Chapter 2: MythMaker

Despite the waterproof case, Derek's phone still needed a rice bath. Lake water quickly proved that waterproof at $50 and waterproof at $5 were two different things. Derek retrieved the phone but didn’t get a chance to answer his mom's call—the lake made sure of that. Derek doubted he had snapped the picture, but he had to check.

In the warmth and safety of his parent's kitchen, it was easy for Derek to try and dismiss the entire experience. He hadn't eaten anything other than a protein bar that day, and hydration had been the furthest thing from his mind. A true fisherman is sustained by his unwavering focus on willpower. Derek could hear the electric humming of the refrigerator and the sporadic rumble of an old furnace. From the kitchen, someone could look into the living room over the counter and see whatever sports program his dad left blaring on the massive screen.

Surrounded by technology, it was hard to envision a dark and primordial creature swimming in Golden Lake. Try as he might, Derek couldn't force the two worlds to coexist. The cozy vibrancy of civilization and the dark depths he witnessed that night weren’t meant to merge. As he was just about to attribute the entire experience to dehydration and malnutrition, Derek looked at his hand, the one that had been holding his phone. Red, blistered skin ran in a line down his hand and forearm. He'd heard of things like frostburn before, but that didn't feel right. A flash of light followed by his phone tumbling into the water sprang to mind. Could that be where the burn came from? If it is a burn.

"I'll take Questions I'll Never Know the Answer to for 400, Alex," Derek muttered to himself. What is... what happened to me on the dock tonight?"

Derek let the question die, but it echoed through the dark caverns of his mind, the parts of his mind more willing to accept the unexplainable, the ones that rarely saw the light of the day. Before Derek could plumb the depths, his phone lit up in the rice bowl. The device was off, so removing the water shouldn't have changed that. However, an iconic fruit logo flickered onto the screen, proving otherwise.

He decided to dwell on the unexplainable another time, maybe after he called his mom back and told Harmony what happened that night. She would ride him about being on the lake after dark, but what had happened to him differed from the typical amber lights that spirited away tourists. After the phone's initial boot-up sequence, the device should have displayed his home screen, a page littered with apps, a picture of him and Harmony, and a group of their friends from high school holding a massive fish between them. It should have been a winner that year, a record breaker, but Rod had other plans.

Instead of the home screen, a spinning logo of a man holding a sword and a shield dominated the screen. Underneath his feet, the words MythMaker wrote themselves out in typical old English fantasy script. Each letter wrote itself out on the screen as if handwritten by quill. When the unseen hand finished the last letter, the man stopped spinning and seemed to look out of the screen at Derek. He looked determined, like those Army recruitment ads that said, "We Want You." which were made famous during World War 1. Whatever this app was trying to say, Derek didn't like the way the guy looked at him, the way his black eyes seemed to look into him. People needed enough from him already, so this guy could get in line.

Derek swiped up on the screen to banish the app, but the man stood there, undeterred. His facial expression didn't change, but something about it felt responsive anyway. It felt like he was watching Derek's attempts to close the app with disappointment but also patience. Derek could imagine the small figure, a cheesy fantasy hero, calling out to him, "You can't swipe away your destiny, Derek Dunn."

"The only way out is through," Derek said, quoting something, but he couldn't remember what.

He tapped MythMaker, and the fantasy hero gave Derek a nod and stepped to the side of the phone screen. Behind the little man was a medieval wooden door flanked by torches. The door swung open to reveal a stone hallway obscured by inky darkness. Moss grew between the stones. They bespoke something ancient and mysterious. It was easy to forget he was looking at the screen of his phone. A new scrawl of white text started to type itself out.

Enter and Become a Myth.

Beware: The Making of a Myth is not for the faint of heart.

Derek tapped the open doorway with his index finger and, for a brief moment, imagined himself sucked into the endless darkness of the hallway. However, it was just the darkness of his phone changing screens, a common phenomenon, but the strangeness of the evening had him on edge. It was only 7 PM, but it felt much later.

The next screen looked like a more typical menu now but set in a fantasy dungeon. It was set in the same hallway with stone on both sides and endless darkness down the hallway, but floating in the air were four squares. The first square read Character. It was the only one that looked like it had any definition. The other three squares appeared intangible; if they were supposed to have text, Derek couldn't see it. Despite the weird manifestation of this app, Derek felt immeasurably better. This display was the start screen of a game. Games he could handle. He'd never heard of a game that just installed itself onto a phone, but something like this wasn't entirely without precedent. He remembered a weird update with one of U2's albums automatically installed into every handheld music device so the band could break some record. Whoever designed this game must have dropped a large sum of money to do something similar, and when Derek's phone had turned off and turned back on, it had automatically installed the update containing this game. He wasn't really in a gaming mood, but after unsuccessfully trying to exit MythMaker a few more times, Derek submitted to the reality that he didn't have much of a choice if he ever planned to use his phone again.

He tapped Character with his finger, and his phone chirped with an over-the-top sound effect of a sword leaving a sheath. The handwritten fantasy scrawl painstakingly wrote itself out across the screen. Whoever designed this game has a flair for melodrama.

Who embarks on this journey?

Derek's keyboard emerged from the bottom of the screen, and Derek knew it was time for him to pick his Character Name. MythMaker seemed like the type of game where he wouldn't need a username with many numbers and symbols to ensure he didn't have the same username as everyone else, so Derek went with his typical game username.

Dirk Dawn

He'd taken to choosing it because he enjoyed how similar it was to his name, and it had annoyed his friends because of how stupid it was. He wondered if they were making their characters at that moment or if their fancy universities were keeping them too busy. As he clicked each letter, they wrote themselves out in the fantasy script, too, and he had to admit he was starting to enjoy the effect. It felt like he was about to embark on some grand adventure. Games like this weren't Harmony's style, but he wondered if he could convince her to play it with him. Whatever the game, a group to play it with improved the overall experience.

The next character creation screen was standard fare in video games, but its options told a different story.

Myths come in all shapes and sizes. Which shall you be?

Derek could tell this page was meant to be where he chose his Character's fantasy race and appearance. Boxes and icons littered the screen, depicting classic options like elves and dwarves along with less typical options like a race called an amberkin, a kismeth, or even a were-folk. He tried tapping them all with a finger to give him some additional information along with any added racial benefits. Derek was the type of guy who never played these types of games as a regular human; sometimes, he just needed a break. However, a tap on each box yielded nothing, and that's when Derek noticed the borders of each race were grey except one, Human. Underneath the race icon was a short description.

As all the other races have dwindled across The Realms, humans are the only ones to have become more abundant. Many theorize it was at the expense of others. The Human race starts with well-rounded stats. They don't suffer in any one stat, nor do they excel. There is no race in The Realms more versatile than a human.

Derek reluctantly chose his race, and a small human-shaped icon populated the screen. Its back was to Derek, and the avatar turned its face toward the dark hallways of Character Creation. Dirk also seemed to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt eerily similar to the one Derek had changed into after his fishing trip.

Before Derek could ponder how weird this was, his Character, Dirk Dawn, walked down the hallway at a mechanical pace, as if he didn't care that he was walking into the unknown without even a torch to guide him. Derek tried not to let his Character's outfit bother him. The app probably permits my phone to use the camera. That's why I couldn't choose any other race than Human. Besides, it's all for effect. Shock and awe. Dirk kept stupidly walking forward and quickly came upon a three-way intersection that continued straight ahead or either branched at a slant to the left or right. Dirk dutifully stopped to a halt at the intersection. The quill text started to write:

One cannot become a Myth without one's chosen craft. Choose wisely

Three portrait-shaped icons started to populate each hallway, along with a title placard above them. From left to right, they read The Inept Scholar, The Angler, and The Neighborhood Pest. Next to each title placard was a little bubble with a lowercase i inside. Derek assumed this was an information bubble that would give him some information about each option. This new room was the page where he would choose his Character's class.

Derek had a couple of problems with it right off the bat. Two of the class options were outright insulting. The Angler option tempted Derek just because it was the only one who wasn't poking fun at him, but that was where his other problem occurred. Despite none of the classes being the typical video game options like a warrior, archer, or rogue, these class options seemed like picks that needed some degree of personal knowledge of Derek's life. The Angler was obvious. Derek loved fishing. However, even the other two less flattering options didn't take a galactic leap of logic to figure out how they applied to him. Derek looked at The Inept Scholar, and it was an icon of mini Dirk Dawn lying on a couch. Abandoned scrolls surrounded the avatar, but the telling detail was a glowing computer screen covered in dust. How could it not be a subtle jab at Derek's lackadaisical approach towards his online studies?

The Neighborhood Pest was more of the same. It was a portrait of Dirk Dawn in a cartoonishly large garden, hiding behind a vegetable while an equally giant, angry farmer searched for him. The farmer in the icon bore an uncanny resemblance to Rod Hockenson. As far as Derek knew, Rod had never been a farmer, but he had also referred to Derek as a pest many times throughout Derek's life.

Cameras couldn't explain this level of detail on the phone. AI couldn't even explain it. An AI wouldn't have a likeness of the owner of the town's junkyard/fishing shop stored in its database along with the favorite insult Rod used. He almost decided that his foray into MythMaker was over right then and there, but then he realized something. If he wanted to use his phone anytime soon, Derek would have power throughout the character-creation process.

He seriously considered picking a random class and continuing down the hallway, consequences be damned, but Derek couldn't bring himself to that point. Something about this process felt important. If Derek was going to be stuck playing this game, he might as well have the best class possible. That presented another problem. None of these options could be considered conventionally valuable in a game setting. Maybe The Inept Scholar could learn spells at some point. The scrolls littered around the portrait's room seemed like a good indicator, but before Derek made any decisions, he decided he would press the information bubble of each class. Derek started with The Inept Scholar:

The Inept Scholar has breezed through life's many hurdles with a natural aptitude that has prevented him from developing the skills necessary to be a successful student of magic. The Inept Scholar acquires knowledge and new skills at a blistering pace. The only thing holding him back is his motivation. The Inept Scholar is unable to achieve mastery of any one school of magic but is able to cast spells of Tier 3 or lower in multiple schools of magic with the appropriate level of study.

Derek ignored the insult about his lack of diligence in his studies and almost picked it up anyway. He was comfortable being a magic user in most games, but being unable to get the crazy spells of a high-level character was a big turn-off. The Inept Scholar seemed like a class that would start powerful but difficult to be effective with later on, not that Derek knew what later on would even mean. Despite sounding vaguely insulting towards him and knowing too much personal information, this sounded like a good class option.

Dirk's next path was The Angler. The portrait depicted a man with his back to the audience, surrounded by a vast expanse of nothingness. The only things in the frame were the man, his pole, and a little fishing hole. However, the fisherman was pulling on the pole for dear life. The struggle between the fisherman and his catch felt like it had been happening much longer and would continue long after he'd left. Derek tapped The Angler info icon.

Stolen story; please report.

The Angler is known for his extreme patience and willpower. While the world changes, The Angler remains stalwart and implacable. The art of Angling is a lonely occupation with no limit to its potential. With enough time and planning, every catch is within The Angler's reach, but at what cost?

Derek involuntarily shuddered as he finished reading the description. Both of the descriptions hit too close to home. What kind of video game offers for their Character to become the best fisherman of all time? It didn't even tout the gameplay benefits of The Inept Scholar class. At least with that one, Derek could see himself having some combat potential. The game hinted that The Angler had limitless potential, but would he be forced down some non-combat playthrough if he chose it? Derek tried not to fixate on how seriously he was taking this process. It’s just a game. Choosing a major in college had been a quicker process for him than this. Not that that means much. A business degree is a classic stalling tactic for someone who doesn’t know what they want to do with their life.

The last potential path for Dirk to travel was that of The Neighborhood Pest. It was the least conventional of the three options, and Derek considered skipping past it. He couldn't imagine himself choosing it or even a situation in which it could be helpful for his Character. However, he tapped the info icon out of morbid curiosity. When MythMaker became popular, Derek would be kicking himself if he passed over something that had the potential to be one of the better classes.

The Neighborhood Pest knows his surroundings and uses that knowledge to nefarious ends. He is a debuff specialist known for finding and exploiting the weaknesses of even the most formidable opponents. The Neighborhood Pest excels at attacks from oblique angles but suffers in direct confrontation. The longer he is in an environment, the more advantage he accrues, but the converse is also true. The Neighborhood Pest takes penalties in unfamiliar environs.

The class intrigued Derek more than he would have thought at the outset. It sounded like The Neighborhood Pest was a rogue or debuff-type class. Derek could imagine himself playing something like that to significant effect, but there were too many unknowns. The description of how he would do it could have been more specific, and the penalty he took in unfamiliar surroundings sounded like it could be a considerable hindrance. Derek didn't know how long Dirk would be in each area of the game and, therefore, didn't know how much he could utilize the class to its fullest. It also seemed like a class that might do better in a party, and Derek had serious doubts that would ever happen. If his college friends were too busy to keep in contact, they were too busy to play a game like MythMaker with him.

Derek tapped The Angler. The miniature avatar of Dirk Dawn walked through the portrait of the fisherman, gaining a tan bucket hat and a wooden fishing pole strapped to his back. How the pole rested on his back reminded Derek of a knight's sword. As Dirk walked down the dark dungeon hallway, he arrived at yet another intersection. However, instead of more descriptions and things for Derek to choose from, there were five different closed doorways. The doors were each wooden and of a different color: red, blue, green, yellow, and purple. There weren't any info bubbles for Derek to pick to help him with his choice, and whenever he tapped a door, the only prompt he received was:

Are you sure? Y/N

A little more context for the choice would have been excellent, but it didn't look like he would get any. He still needed to understand how this was part of character creation. Derek chose the green door because he'd watched a movie once that said geniuses pick green. Dirk strode through the door and walked for another ten seconds before arriving at yet another door. However, next to the door was a matching green chest with the words Starting Equipment emblazoned in its intricately detailed wood paneling. Derek quickly tapped the little chest with excitement. Who didn't love a little loot? As the lid creaked open, a light started to spill out and - "Derek Dunn, where have you been?"

The voice startled him so much that he dropped his phone. It landed face-down. I hope this doesn’t start to become a regular thing. Derek itched to bend down and see what loot he'd obtained, but the tone of his mother’s voice made him revise that plan.

Derek's mother, or as the residents of Golden Lake knew her, Lisa Dunn, was a chatty and kind woman. With heels on, she couldn't have been taller than 5'2', and she never wore heels. She wouldn’t be caught dead without her customary flannel shirt tucked into a pair of overalls that led into a meticulously kept pair of black Tecova cowboy boots. Other women in town were afraid to wear pigtails because of their irrational fear that they would never live up to Lisa Dunn's platinum-blonde look. Lisa was always quick to lend her and her family's hands to those in need and was on good terms with nearly everyone in town, including a fair number of the summer tourists. However, none of these things were what she was best known for.

Lisa Dunn's legendary wrath was what people still mentioned in hushed tones. Even those who hadn't witnessed one of her notorious temper tantrums pretended like they had because they were always the talk of the town. During these tantrums, her choice of words and her use of the environment both received honorable mentions. Eustace Everly still shivers every time he sees an elk because of the time Derek's mother pinned him to a wall between the tines of a taxidermied elk head because of Eustace's drunken advances toward her daughter. Additionally, it prompted all the kids in town to look up the words "waddling bag of erectile dysfunction and alcoholism."

Derek had never needed to pretend he'd witnessed them. He had far too much experience being on the receiving end. With a sinking feeling, Derek realized this might become one of those times. Harmony had mentioned something earlier in the day about his mom needing him, and Lisa had unsuccessfully tried to get a hold of him at the precise moment he'd dropped his phone in the lake. Now, MythMaker had hijacked his cell phone. He really had intended to call her back, but the road to unleashing his mother's wrath was paved with good intentions.

"Today's my day off, so I thought I'd practice for the Jamboree," Derek told her lamely.

"The Jamboree? The one in July? Aren’t we still in January?" Lisa Dunn asked, the tone revealing she already knew the answer.

"Well… yeah. I'm practicing. It's my day off. I didn't think it would be a big deal."

"Well, how are your online classes going?" she asked, another question she knew the answer to.

Derek shrugged his shoulders, "They're going okay."

"That’s interesting. I was looking over your grades, and I couldn't help but notice you had several B's in Business Accounting and Management Theories. Not to mention a C in Music Appreciation. I suppose 'okay' would be an adequate way to put it if one held no standards for themselves. Tell me, how does one get a C in Music Appreciation?"

Derek's lips quirked into a half-smile, "Maybe they don't appreciate music enough?"

Her icy demeanor didn’t show any cracks beyond the polite smile she always wore as her temper ratcheted up to boiling. Derek couldn't help but feel that if his older brother or sister had said it, his mom would've laughed.

"I'm glad you find this amusing, Derek. One of us needs to be able to enjoy your failure."

Derek winced. His brother and sister had always been straight-A students all through college, but his mom had always acted like Derek's lack of straight-A’s wasn’t that big of a deal. While his dad had always treated Derek like the least of his three children, Derek’s mom always went out of her way to defend her youngest son. Derek worried this time; he'd pushed her one step too far, something he seemed to have a knack for.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I'm trying hard in my own way. It's just really tough for me to care about these classes. It's like, what's the point? We pay all these stacks of money for classes that teach me how to do something I already know how to do."

"If you already know how to do it, then why aren't your grades better?"

It was a fair question.

"Because none of it has to do with actual business. Being able to write in APA format isn't going to help me run the family store. Everything they assign is like that. It's all theory and being trained to do things like a trained drone instead of being able to apply it in a real-life situation, like working in a grocery store. I'd rather spend my time doing something practical."

Lisa arched a meticulously crafted eyebrow, "And fishing in the middle of winter is practical?"

"Yes!" Derek said, unintentionally raising his voice, "I love fishing, and I’m going to win. The whole town wants me to win. Don't you want someone to wipe that smile off Rod's face? I can do it. This is going to be my year. I can feel it!"

Lisa Dunn took a deep breath. Derek braced himself for the eruption, but when she exhaled, whatever anger was building behind that cold exterior visibly left her. His mom's shoulders relaxed, and the sharp angles of her face seemed to soften.

"The whole town isn't thinking of your future after this summer. Neither are you. But I am, and so is your father. So what if you win the Jamboree? What next?"

"Why does there have to be a next right now? I can deal with that next when we get there, and then all the other nexts as they crop up. Why do I need to have it all figured out right now? I want to live in this town for the rest of my life and take over the family business. I thought that would make you both happy."

Derek's mother approached him with a sad look and wrapped her arms around him. Her head didn't even reach his shoulder, but at that moment, her warmth and love for him enwrapped Derek's entire being. She held the hug longer than she had since he was a kid, and when his mom finally let him go, she looked up at him with an unmistakable love that made Derek feel like a fool for ever doubting.

"When you have kids, maybe you'll understand that what's good enough for you isn't what you want for your kids. You want them to have more than you had. Your father and I want you to have so much more."

At the mention of his father, Derek stiffened. "I believe that's what you want for me. Dad wants to get rid of me. He hasn't spoken to me in months."

If the harsh words bothered her, his mom didn't let it show. "That's something you're going to have to work out with your father, but just know that he loves you very much—more than you'll ever know until you have kids of your own."

Derek stifled his frustration at the line. Whenever parents wanted to make a point, they had to say something like, 'When you have your own kids, you'll get it.' There was no response to that that didn't make him feel like a jerk, especially since he could feel how hard his mom was trying.

"I have nothing to work out with him. He owes me an apology, and until he's willing to admit it, we don't have anything to talk about. I'm not trying to be difficult, but you shouldn't want me to accept anything less than an apology after what he did."

Lisa Dunn smiled a tired smile. Wrinkles crinkled the corners of her eyes and the edge of her mouth. It was the first time Derek noticed them, and he secretly wondered if he was the cause. "What if your father feels the same way? Have you considered that?"

An incredulous laugh escaped from Derek's mouth before he could control himself. He didn't want to disregard the olive branch his mother had offered him, so he mastered his tongue and said, "No, I have not honestly considered that. It's hard for me to imagine something so outlandish. In fact, I don't know how any person could walk away from that situation and arrive at that conclusion."

Surprisingly, his mother laughed, "The two of you are more similar than you think. You've always been the most like your father."

"So, now we're slinging insults?" Derek asked. "I hope you haven't told Dad that little observation. I can think of several dictators he would rather compare himself to than me."

His mother laughed again. It felt genuine. Derek could feel himself softening. He couldn't remember the last time his mother had laughed at or enjoyed something he'd

said. At some point in their relationship, she'd started to feel like his boss more than his mom. When the laughter subsided, she said, "Derek, talk to your father, and I mean actually talk with him. Be yourself, not this character you play when you're having conversations you don't like."

"I don't play a-"

"Just try. For me," Derek's mom pleaded, and something in her tone finally extinguished his protests.

"Okay, Mom. I’ll. I promise."

"Thumb promise?" she asked.

Derek nodded, "Thumb promise."

The two of them raised their hands and wrapped their thumbs around each other. When their thumbs clasped, the rest of their hands flared awkwardly like the wings of a bird. A thumb promise was something Derek, his mom, and all of his friends used to do together. Derek had always thought pinky promises were overrated. The pinky is the most fragile finger on the entire hand and, thus, easiest to break. So when Derek was eight years old, he proposed the thumb promise, which would be the hardest promise to break because the thumb was the toughest finger to break. His dad and siblings thought it was stupid, but his mom had always indulged him. Before tonight, Derek would have guessed his thumb promise days were over, but that didn't diminish the seriousness of the promise. He would try to the best of his abilities to have an honest conversation with his dad. Mentally, Derek added another amendment to the thumb promise and decided he wouldn't give his mom such a hard time anymore. She was trying her best, and it wasn't her fault she married Harold Dunn, the most stubborn man on the face of the earth.

"I'll talk to him, and I'll do my best," Derek told her, "But I can't promise an apology."

"I understand," she said with a nod, removing her hand from his. "Now, what's going on here?" She said while motioning towards the bowl full of rice in her kitchen.

Derek explained that his cheap waterproof case wasn't fully waterproof and that the lake had nearly eaten his phone. He didn't tell her about his monstrous catch or the burn on his hand. It somehow didn't feel right. Derek also neglected to mention the bits where he ignored Harmony's reminder to call his mom.

When he finished his tale, his mother clucked about him being out in the cold all day and how he needed to ensure he was warm enough. Derek then asked polite questions about her day at the store. The conversation drifted and took them to the living room. Derek scooped up his phone and dropped it into his pocket.

His mom put on a show about a young genius and his zany misadventures. Derek stoked the fireplace, and the two watched episode after episode in warmth and comfort. At some point, Derek heard the front door open, and his dad slipped into the room, back home after a business trip. He remembered his mom mentioning that his dad needed to go out and schmooze some potential massive national supplier. His father dropped into his overly large reclining chair without a word and watched with them for hours. Derek would find the courage to talk to him at some point, but not tonight.

His thoughts drifted to Dirk Dawn's mini adventure and the newly opened loot box from time to time, but he never pulled out his phone to check. It would ruin the moment. MythMaker could wait.