by Dante Doom
“I don’t see why we can’t tell him,” Sang said.
“Like he’d believe you anyway,” O’Hara said.
“Just seems like something you should tell someone, that’s all,” Sang said.
“I don’t think it’s worth telling him. He’s too much of a blabbermouth anyway,” O’Hara said. “If things get any weirder, we’ll tell him. For now, jump back in there and keep your eyes open. These communications from the aliens keep growing clearer with each passing day.”
“Very well,” Sang said as she turned to go back to her haptic pod. “I need to go save Van from that dragon anyway.”
Chapter Twelve
Van screamed as the burning smell of smoke greeted his nostrils. He had attempted to hide in various different forests, but each time he made it to a new section of the woods, a blast of fire would remove the entire area. By the end of it, he had run in a complete circle and was now near the foot of the hill again, hiding behind a stump. He wasn’t sure if the sheriff was playing with him or really was having trouble finding him, but he didn’t want to stick around to find out. There wasn’t much he could do, after all, hiding behind a charred stump. He didn’t have a weapon that would be anywhere close to able to kill the sheriff, and nor did he have any clue as to what to do. He’d kept hoping that Sang would log back in, but she didn’t particularly seem interested in actually helping anyway. How she’d logged out in the first place was beyond him, but the reality was that he was on his own.
As he sank deeper behind the burning tree stump, he pondered how to get out of this mess.
“COME OUT AND FACE ME, COWARD!” screamed the sheriff. Van glanced back to see that the sheriff had landed where one of the forests had been and was patiently waiting. He could see the words Sheriff of Castle Redscale Level 10 hover over its head. He drew up its stats really quickly.
Health 1000
Stamina 500
Strength 16
Breath Attack 150 damage +10 damage per second
Bite Attack 50 damage +50% chance of swallowing whole
Van grimaced at the stats, which showed that he didn’t have much of a chance. Without any cover left to protect him, he knew he was done for. He gripped his bagpipes and decided that he would go out on own his terms, playing a beautiful funeral dirge that he had learned in the last level. Pressing the pipes to his lips, he began to play. In his mind, he was hoping it would be beautiful, but reality dictated otherwise. The screeching sound pierced through the sky, causing a great flock of birds to take off from their various hiding places within the woods.
“What is that awful racket?” cried the sheriff. Van realized something based on its reaction to the noise, though—it wasn’t just a regular NPC... it might be an advanced one! If that was the case, maybe he could bargain with it or lie to it. He stood up and continued playing his horrible song as he marched out in front of the dragon.
“What mortal man stands before me so defiantly? Do you hope that your music might kill me?” the sheriff taunted him as it leaned its massive purple head right in front of Van. Its jaws were glistening in the sun and Van could see drops of saliva dripping from its mouth. The smell was none too pleasant either.
“My name is Semimodo and I am a musician of the highest regard!” Van said! “And I am here to bargain with you for my life!”
“Speak your demands, foolish musician, so that I may weigh them,” the sheriff said.
“In exchange for allowing me to live, I will… uh, bring to you the orchestrator of all of this!” Van said. “Yes, the evil and very powerful woman by the name of Jane! Jane, the evil wench! She put this all together! Her and her wicked frowns!”
“Yes, there was another, but she fled!” the sheriff answered. “You are saying that she is responsible for all of this?”
“Indeed, she is!” Van lied, tapping his Amulet of Lies, hoping that it would help, too. “I mean, look at me... I’m just a moronic bard who isn’t even good at his only useful skill! How could I possibly cause all of this trouble?”
“You are indeed a fool! A jester of the lowest regard!” the Sheriff growled as it pulled its massive face away from Van. “Then I must find this Jane. Take me to her and I shall spare your puny life! For perhaps there is less dignity in life for you than in death, having no skills and only wretched bagpipes to play.”
Van felt pretty excited as he realized he had just duped the sheriff. All he had to do was lead it to some kind of mountain range or place with tunnels and then he’d quickly escape. Preferably while laughing.
He turned and walked back up the hill to where he and Sang had been before the dragon arrived. He knew there would be some tunnel networks near the castle, which would be a fine place to ditch the Dragon. He felt the ground shake behind him as the sheriff followed him. Van glanced behind him to see that the sheriff was intensely looking at the boulder where the glitch had been. The sheriff had seemed to lose all interest in Van. He felt a hand suddenly cover his mouth, and another hand grab him harshly, dragging him back down the hill.
“Shhhh!” Sang said. “What’s it doing?”
“I dunno,” Van said as he rushed over to one of the scorched trees and crouched down. The sheriff was busy pawing at the boulder. Then, it gripped the massive stone and tore it out of the ground, promptly flying off with it and leaving them behind.
“Interesting,” Sang whispered.
“Ha—I bet that when it saw the bug, it probably somehow re-set it’s scripting or whatever!” Van said triumphantly. He’d never been so happy to see something end a quest so suddenly. He glanced at his experience bar and noticed that it hadn’t gone up at all, though. “Hmmm, maybe it’s not as much of a victory as I hoped. Look! No experience!”
“We’ll live,” Sang said. “Let’s get out of here before it comes back.”
“Where did you go, anyway? Why’d you bail on me?”
“Sorry, had to do some briefing with the team... CIA stuff... uh, very important,” Sang said.
Van cocked his head. It was a little odd, but for the first time ever, he saw her stumbling over an answer. That wasn’t like her at all. It made him feel as if she were up to something, but he had no idea of what he could say to confront her, and anyway, she was always up to something, wasn’t she, being in the CIA and quiet about whatever they were doing?
He still wanted to yell at her for leaving, but then again, honestly, if she was fine with leaving in the middle of a fight, so be it. He wasn’t really invested in this game anyway, so it wasn’t as if it was that big of a deal. This was her mission, and he was just along for the ride.
“Whatever,” he mumbled. “So, what’s the plan? We go to the mountain and investigate for glitches or whatever?”
“Yeah, that’s the exact plan,” Sang said. There was a quietness in her voice, though—a gentleness that hadn’t been there before. She sounded perplexed.
“What’s up? You seem off,” Van replied.
“Oh, I just had an interesting debriefing is all,” Sang said as they began to walk out of the forest and toward the village where the Dwarf NPC would be located.
“Care to share?” Van asked.
“No,” Sang replied. She wasn’t as stiff as usual, he realized, so something was definitely up.
“Come on, you can tell me a secret! I mean, let’s face it, I’m already up to my eyes in CIA secrets, so adding one more can’t hurt!” Van prodded her.
“No; leave it at that and move on,” Sang said as she pushed Van away and tried to walk a little faster.
“Something’s not adding up is all I’m saying,” Van said. “You say we’re here to investigate Draco, right? Then, next thing I know, we’re poking around and looking at glitches. When we find one, it’s all weird. Come on, what’s the truth? This some sort of terrorist thing? Like, are the glitches Al-Qaeda trying to blow us up in the game? And if we die in the game due to a terrorist attack, do we die in real life? What if this isn’t the game, but is in fact real life and the terrorists have somehow—
”
“Enough!” Sang shouted, her voice echoing throughout the valley. “Van, I said I am not going to share, so I am not.
“But for once in your life, you look like you want to talk about something!” Van protested. “I can see it all over your face! The way you seem perplexed, the way you open your mouth to talk but then close it real fast. You’re burning up from the inside! Tell me! I won’t tell anyone!”
Sang sighed very deeply. “Log out, you jackass. We’ll talk.”
Van complied and logged out of the game, immediately feeling the sudden stiffness of his return to reality. He groaned as the haptic pod opened up. Sang was standing there.
“How are you able to get up so quickly?”
“I exercise, Van—you should try it sometime,” Sang replied as she grabbed him and hoisted him out.
“Come on,” she said as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the abandoned building and out through the back. There was a small black car sitting quietly by the rust-worn dumpsters.
“Get in,” she said as she opened up the passenger side door and threw him in. Was he being kidnapped? Kidnapped from being kidnapped? Did that count as a rescue? Did he even want to be rescued at this point? Honestly, the mission wasn’t bad so far, and while there was a lot of frustration with Sang, he was enjoying the real experience of being in one of those pods.
“So, what, are we going to get ice cream?” Van asked as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Enough, look. I’m going through a lot right now and you have a right to know.”
“Know what?” Van asked.
Sang took a deep breath and began to speak.
Van sat in the car next to Sang and just stared forward. He wasn’t particularly sure what to do with all of the information that she’d just unloaded on him. It seemed that she was very confused and unconvinced of anything she was saying... but at the same time, the way she was so out of sorts had convinced him that she was telling the truth, or at least what she knew of it. There would be no reason for her to lie to him. She wasn’t a particularly cheerful woman, and she didn’t seem interested in making jokes, so there was no room for error here. Whatever she was talking about, she believed it to be real.
“So… what do you think?” Sang asked quietly.
“Aliens? Maybe... I dunno. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but at the same time…” Van trailed off. He whispered, “There was this rumor a while back, like a long time ago. That when this game was first being developed, there was some kind of line of code that was discovered by a beta tester. It didn’t make any sense, you know? Like, it was all squiggles and stuff, and he posted a screenshot online once, but it was immediately taken down and no one ever heard about the beta tester again. There was this whole thing circulated on the internet for a while after that, saying how the code was some kind of alien message and Draco covered it up.”
“Really?” Sang asked, cocking her head.
“Yeah, I kid you not. I mean, you hear all kinds of rumors about this game, like the survivalist rumor we were talking about before. This one was extra spooky, right? But no reason to think anything of it. But now that you’re bringing this up… well, I saw some bugs a while back, too. Not particularly as strange as the constellation one, but definitely weird enough to warrant a few mentions.”
“So, you think it could be aliens?” Sang asked again.
“Look, I have no idea, but I’m open to the concept,” Van said. “I mean, I’ve looked up at the stars, in-game, of course, and asked if there was intelligent life out there. It definitely makes this job a whole lot more interesting.”
“So, you aren’t freaked out?”
“Freaked out? No. I mean, look, I spend all of my time playing in a fantasy world where literally anything can happen. Am I intrigued by the idea of there being actual aliens? Yes. Am I worried or startled by it? Not really. It’s about time the real world caught up with my own world. Aliens are cool—like, I love science fiction. Not as much as fantasy, but hey, whatever. It might actually make the real world interesting enough for me to want to be a part of it.”
“The world already is interesting enough without this alien stuff,” Sang replied sharply.
“Maybe to you, but for me? Not so much,” Van said as he stretched. “Well, so we’re alien hunters now. Definitely one of the stranger turns my life has taken.”
“And you’re not really affected by this? Not startled or shaken?” Sang asked.
“Look, first off, it’s just some curiosity from the CIA, right? There’s no hard evidence, no little green men, just some weird bugs. The government is always up to some secretly clandestine kind of stuff, right? Alien-searching has got to be one of them. I always assumed there was some kind of cover-up with Area 51 and all that. So, for all I know, this could be just another kind of alien the government is looking for. Either that or there really isn’t anything... just some kind of code put in by the programmers to screw with hackers. It doesn’t really change what we do. It certainly doesn’t change how I feel about any of this.”
“It’s all a bit much for me,” Sang said, “but I’m in too deep here. I can’t leave this mission without it costing me my career.”
Van grinned. Finally, he was starting to actually hear something real from her. This was the first conversation they’d had where he’d felt like she was being real with him and not just antagonistic or professional.
“Well, hey, don’t worry too much; I mean, what are the chances this is actually real? You know CIA history, right? Remember Project Stargate?”
Sang shook her head, indicating she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Oh, well, back in the 70s, the CIA ran some kind of covert psychic investigation thing. For, like, almost twenty years. It was a colossal failure—they spent a ton of time trying to determine if there was such thing as psychic potential.”
“I guess I never heard about it,” Sang replied.
“Yeah, well, it was a big waste of everyone’s time. Point is, the CIA was interested in looking around, but didn’t find anything of use. No psychic powers were discovered. So, we’re probably gonna be doing the same. I’d be surprised if we actually found anything at all.”
“How do you know about it?”
“Oh, well, believe it or not, a lot of people in my world tend to be a little, uh, paranoid about the government. So, there’s always talks about CIA secrets, ancient history, cryptozoology. It goes with the geek territory. I was really into bigfoot for a few years.”
Sang laughed as Van frowned. “I wasn’t making a joke.”
“Oh, uh, sorry,” Sang said. “So, you don’t think we’ll find anything?”
Van shrugged. “Who knows? All I know is that I was hired-slash-blackmailed into helping you achieve your mission, so if poking around and looking for little green men is the mission, so be it. Doesn’t change what I do, by any means. If anything, it’s almost as if you told me all of this because you’re the one who needs reassurance, not me.”
“That’s a good observation,” Sang said, trying to put on a stern face. “But I’m fine. I just needed somone else to hear this.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Van said. All of his previous frustration and tension with her was beginning to erode as he saw how concerned she had really been about the job she was doing. To him, this whole CIA ploy was typical government stuff, but to her, it was an entirely different kind of thinking. But it was nice that she actually trusted him enough to talk to him, and he could feel himself growing a little more at ease with her. Who knew... maybe after all of this, they’d be friends?
Chapter Thirteen
“You idiot!” Sang screamed as she kicked Van over and over again. They were back in the town of Hearthborne, where they had first started before the Sheriff’s quest. Things had been going smoothly since they’d both logged back into the game. But... they had travelled back to the town where the Dwarf NPC was located, only to find out that since they officially hadn
’t completed the quest, he wasn’t available. It was a frustrating situation, and one that had been brought on by the fact that Van had made the decision to exit the quest once he figured it was over.
“Ouch—hey, stop!” he protested as he lay on the ground, curled up in a ball. Sang didn’t relent from swiftly kicking him over and over again.
“Look! You told me you knew things would be fine! You told me to click exit!”
“I said it would probably be fine! Doesn’t the word ‘probably’ mean anything to you?” Van demanded.
Sang shook her head. “We need to get to that mountain! We wasted almost two whole days on that quest and you completely undid all of it! You idiot!”
“Look, I get that you’re upset, but you gotta realize something. That glitch messed up the whole quest anyway, so it’s not my fault. Unless you wanted to go back and fight the sheriff without a full party, there wasn’t anything we could have done anyway,” Van said as he wheezed, trying to stand back up.
“Well, maybe,” Sang said, “but you’ve no right to tell me that everything will be fine when you’re not sure that’s the case.”
“Look, I didn’t know!” Van said. His eyes darted to the left as he stood up and he held up his hand. “Wait!” he said.
“What?” Sang asked as she turned around to see a small group of adventurers nearby. They were armed to the teeth and looked extremely high level. Sang could see they were all Level 75, and looked like they would be trouble in a fight.
“That’s my old adventuring party! They’re gonna be able to give me a map!” Van cried out triumphantly as he leapt up.
“We’re undercover, remember? We can’t just tell them who you are,” Sang said. “And, a map to where?”
“Well, now that we’re on the same page, I know you want glitches, so I know of jut the place! The only problem is that getting there is a royal pain without a map because of how far away it is.”
“What? We need to investigate the mountain for—”