Wait. What?
My mind reels.
My vision is still hazy, and I reach up to rub my eyes only to encounter my glasses. I haven’t worn them in two months. Not consciously, anyway. That had, weirdly, been the most difficult physical change to get used to.
Frowning, I take them off and find the Incite Interface clips I’d attached to sit against my temples. The clips come off with a quiet snap and, when I replace my glasses, the haze is gone.
The man in the golf cart is still grinning at me. He looks the same.
“Flynt?” I ask, stupidly.
His grin broadens. “’Fraid not, just the actor. Jesse. I was going to ask what party you got. Guess that answers that!” The faux-British courtly lilt, which in itself wasn’t exactly Flynt-like, has dropped away entirely to be replaced by something that sounds more Jersey than anything else. It’s… disconcerting. This whole thing is disconcerting. What is even going on?
Also—Jesse? Flynt is not a Jesse.
I glance back at the door I exited. It’s one of those one-way metal doors like in the back of movie theaters so you can’t sneak back inside. We’re in a wide, paved access alley between rows of warehouse-like structures. It’s not raining, but it’s still quite gray. There are several deep potholes filled with rainwater, and everything is still soaked, including the red carpet beneath my feet, despite the fact that it’s covered by a medieval-styled awning similar—no, identical—to what the Girl-With-A-Clipboard stood under at the start of all this.
Tasha. That’s right.
My ballet flats are getting damp, soaking up water from the thick carpet. They feel way too light and flimsy.
I’m exhausted. My head hurts a little. I feel… hungover? Or maybe jetlagged.
“I know, it’s a little disorienting, isn’t it?” Not-Flynt—I’m just going to think of him as that, Jesse is just way too bully-in-a-teen-comedy—offers me a sympathetic look. “You were in there a lot longer than usual. Just over two hours.”
“Wait—two hours?”
“Time flies, right?”
“It… actually seemed…” I’m still trying to get my bearings. I think we’re all the way at the opposite end of the warehouse block from where the entrance was, probably the equivalent of three of four suburban Costcos in terms of square footage—significant for Los Angeles (or, I guess technically, Culver City) but certainly not enough floor space for the amount of area I’d covered. Maybe there was some kind of holodeck effect happening? There had to have been, right? Though I’ve never heard of something like that actually working in real life. “It seemed a lot longer than that.” I look back to him. “Is it supposed to just spit me out like that? I didn’t even finish the quest.”
He frowns at that. “So you didn’t recover the Stone?”
I shake my head and adjust my bag to my other shoulder. It feels… full. Like a very fancy swag bag stuffed with items. Which I guess makes sense, doesn’t it.
“No. We were going to head up to Ruska next.”
“Ruska?” He laughs. “Did the fighter chick tell you to do that? What’s the character… Meg? I had heard they took her out of the rotation for being too unreliable. Ruska isn’t actually part of the sim.”
I’m half listening, but also realizing that on top of the weird hangover-slash-jetlag feeling, I’m also cold and my ears itch. I reach up to rub one and it’s… latex?
Of course it’s latex. They’ve always been latex. You’re not actually an elf, Keira.
“You alright?” he asks.
I look over at him. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“Get in. I should take you back up front. It’s a little bit of a walk.” He motions for me to climb into the back of his golf cart and offers me another grin. His eyes don’t crease the way Flynt’s do. He looks younger than Flynt, now that I consider him. Or maybe, he’s just had some Botox. It is L.A.
Numbly, I climb in. He waits for me to get settled.
“You’re lucky it’s Sunday. At least you won’t have to worry about a parking ticket,” he says as he carefully turns the cart around and heads back toward the starting point.
“Yeah, for sure.” I take my glasses off again to rub one of my temples. My head swims a little before I replace them. “What did you mean that Ruska isn’t part of the sim?”
He chuckles. “In the early script, it was supposed to be the original location, but it ended up being too big or something to do the way they wanted, so they went with Oosal instead. It’s not as well established in the games, so it’s more containable. Fans won’t be coming in expecting to see and explore a whole bunch of landmarks. If you don’t mind me asking—if you didn’t finish the quest, what exactly were you doing in there?”
I shake my head. “Honestly? Now, I’m not even sure. Chasing our tails, I guess.” I sigh. “Maybe I was supposed to try to direct it more? I don’t know. It was a bit disorienting. I’ve never been in something like that before.”
“Yeah, no, it’s pretty revolutionary. Next step in virtual reality, you know? There should have been some System guidance if you were getting stuck, though. None of the story arcs are particularly complicated.”
I think about this for a moment. I suppose they’re not. There are a lot of questions that I feel like are unanswered, but the videogame-style contrivances—maybe that’s what he means by System guidance?—kept things moving fairly smoothly in the scheme of things. I just don’t understand how so much time seemed to pass. Like, I remember a whole lot of down time. Days of research. Multiple meals. Don’t I?
“I must’ve just made some strange choices. I like RPGs, but I tend to play them with guidebooks and YouTube videos at the ready.” He chuckles a little at that, but I can’t help but think about how heavy the air feels and how loud everything around me seems right now. “What was it supposed to be like?”
“Well. There are a few different branches, of course, depending on who your NPC guide is—that’s going to be whoever the player talks to first, which is decided by what direction they go from the entry point. Flynt is meant for the more casual gamers who, apparently, almost always start with the tavern. According to the test groups, anyway. So, he either held the door open for you or helped you flag down Antony to buy you a drink?”
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“Yeah.” Though, as I think about it, those details don’t sound quite right.
“So, from there, what? You fought the Dragon Mage alongside one of the other parties, right? You then would have found a map on the mage, and since you’re a solo-player, Flynt would have introduced you to other NPCs with class types that would have rounded out the party. This make-up would have been a little different depending on the class you selected, and if you’d been in a bigger player party, you might have gone straight on to the quest itself. The map—it would have led you to the cave where you fought the spiders, right? You solved a puzzle, and then encountered the slimes before you found the temple and the Stone. If you had a couple of other PCs in your party, that would have led to a fight with an undead ogre. But you’re saying you never found the Stone?”
I shake my head. All of that sounds familiar—the cave, the spiders and puzzle, a temple—but weren’t the slimes somewhere else? The ogre, too.
“How was Nyssa supposed to fit in? I’m still trying to figure that out.”
He frowns and glances back over his shoulder at me. “Nyssa? The tavern owner?” He shakes his head as he focuses back ahead of him. “Flynt’s party isn’t supposed to intersect with her. Testing said her whole story didn’t go over very well with casual gamers. Too murky on the alignment front.”
“What do you mean? How so?”
He chuckles and shrugs a shoulder. We’re coming up on the mouth of the alley. “Spoilers. You’ll have to come back to find out!”
“Hm. I mean, I definitely interacted with Nyssa.” I rub at one of my ears. I try to peel up the lobe part of the prosthetic, but it’s solidly stuck there. I can barely find the seam with my fingernail. Great. “What about the earthquake?”
“What earthquake?”
“When I went in. There was definitely an earthquake.”
“Uh, I don’t think so. It was probably the Interface clips kicking in. Sometimes they can give people some vertigo at first. Do you have… what’s it called? The eye thing. Astigmatism?”
“Actually, yeah, a little…”
“There you go. They would have cut the sim off if something like that had actually happened. Don’t have an explanation for the Nyssa thing, though. Maybe the sim was trying to compensate for you being in there longer than usual? People usually finish in under an hour, but I know that two is the absolute max that you’re allowed. It’s programmed that way for when we go fully live. Something about fire codes. I don’t know. I’m your average actor-slash-golf-cart-chauffer.”
He grins back over his shoulder at me as the cart comes to a stop at the sidewalk. I can see a couple of the dragon track stamps in the concrete. They lead along the side of the building to the entrance to the Experience in the next alley a few hundred feet away. A few hundred feet the other direction, I can see my little red Kia hybrid parked right where I left it. Several of the other spaces are occupied now, too. I’d stashed my phone in the glove compartment—the invite said I wouldn’t be allowed to bring it into the Experience, which is pretty typical for anything still in previews—so I’m not sure what time it is. It has to be after noon.
“Do you want me to take you up to the entrance or get out here?”
I consider it. I’m still feeling very weird. I just want to go home and take something for the headache. And a nap. A nap sounds great.
“I’ll just get out here. My car’s right there. Can you tell Tasha I had a great time? She was right, the ears were a good choice.”
“Tasha?” He frowns. “Oh. Right. The check-in chick. I’ll tell her.”
I nod my thanks and awkwardly climb out of the cart. The bag is heavier than I’m used to and I’m still feeling off-balance.
“Hey,” he says as I start toward my car. I turn. “You think you’re going to come back?”
“Haven’t decided. Probably. If I can get a ticket.”
He grins. “Next time, go to the right.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the starting zone. Wide Sky’s to the left, but you should go down the street to the right, away from the Square.”
“Why? What’s to the right?”
He grins. “Phaelen.”
A bolt of cold strikes through me as the memory of my last encounter with that character replays sharply in my mind. Of course, that’s the thing that my memory would retain clear as day.
“Phaelen?”
“Yeah. My buddy Grant did all his mo’cap and line readings. From what he says, the whole Order of Talons story is worth it. Definitely not for the faint of heart though.” He grins. “So maybe I’ll see you again, Elf Girl.”
The hairs prickle the back of my neck, and my cold-induced goosebumps take on another flavor entirely. I watch as he backs the cart up and drive back toward the Experience exit several football fields the other direction.
I toss the bag into the front passenger seat with a heavy thunk as I get into my car and start it up, turning on the heater. February or not, it really shouldn’t be this cold and dreary in Los Angeles. My massive steel tumbler sits in the cupholder, and I take several long sips of cold water, still feeling unsteady. I close my eyes and lean forward to rest my forehead on the steering wheel just trying to breathe.
What just happened to me? Was that all really just a simulation?
It had to have been. I never actually thought it was real, did I? Of course not. Really, I should be thankful it wasn’t actually a coma dream. This is so much better than waking up from a coma. Think how jarring that would be. At least I don’t have muscle atrophy and probably insane medical bills on top of an uncertain hold on reality, right?
Right.
Why then does it feel like I lost something?
It was so abrupt and unceremonious. I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I know they weren’t real, but they felt real, and I didn’t even get to say good-bye.
Why is that bothering me so much?
My throat is tight, and my chest has that odd hollow sensation of dread and anxiety. I try to pull myself back under control. I lean back in the driver’s seat. Inhale, two, three, four… exhale, two, three, four…
A song I don’t recognize is playing and I turn the car off. It was apparently one of those unnerving drives where my brain was on autopilot because I don’t remember any of it, and I wonder how long I’ve been sitting here in my car in my condo’s parking space. I sigh. I meant to go to Trader Joe’s. I really need groceries. I don’t think I even have any peanut butter, much less anything to spread it on. I probably should have stopped to get gas, too. I definitely need to do laundry at some point this afternoon and clean my bathroom. The idea of doing real-world things just sounds even more daunting than it usually does on a Sunday afternoon.
Sighing, I go to pull my phone out of my glove compartment but it’s already sitting in the second cupholder, next to my tumbler. On the passenger side floor are a pair of canvas shopping bags filled with groceries. I now vaguely remember chatting with the overly-friendly cashier about the elf ears—though I can’t remember anything else about the trip, or even what that cashier looked like (except for the traditional TJ’s Hawaiian shirt).
There aren’t any messages on my phone, not even on my friend group’s Discord, which is a little odd. They knew I was doing this, and some of my friends were far more excited about it than I was. I expected to be inundated with a barrage of NDA-breaking questions.
I eye the grocery bags suspiciously, a little concerned. Last time I had a haze-induced shopping trip, it was after learning my grandmother had died; I got home to find I’d purchased three family-sized frozen lasagnas, a single pear, 2 pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream, a role of paper towels, and a dozen bananas. I live alone, hate mint ice cream, and am deathly allergic to bananas. I don’t even know how I successfully got them in the bag without breaking out into hives and an asthma attack. The pear was good though.
Getting out, I go around to the passenger side and grab the swag bag first. A bit of electrical discharge snaps at my fingers as I drape it over my shoulder, but after half a second of confusion I realize that I must have touched the metal buckle. Just static. I tuck my phone into the hip pocket of my leggings, grab my tumbler, gather up the grocery bags, and make my way up to my second-floor condo in the front of the 1920s building. I’m glad that I don’t run into any of my neighbors. I don’t want to explain the ears right now.
My condo is cold and cluttered, with a week’s worth of dishes in the sink, a heap of dirty laundry on one side of the bed, and various doom piles pretty much everywhere. Thank God I wasn’t actually in a coma (or worse). I can’t imagine how my mother would have reacted if she’d come in to see this. You’re too old to live like this, Keira Marie. I’d be there, in the hospital, in a coma, and my mother would probably still give me the lecture from one of those uncomfortable bedside visitor’s chairs.
Sigh.
I set the tumbler and grocery bags on the kitchen island, then toss the swag bag on the sofa. The flap flops open as it lands, bouncing slightly against the cushions. I’m about to turn away to go to the bathroom and get some Tylenol when I catch the movement out of the corner of my eye: something slowly rolling out of the bag.
The round object is about the size of a tennis ball, and at first glance, it has a vaguely emerald green glow about it. It flashes at me as I approach, like light glinting off the windshield of a passing car. That sharp snap bites again at my fingertips and there’s a strange taste in the back of my throat, something that reminds me of torched marshmallow.
[SP3C!@L @CH!EVEM3N7: H@9 WH@7]