I woke up to the sound of her screaming. Not the overwhelming terror screams I'd gotten used to. Just the everyday nightmare. All I could think was, “I’m glad it's not me this morning.” No, that wasn't helpful. I was also happy that it waited until morning.
The sun was peeking through the thin wall of the tent. “God I wish there was still coffee.” We hadn't had coffee for the past week, and our supplies were getting low. It's amazing what you could forage in a redwood forest, but coffee is not one of those things.
Kara woke up with a start. “Is this real? Are you real?… Okay. 10 fingers, 10 toes. Tan skin. My braids? Yes, this is my body. I am real.”
“You are real.” I told her as I gently stroked her cheek. “And so am I.”
She smiled and wrapped me in her arms. “You are, at that. Is there coffee?”
“No. Still no coffee.”
“Cigarettes, alcohol?”
“No. Still none of that.”
“I love camping, but not like this.”
“Yeah, if we had gone camping the way you like to, we would've died of dehydration days ago. You know, maybe we should try and get back to town.”
She frowned at me. “We can't go back to town.”
I looked at her pleadingly. “We're running out of supplies. How long can we make it out here?” Behind my back, I was scratching the palms of my hands. I wasn't doing well with so little stimulation.
“Town is dangerous. The forest is the only place we can really...”
“I know. I know. I've heard the old man speech. Says it damn near 10 times a day, but maybe if we're careful...”
“Come on,” she said unzipping our tent. “Maybe we should just boil some water and pretend we've got some coffee.”
“I could really go for some of that smooth french roast right now.”
I stepped outside and swept an eye over the dozen or so tents in our clearing.
The thing about the apocalypse is, it's never quite what you expect. They tell stories about how machines with hyper-intelligence were going to take over and enslave humanity. Maybe turn us all into batteries or something. Well, that's not quite it. Heck, part of me wishes that it was.
“Morning, Nate.” I waved to the former grad student turned lumberjack who had been on watch half the night.
“Morning you two.” he said in a stage whisper.
With a wave, Kara and I went over to the fire and put a kettle on. “Hey, where's the bottled water?” I asked.
“The old man has the last of it. Not much left. Soon we're gonna have to switch over to spring water.”
Spring water… we had tried it and thankfully it hadn't given us diarrhea. So, that was positive. “Anything to eat?”
“Jerky,” said Nate.
I looked at Kara.
“I know what you’re going to say. The old man won't let us.”
“I don't care what the old man says, he…”
The sound of a speaker crackled from overhead blimps. Nate yelled “Hats on everyone! Hats on!” We dove back into our tent to grab our tinfoil hats.
“I feel ridiculous every time we do this,” said Kara.
“Me too, but you know what?”
“The old man said,” we said in unison. If he hadn't been a professor at the School of Engineering, we probably wouldn't have taken his warning so seriously, but he kinda wrote the book on this sort of thing. Literally. As it was, he seemed like the closest thing to a leader we had.
We sat there for good five minutes, covering our ears, wearing tinfoil hats, looking for all the world like a couple of crazies that had just wandered in from an insane asylum.
“Think it's gone,” said Kara pointing up. Sure enough, when I unplugged my ears I couldn't hear it anymore. The blimp was gone. “We will find a way out of this someday.”
“Yeah, but how long? The old man's got no idea how long this is gonna go on for.”
“No one does. This might just be the way the world is now.”
“If this is the way the world is, then we might as well do what we can to get some coffee. We're gunna have to get supplies sometime.”
“All right,” she groaned. “We'll go into town and see if we can get your coffee. But our main goal is going to be food and water.”
I kissed her cheek. “You won’t regret it.”
Going into town was strictly forbidden. It was far too much of a risk. It was also the only place where we'd ever find more supplies.
“Should we tell the others?” She asked.
“No, the old man will just try and talk us out of it.”
We hadn't gotten 30 feet out of the camping ground before Nate called after us. “Hey, where are you guys going?”
Kara put a finger to her lips and whispered, “We're just heading into town.”
“Town.” He said. “You know what the old man said about town?”
I shared a knowing glance with Kara. “We do, we do.”
“It's too dangerous for the two of you to go alone. At least bring Mickey; he's a local. He knows more than just what's by the University.”
“Spare us his paternalistic hero-cis-whitecentric bullshit. We'll be fine on our own.”
“Nate, you know getting Mickey and Kara together is like sparks in a firework factory.”
“Or I could come with you two. Everyone's starting to get up now. I'll just leave word with my wife so that everyone knows where we're at. If we come back with food then no one's gonna listen to the old man anyway.”
“Fine, at least you're better than Mickey. If you're gonna come with us be quick.” said Kara.
Nate ducked inside of his tent and just a couple minutes later we were on the road, well trail, back into town.
“We'd better avoid the main roads.” I said. “See if we can get some place on the outskirts of town. We don't want any bots getting us.”
###
My eyes snapped open. For the briefest moment I didn't know where I was. Was I being poked by straw or pine needles? I reached out across the bed. “Kara. Where's Kara? Is she here?” No, I was in my room at the inn. I felt like she should be near. It seemed impossible that we could have gotten separated. What had happened? Why was I in this game?
From all I could remember, well... things outside were bad. Had we been fighting? I didn’t think we had been fighting. Had the old man kicked us out of the camp for disobeying his orders? Maybe I tried to escape the world by crawling inside a capsule again.
More of my memories were coming back. My childhood as a gamer. Staying up late in the night to level my character in the latest MMO RPG. My parents getting angry with me that I had spent my college graduation presents not on a trip to Europe, but on a few months in a VR MMO at a game server motel. Playing Fights Of Fancy’24/7, stopping only to sleep, use the bathroom, swap out an IV drip, and chug meal replacers.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Maybe that was it. Maybe I had left Kara to come here, to play this game, because I couldn't deal with what was going on outside. Maybe the camping life just wasn’t for me.
And who was the old man? I could remember his lessons. A mixture of mindfulness, meditation, programming theory, and basics of understanding AI. Why was such a highly technical class taught in the woods by firelight? None of it made sense and part of me didn't want it to make sense. Whatever was happening in the outside world, it wasn't my problem anymore. For all I knew, the old man was training me for just this sort of thing. I remembered things about VR systems and finding exploits in game mechanics. For all I knew, I had meant to do this all along. Maybe that time spent with Kara was just an extended camping trip before whatever this was. But if it was an extended camping trip, then why were we scavenging for food?
My thoughts were running in circles and I didn't want any of them.
Argyle would be downstairs. Sure, after that stunt he would probably be laughing at me, but that was fine. As much as I didn't want to think about the outside world, I also didn't want to think about my current predicament. I didn't want to think about being stuck on the very first mission in noob town. My palms itched to hold a controller, put a VR rig on, and lose myself.
How pathetic that I wanted to escape virtual reality into a more basic virtual reality. I was beginning to hate the repetition of this place. Waking up again, and again, and again in the same room looking at the same walls.
At the same time, would the outside world be any better? I mean, sure, I couldn't log out, but did I want to log out? From what I could remember, I had really enjoyed gaming, and here I was. This was the best, most immersive VR game I had ever played. Younger me would've given anything to be here. Why would I give up this opportunity?
I didn't know what to do. I didn't know why I had gotten separated from Kara, why I was in this game. I felt the urge to stop at nothing to figure it out. We had been in love, I felt it. I was still in love. I needed her, I needed to know where she was. But I didn't even know what was going on. How would I even start to come up with a way to find her? Maybe she was in the game too. Maybe we had both gone in together. Maybe that was the plan with the old man all along. I should just keep on playing the game in hopes of finding her.
Sure, I was stuck, so I didn't know how I would keep playing, but that was a side matter. It seemed to me that I only had two options: spend all of my energy trying to get to the bottom of why I was here, and where Kara was or spend my energy getting past this first quest, and make the most out of this game.
The truth was, I didn't even know if there was a problem. I didn't know what happened to us after the camp in the woods. I shouldn't just assume it's a problem when I don't have any evidence that there even is one. For all that my gut told me that I needed to find her, the only thing I really knew is that I was here now. I would just have to focus on getting past the first quest.
I wanted to play this game! I wanted to get out there, to really see what this game could do. Maybe escaping into games might have been a coping mechanism in the past. I feel like someone probably told me that at some point, but was this really escaping? Sure, maybe past me had meant to escape something, a breakup, a falling out, or some disaster in my life. But was present me escaping if I didn't know why I was here?
That settled it, the only thing I could really focus on was the game.
Something the old man had said came to me then. “Focus: the system will use your focus against you. It will please you and irritate you, exalt you and crush you, all to steal your focus. Don't fall into the trap. If you find yourself in the loop, change your focus.”
I was in a trap, I was in a loop. Focused on breaking out by completing my quest, but what else was there in this game to focus on?
My feet took me downstairs through the now familiar bacon commercial. I tried not paying attention. Instead, I looked around the room. There were gaps here, places that were not fully complete. The windows. There was nothing outside the windows.
The taste of bacon left my mouth and I was standing in the empty common room. “Well noob, you really are good for some entertainment.” As predicted, the barmaid was already handing Argyle a Turquoise Taurus.
“Oh, well, I'm happy I could be of service.” I bowed with a flourish. “But you know what I was thinking?” I was thinking that when you don’t want to think about anything, the best thing was to do something mindless. “Do you have to craft in the Crafting Hall? Like, is that the only place where you can craft?”
“No, I don't have to, but that's just where the free crafting material is, and the free equipment. You don't get more crafting material until you're done with what you're crafting. So if you make it there and then you're right there to pick up more material.”
“But you could take material out of there and craft it here.”
He leaned back and took a long sip of his drink, clearly willing to humor me to see where this was going. “Well, no, you can't take free raw materials out of the building.”
“Okay, okay. So maybe you could start crafting there and finish it here?”
“I mean, I guess, but, like, why? What are you thinking here noob?”
I was right on the edge of something. I could feel it. “Well, because if you are the one to start crafting something, do you have to be the one to finish crafting it?”
“I don't know.” He stroked his beard with a far off expression. “I heard a rumor that for more advanced projects people with different Skill sets can work together, so maybe?”
“Okay, how much stamina does it cost for you to start crafting something?”
“Well, it's a per minute thing. Like it takes a certain number of stamina per minute.”
“So, if you were to just craft for one minute, how much would it cost you?”
“It cost me, like 50 stamina per minute. I suppose, if I only worked on it long enough for it to become an incomplete project, that would take 10 maybe 30 seconds, I so I'm gonna take a guess maybe 20 stamina?”
“Okay, what would happen if you were to go to the Crafting Hall, start crafting something, then bring it back here and show me how to finish it. That way I can finish the ones that you start.”
“Well, I'm not like a Crafting trainer. I don't know how to train you in how to do it.”
“That's fine,” I reassured him. “Let me worry about that. First I want to give this a try. I think that we could find a way of combining our efforts so you wind up with more crafted pieces each day, and before long you'll have everything you need to buy that membership.”
“I'll be honest, it’s a pretty half-baked noob plan. Also, being honest, it's kind of the only plan, so what the hell. Let's give it a try.”
Like that, he was off and just a few minutes later he came back with a small deformed piece of metal and a tiny hammer, tweezers, clamps, and an assortment of other random tools.
“All right, this probably isn't gonna work, but we can give it a try anyway.” With that he set to work making a basic iron ring, and trying to explain to me how it was done. Foolishly, I thought it might happen right away. Like, there may be some brilliant flash of insight. Five minutes later, I was severely doubting this plan. He was beginning to get more surly and grumpy. “I don't know what you're expecting man. I'm almost out of stamina. I already used all of my regeneration time today, and I didn’t got fully topped off. I've got maybe three more minutes left in me and that's not enough to finish this ring. I won’t have any more juice till tomorrow.”
“All right.” I said “let's at least keep going until you're out of stamina.”
“Okay, but this better be worth the stamina crash.”
Two minutes later he was looking glum. Two minutes and 30 seconds later I could see him starting to sweat. “I’m about to crash man.” He said shaking all over. He tapped the ring with the hammer one last time. He fell off his bar stool sweating and panting like he had just run a marathon. The ring fell to the floor. And bounced once, twice, and rolled into the toe of my boot.
“Class Skill ‘I can do that’ activated. Skill acquired: Jeweler. You have learned from an Adept jeweler. Your Jeweler Skill is level 1.
Wwell, one was enough I thought. I picked up the iron ring and examined it.
“Basic Iron Ring created by Argyle. Work in progress. 9/10 progress points completed.”
I looked at Argyle still stunned on the floor. I felt bad. He had put himself in this predicament to help me learn how to craft. Granted, I was learning how to craft to help him, but who said that guilt needed to be logical.
I looked again at the ring. I guess the best thing I could do for him is to try to finish what he started. I took the tools from his still trembling hands and began gently hammering away at the ring.
“Basic Iron Ring completed. You have created Crude Basic Iron Ring. Skill Jeweler has increased to level 2.”
“Nice! It worked.”
“What?” Argyle was slowly pulling himself up off the floor.
“Argyle, it worked!”
“It worked?”
I showed him the ring. He examined it critically, not ready to believe that my ridiculous plan had actually gone the way I said it would. His this went wide, and his mouth fell open. He looked up at me. “It worked! It worked!” We both cheered, jumping up and down. If anyone had been around to watch both of us holding hands and jumping repeating “It worked! It worked!” They would have probably thought we belonged in a loony bin. I kind of thought we belonged in a loony bin, but that didn't change the fact that it had worked.
“Okay, so here's the plan.” I clapped him on the back and leaned forward like we were in a huddle “Tomorrow, when you get your stamina re-gen back, you go to the crafting Hall and start a ring. Then turn your re-gen off and bring it back to me. I finish it. Then you go back to the hall as soon as you're able to get more materials and start the next ring. I'll finish it and we'll repeat. Then, as we get close to the end of the day, if you have more stamina re-gen left, you use the rest of your time to finish up on your own.”
“Oh man!” said Argyle with the most genuine look of joy and relief I had ever seen. “You're gonna cut months off of this process.” He tackled me in a giant hug. “Thank you! Thank the gods for you.” He buried his face in my chest and started to cry.
We spent the next day crafting. Argyle would start a ring, and bring it to me in the Tavern. Now, you would think that me helping Argyle finish his projects would only add a little bit of time, but it actually made a significant difference. With him only starting a project and then walking back to the tavern and handing it off to me, he only needed to have his stamina regeneration on for a minute at a time. He managed to go nearly the whole day before he ran out of regeneration time. So, this practice meant that instead of his usual three hours of crafting per day he was able to get a full day of crafting.
This in turn meant that we were making nearly 3 times as many items per day as he had been making before. Sure, some were a slightly lower quality, but in this case, quantity over quality meant that he was overall making significantly more money.
The game had a result system, where based on your skill, you could generally expect to get higher or lower quality results. With superior materials you could generally get higher quality items, that sometimes had additional effects. Also, there was a fair degree of randomness involved, so sometimes if you did the exact same project in the exact same way, you might get randomly poorer results, but maybe one time in 10 he would get a good result, you could get advanced results, epic results, legendary results. Basically, if you were really lucky you could craft something pretty amazing even with the trashy materials and low skill levels we had. Whatever system governed these results seem to favor us working together, and we were getting quite a few with an above-average result.
By the end of the day, we had made almost, but not quite three times as much Gold as Argyle would in a normal day. On top of that my Jewelry crafting was up to level 3, which meant I didn't have to worry as much about dying and losing a level of the Skill. At my level, I only seemed to lose one Skill rank at a time. So, unless I died three times in a row, I should be okay.