The Goddess Quest

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "Thanks."

  Alex steered Derald's pickup southwest toward the hospital, a nasty smile of anticipation on her face. She was so looking forward to crushing the bitch. Alex wasn't even thinking of the monetary or power awards or moving onto the next stage; she kept picturing Henna-Dr. Killdear's face snarling defiantly before it crumbled.

  She knew that overconfidence, making assumptions – even gloating – were neither wise nor becoming. But where was the fun if you couldn't imagine your opponents' humiliating demise? On the other hand, Alex had trouble imagining anything more humiliating than defeat by a slimy sociopath, regardless of her power awards. Clever she might be, but she was no Mage. Probably didn't even crack the Executive Categories. A Journeyman. Purchased her flying and additional power(s) on the Awards Exchange. No self-respecting gamer would ever do that. Plenty of well-to-do amateurs did, but even the richest tourists weren't usually willing to throw massive funds at power-accumulation when most awards were only a few days to, at most, a month's worth of special abilities. The Founders/GM weren't profligate with their awards. People had to work hard to earn them, and at any moment, only a small number of Grade 10 powers were available at a premium price. Doubtful that Henna-Lawstone's owner had scored anything beyond a Grade 5, but one never knew.

  Alex turned into the Manson Health Center's parking lot. The thirty-space parking area was in need of resurfacing – she'd dodged a couple of softball-sized potholes en route to her spot – and the dusty old three-story brick building squatted in sullen rebuke to the twenty-first century. Alex got out and leaned against Derald's truck, surveying the building, mapping out possible strategies. It wouldn't do to just strut in there and squash the doctor like the repulsive bug she was. Some subtlety to avoid tipping off the local fuzz and by extension DARE was called for. She planned to strike fast and hard, but discreetly. Ideally, none of the staff would know anything was wrong until she was long gone.

  A nurse emerged from the front doors wheeling a senior citizen to a waiting handicap van. Opportunity knocking? Alex crossed the parking lot, adopting a stumbling shuffle, catching the nurse's eye as she deposited the old man in the van.

  "Sir," she said. "Do you need some help?"

  "That wheelchair might help." Alex improvised. "Just took a fall on a construction site. Banged myself up a bit. Hit my head..."

  The young nurse rolled the vacated chair over to her hastily and Alex plunked down. Just as the doctor ordered. She pasted a minimally intelligent construction-worker expression over her burgeoning smile.

  "Let's get you inside," said the nurse. "We'll get a doctor to check you out."

  With any luck, that would mean Lawsone. With a hospital this size, not a lot of alternatives. Assuming she was on duty now.

  "Thanks," Alex said. "Really appreciate it."

  Inside, a matronly nurse waddled over to meet them. Her younger co-worker apprised her of Alex's fall.

  "How far up?" she asked Alex. "Where did you land?"

  "Uh, two floors. Hit the gravel." She touched her head. "Kinda fuzzy..."

  "Get him in the ER, Suze. I'll page Dr. Lawsone."

  Alex struggled to look tragic and not grin as the young nurse wheeled her at a brisk walk down a hall and into the emergency ward. A burly, thirtiesh dude helped the nurse hoist Alex out of his chair onto a bed. The matronly nurse arrived with a blanket, which they unrolled over him.

  "Thank you all," said Alex, her attempt to match their southern accents sounding like a valley girl on male steroids.

  While the burly dude slapped on the obligatory blood pressure cuff and the matronly nurse questioned her about the details of her fall, Alex's gaze roamed the room in search of potential weapons. If Lawsone had acquired a protection spell, for instance, she might be invulnerable to a direct TK strike but not to something telekinetically directed to strike her. Victory in a battle between "augmented" avatars often depended on subtle nuances and logic, not brute power.

  The young nurse reached for Alex's cap, but Alex gently deflected her hand.

  "If you don't mind, darlin', I'd rather the doctor did that." The longer she could postpone the evil doctor from recognizing her, the better.

  "Sir, we need to see any injuries to the head you may have sustained," said the matron-nurse with a puzzled frown.

  "Sure thing, ma'am. Just a little sensitive about my hat, if you know what I mean."

  Their expressions indicated they hadn't the faintest notion of what he meant. But screw them. Even a small element of surprise could be crucial. She pushed the bill down over her eyes and subtly moved the helpful trio back from her with a gentle mental push. Perhaps not gentle enough, as the young nurse stumbled backward and knocked over a cart brimming with medical supplies while the burly dude dropped to one knee and the older nurse fell on her ample ass with a startled woof!

  That was when "Dr. Ana Lawsone" made her much-anticipated entrance. She took it all in, a crinkle of question between her dark eyes – a crinkle that hardened into suspicion in the space of a second. She was obviously a quick study.

  So let the games begin.

  Alex drove the full 4000 pounds of telekinetic force in a narrow beam straight into that crinkle. Her forehead imploded. Blood, brain, and bone blew out and spattered in a roughly conical pattern on the walls behind her. Henna/Lawsone crumpled like the proverbial Stephen King ragdoll.

  The young nurse screamed. The burly guy started heaving up his breakfast. The older nurse swooned back on the floor.

  Alex pushed off the hospital bed, eyes on the collapsed figure, body coiled like a jungle cat's. Too easy. She readied another TK punch. But of course there was no life in the corpse. No one could survive having their brains blown out.

  Except in the Verse.

  Dr. Lawsone sat up, her head miraculously restored. Resurrection award. Alex leaped to one side, feeling the rough hand of telekinetic force shove past and punch a body-sized hole in the wall where she'd just been. Alex lashed out in nearly the same moment with a rib-crunching blast to the woman's chest. Lawsone rocked back, but appeared unhurt. She'd raised her TK shield, just as Alex had – an instant before the doctor's counterstrike knocked her back against the wall.

  Grade 6, Alex guessed. Anything less wouldn't have penetrated her defense. Anything more and she'd be toast. Even a one-grade advantage was usually decisive, everything else being equal. Which it rarely was.

  The burly dude and the young nurse dragged the older nurse to her feet and stumbled, gasping, from a room trembling with invisible powers as Lawsone-Henna's resurrected self and Alex circled each other. Alex leaped sideways as the evil doctor/highwayman unleashed another TK broadside at her. Funny thing about telekinetics: you actually had to aim and focus them for maximum effect. Also, sustaining a constant force was draining, and just like in the movies, you risked the cliché of bleeding out of your orifices if you pushed too long and too hard.

  Predictably, Lawsone got impatient with Alex's dodging and attempted to seize her bodily. Big – amateur – mistake. Attempting to ensnare her telekinetically required that she lower her shield. Alex snapped a punch to her forehead and she dropped. The fact that her head was still intact indicated she'd partly raised her shield in time. Alex struck her in the ribs, and the doctor grunted. Her shield was still there but weakened. She might be dying or might recover, but now Alex had shot a good portion of her TK load and she needed to practice a little energy conservation of her own before administering the coup de grace.

  The doctor's field halted Alex's approach about seven feet from her. The woman's dark eyes regarded her savagely.

  "You," she hissed.

  "What gave me away?"

  Alex circled her, probing her field. Lawsone had wisely condensed her protective field to within a few feet around her, sparing her energy and increasing its strength. Alex couldn't penetrate it from above or the sides. But that was where a higher IQ and basic experience came into play. The ungood doctor, she guessed, was not thinking of he
r protective field in three full dimensions.

  "I have a higher grade telekinetics," Lawsone grated through her teeth. "You can't hurt me. When I recover I will remove your head."

  "Thanks for the warning, Henna. I guess I'd better run for it, then." Alex's amiable smile hardened. "Or I could just kill you where you lie."

  Alex relished the flash of fear in her face for a full second before shaping a portion of the wood floor beneath her into a thick shard and jamming it up into the back of her skull. Lawsone's mouth formed a small and shocked "O." Which widened as Alex worked the shard in until the tip protruded between her parted lips – as if she were spitting up a giant, bloody toothpick.

  "I..." Her lips slapped together and apart. "Find you...in the Real..."

  "Rest in pieces...bitch."

  The virtual doctor's eyes glazed over.

  The sound of multiple vehicles rolling up and screeching to a halt in the front parking lot intruded on Alex's exultant reverie. The boys and girls in blue. Alex sprinted out of the ER and down a hall toward a rear exit. Cracking the door revealed two silently flashing cop cars parked thirty feet away and two pairs of men aiming rifles at her over their hoods. Alex closed the door and warped the locking mechanism into the steel jamb.

  She sprinted up three flights of stairs to the top floor, wondering if she'd missed an opportunity with those two cop cars. But that opportunity would've almost certainly required killing them. If it came to it, she could brute-force her way out of this situation, but she was looking for a gentler solution.

  No sign of nurses or doctors on the third floor – she guessed they were cowering somewhere hoping to stay out of harm's way – but there were a few patients. Most were in bed, but one older dude was pedaling away on a stationary bike in an exercise room at the end of the hall. The room had a balcony where a couple of elderly women were playing cards in the sun.

  Inspiration struck.

  "Can I borrow your bike?" Alex asked.

  The man grumbled and offered some flimsy resistance as Alex hoisted him gently but firmly off the stationary bike and took his place. The balcony's glass door slid open by her command. Now came the fun part.

  She'd ridden an object – a motorbike – under TK control exactly once before. Now she hoped the old adage about riding bikes applied. Alex popped the four restraining bolts and lifted the bike and her a few feet off the ground, swiveling toward the open sliding glass door. Cards flew from varicose-veined hands as Alex glided out onto the balcony. The two elderly women watched with saucer-eyes and gaping mouths when Alex cruised past.

  "Ladies," she said. "Nice day for a bike ride, huh?"

  She launched her ride over the banister into open space. Below, a half-dozen flashing cop cars attended the front and back of the building, their rifles riveted to the entrance and rear exit. None of them looked up. People thinking in two dimensions were proving rather helpful today.

  Alex eased the bike along several meters above the tall oak on that side of the building, slowly picking up speed, testing her TK wings. So far so good. She rose higher, hoping if someone glanced up they'd think she was a mutant pelican or something. Steven Spielberg would be proud – or profoundly disturbed.

  She spotted a row of bikes at the front of a building – perhaps a library or a school – and dropped swiftly out of the sky. Time to exchange her flying exercise bike for a less attention-grabbing ride. She snapped the lock on a mountain bike and hopped on. She pedaled along at high speed, earthbound, back toward the motel and Derald in Manson. Two cop cars whizzed by, sirens blasting, racing toward the hospital. The officers didn't even glance at her. Just some dude out riding his bike on a warm summer day.

  Alex walked in on a grimly frowning Derald. A music video was playing on the TV. "What if God was one of us?" some chick was crooning.

  "Jeez," he said. "I heard some cop cars roar by. Was that about you?"

  "Yep. Had a bit of a scuffle with Dr. Evil at the hospital."

  "Did you..." He swallowed. "Is she...?"

  "Dead? Yes. Virtually." Alex dragged her backpack onto the bed and pulled out a handful of cash. "Look, Derald, I need to go. Taking a few hundred dollars – the rest is yours. Your pickup's parked at the hospital, keys under the front seat, as promised."

  "How far is the hospital again?"

  "A few miles. You could take the bike I've got parked outside."

  "Did you steal it?"

  "Sure did."

  "Then I'll walk." Derald sat slumped on the bed, staring glumly at the floor.

  "I'm fairly sure one of the nurses will connect me with your truck," said Alex. "Even if she doesn't, someone will probably make a connection through a process of elimination. So maybe the best idea is to report it stolen right now. Just make up some story about a crazy guy who took it from you with augmented powers."

  "All right." Derald raised his eyes to meet hers. "It's just...I feel like I gotta see this through. To the end, you know?"

  "That would be problematic."

  "What if a god walked among us?" the song continued behind her. Alex turned with a puzzled twinge to the TV. She was sure that wasn't the correct lyric. On the screen, across the singer's face, a message in bold white print had appeared:

  Congratulations, Dionysus3556! You are the first to solve Stage Four!

  You have been awarded 300,000 OD, which includes a $150,000 bonus for being first.

  You have also been awarded Grade 5 physical immunity.

  Grade 5 immunity. Enough to neutralize knife thrusts, standard high-powered rifle bullets, up to Grade 5 telekinetics, and a variety of other bodily insults stemming from fire, concussion, electricity, gas, and even bacterial or viral. Pretty much anything that could hurt a person would either be repelled or reduced. High-powered weapons – including explosives, .50 caliber or greater rifle rounds, or awarded powers above Grade 5 – could overwhelm it, but it was nothing to sneer at.

  Now for your next clue:

  A service built on speed –

  "Why are you staring at the television?" Derald asked. "You look like you're seeing a ghost."

  Alex waved him off. "Just give me a minute."

  A service built on speed

  Sometimes delivered on a skate

  It fills a convenient need

  With products not so great

  "Huh," said Alex.

  "What is it?"

  "The next clue."

  "All I see is Joan Osborne singing about God." Derald rose and moved closer to the screen. "Used to be one of my favorite songs as a kid. Inspirational, you know?"

  That might explain a few things. Alex shook her head. She dumped the remaining cash on the bed and shouldered the empty kid's backpack.

  "Gotta go, dude."

  "If that's the way it has to be."

  Alex extended her hand. Derald shuffled to his feet and clasped it.

  "Tell you what," she said. "I may check back with you when this is all over. Can't promise, but I might." She paused. "Thanks for your help. For everything."

  "You could've just taken whatever you wanted and killed me. Thanks for not doing that."

  Alex gave him a rueful smile. "I'm glad I didn't."

  Chapter 18

  AS A CHILD, ALEX had often dreamed of riding a bike on a freeway. Zipping along, pedaling extra hard going up hills or passing someone, waiting for the CHP to pull her over (bikes prohibited on the freeway). And now here she was, riding north at highway speeds on a mountain bike thanks to her telekinetics – though on a rural road, not a highway – slowing and pretending to pedal when she encountered a car. Heck, she could practically pedal at highway speeds with her 3x strength (assuming the gears and chain could withstand that), but with her mind...she didn't know her limits. She guessed she could pedal fast enough to spin or burn the tires right off the bike.

  In the more remote areas, Alex launched into the sky and really got moving. Hard to guess the speed, but the roaring wind tested her 3x grip to stay on the bike.
Unfortunate Verse rules wouldn't let her fly her body around via telekinetics, but that wasn't proving to be much of a limitation.

  Alex had a prospect: Mac's Green Drive-In of Madison, Wisconsin, "Famous For Its FDA-Certified Organic Grass-Fed Burgers and French Fries!" The potatoes were grass-fed? The number of iconic drive-ins all over the country, complete with girls on skates, surprised her. But Mac's had one noteworthy advantage: a cartoonish dude sporting what appeared to be a deliberately god-awful wig featured on the marquee. That was sui generis in her internet search so far. An added favorable omen – she'd once had a friend from Wisconsin who'd often referred to her former state as "Wet-cunt-sin." But her friend's perky upper Midwest accent had made her obscenities sound weirdly sweet, almost innocent – something Alex had never been able to match with her own filthy mouth.

  Alex pushed her mountain bike chariot higher and higher, until she brushed the clouds and the air grew chilly and thin. Her Grade 5 immunity permitted her to shrug off the icy winds. Gazing at the lakes and forests and checkerboard fields and cities below, Alex had to admit that this was one of those cliché moments when life was good.

  After two hours of constant high-level effort, Alex felt the need to recharge her telekinetic batteries. Her avatar might not need to eat, sleep, shit, or pee, but telekinetic awards had their own energy-expenditure rules. A Grade Six or Seven might've taken her all the way to Madison, Wisconsin without a hitch, but her Grade Five would steadily lose steam and land her there dead-tired. She planned to arrive at Mac's Drive-In fully charged. Never know what might be waiting for her there.

  She might rent a car, but that required ID. She could also rest for an hour or two, find another bike, and resume Steven Spielberging to Madison. Or she could pick up a bus just outside Chicago with a three to four hour drive to Madison. Plenty of time to recharge her telekinetic batteries. Catching the next available bus at 4:30, she'd reach Madison around 8:30 and with any luck her destination thirty to sixty minutes later. The place closed at 10:00, so this could happen tonight.