How entertaining could I possibly make standing in a field, brandishing various weapons for practice and not even being allowed to fire them? A little hands-on instruction is vital of course, but for how long it would take to describe, explain, and spice it up not to be boring… how about I just say that the rocket launcher was the tip of the iceberg and that all the stuff is SPIWs? (Skill Point Included Weapons,) which means you pick it up and almost instantly know how to use it, then put it down and forget.
Does that explain enough? What’s that? You want to know what other stuff we got to play with? No, fuck you. If I have to get dramatic-timinged by the gods, then I get to do it too. Stay tuned; more dramatic reveals at 7:00 sharp. It wrapped up without incident, and we went home, at which point I had a nice bruschetta sandwich.
Why specify my dinner, you may wonder?
Wonder.
……
Plans: Made.
Rations: Packed.
Pants: Shat.
Varia: Scarf.
Grif: In Pokle’s care (and grumpy).
Cam: Underslept (and grumpy).
Matti: Overfed (and… grumpy).
Me: Grumpy (peer pressure).
Hotel: Damn, I used this joke already.
“Alright, boys. We don’t have to waste any expensive teleportation juice this time, just touch your marked hand to the sigil, and you’ll be off.”
Matti raised her hand. “I’ll go first,” she offered to no objection.
One quick touch of the lowered Ratcave™ chandelier and the portal opened in a snap. She stepped on and quickly fell into the floor, off to her destination in a flash. Cam stepped forward, but I halted him by his shoulder. “First telecommute?” I asked with a serious face.
“Uhhhhhhhh yeah, I think so,” he answered noncommittally.
I nodded. “Okay, well, it can be a funky ride your first time through. I need you to trust me on this: Make two fists, then stick out your thumbs pinkie fingers.” Cam started to follow my instructions as I kept moving down the list. “Great, now, put a pinkie up each nostril, then stick your tongue out, and scrunch your nose as hard as you can. That should keep you from getting sick.”
He looked at me quite funny, which is deeply impressive, given that he had followed my instructions to the letter immediately beforehand. I kept all forms of expression strictly off my face and played it straight. “I know, I know, it’s weird. I’ll send you along, and you should come out the other side not feeling too sick,” I jabbered as I hit the circle with my marked hand.
With one more sideways glance, he held the ridiculous pose and stepped into the circle, vanishing almost instantly. I took the chance to double over laughing, eventually struggling to breathe. I picked up Varia and used her floofiness to wipe away a tear. She, understanding speech, was also clearly amused. With 3 deep breaths, I opened my own portal and stepped through.
Composure be damned. I came out the other side to hear Matti cackling uncontrollably as Cam seemed a little lost. He turned to me and noticed that I was also barely holding it together. The pieces fell into place in his head immediately and he dropped the idiotic expression.
“Oh, fuck you!” he grumbled, causing us to renew our guffawing.
He tried to knock us both over the head with a stick, but what’s he gonna do with all those levels he doesn’t have? A major speed advantage is such a pain… almost as bad as myself. But with the good old pranking over and done with, we were back on the mission.
We were in the woods of a mountain valley, surrounded by peace. Leave it to me to find the exact way to make a peaceful stroll in the woods anxiety-inducing. Damn dryads. Anyway, I was following our quest compass right up to the reason we were there (and if you guessed said compass points to your objective, congrats, go steal a cookie from the jar or something).
It was a bit of a hike, up about a mile and a half of mountainside. The trees thinned out gradually as we left the mossy serenity behind for the rocky faces of the ascent. We were strolling along a trail, keeping our wits about us, when the compass turned sharply. I raised my hand to halt the gang, earning me two heads peeking over my shoulder. I stepped back, they stepped back, watching the needle move a great deal.
My gaze fell down and to the right. “Now that’s a pretty big boulder… looks about right to me. Hmm… looks like scratch marks on the side.”
Cam caught on and gave me some personal space again. He, too, inspected the roughly 8x8 boulder lodged in the cliffside. “A secret door, then?”
I waggled the compass. “All evidence… points, to that conclusion.”
He shook his head, already at capacity with my humor. “Uh-huh. How do we open it?”
“Umm…”
“Allow me, boys,” Matti cut in.
I gave her the ‘be my guest’ hand, which Cam mimicked a moment later. Matti then removed her hat and nearly pressed her face against the wall, sniffing every few inches. Us normal humans shared a look as she went up and down, side to side, commentating as she went.
Sniff sniff “I’m smelling… grease, and… steel, with notes of…” sniff “brass. Most of it wafts from the edges, but there is one other spot…”
Her hand traced a path off the main boulder onto a more messily cobbled section of the wall, ending on a rock, which she pressed on, causing it to sink into the wall like the button it was. Her face lit up with excitement… for about 5 seconds, because her delight was thoroughly predicated on the door opening. Spoiler alert: It didn’t.
I smacked my lips. “So… any other spots you can smell?”
Matti eyed the wall, not-so-subtly raising her hat to obstruct some of her reddening face. It’s like, really obvious when someone that pale blushes or goes red. She was coming up with a response when a completely different stone retracted into the wall, and a surprisingly neutral, genderless voice spoke from the hole.
“Who’s there?”
I raised a hand to hush my company. “Pizza delivery. Also wyvern hunters, whichever excites you more.”
“Oh, good. Come in, then. But you better not be lying about the pizza.”
I leaned in all serious-like. “I lie, kid, and swindle about a lot of things. Pizza ain’t one of ‘em. The cheese is stringy, the crust fluffy, the basil fresh, and the pineapple is in the trash where it goddamn belongs.”
There was a pause. “I respect your conviction. Stand back, the door is opening. Fair warning, though, any nefarious intentions and I’ll roast you on a stick and eat you for dinner.”
The speaking hole shut and we heard some clockworks going off before the boulder slid inward and to the side, revealing a lightly-manicured cave entrance. Cam gave me a nervous look.
“You… did bring pizza, right? And what did they mean about eating us?”
My brain lurched, then started back up again. “Riiiight, crap, I was going to explain it to you on the way up, but you were pouting harder than a desert rain frog. Yes, I’ve got pizza. Matti, you know your history, give him the efficient rundown.”
I reached into my bag and produced… well, they’re hard to describe. It’s like, a round cutting board, about a quarter-inch thick and the circumference of a particularly large pizza. They work like those magic bowls, but you can guess what they contain. I had a stack of 10-ish, ribbons binding them and all. I led the way as Matti explained (lore dumped).
“It was 4,849 years, 7 months, and 23 days ago when a dragon collaborated with what would become the League on creating a smaller, more expendable alternative to his own kind for the battlefield. Something that could be reared, trained, and pressed into army service in a matter of decades, where true dragons took a century minimum.”
He nodded, briefly being distracted by the pretty blue magic lights in the tunnel. “So those are the wyverns?”
“Yes. However, they made a small error when deciding how intelligent these new wyverns should be. In the end, it was just smart enough to realize they were an oppressed slave race, and shortly thereafter, they escaped, reproduced… industriously, and proceeded to begin committing genocide on their draconic creators.”
He scrunched his brow. “Wait, that sounds more like karma to me. Slaves getting out and killing their captors and all.”
I raised a finger. “Hush. While I do agree with you, I think the justice has been done.”
“Yes,” Matti interjected. “There were good and evil dragons. The one responsible for the wyverns, his family, his descendants, his relatives, his ancestors, all were completely annihilated. Then the wyverns proceeded to go after all other dragons, forcing them into hiding over the following centuries,” she explained as we entered a large, cavernous chamber.
“And thus we hid, for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, waiting ever-so-patiently for the Gods’ forsaken legendary heroes to clear them all out,” announced a rather low-energy voice. “But the quest only continues, eh?”
Our eyes locked onto a humanoid figure, nude, winged, horned, and partially covered in cobalt-blue scales (same color as the long, messy hair). If I had to describe the human-ish form of our draconic acquaintance, I would call it… low-resolution. No pecs, or boobs, no belly button, no big muscles, no chubbiness, and no naughty bits. They were sat on a 6-foot-high sea of assorted precious metals, mostly in coin form, interspersed within said hoard were assorted chests, weapons, armors, gems, and tax returns.
“Hello,” I greeted with a wave. “Where would you like the pizzas?”
They pointed in the general area of a quaint little kitchen, burying half of which were assorted food delivery containers. I did a bit of a frisbee throw and let some magic carry the pizza discs right onto an open spot on the table, then I returned my attention to the dragon as they dismounted the hoard to approach us, hand extended for a shake.
“Irunox,” they greeted lazily. (Pronounced Ear-oo-nox. Word of advice, don’t make a habit of mispronouncing dragon names, especially in their presence.)
I shook the hand. “Dennis. Pleasure to meet you.”
The shake concluded and Irunox moved on, greeting Cameron, then Matti.
“You would not happen to be Miss Runil of Sidia, would you?” They asked on hearing her name.
Surprise crossed her face, but there was no hostility or accusation in the tone, so she nodded. “Why… yes, yes I am. How did you know?”
A tiny smile appeared on their face, a note of that smug ‘I know something you don’t’ energy. “I was one of the bidders on your castle. My agent saw it and put a rather low bid at my behest. In the absence of competition, I would have flipped it. Alas, it was not meant to be.”
They waltzed over to the table and popped the seal on a pizza, earning a nice toasty meat lover’s.
“Mmm, Prairieton ingredients. Nice taste, good investment. But you’re not here to talk real-estate,” they added with a full mouth. “All the preliminary surveillance I have done is compiled there, have at,” they said, pointing to a small stack of papers on a side table near the door.
I spoke up. “Thank you for the help. We’ll have a look. Cam, Matti, come along, we have some data to crunch.”
Stolen story; please report.
The gang and I hit the documents and found pictures! I recognized them as mind-pull prints, so they’re what our good friend saw through whatever scopes or scrying they have. Unfortunately, such pictures are only as clear as the memories of their maker. Ergo… blurry. We had to lay them out and start cross-referencing to the handbooks.
The next 10-30 minutes were a bit dull. Though a few moments stuck out, such as Matti pointing out: “Black wings, red-brown belly scales, that’s a rotter.” And Cam figuring: “The blue-ish scale sheen on that one make me think it’s an electrochemical poisoner. See? It matches.” Other than that, it was a lot of staring and spitballing.
After identifying 7 individuals, and narrowing down the subspecies of 3, we started to assemble the map of who was seen going where, and when. That’s a few too many words to explain a spreadsheet. And, as with most spreadsheets, it was booooooring. As could be expected, Cam wandered off to take a break soon after we started. I was half listening to him as I copied down some data.
“Is it really as comfortable on all that as you make it look?” he asked.
“Only if your flesh is dense, and your scales hard,” Irunox answered.
“Mind if I give it a try?”
“Be my guest.”
The jangle of coins mixed with a grunt. “Ugh, not as comfy as I thought.” He paused. “It is a cool feeling, though, knowing you’re sitting on money.”
There was a chuckle from Irunox. “That’s the true appeal, isn’t it? … You know, some say dragons hardened themselves just so they could sit on their hoards more comfortably.”
“Do you believe that?”
“No. It is only a joke,” they responded, clapping twice.
A zipping motion caught my eye and I glanced to see a bellows hovering over them and blowing cold air. I shook my head and returned to work, though the eavesdropping continued.
I heard Cam sigh with relief. “Ahh, that’s nice. It’s surprisingly toasty in here.”
“That is my doing. I lost control of how much body heat I produce some time ago.”
“Hmm, tough. That does remind me though, I wanted to ask if you’re a boy or a girl.”
Only the air conditioning was audible for a moment. “I… forgot which I am… some 6 centuries ago.”
“Damn. That’s rough,” (buddy [no, he didn’t say that, but you know I had to (yes, this is how you do parenthetical asides within parenthetical asides, are you suitably annoyed by this eyesore?)]) There was more jingling. “Is that really a whole woodworking shop back there?”
“Yes. A good way to waste some time. What of it?”
“I… just had an idea. Would it be alright if I borrowed some tools and… some of that wood and lacquer?”
“... Some of those things cannot be borrowed, but you may have whatever you want on-cost. I’ll bill you after. As for the tools, you break it, you buy it.”
“Deal.”
And that’s how that conversation ended. Should anyone be wondering why I just took the time to describe the whole thing, just imagine the entire convo is a shotgun, hanging on the wall, with ‘Chekhov’s’ engraved in the stock. More on that at 6:00, now back to your regularly scheduled wyvern hunt. That and… what else would I go into detail about anyway? A spreadsheet? I hate spreadsheets! I pay bonuses just so I don’t have to put up with that trash.
“Alright! That’s everything we’re going to get from this. Pack it up, Cam, we’re heading out!”
“Gimmie five minutes!” he shouted from the back of the cavern. I could hear his rustling in the lumber piles intensify.
“Fine! Five minutes!” I responded in frustration. “Man’s sidetracked already,” I grumbled to Matti as I went to grab a slice of pizza.
“Hey!” Irunox barked snippily, raising their head with speed.
I gave them a sassy look. “Are you about to tell me that I may not have a single slice of the… 6, 7… 9 pizzas I brought you?”
They simply frowned and resumed lazing on the pile of gold. I proceeded to eat my damn slice of pizza. As I finished it, Cam jogged up. “Okay. Sorry for the wait.”
I nodded, seeing that he had already stashed away his find in an E-D sack. “Whatever. Grab a slice for the road. We have some inbred, flying, rabid chihuahua lizards to hunt.”
“Inbred?” he asked with a full mouth.
Matti answered for me. “Only a single batch of wyverns were made. Of those 80, only 30 escaped. Genetically, they were all… siblings. 30 became thousands… and now you know why they are not as smart as they used to be.”
……
We were finally getting to the fun part of a wyvern hunt: The scenic hike! As much of a commentary on the action-packed nature of the activity, I’m not lying. If you can’t learn to appreciate and enjoy a good long walk through some taiga and up the side of a mountain, well, hate to break it to you, but adventuring just ain’t for you, bub.
The day ended before we made it up the mountain we were climbing, so we pitched a tent of gray canvas and stayed the night. In a totally shocking and not-at-all-predictable turn of events, Matti took the first watch. I was already in bed, but Cam was up late sketching on a piece of paper, on a clipboard, using a pencil, with the light of an electric lantern, all of which were included with the illegal gear.
“What are you doing, drawing a battle plan?”
He glanced over, looking a little sheepish. “Uhh, no. I’m… planning out my carpentry project for all the time we’ll have to kill.”
I slow-nodded and snuggled into my heated pillow of a ferret. “Didn’t figure you for a carpenter, but there will be plenty of spare time. I won’t judge.”
“I might be stretching my one year of shop class a bit…” he muttered while resuming his sketch.
“Shush, I’m trying to sleep now.”
“Yeah, Cameron, shush; the all-important Dennis is trying to sleep now,” Matti sarcastically whispered outside the tent.
……
Day 2 of our safari started with a fun little 4-step process. Step 1, wake Matti up. Step 2, try much harder to wake Matti up. Step 3, cast featherweight. Step 4, welp, I guess we just carry her until she wakes up. They don’t call it deathsleep for nothing. That little shtick went on for a good hour and a half, but at least she was graceful about it when she did eventually rouse, though she was clearly embarrassed. As in-control of herself as she is, Matti still can’t hide a blush to save her un-life. Again, too pale.
My boot struck snow for the first time, making a nice little crunch (mother nature’s ASMR right there). I marched on, sinking about as far into the snow as your average Tolkienian elf. Thank you magic snow boots. Matti was much the same, a mix of supernatural grace, and my featherweight spell. Aaand Cam was up to his shins in minutes. We paused to let him get some proper snowshoes on. As for why I didn’t also give him featherweight, sore legs after a long hike builds character. While that’s not any better-sounding than the truth, it’s a lot funnier than admitting that I forgot. Which I just did…
By late afternoon, we were finally getting somewhere. The mountaintop was just another thousand feet or so, and it only took us freakin’ forever, and about 3 energy drinks each. Well, stamina potions, but same difference in my book.
“Can we get to… the sitting down part soon?” Cam begged, sucking in the cold, thin air.
“Yes, soon,” I answered with an only marginally better-sounding voice.
He stopped to sigh, resting a moment on the walking stick he’d picked up in the taiga. “Man, those dragons really fucked up. It’s like the friggin’... sweet-spot between dumb and smart. Not enough forethought to make them more controllable, but smart enough to make them sense flyin’ and jumpin’ magic. A little smarter or dumber and… and…” he yawned.
Matti came up behind and rested a hand on his shoulder. “A little more or less intelligence, and the wyverns might not have grown to be such an issue, yes. Ugh. If I was any smarter, I could have arranged a night-run all the way up here, would have only taken me an hour.”
I finished picking a piece of cliff face ahead of us and started to unpack the grappling hook launcher. “But then you would have missed out on all the great banter!”
She leaned further against Cam. “Be that as it may, that’s not really why I’m here. I’m here to earn the right to say I have slain wyverns.”
THOOP
I watched as the hook caught high above us with a ktang, then I gave the rope a few good yanks. “I hope you’re ready to be disappointed, Matti, because ‘slain’ is for those who use legal methods.”
I handed her the rope. “We’re here to score kills.”
……
Cam’s hand smacked into mine with a cathartic clap as I pulled him up the final ascent to the peak. He stood tall and marveled at the endless mountain range, one of the three great barriers of the neutral lands, responsible for darkness and light’s endless cycle of peeking over the fence, asking ‘you got the funds to cross that and hit me?’ and the answer inevitably being ‘nah’.
Cam pumped his fists triumphantly. “I’M ON TOP OF THE WORLD, BABY! WOO!”
I patted his shoulder. “Yup, yup, nice adventuring and stuff. Back to work. Help me set up the lightbulb.”
He had a pretty nice micro-pout face right then, but I kicked things into gear. “Alright, Cam, you’re on the tablet. Matti, you’re with me on the tripod.”
“Ready to assist,” she answered.
Cam, meanwhile, was wildly shuffling through his oh-so-inconvenient E-D sack that lacked any form of sorting magic. Can’t relate. The curse attached to the one I got from the Shimmerlands is elitism (definitely a curse, 100%, totally not my doing). I let his search continue as I slid the oblong polymer case from my bag and undid the latches. Surprise, surprise, it’s a big metal tripod with a mounting ring.
“Alright, let’s get this puppy set up before the metal starts freezing to our gloves.”
Matti grabbed a leg, and I got 2. We lifted the thing up and made for the relatively flat boulder at the apex of the mountain. “Ready on the connection, Cam?”
At a glance, I saw he had one of the black tablet computers that the average suburban mom reads e-books on. “Yeah, it says higher.”
So we lifted it higher, prompting Cam to relay more instructions. “Uhh, left, and bring the legs in. Wait… back right a little. Matti, your leg out a bit. Boss, left leg in another inch. Higher again.”
I grumbled. “Damn, won’t this thing go off y–”
Ktang-ktang-ktang it went as the legs shot out to full extension, passing the snow and drilling into the stone with a VREEEE. I nodded, discarded my unfinished thought, and started to unpack the lightbulb.
“How is a lone wyvern hunter to manage all that at once?” Matti asked, aghast at the needless complexity.
“I used duct tape,” I replied casually.
The lightbulb looks as one might expect; a sphere of opaque metal-polymer-silicate alloy about twice the size of a basketball, and with a hexagonal bit sticking out the bottom to neatly slot into the tripod. Matti and I carefully lifted it into place, standing on our collectively-short tippy-toes. Then, it dropped in with a satisfying clunk.
“Alright, tech wiz, turn this mo-fo on.”
He looked down at his tablet, ready to hit a… touch-screen prompt. Setting aside the rant about how much more satisfying a physical button really is, he stalled. “Insert battery?” he inquired.
“Oh, right,” I blurted, fishing the tiny cigarette-case-looking container from my bag.
I almost tossed it to him but… well, I looked at the tablet in his hands, then all the snow it could sink into, and the cliff right behind him… then I walked over and handed it to him. I felt the spirit of Murphy pat me on the shoulder. He put the tablet in his bag and started to undo the latches.
“Tech wiz. Man, you can’t call me that. I’m so blue-collar.”
I snorted. “Hey, in this industry it’s called ‘unskilled labor’. That moniker contributes to the propaganda campaign against the proletariat in order to keep wages stagnant and benefits nonexistent.”
He paused, looked at me, shook his head, and went back to the case. It popped open, and he was befuddled by the contents: A single AA battery. His head swiveled to me with a confused puppy sort of look.
I gestured at the tripod. “It goes in the leg with the little red band painted on.”
“No, I know that. But… one battery, for all that?” he questioned incredulously.
“Magitech,” I spouted with the exact tone your average dollar-store misogynist would say ‘women’.
He shook his head again, trying to shrug off the one-two punch that is my garbage humor. As he went to plug the battery in, Matti sidled up to me. “Are you sure you don’t hail from the Hells? All that talk of exploitation… it’s very demonic.”
I shrugged. “Nah… um, well… maybe. I am from Tennessee.”
Cam reversed into us, allowing instant crowding around his tablet. He started reading off the prompts as they popped up.
“Active Electronically Scanned Array is good, scan angles are 85 up, 70 down, all 360 around. Infra-Red Search and Track is spooling up now, looks good. 10-800x electro-optical target tracking is good, lenses are ready. It is scanning the valley for 3D mapping now.”
I clapped my hands. “Great. Let’s get you two in position.”
From my bag, I retrieved the very last pair of military-looking cases. I opened one and it had a telescope, while Matti popped the other, which had a collapsible teleportation ring. She set it down, and I stood on it to scope out another mountaintop in the distance. The sight-stabilization magic kicked in, and I picked a spot on the distant peak that was flat enough to stand on. With a click of the button on the side, the scope sent the coordinates to the teleporter ring.
“Alright, comms check,” I ordered.
The three of us all pulled yet-unused walkie-talkies from our belts and switched them on. We all agreed on a frequency (4.20 in a 2-1 landslide vote, much to Matti’s chagrin) and initiated the check.
I pressed my talk button. “1-2, this is 1-1, please check in, over.”
Matti looked at me with annoyance evident on her visage. “I hear you,” she replied, totally ignoring the cool and super-unique code-name system that I hadn’t explained beforehand.
Cam then pressed his. “1-1 this is 1-3, I’m reading you loud and clear, over,” he answered with a stupid grin. He got it.
She groaned. “Ugh, get me off this rock with these childish boys.”
I pointed the authoritative finger™. “Hey, I don’t say women like that, so how about you don’t say boys.”
Matti gave me a look, then stepped through the teleporter and zipped away to the far-off mountain. I looked at Cam and shrugged. He returned the sentiment and went through to help her set up the 2nd radar bulb. I waited all of 10 seconds, then pressed the talk button.
“You cannot escape me, Matti. No matter the distance, I can still annoy you. Over.”
“I’m turning this off until Cameron and I are on separate mountains.”
“Your doom is only delaaaayed. … … … Over.”
There was a five-second pause. “Can confirm, she switched it off. Over.”
I smirked and scratched Varia, still curled around my neck. “Oh boy. We’re already just loving it up here, aren’t we?” Her little ferret self practically vibrated from the sweet-spot rump scritches, but she refused to deactivate scarf mode. “Damn. You’re so solidly attached that I almost forgot you were there.”
If it was a certain show about a paper supply company, I would have looked into the camera.
……
Well, that’s phase 1 of the hunt done and dusted. We’d finished setting up a nice triangular formation of radar, IRST, and optical tracking, allowing for phase 2 to commerce. The absolute best part about wyvern hunting that everyone gushes about afterward, talking about how fun it is to sit in a bunker watching the things fly around for a week and a half.
Okay, so, maybe not the best part. Actually, it sucks. You have to stick by the lightbulb in case it needs resetting, but standing in front of a high-powered radar that is pointing in every direction at once all the time is a great way to get your skin burnt off by excessive radio waves. I don’t even think that was a problem with Earth radars, like, theoretically it could happen but… Iunno.
Magitech.
So, the provided solution is that one of the E-D sacks that all the provided gear comes in is a ‘widemouth’, which means you can dig into the snow, slap it in there, open it aaaalll the way, and install a door. Boom, instant bunker. You do have to empty every other E-D sack on your person to enter, otherwise you’ll get some grief about that, but it’s a small price to pay not to get microwaved.
Some may wonder why it’s necessary to sit in a bunker watching your targets fly by for so long… well, it’s complicated, and remarkably simple. Wyverns are colonial animals, but hunt by their lonesome. So, of the 8-20 of them, you see 1 at a time usually. And if you kill 1, you get about 16 minutes before the rest GTFO. Whether psychic, sixth sense, or they just smell the blood, it doesn’t matter, the result is the same: You just wasted all that time killing a single wyvern.
So, phase 2 is for cataloging all the unique individuals in the wyvern colony, figuring out their routes, and triangulating the location of their home cave. Once you have all that, only then can you start phase 3 and actually remove them from this plane of existence.
In hindsight, this whole trip might have been worth just skipping, but here we are. Maybe the banter of us 3 being stuck in bunkers listening to one another over the radio will save this dull experience. And remember. I’m not stuck in here with them. They are stuck in here with me.