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INVENTORY:
* MEDICINE
* COIN
* TROPHY 1
* MYSTERIOUS SCROLL
The scene teeters as Max adjusts his headset. His eyes focus past granulated countryside bounded on one side by sheer stone walls that communicate a boundary more than any sign could. Max faces a tall monument constructed from slate-gray stones and black mortar. A tiny row of red hearts appears whenever Max glances down. He turns to look around, and the ensuing wave of nausea nearly topples him.
Everything about this place assaults the senses. The colors are just a little brighter than anything material. Every object within sight is just a bit too immediate. Even through the pixelation, more real than real. The soundscape is fully modeled too. A small bird flies past, its shrill call carving through space until it’s behind him. Max turns his head to follow, and his stomach lurches. People pay for this?
A scrawny creature—monkey?—meerkat?—hedgehog?—hard to tell beneath those huge cartoonish eyes—waddles up and tugs at Max’s hand. Its fingers have squishy pads, dry and warm to the touch. “Whoa-ho! Take it easy there, pard’ner. This your first time?”
Max ignores the distraction. “Molly? Are you here?” Would they have both been placed at the same starting location? Would she be able to hear him?
He needs to find her, but every second brings a new distraction. It makes sense how people could spend days on end immersed in an environment like this. Soon he can’t even notice the pixels anymore, unless he really concentrates.
Another tiny creature, identical to the first, materializes out of nowhere and says something indistinct to someone on the opposite side of the monument.
“No, I’ve been nauseated lots of times,” a familiar voice replies.
“Molly!” Max peeks around the brickwork, but runs into an odd sensation, like he’s run against an invisible barrier. The immersion is fragile, especially when he tries to move around. He still has some sense of his real body, the one wearing the VR glasses and power glove against his skin. His actual forehead, bumping against the crumbling sheetrock.
“Careful,” Max says, rubbing his forehead. “This simulation doesn’t handle moving around too well.
“Working fine for me,” Molly says, flexing five working fingers where her prosthetic hand normally appeared. She stretches her arm behind her, producing loud pops from her shoulders and elbows.
“Is this your first time in this game?” Max asks.
“Sure,” Molly says. Her tone is so neutral that Max can’t figure out if she’s being sincere or sarcastic.
“Okay. Try walking toward me. Look out, there’s a—”
“I don’t need practice,” Molly says. “I pick up on things quickly. Worry about yourself.”
Max carefully plans his next step, and stumbles anyway. Up close, the tufts of grass sprouting from the ground blossom into blurry rectangles.
Better to not think about it too much. Max rises and takes another step, much like he would back in the real world. Smooth. He’s got this. Probably. “Where’s this graveyard?” Max asks.
“First we need to get a sword,” Molly says.
“But we’re only here to find what the Muses were talking about,” Max says. “Why would we need a sword?”
“Trust me,” Molly says. “Always get the sword first.”
Max looks around. “What about that cave?” Max says.
Of course. It’s dangerous to go alone. They descend into the cave, dark except for two fires burning. The old man who inexplicably seems to live there gives them each a rickety wooden sword, Max’s chiming into his inventory.
“Do you know where the graveyard is?” Max asks the old man, but he doesn’t veer from his programmed silence.
Back in the overworld, they venture north through a narrow channel in the rock formation, into a forested area. They pass through a boundary where the world seems to pause around them before the next scene scrolls into view. They’ve just crossed into another screen.
“Watch out!” Molly screams and flings herself out of the way of a wooden club, bigger around than her body, that shakes the earth as it crashes down. Attached to the club is a giant hand, and attached to that an even bigger cyclops, who looks prepared to eat horses (much less adventurers). He towers over both of them.
“You never said there’d be monsters!” Max says.
“I said always get a sword,” Molly corrects, then whirls around in an uncharacteristically graceful move, landing a clean slash against the monster’s bare chest. It doesn’t even leave a mark. “Oh,” she says, backing away.
The monster turns on Molly, leaving his back exposed to Max. This is his moment. He drives the sword home with both hands. An explosion of pain rockets through his clenched fists. For a sliver of a moment, the real world seeps back in. In a tiny room, Max just pounded indentations into the drywall of room 303. But in the game world, the wooden blade bounces harmlessly off the cyclops’s thick hide, reflecting the full force of Max’s strike back into his arms.
“We can’t win,” Max says. “The monster’s too strong.”
“No time to level grind,” Molly says. “Hemera could be getting the next trophy as we stand here.” She ducks, another whistling attack passing over her head.
“Why would they put such a powerful boss character one screen away from the start,” Max says. “That hardly seems sporting.”
Molly freezes, a faraway look in her eyes. She dances away from another attack. “You’re right. There’s something we’re missing. There has to be a way to defeat the cyclops. I need a second to think. Keep him busy.”
Keep him busy? This isn’t going to end well. “Hey, monobrow—Over here!” The monster glances Max’s way but turns attention back toward Molly. “Hey! Your mother was a hamster!” Max hurls a stone at the beast. “And your father smelt of…” That captures his attention. The monster turns to face Max.
“Uh, Molly? A bit of hurry-up?” Max stumbles backward, but something catches under his foot and he stumbles backward. His hand scrabbles for another rock, but there’s nothing nearby.
Imminent skull-crushing has a funny way of clearing the mind. Max suddenly remembers: he’s been in this situation before. In one of the Zork games he’s played with Nolan reading off the screen. There’s a room with a fearsome cyclops, one far too strong to defeat in combat. But there’s a shortcut around the whole situation.
Confronted with a fearsome cyclops, a fight could be avoided by saying…
“Xyzzy!”
Nothing happens. That’s not the magic word here. “Plugh?” No, of course. It’s—
“Ulysses[15]!”
The cyclops groans in agony, as if the word inflicts searing pain. His roar is loud enough to rattle the visor on Max’s face. The monster mashes his broad hands into his ears, to no avail.
“Yes, Ulysses,” Max says. “Your father’s deadly nemesis!”
“Ulysses!” Molly joins in.
The cyclops stumbles in haste, flattening several trees, and a scattering of items spills out across the ground.
The monster disappears into the forest, and Max and Molly collect the spoils. There’s a cartoonish bomb, which Max picks up, and a book bound in glossy black cloth.
Molly says, “A bomb will come in handy. But what’s that book thing?”
Max picks it up. It feels heavier than seems reasonable for a book. He tries to open it but can only clumsily bat it around; more like a solid block than a hardcover. “How do you read this?” he asks.
“Probably need to be in the right situation for it to become active,” Molly says.
“Let’s keep moving. Maybe we’ll run into somebody we can ask about the graveyard,” Max says.
A tenor voice answers. “Run into somebody, you have. Stand a little less taller, for you are in the presence of The Eigenthief!”
“The Eigenthief?” Max says, emphasis on the first word.
The dashing figure wears all black, from boots to belt to pirate shirt, all the way up to the black mask covering his eyes. “Yes, The is part of my name. Nicely done with the cyclops, by the way. Most newbies here don’t figure that out without dying a few dozen times. I’m sure you have no idea how rare of a rare drop item that book is. Now, if you’d be so kind, hand it over, and I can be on my way.”
Max notices the substantial sword hanging from the man’s belt. What would happen if they died here? Not much. Except for losing what chance they had at recovering the trophies before Hemera gets to them. That’s too much to risk.
Max holds the book out in offering.
Max doesn’t see it coming. The next thing he realizes, the book is on the ground, Molly kicking him in the shins, and kicking it aside. Well, since this environment doesn’t have any foot controls, so it’s more like angrily walking into the book until it gets pushed out of the way. Speaking of which, how is it that his shins actually hurt from that?
“You call yourself a proper thief? Molly says to The Eigenthief. “You’re just a two-bit thug.”
The Eigenthief looks wounded. “Two-bit?” His face darkens.
Max braces for battle. His hand finds its way to the wooden hilt of his sword. A deadly quiet settles over the world. Even the birds shut up.
The Eigenthief eyes Max and Molly. The moment stretches.
Time passes.
At last the Eigenthief opens his mouth—and tosses his head back to laugh, long and hard.
“It’s as plain as cærulean night that you have nothing to offer me, beyond the book of course. Which, I might add, I could, at any moment of my choosing, easily extract from your care by force. I’m sure you’d prefer to conclude our dealings without undue discomfort on your parts.” He bows deeply.
“You mean on our part. Singular,” Max says.
The Eigenthief straightens. “No, I quite deliberately refer to a plurality of your parts. It’s a threat, you see.” He takes a step toward the book. Molly moves to block him, but doesn’t draw her sword.
“My, isn’t that droll,” The Eigenthief says. “You two are simply adorable. Now, I want you to look closely at my sword. No, my lad, eyes over here. Yes, look. This is a level 20 dancing vorpal blade. It could practically cut you down with as little as the thought to do so. In fact, I’m practically holding it back as I speak. Your pitiful ligneous blades would wither against it like green twigs in a brushfire.”
“Are you an AI?” Molly asks.
Where did that come from? What did she see?
The question seems to catch The Eigenthief off guard. “What did you say?”
“You don’t talk like a PC. Are you real?” Molly asks.
“Not a Player Character? Of course I’m real. What kind of preposterous question is that? I take great pride in my not-at-all-pompous speech.”
“Oh yeah? What’s 741 times 538?”
“Why, three hun— Wait a minute. How did I know that?” The Eigenthief’s countenance falls toward his boots. He strokes his goatee and says, “’Tis incredible. I must be some kind of savant! Ask me another.”
“286 times 69,105,” Molly says.
“Nineteen million, seven hundred sixty-four thousand, and— By the Leather Goddesses— For once I am rendered speechless.”
“Hang on,” Max says. “Are you seeing words appearing in your field of vision? Like a little HUD?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, lad,” The Eigenthief says. Everyone is quiet for a moment, then he speaks again: “For the first time in my life, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do next.”
“Do you believe we could help you?” Molly asks. “Do you trust us?”
“You, young lady, I believe could do anything,” The Eigenthief says. “And yes, I trust you. Moreso if you’d leave your quarrelsome companion behind.”
“Come with us,” Max offers, ignoring the slight. “We are on an important quest, and we could use someone familiar with the area. Otherwise, we could spend all day looking for the graveyard.”
“The graveyard you say?” The Eigenthief says. “It’s like my second home.”
“Your second home is a graveyard?” Max asks.
“LOGIC ERROR, INITIATING CORE DUMP,” The Eigenthief says in a harshly mechanical voice. Max and Molly both take a step back. Then he collapses.
Molly runs up to him. It’s difficult to take the pulse of someone made out of pixels, but she at least makes an effort to check his vitals. “Are you okay?”
The Eigenthief’s body begins violently shaking. Is he sobbing?
He wipes away tears with the back of his hand. The scoundrel’s laughing! Max feels his fists tighten inside the power gloves.
“Ohh, that was rich,” The Eigenthief says, slurring. “You shoulda seen the looks on your faces. Oh, I had you going. Both of you. A hunnert percent.”
Max steps toward The Eigenthief, but Molly gets in his way. “No.”
“You seemed pretty OK with slashing at a cyclops a few minutes ago,” Max says.
“He said he’d help us. So, let him,” Molly says.
The Eigenthief springs to his feet again and brushes himself off.
“Very well, I shall trek with you,” The Eigenthief says, in his usual sententious voice. “Let me just fetch that silly little book, should a need arise for—”
Max notices that Molly already has her hand on the hilt of her sword. But they both turn to see what The Eigenthief is looking at. The book.
The glossy black of the cover is now a puddle sinking into the earth. Burned tufts of grass along the edge of the black wilt, leaving an ugly smear of brown death.
“I wouldn’t touch that,” Molly says.
Max nods in agreement.
Molly looks at The Eigenthief. “You were saying?”
The Eigenthief scowls. “On second thought, maybe we should just leave it there.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Max says. “To the graveyard!”
With a lingering look back, The Eigenthief agrees and leads them ahead.
footnotes
[15] “Odysseus” would’ve worked too.
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