Chapter 13: Lies, Damn Lies
“Lena,” I said, “why don’t you look at the Discord.”
She rolled her eyes. “What for?”
I turned back to my phone. She could find out for herself.
The exchange between NugsFan15 and ShakeProtocol had continued. I considered it illustrative.
ShakeProtocol: I respect the devs’ time, but it takes none to establish the parameters for what we’re meant to be doing.
NugsFan15: First, that isn’t true. AlephLambda would have to type out an explanation. In all likelihood, they would need to run it past senior developers, which would take their time as well.
Their next message came through so quickly, I knew they’d done the trick of typing out both lines in advance and copying the second to the clipboard before posting the first.
NugsFan15: Second, establishing parameters is almost certainly part of Third Eye’s gameplay.
ShakeProtocol: How?
NugsFan15: By gathering as much data as possible, until we have statistics.
ShakeProtocol: Sure. Great. So far, I’ve publicized at least two of the things we as a community know about Third Eye. What have you got?
NugsFan15’s response was a link.
AlephLambda: Loving the initiative from both of you! :)
NugsFan15: Thank you.
ShakeProtocol didn’t respond.
I tapped the link. It opened my browser to a website that clearly hadn’t been optimized for mobile. I had to pan my screen back and forth to see it all.
I had to pan my screen back and forth a lot.
The website’s title read ‘Third Eye Wiki.’ There was no explanation of the game or the categories, no welcome message. No extraneous text of any kind. Not yet. Because, unless I missed my guess, this wiki, this open, multi-contributor encyclopedia of all things Third Eye, currently had only one contributor, and they didn’t have time for puny human concerns like welcomes.
What did exist on the site? Tabs for Links, Game Mechanics, Game Elements, Materials, Hints and Tips, Theories, and Media.
I tapped Theories. It was an empty page. No surprise.
I tapped Materials. It was not empty.
It started, started with a table duplicated from the one on our Third Eye apps, except this one had four extra columns, ‘AvR’ and ‘RR,’ which were, at the moment, identical to the ‘No.’ line on our apps, ‘TA,’ and ‘LR,’ which was a fillable form with a submit button. Sadly appropriate to Third Eye’s UI, it was a basic, black-on-gray HTML button, real Web 1.0 stuff. Three Materials had nonzero data on the wiki: Wood, which made sense, Plastic, which neither Lena nor I had gotten any of yet, and Fire, which, wait, what?
A legend at the bottom of the table explained that AvR meant Average Return and would tabulate how much of a Material players typically got when they collected it. RR meant Record Return, the highest amount of a Material anyone had collected. TA meant Times Acquired, how many times the Material had been collected. LR meant Latest Return and included a request to ‘Please submit accurate returns as you acquire them.’
Like any wiki, this one relied on the kindness of strangers. Funny thing about that. You’d think it’d be a disaster, right? People on the internet are assholes, we all tell ourselves as much. But wikis are great. They don’t always work, they get brigaded now and then, you can’t cite them. But they work well enough. Give people a chance to chip in and chip most shall.
Would a simple, clickable form leave an edit history so we could hunt down and ban the unkind strangers, though? Even as an avowedly pro-wiki person, I thought this might be a little too optimistic.
Anyway, below this well-thought out, underpopulated table was a description of the Materials. Only Wood, Plastic and Fire so far. These duplicated the info from above, and came with a terse text description of what the materials were (duh). More interesting were little plusses that expanded into a list of where they’d been found so far. Currently one entry each. Plastic from a sign, Wood from a torch, Fire also from a torch.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Fire seemed like such a weird resource, but before I could figure out why I thought so, the waitress arrived with our check.
Lena and I forced smiles at the bill and emptied our wallets until we’d covered it and enough of a tip to assuage our consciences. Before we headed home, we’d have to hit an ATM and hope one or both of our bank accounts could assuage our hunger later today, too. Thank God I had leftover pizza back home.
We cleared out of the IHOP and stepped into the noon sun. I got a blast of cold air when I opened the door, but by the time Lena joined me in the parking lot, I’d adjusted to the temperature.
She waved her phone. “You wanted me to check the wiki out, right?”
“Yep.”
“It’s hella impressive.”
“Yep.”
“I don’t get it.” She frowned at her phone. “You’re acting like you owned me in an argument or something.”
“I’m afraid this time, you owned yourself.”
“A self-own? Couldn’t be me.” But her frown deepened. “All the edits. All the edits, so far, are from this same dude. The one you’re sure is local.”
“Yep.”
“And you expected that,” she said. Before I could answer, she added, “If you say ‘yep’ again I’m gonna get angry.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
Lena wasn’t just feigning ignorance. I’d actually confused her. Proof? The fact she said not pissed, not even mad, but angry. If I needled her more, I would be the asshole and she would have every right to that anger.
Time for an explanation.
“You thought NugsFan15 had to be a jock because they were a sports fan,” I said. “And when you picture a jock, you’re thinking of, like, some teen movie bad guy.”
“Are you telling me Revenge of the Nerds lied to me?”
“Have you actually seen that one?”
“Nah. It’s like a million years old.”
“Okay, so, I haven’t seen it either,” I said, “but those movies all hit the same notes. Nerds are weak but smart, and are assholes unless they’re the protagonists. Jocks are strong but dumb, and are always assholes because if they were the protagonists it’d be a sports movie.”
“Exactly,” Lena said.
“Thing is, jocks are sports players. Fans are a whole different ballgame.” I grinned at hitting that specific idiom in the flow of conversation. “I’ve known three types.”
“Okay...?”
“You’ve got your actual players. Ex-players, at least from school. They’re legit jocks, although some of them are smart, too. Some people just roll high for all their stats. The smart ones become lawyers and they’re too busy to play Third Eye.”
She gave me the side-eye. “Sure.”
“Then there’s – I’ll call ‘em casual fans, but some of them are pretty hardcore. They watch all the games, go if they can afford it, but trust me, they aren’t players.” I thought of Benji, master of the family Discord server, who could turn any sporting event into an excuse to drink a couple liters of beer and laugh at how I’d wasted my life. “They don’t have anything better to do with their lives, but they’ve got neither the inclination nor talent to threaten us.”
“You sound super unbiased right now.”
“The most,” I said, “and humble, too.”
She cracked a smile. “What’s the third type?”
“The third type,” I said, “are the nerdiest motherfuckers in the world.”
“What about LARPers?”
“The second nerdiest. But the most dangerous to us. Actually, LARPers would probably be good at all the walking around for a game, like we’ve had to do this morning, so they’re serious rivals, too.”
“I’m tryna be all open-minded and shit, but we have to draw the line somewhere.”
I scratched my chin. “You know, somebody could say the whole thing with us wearing our avatars is a lot like –”
“You want to see me in my Third Eye outfit again, Cam?” Lena asked.
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Then don’t finish that thought.”
“Understood.” I blinked. “Um, where were we?”
“The third type of fan?”
“The third type of fan,” I said, “is the stathead.”
Again, I thought of a family member. While Benji swilled beer and talked shit about me, our cousin Dane would rattle off inane bullshit about the game we were supposed to be watching. Numbers none of the announcers ever talked about, but which supposedly revealed a whole different layer underneath what we saw. Benji said Dane ruined the games, so I grew up admiring Dane.
Then I got old enough for him to use that inane bullshit to scam me out of my allowance, one bet at a time. I spent about three months studying Sabermetrics and PER and a million other analytics. Dane destroyed me again. Then he told me I’d done well for an amateur and I quit trying.
Turned out Benji had his reasons to hate him. Even a broken clock, am I right?
“The stathead turns the game into math,” I said. “They’re convinced they know more than the players, coaches, managers, and Vegas.”
“Nobody knows more than Vegas,” Lena said. “Not about sports, but, just, like, in general. The house always wins.”
“Are you thinking about the Fallout game when you say that?”
Her eyes flickered to the side. “The world may never know.”
“I’m just saying, the terrifying thing about statheads? When they’re convinced they can turn the game into math and understand it better than the professionals?” Last I’d heard from Dane, he’d offered to get me an internship where he worked, because those weren’t soul-crushing enough when I didn’t have to report to my smug snake of a cousin. If not for him, though, I’d have taken the position, because his job sounded cool as hell. The website he worked for sold statistics to analysts and pro teams. And to Vegas bookmakers.
“Once in a blue moon,” I said, “they’re right.”