Chapter 28: Public Service Announcement

“Heya, Third Eye community! It’s ya girl, Ashbird, and today me and my lovely assistant are gonna give you a demonstration of the Reactions window.” Lena struck a pose with a victory or peace sign.

She held it until I started laughing.

She flopped onto a park bench and fanned herself with her phone. “My genius goes unappreciated in my lifetime.”

The trio of bobbleheads she’d positioned on the bench gave sad nods.

“No, it’s great,” I said. “You’ll go viral for sure.”

She stuck her tongue out.

“I’m not kidding,” I said. “Some people will think you’re doing the streamer thing and some people will think you’re parodying it. As long as we get viewers who like the part of the schtick they believe you’re doing, we’re golden.”

“Ew, no,” she hissed. “Nobody is allowed to think that wasn’t ironic!”

“Too late. You’ve obviously been suppressing your desire to star on Twitch this whole time.”

“Couldn’t be Twitch. We’re not live.” She frowned. “... Right?”

I flashed an evil smile. For a second. As much as I might want to wind Lena up, we came out here for a reason. “It wouldn’t matter if we were, since we don’t have any viewers. Anyway, we’re not. We need to edit it into something people might actually learn from.”

She sighed with relief. An exaggerated sigh. So she really did like the idea of streaming, huh? It would be pretty cool.

“Do you want me to do another take?” she asked.

“Probably should,” I said. “You can act silly if you want, but we need to lead into the actual demonstration and I don’t know how hard it will be to cut me laughing out of the background noise.”

We’d spent the previous afternoon workshopping my idea with Erin’s group. To their credit, once I became “part of the solution,” even ShakeProtocol and DeepingShadows warmed up. Erin’s return helped, since she seemed to love what I came up with.

Lena going off-script wasn’t in our plan, yet I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t planned for it.

She hopped off the bench. She smoothed out her shirt and ran her fingers through her hair. She patted her cheeks, then flinched because being outside so much had gone past bringing out her freckles and started to give her a sunburn. She cleared her throat.

She launched into the exact same spiel.

I’d thought she might, so I’d prepared. First, by clamping my jaw shut to keep from laughing. Second, by queuing up the Third Eye app on my phone. I activated it just as Lena struck her pose.

Through my camera, her flaming dress blossomed into view. In a video, I hoped it would look like she’d done a magical girl transformation. I’d flubbed the timing because I always forgot how long Third Eye took to boot up, but it still looked pretty good.

Of course, most of that came down to the camera’s subject.

“I know you take one look at me and want to learn all about Fire,” Lena said. “Good call! So.” She put her hands on her hips. “You’d better like and comment on this video, and subscribe to our channel, to make sure we want to show it to you. Today, we’re gonna explore Air.”

I pushed a fist into my mouth to try to hide my grin.

Of course, if we didn’t find Fire soon, we’d have a hell of a time keeping Lena’s promise. Maybe we could convince Erin to guest star.

“Without further preamble,” Lena said, “here’s my assistant. OldCampaigner, say hi to our fans.”

I swapped my phone to selfie mode. “Hi, purely hypothetical people.”

And back to Lena. “They’re already fans, they just don’t know it yet. Now show ‘em some Air!”

“With pleasure,” I said.

In the finished video, we would switch to Lena’s perspective now. Assuming either we or someone in the wiki team got good enough at video editing to pull it off.

In the present, I flipped to the Third Eye app, opened the Reactions window, and thumbed the button where Air met Wood.

“Ooh,” Lena murmured. “Pretty cool, huh? OldCampaigner, what can you tell us about it?”

By the time I flipped back to my own camera, the Wood already floated over the grass. It was a meter by a meter and a half across and less than a centimeter thick. At a glance, it looked a lot like those panels they sell at Home Depot for the floor of your attic or the roof of your basement. I suspected that you couldn’t identify what kind of tree it came from; just like the Plastic, it wasn’t Wood but the idea of it.

“First, the mechanics,” I said. “By the time you watch this, you may have collected a Reactant of your own. If not, lucky you. You get to experience it for the first time. A Reactant is a special Material you gather using the Third Eye app and your phone’s camera. Once you find one, you’ll get access to a new window on the app: Reactions.”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Lena rubbed her fingers. Thinking, I assumed, of when she’d get her own access.

“For those who’ve already done it,” I continued, “you’ve seen the window, but you may not know what to do with it. You choose a Material you’ve gathered, that’s the row, and a Reactant, the column. Push the button, spend one MP, and you’ll get an object of the type you chose, manipulated by...”

“Reacting with,” Lena said. We’d planned out this back and forth. DU_Goldie, who was studying marketing, claimed hearing two voices made people more likely to stay involved with a video.

“... the element you chose to apply to it,” I finished.

“You say ‘element,’” Lena said, “and so far, that’s what all the Reactants have been.”

“Air, Earth, Fire and Water,” I said. “The four classical elements. You’ve probably all played at least one game with them. Ashbird and I don’t have all four yet.”

“So you might have to wait for detailed tutorials.”

“We do at least know someone with each, though,” I said. “That doesn’t mean it’ll always be elements. There’s a lot we’re still discovering about Third Eye, and more Reactants may be part of it. We might find something more complicated, like Acid, or more esoteric, like Shadow.”

“In fact,” Lena said, “we’re not just making this video out of the goodness of our hearts! Try to contain your shock.”

“What Ashbird means,” I said, “is that if you know anything more about Reactions, Materials, or Third Eye in general, we’d love to hear from you. We all have to work together to explore the game’s mechanics.”

“You can drop us a line in the comments,” Lena said, “but to help out the whole community, you should hit up r/thirdeyegame, the Third Eye subreddit; the Official Third Eye Discord server; and the Third Eye Wiki.”

“Shoutout to NugsFan15 and her admin team on the wiki,” I said, “who helped us figure out a lot of this information.”

“All right,” Lena said. “Enough dawdling. Show us some magic, OldCampaigner!”

“I’m sure it’s just sufficiently advanced technology, Ashbird,” I said. “But if you insist...”

I made a slow pass with my hand.

The Wood followed my motion, spinning in midair. A hard surface like this didn’t show off the coolest parts of how Third Eye represented Air. So far, it just looked like telekinesis.

Again, intentional. We wanted to build up to Plastic, because it was the real “wow” moment.

Still, I wanted to try to show off a little right out of the gate.

I snapped my hand right and the Wood somersaulted through the air. It made two complete revolutions and smacked into the back of Lena’s bench. Third Eye showed her bobbleheads quaking on their bases.

She huffed. “Hey, do that to your stuff, not mine!”

“My bad.” My hand swung left and the Wood followed. Its swooping motion turned it end over end, clipped a bobblehead, and appeared to knock it over.

“Jerk.” She glared at the Wood. We’d placed the bobbleheads specifically to give this demonstration, but Lena had either improved her acting or gotten genuinely annoyed.

“Of course,” I said, “we can’t actually affect the real world using Third Eye. It sure looks realistic, though, doesn’t it?”

“It’s cool or whatever,” Lena said, “but you shouldn’t mess with my virtual stuff, either.”

“Ashbird’s right,” I said. “Quick disclaimer, distinguished guests. Once you gain access to Reactions, Third Eye lets you interact in a very believable way with other players. It can be absurdly cool. It can also be scary.”

“If you’re a huge pussy like my lovely assistant, anyway.” Lena wiped the smirk from her face. Mostly. “That isn’t fair. Folks? I hate it, but we’ve gotta be serious for a sec. The first time OldCampaigner and I experimented with Air, he used a Material in a way that looked like an attack on me. I wasn’t hurt. Duh. But it looked so realistic that it was really upsetting.”

She slipped in that ‘duh,’ but she also left out which of us got upset. Our little compromise for including this bit in the video.

Of course, our “quick disclaimer” was the real reason we were filming.

Picture this: on the front page of the wiki, there’s a text post. It implores the playerbase to avoid PVP, especially invasion PVP, and to take exquisite care how they use their Reactions. It warns that Third Eye could get shut down before it ever launches. It’s eloquent, impassioned, and co-signed by Third Eye’s biggest BNFs.

Is anyone going to read that?

Is anyone, having read it, going to do anything other than leave a comment like “lol so cringe?”

Is anyone, seeing it on the game’s subreddit, going to upvote it?

Statistically, yes. A handful of people whose earnestness has endured in the face of the internet. If nothing else, because a couple of them wrote it.

But practically, no.

Now picture a video. It’s called tips and tricks, it’s going to help you play better. That’s worth a click. The main presenter looks super cute. Super cute, today; I hadn’t seen Lena with makeup in years, but LikeItsNinetyNine had joined the chat in the evening and explained to both of us that we should use a little to present well on camera. Then, in the thumbnail and at the start of the video, she transforms into a queen of fire before your eyes. The other presenter does some – hopefully – awesome tricks with a game mechanic you’ve either just discovered or just learned to hope you will. All wrapped up in Third Eye’s stunning graphics and sound.

And here and there, mixed in with all the cool stuff, they’re telling you the cultural expectations they’ve followed to get this far.

I was betting a whole lot on us getting only fifty percent “lol so cringe” comments.

The devs needed to cut their IRL invasion shit, but if we pulled this off, we could shift Third Eye’s player culture enough to buy them time to agree to do so.

“Obviously, you can’t hurt someone physically with Third Eye,” I said, “but you can hurt them emotionally. You could scare someone, or piss them off, or even trigger a memory or phobia. So whatever you do, follow this one simple rule:”

“Don’t be a dick,” we chorused.

“And if you can’t manage that?” Lena pointed her finger at my camera. Her wings spread at her back, stretching from the sidewalk all the way to clusters of trees on either side. Flames rippled from her eyes and flowed down her arm. “I’ll personally kick all your asses.”

“Believe it, folks.” I gave an exaggerated shudder. “Ashbird is not an enemy you want.”

“Damn skippy!” Lena grinned. “Fortunately, I know our lovely viewers won’t use the knowledge we share for evil. So. You know. Share a lil’ knowledge, wouldja?”