Lair

by Carl Stubblefield

  A ding sounded, followed by a trumpet fanfare. New logs prompted at the bottom of the display waiting for Gus to access and read them.

  “Noice!” Gus exclaimed in his best faux-Australian accent as he scanned the new notices.

  You have obtained (1) medium sized clam; 20 XP received

  You have obtained (15) coconuts; 20 XP received

  You have obtained (3) gull eggs; 20 XP received

  Quest Rewards:

  HP: +20

  EN: +20

  MP: +20

  450 XP received (-50 XP for an assisted quest)

  LEVEL UP! Congratulations, Level 2 reached

  990 XP to next level

  All base stats +1

  Wreck-less is now Level 2, functionality improved.

  50 XP awarded

  940 XP to next level

  Future level increases will give 5 points to allocate in basic stats at user’s discretion.

  Gus checked his updated stats:

  Gus Vannett

  Level 2

  Agility: 8/?

  Constitution: 7/?

  Charisma: 8/?

  Strength: 7/?

  Perception: 10/?

  Intelligence: 11/?

  Luck: 6/?

  HP: 120

  MP: 120

  Stamina: 120

  Then it hit him. Gus had never experienced a runner’s high, but this feeling was a combination of eating the best pizza of his life, the total relaxation of sleeping in with no pressing obligations for the whole day, and getting exactly what you wanted when opening Christmas presents all rolled into one. His whole being resonated with not just ecstasy, but happiness and ‘rightness’ with the universe. He lay there wordlessly, basking in the post-leveling euphoria until he heard an audible hiss, and the suit separated along its original clamshell seam.

  Chapter Six

  Eat It

  Day 1 2:44 PM

  13:22:52 remaining

  Slowly the feelings subsided and Gus pushed the upper half of the suit off of him. Taking a couple more moments, he began to sit up and noticed that the display that he had assumed was a function of the suit was still interposed on his vision.

  “Nick, how can I still see the display?”

  “It is part of how you interact with the world as a super. It’s also much more functional than you may realize. The optic nerve is one of the areas with direct nanobot interaction and this display is only one of the ways they can assist you. You can now visualize other forms of electromagnetic radiation past normal human vision, as well as tactical, geographical, and other overlays to the interface.”

  “Like VATS? Please say yes…” Gus begged hopefully.

  “Exactly like VATS, if you enable that function, although you won’t have a noticeable ‘bullet-time’ effect until you level up your perception stat significantly.”

  Gus fist pumped as he heard the news. “Just the fact that it exists is blowing my mind! Are there any quests with perception bonuses?”

  “There are, but all of the introductory ones deal with hunting, and you do not even have a weapon yet.”

  Gus’ stomach growled again, and he looked at his hodgepodge of food items. Feeling like he definitely would want to cook the clam and eggs in some way, he opted to try one of the coconuts.

  Gus recalled a Hawaiian vacation he had taken in his teens as he looked for an appropriate piece of driftwood. Finding one that suited his purpose, he stabilized it the best he could and slammed the dry coconut husk on a pointy section of driftwood and twisted. The desiccated strands ripped free from the coconut husk. It took little effort to strip the coconut relatively bare, and as an added bonus there were a good amount of fibers that would serve to make excellent kindling to get a fire started.

  Not having any tools to cut the coconut open, he hit it on some rocks until the poor thing caved in. He drank greedily at the liquid inside, spitting out small shards of coconut shell that had imploded in with his crude technique. In the past, he had always thought coconut water to be bland, but the taste was heavenly. All too soon he had drained the coconut dry. Fishing inside, he found a large piece that had coconut meat attached to a shell fragment and Gus tried to bite it, but found he could not put significant pressure on his teeth. All he knew was that it had been a while since he had eaten anything solid, and his teeth and gums protested at being called back into service. The soreness didn’t allow him to bite into the hard coconut the same way. Gus popped the small piece of coconut in his mouth, figuring he would gnaw on it bit by bit until he could pry it from the shell and regain his normal bite function.

  If the coconut didn’t work out, he’d need to cook something instead. Gus looked at the remains of the suit to see if there was anything he could use as a rudimentary knife to get started. That’s when he noticed that his clothes, or what remained of them, were a threadbare gauzy mess. They were falling apart just from the simple motions he had taken to open the coconut.

  “What in the…?” Gus asked in disbelief.

  “If you recall, I did mention that the cotton in your clothes was used to help repair your wounds.”

  “And now I’m naked on a deserted island? That kind of complicates things, don’t’cha think?”

  “It was necessary to keep you alive. Most dead people are not concerned about their attire.”

  “Point taken, I guess,” Gus admitted.

  “Well, I’ll have to worry about getting some clothes before it gets cold. Make another frond wall as a blanket for sure.” He looked at his watch, which had survived the nanobots intact, he saw with relief. His mother had given it to him a long time ago, and she told him to never, ever take it off. It was one of those few memories he still had of her that hadn’t been affected by his extended hospitalization when he was young.

  That was one of his biggest regrets; that he had lost large chunks of his memory, and unfortunately, those chunks were mostly ones that included his mom. Whenever he tried to talk about her or bring her up around his father, he was met with either stony silence or a not-so-subtle change of subject.

  Everyone deals with death differently, I guess. Remembering the recent memory, he began to be unsure if his mother had really left, or it was a euphemism his father used for her dying. He had felt a little off after the whole nanobot transition, so he was unsure if he was remembering things better or if his imagination was becoming overactive. Who knows? He looked at the watch again. He had forgotten he was wearing it while encased in the suit. The time read 9:47 PM.

  “Nick, what is the estimated local time now?”

  “2:47 PM.”

  He recalibrated the watch, thinking that getting the suit off had taken a lot longer than he’d expected. Another churn of his stomach broke his reverie; it almost began to feel like he was cramping up.

  Now to cook this stuff. He could eat the egg and probably even the clam raw, if worse came to worst. Ugh. Gus decided to redouble his efforts. He stood up and looked at what remained of the suit. The main body of the suit looked flexible and had some soft polyfoam liner that supported the body.

  Looking at the helmet, he surmised that it could be used as a makeshift pot so he set to work trying to disengage it from the suit. Then he could cook the egg and clam and at last have something to eat. It seemed very securely attached. He tugged to see if he could rip the helmet away but the material was tough, and even though he felt stronger, he could not rip it even slightly.

  Inspecting the outside, he saw no tears or scuffs on the material, despite the crash, the long immersion in water, and his recent beach adventures. He would have to do something else.

  An idea came to mind. Maybe his suit was in such pristine condition because of his passive ability. If that was true, could he work with that? It seemed like a longshot, but what did he have to lose?

  He focused his attention and tried to see if he could invert the way his Wreck-less skill worked. He stared at the seam where the suit and helmet met, focusing on a small pinpoint whi
le he tugged them apart. He imagined the material coming apart and unravelling. Nothing happened.

  Still, he kept his focus on that pinpoint area on the stretched fabric. Just when he was about to give up the attempt a small dot appeared. It looked like burning paper with a magnifying glass, the small circle appearing at the apex of his focus. He slowly crept the focal point upward, tracing the border of the helmet. Small fibrils were seen unravelling and then crisping as hair does when burned. He was able to manage about one inch of a tear when he had to stop.

  His eyesight became a bit blurry; a chime rang and the sharp pang of a headache manifested itself at the back of his head. Oooh. That felt like an ice-cream headache all over. It took a minute of Lamaze-like panting before he could open his eyes.

  Looking at his stats, he saw that he had progressed 8% in his Level 2 Wreck-less skill. His MP bar was down to 1%, so he must’ve drained it completely, causing the headache.

  Another chime sounded.

  You have just unlocked the skill: Wreck-It-Gus!

  Wreck-It-Gus: Some people just want to watch the world burn, and you are one of those people! Fighting against your innate nature to preserve and protect, you have gained the ability to do the opposite. With great power comes the tendency to want to cause great damage! You can now cause material failure at +50% normal rates.

  100 XP awarded

  840 XP to level 3

  “How come the skill description is a little bit snarky, Nick?” Gus needled.

  “Actually, skill names and updates, as well as quest names, are based on your own psyche. They are generated by your own subconscious, so I’ll leave you to interpret the implications…” Nick replied with just a twinge of wryness, or maybe that was just Gus’ imagination.

  Taking a break to let his MP recharge, he set the stopwatch function on his watch to see just how long it would take him to recharge to full. He began braiding another coconut frond. He was able to complete that one and most of another when he noticed his MP bar was full again. Just a little over nine and a half minutes. So about 10 MP a minute. The timing was good to know. He switched again to the suit and this time was able to get about an inch and a half before the headache needled him in the back of the skull. He would have to keep tabs on that; that blurriness and distraction could be game over in a battle.

  “Nick, can you set a tiny alarm to warn me when any of my status bars drops below ten, then five percent?” he asked.

  “Done,” Nick said, and Gus got back to work.

  He quickly finished the last of the second frond blanket and stood, deciding to make a coconut run. There were only a couple left, but he felt like stretching his legs after sitting for so long. He streaked, literally, down the beach, noting the extra speed and mobility he had without the suit. He could’ve used some more support for his boys downstairs though, he thought as he jogged back to the tree. The coconuts felt cold on his skin as he clutched the remaining four to his chest and made his way back to the shelter.

  He needed some kind of tool. If he had a knife or a hammer, things would be simplified a lot. His stomach needled him again, as if saying, ‘Hurry up, jerk!’ Studying the suit again, he pulled on the polyfoam liner, trying to scavenge what he could for usable items. Surprisingly, the foam peeled out more easily than expected. Whether from his increased strength or from how the suit was designed was unclear.

  It retained its human-like shape and contours, easily molding like a cohesive foamy putty. He could mash it and it would compress, flattening and becoming uniform, then it would slowly puff up and aerate into an inch-thick layer. Using this method, he fashioned it into a mat to place between the fronds. Testing it out, he found it worked wonderfully. He did the same with the other half of the suit, but decided to try crafting the remaining putty into some form of clothing. After fashioning what looked like a makeshift diaper, he gave up. It would be ok if he were standing still, but movement caused the foam putty to condense at areas of pressure and fall off.

  “Well, it was worth a try,” Gus said.

  Looking inside the back of the suit, he saw a panel over the section that covered the rear. He removed it and found a twelve by eighteen-inch plate with a quarter-inch thickness, tapering to a thin edge. If he could figure out how to convert this into some kind of knife, his life would be vastly simplified, at least in the short term. He removed the plate, revealing empty vials and tubes. All of them were empty, with only a trace of fluids still in the lines.

  Flipping the plate over and over, he thought about using Wreck-It-Gus, but doubted he could cut directly through the metal. How could he shape it into some type of tool?

  The plate was hard enough that Gus thought he could use it to cook his food. He tried smacking the clam against a rock to break the shell, but succeeded only in chipping a tiny section away from the edge of the shell. He tried using his fingernails in the small opening to pry it open, but the clam resisted his efforts. Getting an idea, he forced the corner of the metal plate into the chipped notch and twisted to wedge the sides of the clam apart. It was just thin enough to fit in the chipped area to gain a purchase. Success! It wasn’t a perfect tool, but it did the job in a pinch. Gus whooped with the success, his confidence growing. Now he needed fire.

  Breaking small chunks of the driftwood into suitable pieces, Gus built up a pile of smaller branches and then some larger pieces in another pile. Stacking the branches into a teepee-like structure and filling the inside with the coconut husk fibers he was ready to start his fire for the night. He looked around for something to create a spark, but none of the rocks nearby looked like the flint he had used back at Scout Camp. He tried hitting a couple rocks together but none produced a spark. Remembering how the suit appeared to burn, he attempted Wreck-It-Gus on the husk fibers and they easily flared up, and the driftwood was soon alight.

  A tension he didn’t know he had been holding inside relaxed as the first sparks caught and the flame began. I can do this! The small heat from the fire grew stronger and Gus added driftwood, building the fire to a respectable level. He sat and stared into the flames for a bit; their hypnotic crackling was soothing and helped him relax. He had done it. He was a survivor! Pride welled up at the little he had been able to accomplish without a lot of resources.

  He sat a bit taller, resisting his usual tendency to slouch. Things were going to change, he could feel it. An unexpected optimism washed over him as he stared at the flames and a smile crept over his face.

  Gus used the plate to scoop out the clam from its shell and as the fire finally burned down to coals, he set the plate atop it and let it heat. While it was warming up, he took his clamshells and rinsed them in the surf, removing the residual sand as well as he could. By the time he returned, it looked like the metal was ready to use. With a little trepidation, he cracked the first egg and was happy to see only a deep orange yolk and not a tiny bird inside. The other two eggs were similarly bird-free.

  He cooked the clam and eggs atop the plate. Gus used the clam shells to keep the egg from running off the plate, as the coals were not as even as he had expected. The shells also functioned well as makeshift spoons to eat the scrambled eggs. To be honest, the eggs and clam were much tastier than he expected they would be. He was so hungry that he didn’t mind the salty sand that had mixed in with the food, despite his best efforts to keep everything clean.

  After removing the plate from the fire, carefully dragging it using the edges of the coconut shell so he wouldn’t burn himself, he scraped the plate as clean as he could then set it aside. It wasn’t much, but his gnawing hunger had abated. He would need to find some more food soon, but he had other pressing concerns.

  Finally sated, Gus looked at the plate and wondered how he could use it to build a more functional tool. He checked to see if it was cool and took it to the beach, and used some sand to scrub away the residue from his meal. Once it was relatively clean, he decided to give his new ability a try, since he didn’t have any other things to do.

&nb
sp; He focused on creating small perforations in the plate, in an attempt to fashion a machete sized rectangle of the metal. He was expecting this to be a project that would take a couple days, since Wreck-It-Gus had been a slow process with the space-suit fabric. Surprisingly, it was much quicker, despite being metal. His focus points behaved almost like he was melting wax. He burned through his MP bar with only a couple perforations, but he was progressing much more quickly than before, when he was trying to remove the visor from the suit.

  He tried the suit again to see if he had just gotten better, but it reacted in the same way it had before. That makes no sense, why is the metal easier to cut?

  The more he practiced, the faster he seemed to be, using just enough energy to make a perforation and resting just long enough to maintain his MP before having to wait and recharge. Getting a feel for the timing, he felt himself relax. The waves crashed in the background, and a warm breeze blew occasionally.

  Glancing at his watch, he saw that almost an hour had passed without him noticing. The sun was getting low in the sky, but he was encouraged with his progress. After forming the initial set of punctures and resting, he went back and created another set in between the previous perforations. A chime sounded just as he finished the second set.

  You have leveled up the skill: Wreck-It-Gus to Level 2!

  50 XP awarded

  790 XP to level 3

  Score! Gus felt the same feeling when he had power leveled in video games. But this was his reality now! And it would only get better, he anticipated. He could definitely get used to being a super. The future felt like it had no limits.

  Looking at the alcove next to his camp, Gus found a flat section nearby. He placed the plate against the rocky shelf and, with the base of his palm, hit it sharply. It separated neatly, and he now had a three by eighteen-inch band of metal, a foot for the blade and six inches for a handle. The knife really didn’t have an edge, but the jaggedness of the perforations created a ragged edge that could function as a saw-like tool.