Chapter 12: Mining Fatigue
“Glass,” Lena said.
I followed the angle of her camera and focused where she had. Outside of Third Eye, we were paying special attention to the side window of a Ross Dress For Less. Inside, we were paying special attention to a window of a Ross Dress For Less that had spawned a second pane inside the first. The inner glass was thick, maybe plexiglass, like something from an aquarium.
“Nice spot,” I said. “You want to collect it?”
“‘Course.” She strode through the automatic doors like she owned the place. When one of the checkout clerks eyed her, she flashed a smile and a thumbs up.
I sidled up to the clerk while Lena went to grab her glass. “Sorry about this. We’re trying out this new AR game.”
“It’s got you rooting around clothing stores?” The clerk shook her head. “They should work on where they place content.”
“I know, sorry. It’s in beta. We’ll buy some candy bars so it’s not so weird.” I grabbed three from the rack near the checkout. Buying actual clothes? Yeah, right. It was Dress For Less, not Dress For Less Than A Thrift Store.
The clerk brightened as she rang my candy up. “Is the game cool?”
What a question.
Now that we knew to look for mundane but out of place objects, we’d started to rack up XP and Materials in Third Eye.
Lena had caught up to me in XP when she collected an extra concrete post that didn’t really exist in the Hobby Lobby parking lot. (Third Eye considered this “Stone.”)
I retook the lead when I realized the For Sale sign in the window of the Dollar Tree, which gave my stomach a twist at the thought we’d lose our cheapest supply of random useful shit, wasn’t really there. I’d felt like a total weirdo going inside to touch their window, but I got a unit of Wood out of it. (Odd, but I supposed it made sense: the sign would’ve been made from wood pulp.)
We hadn’t found any Third Eye objects on the shelves of either store. They all seemed visible, if not necessarily accessible, from the outside. Also, the workers started giving us really weird looks when we walked around scanning everything without making any purchases.
Back outside, we’d checked Walmart’s parking lot, but either we missed the signs or it had been rendered aggressively mundane by the megacorporation squatting on it. Or, more likely, Third Eye Productions didn’t want to risk the wrath of an angry Walmart.
Across the street, though, we’d found our first real windfall. Tucked just inside the gate of the fancy apartments Lena and I always gave aching glances to was an entire extra wall segment. Metal struts, glass panes, concrete roof. Lena had focused on it first and it seemed to count as three separate instances, so she’d pulled firmly into the lead in XP.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t get past the security guard to touch the wall. Didn’t, anyway. I’d shot down Lena’s suggestion that she distract the guard while I slipped around the gate and touched the wall.
So. Was Third Eye cool?
I watched Lena avert her eyes from the flash while she collected the glass from the Ross Dress For Less window. Now that we knew what to expect, we could grab Materials without hurting ourselves, but why put in the too-bright flash in the first place?
“The game is... interesting,” I told the checkout clerk.
“Huh,” she said. “Well, good luck with it.”
“Thanks!” Lena said. She took two of the three candy bars I’d bought, unwrapped one, and popped it in her mouth.
The clerk laughed and waved as we left.
“What did you get for the glass?” I asked.
“Glass,” Lena said.
Since I’d gotten Wood for a paper sign, I thought she might’ve received Sand, or even plain Stone. “Any new windows open up?”
“Just Materials. No ‘chieve for getting a second type, either.” So she’d been on the same page as me. If one Material got you one window, a second might have unlocked another. No dice.
“I wonder if we have to do something else to open the next one,” I said, “or if it’s not implemented yet.”
“It’s gotta be a crafting interface next, right? We’re getting wood and stone and shit.”
My lip curled. “Looking like.”
She chuckled. “You’re on the wrong side of history on this one, Cam.”
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“Trust me, I know. I can’t think of the last time I played a game that didn’t have a goddamn crafting system.”
“Trowel Samurai 2?” Lena suggested.
“I guess you were right about staying home, after all.”
“Well, duh.”
I sighed and looked at the list of Materials on my phone again. Maybe Lena had misread the situation. They could be spell components, not crafting materials. Wouldn’t that fit Third Eye’s theming better?
Since when had theming stopped a game developer from mutilating a perfectly respectable – anything else – into Survival Crafting?
“You’re actually bummed about a crafting system,” Lena said.
I blinked. She’d leaned in front of me and looked up to see my expression. Her’s, a slight frown, furrowed brows, surprised me. An untrained observer could mistake it for genuine concern.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and summoned a smile. “It’s fine.”
“You know what you need?”
“I know you’ll tell me.”
She nodded. “Better taste in games, for one, but for another, pancakes.”
“You make half of a compelling case,” I said.
We made for IHOP.
While we waited for our order – we split a single breakfast sampler, since we hadn’t suddenly come into money –, I fired up Discord and Lena, Reddit.
“Damn,” she said. “We weren’t first.”
I nodded as I scrolled up.
A user named Salamancer had broken things open with a post about getting XP for spotting ‘impossible objects’ and included a pair of screenshots. One of a building with a retaining wall that jutted out at a weird angle (Third Eye) and another of the same building, architecturally normal. AlephLambda congratulated them.
Twenty minutes later, ShakeProtocol, the hot guy from the subreddit, posted on the Discord as well. He’d found an impossible object, a stop sign on an intersection with a light, and when he touched it, it flashed and vanished. AlephLambda congratulated him.
Unlike Salamancer, ShakeProtocol didn’t accept a pablum answer.
ShakeProtocol: What can we do with the resources we get?
AlephLambda: I’m not supposed to tell secrets, but I will let you know some features of Third Eye will be rolled out over the course of the beta. :)
ShakeProtocol: Is that confirmation that for now, we can only accrue Materials, not use them?
AlephLambda: I really can’t say. ;)
ShakeProtocol: Since the game is also a kind of puzzle, it’s very annoying to not be able to know if something is an unimplemented feature or a mystery for us to solve.
Back in the present, I nodded along with him.
AlephLambda: I’ve already said too much. :(
A newcomer responded.
NugsFan15: The devs are working hard to deliver us this content. Try to exercise some patience.
Their message was fair, even though I wanted to strangle AlephLambda. Their username, on the other hand, made me wince.
“Sup?” Lena asked.
“A post on the Discord from someone called NugsFan15,” I said.
Lena narrowed her eyes. “They really like Mickey D’s? No accounting for taste, but why do you care?”
“15 is a jersey number.”
Lena didn’t respond.
I pinched my nose. “The Nuggets. The NBA team?”
She stared at me. “What? Why would someone name a team after chicken?”
“I think it’s gold nuggets, not chicken ones. You’ve never seen one of those retro team shirts with a miner on it?”
“Oh, yeah, at all those sporting events I attend.”
“I have one of those shirts.” In fairness, it might still be at my parents’ house. I just didn’t feel like extending fairness to Lena when she put on this silly of an act.
“... congratulations?” Her head tilted.
She had to be acting. Right? “Did you seriously not know this? The Nuggets are even pretty good now. There’s a billboard for them visible from our apartment.”
“I try to know as little about sports as possible, Cam. It’s kinda my life’s work.”
“The sports don’t matter, okay?”
“On this point, we agree.”
“The point,” I said, “is that the Nuggets are Denver’s NBA team.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “You sure? All I ever see is Broncos stuff.”
“That’s football.”
Lena’s fingers flew across her phone. “Huh. You’re right.”
“Of course I’m –” I saw her grin and realized she’d played me. I tried not to smile. “So. You get what I was upset about.”
She nodded. “This NugsFan15 probably lives in the same metro area as us. You’re upset ‘cause we’ve got local competition.”
“You’re not?”
“Nah. It’s a pretty big city. Statistically, we were gonna have rivals.” Her grin widened. “Turns out we got crazy lucky.”
The waitress picked that moment to return with our breakfast sampler, so I got to marinate in wondering – worrying – why Lena thought we’d gotten lucky.
She didn’t say anything else while we ate. She gobbled her pancakes and sausage with a smile. Maybe whatever she’d concluded gave her genuine contentment. Maybe she’d learned her lesson with the pizza last night.
Maybe she just wanted to troll me.
After we cleaned our plate, Lena even picked up her napkin and dabbed the syrup from her mouth.
Trolling, for sure.
“Well?” I asked.
“You got syrup right here.” She tapped her upper lip.
I wiped it away. “Why do you think we’re lucky, Lena?”
“Colleges. Hobby stores. Barcades. Microcenter! There’s so much shit like that around here, I figured we might wind up going against some real gamers. Not, like, someone we couldn’t beat, but somebody who’d put us through the wringer.” She laughed. “Now it turns out our first local rival is just some jock!”