Chapter 1: Third Eye

Sometimes, you see a crowdfunding campaign that over-promises and under-clarifies and you just know the project is going nowhere. You look at the campaign and you look at your PayPal balance after your last round of selling action figures for a few bucks more than you paid for them in a yard sale, and you think --

What the hell.

By you, I mean me. So maybe I’m the one with the problem.

Regardless, they’d gotten me that way four times, and I didn’t expect the next time to be the charm with Third Eye.

At least I wasn’t alone. More than 100,000 people saw the description of it as an immersive, Augmented Reality, Altered Reality Game and thought, “That’s definitely something a team with zero industry experience is going to successfully complete in a way that makes it feel like I got my money’s worth.”

For fuck’s sake, even the acronym sounded like a stuttering pirate. AR-ARG. How could that be anything but an ill omen for the project?

I only threw thirty bucks at the Kickstarter for a laugh. If functional software ever came of it, I’d gain beta access. If, as seemed overwhelmingly likely, nothing did, I’d gain a story and be out the price of a few hamburgers. The highest backer tier, with its promises of physical and in-game rewards, was $10,000. Canadian, but still. Four poor saps took them up on that. Well, not that poor, I had to hope.

In total, the campaign blew past its goal and brought in more than four million. It unlocked stretch goals for “further dimensions,” “helper daimons,” and “player generated arts.”

Then, as these things do, it went silent.

I, and presumably most people who had invested a few meals worth into the possibility a game might one day emerge, promptly forgot about it. Whether the top-tier backers were as sanguine, I couldn’t say.

So it stunned me when, six years later, four after the deadline specified in the Kickstarter campaign, I saw an email entitled Third Eye Beta Access.

“Huh,” I said.

“Sup?” Lena asked from her seat on the other side of our living room.

I glanced at her, but she hadn’t spun her computer chair to look back. All I saw was a mop of copper curls poking above the black mesh. “Remember Third Eye?”

A pause. Long pause. “Nope.”

“Ye don’t be remembering the AR-ARG?” I put on an accent like it was Talk Like A Pirate Day. And like people still cared about Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Lena sure didn’t. “Nuh-uh.”

“I distinctly remember you linking it to me.”

“I link a lot of things to you, Cameron.”

She used my full name, so I’d somehow annoyed her. Back off? Nah. “You seemed pretty into it.”

“I’m into a lot of things.”

“Just check your email, already.”

“Later,” she said. “I’m in the middle of a level.”

“What are you playing? What even has levels these days?”

“Lil’ thing by the name of Trowel Samurai 2?”

I blinked. “It’s out?”

“Since this morning.”

Needless to say, for the rest of that afternoon, I forgot about Third Eye all over again.

I didn’t think of it again until my third loss to the Cake Daimyo. Lena had blown past this boss hours ago, and I chose to blame my failures on the lavish hi-bit layer cake castle I’d been trying to fight my way up on an empty stomach.

“I’m gonna order food,” I said.

“Because you can’t beat Cake Daimyo?”

“I’m just hungry. It’s almost seven, anyway.”

“Shit, seriously? I’m supposed to beat this today so I can get a guide out.” Unrelated to the speed at which she had blitzed through the early levels of Trowel Samurai 2, Lena had a freelance gig writing game guides that I’d never been able to crack into.

I got up and lifted one of the blinds. “I don’t know how to break it to you, but I think it’s officially tonight.”

“Welp.” She dropped her controller on her desk without even bothering to pause and tabbed to her browser. “Might as well eat then.”

“I’m thinking pizza.”

“Sophisticated, yet traditional. Gimme pineapple, ham, green peppers, black olives, and one more as a surprise.”

Once upon a time, I would’ve asked if she didn’t want the supreme instead, but I’d learned my lesson. I just got pepperoni and slapped that on her side as well because I knew something so vanilla would annoy her without actually making her pizza taste bad.

I’m not a complete monster.

While I was putting our order in, I glanced at the notifications on my phone and saw I’d received a text about the Third Eye beta.

Which was a little weird.

“When did I get my new number?” I asked.

“Couple, three years ago. Why?”

I shook my head. “I guess it was at least six.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“No way,” she said. “I know I’d already moved in. I could’ve only mocked you part-time, otherwise.”

I had failed to use two factor authentication everywhere I should have and had gotten quite a few pieces of my identity – including my old phone number – stolen. It had been scary at the time. Then it became inconvenient as I spent months sorting all my shit out. I would’ve been able to look back on it and laugh by now, if from day one it hadn’t been endlessly amusing to Lena.

I knew she was right about the timing, because if she’d treated me that shittily before we started cohabitating, I wouldn’t have invited her to share an apartment in the first place.

That was a lie. Had we been dating then? More or less. Were we now? More less than more.

But what the hell. With the rates for apartments in Englewood, I wouldn’t have kicked out Hitler and Stalin as long as they paid their shares of the rent.

None of which was germane to my weird text. “If it hasn’t been that long, this is just downright strange.”

“I love strange things,” she said, “as long as you tell me about them after you assure me you’ve already put the order for our pizzas in.”

I checked the order status. “It is in the oven now, and I just got half-and-half.”

“I’ll order something else later.” Someday Lena’s diet would catch up with her metabolism. Like karma, it took its sweet time. “For now, weird me out.”

“I didn’t even have this number when I backed Third Eye,” I said. “But they still texted a beta code to it.”

“They bothered to search up your new phone number?”

“Like I said, strange, right?”

“Kinda creepy.” She pried herself out of her chair with an exaggerated groan. I mean, I hoped it was exaggerated. The way she perched on an office chair like a gargoyle couldn’t be good for her back.

It hadn’t twisted her so much she couldn’t walk across the apartment yet, at least. She joined me by the window.

I held up my phone. “Check it out.”

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “Third Eye. Never thought we were going to get our money’s worth out of that shit.”

“Oh, now you remember it.”

“Avast, ye lubber! Who could be forgetting the AR-ARG?” She gave me a broad saccharine smile. One of her teeth had a visible cavity, victim of the sweetness of her diet. And our lack of dental insurance.

I gave her the finger. “You’re the worst.”

“You know it. Hey, I better have an invite too.” She pulled her phone out. “Yup.”

“At least we can play together,” I said. “Or, more likely, mock it together.”

“I’m expecting a beautiful disaster.”

“Beautiful? I’m expecting the whole damn thing to be text-based.”

She snorted. “For somebody who buys into so many terrible Kickstarters, you sure manage to keep your expectations low.”

“I think of it as buying a front row seat for the train wreck.”

“Ghoulish.”

I couldn’t call her a liar.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked. “We’re not getting anywhere in Trowel Samurai before the food gets here. We may as well sign up.”

Can you imagine there was once a time where I would’ve interpreted that as “We may as well blindly click these links in texts or emails?” Consider my lesson thoroughly, painfully, learned. Most of the pain had come from Lena’s mockery. She considered this an example of tough love.

We returned to our computers. I’m sure she did the same thing I did: had my antivirus scan the link itself, while I ran a search on the Third Eye beta to see what people were saying about it.

Few reports of actual gameplay yet, but none of it being a scam. The antivirus scan came back negative, too.

“Sounds like there’s not much to it, yet,” Lena said.

“‘Yet?’ Love the optimism.”

“At least we live in a big enough city we’ll probably see something. That’s how AR games usually work.”

“Assuming it works at all. Since only like five people on Reddit claim to have gotten anything other than the overlay, I’m not holding my breath.”

“To be honest, if the overlay looks enough like a game, I might start wearing my Google Glass again just so it feels like I’m playing something when I have to go outside.”

“You are playing something when you go outside,” I said. “You have like five idle games running all the time.”

“Those are more work than play.” Believable. She had another gig reviewing mobile games. That one, I didn’t envy her. “Anyway, you know what I mean.”

Hell of it was, I did. There was a certain appeal to living life with a heads-up display.

Not enough of an appeal to be caught wearing smart glasses out in public like a douchebag. Or to buy smart glasses in the first place.

But an appeal, nonetheless.

Probably the only appeal of Third Eye, if the Reddit thread was anything to go by. Still, new posts continued to pop up, so if the link was a virus, it was slow-acting enough people hadn’t noticed it yet.

“I’m satisfied,” I said. “I’m clicking the link.”

“Took you long enough,” Lena said.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you actually were looking forward to this.”

She didn’t respond.

I frowned. “What’s up?”

“You want to be serious for a sec?”

“No,” I said, “but for you to offer it? Sure.”

“If you don’t think too hard about it, that almost seems kind of you, Cam.”

“Are you going to pour your heart out to me or not?”

“I’m not like you,” she said.

I waited to find out what kind of diss this was going to turn into.

“I don’t buy into these dumb Kickstarters just to watch the world burn,” she said. “I’m usually hella careful about what I back. This is the only one I actually got sucked in by.”

I spun my chair around and raised an eyebrow at her. “What, ever?”

At some point, she’d turned to look at me. Instead of perching on her chair, she’d sunk into it. She wore an odd expression. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to laugh or to cry. “Yeah.”

“I guess you learned your lesson,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I cocked my head. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You going to say anything other than ‘yeah?’”

That put some fire back in her. “Screw you. I’m over here having a heart-to-heart and you’re being an asshole.”

“Lena, I have no idea what the hell is going on.” I spread my hands. “Sorry if I’m being an ass. I’m not used to you getting serious about shit.”

“It’s cool,” she said. “What I’m trying to say is, when I say I learned my lesson, it was kind of a harsh one.”

I stared.

She fell silent.

“What tier did you back at?” I asked.

“Magus of the Second Circle,” she whispered.

“You put in five thousand dollars?”

“Canadian!” She winced. “Yeah.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I should never let you live this down.”

“No,” she said. “You shouldn’t. Especially after all the shit I gave you for the identity theft thing.”

“Wait, is that why you moved in with me? I know you used to have your own place.”

“I was okay for a couple of years after,” she said. “But it did wipe out my savings, and when I had a couple of bad months – but don’t get me wrong, I did like you. Do! And I like living with you! It’s cool.”

“I really shouldn’t ever let you live this down.”

“I know!” She covered her head and curled up in a ball on her chair.

I got up and squeezed her shoulder. “I won’t bring it up, promise.”

She looked up, eyes wide. She hadn’t quite teared up, but she’d come closer than I’d ever seen her get.

“Both of us living with the knowledge that I’m the bigger person?” I grinned down at her. “That’s worth more to me than any amount of needling you.”