by Rob Favre
A red-mohawked punk in a leather vest zoomed over my head on a flying skateboard.
This part of each run wasn’t too bad, most of the time. I was too insignificant for the others to bother killing. I had been trampled or beheaded a few times just for fun, but they mostly ignored me. No, the real problems would begin if I got anywhere near the coin. Every few minutes, a coin would spawn in one of the buildings, or sometimes in a park or underground in the sewer. When that happened, everyone in the game made a mad dash to be the one to claim it.
I didn’t have any way to count, but there I was pretty sure there were a few thousand characters running around the map, all trying to grab the single coin each time it appeared.
And all of them were better armed and equipped than mine. Which is to say they were armed and equipped at all. And all of them were being controlled by players who had many years more experience at this game than I did.
One time, I had gotten close enough to see one of the coins. It had spawned in the sewer almost directly under my feet. I jumped down a manhole and caught just a glimpse of shiny gold as a businessman in a gas mask sawed my character in half with a chainsaw. Before the screen went red, I saw a leprechaun get within grabbing distance of the coin before he was vaporized by automatic shotgun fire.
But that was dozens of coins ago, and I hadn’t gotten that close to another one since. A jet arced past the building that seemed to hold this new coin, and a missile crashed into the top floors, blasting them open. The skater punk, a princess riding a Pegasus, and a half-man-half-bumblebee in a wedding dress all rose through the air to try to get to the opening. The princess went down, pierced by a green-feathered arrow and a purple laser beam.
The barbarian next to me turned around and caved in my chest with his axe. My avatar fell limp to the ground, and the barbarian stopped long enough to pick up my fedora. He was trying it on as everything went red again.
The 30 second countdown began.
I pulled off the goggles. I couldn’t do this again. Not yet.
“Dude! He emerges victorious! Took a little longer than I expected, but still! Extreme victory!”
Everything was dark, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust. When they did, I saw Mustard making celebratory tentacle spirals. Renay smiled sheepishly next to him.
“Success?” she asked.
“I’m… getting the hang of it. It’s pretty competitive.”
“How many coins have you gathered?”
“Well, so far, I mean, I had to learn the rules, and the controls, and…”
“Tom. How many?”
“None. None so far.”
“Oh.” She was careful to keep her tone even, but I could tell it required some effort.
“How long have I been in there?”
“Around six hours.”
“That explains why I’m so hungry. Look, I just need to take a little break, stretch out a little, and I’ll get back to it. I’ve just about got this figured out.”
We watched Preston – that was cat’s name – play with a rubber ball while we ate algae paste. It was green and slick and tasted like grass, but apart from that it was pretty good. Okay, that’s a lie. It was awful. Luckily, Mustard had filled what looked like a small bathtub with barbecue sauce. It really helped cover up the taste.
Renay and I were both pretty quiet as we ate, but Mustard happily filled the silence with a monologue about how Planet Awesome Flavor stores giant blobs of ice cream in orbit so they don’t have to put it in freezers. He had just started listing all the flavors when Renay spoke quietly.
“Tom, do you really think you will be able to mine twelve coins?”
“Sure, I think so.” I did not believe it. And the look on Renay’s face told me that she knew I didn’t believe it.
“Look, it’s the only plan I’ve got. Maybe I’ll get the hang of it. All I can do is go in there and try.”
She nodded, tried to smile. “All you can do is try.”
I was not getting the hang of it.
I had died dozens and dozens of gruesome deaths. I had learned that being caught in a strong enough explosion could actually propel the lifeless scraps of your character outside the city, where vultures would land and start picking at it before things went red. I had briefly come into possession of a modest weapon, a handgun, which I managed to hold for all of thirty seconds before being roasted by a napalm airstrike.
I never got close enough to see one of the coins again.
After what felt like days, I pulled the goggles off. I rubbed my stinging eyes, looked around. No Renay, no Mustard, no Preston. The other hammocks were empty. Nobody else was here at all.
I stepped out into the bright sunlight and blinked. I had played all through the afternoon and the night; it had to be the next morning. There was a lot of noise coming from over near the fabricator - excitement, shouting, and laughter. I stumbled over and found Renay sitting on the hood of one of the black vehicles. It looked like the entire Dodgers tribe was gathered and looking at something, but I was in no position to see what it was. I sat down next to her.
“How did the mining go, Old One?”
It took me a few seconds to overcome my shame and actually answer. “Renay, I’m… I’m really sorry. I thought I would be able to make this happen. It’s just… tough.”
“I do appreciate how hard you tried, Tom. I really do.”
She was trying not to smile. Something was going on here.
“What did I miss?”
A roar of surprise and delight exploded from the crowd. A glowing ball of yellow light flew up into the air, hovered perfectly still for a few seconds, and then started making a figure-eight pattern in the air.
I realized what the Dodgers were so excited about.
“You gave them the field module from our ship?”
“Yes. Just the interior one, though. Mustard assures me all the flight and travel systems are fully functional.”
“So, if a space rock punches a hole in the ship or something…”
“The outer field will keep the air inside. At least that’s what Mustard says. And he is almost never wrong.”
The ball expanded to a five-meter balloon of sunlight, then fell and started bouncing off the heads and hands of the crowd, causing shrieks of terrified delight. Some of them scattered, others jumped to try to touch it.
“And let me guess… you got something in return?”
“They are almost done processing the fuel. In about another hour we can head back to the ship.”
I shook my head. “You couldn’t have pulled me out of the game earlier? I was getting murdered in there.”
Her smile broke through like the sun through the clouds. “I did not want to cut your fun short. You do love playing those games, and it has been some time since you were able to.”
Preston emerged from under the vehicle and tried to climb onto the hood, but he wasn’t quite big enough to make it. Renay picked him up and he began purring again.
“Renay, thanks. This was… well, amazing. When we get back, everyone’s going to know that we would have been stuck here if it weren’t for you.”
She replied only by smiling. It was hard to tell in the rosy light of dawn, but I think she might have blushed a little.
We didn’t see any other dinosaurs on our trip back to L.A. And later that day, when I left California to travel into space for the second time in my life, I wondered if I would ever come back to Earth. It wasn’t much like I remembered it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to come back. A place where even the video games are work maybe wasn’t the best place for me.
Floyd looked sheepish when they finally reached the front of the line. “Sorry, this is all we have tonight.” He ladled a half scoop of thin oatmeal onto each of their plates.
“Is it because you are saving food for the Exmass feast?” one of the boys asked.
Floyd smiled sadly. “Shhh now. You figured it out the secret. But you cannot go telling anyone now, understand?”
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The boys both nodded, beaming with pride. At the table, they tried to keep their voices down as they speculated about what would be on the Exmass menu, but they were so excited that their whispering didn’t last long, and soon they were just talking openly. Even with all the chatter, it didn’t take them long to finish their portions.
Will held up his empty bowl. “Mom, can I go back and get more?”
“I’m not very hungry tonight, dear. You can just have mine.” She pushed her bowl toward him. He went on speculating about a future full of patars, and cakes, and roasted goat.
Chapter 18
“Tom, you have to. It is your turn.” Renay was hiding a smile and trying to sound serious.
“It wasn’t my idea to bring him.”
“It was not my idea to bring him either. It was entirely his decision.” Preston mewled indignantly when Renay picked him up, and her smile, no longer hidden, lit up her face. It might have been my imagination, but he seemed bigger. I had started joking about how one day he would get tired of waiting to be fed and just eat us. Mostly joking.
“Next time we leave a planet, I’m the one who decides which life forms get to come along.”
I used a bowl to scoop out the litter box we’d rigged up for Preston out of an old crate. This was now a dedicated bowl with just one purpose. I was not going to be eating out of a bowl that had been touching that. No amount of washing would convince me otherwise.
Having Preston around was good for Renay. He was usually better company than me. He followed her around, curled up with her when she slept, and basically never left her side. It probably made her sleeping situation just a little bit more comfortable, since we didn’t have light beds to lie on anymore. We’d put together crude mattresses and blankets out of the remains of the wall, and I’d sort of gotten used to sleeping on the hard floor with nothing but a few layers of cloth to cushion me, but it definitely made me miss the light couches.
The nice thing for me about Preston being around was that sometimes I could watch him playing with Renay when I was bored. Which was pretty much all the time. Without light baseball, there was even less to do on this trip than there had been before. I would hang out with Mustard sometimes, but talking about food is just torture when you have only eaten protein paste for a month, and you know that it’ll be at least that long before you have any hope of eating anything else. Besides food, the only thing he wanted to talk about was how great it would be when we got there, but those conversations were pretty one-sided. One-sided was really the only style of conversation Mustard knew.
I was still uneasy when I thought about what might be waiting for us when we reached our destination. But we had talked about it, the three of us, as we orbited the Earth, and this had seemed like the best thing to do under the circumstances. We thought about trying other places on Earth, but who knew if anyone else would be able to help, or if we’d even be able to find the fuel to take off again. Even if we did manage to find people who had fabricators, we were out of field generators to trade, and I now knew better than to think I could earn a bunch of coins with my gaming skills. Mustard had insisted that this time we needed to find some “people” to help, and he knew where to find them. I still got sick with worry sometimes when I thought about the chance we were taking, but Renay and I had not been able to come up with a better plan. Anyway, there was no point thinking about it now. All we could do is wait, find ways to pass the time, and try to mask the smell of cat pee.
But even with all of that, I preferred this part of the trip to the first part.
Renay laughed behind me. Preston had probably done something cute.
I emptied the bowl into the waste chamber. Mustard had assured me that the reactor could process any type of matter and convert it to power, since it broke everything down into subatomic particles anyway. Some part of me was pleased that we were flying across the galaxy powered partly by cat poo.
“Do you know what, Old One? I think that I have actually come to like it.” Renay laughed and twirled in her brand-new relish onesie. After weeks of continuous wear, the white dress the Dodgers had given her became less white, and Preston had shredded most of the hem anyway. So, she’d asked Mustard to generate her a new outfit.
“It’ll be easier to run now, at least. I mean, if there was anywhere you could run.”
She sighed as she folded up the white-ish dress and put it into the bag in the corner. “Do you know, Old One, I am surprised to find that I miss running. I did not like the planet at first when we got there. The air and the sky, everything felt much too big. But now I find myself wishing for a big open valley to run through. This should feel like home to me. But I have decided I like wide open places after all.”
“Maybe there just isn’t enough room here for everyone.” I shot a sideways glance at Preston, who was fast asleep, stretched out along the far wall. A circle of silver fur had started forming on his left side about a week ago, but if it was bothering him at all, he didn’t show it.
“I agree, there are probably too many of us here. Old One, into the waste chamber with you.”
“Okay, but if I go, you’re stuck cleaning up after Preston by yourself. And entertaining Mustard.”
She laughed. “I suppose you may stay a bit longer. But as soon as we step out of this ship, I wish to go for a run.”
“I wouldn’t mind eating some real food.”
Mustard piped up excitedly. “You gotta try the snaptastic flavor of Grillo Brand Hot Dog Sausages, dude!”
“No, Mustard, I said food.”
Renay laughed again. “What about when we get home, Old One? I wish to smell the trees in the Enchanted Forest and go to movie night. What do you miss?”
I didn’t want to say what I would really miss. Who I would really miss. It hurt less now, thinking about it. I thought about the life Zoe probably had now, the adventures she’d been on. I knew it was all happening without me, but there was a melancholy satisfaction in knowing that at least it was happening. I knew things would be different when I got back. She would be in her thirties, with a whole lifetime of memories, and I’d just be the kid she had a crush on back in the day.
“Baseball. I miss baseball.”
We were quiet after that. Renay sat by Preston and stroked the white fur of his belly. He rumbled contentedly.
I stared at the ceiling, and thought about what was and what is and what could have been, and waited.
We’d been waiting for some privacy to have this conversation, because we needed to talk without Mustard being able to hear. There wasn’t a lot of space on our vessel, and Mustard didn’t exactly care about privacy or personal space, so there wasn’t any place we could go to avoid him. A few days before our arrival, he started making the calculations for our deceleration and insertion into orbit. When we approached Earth, he had shut down all his non-essential functions until the calculations were done. He called it “extreme concentration.” This was our chance to talk without being interrupted.
Renay and I were sitting together on the Couch, which is what we called the pile of bags in the corner. It wasn’t quite as nice or bouncy as a couch made of light, but we were getting used to it. We stared at Mustard, standing motionless in the middle of the cabin except for the tip of a single tentacle, tracing a small circle slowly in the air.
“What do you think we will really find there? Do you think there will really be anyone who can help?” Renay whispered. We didn’t think Mustard was listening, but we whispered anyway, just out of habit.
I shrugged. “They can’t be any less helpful than the people of Earth.”
“Not true. They helped by giving us Preston.” He was curled up beside Renay, sound asleep. He had gotten too big to fit in her lap, so he mostly slept beside her now.
“You mean, Alberto gave you Preston.” I was surprised at the harsh note in my own voice. Renay just smiled mysteriously and scratched Preston behind the ears.
I tried to change the subject. “Do you think he’
s right about what we’ll find there?”
She shrugged. “I want to trust him. But in my heart, I fear this will be another dead end.”
I feared the same thing. This had seemed like our best option at the time, but the closer we got, the more I worried that we had trusted the lives of everyone we knew to the judgement of a talking sausage. There was nothing to do but wait, and think about all the things that could go wrong.
Preston rolled over and stretched himself out to his full length, which had to be close to two meters now. The silver patch of fur had solidified into a Jaguar logo. Renay’s pet was the newest in a long line of living car commercials that had almost certainly outlived the product they were created to advertise.
Mustard’s tentacle kept twirling. We watched in silence. One way or another, we would know soon enough.
We had arrived.
Mustard was in a quivering frenzy of excitement. I have to admit, his enthusiasm sort of rubbed off on me. My fears and worries were still there, but it was hard to pay attention to them when Mustard was bouncing around the cabin, dancing and singing jingles about sausages and egg rolls and Flavor Implosion Corn Chips. It was like watching a kid sprinting toward the entrance to Disneyland, too excited to just walk.
“My dude. My lady. Are you ready to see the most spectacular sight ever witnessed by human eyes? And also by your primitive eyes?”
Renay giggled. “Show us, Mustard.”
“May I present… Planet Awesome Flavor!”
Mustard turned on view mode, and we looked down at a cotton candy planet. Not literally, though I admit I took a few seconds to think about it. Huge oceans of baby blue, striped with long, narrow daggers of magenta. Orbiting the planet was a cloud of glinting silver satellites, and several gigantic white objects that looked like spindly crustaceans, casting spiny black shadows on the surface of the pale blue ocean below. Tiny golden specks flitted purposefully between the planet and the big crustaceans, like a whole colony of metal ants.