by G. D. Penman
Martin took a deep breath. “I’ve lost an eye. I don’t mind paying to get it back.”
“You misunderstand me, sir. There’s a few folk that Strata seems to take a personal interest in. It leaves its marks on them, sir, so that all who know what to look for know they’re chosen.”
Still that horrible pity.
Martin was incredulous. “Chosen?”
“Aye, sir. Summoned by the will of the dark, not some crusader’s call.”
Martin suppressed a shiver and a memory. “So there is no fixing this?”
“Not unless Strata wants it fixing, sir.”
He blew out his breath and went through his usual polite script. “All right. Thanks for your help.”
He was almost out the door when she replied.
“I know I didn’t help you none, sir. But there is nobody who can now.”
Suddenly the bustle of town seemed claustrophobic, and it was all Martin could do to barge his way through the press of bodies to a quiet corner near the elevator apparatus. He needed to get out. He needed to get out of this body. He needed to get out of Strata.
He pressed his hand to his guild crest and tried to force normalcy into his voice.
“Listen guys, I’m pretty beat after everything. I think I’ll call it an early night if Julia isn’t coming back. Meet you back here tomorrow night?”
Lindsay seemed genuinely startled.
“Uh, yeah, no problem dude. Sleep well and junk.”
He had his eyes shut and the menu open to escape when he froze. There was a slimy little hand clasped around his wrist. Speckles was lurking between him and the side of the apothecary, almost invisible within the Pearlfeather Cloak. “No afraid. Gods below good. Gods below love you.”
That was the icing on the cake. Martin logged out as fast as he could. Night had actually fallen by the time he pried the NIH from his forehead. He didn’t bother to look at the time on his phone.
For once, he was relieved to be back in his own body. He blinked both eyes slowly, really appreciating them for the first time in his life.
In a few seconds, his usual misery would catch up to him. He would realize that his life out here wasn’t any more within his control than his life in Strata and he would sink into a depression nap that would last until dawn if he was lucky.
But for that one glorious moment, he was relieved to be home.
Twenty-Seven
The Final Boss
The nightmares never came.
Or if they did, they were so weak he was able to shrug them off and go about his usual dream business.
Did he hear a whisper? Was there a flicker of green light beneath him everywhere he went? Both were quite possible, but neither encroached on whatever else had happened enough for Martin to recall them upon waking. That was good.
Strata was his freedom and it had started to feel far too much like a whole new cage. The dream, that had been a big part of that. If his brain was going to calm down and let him get on with things as usual then Strata could go back to being fun, rather than harrowing.
With no long night of gaming behind him, Martin was up and active a lot earlier than he would have expected on a Monday morning.
“Well rested” wasn’t usually a status effect that he managed to achieve in real life, relying far more often on “Over-caffeinated.”
There was a strange ache in his muscles as he walked down to get the early train, not painful exactly, but tense in a way that he wasn’t used to.
He didn’t have a mirror at home, but some poking and prodding in the shower made him suspicious that he might actually be growing muscles instead of rubber bands. Whatever cycle the NIH ran on him while he was playing was actually making him fitter. Video games that made you healthier; that was a confusing thought. He wondered why something like that wouldn’t have shown up in the news, then realized that his exposure to the game might have been a bit more intense than the average user’s. That, or news about the game was being suppressed.
The press of bodies on the train was less intrusive than usual. He was getting barged into and bothered less frequently too, which he eventually realized was because he wasn’t staring down at his phone.
He had things that he could be doing, websites to scour and leads to chase, but right now he felt oddly at peace. He just had to get through the day and he could slip back into Strata.
Something felt wrong the moment he stepped into the office. There were eyes on him from the very first moment, and not just Gillian’s usual prying stare. He very carefully did not make eye contact and headed to his desk to log in well ahead of time.
The work here wasn’t exciting, but after dealing with the complexities of Strata, the minor challenges of untangling orders in the system, pulling extra details from the database when they were missing and feeding everything back into the almighty algorithm… he could lose himself in it, if they’d let him.
It was only an hour into the day when he looked up from the screen to see Gillian hovering by the open door of his cubicle. She looked flushed. There was a little line between her eyebrows; she was worried about something. Upset.
It was strange that this person he could barely stand had the face that he knew best in all the world.
“Good morning, Martin. I need to talk to you in my office, please.”
There was no way this was good news. He supposed it was possible that she was giving him some sort of formal reprimand for being tardy last week, even if that was a break from procedure, but she didn’t have that usual satisfied gleam in her eyes that she got when she was about to tell him off.
In her office, one of her usual lackeys was sitting waiting. A witness. That was even more concerning. They all sat in their respective seats, and then she began.
“Martin, we are all very worried about you.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’ve… you’ve never been the most positive person on the team, but these last few weeks, you have changed so dramatically and… I just want you to know that I am here if you want to talk.”
“What would I want to talk about?” He glanced nervously at his coworker, who looked genuinely bored.
Gillian let out a weary sigh. “It’s drugs, isn’t it?”
Martin gawked at her. “What?”
“You’ve been irritable. Your concentration has been faltering. These are all symptoms of addiction, Martin. Listen to me: you are not alone in this. The company has an instant dismissal policy about drugs, but I am still here to support you. I am your friend, Martin, and I will help you to get the help you need.”
He had to raise his voice to be heard over all the mealy-mouthed platitudes. “I am not on drugs!”
It was Gillian’s turn to look dubious. “Martin, you have to admit that you have a problem or nobody can help you.”
His mouth drew into a thin line. “I don’t have any problems! Everything is fine.”
Gillian steepled her fingers. “I saw your tattoo, Martin. I know what things like that mean. It’s a gang sign, isn’t it? Have you gotten involved in crime?”
“Are you kidding me? My tattoo is…” How did he explain this to someone so obnoxiously normal? “I play a video game with some friends. That is the logo of our group.”
“A video game? You expect me to believe that a video game is so important you got it branded onto your skin?”
She looked so painfully serious that Martin was worried she was going to sprain something.
He sighed. “Gillian, it doesn’t matter what you believe. My personal life is none of your business.”
“You aren’t part of the team, Martin. Everyone else socializes. Everyone else has friends. You just come to work, do everything that you have to and then leave.”
Just a hint of whine was creeping into her voice. But whining was not going to help her case.
“That is all you pay me to do,” he said flatly.
“But it isn’t enough to just be a machine, Martin. You
have to work with others. You have to—"
He cut her off with ever increasing volume.
“I work with the rest of the team constantly. Whenever one of them is having a problem I am happy to—"
She returned the favor, cutting him off mid-sentence. “To take it away and fix it yourself instead of helping them to learn how to solve problems themselves. It’s like you don’t even understand why we are concerned about you.”
He had to calm down or he was going to start screaming.
“Gillian, I don’t understand the problem. I show up on time. I do more work than everyone else put together and I go home. That is a model employee.”
“Martin.” She looked so heartbroken that he just wanted to shake her. “There is more to life than just doing what needs to be done.”
He took a deep breath.
“There… there is. And that is what my life outside of work is for. I have people who care about me. I have a whole life that you know nothing about. A life that matters.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he instinctively reached for it. Gillian rolled her eyes but made no move to stop him so he pulled it out anyway. Not having to look at her for a second might help with the urge to strangle her.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about. You are so distracted all the time. I have called you in here to try and help you with your problems and you would rather check your email than actually engage in meaningful—”
His eyes darted over the screen as she rambled on, but he had already read the important part of the message.
He glanced up at Gillian and said the two words he had been dying to scream at her from the moment he met her.
“Shut up.”
That was enough to take the wind out of her sails.
“What?”
His mind rushed ahead, making the calculations. The useless shield from Celaphox had sold for just a little over three months’ wages. If he cut back on his living expenses, he could stretch it to four. That would be enough of a margin for error to finish Strata comfortably.
“Just be quiet for one second. Let me think.”
The flush came back over Gillian. Not embarrassment, but anger. It was almost cute when she puffed up and turned red.
“I will not tolerate being spoken to in this manner. Martin, you are an employee, and you cannot—”
“Not any more I’m not.” He smiled up at her. “I quit.”
Her mouth hung open.
“What?”
He stood up and gave his ex-coworker a pat on the shoulder.
“I quit. I’m done. Goodbye.”
Gillian shouted after him, desperate to keep his attention as he headed for the door. “You can’t just quit. What are you going to do with your life?”
He rolled up his sleeves and grinned. “Believe it or not, I’m going to play video games.”
“What?”
She was standing too now. When had that happened?
“Martin, don’t throw your life away.”
That touched a nerve.
“I’m done throwing my life away. Day after day. Coming here and pushing buttons, years of my life just pushing buttons, all to change some numbers I don’t care about on some screens. This isn’t real. This… this is the life that doesn’t matter. Why am I wasting my time on it?”
He walked out into the deathly silent office with a bounce in his step. It felt like a victory as he strolled back to his desk to gather up his meagre belongings.
He might have walked out there and then had inspiration not struck at the last moment.
Perhaps this place would be of some use after all.
He clicked over to the telecoms database and typed in the words “Edwin Klimpt.” It wasn’t like they could sack him for improper use of company property now.
There was only one entry, and it looked like someone was in the process of scrambling it from the moment the data appeared on the screen.
He was too late for a phone number, but he scribbled down the address, one state over, before they could finish. He slipped the post-it note away and turned to leave, only to be confronted with a security guard.
“Turn out your pockets please, sir.”
Gillian was hovering behind the guard, tears in her eyes. Martin rolled his eyes.
“Really?”
The guard must have been on standby in the stairwell to get here so quickly. Maybe Gillian had better organizational skills than he’d thought.
“Standard procedure when escorting downsized employees out of the building.”
Martin looked him up and down. “You aren’t touching me, and you have no right to search me.”
“Sir.”
Well, that was informative.
Martin let his eyes flick away from the security guard for a moment.
“Gillian, call the cops. They’ll tell you the same thing.”
She just shook her head. “I called him, Martin.”
The guard had about a foot on Martin, weighed about half as much again in muscle and he had pepper spray too. Martin found himself reaching for a sword that wasn’t at his hip.
“I’m warning you, if you touch me, I’m going to treat you the same way I’d treat anyone else trying to lay hands on me without permission. Now stand aside.”
The guard went for him and instincts that Martin didn’t know he had kicked in.
He vaulted clear over the cubicle wall without even thinking. A single leap. Just like that.
He didn’t look back. He just ran for the exit. In fact, he didn’t stop running until he was on the train, and by then his brain was already rattling through the glorious days ahead of him.
All that money. He didn’t need to work for three months, and all that extra time would let him explore Strata more thoroughly, level up, even manufacture gear.
It would also give him all the time he needed to get stuck into the mystery of the invisible developers, starting with a daytrip to visit his new best friend Mr. Klimpt.
There was no way that the company would send anyone after him or warn Klimpt that he was coming. That would involve admitting their culpability in the breach of his privacy. He only had to hope whatever algorithm scrambled Klimpt’s data didn’t notify its owner each time it did so.
Even if his accelerated plans to delve through Strata were derailed, there was no way that in the next three months of exploring Strata he wouldn’t come across a single item that could go to auction. If he got far enough into the crafting systems then he could just make that a part-time job.
His hands started to shake as the adrenaline wore off. How the hell had he been able to jump that high? What was the NIH shaping him into while he played? With habitual movements he pulled up the newsfeeds about Strata on his phone, expecting to see some stupid think piece somewhere in the mix about a game that made you healthier, but that wasn’t the front-page news. Somebody had died.
Some girl called Jessie Beldrum, three states north, had been playing the game without a break for over a fortnight and dehydration had finally finished her off. The body had been discovered today, though it looked like she’d been dead a week, and whatever algorithm the Masters of Strata had been using to keep their game out of the news hadn’t been able to stand up to the swathe of reports.
Jessie Beldrum. Jezebel?
The dates didn’t add up. He’d seen Jezebel after this Jessie girl died. She couldn’t have still been playing. That made no sense.
He pushed that momentary spike of fear aside, turned off the news and focused on his excitement. It was all over. The dead-end jobs and the grind. He was finally free. Even years from now, when the last boss was slain a dozen times over and people abandoned Strata, there would always be a new game. There would always be somewhere that Martin belonged, and could use his own excellence to pay his way.
Back in his apartment, Martin stripped the bed, tossed out all of his trash and even ran the little handheld vacuum over the place; everything he could think of doing before
logging back into Strata and getting started on his grand plans. This was more than a fresh start for him. It was a whole new life. He felt like he needed to do something, other than checking his newly healthy bank account, to mark the occasion.
He picked up his phone and tapped the only number he seemed to use.
“Hey Lindsay. Want to start early tonight?”
There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation.
“Can do, can do, how early are you finishing work?”
“I’m finished now,” he tapped back. “I quit.”
There was a momentary pause, then:
“Dude. What? That is crazy. Talk in Strata. Give me like 20 minutes to duck out.”
He smiled down at the message, already reaching for the NIH.
“I’ll be waiting for you down there.”
This time, as the numbers counted down and he closed his eyes to blissful darkness, Martin didn’t feel like he was falling; he felt like he was coming home. It might have been a dark place, but it was his.
And he wouldn’t give it up for anything.
To be concluded in Masters of Strata.
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