by Vic Connor
“Zee whole, zee whole,” he keeps saying with a thick German accent, “zee whole ist life. Parrts arrt just parrts. Parrts alone arrt dead.” With robotic precision, his nimble fingers fly over the table, assembling the pistol. “But zee whole, ah … zee whole ist alife!”
Skill Unlocked!
Gunsmith
Before my eyes, the pile of broken parts blurs and shifts.
“Pull me beard an’ polish me hook, arrr!” I laugh. “Ya be mighty right, ya scurvy dog, ya!” I look up at Abe. “Maybe I does remembers!”
“Glad ya did, lad!” he says. “If we be havin’ to dispatch ‘em filthy rats with no healin’ fer us’n, we better be shootin’ ‘em from far away!”
New Message!
Ah? Let’s see…
FROM: System Message
Re: Crafting Tips
You now have access to some crafting skills.
Your avatar can perform complex, time-consuming tasks, but you are unable to carry out these tasks (including repairing and upgrading ancient firearms) in the Lobby.
Remember that you can exit to the Lobby at any time. Your current safewords are: “I do not like the look of this.”
Abe’s huge mitt palming my shoulder makes me stumble forward.
“Whatever ails ya, lad?” he asks. “Ya jus’ gots all weird-like, starin’ at thin air.”
“I be dandy fine, Abe me mate.” I cough. “Me just be thinkin’ about this bloody loot we’ve got ourselves here.”
The loot from the corpses produced by Miyu’s naginata yields a few bullets, some black powder, a fourth flintlock pistol—identical to my other three—and the broken remains of two more guns. And several crude cutlasses none of us have any use for.
“Thems be worth less than a whale’s fart, t’ whole lot of ‘em,” complains Abe, kicking at the swords. “But ya be startin’ to look all real gunslinger like, Jake me boy.”
With Juanita’s help, I tie a makeshift holster around my right thigh, using bits of bloodied clothes torn from the thugs. I secure the fourth gun there.
“Bad luck,” says Miyu. She tilts her mask forward a little, giving it a slightly menacing look.
I gape at her, confused.
She raises her left hand with her palm in front of her left eye, her thumb hidden, and her four other fingers extended. Her nails are lacquered in onyx black; her right eye is an equally dark bead.
“Shi,” she declares. “Bad luck.”
“She means four,” Juanita translates. “She believes it will spoil your good fortune.”
I cast a glance at Abe, then at Miyu, then turn to Juanita. “Does she mean the number of guns I carry, or…”
Miyu turns her hand so her palm faces me, then moves it aside a little to uncover her left eye and extends the thumb. “Uitzli,” she says, again.
I kick the broken pile of guns with a crutch, looking straight into Miyu’s eyes. “I think I may be able to fix a couple of them,” I tell her. I also raise my own hand with my five fingers extended.
She tilts her head backward, making her Noh mask’s smile a bit more pronounced.
Juanita points at the narrow canyon cutting into the cliff. “We will spend the night in there.”
“Now?” I ask. “It’s only early afternoon. Shouldn’t we continue? And where are we going, anyway?”
Miyu tilts her head, as if unsure what I mean.
“Our Jake be rememberin’ almost nothin’,” Abe explains to her. “His memories, thems be scrubbed clean, like the deck of ‘em Royal Navy ships on King’s Day. ’Twas the cost o’ that damned pagan ritual, the witch said.”
“Part of the cost,” I say, remembering Sveta’s golden coin.
The samurai nods.
“We have had no rest for three days, my child,” Juanita says, and I realize how worn out she sounds. “The pirate and I, while we watched over you; and our good Miyu, while she stood guard here.”
“An’ while ya was takin’ a three-day nap, me lad.” Abe crosses himself. “Then ya walked again among us’n living. Like our Lord an’ Savior.” He looks down at my crutches and pauses. “Well … inna manner o’ speakin’, t’ part about walkin’. But now ya be alive, an’ we be dead tired, me lad.”
“And injured,” adds Juanita. While Miyu’s arm has stopped bleeding for now, her left sleeve hangs heavily, drenched in blood. “We will set up camp inside the canyon where nobody will see our party, and the three of us will sleep as best as we can.”
“Three?”
“You will have time to play with your guns,” she tells me. “While you keep watch.”
The gulch in the cliff is about fifty paces long—so narrow we need to walk in line—and twists and twirls like the bowels of a huge beast. About half a mile from the entrance is a gap wide enough to fit the four of us in a tight circle.
Miyu drops to the ground, asleep just a few heartbeats later.
Abe pulls the broken gun parts from his rucksack and sets them down, then helps me sit in front of them. He stretches out his huge frame as best as he can. “At least it be warm,” he says optimistically, closing his eyes.
“Those thugs must have been a search party,” Juanita says. “I doubt there are more of them nearby; Barboza’s scouts must have scattered all over the island trying to find us. Still, we cannot afford to be careless, my child, so you will have to help keep watch.”
“Shouldn’t we retell what went through first?” I ask. “Since resting and retelling are key to growing strong?”
“Yes, young Jake, but resting comes first. We shall speak at length in the morning. More of your memories may have returned by then.”
She sits down, cross-legged, and chants softly…
…her fingers move as if working on a loom…
…bees!?
“What the h—” I gasp, as a fistful of black dots fly out from between her hands, cupped as if she were holding an invisible hive between them. They swarm straight at me.
“Do not be such a frightful child, young Jake,” she advises. The insects buzz around my head for a moment, then divide into two groups. Half of the bees fly back through the canyon the way we came, while the others buzz away through the side of the gulch we still need to traverse. “They will scout ahead,” Juanita says, “and watch our back.”
“And if they find something?”
“They shall come straight back for you, and you shall wake us up.”
“Wait … what if I fall asleep, myself?”
“Then they shall wake you up.” She yawns. “By stinging you in the neck.”
“What!?”
Abe, eyes closed, chuckles. “It be mighty effective, me lad. Ya better be sure.” He rubs the side of his neck, as though the memory still pains him.
My eyes scan left and right, carefully watching the entrances to this small gap we’ve found in the gulch.
Abe snores softly, one huge hand serving as a pillow beneath his bloodied bandana. Juanita, huddled in her poncho, breathes heavily as she drifts off. All else is dead quiet. The jungle’s noises don’t reach us here, swallowed as we are deep inside the cliff’s intestines.
Shadows grow longer as the lazy sun sails toward sunset and my three companions rest deeply.
“Nothing I can do about us being four,” I whisper toward Miyu, remembering her superstition about the number. “But, at least, I think I can do something about me not carrying exactly four pistols.”
I let my fingers choose what to pick first from the pile of broken gun parts in front of me. I have no clue what the piece I’ve selected even does.
But my avatar knows.
Or, with a bit of luck, soon will.
I fix my gaze on the gun part. “I don’t like the look of this.”
13
Theorycrafting
By my third coffee, Sveta had taught me all I needed to know about how to summon floating screens; opening, closing, and shuffling them around the Lobby was indeed as easy as simply thinking about it.
I
had five of them suspended over the large boardroom table, with the table’s surface showing a bird’s-eye view of the twisting canyon path, centered on our resting party.
“The sensation of depth is amazing,” I said appreciatively, peering over my sleeping companions and my own crippled avatar, crutches lying by his side. “If I had vertigo, I’d feel sick right now.”
“I bet you wouldn’t, boss,” Sveta countered. “No man in your position is afraid of heights.”
It felt good to be back in my hovering chair, draped in my radioactive blue power suit and impeccable white shirt. “Our friend Maneesh wasn’t joking about the pain,” I said, moving my shoulders a little and enjoying the feel of the clean, soft fabric against my skin. “Those crutches are killing me.”
“Do you need a massage, boss?” She started to get out of her seat and paused with her torso bent forward invitingly, silk blouse bulging.
“Tempting as the offer is, Svetty dear, I’d rather not.” I glanced down at the floating screens. “We have work to do.”
“You’re always all work, sir.” She pouted as she sat back down. “Sometimes, I worry you’ll become dull.”
“Dull only for those who don’t know how to appreciate the subtle, complex joy of crafting, my dear.” I pulled the five screens nearer. “Which a fair number of players usually fail to do, to be honest.”
Peering into the Stat screens of my party had proved frustrating. Only a terse description about themselves, along with their names, their favored weapons, and their classes—kind of a ‘duh’ moment, as it turned out Abe was, indeed, a pirate; Miyu, a samurai; and Juanita, a witch.
“Nothing I didn’t already know,” I grumbled. “Abe seems as strong as he is tall. Juanita can shapeshift into a swarm of bees or a snake, among other things. Miyu is lightning-quick with pole arms… Basically, just what I’ve seen myself.”
“Perhaps that’s intended, boss? Like a kind of diary? The game only collects things about your companions as your avatar notices them, maybe?”
I leaned back in my comfy chair, hands behind my head, and looked up, thinking. “Maybe…” I mused. “If I were designing a game and going for full immersion, I guess I could see why I’d avoid having the Stats screens give the player information their avatars don’t already know. My avatar still doesn’t remember, for example, what’s Juanita mana pool, or if there’s even such thing as a mana pool in the game. I wonder if that will show up if I ask her about it?”
“May be worth a try, boss, when you go back to your new friends.”
I fixed my gaze on her for a long moment. “You don’t know for sure?”
“No, sir,” she confirmed. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
I kept staring at her for several moments. “Tell me, Svetty dear,” I said after a while, “how would you rate yourself as an assistant?”
“Why, boss, I don’t think I’d be an impartial judge of that!” She giggled.
“Would you trust my judgment if I were to rate you as an A+?”
She giggled again, playing shy and fumbling with her glasses.
“It that surprising? I’m a simple man,” I explained, adjusting the Gadium on my wrist. “I pay for the best, and I get the best.”
“Aw, boss.” She beamed. “You’re too kind!”
“The best.” I continued studying her. “And very experienced.”
She kept smiling, although she narrowed her eyes a little.
“This cannot possibly be your first rodeo, Svetty dear,” I noted. “For starters, I’m a bit of a special case. Crippled, playing on Hardcore, testing one of the Premium capsules—” She seemed about to say something, but I went on speaking “—and the way you handled our good friend Maneesh from Engineering… NozGames would never assign a green rookie to oversee a fringe case like me. Would they?”
“I’m afraid I’m a bit at a loss here, sir. What would—”
“You’ve done this before. Assisting players, during the previous rounds of Closed Beta, or even during the Alpha rounds. Yes?”
Her alluring persona vanished. She grinned the way she’d done while roleplaying Razor in the dysto-punk bar during the Pain Tutorial. “I may have, yes,” she conceded.
“Have you?”
She considered my question. “Yes.”
“But NozGames doesn’t want you to share with me what happened in those cases, right? I get it—some VIPs have paid fortunes to take part in the previous Alpha and Beta rounds, and that experience, for which they have paid through their noses, gives them an edge. And if you were to share that information with me, those VIPs may have cause to bitch mighty loudly to NozGames. Correct?”
“Spot on, Hardcore.”
I nodded toward the screen she used. “Can you ask, at least? For clarification, just to make sure? If your bosses confirm that you can tell me nothing about the previous Beta rounds, that’s fine. But if there’s anything at all that you can share, well, I’d be glad to know.”
She nodded. “Definitely. No harm in asking…” She looked at her screen for minute and created—with her mind, apparently, as she didn’t type them—a few lines of text I was too far away to read. “Done deal. I have no idea how long it might be before we get an answer, or if we’ll even get one, but I’ve asked the question.”
I leaned back in my chair again. “You’re a godsend, Svetty dear.”
She adjusted her glasses and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You are just the sweetest boss ever, boss.” She smiled. “One thing I can share is this: They tailor the single-player section of the game to each individual player. Bespoke content, just like your suit. It’s just as new for me as it is for you.”
I caressed the unwrinkleable sleeves of my blue suit. “This sits good on me, does it not?”
“Very much so, boss!”
“Good to hear your unbiased opinion, Svetty dear. So, let’s see how well we fit into this bespoke content, then.”
My own Stats screen contained no numbers, just an indicator that my avatar’s Strength and Resilience were both “Fair.”
“Weird…” I said. “No Intelligence, no Charisma.”
“No non-physical traits, in fact,” Sveta pointed out. “Looks like you’re just a body in that world, boss.”
“Again to enforce realism, I guess? Becoming stronger is easy to simulate—the game can just make everything feel lighter, until a ton seems like ten pounds to me. But the game can’t make me any smarter, can it?”
“This, I can also confirm,” she said, “and the answer is no. Would be the Holy Grail for NozamaTech, I imagine, if Istoria could boost intelligence. I’m sure NozHealth is dying for, even willing to kill for, some metrics that show Istoria has long-term cognitive benefits, because it would be the best marketing speech ever, but so far they’ve showed no measurable IQ improvement to brag about.”
The tooltips confirmed what Juanita had told me in-game: My avatar would increase its traits by doing something strenuous, something that pushed my body to the limit, then resting and recovering. There seemed to be no way to spend VPs here to raise my stats.
“In that,” Sveta explained, “it’s a close match to how physical exercise works. It’s the rest after the physical effort that makes us stronger.”
“I’m not the one to hit the gym very often myself, Svetty dear. I’ll fully trust your expert opinion on bodybuilding.”
My avatar’s last screen was labeled “Memories,” and listed just two:
Gunslinger (Unlocked—Apprentice)
Gunsmith (Unlocked—Apprentice)
“There should be something about ‘Crutch-wielding,’” I grumbled. “Boy, I’d love to increase that one as fast as I can.”
Memories would be unlocked by context, the tooltips said. Anything that struck a chord had a random chance to trigger a recall; the more dangerous the situation, the higher the likelihood of remembering.
“Looks like the game wants you out of your comfort zone, boss…”
“No risk, no rewar
d, Svetty dear. No one has ever conceived a fairer rule.”
Opening the ‘Gunslinger’ sub-menu brought two more items:
Quick Draw (Apprentice)
Aim: Point Blank (Apprentice)
Quick Draw allowed me to pull out my pistol and shoot in half a second, but prevented me from using any Aiming skills and gave me a 20% chance of dropping my gun.
Point Blank took one second to draw, aim, and fire; successful shots could be upgraded to Critical Hits.
“I’ll also need the target six paces away or closer,” I read.
“That’s far enough for their swords not to prickle your fair skin, boss.”
“Close enough to smell my foes, though. And do you have any idea how bad those thugs smell, Svetty? Our friend Maneesh may be a tad too keen on olfactory realism, I must say. I’d feel much better at ten paces or further.”
She only shrugged and smiled.
I went back to the menus and checked the Gunsmith skill. “A-ha,” I said, feeling my inner crafting nerd smile. “Jackpot.”
Weapon Crafting (Apprentice): requires Schematics; requires Parts; requires access to Workshop.
Alchemy (Apprentice): requires Formulas; requires Ingredients; requires access to Laboratory.
Field Repairs (Apprentice): requires Parts; each repair attempt requires 1VP and 3 hours.
Weapon Crafting seemed straightforward enough: Assuming I could somehow access the necessary components and tools, I should be able to either craft something cool from scratch or enhance my current weapons.
Alchemy had a nice Alternate-History twist, according to the tooltip. Down the road, I’d have the option to craft some weird gunpowder mixes, for who knows what effects.
Both skills were out of my reach for now, though, having neither the components nor the proper workshop or laboratory to conduct my craft.
Field repairs, on the other hand…