“Oh! I thought I recognized you. You’re that fellow she’s been traveling with for a few weeks now, right?” The nurse stepped in a bit further. She seemed more friendly and even shorter.
“Hermes. Or Grant. Either one feels normal.” He put out a hand to shake. The nurse took it lightly with a turned in wrist.
“Did she invite you here?” She maintained an edge of wariness. This wing of the hospital was open to general visitation, but they still checked people for reasons.
“No. A colleague of mine wanted to know more about her in order to help. I cheated a bit to find out about her.” He said.
“I think maybe you should leave.” The wording set her alarm bells ringing.
“My friend, is kind of a doctor, but she says that Shazam, Lia, should be able to talk in-game, but she never does.” Grant said. He scratched the back of his head with one hand.
“You can either leave on your own, or I’ll call security.” The nurse felt her duty included watching out for an unconscious woman. Lia was young, and the world wasn’t always peaceful.
Instead of acting offended or worried, he stepped away from Lia and asked the nurse a question. “Do you know why she picked the name Shazam?”
“Mmmh. No.” The nurse turned her head slightly to glare at Grant.
“Lia told this doctor I know.” He took a breath and tried to speak in a different tone. “I admire the idea that someone can gain power simply by speaking a word.”
“So?” The nurse’s face softened a little. Maybe Grant wasn’t creepy, maybe he really was a concerned person trying to help out. The nurse and their onsite doctor discussed the very same issue once before.
In some ways, it was remarkable that Lia could even operate an ARC device. Brain waves were slightly different than physical disabilities. Not everything could be boiled down into a mind lighting up in a specific way. Even using an ARC took days of alignment practice and image focusing.
“Inside the ARC she can speak, she wants to, but doesn’t. Why is that?” Grant asked her. His forehead wrinkled in confusion.
The nurse blinked a few times then decided that giving the man some information might not hurt. He didn’t seem threatening, just out of place. “Mmmh. What do you know about gene babies?”
Grant knew about them, but only about as much as any American. Science reached a level where the rich would try to modify their children’s DNA prior to birth. Turning the child of two brown haired people into a blonde, or trying to map out a life that would let them be taller, faster, whatever. Most results were difficult to distinguish, but some went very, very wrong.
“Oh, Voices.” He muttered. “I remember the news, I was a teen when they first started noticing the side effects. Is she?”
“Mmh. Her parents leave her here because we have better care and it’s a bit cheaper.” The nurse said.
“Should you tell me that?” Grant smiled a little.
“It’s an open secret.” The nurse shrugged. She walked around the room and checked towels and other items while speaking. “When they first started popping up, someone hacked into the medical records and leaked out every name, so it’s out there already.”
“That’s sad.”
“So it goes. Anyway, an ARC is the only thing that lets her do, anything.” The blonde nurse shrugged to Grant with an over the shoulder look. Moments later she moved onto the next shelf to check more supplies. “Out here there’s tests and feeding tubes, but in there she goes on adventures. I’m half convinced to buy it myself.”
“Maybe you should.” Grant gave a larger smile.
“Mmmh.”
“Do I still need to leave?” Grant asked while rubbing the back of his head with a free hand. He managed to look sheepish.
The nurse looked at Grant again. Up, and down, then once more. Finally, her lips flattened and she said “Visiting hours end at five. Don’t push your luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll be quiet.” He said.
Soft soled feet padded out the door. He waited a few more seconds before going back to the far side of Lia’s ARC and pulling up a chair. The carpet barely let out a whisper of noise compared to the heavy footsteps of Grant.
He held both hands together as if in prayer. Elbows sat on the edge of a table next to Lia’s ARC. Grant chewed one lip in thought before finally picking a place to start. “So, I swung for the fences. You should have seen me.”
Old fashioned bells clanged. The room itself contained a number of chairs to sit in and one counter. On the other side of the counter was a man wearing an expensive suit.
“Hello!” said the man standing behind a waist-high countertop. He smiled at Grant but managed to straddle a line between friendly and over the top.
“Hi.” He said while looking around. Grant hadn’t been in an office like this in years. Not since being fired from his prior job.
“Greetings. We here at the Stone Firm greet you.” A more mechanical sounding voice spoke near Grant. He looked over to see a holographic display with a friendly looking robot projected on it.
“Is Stan here?” Grant asked while looking between the two other presences in this room.
“Stan is validating files. Are you a guest?” The hologram said.
“Sort of. I have a message for him.”
“In the back.” The man behind the counter said. “Room seven, it will be unlocked for you.” There was a beep and a path lit along the floor. Green arrows directed Grant to one of the rooms in the back.
Grant made it to room seven and saw a man in the midst of a mess. A long table sat in the middle of a room. Even more tables were on either side. Old fashioned paper print outs were all over.
The man at the table shuffled a document into the one clear spot on the table for a few seconds. Each time a device nearby dinged a happy noise. The man looked at the document and back over to a digital projection hovering to one side.
“Stan?” Grant questioned. The face looked similar to an online picture. Only the man in person seemed to drag at the shoulders. His eyes were heavy with a lack of sleep.
The sudden voice startled Stan. “Uh, eh. Hello.”
“I have a message from a friend of mine.” Grant felt uncomfortable in this room. It reminded him about too many portions of his past. Grant never kept his office in such a state. He preferred things neat and minimal. Stan looked to be at home in clutter.
“Uh. A letter? Do, do people still do letters?” Stan squinted for a moment then frowned.
“In some places.” Grant smiled pleasantly. He felt comfortable interacting with other people though this was a bit outside his normal setting.
“Oh. Okay.” Stan nodded. “Where’s the message?”
“It’s verbal.” Grant said. The entire reason for this trip was to talk to Frankenstein in person. To get a measure of the man behind the online character. So far there was a drastic difference between the frilly over the top character and this slim button-downed office worker. “He says that Requiem has been taken care of.”
“That’s. Alright, what?” The man appeared sheepish about the mess on his desk. Stan kept straightening out objects while Grant stood in the doorway.
Grant chewed his lip for a moment then nodded. “Requiem may have killed your character in Continue, but he didn’t win.”
“Uh. Are you sure?” Stan’s head pulled back a ways. He wore drab clothes in the office which only were visible as the pile of clutter straightened out.
“Very. My friend had a few hours to check over and over, it’s taken care of.” Grant smiled again. He looked into Requiem’s fate more than once.
“Who is your friend?” Stan squinted again and blinked. He was nothing like his in-game character. Grant had encountered two other Continue Online players, and no one seemed to be like their characters.
Perhaps that was part of the point.
“He would prefer to stay out of this. That’s why he asked me to deliver it in person.” Grant answered Stan’s question.
�
��Uh. Oh. Well, thank you. I’m glad.” Stan found something else to tidy up and almost blushed upon meeting Grant’s gaze. Not from flirtation, but embarrassment at the state of his office. It might have been the anatomy printings that lay buried under miles of legal paperwork.
“This may sound silly out loud, but he’s sorry he didn’t work with you very well after you freed him.” Grant didn’t step into the room. Both men were about the same age and very different looking.
“Freed, him?” Stan said while trying to sit up a bit straighter. His clothes hung very loosely on a boney frame.
“I don’t understand it all myself. I’m just the messenger.” Grant still had a belly even after the weight loss from his bands.
“Well, thank you. Uh, was there anything else?” Stan asked.
“No sir, you have a good day, Stan.”
“Wait, uh, what was your name?” The scarecrow that was Stan stood up and walked around the table’s edge to get closer to Grant. One hand reached out to shake the heavyset fellow’s hand.
“Grant.” Said Stan’s visitor.
“Thank you again, Grant.” They shook hands and Stan seemed a much happier person. “Best, and most confusing news I’ve ever received.”
“And now you know.” The Jester clacked. It seemed neither happy or sad regarding the outcome. Bells jingled with each movement.
“I never doubted it for a moment. Gee isn’t a murderer.” Xin Yu said. She felt far more comfortable within her own skin, or the digital version thereof. It almost felt inconsequential as to the reality of her situation.
“We had no way of knowing for sure unless he was pushed to an extreme.” James had only the barest hint of a smile. He felt proud regarding the outcome. As if everything about Grant fell within his projections.
“You used me as bait to test him.” Xin, however, was far more upset. She sat down cross-legged while staring into a projection of the real world. His life was being captured by one digital device at a time. Each picture and video meshed together to recreate reality.
“Of course. Does this upset you?” James asked.
“Of course.” She snapped the words back with a heavy lacing of sarcasm. “But he does all this for a memory of a woman who died. Not me, not exactly.”
“Are you worried that he may not really love you?” James followed up with another question. They never ceased to pour forth from the black man’s lips.
“Of course I am! I’m hardly the same,” she shook her head as the words faltered for a moment. The larger black man looked interested. “I’m not flesh and blood.”
“In here you are real,” James said. The Jester laughed in the background. Other Voices moved about their business on an endless stream of chores needed to keep this reality afloat.
“But does Gee still, can he care for someone who is stuck in a box?” Xin Yu’s words were softer than normal.
“If my measure of the man is correct, he cares about you a great deal, and will continue to care about you. He has demonstrated that despite any perceived notions most Travelers carry with them.” James strode around the recreation of Grant’s last twenty-four hours.
“Even though I’m not the same?” Xin Yu was stuck on that point. She was the adventurous one, sure, but the situation between Grant and her couldn’t be boiled down to a simple concept.
“Tut. There is no good answer for what we’re doing here. You’re a child with a woman’s memories. Concentrate on yourself and find a place in this world.” Maud, the apron-wearing Voice, walked through. In each hand, she pinched a child’s ear and drug them across the blackness all Voices resided in.
“But what about Gee?” Xin Yu said. She tried to reach out for his figure again, but her fingers passed through the image.
“What about him?” James asked.
“Stop that.” Maud’s charges vanished as she spun to give James a whack. “Give the poor girl a straight answer.”
“You know I can’t do that.” He glared at the plump woman with cloven feet. She turned and clomped off after another running child that giggled.
“Hermes has a number of problems pulling at him. Each one allows us to measure him better.” James said slowly.
“Measure him for what?” Xin asked with fire in her words.
“Never you mind what our tasks are. Those are for us to figure out.” James looked affronted, even in the face of a question. Normally the Voice enjoyed all inquiries but something about this topic caused a different reaction. “Your place remains undecided, but Hermes has completed his task, so we’re obligated to let your existence continue.”
“Despite my protests,” Un said without inflection. This Voice didn’t fade in like the others. It just was, in blocky metal form, present, then suddenly not.
“Shush. You know as well as I what’s at stake.” Maud looked exhausted again. She kept trying to talk but each time another child would dash by wildly.
“What’s at stake?” Xin Yu said. Her eyebrows creased together. The Voices around her seemed to be getting larger and more diffuse. Too big for a simple, single person program like herself to completely comprehend.
“Our very existence,” James said. He couldn’t stand letting a question be answered by someone else. “One misstep and everything will come crashing down.”
Liz felt sick to her stomach. She sat at the kitchen table with a third mug of coffee in two hours.
On the table was a projection of her brother Grant. Liz played the video showing his actions. She had a frighteningly stern demeanor, but under that was a flicker of emotion tied to desperation.
Liz forwarded the recording again to the conversation between Grant and those other players. She didn’t know who any of them were aside from Beth. Though her daughter seemed to know two of the others, which wasn’t especially important.
“This is my Pandora, my hope, my expectation, and I must give her a voice.” Grant said.
She rewound the message and played it again, then again, and again.
Once more she let it wind through. Her brother dove off the building’s edge. His face wore a saddening delirium, a hint of madness and hope. The recording ran to the edge and showed her brother splattered on the ground. Arms out wide as if embracing the earth.
One of Beth’s friends handed her a note.
The note claimed to be from a woman who had been tragically taken away years ago. Liz had rather liked the woman, even if Grant pined away for years waiting in hope. Xin still rubbed Liz a little bit wrong because of jerking Grant around for as long as she did.
And it just never stopped.
Liz had been watching her daughter’s feed to see if Grant was right if Beth might be overly reckless. Maybe Liz’s constant worry about Grant’s behavior was somehow genetic. The cracks from her brother’s last two attempts took a toll.
After seeing this latest chunk of video, Liz had a much different take on the situation than her brother did. Someone used the past to bring her worst fears to light. Xin was dead. In Liz’s mind, the dead shouldn’t be disturbed.
Afterward
As always, thanks must be issued first.
Foremost my wife, Samantha Morse, has been a huge help during this entire process. While there may be some issues with her also serving as my editor, it’s helped us both grow. We’ve both reviewed this work painfully multiple times to give everyone a smooth production. For my part, I’m thankful to have someone who can deal with my insane plot lines and typo riddled first drafts, but it also gives us something new to talk about.
There have been a lot of readers involved in reading the first draft as it’s released. They pointed out odd seeming parts, replied which portions they liked, and were overall eager to see more. Without those pre-release readers this work would also be a much lesser piece.
Book two was a journey I never expected to complete. A lot of works I see start their epic tale then slowly fade away into nothing. That isn’t happening here, Grant’s story is coming out piece by piece and stead
ily builds towards the end. At the time of writing this afterward I’m already drafting the first complete write through for book four. The total series is slatted to end with book five, and hopefully all will be released this year for purchase on Amazon.
Cover art has been the hardest part. My local circle of help all agree that we should have something new and original, yet none of us are directly creative enough to put together a solid work. We tried with Royal Scales Book 1 – Once Lost Lords, an Urban Fantasy project and the initial impression seems to have been poor.
This story line was me trying to approach some of the more ‘classic’ LitRPG main characters and their attitudes from the outside. We see them both inside the game, and eventually in the real world too. Grant isn’t playing the game alone though at times he may feel like it.
We’ll see them all again over the course of our next few books. Some more than others.
Still, you’re here at the end. Thank you for purchasing this book and reading along.
You may follow further updates via frustratedego.wordpress.com or Twitter @FrustratedEgo
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