Chapter 31: Child’s Play

At first, I didn’t understand what Albie had said. I mean, I got it, the words fit together, but they made no sense in the context of this little girl.

Slowly, I raised my phone and looked through the camera.

Through Third Eye’s filter, Albie’s sweats became poofy burgundy pants, a burgundy cloak with its hood pulled back, a teal tunic piped in red. Her gloves and boots were red-brown leather.

Oddly, Albie herself looked unchanged. Her wraparound glasses vanished, so I figured them for smart glasses of some kind, but that was the only difference I noticed about her face and hair.

On a scale from Erin (transformed from head to toe) to ShakeProtocol (slightly hotter than normal), Albie didn’t even register. She was just herself in different clothes.

Maybe Third Eye knew better than to Hollywood up an actual child?

Which brought me back to why Albie being a Third Eye player made no sense.

Lena and I had both found Erin’s age surprising, but that was because of the tier we knew she must have backed the Third Eye Kickstarter at. Her Custom Personification meant she must have had rich, and generous, parents. DU_Goldie was an undergrad, too, but with no reason to suspect he wasn’t at the same Apprentice tier as me, that came as no surprise. Teenagers, getting involved with a mobile game? Shocking.

Albie would not have been a teenager.

Was she even one now? I interacted with few enough kids I could hardly guess her age. If she would grow up to be as short as Lena, she might be pushing thirteen. If she had Erin’s height in her future, as young as seven. Maybe ten, on average?

Regardless, even at her oldest she had to have been in the single digits when the Third Eye Kickstarter ran.

Albie lowered her eyes. “It was too mean.”

I blinked at her. Too mean?

Oh. What she’d said about my use of Air.

“Nah, it’s fine,” I said. “I was just surprised to find out you played Third Eye.”

Lena shifted so we could both look Albie in the face. She asked, “How’d you get into the beta, kiddo?”

“My big bro wanted us to be able to work together.” Albie gave a little huff. “But now he’s super busy, so I’ve gotta practice by myself.”

Lena and I exchanged glances.

“Marroll tries to help,” Albie said. Her dog hopped up at the sound of his name and nuzzled his huge head under her arm. She hugged his neck. “But he can’t, not really.”

“You’ve got Air, though?” Lena asked.

Albie nodded. “Uh-huh. I wasn’t trying to be mean about it!”

“You weren’t, I promise.” I gave her a thumbs up. “We hadn’t met anyone else who has it, so I’ve been practicing on my own, too.”

Albie looked up. Her eyes widened and her smile started to.

I began to shake my head.

“Ooh,” Lena said. “You and Cam should play!”

Internally, I counted the MP I’d spent today. Three for test objects, four for the ones I’d done on video, another for the Glass I’d have to manifest for our next take. Forget using Iron to scoop up the Glass I’d dropped; if I spent just one MP playing with Albie, I’d only have one left for the Plastic we needed to wrap up the video.

One retake, one dropped object, and we couldn’t finish until tomorrow. Every day counted. I’d sold the wiki team on the video idea and managed to sell myself, too.

If there was a chance Third Eye Productions would get sued into shutting down, and if there was a chance I could make that less likely to happen, that helped every player. Albie apparently included. And yeah, I liked the idea, not just of helping, but of being the one to help.

It made no sense to spend one of my last two MP playing a game with this little girl.

“Can we really?” Albie asked. She looked up at me and then – smart cookie – to Lena.

“‘Course you can,” Lena said. “Right, Cameron?”

I turned from the huge smile that erupted on Albie’s face to the odd little one on Lena’s.

What the hell.

When we resumed the video shoot, I’d just have to avoid any mistakes.

I gave another thumbs up and a grin I hoped didn’t look fake. “I’d be honored to play with you, Albie.”

I’d agreed under duress, but when she leaped into the air, clapping and running around, it wasn’t hard to keep grinning. Marroll bounded after her, overtook her, and circled her as she bounced around on the grass.

Lena touched my arm. “You’re one of the good ones.”

“And you,” I said, “are a total softie.”

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She jerked her hand away and crossed her arms. But she kept smiling.

When Albie calmed down, or at least tired her legs out, she skidded to a halt and told Marroll to sit. She straightened out her stance and touched her glasses. “You ready?” she called.

“Whenever you are,” I said. I flicked to Third Eye and waited to see how she wanted to play.

She gestured with both hands.

I whispered to Lena, “Where’s her phone?”

“Oh dang,” Lena said. “She’s got a full AR overlay.”

Her glasses, I realized, were fancier than Lena’s or even Matt’s. Both of them connected their glasses to their phones. They could see Third Eye effects through the glasses, but needed their phone screens to interact with the app itself. Albie’s glasses were her phone, with her whole screen projected on their lenses.

As soon as I looked at Albie through my phone camera, I recognized the advantage this gave her. She could tap a Material and Reactant on her overlay, then instantly manipulate it with both hands. She did it now with Wood. With just a few small gestures, she compacted a board into a cube, then a ball.

From what I’d seen, this had to be Earth plus Wood, and she’d had a lot more practice with the combination than ShakeProtocol.

“I can’t make a ball like that,” I admitted.

“It’s okay,” Albie said. “We can play with mine.”

She made another series of passes. The ball tumbled out of the air, only for a gust of wind and a sheet of Plastic to scoop it up.

I called, “Do you want me to manifest some Plastic as well, Albie?”

She bobbed her head. “Uh-huh!”

“Here goes.” I summoned another sheet – one MP remaining – and cupped my hand to shape it.

“Ready!” Albie shouted, and whipped her arm forward.

I was not.

The ball whistled toward me and I flung the Plastic up just in time to deflect it. It rolled to the ground.

Lena applauded. “Point to Albie!”

“Somehow,” I said, “I don’t think you’re on my side.”

She snorted. “Not a chance.”

“Can I at least hope you’ll be a fair and impartial referee?”

“Nope!” Lena strolled over to the bench with her bobbleheads, righted the fallen one, and sat down. “Go Albie! Kick his as... uh, butt.”

I scooped the ball up with my Plastic. “You ready, kiddo?”

“Mmhm!” Albie bounced on the balls of her feet.

Careful of my gestures – if Third Eye decided I’d stopped selecting my Plastic, it meant the end of playtime –, I wound up for my best impression of a baseball pitch. The wind tore at the grass around me, billowed my nonexistent cape and tunic.

Lena tensed.

Albie’s eyes shone.

I threw.

Not the fastball I’d wound up for – Lena exhaled when she realized, while Albie’s smile wavered – but a high, slow lob that took a long time to land with a soft whump in Albie’s outstretched Plastic.

She flicked it upwards, caught it on the return, and snapped it right at me.

This time, I expected the throw and managed to scoop it up. I still couldn’t handle a clean twist into a return throw like she had, but after a second to adjust my stance, I sent it arcing back to her.

Again, she caught it with only a twitch of her fingers. I watched her fight and lose the battle with her frown.

She tossed the ball, and while it was midair, way midair, high enough I couldn’t track it with my phone, she said, “See how I do it?”

I watched her gesture and nodded. “I might have a few tricks I haven’t shown yet.”

She pumped her fists and that balled up her Plastic, yet she still got it unfurled in time to catch the ball and sling it at me from an angle far to her right.

I pivoted to make the catch and return it. Albie caught that just as easily as she had my lobs. She tossed it up, caught it high overhead, and shot it down at me.

I blocked it and bounced it back to her.

Marroll had followed our motions with his eyes, and now started bounding between us the way dogs do when you pretend to throw a ball for them.

Albie laughed as she caught and returned my toss. Even distracted, she fired off a fastball I had to fling my hand out to catch. To the dog, she said, “I’ll play with you later, silly.”

Marroll skidded near me and wagged his tail.

I mimed a lob with the hand that held my phone.

Albie and her dog both looked at me like I was an idiot.

I shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

I whipped the ball back to her and Marroll raced after the angle of my throw. If I’d thought the distraction would make the ball harder for Albie to catch, I learned otherwise. She did look surprised for an instant, but pivoted her fingers and sent ball and Plastic both circling around her. It was the move I’d tried to do with Wood for the video, but seeing how she pulled it off, I realized I’d have needed both hands free.

Still in one smooth motion, she released the ball and sent it and Marroll back my way.

I caught the ball high over my head, but Marroll jumped at where a real ball would have sailed.

You know. Over my head.

Over a hundred pounds of dog, times momentum, landed paw-first on my chest and put me on my ass. Somehow, I managed not to lose either my phone or my Plastic, even when a gargantuan pink tongue licked my face. “Whoa, down boy!”

Marroll licked me again, then put his paws on my shoulders, sniffing for the invisible ball I was flinging back and forth.

“Down,” Albie called.

Marroll backed off instantly and scrunched on all fours, looking guilty as only a dog can.

Lena appeared beside me. She petted Marroll – treachery! – but reached down to me. “You okay, Cam?”

“Just lost my footing.” I shook my head at her outstretched hand. I struggled to my feet, balancing my hands to hold both phone and Plastic.

Albie joined us. She stroked her dog, letting him know he wasn’t in trouble. “I’m sorry! Marroll sees me playing and gets real excited.”

“It’s all good,” I said. “Do you want to keep going?”

“Yeah!”

“Me too.” I considered the phone in my hand. Something occurred to me that I knew was probably really stupid. Once the idea got in my head, though, I couldn’t evict it.

It started with a simple question. How had ShakeProtocol and LikeItsNinetyNine manipulated their Third Eye objects when they had to leave their cameras to film their scenes?

“Lena,” I said.

“That’s my name.”

“Mind taking my phone for a minute?” I held it out.

She gripped it with her fingertips on the edges, like I’d handed her a live bomb. “What the heck are you going to do with no phone?”

Most likely? Make a fool of myself.

I cupped both my hands the way I’d seen Albie do.

The little girl looked me up and down again. She nodded once, just slightly. “Marroll,” she said.

Her dog gazed up at her.

She said, “Stay.”

He woofed.

Lena sat beside him on the grass. She set my phone down with its case unfolded so the camera pointed at me, trained hers on the space where I knew the ball and my Plastic had to be, and scratched Marroll with her other hand.

Albie and I backed away, ten strides for me, more for her, enough to give us room to throw.

I gave her a nod. She returned it.

I said, “Game on.”