Justin didn’t think he agreed on that front. He sighed as the guards reappeared and the chains vanished off his wrists with a clanking sound effect.
“Mayor Hausen wants to see you,” a guard announced. “Come with us, adventurer.”
At least they weren’t calling him Player Underscore 009. He shook his head and stood to follow them out of the cell.
“Remember!” Lyle Stout called after him. “Tell him to let me out! I’ll buy you a drink before you go off to your doom.”
He was still cackling like a madman when the door to the jail swung closed.
To Justin’s surprise, it was still dark out. The guards led him across the town square and up a gentle hill. To his right, he could see the giant arms of the windmill turning and hear the sounds of it creaking. Dogs barked distantly and sometimes, he heard a squeak or the lowing of a cow.
It was only now that he noticed the ambient music in the game. It was subtle, so atmospheric that he hadn’t realized that he was listening to it. A few notes played on a flute—like the kind of sound that might carry on the night air—were accompanied by the distant sound of a woman’s voice as if singing a lullaby to her child. It was almost peaceful.
Almost.
There was a sense of foreboding about this place. You couldn’t miss it. Everything was too picture-perfect and the guards were on edge. What kind of tiny village had this many guards, anyway?
He shivered in happy anticipation that he would be slaying monsters in no time. Of course, he was currently dressed in the most noob clothes he’d ever worn and the game didn’t seem to have mechanics he could use, but maybe the wizard would drop some good gear for him.
Or would this game be super-realistic and make him fight someone in leather armor if that was what he wanted to get instead of fighting a wizard in long, flowing robes? Justin scowled. That would piss him off, even if it would be hilarious to go around waving a sword while in blue, spangly robes. No one would see it coming.
He would also die. You never played a clothie if you could help it.
The mayor’s mansion was like many other game houses Justin had been inside. The first floor contained very little and was merely one open room with a hearth and a rug and no kitchen. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with books that were identical on each shelf.
Still, the way the mayor was seated in a chair by the fire, his face in shadow, was cool.
“Hello,” Justin said cheerfully.
“Adventurer. I’m glad you could come.” The mayor stood. “Am I correct that I am speaking to Player Underscore 009?”
This was becoming annoying. He rolled his eyes. “Yes, that’s me. PU009. My friends call me, uh…” Yeah, it was not a catchy name.
“I’m glad it’s you,” the mayor said, and Justin’s mouth twitched. Never mind. He was enjoying this glitch now. “You see, adventurer, I have a problem. My daughter has been kidnapped.”
“Oh, really?” he asked. “You don’t say. Would you be the one with the posters up in the tavern?”
“I have posted many rewards,” the mayor said, “but the wizard, Sephith, is a master of dark magic and illusion. No one has been able to save Zaara.”
“Cool,” he responded. “So, what’s the reward?”
“The reward is ten gold pieces,” the mayor said. “This should tell you how dangerous the quest is, adventurer.”
“No risk, no reward,” he said. “I’ll take it.”
“Good.” The mayor handed him a scroll that he had not held a moment before. These things were far more noticeable when playing an MMORPG in virtual reality, Justin thought. “This should tell you all that you need to know about Sephith.”
A pop-up covered the screen now, made to look like parchment with old-school script that detailed Sephith’s history and powers. He skipped through it as quickly as he could, and it was only when it disappeared that he felt a flash of misgiving. Skipping the tutorial hadn’t been a great idea, after all.
On the other hand, he’d made it out of the starting zone with only one death. He was doing fine. He didn’t need to know about Sephith.
“This will be a dangerous quest,” the mayor told him. “If you have any questions about Sephith, you may ask me. I have learned much about him since he took Zaara.”
Of all the things Justin was interested in right now, a long backstory was not one of them. “No, thanks. I know what I need to know.”
“Will you take any companions with you?” the mayor asked. “I suggest you do. The other heroes went alone and their fate…was not what they hoped.”
An idea occurred to him suddenly and he felt his face split into a wide grin. Oh, this would be good. This would be so, so good.
“I do have someone in mind,” he said casually, “but I’ll need your help.”
“I will do anything I can to help, of course. My daughter’s life is at stake.”
Excellent. “I want Lyle Stout to help me,” Justin said.
“Lyle Stout is the town drunk,” the mayor said.
“Oh, sure,” Justin replied, “but he’s also very good at causing chaos, isn’t he? I think that would be useful when we get to Sephith’s tower. Why, I hear that only three days ago, he broke a bench with another bench. That’s the kind of strength this quest could use. I don’t suppose I could persuade you to let him out of jail for this? It would be a good way for him to work off his debt to the town, after all.”
The mayor responded promptly: “Of course. Anything you need, adventurer. If you wish to be accompanied by Lyle Stout, I will arrange for his release from jail.”
“Excellent.” He felt the beginning of a laugh. He knew Lyle was an NPC but Justin would have so much fun telling him exactly how he’d gotten him out of jail. The dwarf wanted to laugh about him ending up as another dead adventurer? Well, he could make a choice, couldn’t he? Help on the quest or stay in that grimy old jail.
Chapter Fourteen
DuBois watched the progress on the screen with a critical eye.
Justin’s mind moved at unpredictable speeds. One moment, it would race along without any interruptions and the next, it would fall into a period of rest for up to an hour. What was interesting was that he did not seem to be aware of it. He would pick up with conversations exactly where he had left off.
DuBois appreciated that the characters in the game seemed inclined to wait as well. Everything hinged on interaction. If Justin did not interact, everyone else—what had Jacob called them? Some acronym—simply stood there. One of these days, the doctor would ask to see the inside of the game alongside their patient.
Not yet, however. The young man could still go critical at any minute and watching his brain in motion was fascinating.
The sound of voices behind him intruded and Nick came to stand at his shoulder and cleared his throat awkwardly.
He had learned over the years that when people did that, they usually wanted to say something. While he had never quite worked out why they didn’t simply say whatever it was to start with, at least he understood the strange mannerism now. He looked at the engineer and waited patiently.
“The senator is here to see you, sir,” Nick said.
“Hello,” Tad Williams added as he strode across the floor.
DuBois thought about mentioning to the two of them that they could have skipped both the introduction and the throat-clearing but decided not to. People seemed to cling to these strange rituals, no matter how often he pointed out that they simply wasted time. He nodded a hello to the senator and chose a piece of cheese popcorn out of his bag. The trash can below his desk now overflowed with empty packets.
He didn’t know it, but the three PIVOT employees had a bet going about the maximum number of bags he could finish in a day. Amber was currently winning.
“Dr. DuBois.” The senator looked as if he had slept but not well. He was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, clothes in which he looked manifestly uncomfortable. “Since there hadn’t been an update, I decided to come
by to see how Justin is doing.”
He put considerable stress on the first words, and the doctor looked vaguely at the calendar. It occurred to him that he probably should have updated them. How long had it been? He looked at his notes. Ah, three days.
Well, the senator surely couldn’t be expecting miracles.
“Recovery from brain trauma can take a long time,” he explained. “Justin is doing as well as can be expected. His brain function still shows the ability to understand and produce language.”
“Were we worried about that?” Williams asked.
DuBois looked at Jacob, Nick, and Amber. She waved one hand, the palm out, in front of her face. Jacob drew one finger repeatedly across his neck. Nick shook his head and made scissor motions with two fingers. He had no idea what they were going for.
“There’s no telling what might have been affected,” he explained to the senator. “He might end up with aphasia—that’s a difficulty with language.”
“I thought you said he had no difficulty with language.”
“I said he could understand and produce it,” he said patiently. Didn’t people ever listen? “Whether he will be able to speak it, write it, read it, or understand it aurally is another matter. Any one of the functions of language can be interrupted as well as other things. Partial paralysis is common, for instance. Or loss of function in the frontal lobe. He does seem to be making…strange decisions.”
The senator looked stricken at this, and Amber swooped in.
“His decisions make very good sense to another gamer,” she told the senator. “Justin appears to believe that he is reviewing this game on a video streaming platform. He sometimes notes glitches, for instance. I believe he is trying to find the limits of how the game operates.”
The senator and DuBois exchanged a look. Neither of them knew what this meant.
“My point is,” she said, “Justin has picked up very quickly that he can solve problems in multiple ways and he is doing that. This shows creativity, the ability to make choices…all kinds of higher brain function. He’s interacting very well with the game.”
“Then why can’t he…” The senator took a deep breath. “My apologies, all of you. This is not my area of expertise.”
“I understand entirely, sir,” Amber said. “You can feel free to ask, however.”
“If he can interact with the game and speak to people in the game, why can’t he wake up?” Williams asked. His tone was admirably even, but DuBois saw from the flared nostrils and the clenched hands that the senator was upset. He moved as if to straighten a tie he was not wearing and shoved his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt, which read PHILLIPS EXETER across the front.
“The mechanics of that aren’t exactly certain,” the doctor answered. He could see Amber trying to choose her words, and he had a hunch that she would spend more time doing that than talking. He took a moment to check the screen and make sure Justin was okay—he was—and returned his attention to Tad. “The human brain is enormously complex. What Justin is doing now—and what people do inside this game—is more similar to dreaming than to consciously processing information. As of now, dreaming is believed to be a cleaning mechanism for the brain. It processes information it already knows, takes limited inputs—for instance, how a person can wake up if they hear a loud noise—and in Justin’s case, waits for the blood to drain away and the brain to heal.”
“So he doesn’t know…that he’s asleep.” The senator walked closer to the pod and extended his fingers as if he wanted to open it.
“Would you like to see him, sir?” Amber asked.
DuBois refrained from sighing. They would never get anywhere in this conversation, would they?
Williams nodded, and she checked several feeds before she opened the lid of the pod. Inside, Justin looked the same as he had before. His hair might be greasier. He had less muscle tone. Still, the doctor didn’t see the point. The senator knew what his son looked like, surely.
“We should keep the lid closed,” Amber said. “It keeps his environment as secure as possible and minimizes the chance that he’ll wake up suddenly.”
She waited until Tad nodded, which was a good thirty seconds. The man stared at his son, and even if DuBois didn’t understand what was going on, he could see the pain in his face. Maybe, he thought, this was like when he would keep checking the monitors, even when he could hear that everything was fine. Sometimes, you wanted to see it for yourself. After all, the senator didn’t know what all the read-outs on the monitors meant.
Yes, that made sense now.
When Tad turned toward him, the doctor saw that the senator’s eyes were suspiciously bright.
“Can we talk to him?” Williams asked.
“Of course.” DuBois tilted his head. “He might not hear you, but you certainly can.”
The senator looked briefly skyward. “So he can possibly hear,” he said finally and carefully. “Can we…also be in the game?”
DuBois, Amber, Nick, and Jacob all looked at one another. A flurry of tiny gestures followed—raised eyebrows, shrugs, and finger wiggles. Then, when Tad wasn’t looking, Nick and Amber gave a shrug and a hopeful-looking nod at DuBois.
“There might be,” the doctor said. “We need to test it first, of course. Come back tomorrow.”
“It would do Mary so much good,” Tad said. “Both of us, to be honest. Knowing he’s awake in there and alone—it’s hard. I don’t want him to be scared.” He cleared his throat as if embarrassed. “I’ll call tomorrow to arrange a time,” he said and left abruptly.
When the door had closed, Jacob looked at DuBois. “We could definitely work on your bedside manner,” he said and sounded exasperated. “Do you think it was necessary to list all the worst-case scenarios?”
“He asked,” the man responded, puzzled.
Amber sank her head into her hands with a sigh. “Okay. Come on, we have so much to do. No, leave it, Jacob.” She shook her head slightly. “This isn’t a worthwhile discussion right now.”
DuBois took a moment to ponder this, then shrugged. If they wouldn’t talk to him about it, he could hardly force them to. He tipped the last of the popcorn into his mouth. “Is there another bag anywhere?”
“Of course,” Nick said smoothly. “That’s eight, right?” He smiled. “You keep eating.” In an undertone, he added to Amber and Jacob, “I’ll win this, you see if I don’t.”
Chapter Fifteen
The mayor accompanied the guards to the jail and left Justin in the house. He wandered around, twiddled his thumbs, and wished he had a video to watch. This game was certainly leaning into the story before it let him fight any more monsters.
When the mayor returned with Lyle, the dwarf was still tipsy. Squiggly lines practically came off him to show how much he smelled of booze, and he couldn’t seem to walk straight. He gave Justin a look.
“What’s this about a wizard?”
“I asked Mayor Hausen if he would release you from jail,” Justin asked serenely. Just like you asked, remember? “Because I need you to help me fight the wizard.”
“Oh, no.” The dwarf shook his head. “No, no. I don’t fight freaks of nature. Give me a good, honest brawl any day of the week, but I won’t fight spells. You can’t punch a spell.”
“Yes, but you can punch a wizard,” he pointed out. He sighed. “I understand if you don’t want to join me, of course.”
“Hmph. Yes. It’s a ridiculous quest.” Lyle swayed on his feet. “So, I’ll be going now.”
“Yes, back to the jail for you,” he said smoothly. “Good luck with the innkeep whenever he decides to speak to you.”
The dwarf stopped. The guards had stepped forward to take his arms. “Now, wait a minute,” he said. “Yer sayin’ I have to go back to jail?”
“Yes,” Justin confirmed. He assumed that was the word the conversation branch would cue off of. It was masterfully done. “I asked the mayor if you could be let out to help me fight the wizard. If you don’t come al
ong—”
“That’s ridiculous,” Lyle said. “You can’t throw me back in jail simply because I’m not stupid enough to go get myself killed!”
“You’d be a legend,” he said. “And imagine the treasure inside a wizard’s tower.”
“Those instruments are evil,” the mayor said at once. “The whole place should be burned.”
“Now yer talkin’ crazy, mayor.” The dwarf considered the offer. “So he has an evil thing. You melt it down, get a good ingot out of it, and now you got something normal to sell, y’see?”
The mayor did not seem to like this, but Justin knew he would agree. After all, the game had made this quest a possibility, right?
“Very well,” he said. “Take what you wish from the wizard’s tower, but all potions are to be destroyed and all instruments are to be melted down. Books, you shall burn. Am I clear?”
Book burning? That’s not a good look, bro. He shook his head. “Yes,” he lied. He hoped his inventory could store a large number of books—clearly, they were worth something, and he wanted a spell to make his sword less lame. Maybe he could get it to light on fire in combat. He wondered how learning spells worked in this game.
“Very well,” the mayor said again. “Now, I will be unable to outfit you, of course—budget cuts, I’m afraid. You understand.”
The game writers, Justin thought, had worked in government somewhere. Hell, even his father would have enjoyed that joke.
And it wasn’t like they needed the mayor’s help, anyway. Lyle had spoken about a reward. Justin would cash it in early, buy himself new armor, and head off to kill the wizard—with a great distraction in tow.
The mayor waved them out of his house and the two of them left. Lyle’s player icon and health bar had appeared under Justin’s in the top right corner of the screen. Apparently, he was a party member and like a party member, he followed him around.
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