Day 3

Thursday, August 23rd

The next day, Jake managed to summon the will to get out of bed so he could contribute to society and more importantly earn his paycheck.

There wasn’t a tribe of goblins for him to slay a couple hours before dawn this morning, so he was able to get up at his usual time. That still placed him in the early bird’s nest rather than with the late risers, but had him waking at the far more reasonable time of fifteen before five.

He got up early and finished his workday early too, so he didn’t feel he had much to complain about. Didn’t exactly give him time for a nightlife, though, unless he wanted to show up to work feeling dead.

It wasn’t a problem. He wasn’t the type for it anyway and if he was being honest, this city’s nightlife was usually almost as dead as its daylife.

His sluggish morning routine started off as it usually did. He threw something in the microwave to fill his belly, cleaned himself up in the bathroom, put on his work uniform, and headed out the door.

That was it or at least it would have been it if he hadn’t gotten a message from Evelyn right as he stepped out the front door.

Eve: Hey, it’s Evelyn. Can we talk real quick before you go to work?

Jake had no recollection of saving her number to his contacts. When he checked for the number listed under her name, he didn’t find one.

After giving it a thought, he decided that he had the time to talk. He wouldn’t be able to take such a leisurely pace getting to work today, but dealing with his alien life coach was more important than a comfortable commute.

He headed back up to his room and put on his wrist brain and display shades. He already had them on him, but he wanted the conversation to be in a place that was both private and not a total mess.

There was little doubt that the aliens already knew what his grandparents’ house was like, but he still had enough shame that he didn’t want to actively show the interior to anyone. Which was going to be a problem since he was probably going to have to invite Will over today after he got him into the beta.

After closing his room’s door behind him and slipping on his user set, he realized that they hadn’t actually discussed how he was supposed to get in contact with Evelyn.

“Uh… could you call Evelyn?” Jake asked as he stood in the middle of his room. Thankfully, his wrist brain responded.

A User Request for Staff Assistance can be sent to 10-Epsilon.

“Yeah, call her.”

A User Request for Staff Assistance has been sent!

Please wait for Staff to reply…

User Request for Staff Assistance has been accepted!

“You can call me Eve if you want,” Jake heard Evelyn say from behind him. He looked back to see her projection leaned against his door with the bottom of her heel pressed against it. She was currently busy buttoning the wrist of her dress shirt.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said, turning around to face her fully. “10-Epsilon rolls off the tongue pretty well too.”

“Thanks, Beta-42.” She spared him a glance while she continued to button her wrists. “That uniform looks good on you by the way.” She switched the wrist she was buttoning.

“Thanks,” Jake said. “You look good too… In your uniform.”

She didn’t look up from her wrist, but she smiled.

It was obvious that she was still in the process of getting ready for the day. The ribbon around her neck was missing, she hadn’t buttoned the top two buttons of her dress shirt, and her hair was still down.

“A little bit early for you?” Jake asked.

“Nothing I can’t get used to,” Evelyn said. And that was true. She’d already gotten used to another dimension and world, after all.

She finished buttoning her cuff and switched to the top buttons of her shirt. “My boss wanted me to talk to you about an alert he received relating to you the other day.”

“Oh?”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“It was the one we get for when a user is stranded in another dimension?”

“Huh? Oh...” Jake scratched the back of his head. With how he almost died the other day, he’d nearly forgotten his arm getting stuck on the other side of a portal. “Sorry about that.”

“Everything’s fine as long as you’re fine, but my boss wanted me to advise you against doing whatever you did to trigger it again. There’s a very real risk that you could end up summoning some of the monsters from the instances to this dimension.”

She finished buttoning her shirt, then slipped her hands behind her waist. “If that happens, you won’t have health points to defend your body and neither will the other people they could end up hurting.”

“Right,” Jake said. Not that anyone would have gotten hurt besides him in that abandoned part of the neighborhood. “I’ll try to be more careful. Thanks for the warning.”

Evelyn looked him in the eye and smiled. “I didn’t come here just to warn you, though. This one’s not from my boss, but I wanted to tell you you’re doing a good job, so far.”

“Thanks.” Hearing that made him a little happy.

“My boss was telling me about a meeting he had with some of the other higher ups yesterday and how it made a big impression when you just so happened to finish your second instance right in the middle of it.” She walked up to him. “It also doesn’t hurt that you finished another instance on the same day.”

Jake shrugged. “Just trying not to die.”

Evelyn shook her head. “You really are my only hope, Jake.”

The Princess Leia vibes he was getting from her the other day returned. “You’re making a Star Wars reference, right?” he asked.

“No,” she said in an innocent tone. “All girls from other worlds say these sorts of things.” Obviously, she was joking. “Learning about your culture is a part of my job and your culture includes Star Wars.”

“What’d you think of the movies?” Jake asked, lowering his empty arms.

“I was surprised how accurate the laser swords were,” she said.

Jake couldn’t be sure if that one was a joke or not.

“I didn’t get much of a chance to watch things like that back where I came from,” she continued, “So it was a nice experience to have.”

“Maybe we could watch a few movies together, then,” Jake said. “After we come out of this alive.”

She tilted her head. “You want to meet me in person?”

Jake shrugged. “I mean if it’s not against company policy…”

“Sure. As long as you don’t plan to call me 10-Epsilon in public.” Evelyn smiled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Anyways…” She let out a hum as she stretched out. “I have to keep getting ready for work and it looks like you already have to get going.”

“Looks like it.”

“If you need any help just call me, okay? I don’t want you to die before we get to see a movie.”

Jake chuckled. “Okay.”

“Then I’ll see you later, Jake?” Evelyn asked.

Jake nodded. “See you later, Eve.”

And with that, she disappeared from his room. She didn’t disappear from his mind, however.

Maybe talking to her like this wouldn’t have meant as much back when he was away at college, but here in the city where he felt most alone, it definitely did.

It felt like there was a touch of life added to his day. Not the kind of touch that having Ernie as a junk hauling partner added, but a welcome touch that improved your life rather than made it more chaotic.

===

Later That Day

Speaking of Ernie, after two days of monster slaughtering on Jake’s part, his junk hauling partner finally noticed something different about him today.

“Hey,” Ernie said to Jake as they were driving between addresses on their dispatch route. “What’s up?”

“Huh?” Jake said, snapping out of the trance he was in.

“You got a girl or something, man?”

Jake gave him an odd look. It sounded like it was coming out of the blue to him, but Ernie did seem to be surprisingly perceptive sometimes. “No, why?”

“Because you got that dumb look on your face with a big smile like, ‘Damn, my girl got a big booty!’”

Oh…

Jake turned back towards the window, trying to hide a grin. “Okay, so let’s say I do.”

“Man, you gotta be careful. My homies saw me looking dumb like that one day for this chick and next thing I knew, I got a kid and now I’m here. Shoot, you’re already here, so imagine how bad it’ll be for you.”

Jake could get the point he was trying to make. “I’ll try to feel her out before things get too serious,” he told him.

“Bro, I wasn’t serious at all,” Ernie said. “I wake up one day and I got this chick’s mom banging on my door shouting, ‘You ruined my baby’s future!’ And, shoot, you know how I was like back then, man. I went out there and I was like—”

As Ernie retold another wild story relating to his wife and her mother, Jake reflected a bit on his own situation with Evelyn. Though Ernie was lacking quite a bit of detail on Jake’s circumstances, his words still sort of applied.

Jake could call Evelyn some chick from outer space or that hot chick from another dimension, either way, he knew just as little about her or where she came from.

Was she telling him the truth about everything? He couldn’t tell and he wasn’t in a position to check if she was.

All he knew for now was that she was acting like the nice girl from the galaxy next door. As long as she kept that act up, Jake was fine thinking about her the way he did. It gave him something else to distract himself from the house he'd be going back to later that day. It didn’t hurt that it distracted him from the end of the world too.

He couldn’t really put his trust in her, but he could ask her for advice once in a while. As for his friend, Will? Well, if there was someone he was going to trust, it would be him.