Chapter 105: Eye Open
“Heya, Third Eye community!” Lena grinned as she struck her now-familiar pose, fingers spread in a V, wings matching at her back. The park grass, wet from recently melted snow, squelched beneath her boots. “It’s ya girl, Ashbird, and my lovely assistant, OldCampaigner, coming at you with our hottest episode yet.”
“That’s right, distinguished guests.” I really needed to come up with a signature pose. I tried to act all cool, just inclining my head slightly as the camera focused on me, but I think it came across more like I had a neckache. “I know Ashbird has been building it up for a couple videos now, so you probably expected us to save Fire for our last Reactant demonstration.”
“Which we totally planned to do,” she said. “Unfortunately –”
I frowned. “The friend we hoped to invite on to demonstrate Earth is laid up in the hospital right now.”
Lena nodded. “She’s doing fine, by the way. Frankly, I don’t know why she can’t record. It’s her ankle that’s broken, not her wrist! She could totally still play Third Eye.”
I heaved an exaggerated sigh. “While were on the subject –”
“The subject of how our friends are missing out on the chance to appear in our awesome videos?”
“– the subject of our friends getting hurt,” I said, my mouth setting in a hard line. “Unfortunately, that’s also something we need to tell our audience about.”
Lena’s wings drooped. “Ugh, yeah. I guess you’re right.”
“Distinguished guests,” I said, “the truth is, our friend got hurt playing Third Eye.”
“I know what you’re thinking!” Lena spread her hands, and her wings. “Nope, she didn’t try to PVP me. Nobody’s that crazy.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “No, the injury happened while we were scouting for Materials. By now, you’ve probably noticed how some of the objects we collect provide clues to other places where we can find more.”
“That’s how OldCampaigner got his Water, for example,” Lena said.
I nodded. “It’s absolutely worth pursuing those clues. In fact, figuring them out is one of my favorite parts of the game. But –”
“It’s important to make sure the clues are pointing you toward something,” Lena said, “not telling you to stay away.”
“Yeah,” I said. “In this case, all the signs our friend followed were stop signs and one-way street signs pointing away from the location we explored. It turns out, when we ignored those, we found content we weren’t supposed to.”
“That’s not speculation,” Lena said. “Later on, we got full-on confirmation from the devs that we weren’t supposed to. This is still a beta, and not all of the content in it is actually ready for players to experience. What we found in this case? It was scary as f–”
I cleared my throat. “Remember, we’re on YouTube.”
“– as heck,” Lena finished, lamely. She rolled her eyes.
“Hey, if you want to get demonetized...” I cupped my chin. “I’d say be my guest, but actually, please don’t do that.”
She stuck her tongue out. “I know, I know. I’ll keep it clean.”
“The point is,” I said, “what we found in that place was... freaky. To put it mildly. You might think it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, especially if you don’t have smart glasses, because you’re only experiencing it through your phone, right?”
“That’s what we thought, too,” Lena said. Lied.
“At some point, we’re hoping to be able to share some of the footage we took during that expedition, but trust me, this is not us throwing our friend under the bus and saying she freaked out over nothing.” I shuddered. “The only difference is that she actually got hurt when we all ran around in a panic.”
“Maybe you’re thinking, unlike these two wusses, I’m a total badass, I wouldn’t get scared,” Lena said. She pointed at the camera. “First of all, trust me, you totally would.”
“Second, and more to the point,” I said, “even if you really can handle the experience, it’s not going to get you anything interesting. We were hoping to come out of it with extra Reactants, or maybe even the Refinements we’ve started to hear about. Nope. It wasn’t a space we were supposed to poke around in, so why would the devs have put anything worth finding there?”
“Right?” Lena shrugged. “Anyway, the upshot of all this is, we don’t have anybody here to demonstrate Earth for you.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“So...” Lena grinned. Flames rippled down her arms and danced along her fingers. “We’re just going to have to get right to the good stuff!”
I paused the video and leaned back in my computer chair.
Was it my imagination, or did our apartment jump up a degree? Lena’s chair creaked as she shifted on it. “Why’d you stop it? Didn’t you hear what I said? We were just getting to the good part.”
I glanced at her.
We’d pulled both our chairs up to my desk to watch the edited version of the video, since my monitor was the biggest one we had. Lena was actually sitting down, not perching on her chair. Another benefit of having Bernie, who made a questioning burble from where he sat on her lap. I knew that through Third Eye, I would see him curled up there with his tail draping to the floor.
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Either Bernie’s sound or something in my smile must have drained away even Lena’s half-feigned anger. Her unseen wings stopped fanning flames into the air, and she lowered her eyes. She petted Bernie, and a little smile played across her lips.
“I think,” I said, “that part was pretty good already.”
That earned me a broader smile.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last. She swallowed. “Do you think it’s gonna be enough?”
We’d hashed out this part of the video over and over again with the rest of the wiki team, as well as Miguel and Zhizhi. By now, everybody in our circle knew Third Eye could affect the real world.
A lot of people outside that circle were starting to guess, but not so many that they weren’t being downvoted and called crazy for it when they posted threads about it on the game’s subreddit.
We could reveal, on camera, the way Third Eye could change the real world. All we had to do was repeat the tests we’d shown Zhizhi. We could warn people that Third Eye had led us to face off with an all-too-real monster.
If we did, though, we were guaranteed to lose a lot of our audience. They’d write us off as crazy, and who could blame them? In their shoes, I sure would. At best, they’d accuse us of scamming them to try to drum up views.
I’d said, and Erin, Joon Woo, Zhizhi, and Miguel agreed, that for now, the best way to convince people to play safely was to keep pretending it was just a game. We could couch our warnings in terms that made sense in that context, but deliver the warnings all the same. We could seed just enough doubt that, when more people realized what was going on and we did address it head-on, they’d understand we’d been slow playing it all along.
I still thought it was our best bet to keep most people as safe as we could.
I knew it was our best hope of gaining more viewers.
But.
“Honestly?” I sighed and reached over to clasp Lena’s hand. “No.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
I smiled sadly. “Some people are going to take it as a challenge, the same as they would the signs the devs put in telling them to stay away. Wouldn’t you?”
She hunched her shoulders. “Maybe.”
Definitely, I knew. “They’ll say we’re just trying to hide the good stuff from them. They’ll say we’re colluding with the devs.”
“Technically,” she said, “we kinda are.”
The versions of us in the video weren’t lying about official confirmation that we shouldn’t have gone to the construction site.
Once we finally left the site behind, Erin had shown us her chat logs. She’d sent frantic messages to the devs during the fourteen minutes while Donica was getting her Earth and we were out of contact, and she’d gotten actual responses.
First from VisibleFromSpace. Then, when those didn’t satisfy her, from AlephLambda.
Erin had explained that, since the expedition team had all agreed to flee the site after that, the support team had agreed not to share these logs with us until we got out. They thought it would only scare us.
Well, she wasn’t wrong.
VisibleFromSpace responding at all showed how seriously they took the situation. Erin’s DM log showed dozens of unanswered questions, but she’d gotten a response instantly when she asked about us disappearing into the construction site.
NugsFan15: I’ve just lost contact with four of my friends who were inspecting a site where we found a lot of strange Third Eye phenomena. We’d just realized that the in-game objects that led us here may have been warning signs. Before my friends could leave the site, the interference we’d been experiencing worsened and we lost contact.
NugsFan15: Please help or advise us in some way. Or at least reassure us there’s no reason to think they’re in danger due to Third Eye. Thank you.
VisibleFromSpace: If you have been warned away from a location, you should heed those warnings. Under no circumstances enter the site, and if anyone has done so, they should leave immediately.
NugsFan15: Are you saying they could be in danger from Third Eye phenomena?
VisibleFromSpace: Certainly not.
VisibleFromSpace: I’m saying warnings are meant to be heeded.
NugsFan15: Is there anything you can do to help? Any advice?
VisibleFromSpace: Yes.
VisibleFromSpace: In the future, don’t trespass.
Then they stopped responding.
If Erin had noticed, she didn’t say, and neither Lena nor I picked up on it, but Miguel pointed out that Erin never mentioned trespassing when she described the situation.
You know. Just in case you thought there might be any ambiguity about whether VisibleFromSpace knew where we’d gone.
Erin hadn’t been satisfied with their answer, and when they stopped responding to her next three questions, she turned to AlephLambda instead.
NugsFan15: I’m sorry for bothering you, since you have so many players to help, but please, if you have a moment, some of my friends went into a site that seems to have a lot of strange Third Eye phenomena. We’ve lost contact with them, and VisibleFromSpace seemed to indicate we may have stumbled into something dangerous.
NugsFan15: If you have any advice, please, let me know.
AlephLambda: Don’t worry. Third Eye won’t endanger your friends. :)
NugsFan15: You’re sure?
AlephLambda: Positive! :)
AlephLambda: So it’s very important you don’t overreact and enter the site yourself. :o
NugsFan15: I’ll get them out of there as soon as possible, as soon as we regain contact.
AlephLambda: That’s a great idea. :)
AlephLambda: Best of luck with the game, and stay safe out there! :)
NugsFan15: Thank you for trying to put my mind at ease.
AlephLambda: Always happy to help. :)
On the surface, those looked like the same pablum, pat, chatbot responses we’d gotten from AlephLambda in the past. I might still think so, if that were the last any of us had heard from the dev.
It was the end of Erin’s conversation with them.
Some of us had received another message.
Lena must’ve been thinking about it, too, because she reached over to my keyboard and alt-tabbed to Discord.
I’d left the DM up. I found myself checking it on and off, hoping a new one would come in, even though we’d gotten only the usual canned responses to our answers and no notifications had popped up while we watched the video.
Lena and I had each had a message waiting for us when we got back home from the construction site.
It didn’t prove anything about what had happened there, or about AlephLambda’s identity.
Sure as hell convinced both of us, though.
No new messages, so I just reread the one we’d both stared at so many times.
AlephLambda: Sorry to hear you had such a frightening experience. It was a lot of fun to see how much you’ve both grown, though, and I can’t wait to play with you again! :)
I glanced at Lena. She couldn’t help but smile as she reread the message, and when she turned that smile my way, I knew I was matching it.
We’d had a few days to think about it, to turn it over in our heads, to come to a rational decision, and we’d ended up at the same place.
Despite everything, we couldn’t wait to play with Albie again, either.