Chapter 27: Part of the Solution

I rolled my chair back and flexed my fingers.

Did I deserve that line from DeepingShadows? Probably.

It didn’t promise a very fun conversation, though.

Maybe if I hadn’t been reminded of her this morning, I wouldn’t have recognized the words she chose, and why. It’s not like she used the quote function to dredge up my comment.

Lena sucked in a breath and said, “Ohh, shit.”

So maybe I would’ve remembered, too.

OldCampaigner: Long time, no see, DS.

DeepingShadows: You’re not wrong.

Ashbird: Heya, DS!

NugsFan15: You three know each other?

DeepingShadows: Oh yes. In fact, our knowing each other turned out to be quite portentous.

“And you’re being quite pretentious,” Lena muttered. She started pacing.

“I’m surprised you didn’t post it.” The thought popped into my head and out my mouth. I waited for ‘Ashbird is typing...’ to make me regret it.

Lena just shrugged, though. “Trying not to get kicked on the first day.”

DeepingShadows: If Ash hadn’t been so enthusiastic about Third Eye, I might never have found out about it.

NugsFan15: Oh, wow. Then I’m really grateful. Thank you, Ashbird!

Ashbird: yw. What can I say, I’m a tastemaker.

DeepingShadows: You certainly do have your preferences.

DeepingShadows: On which note, real quick, congrats on still being together, you two. Ha. I remember how flustered OC got when I suggested there was something between you.

I started typing but mashed backspace to erase my response. On the way home, I’d imagined telling her that my relationship with Lena was on the rocks. Actually putting those words onto the screen made my fingers freeze up.

I waited for Lena to correct her.

A silent apartment and a still chat room. Stale, close air. Too hot. I’d text the landlord later, tell him to turn the furnace down, make his day.

Erin rescued us from the stillness.

Sort of.

NugsFan15: Ah, they are? That’s so sweet! I thought so from the pattern of their interactions but didn’t want to assume.

My hands remained frozen on the keyboard.

Lena continued to pace, but she didn’t post anything.

NugsFan15: Congratulations from me, too, for whatever that’s worth.

She added a heart emoji.

A heartbeat. Another. Too many. Awkward again.

Ashbird: Thanks!

Ashbird: Sorry we’re not responding super fast, we’re reading the logs in another tab. You’ve found out a ton.

I could've kissed her out of pure gratitude. Since when had Lena lapped me at negotiating social situations?

What I couldn’t do was look up and see her expression while she did it.

DeepingShadows: This is all very cute, but since you bring up the logs, I believe we were talking about something more substantive?

Hell. Right then, I could’ve kissed DS.

A feeling that didn’t seem mutual.

DeepingShadows: Several of the top Third Eye players have gathered here to work this problem and have been doing so almost since launch. Myself excluded, they’ve made significant discoveries and contributed to the community. I’d like to think, myself included, we’re pretty clever.

DeepingShadows: It’s all fine and well for you to criticize NF, but I don’t see you offering a solution of your own. Is it, perhaps, possible you don’t have one?

I swallowed a sigh.

Not so much because she’d nailed me – though she had – as because I still felt grateful we’d escaped the personal awkwardness.

OldCampaigner: I admit, I haven’t gotten that far. I just think trying to hide the problem is going to make it worse.

DeepingShadows started to respond, but Erin cut her off.

NugsFan15: You’re right. I know that, and it needed saying.

NugsFan15: Please think about what we can do. We’re always grateful for fresh ideas.

DeepingShadows: You’re too kind, NF.

OldCampaigner: I’ll try to come up with something. We both will. Promise.

NugsFan15: Thank you.

NugsFan15: I have to get back to my dorm. Is it okay if I ping everyone and we try to brainstorm in a half hour? You can meet more of the server.

Ashbird: I’m in.

OldCampaigner: Sounds like a plan.

DeepingShadows: It’s been a nice surprise running into you again, OC, Ash.

I felt like I should say something. Apologize, maybe. I’d felt bad about cutting her out of my life.

But she went offline right after posting, and I couldn’t face the prospect of DMing her.

Apologize for what? DeepingShadows probably preferred us gone. She’d never had time for unproductive people, and that’s what we must have become in her eyes.

Ultimately, I just didn’t know how to cross the gap.

Speaking of –

I forced myself to turn my back on my computer.

Lena had drifted further away during the conversation. She sat on the floor now, her back up against the kitchen counter. The lights were off on that side of the room, so her phone screen lit her face. Mirrored text scrolled up her forehead.

I creaked to my feet and joined her at the counter. “Hey.”

“Check it out.” Her voice sounded flat, tight. She held her phone up.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, swallowed a sigh, and bent over to read what she’d been scrolling through.

“Whoa,” I said. I couldn’t help it. DeepingShadows wasn’t kidding about top players. My shitty Air and Plastic experiments, what felt like ages but the clock on Lena’s phone insisted were just four hours ago, were kindergarten in comparison. Or clown school.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Lena tried on a little smile. “Cool, right?”

Cool enough I let it distract me. Again. “Let me get my phone so your arm doesn’t get tired.”

I returned to the desk. I thought about sitting there and reading on the computer, but in the end I scooped the phone up and joined Lena on the floor.

She bumped her shoulder into mine and pointed to her phone screen.

Judging from the position of her scrollbar, she wasn’t even at the halfway point of the Third Eye Chat room. Almost all the discussion hinged on the Reactions window. They’d spilled gallons of virtual ink on tests of Fire, Earth, and Water, and how the three fit together with various Materials.

Their early consensus was that each Reactant had a “function” within the game. (Or a “verb” to Salamancer; he and ShakeProtocol argued over terminology for an entire screen’s worth of lines.) A person would need all the functions to gain full Third Eye, uh, functionality. Awkward. Maybe Salamancer had the right idea about the term.

Earth “shaped,” Fire “destroyed,” and Water “changed.” I sort of grasped why Erin had thought Lena used two or even three together to make her dress and wings.

What did Air do? Apart from get me in trouble?

“Air ‘moves,’” I said. It felt right to me, at least for a first guess.

“Hm?” Lena looked up. “Oh, its function?”

I nodded.

“Seems like,” she said. “You’d need something like that for a game.”

“We’ll need them all eventually, I think. Unless we’re restricted somehow.”

She stretched. Yawned. “Right now, I’d settle for one.”

I reached over and squeezed her shoulder. She let me.

This text log would probably help us more once she got a Reactant, and I got one anyone else had posted about.

For now, I watched the demonstrations.

ShakeProtocol posted the first. He seemed to have had trouble setting it up, since his voice sounded tense and the first thing he said was, “Take seven.”

I understood why as I watched. His camera showed a floating panel of Wood, an intrusion of Home Depot into an otherwise Ikea living room. Then the camera’s view veered as he set his phone down. It stabilized on, I was pretty sure, a coffee table.

ShakeProtocol stepped carefully into view, one hand extended, clad in his Third Eye gear. Sleeveless tunic, short cape, tight leggings, amulet.

Lena perked up.

“If I set the Wood down when I’m away from my phone,” ShakeProtocol said, “it will ‘deselect’ and I’ll have to start again.”

I thought he’d skipped a couple of steps of explanation, but he’d made the video to show the other members of Erin’s server, not the general public.

“From here, though, I can keep it and my hands on camera so you can see what I’m doing.” He curved his hand and the Wood bent in the air. Whoa. Again. “I’m not sure how it’s tracking me.”

He went through a series of hand gestures and the Wood went through matching contortions. A real board would have splintered and shattered; the Material conformed to his motions like clay.

“Once I lose selection on the object,” he said, “I can’t seem to reshape it further. Have to get it right the first time.”

Third Eye’s graphics impressed, as always, but halfway through his demonstration, he flexed his hand and it seemed to count as deselecting the Wood. It hit his carpet with a thump. “Shit.”

He picked up the Wood and carried it over to his camera. He’d shaped it into something like an uneven twist pretzel. “Good enough. I’m keeping this take.”

His video ended there. The next came from LikeItsNinetyNine.

She seemed to have handed her phone to someone else instead of setting it down, since it didn’t hold steady. Her cameraman waited to start until she got in position, so the video opened with her onscreen in her nature-goddess cloak of vines and a dark brown dress, her Material suspended before her.

Like ShakeProtocol, she’d chosen Wood, probably because we’d all found the most of it. Unlike him, she kept dancing from one foot to another as she wiggled her hands. I couldn’t keep track of her gestures.

Something apparently went wrong, because the Wood doubled in on itself and LikeItsNinetyNine said, “Oops!”

“You’ve got this, Bev,” an offscreen guy said. “Looks real good.”

LikeItsNinetyNine grinned. She twisted both hands and the Wood took on a shape like a log. “Honey, could you push where it says Water and Wood?”

He said “Sure;” it sounded like “Shore.”

I expected another Material to manifest; instead, the Wood she already held started to change. It lost some of its shape, gained some texture. She waved her hands like a conductor, or maybe somebody at a rave, and the Wood began to branch out.

I leaned closer to my screen.

A bark interrupted her concentration. The Wood dropped, half formed, and a little spotted dog ran through the camera’s view, followed by two boys. The camera shifted to give a view of a plaster ceiling as LikeItsNinetyNine laughed and the cameraman called out, “C’mere, you rascals!”

Lena grinned. “Now that’s my kind of tutorial.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my hands. “Did you see how she could manipulate the same object with two Reactants?”

Lena gave me an odd look. “I mean the personal touch.”

“At the end? It was cute. I do wish she’d finished, though.” I sighed. “I’ve got to get some Water.”

“I wish NugsFan15 would show off her Fire,” Lena said. “We know she’s got it.”

Something bugged me. I took a second to figure it out. “It sounds so weird when you say her username out loud.”

“Doesn’t roll off the tongue,” Lena said. “What do you expect from a sports fan, though?”

I didn’t have the energy to wrangle Lena’s opinions of sports fans. Again. “We shouldn’t use her real name in Discord without asking her, but just between you and me, it’s Erin.”

Lena raised an eyebrow. “You two are already on a first name basis?”

I eyed the slogan on her shirt. “What, you worried?”

“As if.” She turned her nose up and away. It would have looked less silly in Third Eye.

I tried to smile. “I’m pretty sure she’s too young for me, anyway.”

“Wait, really? How old was she when she backed?”

“Pretty young,” I said. “I think she’s an undergrad at DU now.”

“Dang.” Lena’s eyebrows rose. She glanced at her phone. Recontextualizing Erin’s messages? “Oh, we got company.”

Like a moron, I looked to the front door. Then I realized she meant in Discord.

I dragged myself upright – thanks, kitchen counter! – and back to my PC. After a minute, Lena rose and perched beside my desk.

We swapped greetings with Salamancer, who we knew from the official Third Eye Discord. He introduced us to some new faces, DU_Goldie and OpenMike. They all said “hi” and not much more, although Salamancer disappointed Lena with the revelation that, despite his username, he didn’t have Fire yet, either.

I shifted in my chair. “Does the vibe feel off to you?”

Lena glanced down. “They’re Erin’s friends, right? You went at her pretty hard.”

“Oh,” I said. “Too hard?”

“Eh.” She spread her hands. “Prolly would’ve been fine if DS didn’t bitch you out.”

Speaking of whom, she came online again, followed by ShakeProtocol.

ShakeProtocol: Morning, everyone. NugsFan15 told me we had some new members.

Ashbird: Hiya! Loved your vid.

More like drooled over your vid, I thought.

ShakeProtocol: Thanks. Third Eye cinematography is awkward. It would be better if they implemented a client that could work with PC webcams.

OldCampaigner: It looked like you were figuring it out.

ShakeProtocol: I’m a big fan of figuring things out.

OldCampaigner: Did NugsFan15 tell you what we’re trying to do this afternoon?

ShakeProtocol: The same thing we always do.

Ashbird: Try to take over the world!

No one responded.

“You’re wasted on this crowd,” I said.

Lena glared daggers at her phone.

Ashbird: Really? Nobody has appreciation for the classics? :P

DU_Goldie: can we talk 3rd eye now

ShakeProtocol: Let’s. I hope the two of you have some ideas?

DeepingShadows: They’ll undoubtedly try their best.

I’d felt bad about cutting this woman out of my life? Now I just wanted her gone again.

Ashbird: Like old times, huh, DS?

DeepingShadows: Yeah.

ShakeProtocol: I just read the logs. You’re right to be concerned, OldCampaigner, but ease up next time.

Salamancer: The only one who is allowed to be hard on our admin is Shake.

ShakeProtocol: Have I been? That’s my bad.

Salamancer: Perhaps I misspoke. For the benefit of our new members, please forgive any errors, as I am ESL.

OldCampaigner: You seem plenty fluent.

Salamancer: Merci.

ShakeProtocol: I’d rather we didn’t get distracted. Have you come up with any ideas, OldCampaigner? I’m sure it would make NugsFan15’s day if we had an actual plan for once.

DeepingShadows: It’s all fine and well to call out our approach, but unless you’ve conjured a new one, it’s pointless. Almost cruel.

I rubbed my eyes. Lena and I hadn’t been active on a busy private Discord since DeepingShadows’s old group. I wanted to learn more about the inside track these guys had on Third Eye. Salamancer seemed cool, and I liked Erin.

And look. Maybe I had gone too hard on Erin, and maybe the members of her wiki team were right to come back at me.

Have you considered, though, that maybe this was cliquish bullshit, and they could miss me with it?

OldCampaigner: I’m still trying to think of something.

ShakeProtocol: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Straight outta human resources. What kind of job did this guy have that he split time between meeting rooms and messing with Third Eye? People on the management track were supposed to play, like, golf. Or Call of Duty.

“Ew,” Lena said. “Why are the hot ones always corporate?”

I started to chuckle, but then the next line came through. DeepingShadows didn’t seem to share our aversion to the saying.

DeepingShadows: So, OC.

DeepingShadows: Are you part of the solution?

I stared at the two Discord instances. On my PC, this discussion. Stress, frustration. On my phone, LikeItsNinetyNine’s Water tutorial. Charm, wonder.

Lena saw my expression and cocked her head. “Sup?”

OldCampaigner: Actually

OldCampaigner: I think I am.