by Kyle Vauss
“Baxter?” I said.
Still no answer. No pattering feet, no excited barking. Just silence.
“Sarah?”
I thought that she might have taken him for a walk. It would have been unusual, since Sarah had never wanted to take him out before. She liked the idea of a dog, but wasn’t so keen on the nitty gritty.
I walked into the living room to find it empty. Same with the kitchen and bathroom. Baxter’s lead hung from a hook on the coat stand. She couldn’t have taken him for a walk. I was clinging to excuses.
“Sarah?” I said. I didn’t like the sound of my voice in the empty flat.
I didn’t understand. I put the flowers down on the coffee table and then went toward the bedroom. I started to get an uneasy feeling. It mixed with the anxiety and adrenaline and became so strong that I almost wanted to slump onto the sofa.
As I approached our bedroom, something told me that I didn’t want to go inside. Pushing the thought away, I gripped the handle of the door and turned it.
They were gone. All Sarah’s things - her clothes, her makeup, her jewelry - had vanished. At first, I thought we had been robbed. I reached for my phone to call the police. I stopped when I saw a note folded on the nightstand next to my side of the bed.
She’d written ‘Tom’ on the front of it. Bold, plain letters, no kiss underneath. With shaking hands, I unfolded the note. It smelled of her perfume, and I saw her perfectly-straight handwriting all over it. I held it out and read. As I looked at line after line, I felt the blood drain from my face.
She’d left me. She’d taken all her things, packed her car, and she’d left me.
Not only that, but she’d taken Baxter too.
I almost stumbled back in shock. Everything I’d planned for tonight, every word I’d carefully rehearsed, was all for nothing. I’d come back ready to sort things out, but she’d just run away, not even giving me the courtesy of a goodbye.
The worst thing, the one that made it so horrible, was that she’d taken my best friend. Baxter was my dog. I was the one who walked him, fed him, trained him, took him to the vets. She didn’t even like him. That meant that there was a malicious element to all of this.
It was hard to know what to think now. The first thing was sadness. I was alone, abandoned. Mixed in with that was anger.
I sat on the bed. I held the note in front of me and read it again, as if a re-read would change the words. This time I couldn’t even take it in. The words slid right off the page and into my eyes, but they were lost in the black hole forming in my mind.
She’d gone without a word, and she’d taken my dog with her. My goddamn best friend.
The next few hours flew by in a flurry of phone calls. I tried every number and person I could think of. I rang her parents, her sister, her best friends. At best, they were standoffish with me, and downright rude at worst. Sarah had told them not to say anything to me.
It was well past midnight when I rung her parents for the fifth time, only to hear the phone beep out, indicating they’d hung up. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this. I needed to get out of there. I didn’t know where I’d go. A bar, maybe? Just somewhere. Anywhere.
As I walked through the empty apartment, I couldn’t believe it. Someone knocked on the front door, and I heard Clive call my name, but I ignored him. I held the note in front of me and read it again. The last line was the worst. That was the one that really stung.
‘Don’t try to find me, because I don’t want to see you again.’
Chapter Three
Present day, in the newbie forest
I shook away the memory and found Loria looking at me, waiting for an answer.
“So, is your blank look a no, or do I need to repeat the question?”
Loria leaned on her staff. She was just two inches shorter than me. Her illusionist robe was grey and tattered, and it looked like she’d looted it from someone on the street.
“That’s a ‘no’,” I told her.
I didn’t want to be an ass, but I also didn’t want to have anything to do with people anymore. Sarah had seen to that. I’d always gotten on well with Sarah’s family. Her sister started calling me ‘bro’ after we got engaged, and her dad would invite me for a beer every so often. After Sarah left, they became stonewalls. They wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone, and eventually they stopped picking up the phone.
The problem was, not only had she left me without an explanation and taken my best friend with her, but she’d also landed me with a mountain of debt. 32,105 GD spread across 3 credit cards that were in my name.
I felt bad for the way I’d spoken to Loria. None of it was her fault. “It’s nothing personal,” I said. “I just prefer going by myself.”
“But it’s better we travel together,” Loria said. I could tell she wasn’t the kind of woman to be deterred easily. “There are quests out there that you need to do with another person. It’s not good to be on your own all the time.”
I didn’t want to offend her, but I didn’t want to travel with her either. I just needed to do my time, level up, then log out. The quicker I finished the character, the quicker I could sell it.
Then, when I had enough money, I’d leave the country and cancel my subscription forever. I could quite happily spend my days on some beach. Watching the boats rock on the tide until they sky fell dark. Going weeks without talking to another person. I just wanted to get as far away from my apartment as I could.
“I seem a bit forward, don’t I?” she said. From her accent, I guessed she was from the south. She leaned in toward me. “It’s all new to me, you know?”
“You’ll get the hang of it. Just don’t stray too far until you reach level 5 and you unlock Illusion Shield.”
She shook her head. “Not that. This, I mean,” she said, and stepped back. “Walking. I just can’t get over it. Out there, I’m on four wheels all day. I wheel myself around, of course. But in here – wow. It actually feels like I’m walking.”
“I can see how that’d be amazing for you.”
“It’s just nice feeling like an equal,” she said. “I’ve got friends in the real world, but they see me as a pity case. They try not to show it, but I can tell. I’m a badge they can pin on their chest. ‘Look at me, I’m friends with someone in a wheelchair!’ It just makes me feel so small.”
Things like this made Infarna amazing. It took it beyond the confines us being just entertainment, and it made it something life changing. I mean, how else would someone like Loria get the chance to forget about their real-life problems?
I still remembered the best character I’d ever sold. It was a necromancer that a woman had ordered for her son, who was in the cancer ward. She just wanted to give him a little escapism. After I got the necromancer to level 10 and completed the order, I couldn’t bring myself to charge her. Instead I gave it to her for free, and bundled in a few elite items for good measure.
“That’s why I love Infarna,” said Loria. “Here, I can do whatever I want. I want to get to the highest level possible. I want to do every quest and get a 100% completion. Not many people have done that, you know. Only problem is, some quests can’t be done without a party, and not many people want to join an illusionist.”
I looked Loria up and down. At 6 foot 2, she was the tallest female character I’d ever seen. Discounting an Amazonian NPC who’d once sent me to respawn with a swing of her hammer, of course.
“So, the wheelchair thing. Is that why you made your character tall?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yup, standing up is a novelty. But listen, I can’t hang around. Have you heard of Ulrip Cavern?”
I’d played the game for so many hours and with so many characters that I’d lost count, but I’d seen so little of it. Since my job was to get characters beyond the beginner levels and sell them on, I had never bothered travelling or completing quests.
“Nope,” I said. “Never heard of it.”
“Hand me your map.”
I too
k my map out and displayed it in front of us. Loria pointed her finger miles north. A message popped up asking me if I wanted to add a map marker. I shrugged. I was never going to Ulrip Caverns, but I wanted to end this conversation any way I could and be on my way. After accepting, a red dot appeared on my map, and Ulrip was logged into my known locations.
“There’s meant to be some legendary loot in it,” said Loria. “But it’s a slog. They reckon it takes a day just to walk through the cavern. And you have to drop twenty meters to get in. Once you go, the only way out is either by getting to the other end, or respawning.”
“You see, this is why I don’t do quests. What’s the point in a day-long mission?”
She shrugged. “Guess the devs asked that question, too. Ulrip was meant to be an expansion pack, but playtesters said it was a snooze fest. The devs moved on to something else, but they didn’t want the resources they’d used in Ulrip to go to waste. So, they left it open as an explorable area. Apparently, there’s a boss creature in there somewhere. A real big mother.”
I could see why an expansion like that would fail a beta test. In a world where VR role playing games were ten-a-penny, each one needed a unique selling point. Infara’s was its respawn system. When you died, you lost some exp and some of your inventory, randomly selected. In the spot where you died a Death Shard was left. If you managed to get to it, you got your items and exp back. If you died on the way, it was gone for good. This wasn’t unique in a single player sense, but it was fairly unheard of in multiplayer games.
That meant that a quest like Ulrip Caverns was never going to be a good prospect. There was one way in, one way out, and the journey lasted a day. Imagine if you got half way through and then died. It’d take you 12 hours just to get your stuff back.
“What do you say?” asked Loria. “Party up? Climb down Ulrip’s anus together?”
I shook my head. “Anything I do other than levelling up lowers the resale value of the character. And I’ve got four levels to get tonight, so I better get going.”
“You’re a reseller?”
I nodded.
“But you seem so…decent,” she said.
I dug the tip of my sword into the ground and leaned on it. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“My brother says resellers are con artists. They take your money then sell you some half-assed character. Like an archer with no agility, or a mage who can’t use magic.”
“There are some dodgy guys out there,” I said. “But I don’t care. I level characters up to spec and ship them out. I’ve got no interest in conning someone.”
I heard a beeping noise in my ear, which carried on until I stopped it. It was my in-game alarming telling me I’d spent an hour playing. That left four more hours of levelling up tonight. Five, at a push, but the rings around my eyes would be especially dark in the morning. It would have been fitting that levelling up a Shadow Walker put shadows on my face.
“I’m going to add you as a buddy,” said Loria. “That way, we can chat wherever we are. And it’ll let you see me on the map. If you happen to glance at your map and I look like I’m surrounded by wolves again, you can come help me.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “And you can whip your staff out.”
My map screen updated, and my social menu tinkled, informing me that I had been added as a friend. I grimaced at the sound. And then I grimaced at myself. I knew I needed to lighten up a little.
“So,” said Loria, smiling and picking up her staff. “Are you going to add me back or what?”
“Yeah, I might,” I said.
“That’s about as non-committal as possible.”
“I’m just busy. And I’m not going to be around as this character much longer. Who knows what I’ll be next. A warrior? Paladin?”
“It must be cool to sample so many classes.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The first dozen times. But play as a monk twenty times and you’ll start to hate the sound of chanting.”
“You must know what you’re doing with classes, Mr. Reseller,” she said.
I nodded. “I’ve levelled most of them.”
“The 3 skills I picked at the beginning are Bait Illusion, Circles of Fear, and Multiply. I don’t get to choose again for a while, right?”
“Until you hit level 10, any skills you get are set by your class skill path. At level 10 you can pick a new skill, though. And there’s always trainers in some of the larger cities who can teach you stuff.”
Loria nodded. “I’ll see how it goes. Right now, I’m just enjoying running. Fancy a race? I’ll beat your ass.”
I shook my head. “Maybe some other time.”
Loria crossed her arms. “My friend list still hasn’t changed.”
I needed to avoid the subject. “Better go,” I said. “Good luck with the cavern. And remember what I said about levelling here. Just be careful. I know you can always respawn, but it’s never nice. And here – take another potion for the road. So long, Loria.”
As I turned my back, Loria shouted. “I better get a friend notification soon!”
I walked away, knowing she wasn’t likely to get it. There was nothing wrong with her, I just didn’t want a friend. I didn’t want to even be an acquaintance with anyone, full stop. People let you down. Maybe not all of them, but I wasn’t going to take a chance.
And as I thought about my attitude to people, an apt image came into view. Just across the forest, and walking my way, was a hunter. He walked with a strut, as though he was the most confident person in Infarna.
He had grey hair that flowed to his waist at the sides, but was tied up in a bun in the center. It made him look like a Christmas tree with tinsel draped down it. Around his chest and belt were the stuffed heads of various dead NPC creatures. They ranged from fang voles to fire golems.
As I watched him walk my way, I knew I had to leave. At this minute, hell, at any time of day, there wasn’t a person in the whole of the game I wanted to see less.
Chapter Four
It was Crawford. Just seeing him made me want to log out. With him, it was the worst of both worlds. Not only was I treated to his sparkling personality in Infarna, but he also worked in my office. He didn’t really know who I was in either environment, of course.
I first found out he was a player one Monday morning in the office meeting room. Posters on the walls showed tigers creeping up on prey, and big, bold text told us to ‘Be the best you can be. Unleash your inner tiger.’
I settled into my seat, twisting a cup of coffee in my hands and wondering if the human mind was capable of speeding up time. Anything to get the next forty minutes of boredom over with.
Crawford came into the room. He strode through the door looking like the definition of the word ‘slick’. His hair was swept back under so much gel it looked like it was soaking wet. His suit cost more than everyone else’s in the room put together, a fact that was made clear since Crawford left the price tag on. I knew that it wasn’t an accident.
“Striving for excellence,” he said, setting his laptop up. “That’s what father wants me to talk to you about today. ‘Because you all need to bloody sort yourselves out,’ as he put it.”
Crawford’s father owned the company. A cynical mind might have said that was how Crawford got his job as coach. Yep, I would have said that. I used to be cynical about him.
The problem was, Crawford was damned good at his job. As a motivational coach, he knew exactly what to say to get people working, even if he accomplished that by stirring anger in them.
I started to wish I could be anywhere else in the world rather than in that room, getting talked down to by a silver-tongued Gordon Gecko. As I looked at the windows and wondered if there was any escape, a screen flashed on the projector. It was connected to Crawford’s laptop, and he’d mistakenly left a window open.
I would have recognized the color-changing trees and scurrying imps anywhere. It was Infarna Omega. Crawford had installed it on his work laptop. I fou
nd it hard to believe a guy like that was interested in Infarna.
A few weeks later, when I was levelling up a cleric to sell to a man in France, I saw a hunter named Crawford. I knew who it was straight away.
He seemed to be in good form today. Crawford didn’t really know me, and he certainly didn’t know I worked in his office. Added to that was the fact that I changed character every week or so, after selling them. Despite that, he always stopped to talk to me. He was a lonely guy.
“Having fun levelling with the imps?” he said.