by Brian Simons
Daniel put a hand on her shoulder. “She doesn’t speak for Sagma,” Daniel said.
“I only wish I could verify that,” Alua said. “He still won’t speak to me.” Then she reached into her bag for the sooth syrup she had received from Vernagi. “Here,” she said, handing the vial to Daniel. “As the Regent’s man, I’m sure you’ll put this to better use than I would. What on earth would I do with a sooth syrup?”
“What does it do?” Coral asked.
“It invokes a certain state of mind,” Alua said, “where the only thing you are capable of is the truth. Suffer no delusions, speak no shadows.”
Daniel added the vial to his inventory.
“We should camp here and move north in the morning,” Sybil said. It wasn’t dark yet, but she was probably worried about setting up for Farah’s birthday party.
“Chauncey,” Daniel said, “you stand guard while Alua and Lyla rest. Lyla, you’ll take the second shift.” The hirelings nodded their consent.
“First,” Coral said, pointing to the dead wyverns, “everyone fill up your bags.”
9
Coral logged out and opened her eyes. She took the visor off her face and put it on the bed next to her.
She couldn’t get what Marco had said out of her head. I can see why he likes you so much. Where did that come from?
Nevermind that. Coral’s parents were going to call soon, and then she had to get ready for Farah’s birthday party.
Coral pushed off of her bed and her visor tumbled onto the floor. She was about to pick it up when her computer rang. She rushed to her desk to answer her parents’ call before she missed them.
“Hi Mom and Dad!” she said. Her parents’ webcam streamed a lower quality picture than usual.
“Hi sweetheart!” her mother said. It seemed like the image updated only every other second, so that her mother’s face was always frozen mid-word. At least the audio was clear.
“How’s Belize?”
“We’re not in Belize anymore, dear,” her father answered. “We’re in Sierra Leone.”
“In Africa? You had just started jobs in Central America!” Coral was worried. That transition was too quick.
“The resort we were working at had some problems. It’s… under new management now,” her father said.
“What does that mean?” Coral asked. She conjured up images of masked men with machine guns taking the vacation resort by storm.
Her mother’s smile faltered. Coral knew they were putting a brave face on a scary situation. At first it sounded like a grand adventure for her parents, to travel the world and find bit jobs here and there. Now Coral wondered how safe it really was.
“It just wasn’t meant to be,” her mother said. “It’s much better here. We work for a company called Arbyten, Inc. We’re teaching English to the people here that want to work in customer support. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“That’s the company that makes Travail, Mom,” Coral said.
“The game you work at! What a coincidence.”
So even Arbyten was outsourcing jobs. If a robot couldn’t do it, someone across the globe could, and for pennies on the dollar.
“How are they treating you both?” Coral asked.
“Nothing to complain about, honey.”
Of course they wouldn’t complain, because then Coral would worry. She wanted the truth, but she knew she wouldn’t get it. “Is it at least fun work?” she asked.
“Very engaging,” her mother said. “And how are you dear? You know the property taxes are due soon. If you need help—”
“I’ve got it under control,” Coral lied. The tax bill came in a couple of days ago, but she was so busy with Travail that she didn’t open it.
“Ok, but if you need help, ask for it,” her mother said.
“Well, sugar,” her father said, “it’s late here. We just wanted you to know we’re doing well and enjoying Sierra Leone. Have a good night, we love you!”
“I love you both too,” she said. Coral didn’t disconnect first. She saw so little of her parents now she didn’t want to cut this short.
As her parents fidgeted with the webcam to end the call, her mother shook her head and said, “She never asks for help.” Then the feed cut off.
Great, thanks, Mom. She pushed back from her chair and got up — and felt the crunch of cheap plastic under her foot.
“No! No no no no no!” Coral bent down to pick up her broken Travail visor. The lenses were cracked, but the frames were still intact. She slid the visor onto her face. It perched on her nose just fine, the arms tucked behind her ears firmly.
She jumped onto her bed and logged on quickly to make sure the visor still worked. She reappeared in the desert, just outside Sagma’s temple. Marco stood with his back to her. He was talking to a player and holding his staff. The player had her coin pouch open.
Here, in the sunlight, Coral could see the shape of it. The head of the staff looked like a stone serpent with a spherical ruby gem in its mouth. It was no doubt inspired by the wyverns native to the desert. The red orb glowed just as it had in Vernagi’s hands. The color was a bit off though. Instead of crimson red it lit up a muddy brown. Coral logged back off before anyone had a chance to see her.
Ok, so the visor still worked. Coral had long suspected that the lenses did nothing. Maybe they did something after all. Or maybe the coloration was wrong because something else was broken. Either way, she had to get going.
Coral stuffed her wallet and keys in her pocket. Then she folded her visor and put it in her other pocket. She was meeting up with her Travail friends, might as well keep it handy.
She jogged downstairs and toward the front door. Her hand touched the door handle, but then stopped. She should open the envelope. She was afraid of the number inside, but that wouldn’t change what it was.
She dug her finger through the sealed paper flap and pulled out the property tax assessment.
Mr. & Mrs. Vipond:
Congratulations! Your property has increased in value since the last property tax assessment. The total assessment for the land and improvements is $412,000. Your tax due is $5,348. To avoid late penalties, please pay in full no later than thirty days from receipt of this letter.
Sincerely,
Philadelphia Board of Revision of Taxes
She should definitely not have looked at that. What did a panic attack feel like? Probably this. The money Coral had saved up before Travail was mostly gone now, and the money she earned in the game was less than half the tax bill. She wondered whether the city had made up a bogus value for her parents’ small house just to extract extra taxes from them.
With a shaking hand, she turned the doorknob and let herself out of the house. She’d just have to play harder in Travail. Her mother was right; she was not going to ask for help. She was going to figure this out herself.
Coral stopped into the Wilkersons’ diner near her house to pick up a cake for Farah. It was a small expense, and Coral didn’t otherwise have a present for the birthday girl. When she walked in, she came face to face with the robot that had replaced her.
“Welcome to Welkerzons Diner,” the bot said, stumbling over the Wilkersons’ name as she always did.
“Thanks, Coral 2.0,” Coral said.
“Excuse me?” the bot responded.
“Nothing.” Coral looked around but didn’t see Mr. or Mrs. Wilkerson. “I’d like to buy a cake please,” Coral said. “Chocolate with vanilla icing if you have it.”
“I will bring you one full cake,” the bot said. “Please feed money into the register machine and it will dispense change.”
The bot turned to walk away. A round logo was stamped onto the nape of her neck, like a tattoo. “Furnished by Finney’s Pianola Co.” Coral turned toward the register, which displayed the price of a cake, plus tax. She paid, retrieved a cake, and left without ever interacting with a real person. It was the first time a visit to the old diner felt so hollow.
At least the cake itself came from
a real person. Unlike the cakes sold in grocery stores, which were all mass produced by giant machines, Coral knew Mrs. Wilkerson still baked from scratch.
With her cake in hand, Coral took the bus to West Philadelphia. She followed Sybil’s directions and found the house. It was a huge old Victorian on Baltimore Avenue. Coral was impressed with the house’s grandeur until she pulled open the front door.
Inside, the tile floor of the foyer had a web of cracks cutting across the tiles and grout. It was as if the floor underneath had begun pulling apart and the tiles couldn’t stretch to accommodate the distortion. The hardwood floors in the next room were blackened and rotting in places, especially near a garbage can with two inches of water in it. Coral assumed the house had a leak somewhere.
The house was dark, but that was to be expected. Coral kept her house dark during the day too. Only the rich would waste electricity lighting a house when the sun was up. “Hello?” Coral yelled.
“Back here!” Sybil replied.
Coral walked through the house holding a boxed cake in one hand. The kitchen was clean, but full of outdated appliances, some rusting in spots. The linoleum was peeling up from the floor in large flakes. Coral pushed through the back door and found her friends all there.
Sybil guided a smaller girl toward Coral by the shoulders. “Farah, this is my friend Coral, she brought you a birthday cake.” The girl smiled and took the box from Coral. “Are you gonna say thank you or what?”
“Thank you, Coral,” Farah said and then walked away, back to a group of other thirteen year olds crowded around a picnic table. There must have been a dozen of them, eating hot dogs and potato chips while the radio played.
“She’s happy but shy,” Sybil said with a shrug. She and Coral walked over to a few lawn chairs set up around a patio table. Daniel and Sal were both sitting there.
“So he’s just going to go around Travail begging people for money? For that weird old woman?” Daniel was saying.
“It’s Marco’s choice,” Sal said, “and it’s for a good cause. I donated to it.”
“When?” Sybil asked.
“Before we logged off. There’s an option on the status menu when you bring it up. I’ll probably donate some more later. It feels good to help.”
“Sal, you can barely afford rent,” she said. “Have you lost your mind?”
Sal just smiled back at her. Something was off about him. He reached across the table toward a pile of games.
“Have you ever played this one?” Sal asked, placing a triangular block of wood in the center of the table. Everyone shook their heads as he placed colorful pegs into each hole.
“It’s a two-player game. You take your color of peg and jump over one peg into an open hole, then you remove the peg you jumped. You can only move if there’s a peg to jump over. The goal is to have the fewest pegs left at the end of the game.”
Coral reached over tentatively and moved a red peg into an open hole. “Where’d you learn how to play this?”
“I played a few times with my older brothers when I was a kid. I haven’t seen this game in years though,” he said, jumping over a blue peg.
Coral and Sal took turns until the only pegs left were orphans, stranded in corners with no adjacent pegs left to jump. “You win, Sal,” she said. “I have three pegs left to your two.”
“My turn,” Sybil said, helping to reset the pegs.
“No fair though,” Sal said, “since you’re the one who owns it. I’ll bet you’re a whiz at it.”
“I don’t really play games,” Sybil said. “Travail excluded.”
Coral watched them move pegs across the small board until the game was over. “I win again!” Sal said. “See, there’s nothing wrong up here,” he said, tapping his temple with his forefinger.
Daniel reached across to set up some pegs when Coral pointed across the backyard. “You have an admirer,” she said. Every few seconds, Farah would look over at Daniel and then say something behind cupped hands to her friends. “I think it’s cute,” Coral said.
“I’ll be back,” Daniel said. He left the pegs where they were and went to sit with Farah and her friends for a while.
Coral turned to Sybil, “You have one of the largest homes I’ve ever seen. It has so much character.”
“It’s a dilapidated mess, but thank you,” Sybil said. “It was falling apart when I was growing up, but after my father left I just couldn’t keep up with the repairs. I’m surprised it’s still standing.”
“You mentioned your father before,” Coral said. She was dying to know what had happened, but she was too afraid to ask directly last time the topic came up. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Sal lurched forward in his seat. “What kind of repairs do you need done?”
Sybil’s eyes locked onto Coral’s for a moment. She looked like she might answer her. Then she turned to Sal and said, “The kitchen cabinets are loose, for starters. I’m afraid they’re going to fall right off the wall.”
“I can fix that,” Sal said.
“That’s something you can just do?” she asked.
“I’ve always lived in crumby apartments with lazy landlords. The internet taught me to be my own handyman.”
They played a few more rounds of the peg game. Coral wondered what Sybil would have said if Sal hadn’t been there to intervene, but she couldn’t just ask again. The moment was gone.
Daniel came back over to the group. “The birthday girl has requested her cake,” he said.
“I’ll set it up,” Coral said. “Do you have candles?”
“No,” Sybil said, “and thank you for bringing cake. After the hot dogs and chips, I didn’t have the cash to pick one up myself.”
“No problem,” Coral said. She set out a few dishes and forks, and then pulled the cake out of the box.
The biggest surprise was when they sang happy birthday. Sybil’s voice was like an electric can opener, shrill and uneven. It looked like Travail offered her an escape from her real life vocal cords.
When it got late, Coral, Sal, and Daniel got up to leave together. They all walked north to Market Street and waited at the bus stop. Sal’s bus arrived first, taking him deeper into West Philly.
“Daniel,” Coral said once they were alone, “back in Havenstock, when that Elf Mage threw a fireball at you—” Daniel turned away from Coral. She thought about letting it drop, but there was something about that battle that didn’t feel right. “I’ve seen you take a serious hit before. I know what you look like when you’re hurt. That Elf Mage couldn’t have done much damage, but you looked like you were bracing for the end of the world. What happened?”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Coral worried the bus would come and take one of them away, destroying her opportunity to connect with him.
“I just lost it, Coral. I thought I was going to burn to death again. The second my armor warmed up, all I could feel was adrenaline and fear. I couldn’t even control myself, I just wanted to take off running for the hills. If I weren’t lying on the ground with an elf on my back, I probably would have.”
“Because it reminded you,” she said, swallowing hard against the realization of how deeply Travail had wounded him, “of that day we met. And that undead dragon—”
“It wasn’t even the possibility of dying in the game,” he said. “I was afraid of feeling that way again, the insufferable heat, the physical sensation of my skin melting off of my body, the pain all over, inside my lungs, the oxygen igniting inside of me. I can’t do that again.”
“I didn’t realize the extent of it,” she said, placing a hand on his knee. “If you need to talk, I’m here.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I just need some time for that memory to wear off.”
“The game is too real sometimes,” Coral said.
“Yeah. Too real.”
The bus was a block away, but Coral felt guilty leaving Daniel to sit alone at the bus stop.
“Do you have you
r visor with you?”
“Sure,” he said. “Is that silly, to bring it with me everywhere?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Do you want to come over my house?”
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” he said.
“Exactly. People are desperate, you shouldn’t be out here alone waiting for a bus. No one’s using my parents’ room.”
The bus squeaked to a stop in front of them. Coral stood up and looked back at Daniel. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
10