good,” one of the armed women said to me as I worked my way through the mob. “You made them start late.”
“I will be certain to apologize when I have the opportunity,” I said to her when I left.
The next morning the steam engine pulled out of the local station on time. On board were my team and our supplies. We managed to grab a car for ourselves, but it wasn’t easy to get one with people
packed into the other cars.
Little Manish sat quietly on his bench and watched the scenery as the engine picked up speed and pulled the rest of the train along. I looked back and saw people sitting on top of some of the cars behind us. The game designers wanted the players to experience all aspects of this part of the world in the days of pulp adventure, not just the neat ones.
Tommy managed to occupy himself with a book on Hindu philosophy. Grom busied himself with the cleaning of his service revolver. I watched as he took it apart and used oil to rub its stock and bring out the basic blue color of the steel.
The logbook materialized more of the map I would need and showed our progress toward the final outpost where we would embark on our quest to find the missing courier box. However, the map ended at the outpost and simply listed everything between it and the mountain range as “Frontier”. This was the sort of thing I’d complained about to Rhonda. It would’ve been handy to know exactly what I was headed into, but the VR team wanted this to be a surprise. How nice of them.
There was very little information on what kind of people lived in the forests, other than that they were known to be hostile to outsiders. There was no information on the lost city of Virkya that Buttersnipe wanted to locate. I expected the logbook would give us that information when if felt we needed it.
“So what do you know about this place where we’re headed?” I asked Grom. I’d briefed them earlier on the mission and the need to remain silent.
“Nasty place, sir,” he told me. “I knew a man who was posted at the station where we’re unloading our supplies. He swore it was full of tigers, cobras and people who would kill you in silence. He said that naked men would walk out of the forest every year and claim to be holy. He told me even the people who live around the station were rough. He said once a year a soldier would be found dead because he tried to talk to a local woman without asking her father’s permission. He ended up getting a transfer to Palestine because he thought it was a safer place.”
“What about this lost city of Virkya?” I asked him. “Do you know anything about it?”
“Not a bit, sir. You might ask young Tommy here, he’s a big reader.” Grom gestured at the private while he cleaned his gun.
“So what do you know about Virkya, private?” I asked him.
“It was settled in 800 AD by one of the Hindu kings,” he told me as Tommy put his book down. “Abandoned in 1100 and no one knows why. The walls of the city are reported to drive men mad.”
“Why is that?” I asked him.
“They are supposedly covered by erotic frescos. One glance and you will go insane.”
Insane with lust. Wow. What kind of content rating were my employers going for here?
CHAPTER FIVE
There was a knock at the door that separated the two train cars from each other and Grom got up to see who it was. It was still late morning and the sun shone into the car, illuminating the benches and floor of the car. It was hard to remember that this was all an illusion created by the VR team. Should I move too quickly, would the hallucination all collapse? But as long as I stayed with the game and didn’t push their reality too hard, everything would be fine.
Grom came over to me and bent down to my seated level. “Sir,” he began, “there is supposed to be someone on the train in the next car who claims he knows you. Shall I send him a message to go away?”
“Did he give you a name?” I asked. This was an interesting development.
“He said his name was Howard and claims he knows you from the past.”
“I’ll see him in the next car,” I told Grom. “This might be the connection we need.” I stood up and walked to the connecting door.
Howard in this scenario? How could this be? Howard was one of the characters from Wolf Mountain and was a NPC. Thus, he should just be a program that did as it was designed to do. Like Chamita, whom I married in a VR game scenario, there should be no agency on their part. They were supposed to have as much free will as bishop on a chessboard. I hurried over to the next car. I opened the door to see if it was the same Howard. How could he know it was I? I didn’t even look the same.
The conductor took me to the next car after I crossed the connection between the two. He opened the door to a much different car, one crowded with all manner of people on their way to the last stop before the frontier. The smell of rare spices and the mass of humanity struck my senses right away. The room was packed full of arguing adults and children who cried.
In the midst of it was Howard.
I didn’t recognize him at first. He’d shaved off his moustache. He wore much lighter clothes for the tropical weather.
I called out his name and worked his way through the mass of people until we were face to face. Howard pumped my hand and patted me on the back.
“Look at you, Vince!” he said. “An officer in the British Army! I didn’t even recognize you when I first saw you enter the train with those other men and that boy. Then I got to thinking about who you reminded me of and it all came to a head. So what are you up to these days?”
I suppose it was possible to pick me out from the last body they’d given me for the game, but I didn’t think the two looked very much alike. This wasn’t Howard’s opinion and he saw through me right away.
“So what happened to Bonnie and Ted?” I asked Howard. “They seemed ready to be married.”
“Last I heard they were raising two boys off the coast of Maine on some island they bought with their share of the treasure.
“Glad to see everything worked out good for them,” I commented.
“So how did you come to be in the British Army and what are you up to?” he wanted to know. “I’m on my way to Ethiopia. I hear the war is going bad over there and maybe they could use a man who knows his way around a gun.”
I gave Howard the short version of what the back-story for my character, now that I'd finally had time to read up on it. I still wasn’t sure how much of it was supposed to fit the basic story line and how much was bogus, ok I browsed it more than I read it, but I’d find out eventually. My guess was that the game designers inserted Howard into the story to throw some suspicion on the pristine background of my character. How they pulled Howard from the Sandstone database wasn't something I wanted to think about too much.
“So how would you like to come and work for me?” I hit him up with the question. “We had a lot of fun the last time, perhaps you could do with some adventure again.”
“It has been dull these past thirteen years,” Howard, sighed. “I still have most of the money you split with me from the Wellington treasure. Sure, a lost city and more discoveries to be made, it sounds great!”
On my way back to our rail car, it hit me that Howard hadn’t once asked about Chamita. This couldn’t be the same Howard who appeared to me in the dreams and phase-shifts. What the hell was going on? It also occurred to me that the game designers and VR team could do anything they wanted to the scenario and we were at their mercy. Even if I had agency, I still had to follow along with the game. So long as they didn’t change the rules, I would continue to play. But if things went way out of bounds, such as Howard turning into a werewolf, then I would hit the red panic button and end the game. That much power I still possessed.
Howard entered the car with me. Tommy was still with his book and Grom his revolver. The sergeant checked to make sure it was loaded when he saw Howard, but tried to act normal.
“I’ve hired a man to come with us,” I told the crew. “He’s an American, don’t hold that against him.” Howard laughed.
“Howard, this is Sargent Grom and Private Tommy. The young lad you see by the window is Manish. We’re on our way to find a lost city. Gentlemen, this is Howard, we had an adventure together a few years ago and I trust him with my life.”
We sat down. Howard introduced himself to the other two and began to talk about the terrain we found ourselves in and where the train was headed. I pulled out my logbook and was pleasantly s
urprised to see a plot cache listed on the landing of the station where we were headed. The description of it listed the cache to be in the form of a trunk. I would know it by the location, near the stationmaster’s office, and a large label on the top, which indicated it was to be held for “Talbot Mundy”. It didn’t appear to be dangerous, but you never knew what would be inside those things. I’d had them collapse walls and summon all manner of beasts. I closed the logbook and decided to wait for the train to end its passage.
An hour later, the train blew its whistle as it pulled into the Station. We waited until it came to a complete rest before we disembarked from it. While my team waited, I leaned my head out the window and had a glance. As the passengers on top of the train climbed off and hit the ground, I looked it over.
It was small, hardly enough room for a water tower and office too. I could see the roundabout up ahead where the train would be turned around for the trip back to the city. We were close to the maharajah’s palace and most of the people who left the train worked for him. I watched as his palace guards escorted an elderly woman off the train into a waiting car, the only one I saw at the station. Many modern conveiniences hadn’t reached this far out in the empire.
“Wait here for a minute, “I told the crew. “I need to see the stationmaster for a minute. Grom, why don’t you see if you can find a tracker who knows these hills? Tommy, look for a cart to take us to the nearest village. Perhaps we can pick up Buttersnipe’s trail there.” I hurried away into the building.
The trunk sat in a pile of cargo outside the stationmaster’s office. As I heard him bark orders out to the railroad workers on the other side of the door, I opened up the trunk with the Talbot Mundy name on it.
Inside was a new carbine and ammunition that I felt was for Howard. Also included was a plain white envelope.
I pulled the envelope out of the trunk and tore it open. The light from the flickering gas lamps showed me one name and address on the plain white paper inside the envelope:
Rashid Arsan. Obsidian Trader. Kushmandir Village.