by Sam Ferguson
“Where would they respawn if their last save point isn’t functioning correctly?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know, maybe back at the initial spawn point? The beach following the shipwreck?” Brian suggested.
“It doesn’t look like it is a fast travel point. There isn’t anything there except the beach,” Rhonda said, checking her map. “It would take us hours to hike that far, and for all we know he simply logged off for the night.”
“That’s exactly what we need to do,” Chris said. “We need to log off and try to get some sleep, then head out in the morning to rendezvous at the professor’s location. Take all your essential supplies with you. There is no way the professor would choose to keep things running as usual. We should all plan to help transport the professor and Meredith back to Pucon. Brian, I’m…” Chris was finally at a loss, “I’m so sorry. I know you probably won’t get much rest. We’ll, see you tomorrow night.”
Chris couldn’t have been more right. Brian might have dozed off once or twice, but he was up almost the whole night agonizing over every interaction he had ever had with Barry. Couldn’t he have been nicer? Why did he let himself get so bothered by Barry’s comments about great things he had seen and done? Shouldn’t he have been more charitable, encouraging? Barry had been the new guy last year, and Brian hadn’t given him any praise or encouragement. Barry may have felt like he needed to overcompensate by praising himself. Ugh. All the unkind things he’d said about him behind his back! His thoughts continued in this vein over and over. The only thing worse were those few times he had drifted off—dreaming that everything was actually okay, that he had only been mistaken about Barry’s condition—only to jolt awake and realize the cruel truth.
By the time the morning came, Brian was ready to be on his way. Well, a part of him was. There was another part that wished there would be a place he could simply go to escape from it. Some place dark and warm, away from everything, and most importantly away from his own mind. How could he escape from his own mind?
Unable to put together a clear plan himself, he imagined that Chris was there to give him specific directions. What would Chris tell me to do right now? Brian wondered. He pulled up the image of Chris’s half-orc avatar and paired Chris’s voice to it.
First: Meet basic physical needs.
Eat.
Relieve yourself.
Wash your face.
Get some fresh air.
Second: Prepare for the journey to Site 5.
Retrieve the most valuable items from Cave 1.
Ensure sufficient rations.
Take most direct route to rendezvous point.
Brian followed his imaginary orders as single-mindedly as possible, trying to only focus on the task immediately next on the list and not let his mind wander. The more he moved, the more he did those things to care for his body, the better he felt in spite of himself. Not “good.” Just not completely and totally miserable.
When it was time to decide what needed to be packed out of the site, he tried to make as rational a plan as possible before entering Cave 1. Assuming that they wouldn’t be back that summer, or perhaps ever if the volcanos couldn’t continue to play nice, what should he really take? His knee-jerk reaction was to take nothing. How could anything matter when a team member had just died? He forced himself to think about all of the other team members, the locals who greatly valued these pieces of their history the team had been uncovering, and mentally created a list.
He momentarily considered trying to bury the body, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to dig a grave deep enough outside of the cave to ensure it wasn’t disturbed by wildlife, and there was no way to dig through the rock inside the cave. Either way, he could only imagine that anything he did to move or disturb the body would potentially impede any investigation that might be done later to determine cause of death.
He steeled himself once more and entered the cave. He retrieved the few items he had previously determined to be of most cultural value and placed them as carefully as he could into the center of his pack, surrounded by clothing and other soft items. Then he realized there was something just as valuable he hadn’t considered when sitting outside. He returned to the suitcase at the foot of Barry’s cot and retrieved the personal items that were there. Placing those reverently at the top of his pack, he quickly zipped it closed and turned off the lights in Cave 1.
Brian could see that Mike and Rhonda had arrived some time before by the pack horses tethered outside Site 5. He was exhausted, as much from the emotional load he had been carrying as from the pack on his back and the six-hour hike. He was looking forward to seeing some friendly, flesh and blood faces. His friends must have been keeping an eye out for newcomers, because he was only partway up the slope when Rhonda came jogging out to meet him, Mike not far behind.
Mike took Brian’s pack from his shoulders and Rhonda grabbed him in a hug. He was grateful for the comforting gesture and leaned into it for a full minute before pulling away first. She looked in his face, surely noting the redness around his eyes, and then led him by the hand the rest of the way up. Mike clapped him on the shoulder, giving him a squeeze as they walked.
Neither said a word until they reached the cave entrance. Brian had only been there once, but things were set up much more now, especially with a second person living there. Since the cave entrance was open to the elements, two tents had been erected in the main cave, but it didn’t look as though they had been used much. Neither even had a sleep roll in it.
“Brian, you need to come see this,” Rhonda sounded really worried. “I’m… I’m not even sure what to make of it.”
“I’m glad you’re here, bro,” Mike offered, but no additional explanation.
They led Brian through an opening in the far wall just big enough to shuffle through in a crouching position. The opening had been dug out for about six feet before opening up into an enormous interior cavern. Brian’s mouth fell open.
The ceiling stretched away from him for maybe twenty feet. All along the sides of the cave, the frozen ripples of black rock left behind by ancient magma had been expanded to create shelves where mummified remains were displayed as far back into the cave as Brian could see into the gloomy interior. The fifty feet immediately inside of the tunnel opening was illuminated by a strange, blue glow emanating from the carved-out portions of a stepped fret pattern that wound around twelve columns from top to bottom. The columns were evenly spaced on either side of a central, carved platform.
On the far side of the platform was an extensive array of computer equipment, and the figures of Meredith and the professor at their stations with their headsets on.
“What are they doing?” Brian asked, his awe fading and his anger starting to ignite. What were they doing playing at a time like this? One look at Rhonda sent his feelings a completely different direction, and the image of Barry’s corpse still wearing his headset flashed into his mind. “They aren’t—” Brian started to ask.
“No, not from what I can tell, at least not physically,” Rhonda was quick to answer.
“Not physically?” Brian moved to the professor’s side and put a finger to his neck. Sure enough, there was a pulse, but no response to the touch.
“Don’t touch the headsets,” Mike warned. “We’ve been here for a couple of hours now and haven’t been able to figure out much, but what we do know is that when we try to remove the headsets, they… they freak out. His whole body begins to spasm and the veins in his neck bulge out. Same with her,” he pointed to Meredith. “Rhonda has measured their heart rate and blood pressure with some of her emergency medical equipment when I go to remove the headsets, and she says it could cause a stroke or a heart attack.”
Rhonda nodded her head. She was chewing her lower lip, her brow knit as she slowly rocked from side to side while hugging herself around the waist.
“Do they respond to other stimuli? I know I can feel it when I get crampy or cold while I’m playing. I’m sure that a quick n
eedle prick or a splash of water would get their attention,” Brian suggested.
“I don’t think they’re conscious. I actually did do a pinprick test and got no response. I’d need to see their pupils to check dilation to really get a better idea of their mental state, but since we have that problem,” she waved her hand vaguely to the headsets.
“I think Augustin may have been right,” Brian began slowly. “Maybe dying in the game when a glitch was active affected their minds and their physiological responses. That software system links pretty directly with all the functions of our brains to give us the sensations we’ve been noticing in the game. That could really mess with someone. The last time I saw Meredith, she died at the location of a glitched-out assassin guild quest. I didn’t see Meredith’s body after she died, but she also got eaten by a dino, so I don’t know if the body disappeared or…” he didn’t care to take his mind to the space where he could fully understand the implications in order to finish the sentence.
As if in response to his name being spoken aloud, Augustin’s voice came floating to him from the other side of the short tunnel connecting the two caves.
“Hello?” Augustin called again.
“Here!” Rhonda yelled, jogging to the tunnel entrance and shuffling through to show him and Chris the way.
“HO-LY CRAP!” Chris called out when they came through into the cave. “This place is… is… what are they working on here?” Chris walked straight to a bank of computer hardware that sprawled out for six or seven feet between Meredith and Professor Rojas. Brian hadn’t taken much note of it until now.
“How did you get here so fast?” Brian stepped to stand next to Augustin, who was still standing at the mouth of the tunnel, scanning his eyes over everything in the cave soberly but with a distinct sense of awe.
“Neither of us could sleep, so we left before sunrise,” he answered without discontinuing his visual assessment of the space.
“You made good time. I just arrived,” Brian said somewhat lamely, totally overwhelmed by everything about the day.
“Guys, get over here and look at this!” Chris called to them. Brian and Augustin joined him and the other two at the piece of equipment Chris was inspecting.
It was a large object, probably three feet tall, four feet wide, and six feet long with rounded edges and corners. Something between an egg shape and a near rectangular prism. Chris ran his hands along some metallic filaments extending from the professor’s computer to the object. They were interwoven onto the surface of some delicate looking components inside the strange device. Another set of filaments connected Meredith’s computer to a similar set of circuits on the other side.
“Hey Prof, what have you been working on here?” Chris asked, looking excitedly to where the professor was seated at his computer console. A look of confusion came over his face as he took in the VR headset and the slumped posture of the professor. He looked back over his shoulder toward Meredith and then stood up in alarm. “Why are they still logged in?”
“We haven’t been able to figure it out,” Rhonda began. “It looks like they’re tied into the system. We can’t remove the headsets without hurting them, and they aren’t responding to stimuli.”
Chris quietly took stock of the scene, his eyes moving back and forth from the computer equipment all around to the strange object that was connected to each of the items. “This, this is not normal. Is this the kind of equipment you guys packed out here?”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, a bunch of items were still in their shipping materials, but just look at the size of the tunnel entrance. Unless Meredith assembled all this from parts, it wouldn’t even fit through the tunnel,” Mike waved his hand back toward the cave entrance.
“What were they doing here?” Brian asked.
Chris looked up at him. He shook his head and shrugged. “It looks like a giant computer, something really advanced by the looks of the circuitry.” He put his eye right up to the opening and pressed his cheek up against the smooth metal exterior.
“There are layers and layers of circuits inside here. It’s a beautiful design actually. Something like this must hold a universe-worth of information!”
Augustin circled around to the other side of the strange console and began inspecting it carefully. “I don’t believe it was brought by Meredith. Look carefully around the base.”
Joining him to look at what he was indicating, Brian saw fine, silvery strands that reminded him of fungal hyphae extending from the base of the metal object into the cooled lava rock all around it. Experimentally, Brian reached down to swipe off a sample.
“Ow!” he cried out in surprise as a sharp pain, like a paper cut, immediately registered. He grabbed his finger with his other hand and inspected it closely. He found that his skin had indeed been cut, but the wisp of material he had intended to collect was still intact and attached to both the object and the ground below it.
“It’s strange,” Chris began.
“Which thing about this place, exactly, gave you that idea?” Brian asked in annoyance.
“I just mean, it looks like this is an actively functioning computer of some sort. It is clearly interfaced with all the equipment around here,” he pointed to the filaments which Brian now noticed had webbed out to every electronic device in the area, “and yet, it isn’t generating any heat, and I can’t detect the sound or vibration of a fan or other cooling system inside of it.”
Before Chris pointed them out, the fishing-line type connectors hadn’t caught Brian’s eye among so many things to take in at once. Now, he wondered whether they might run through the ground to the pillars and connect them back to this strange computer to draw power for that creepy blue light.
“That is so strange!” Augustin put his hand on the top of the device, possibly to test for himself whether there was any noticeable heat or other sign of power running through it. As soon as his skin made contact, an array of glyphs populated in glowing blue and green colors on top of the object.
“It didn’t do that when I was inspecting it earlier,” Rhonda said with alarm, taking a step closer to examine the images.
“These look very much like the symbols that Meredith sent me with the packet of information pertaining to the ceremonial invocation we had worked on with her. I knew many of them came from Sites 1 and 2, and I can see,” he pointed to the symbols that ran all along the base of the platform behind them, “that many more of them came from this cavern.”
“Can you read them?” Mike asked.
“I can.” Augustin read the text aloud in the language it represented, running his finger along the symbols as he went. As he spoke the word of the last symbol, the brightness of the twelve pillars increased, and particles of colored light began gathering above the platform behind them. Chris and Rhonda both gasped and stepped away, moving farther back into the cave. Brian stood motionless next to Augustin as Mike took a seat on the floor behind them, watching silently as the flowing particles slowly swirled, increasing in number and intensity until they resolved into the ethereal image of a man. He was wearing an elaborate headdress and a set of robes embroidered with traditional Mapuche designs.
Brian’s eyes were locked on the man’s face, unable to shake the feeling that there was something achingly familiar about him. He looked confident, arrogant perhaps was a better word, as he slowly extended both hands out to either side of him, displaying even more elaborate embroidery on the insides of his long, draped sleeves.
The man addressed Augustin in the same dialect he had used to interpret the ancient symbols. Brian really couldn’t keep up, but a quick glance confirmed that Augustin seemed to be understanding every word. The spectral man nodded slightly toward Augustin with a patronizingly deferent gesture, and then used one extended hand to point toward the professor. Augustin responded somewhat hesitantly after looking at the professor and seeming to weigh his options for a minute. A sneering smile grew across the man’s face.
As Brian continued to lis
ten, taking in the mannerisms and the inflections, something kept itching at his mind. How did he know this man? Something about the voice and the eyes. Finally it hit him. He was barely able to keep an exclamation of surprise and dismay from tumbling over his lips, instead choosing to bow his head for fear his sudden realization would be apparent on his face. The Master. The elf from the assassin-guild quests. Now that he was paying attention with only his ears, and ignoring the fantastic illusion in front of him, he was even more sure of it. That voice was unmistakable.
Brian glanced up again when he heard Augustin speaking once more. He swept his hand to indicate each of the others in the group and then brought his hands together as though prayerfully reverent. A question was posed, if Brian had at least caught the inflection correctly. A short answer from the man of light seemed to end the conversation, and the particles which composed his form began to dissipate, leaving the eyes as the last things to be swept away. After another minute, the pillars returned their light to the previous level, and the experience seemed to be over.
“What the…” Mike trailed off, getting back to his feet. Chris and Rhonda came closer to stand in front of Augustin, also eager for some information about what had just taken place.
“That was… the oracle,” Augustin answered slowly
“Are you completely serious?” Chris sounded excited and a little incredulous all at the same time.
“He called me his new champion and asked if I had defeated the old priest with the strange device,” Augustin pointed to the professor. “I figured I needed to know what he would say. I mean, if he was calling the prof the old priest, he must have activated this thing already.”