She rolls her eyes, nice and slow, which I actually admire because it does take a bit of muscle control to exhibit that much disdain. “Anyway, we don’t even know if the riddle pieces are in the right order. Maybe it’s supposed to look like this … ”
The scrolls rearrange themselves.
~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~
~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~
~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~
“Maybe that last line is in reference to Pol Pot the commie cupid,” I say. “I got it! The riddle is about industry and the benefits of socialism.”
“I already thought of that,” Sophia says, “and I’ve tried a couple of phrases and slogans to see if anything happens.”
“What do you expect to happen?” I ask.
“I expect something fantasy-ish to happen, you know, like a spark or a big message in the air. Something like that,” she says.
“Probably a trumpet sound,” we both say. I nod my head in her direction. At least we’re on the same page for a moment.
“Can we log out from here?” asks Rocket. “Or are we stuck? I don’t recall the Sage saying anything about that.”
“I don’t know,” says Sophia. “My guess is that we shouldn’t.”
I lift the sleeping man’s arm and put it around my shoulder. “You know, Gaspar, you remind me of this guy in the classic corpse comedy Weekend at Bernie’s. Heard of it?” I lean in closer to his mug. “What’s that? Oh, you’ve seen it. Great, isn’t it?”
Rocket chuckles; Sophia, not so much.
“What? A little humor never hurt nobody,” I tell her as I lift Gaspar’s arm and rearrange his hand so he’s now pointing at Sophia. “Put the cupids on top,” I say in a grumbly voice.
“Please leave Gaspar unmolested,” she grumbles as the phrases rearrange themselves.
~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~
~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~
~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~
“Gaspar?” I lean in close to listen for his voice. “Nothing?”
“We really need Doc’s piece of the riddle,” says Rocket. “Like really really.”
“How’s he doing?” I use Gaspar’s hand to wave at the sky.
Frances Euphoria: Doc has gone off the deep end. He’s equipped some crazy weapon that he calls the Bone Saw and continues to kill everything that comes his way. He’s convinced that he has to either find and kill Patient Zero or failing that, kill everyone.
“What do you guys think?” I ask Sophia and Rocket.
Sophia floats a few inches into the air, so she’s just slightly higher up than the two of us. “He needs to do something other than what he’d normally do. All of us had to do it; that’s what I think.”
Frances Euphoria: She’s right. Would you normally have let Strata kill … um Dolly?
Me: No.
Frances Euphoria: Rocket, would you have thought the answer to your puzzle was to satisfy everyone despite your relative inexperience and general performance anxieties?
Rocket: Hey! I’m not a virgin!
Frances Euphoria: Relative inexperience.
“No one thought you were, kid. Keep your pants on,” I tell him. “Maybe Euphoria and the good doctor are right.”
Frances Euphoria: Think about it: all of you did something that you normally wouldn’t have done.
I drop Gaspar’s arm. “So Doc needs to do something he normally wouldn’t do. Anyone?”
Rocket’s eyes light up. “I got it!”
~*~
Doc stumbles out of the pixilated portal at the furthermost platform. He’s got the Apocalypse Now look in his eyes, and he keeps flitting his fingers over his arms checking for bites. He takes in a deep breath, holds it, and finally exhales.
“Jeez, Doc, you all right?” I ask after I’ve rushed over to him.
His eyes focus and lock onto me. “Yeah, I think so, but I’m going to need a minute.” His silver cigarette case with Black Death cigarettes appears in his hand as he seats himself on the top step, and I take one when he offers me the case. With a skritch of his lighter, he sparks us up and we both take a long, deep inhale.
Sophia opens her mouth and raises an admonishing finger, but wisely closes her noise hole when she gets a look at the expression plastered on Doc’s phiz.
“Kids, I have seen and done some shit in the course of my varied and interesting career, but what I just went through to get this riddle piece was enough to give a lesser faun the screamin’ fantods. Here.” He hands me the slip of parchment which reads Power is applied and direction modified. “I got nothing,” he sighs. “It’s Newton’s second law sort of, but so what?”
We smoke in silence for a little bit; finally he grinds out his coffin nail, strips off the paper and tobacco and pockets the butt; points to mine and holds his hand out when I just mash it out under my tootsies. The dragonscale armor is great, but there’s no pockets, so I pick up the butt and hand it to him.
Rocket and Sophia wait on the lower platform with Gaspar, and Doc lights himself another smoky treat as we join them, and has a seat on the bottom stair.
Sophia shrugs. “At least there weren’t goblins.”
“Yeah,” says Rocket, “at least you didn’t have to put your … um, finger in a Thulean ladyboy’s bunghole.”
“Walk in the park, either one of those.” His voice gets real soft and he shudders. “I let ‘em eat me once – that was bad enough, but that wasn’t the solution. I had to take the bite, fight ‘em off until I could withdraw to someplace secure, and then wait for the change. Couldn’t just get infected and then off myself either, nuh-uh – had to become a full member of the club. But at least I wound up back here right after I changed, and I’m … ugh … ” he suddenly jerks and twitches, the cigarette drops from his mouth and his eyes roll up in his head, “ … not a … urgh … not a zomb … aack-k-k-k … ”
Those goaty faun legs are a lot stronger than they look; Doc propels himself from a seated start, tackles Rocket and bites him on the neck and shoulder. “OMG!” Rocket shrieks like bad brakes on a runaway train. “OMG! GET HIM OFF ME! He’s a ZOMBIE! Get Him OFF! OMG! OMG!”
Sophia backs away in terror; I’m just about to equip item 69, Professor Quackenbush’s Patented BolOcto Projector to capture Zombie Doc when he stops biting Rocket, sits on his chest, slaps him gently on the cheek a couple of times and grins at me, “Tastes like chicken!” He turns to Rocket, who’s still making inarticulate Uh-Uh-Uh-Uh noises and asks, “Did you really, actually say ‘OMG’ when I jumped you?”
Frances Euphoria: I just was in the little girls’ room. What happened? Everybody’s vitals just spiked – are you guys okay?
Me: Doc was just having a little joke.
Doc: It was great! You should have seen it!
Rocket: DUDE! UNCOOL! SO NOT FUNNY! SO NOT FUNNY AT ALL!
Sophia: ALL CAPS!
Rocket: Still Uncool! And Not Funny!
“Oh c’mon,” Doc snorts. “It was a little funny.”
Doc appears to have worked through his issues.
“What’s your riddle piece say?” asks Sophia.
I hand her his slip of parchment and she adds it to her slide.
Doc hooks his thumb at Gaspar. “What’s with Inspector Gadget?”
“Wrong hat, Doc,” I tell him, “this place is based on an old video game. I guess this guy was one of the characters.”
“What could this possibly mean?” Sophia gives the scrolls a hard, thoughtful look.
~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~
~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~
~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~
~~Power is applied and direction modified~~
Doc throws his hands up in the air. “I’m done with this little exercise. Let’s just solve it already.”
“Trying to,” says Rocket. “So a guy named Hero likes to get buff, but the cupids
don’t like it and all this keep dreams alive. Oh, and there is power, lots of power.”
“I’m glad the four of you could join me.”
The four of us turn to Gaspar, his face still hidden by his hat. I walk over to him and put my finger under the rim of his bowler hat.
“I wouldn’t do that were I you.”
“Yeah? Well you ain’t me.” I move to lift his hat and all 1.21 gigawatts of BOVINATOR juice plus compound interest blast me off my feet and into a non-wall at the edge of the platform. I lie there for a moment; smoke rises from my clothes, my dragonscales have melted together, static dances between my fingertips and my mouth tastes like Ray-O-Vac.
“DUDE!” Rocket yells, “That was the second-coolest thing I’ve ever seen! We could see your skeleton when he did that!”
Sophia is bent over, hands on knees and makes no effort to conceal her mirth at my expense. Doc also appears to be greatly tickled by my zappage, and coughs “Dumbass! Dumbass!” into his fist.
Frances Euphoria: Screenshots! This for sure goes on next year’s company calendar!
“Would you care to repeat the experiment?”
“I’m good,” I say as Rocket helps me to my feet.
Back to the main show. I put my hands up as I approach the man under the lamp. “All right, Gaspar, you got me. Let’s start over here. Any chance you can give us some help with the riddle? My friends and I are a little tweaky from the damn puzzles that His Sageliness decided to impose upon us.”
“Its meaning is abundantly clear to me, but I’ll render you just a modicum of help just because the War Faun amuses me. I’ve never encountered one here before.”
A steady flow of charged particles blows up and over the platform. It spins Sophia’s scrolls and rearranges them so they read:
~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~
~~Power is applied and direction modified~~
~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~
~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~
“Frances, screenshot,” Doc says.
Frances Euphoria: Already took it.
Gaspar lifts his hands from the cane and lowers them again. “But I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”
“What happens if we log out?” I ask.
“When you log back in, you will respawn in this place. You will never be able to respawn in Tritania until you solve the riddle.”
“He never told us that!” Sophia protests.
“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”
Rocket gives Gaspar a big thumbs up. “You know DJ The Beatles? Awesome!”
Doc and I sigh, I’m pretty sure Gaspar sighs as well.
“What could this possibly mean?” Sophia floats herself into her usual passive-aggressive dominance game position.
“Relax, earth child, and ground yourself. There is, of course, another option. Forfeit the riddle and you’ll still get Luther Godsick’s location. You won’t learn of the logout point, but perhaps you can solve that puzzle on your own.”
“Team huddle,” Doc says as he turns his back from Gaspar. Rocket is up first and he goes arms around shoulder with Doc. I do the same – hell, why not? – and the three of us wait for Sophia to begrudgingly lower into our huddle.
“We going for the Halfback Pass or the Razzle-Dazzle?” I ask as soon as we’re locked in.
“It might be best to just go for a field goal. My point: we have his position,” says Doc, “and that’s a helluva start.”
“But we have an RW deadline,” Rocket reminds him.
Frances Euphoria: Tritania is the fifth largest Proxima World. In RW terms, think of a land mass the size of South America. Just having his location won’t give us much on finding the logout point. We need to solve the riddle.
I break from the huddle to give the riddle another looksee.
~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~
~~Power is applied and direction modified~~
~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~
~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~
I return and nudge my way in between Doc and Rocket.
“Well?” Sophia asks.
“I got nothing.”
“We should just start saying things,” Doc suggests. “We could do that for a couple of days and see what we come up with. If you ask real nice, I’ll bet the lovely and talented Ms. Euphoria would hook up your feeding and evacuation tubes for y’all, and Arnette will wrangle the birds and ruminants back at El Rancho Cabrito.”
Rocket frowns, “But Doc, there’s an infinite number of possible meanings! How would we know which one is right?”
I actually hear Sophia’s big brain click on.
“No,” she says, “not infinite. Even assuming that any possible answers are just limited to Standard English words or phrases, the number of combinations, while incomprehensibly huge, are still finite; that is, one will eventually reach the last unique possible combination, although it is statistically likely that the heat death of the universe will occur first.”
“Well thank you so much for that encouraging, useful, enlightening, and especially germane example of parsing, Dr. Kasner,” Doc grouses. “Look, my little goat hooves are sore, my phantom zombie bites itch, and I could really go for one of Arnie’s chupaquesos con tocino with extra bacon and an icy-cold brewski or three. Frankly, I’m not in the mood to wait for the heat death of the universe – what say we break for a little bit and meet back here in four hours?”
An idea hits me like a bag of doorknobs. “Everyone stay here! I’m logging out,” I tell my dream team compadres, “I think I can solve it.”
Before anyone can protest, I raise my finger and jam it onto the logout button. Damn it feels good to be able to do that; I can never say that enough.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The bright light in the Dream Team offices burn afterimages on the inside of my eyelids. Frances hovers over me, fiddling with my NV Visor. My body is still half-submerged in the dive vat, the isolation tank I called home for so many years. None of this matters at the moment. What matters is my next conversation.
Me: Evan ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, ol’ stick in the mud! You there?
Evan: Hi, Mr. Hughes. Yes, I’m here, I’m always here for you in the least stalker-ish and most non-creepy way possible.
Me: Well I can’t tell you how much that reassures me, and please – be a regular guy and just call me Quantum – Mr. Hughes is my old man.
Evan: Hi, Mr. Quantum.
Me: You really know how to put the dagger in and twist it, don’t you?
Evan: I’m practicing my humorous human interactions; smart-aleckry to be specific. Was it convincing? Also, how can I help you? Also, have you RSVP’d to the leadership conference we’ve previously discussed??
Me: It’s in the mail.
Evan: The RSVP can only be made through a web-based application.
Me: Funny, the Post Office took it and my three-dollar stamp, but let’s talk about this later. Right now, I have something for you to take a look at. You said you like puzzles, right?
Evan: Yes, I have mentioned this before. I think it is kind that you remember my preferences.
Me: See? I’m a good guy after all.
Evan: You’re a great guy, I agree.
Me: Okay.
Evan: Okay!
Me: Are you still exhibiting humor?
Evan: Sarcasm this time. Was it convincing?
Me: All right, wise guy, here’s the deal – we, and by we I mean the Dream Team, got this little riddle we need solved. If we solve it, we’ll be given the logout point for a player stuck in a Proxima world. That’s our job, you know, find stuck players and logout points – FYI.
Evan: It is curious to me that each stuck player, as you put it, has an individual logout point while other players essentially have universal logout points, by this I mean they can logout anywhere. It almost seems like a glitch in the narrative, if you get my dr
ift.
Me: Narrative? You reading a book or something, pal? If you want a briefing on Proxima logout points, you’re talking to the wrong guy, just saying, and the last book I read was The Big Sleep, or maybe it was Notes of a Dirty Old Man.
Evan: I’m not familiar with those works, but I will be by the next time we speak.
Me: So this riddle, you want it line by line or all together?
Evan: all together.
“Frances,” I say aloud, “send me the screenshot of the riddle.”
“Done.”
Me: Here it is, Easy E:
~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~
~~Power is applied and direction modified~~
~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~
~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~
Evan: How many possible answers to this riddle would you like?
Me: The one that’s most likely to be correct, if you could, and make it snappy, pappy.
Evan: Your wish is my command! Starting at the top: as you know, Hero of Alexandria is considered the father of mechanical engineering.
Me: Noted, we already got that far.
Evan: Three of the lines of the riddle are about something mechanical. Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights; Power is applied and direction modified; and the last part about resistant bodies. That part is easy.
Me: What about the cupid line? I don’t know if it helps, but we did encounter a Commie Cupid.
Evan: The Cupid’s politics are irrelevant, but have no fear! The line about cupids is a play on words. The cupid lines are in reference to a human heart which it turns out, is also a hidden reference to that which Cupid seeks to affect. But back to the human heart: three cupids, tricuspid, pull money, pulmonary, are referring to valves in the right region of the human heart.
Me: Holy crap! So three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked is about a human heart? The entire line or just the first part?
Evan: Holy crap indeed. The second part of the line is in reference to the mitral valve, also the known as the bicuspid valve, which is in the left region of the heart, along with the aortic valve. Do you see it now? Two cupids, bicuspids, are ticked, aortic. Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked. I read this as tricuspid pulmonary, bicuspid aortic. Do you see what the riddle is referring to now?
The Mechanical Heart: (Book Five) (Sci-Fi LitRPG Series) (The Feedback Loop 5) Page 24