by A. J. Markam
“Richard, go get some drinks,” Slothfart ordered.
“Why me?”
“Isn’t that what you do? Help everybody else and heal them while they’re taking damage?”
“What does that have to do with alcohol?”
“Cuz I need some alcoholic healin’,” Slothfart said, and banged his empty flagon down on the table. “And you’re the healer.”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant to – ”
“Everyone in favor of Richard buying the next round, say ‘aye,’” Slothfart said.
Russell, Jen, and Slothfart all shouted, “Aye!”
“The ayes have it,” Slothfart said. “Go on.”
“This is outrageous,” Richard grumbled.
“It’s called democracy,” Slothfart said. “Deal with it.”
Richard looked at me with exaggerated dignity and said, “Well, at least I have one ally in the group.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Slothfart said. “I want another Pestilential Ale. And get me a shot of Death Root, too.”
I watched as Richard hoisted himself up out of the booth and walked over to the bar, still grumbling in annoyance.
“So, I guess the next question is, where do we go from here?” Slothfart asked.
Jen shrugged. “I figure we can pick up a new quest tomorrow and see where it leads.”
“Can we go to Sillomar?” I asked, pretty much out of nowhere.
Everybody looked at me.
“Why do you want to go to Sillomar?” Jen asked.
I didn’t have a good answer for that.
“…because I’ve heard it’s pretty?”
Richard, Jen, and Slothfart all looked at each other.
“I don’t know if ‘pretty’ is the word I would use to describe it,” Jen said.
“Pretty freakin’ awesome, though,” Slothfart said. “Lots of pubs.”
“And nudie bars,” Russell grinned.
“We are NOT going to Sillomar for the nudie bars,” Jen scowled.
“Of course not! We’re going purely for the joy of the game and adventuring! Obviously.” Slothfart then turned to me and wiggled his eyebrows with a grin.
“Yeah. Obviously,” Jen said sarcastically. Then she asked me in a suspicious tone of voice, “Why Sillomar?”
“I… I just heard it was really cool.”
“From your ex-girlfriend?”
“Jimmy has a girlfrieeeend?” Slothfart said like a second-grader going oooOOOOooo!
“Did you guys bone in Sillomar?” Russell asked lecherously.
“He’s only been in the game for a day,” Jennifer said.
“Plenty of time to bone.”
“She told me about it once,” I said, “and I sort of wanted to go… but not with her. With you guys.”
Jennifer still looked suspicious, but she shrugged. “Okay… I guess we could do some quests on the way to Sillomar.”
“Sounds good to me,” Slothfart said. “As long as I have booze and weed, I’m good.”
“And nudie bars!” Russell exclaimed.
“And nudie bars,” Slothfart agreed.
“Why the hell would you guys want to look at naked orcs and goblins?” Jen asked.
“Ew!” Slothfart said.
“Bleh!” Russell spat.
“Humans and elves only, thanks,” Slothfart snorted.
“Especially elves,” Russell leered. “Maybe Jen here will do a wet T-shirt contest, eh?”
He was frozen again by the time Richard came back to the table with the drinks.
“What did he say this time?” Richard asked as he passed out the flagons.
Jen glared at Slothfart. “It doesn’t bear repeating.”
“Yeah,” the orc said. “Totally out of line.” Then he gave me a look like Hoo boy.
“By the way,” Jennifer said, “we’re heading for Sillomar tomorrow.”
Richard looked surprised. Well, as surprised as Richard ever looked – which wasn’t much.
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Nudie bars, dude,” Slothfart grinned.
“So glad you included me in the vote.”
“Why, do you have anything against Sillomar?” Jen asked.
“No, not precisely – but I do like to be consulted on these sorts of things.”
“It’s called democracy, dude,” Slothfart said. “All in favor of going to Sillomar, raise your hand.”
Jenna and Slothfart raised theirs. Russell flexed and broke his ice encasing just enough to put up his arm… and I timidly raised mine.
Richard gave me a mock dirty look. “You traitor.”
“Sorry,” I winced.
“Turnin’ on Richard like that – you’re a right bastard, Jimmy,” Russell said, slapping me on the back with his tiny goblin hand. “That’s why I like you.”
30
The next three days were a lot of fun – at least inside the game. Jennifer, Russell, Richard, Slothfart and I would roam over the countryside as we headed toward Sillomar, picking up quests along the way. We fought gelatinous blobs with half-digested remains of warriors suspended in their bodies. We cleared a village of gremlins, little half-monkey/half-lizard creatures that had infested the town. We fought a two-headed ogre that nearly killed us all before we took it down. And we built up a nice assortment of armor, weapons, and coins along the way.
In the real world, things weren’t quite so peachy. I had to call my mom again and lie to her that I was still in Vegas. That didn’t go over well – especially when I could hear my grandmother yelling in the background as my mom was on the phone.
“Tell him that he needs to come back home and help his brother!” Baba said in Russian.
I don’t think I was supposed to hear it, but I caught Danny in the background saying, “I’m not a chop shop. Let him stay in Vegas.”
So the videogame was a welcome vacation from reality.
I ate sandwiches and fast food provided by the FBI agents when I got out of the pod, and then went back in and lived a life way more exciting than anything I could’ve dreamed in the real world.
The only downside was when my friends logged off around 1 or 2 in the morning. They didn’t have long-term immersion pods, so they had to get some sleep – unlike me. But until then, we would either drink in inns where we stayed the night, or sit around campfires and drink canteens full of alcohol as we told stories about our lives in the real world. Either way, there was a lot of drinking going on.
I had to lie a lot, unfortunately. I told them as much truth as I could – like how my dad had died when I was young and I had boosted cars as a teenager – but everything veered into fiction after that. I told them that I had worked in my brother’s auto shop for the past ten years.
“How old are you anyway, dude?” Slothfart asked.
“Twenty-eight. Why, how old are you guys?”
“Never ask a woman how old she is,” Jen said, waggling her finger as she sat beside the fire. The firelight on her face made her look even more beautiful, highlighting her cheekbones and full lips.
“She’s 26,” Russell volunteered.
“That wasn’t your secret to tell!” she laughed, and cast a handful of snow at him.
“What about the rest of you?” I asked.
“Twenty-five,” Richard said.
“Same here,” Slothfart said.
“Twenty-two,” Russell said.
“Wow, you’re the baby of the group,” I joked.
Slothfart picked him up and held him the air like a doll. “That’s why he’s so small!”
“Put me down, you stupid git!” Russell yelled.
When the orc finally set him down again, Russell took out his war hammer. “Do that again, and I’ll pound yer head down yer neck and out yer arsehole.”
“Don’t you just love it how the Brits always say ‘arsehole’?” Slothfart chuckled. “It’s like, I can’t even take offense – it’s just so adorable.”
&nbs
p; “We’ll see if you think it’s adorable when yer head’s pokin’ out of yer anus like a turtleneck sweater,” Russell threatened.
“Boys,” Jen said tiredly, like a mother refereeing between two children. Then she turned to Richard. “Did you hear back from that company yet?”
“I did. I have an interview next Tuesday.”
“Cool!” she exclaimed.
“Nice!” Slothfart said.
“Bloody hell,” the goblin complained. “What are we goin’ to do if you go and get a job?”
“Get a job yourself, perhaps?” Richard asked.
“You know I don’t wanna do that!” Russell said cheerfully. “I like bein’ on the dole, sittin’ around all day, and playin’ video games!”
“Yes, well, some of us have to be responsible adults.”
“Screw being responsible adults,” Slothfart said.
“Here, here,” Jen said, and raised her flask of alcohol.
“I’ll second that,” Russell said, and took a slug from his own canteen.
Richard sighed. “Yes, well… I don’t really want to get a job, either.” He raised his cup. “To video games… and being irresponsible adults.”
We all hooted in agreement, then drank again.
“What’s your toast, dead guy?” Slothfart asked me.
I thought for a second… then said, “To not having to pay forever for your mistakes.”
The group looked at each other – then shrugged and drank.
The days were awesome, and the nights hanging out with my new friends were even better. I’d never had real friends.
Let me amend that. I thought Rod was a real friend. And then I found out he was just a scum-sucking traitor.
The other guys I’d hung out with were always criminals. We’d do a job together and I’d end up drinking with them between heists. In prison, my so-called ‘friends’ were people I attached myself to in order to make it through alive. Other than survival, I had nothing in common with them.
So drinking with people that I liked was a welcome change.
But eventually, they would all have to log off. While they were gone, I would sit and work at unlocking the two puzzle boxes I had bought with Arkova.
The iron puzzle box was the easier of the two. But with 54 different locks – six sides of the cube times nine squares per side – there was plenty to practice on.
It turns out the locks in the videogame had their own logic that wasn’t so dissimilar from the real world. With most real-world locks, you have a cylinder with a bunch of tiny springs that go up and down. You want the springs to individually move up to the right height, and that triggers the mechanism that allows you to turn the lock. That’s why a key has uneven edges on it – because the springs fit into the grooves, and thus are automatically at different heights.
The thing is, most real-world locks are easy to pick. You just move the cylinders up and down with your picks until you trigger the right combination of different heights. It’s easier if you have a ‘feel’ for small vibrations through your fingers, but it’s not terribly difficult.
These locks were similar, except there were different tools and different kinds of mechanisms to trigger. I mentioned a corkscrew and a ‘cross’ implement before; they fit into specific slots inside the locks. There were also hooks, tiny bars at right angles, and some razor-thin implements. All of them fit into different parts of the lock.
It was confusing at first, but I eventually figured out that each side of the cube relied more heavily on one of the lock picking instruments. Not only that, but one side of the cube was slightly darker than all the rest. I realized that side was meant to be the top, and it helped you orient the rest of the cube.
Once you knew which side was up, I discovered that the locks progressed from super easy in the upper left-hand corner of each cube face to very difficult in the lower right-hand corner. The most difficult locks usually required three tools at once to unlock them.
Once you correctly picked the lock, the surface of the tiny square popped out with a Click!
Imagine a Rubik’s cube for a second. At each of the eight corners of the puzzle, those corner cubes have three sides – and thus three different locks.
You might ask, ‘How the hell can the same corner cube have three different locks in it?’
Magic, I guess.
Magic was definitely the issue with the other puzzle. Like Arkova said, each side represented one of the different types of magic in the game: water, fire, earth, air, dark, and light. And the different locks required picks enchanted with that particular type of magic. So you’d enchant one pick with water magic, another pick with fire magic, another with air, dark magic, light magic, and so on.
Enchantment was weird. I had different ‘recipes’ for enchantment, which imbued different types of magic in the picks. I would basically line everything up with the right powders and rune stone combinations, wave the wand and think Enchant, and after a flash of light, the pick would glow with that particular type of magic.
Did I mention that a pick only held a charge for one use? So if you screwed up and used a water pick on a fire lock, it was done. Finito. You had to redo the enchantment on it.
Yeah. Magic sucked.
Fifty four keyholes on that Rubik’s cube, too. With this one, though, the center locks in each side were the easiest. On the copper side, the center only required an earth-enchanted pick. On the crystal side, it only required an air-enchanted pick. But the corner locks – the ones that bordered three different sides – would require three picks: an earth, dark, and water pick, for instance.
It was a pain in the ass.
But gradually I began to get a ‘feel’ for the different types of picks and even the locks, just by touching them. A fire lock radiated heat. A water lock felt cool to the touch. A dark energy lock felt like an uncomfortable electrical current was running through your fingers. A light energy felt like your fingers were tingly.
Then I had to learn to differentiate between a cool, uncomfortable, spiky-feeling lock (water, dark magic, earth) and a hot, tingly, silky-feeling lock (fire, light magic, air).
Arkova had said that eventually I’d get to the point where the locks combined both magic AND mechanical-style locks.
I was dreading that day, let me tell you. But apparently it wasn’t going to happen below Level 200.
I leveled up way faster in lock-picking and enchantment than my regular combat skills. For one thing, every time you successfully picked a new lock, you got a point added to your lock-picking skills. Two cubes with 54 locks apiece = 108 points. And if you picked the same lock repeatedly, you didn’t get more points, but you got faster – and once you reached a certain speed, you got another point. So 108 x 2 = 216 levels, theoretically.
Over the course of three days, I’d been able to unlock 49 of the mechanical locks, plus 37 of the magical ones. I also got pretty fast on 27 of the mechanical locks and 14 of the magical ones. So 49 + 37 + 27 + 14 = 127. Plus I’d started at 50 because of my Talent Points, so my total Lock Picking level was 177.
For Enchantment, you got points every time you enchanted a new ‘recipe.’ So the first time I enchanted a fire lock pick, I got five points. Then I didn’t get any more points for enchanting just fire – but I got five points for the first fire/dark combo enchantment, and five more for the first fire/air combos, and so on. I got up to 85 pretty quickly, which was cool… but I shuddered to think what I was going to have to do to get to the top levels of Enchanting.
Although Slothfart heartily approved of my lock picking, he teased me sometimes about my dedication to practicing Enchantment.
“Dude, you do know that doing a profession is total bullshit, right? Like, until you reach level 400 or something, the most you can sell anything for is five or ten silver. And by the time you get that good at skinning or mining or whatever, you’re already at a combat level where killing one good mob will get you two or three gold. It’s like you’re jerking off for pennies w
hen you could be banging chicks for a hundred a pop.”
“Banging chicks for a hundred a pop?!” Russell hooted. “I’ll gladly take that job!”
“It’s called a gigolo,” Jen said. “But I don’t think the older ladies are going to be lining up for goblin lovin’.”
“It’s the best type of lovin’, luv,” Russell said as he grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “You should try it. I’ll only charge ya fifty a pop.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough to have sex with you, Russell.”
“Well, now, this is what I call negotiation!” he said, and rubbed his hands together. “How about a hundred?”
He got frozen again for that one.
“Seriously, though, dude,” Slothfart said to me, “you should spend your time killing stuff and leveling up instead of sticking your pick in holes.”
He stopped, then snorted with laughter. “Sticking your pick in holes…”
“I’m just waiting for the day when we hit the big time,” I said, “and there’s a treasure chest with something absolutely epic inside.”
“Yeah, you stupid orc, don’t discourage him!” Russell said once he’d broken out of the iceberg. “Let him be a studious bloke if he wants! It’s benefiting the rest of us, you wanker!”
“I’m just sayin’.”
“What your profession?” I asked.
The orc grew silent.
“Tailoring, wasn’t it?” Richard asked.
The orc blushed. Russell snickered.
“Shut up!” Slothfart yelled. “I just happen to like sewing, that’s all!”
“So you can sew yourself a pretty, pretty dress?” Russell asked.
“Or a nice cozy hat?” Richard said.
“Shut up!” Slothfart grumbled, then mumbled to himself, “I knew I should’ve chosen mining… somethin’ manly…”
“Just a bit of advice, Jimmy,” Richard said with mock solemnity. “Never pick a profession while you’re high.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time!” Slothfart shouted.
“It’s all right,” Richard told him soothingly. “If you can’t be a good example, at least you can be a cautionary tale.”
I even had a nice moment or two alone with Jennifer. There was one time after we’d finished a tough day of questing, and she and I were standing on a field overlooking the horizon as the sun went down. It was a gorgeous sunset – pink, purple, and orange, like the sky was on fire.