by E. M. Foner
“The K-type supersedes the J-type,” Zick said confidently. “They don’t need as many signal leads, but the new processors work with the old slots.”
Julie and Dewey opened the cartons and began handing out individually packaged processors. Razood puzzled over the molded plastic protection for a moment, failed to tear it open on the dotted line, and then tried with his teeth. “I think we’re going to need scissors.”
“There’s a trick to it,” Jorb said, and then failed to open his own package. “And that trick is scissors.”
“I can’t believe we’re traveling in interstellar space and we still can’t get the stuff out of blister packs,” Bill said. “Back on Earth when I sold toys from a pushcart with my mom, we used to keep three pairs of scissors chained to the display just so people could open the packages they were buying.”
“Earth!” Dewey exclaimed. “Good call, Bill. I’m carrying a Swiss army knife my EarthCent Intelligence friends gave me. I think it has a scissors attachment.”
“If it has a knife, that would work even better,” Zick said.
“You open the packages, Dewey,” Flower joined in the conversation. “Humans are apt to slice into their fingers when they try opening those molded plastic packages with knives. I’ve seen the blood dripping on my thermal imaging.”
“Bucket brigade,” the artificial person declared cheerfully, unfolding the knife’s largest blade. “I’ll slice down the dotted line, and you pull apart the packaging, Julie. Let’s get to work.”
It took over an hour to populate the array of vector processors, and then Flower sent a pair of maintenance bots to replace the heavy deck plates.
“Don’t we want to turn it on to see if everything works before sealing it all in?” Julie asked.
“Safety first,” Jorb told her. “This type of computational hardware sucks a lot of power, and we’ve mixed and matched parts from several different species. If there are interoperability issues, it might express itself energetically.”
“He means it might catch on fire,” Zick said, “but I’ve never seen it actually happen with any of this alien hardware. There are too many fail-safes built in.”
“How will we know if it’s working properly?” Bill asked.
“I think there’s your answer,” Razood told his former apprentice, pointing off toward the right. An improbable wave of vegetation seemed to be rolling towards them, and suddenly they found themselves standing in a dense jungle, complete with a cacophony of bird song.
“This is incredible,” Julie exclaimed. “I thought LARPing was all about running around with medieval weapons and bashing stuff. Will we get to see the tropical birds that are making all this noise if we explore?”
“Noise?” Flower said indignantly. “I’m playing Dollnick opera for the intro, and the closest thing to birds in this jungle are the Horten vampire bats. Now don’t be surprised, I’m going to try something.”
“Try what?” Julie asked, and then her eyes went wide when she saw that Bill’s clothes had been replaced by a medieval outfit, complete with accessories like a large pouch slung over his shoulder and a short sword at his belt. She looked down at her own body and saw that her belly button was exposed because she was wearing a sort of halter top and a short skirt that would have been more appropriate on an anime schoolgirl. “Hey, timeout,” she called, making the universal hand signal. “How come the guys are all dressed like warriors and I look like a cartoon bimbo?”
“I thought you’d like it,” Flower said. “It was the hot outfit for young women at MultiCon.”
“You’ve got a cool sword hilt sticking up over your right shoulder,” Bill told her. “Like that Vergallian anime from the award show, Class Assassins.”
“You would remember that,” Julie said, but she turned her head enough to see the sword hilt, and then reached for it with her right hand, which passed right through. “Hey, that’s not how it worked on Union Station.”
“It’s a hologram,” Flower told her. “It’s the same sort of illusion I’ll wrap around bots so that your weapons will have something to hit when you’re fighting monsters. I’m sure it works the same way on Union Station.”
“You’re thinking about that experimental setup that Stryx Jeeves was working on where everything was real,” Jorb told Julie. “You never actually got to try the regular LARPing studio.”
A bearded dwarf who was as wide as he was tall stepped out of the jungle and dumped an armful of weapons on the path. “Compliments of Flower,” he grunted in a thick brogue. “I’ll be drinking in yon pub if ye need anything else.”
“I’ll go with you,” Dewey said. “I’m more of a pub type than a traipsing around the jungle with a sword type.”
Jorb and Razood leapt forward as the dwarf and the artificial person headed off. The Drazen seized a double-headed battle axe and the Frunge grabbed a war hammer and a small round shield with a spike protruding from the center. Bill and Zick took their turn next, each going for classic claymores. Everyone looked at Julie expectantly.
“I don’t want to be a party pooper, but killing monsters really isn’t my sort of thing,” she said. “And what if I mess up and hurt somebody?”
“You can’t,” Jorb said, and his axe flashed out at Razood, who deflected the blow with his small shield. “No, let me hit you so she can see how noodle weapons work,” the Drazen said.
“Hit Bill,” the Frunge suggested. “That’s the sort of sacrifice a man should make for his betrothed.”
“Go ahead,” Bill said. “But you don’t have to put your back into it like that.”
Jorb shifted the axe to his tentacle for longer reach and then brought the blade down on Bill’s shoulder. It deformed into a silver goop on impact, though it remained in one clump, and reformed the axe head when the Drazen pulled the handle back.
“Did it hurt?” Julie asked Bill.
“It felt about the same as when I throw a laundry sack over my shoulder,” he said.
“Well, I’ll take that dagger for self-protection, but don’t count on me to kill anything I don’t have to.”
“What’s the quest?” Zick asked.
The Dollnick opera playing in the background suddenly halted, and a baritone voice echoed through the jungle.
“An ancient civilization destroyed by dark magic, their temple complex overgrown by vegetation and lost in the mists of time. Legend has it that a necromancer lives on in the pyramid of the Death God, building an unholy army in preparation for an all-out war with the forces of light. Find the temple complex, kill the necromancer, and the loot of an entire civilization will be yours.”
“Was that you, Flower?” Julie asked.
“Stop asking questions,” Zick told her. “You’re ruining the suspension of disbelief.”
Jorb tilted his head back and sniffed the air. Then he struck a heroic pose and pointed dramatically with his axe. “It’s that way.”
“How can you tell?” Bill asked as they all fell in behind the Drazen.
“It stinks of death,” he proclaimed in an accent that sounded suspiciously like the vanished dwarf’s.
“Shouldn’t we be going the other direction then?” Julie whispered to Bill.
“I think the whole point of these LARPs is to find action,” Bill said. “Besides, it beats sitting in estimating class and getting all of the cake prices wrong.”
After a few minutes on the overgrown path, Jorb turned off into the jungle, clearing away vines with broad sweeps of his axe. Before they had proceeded far, the weapon clanged off something with a shower of sparks.
“This must be it,” the Drazen said, using his tentacle to pull some vines away from a large block of stone. “I’ll bet it’s a step pyramid.”
“Do we climb it?” Bill asked.
“Not unless you want to see the top,” Zick said. “The entrance is usually hidden at ground-level somewhere on these. Look for carvings of faces and try pushing on the eyes. That’s super popular with lost pyramids of Death
Gods.”
“Why don’t you and Jorb go right and I’ll take the newbies around the left?” Razood suggested.
“You want to split the party already? What’s your hurry?”
“Some of us have jobs,” Razood said. “Those apprentices from Bits I took on are nice guys, but if I leave them alone in the blacksmith shop for too long I know they’ll try to forge something.”
“I’m with Zick on this,” Jorb said. “Splitting the party is always a last resort and we aren’t there yet. I bet that Flower can just save our place if you have to leave.”
“You guys are totally ruining the vibe,” Zick complained. “Can we not talk about the game engine for five minutes?”
“Over here,” Bill called from just a few steps away, where he pulled back a mat of vines from a stone block to reveal a high-relief carving. “It looks like an ugly guy, but his eyes are completely missing.”
“Maybe they were jewels that have been stolen. That happens a lot in jungle quests.”
“Stick your fingers in and see what happens,” Razood advised.
“I like my fingers,” Bill said, regarding the holes nervously. “I don’t want to spoil the suspension of whatever, but does anybody ever lose body parts in these things?”
“I’ll do it,” the Frunge offered striding forward. He held his war hammer cocked behind his head for a blow, and reaching forward with his free hand, thrust his index and middle fingers into the eye sockets. There was a metallic screech, and the whole stone began to pull inwards with a low rumbling noise. In just a few seconds, a stairway leading under the pyramid was revealed.
“Wait,” Julie said as the warriors all pushed forward. “If this is an ancient temple complex that’s been lost in the mists of time, who lit all of those torches in the wall sconces?”
“Somebody always lights the torches,” Zick said, gripping his sword tighter. “Hey, I hear fighting somewhere.”
The torches suddenly dimmed, and a willowy Dollnick female materialized in a shimmering haze, her four hands held palms out in a calming gesture. “We have a bit of a problem,” she announced.
“Flower?” Julie asked.
“In here I’m a goddess, or I will be as soon as I come up with a decent back story,” the Dollnick AI said. “Keep in mind we’re just testing the basic game engine today.”
“Did you let more people in here?” Jorb asked as the sounds of fighting grew louder.
“Somebody spilled the beans to the Wanderers about this walled-off section being a LARPing studio, and they made such a fuss that I agreed to allow a group of them into the sandbox area so I could gather more data. It turns out that a couple dozen of them had noodle weapons from somewhere, and I thought it would be a good way to accelerate testing of the non-player characters I’m supplying as bots dressed in holograms.”
“So what’s the problem?” Julie asked.
“You know that the bots have to fight back or the whole exercise would be pointless, but I don’t have any experience with this so I’m being extra careful not to cause injuries,” Flower said. “The Wanderers have no such compunctions. They’ve slain half of my orc defenders and are ganging up on the rest in a very unsporting manner. I’m afraid they’ll be able to break through, and their Verlock mage has already performed a ritual that allowed her to speak with the undead and learn about the pyramid.”
“But the undead aren’t real, you’re supplying them,” Julie objected. “Why didn’t you just refuse to answer?”
“She’s a real Verlock mage and she performed the ritual correctly. Not answering would have been cheating.”
“Jorb, get the door,” Razood said. “We’ll have to defeat the dungeon boss before the Wanderers find their way in.”
The Drazen set down his axe and then jumped upwards, stretching with his tentacle, which just reached the top of the stone block that had withdrawn into the pyramid. He pushed in the eyes on the face that operated the door and then dropped back to the stairs. The block began moving outward with a loud grinding sound.
“Flower, I mean, Goddess. Can you turn the lights back up?” Razood asked.
The torches flared and the ghostly hologram of the Dollnick female disappeared.
“Why aren’t we moving forward?” Bill asked as the Frunge headed back up the stairs. “Isn’t it a race now?”
“Some dungeons gloss everything over with magic, but I think that Flower is more likely to—there,” Razood said, pointing at a complicated arrangement of gears and rods. “Everybody stand back and give me room.” He went to work with his heavy war hammer, bashing the mechanism at its weakest points. “That should do it.”
“But how will we get out now?” Julie asked in dismay.
“By beating the dungeon boss,” Zick told her. “There’s usually a teleport scroll in the loot.”
The next twenty minutes went by in a blur of combat, with Jorb and Razood tanking for the party and defeating most of the undead before they could get to the second rank, composed of Zick and Bill. Each time one of the zombies or skeleton warriors nearly broke through, Julie felt like her hands were burning, and she was about to call upon the goddess for help when they found themselves in a giant throne room.
“Who dares enter my pyramid without an invitation?” the corpse-like figure on the throne demanded. He rose with surprising grace for one who looked like his better days were centuries behind him, and then stalked forward towards the group of adventurers. “Those who slay the undead are destined to replace them,” he continued, raising a scepter and letting out an evil laugh.
“Rush him?” Jorb asked Razood under his breath.
“It can’t be that easy,” the Frunge replied. “Zick?”
“I saw a scenario just like this last season on the professional LARPing league channel with the same throne room and everything,” the former game designer from Bits said. “As soon as the adventurers attacked the necromancer, he smashed his scepter and teleported back onto the throne. Then those other three doors opened, and the whole room filled with undead. The party wiped.”
Julie looked around and saw that the passage they had arrived through was indeed one of four possible entrances to the throne room, though the doors to the other three were closed and covered with cobwebs.
“No guts, no glory,” Jorb muttered. “Plus I’m teaching a class at the dojo in an hour so I can’t stay down here forever.”
“Agreed,” the Frunge said, and then stared at Julie strangely. “You’re a spellcaster?”
“A what?” Julie asked.
“Your hands are glowing,” he told her. “That means you have some kind of magical ability. Try something.”
“Point at the dead guy,” Bill suggested.
Julie felt silly, but she pointed at the necromancer, and on a sudden impulse, trying her best to sound scary, declared, “Abracadabra.”
Flames shot from her fingertips and engulfed the undead sorcerer, whose clothing went up like a torch, and then the spot where he was standing was empty.
“Well, that was easy,” she said.
An evil laugh chilled her to the bones, and the necromancer reappeared on his throne, now garbed in black cloth that made him near invisible. Without even bothering to rise, he smashed the crystal on the end of his scepter against the stone arm of the throne.
All three sets of the doors to the throne room burst open, and a seemingly endless supply of reanimated dead in various forms streamed through two of them. But the third passageway only yielded a few limping skeletons and a shuffling zombie with a spear protruding from his back, followed by a horde of hard-charging adventurers from every alien species on the tunnel network.
“Kill the mobs and keep Flower’s group from the throne,” a glowing Verlock female boomed, her words coming slowly despite the excitement of the situation. “The necromancer is all mine.”
Jorb and Razood fell back in defensive positions as a dozen heavily armed warriors got between the party and the throne. Bill and Zick closed u
p around Julie, and the rest of the Wanderers charged gleefully into the undead hordes, slicing and dicing like they were engaged in a kitchen showdown.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jorb said, backing towards the passage the Wanderers had emerged from. “Those guys are wearing magical armor, and some of them have enchanted weapons. Who would have expected a Verlock mage on a Wanderer ship?”
“You guys go,” Zick said, slipping his sword back into its scabbard and folding his hands behind his neck in a sign of submission. “I want to stick around to see the end.”
The ghostly Dollnick female reappeared to lead the way up the passage as the remaining members of the original party exited. “I think it was a success from a technical perspective,” Flower said, though she sounded a bit apologetic. “Sorry about letting the Wanderers ruin your fun.”
Twelve
“I’m Dianne from the Galactic Free Press,” the reporter introduced herself. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”
“Samuel McAllister, I don’t have an official job title yet. Vivian was here a minute ago, but she just realized that the coffee Flower stocked in our kitchen is all decaffeinated, so she ran out to get some real beans for us.”
“That works for me,” the reporter said. “It’s going to be exciting with the headquarters for the Human Empire on board. I haven’t submitted a story worthy of the front page in two years.”
“We haven’t made any decisions about that yet,” Samuel said, though he realized how odd that must sound given the luxurious office suite with the Human Empire emblem literally carved in stone. “All of this is just an example of aggressive salesmanship on the part of our hostess.”
“Flower does try to be proactive,” Dianne said. “So do you mind if I take a few images over my implant? Your office is very impressive.”
“You mean the book collection.” Samuel reddened. “Flower had them all brought in overnight and we haven’t decided what to do about it yet. I can’t even read any of those languages, other than Vergallian. It reminds me of when my mom’s embassy sponsored a charity book sale on Union Station. Some of the aliens were buying books by weight to use for interior decorating. On the bright side, most of the academic monographs would have ended up in recycling otherwise.”