by Wolfe Locke
What happened? the Forest Titan said as he passed the woodpile outside his house.
“We have to go.”
So soon?
“Yeah. The meeting went badly. Really badly.”
Ah well. I always knew this wouldn’t end well. I felt it in my bones. You learn to sense these things when you’re my age. Something was off with the energy of this village from the moment we arrived here.
“Thanks, Forest Titan,” Zander said bitterly.
But when you’re my age, you also learn that nothing is forever. This is just for right now. Good, bad, it’s all temporary. So don’t think too long-term. Things can always change on a dime.
“Okay,” Zander said. He wasn’t in the mood for the Titan’s philosophy.
Just something to think about.
“Where’s Rocktooth?”
The Titan shrugged. How would I know? He’s your friend, not mine. We summons don’t all know each other.
“Fair point. Just asking.”
In the end, they left at first light. Zander didn’t want to stay in Haven a moment longer. It was too painful, knowing that he might never see it again.
“Do you want to take one last look at the village?” Celeste said as they passed the boundary stone that marked the line between Haven and the woods. “Maybe it’ll be super satisfying when you come back. If you have that memory.”
“No. Let’s just go. If I turn back, it’ll just make it all worse.”
“Okay,” she said, looking concerned. “If that’s what you want.”
He wondered where Rocktooth was. In some ways, the golem was his best friend. They’d been through everything together.
Never fear, the Forest Titan said. It will all turn out all right. I’m sure of it. Rocktooth was in this world a long time, he will need to recharge his energy in the Nether.
“You were also sure you could beat Dagon,” Zander said, under his breath.
New Panama. Beaches. Oceans.
He tried to keep those oceans in his head as they moved off into the forest and out of Haven. The place Celeste had wanted to go was just as good a journey for the next adventure.
Vendormate
Chapter 1: Six Hours Since the Last Log On
Kurt woke up 10 minutes before the alarm went off, an old habit he had picked up from when he was still in the Army. One of the only things Kurt had remained disciplined about after his contract had ended. Staring up at the ceiling in the dark before dawn, Kurt counted down seconds until the alarm went off, turning it off just as soon as the bell started ringing.
Having procrastinated enough, Kurt hopped out of bed. He abruptly gasped as the morning cold bit against his bare skin, a harsh reminder that the heat had been turned off from not paying the gas bill three months in a row. Shit happens.
What could he say? His streaming numbers had been down. Gaming didn’t pay like it used to. Actually, it hardly paid at all, but it wasn’t he could complain. The times were tough on everyone. Even worse with all the de-platforming and demonetizing on the SynaCAID platform. Kurt had only just started making money selling items to make up for it.
It hadn’t come as a surprise when the certified letters had started trickle in. Not that Kurt ever actually answered any of them. Kurt completely refused to sign for them whenever somebody was sent over to try to certify the delivery. The letters were followed by phone calls from agencies and angry creditors, which evolved into visits from collectors.
Eventually, Kurt had to start making cuts. The heat was one of those. The unpaid bills were a mountain of debt he would have to pay off eventually, but for now, Kurt had to make do with what he could. Times being what they were, he wasn’t really sure when that would be unless something radical changed in the immediate future.
In the meantime, Kurt had a decent fix to guard against the cold. He felt around in the dark of the morning for a shirt. Instead, he found something even better. An old hoodie and pressed it against his face to see if it passed the smell test. It didn’t, but it was close enough to what Kurt needed that he put it on anyway. It’s not like he was going to see anyone that cared, and at least it would help keep him warm. Kurt put it on before sauntering off to the bathroom to see a man about a horse.
After stumbling into the bathroom, Kurt flicked on the halogen lights that barely illuminated the room. Flickering, pale, struggling just like he was from the cold. Unable to see well, Kurt braced himself with one outstretched hand against the pale green wallpaper that decorated the bathroom and did what he could do to aim. Soon as he was finished, Kurt kicked the lever to flush the toilet. He knew just how dirty it was and had no intention of touching it, much less getting around to cleaning it.
Afterward, Kurt walked straight into the kitchen. He checked the clock on the wall and saw he still had a few minutes before he needed to log in to start his routine. His stomach rumbled with a few pangs and growls. With time still on his side, Kurt decided to check the fridge. But all he could find was a plate full of disappointment.
Kurt wasn’t really sure why he had even bothered to check.
It was close to the end of the month. There wasn’t any money left over for food. Not that it mattered. Even when Kurt did have the money, the stores rarely had anything worth buying anyways. With the embargo, things were scarce out there. The only thing still reliably on the market was the protein capsules that could be loaded into the virtual rigs. They always left a bitter aftertaste.
The inside of the fridge was completely bare. Well, bare except for the pile of pasta on an old crusty plate. A pasta that Kurt had no recollection of making and knew he couldn’t afford to have ordered. He grimaced; it was a little much even for him, but he was hungry, and all he could hear in his mind was the mantra ADAPT, IMPROVISE, OVERCOME. That and he had no alternatives.
As he pulled the plate out of the fridge, a foul smell instantly filled the entire room. On closer examination, Kurt could see the pasta was dried and cracked, with signs of mold green and black molds growing over most of it. Irritated and disgusted, he threw it down the drain and turned on the garbage disposal.
“Guess I’m not eating till payday,” Kurt muttered with a mix of disgust and self-pity.
There was only one thing Kurt could do about his hunger cravings. He headed out towards the balcony of this apartment, not bothering to put on any pants, taking just enough time to pat down the pockets on the pair he had left on the floor. He was trying to find his smokes and hoped they hadn’t fallen out anywhere else. A smile lit up on Kurt’s face as soon as Kurt found them. He opened the glass door and let himself outside into the cold of the morning.
Shivering and covered in goose flesh, Kurt pulled out a smoke and grabbed his lucky lighter off the railing and lit up. Just like the first piss of the day, the first smoke was always ecstasy.
Gray clouds rose from the burning embers at the end of my lips as Kurt looked down in resentment at the city below. Watching as the first signs of traffic and activity as people began to wake in start their day. I’d been one of them once. The reminder pissed him off, ruining the mood. With one last puff, Kurt flung the cigarette off the balcony, hoping it landed on somebody floors below. He didn’t bother to look to see if it hit anyone. Kurt turned and walked back inside, heading straight to his office. He needed to get logged in and get working.
Once Kurt was in his office, he sat down at his computer and powered it up. Waiting ages for the ancient machine to start. Kurt already knew where he was going once the home screen finally loaded in. With one-click on a browser and then another, Kurt found himself rapidly searching through indexed group pages and the dedicated forums belonging to each group.
Kurt read through most of the posts, at least the headlines, making sure as he did to change his notification settings to prioritize the algorithm to show the posts he was looking for. Requests for teams, request for supports, requests for healers, requests for tanks, requests for trades with times, and servers. On a yellow scratchpad, Kurt wrote
out all of the findings, prioritizing by strength, location, and the number of people who’d be there as he built-up his hit list. Within 30 minutes, the list was already full. Kurt couldn’t help but smile as a toothy grin reflected off the screen. It was going to be a busy day.
After finding enough leads on the forums, Kurt enabled the automated macros he depended on once he was in the game. Setting it up so that the computer would forward any additional posts that fit his criteria. With one additional vanity macro to forward him all posts related to his character.
Not once in his entire time playing had Kurt ever wrote anything on the forums, but he loved to lurk and read about how hated his character was. There was something deeply satisfying about watching others complain about his handiwork.
Kurt inserted the notes into the scanner and forwarded the data to his in-game character before walking into the guest room, where he kept the virtual reality dive machine. The guest room had at one time been his actual office when he still held a real job, back before the embargo. Kurt saw the downturned frame of the picture of him with his family and frowned. Kurt didn’t want to see them or be reminded of them and moved the picture frame into a drawer; Kurt just didn’t want them to see him like this, even if it was just a picture.
Ignoring the rest of the memorabilia in the room, Kurt walked straight to the immersion pod and prepared to get in, pressing the oversized red button that started up the massive machine. He was thankful that if anything good at least had come out of the divorce, it was selling the house and getting enough money out of the deal to pay for the pod before the crash.
Once in the pod, he checked out the control console and enabled the maximum amount of time for the delve at 4 hours. After which, Kurt would be ejected from the player server and forcibly logged out. During that downtime, he usually tried to peddle his wares in chat rooms during the state-mandated cool off break period.
Kurt waited for the machine to finish its startup cycle before entering the pod and sat down in the pod’s chair. Once Kurt was secured, he put on the immersion headset that would ground him in a digital world as real to him as anything else.
As his vision of the real worded faded, an announcement appeared in front of him as the sensation of the real world faded away.
Now Entering – Seven Cities Online – Oceania Server
* Current players - 599,354,067
* Welcome Back Vendormate. It has been 6 hours since you last logged on.
Chapter 2: Rat’s Nest
**Welcome Player: Vendormate**
***Now Entering***
****Chesterfield Highlands – Location – Homebase of the Player Vendormate ****
*****Custom Location Name - Rat’s Nest*****
Kurt opened his eyes. The transition from the real world to the virtual one of “Seven Cities” was complete. Most players would have spawned in the central plaza of their respective cities, ready to engage in digital commerce or telework, but not Kurt. He had a separate spawn point he’d affectionately dubbed “The Red Room”. A secure port in the center of the Rat’s Nest. His player home.
While the Rat’s Nest may have been his secret lair, it wasn’t a bat cave, and Kurt wasn’t some basement dweller who resented the sun. He actually liked a little bit of shine on his face.
One of his favorite things about the place, but not why the reason behind its name, was the artificial sun that he had programmed to shine through every window of his player home, even the interior windows, and the red room was always sunny. He liked to think it helped to liven him up a little instead of the perpetual gray of reality. It took a special kind of person to play a game if it wasn’t fun.
Less of a player home and more of a player mansion, Kurt thought with a smile, correcting himself. He had bought and paid for the construction with some of the spoils and rarer drops from his more lucrative ganks. It was one of the biggest draws of “Seven Cities: Online” and the one feature that received the most complaints. Any player trading had to be physically exchanged. The trades weren’t inventory to inventory but hand to hand. People could still sell their wares to some of the NPCs, but the prices were beyond horrible. This was intentionally done to encourage player to player behavior and foster roleplaying, something that all gaming communities thrived on.
It was a controversial design decision by the company behind the game, Smoogle. The forced human interaction was part of their plan to make the game a virtual platform for everyone seeking an escape from the real world. Most of the complaints about the system were made by the lone wanderers and min-maxers that hated the setup, and more than a few on the receiving end of a bad gank. Even with the currency conversion being garbage, it was still how Kurt supported himself.
The player markets played a big part in how the company supported itself. A little off the top of the security contract between players to provide protection, a small fee for facilitating sales of non-generic items, and a minor fee attached to every quick revive. The markets were a sort of whale trap for casuals. On a personal level, Kurt loved the market. He knew the secret to success. With a natural smile, a few prepared good jokes, and easy conversation, most people would really open up and give him a good deal on anything.
Shrugging off the feeling of the sun on his face, Kurt walked out into his grand living room. Smiling to himself as he admired the many trophies that decorated every single space on the walls. The room was completely full of the spoils of past fights. When it came to trophies, Kurt had but a few simple rules. It had to be significant enough to somebody that if they lost it, it hurt. The sort of thing that would have them sliding into his direct messages, threatening his life, lewd threats towards his mother, cursing him, just begging for it back.
Anything less, and Kurt knew it hadn’t been a real loss. In this world where he was one of the top players on every server, there wasn’t much any of the other players could do but complain about it on social media if he came to steal their stuff. At last count, the petition to ban him from the severs stood at 23,384 signatures and counting.
In the world of “Seven Cities: Online”, Kurt Lane, or Vendormate as his avatar was known in extremely closed circles, was basically a god. A level 621 god, and an old god at that. Initially, he had been part of a 4-man grief squad called “The Harry Richardsons”. They worked hard to troll and grief as much as possible. Eventually, his teammates, Charlie Mason, Jefferson Dhomer, and Johnathon Gacy, had retired or abruptly quit. Outgrowing the gimmick as they got married and had kids. But Kurt never stopped. Rather than get married, he got divorced.
With an abundance of time on his hands, Kurt chose to spend it freely in the game, as did his wallet. When each of his teammates quit, they had given him all their equipment. Even though some of it was already outdated and outside the meta, it was still useful.
Kurt’s stats were maxed out, every stat point set at 999, and every ability he had was at S-Rank. It didn’t mean he was fantastic. It just meant he’d had a lot more time on his hands than the average player and had a few advantages from being one of the first in the chute.
Through the player’s market and the pay to win the market, Kurt had been able to feed his character almost every skill in the game that mattered, even if the character could only have 4 slots filled at a time. Whenever he needed to switch it up, all he had to do was go back to his spawn point and change into one of his stored load-outs from the red room armory or manually swap out the abilities.
A bright clear orb floated towards him, hovering in the air. An A.I. named PAL. A sort of companion Kurt had earned from placing top 25 in one of the first player verse player tournaments in the game. It was more of a promotional piece than anything. Still, it served a purpose, and Kurt had appreciated those uses over the years.
[PAL] **Greetings Vendormate**
[Ping] The macro you have set up has forwarded data on a social media post about a player bazaar. The post is currently after with 941 likes and 131 comments.
Looking at the A.I., K
urt smiled. That was exactly what he had been hoping to hear and followed up with a command to the A.I. “PAL, open up the macro, give me the summarized details of the Player Bazaar.”
[PAL] **Processing Query**
**The Player Market is located at the Riverside Basin. Of the participants who have stated they will be there or plan on visiting, it is estimated only a 71% follow through with an estimate of 93 participants representing three-player vending factions, the Blue Dutchman Group, the Old Anchor, and Marla’s Closet.