“Overtime again? I thought we were actually ahead this week! What happened?”
The outrage from two cubicles over could clearly be made out from my own workstation. I don’t particularly mind the overtime. It’s extra money after all. The pay for this kind of work is not as high as it should be to afford to live in Los Angeles after all. Besides, I don’t have the money to go out nor is there anyone waiting for me at home in my tiny studio apartment. My work here is almost done. Maybe I can take theirs off their hands for the night. I poke my head above the cubicle and look toward the direction of the noise, the complainant continuing their tirade.
“If you’ve got plans I could cover for you,” I offer as I’m just now seeing who it is doing the shouting. Gina. Her eyes light up as I offer.
“Could you? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I’m pretty sure tonight’s the night he’s going to propose!” She had begun packing her bag before she ended her sentence. Though she has been certain of this proposal for the past four months running.
“Hey, hey – wait! Before you run off you gotta tell me what you need done or I’ll spend all night trying to figure out what to work on.” Can’t have her leaving without giving me the particulars of what I’m doing to cover for her anyway.
“Oh, right. Just come over to my cubicle. All the files are on here anyway.” She looks a little chagrined at having to dump this work on me. “You know that one scene of the building being destroyed? I need to do the particles for it...by tomorrow”
Ugh. Particle physics. Not only are they finicky and nightmarish to set up all of those spaghetti nodes, but it takes hours and hours to cache. I’m starting to regret volunteering to cover for her now.
“And I need to clean up the motion tracking for that sword fight scene. Also by tomorrow.”
“How far along have you gotten?” I ask as I watch her open up the relevant files that I’ll need. Motion tracking cleanup isn’t especially hard, it’s just tedious. I’m beginning to think that she puts off the more dreary tasks until she finds someone else to do them for her.
Without looking me in the eyes she replies, “I hadn’t started yet.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, “You know covering for you is one thing, but with both of these done by tomorrow you’re asking for a miracle.”
I sit down in her chair and start looking over the tracking data. Not too much noise involved, so this one might actually go faster than the particle setup. I should do that first and then work on this one while it caches.
“Pretty pleeeaase?” She’s looking at me with her best attempt at puppy dog eyes.
“Fine. Just set me up with a cute blind date or something.” I said it mostly as a joke to jostle her a little bit, but she cocked her head to the side as if she were running candidates through her head while finishing packing her things to go and putting her coat on. A ghost of a bright smile passed her face in a very clear “a-ha” moment.
“Friday! Double date at eight at the Tipsi Tiki!”
Slightly stunned that she not only agreed but has a candidate in mind and even has already set the time and place. “Don’t you need to check with the prospective other party first?” I ask.
“Nah. I’ll talk her into it if she’s not interested already. See you tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow’s my day off – which is the only way I’ll be able to accomplish all this in time for you anyway. With any luck, I’ll already be at home and asleep by the time you--” I trail off as I turn towards her except she’s no longer there. I catch a glimpse of her coat as she rounds the corner at the end of the cubicle row.
Well, no matter. I focus back on the program in front of me and start adding nodes and attaching them to others, building out a spider’s web of nodes that will ultimately do the job of animating as it explodes. Nothing worse than manually keyframing ten thousand objects only to have the program crash. It’s done with particles instead through an elaborate weave of nodes assigning every attribute you can think of. Mass, gravity, physics algorithm to be used, children, etc etc etc.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
I finally finish and get it set to start caching around one in the morning. Seven hours just to set up the nodes. Estimated time on the cache looks to be about five hours so it should finish with a few hours to spare before she gets back to work. I copy the file for the motion capture and carry it back to my own cubicle. Can’t very well work on it on a computer that’s constantly lagging after all.
I lean back in my chair. Nearly four in the morning, huh? The cleanup went faster than I thought. I could really go for a nap. I don my coat and helmet and pull my onewheel out from under the desk where I had it charging. Traffic is so bad that just about any alternative to a car is faster. Though at this hour maybe a car actually would be faster. No matter. I set off toward my apartment on the edge of south LA. It’s a pretty long ride to get there and I’m pretty tired so my mind just kind of goes blank. I’m almost to my place when I see something fall in front of my onewheel or perhaps thrown? Without enough time to brake or swerve, the object gets caught between the tire and board and I’m ejected a good twenty feet forward. I weakly get up on my hands and knees meaning to stand but feel a little woozy. Before I manage to either puke or stand, I hear the sound of a gun cocking and something is pressed into the back of my neck. My blood runs cold.
“Empty yo pockets,” a voice demands. I’m still on my hands and knees and staring at the ground. I guess the typical thing that people do in this situation is freeze up. In fact, that probably would have been far smarter. Instead, I startle and make a jerky move with my hand towards my pocket as I hear the deafening roar of the pistol go off.
----------------------------------------
Where am I? Oh right, I was getting mugged. Wait, that gun went off! Did he shoot me? Did I die? I try to sit up but my body feels alien and doesn’t respond to my commands as I expect it to. Sitting up seems to take more effort than I had thought it would. I try to take stock of my situation. My body is tiny now. I guess I did die. So wait, this means reincarnation is real? Oh but I have all my previous memories. Odd.
I look around. The place feels very...rustic. The bed I’m on seems to be nothing more than two bed sheets sewn together and stuffed with something rather pokey. Feathers? Or maybe straw? Not even on a bed frame, just sitting on the floorboards. Maybe this is what people would call a bedroll? I try to stand up – nope. This alien feeling body is not fond of its new owner. Well I am small. Would it be out of the ordinary for someone my size to crawl? I wonder how old I am now anyway. Looking around, I’m not seeing anything of value. Or much of anything, really. There’s this bedroll and a basket in this room. That’s it. Well, maybe I can find something in the next room. Let me just crawl over to the door – oh. The door is closed.
I sit up in bed while I ponder this particular predicament. I can’t reach the door handle to open the door, even if I could stand I kind of feel like I would have trouble reaching and turning the knob. What to do, what to do...oh! If I’m really this small, it stands to reason that there is someone nearby whose job it is to care for me, right? Judging from this room, I’m not rich enough to have my own nanny, so I suppose it would be a new mother for me. Maybe if I shout loudly enough she’ll come running.
“Errrrhhlarrrr.” Huh. That was supposed to be ‘hello’ but I guess I don’t have control of my vocal chords just yet. Still though, no response. Maybe a little louder.
“ERRRRHHHLAARRRRR!” Oh, footsteps! That seems to have done the trick!
A slightly gaunt looking woman with very blonde hair comes in and speaks warmly in a language I have never heard before. I truly have no idea what she is saying. Whelp. I guess learning a new language is first on my list of things to do. Though now that I think about it, I guess getting control of this body should be priority one. Can’t speak in said new language if vocal chords refuse to follow my will. The lady picks me up and props me onto her hip and turns to leave the room, all the while speaking in warm tones. I’m beginning to think this is baby-talk.
Once in the new room, I try to gauge just how well off or less so this new life is. Absolutely nothing here looks to be of value. In fact, this place looks like it could have been someones summer home in the early 1700’s. I guess I should temper myself to not expect a life of relative luxury like I had back in LA. Outside I can hear the distinctive ‘ting ting’ of what could only be a blacksmiths hammer. Where am I that blacksmith is still a trade? I’ve seen people still blacksmithing at fairs and such, but for these living conditions, I’m inclined to think it’s a means of employment.
She walks us over to a pot over a metal stove that looks to have just water and wild onions in it. She gives it a cursory stir before she sits down and pulls her shirt up and positions me in front of her breast. Oh. I guess I’m still breast feeding. This feels decidedly odd, but my body is really small. Maybe it’s for the best. Down the hatch, I guess. The rhythmic pounding of metal in the background stops and a moment later the door slams open. I jerk towards the sound and get rewarded with a spray of milk in the face. A gruff sounding voice speaks and the woman holding me speaks in sharper tones than she used for me. The man walks into a different room. Okay, I really need to make understanding this language a priority. Not knowing what they’re saying is a little maddening.