Chapter 64: Error Checking

Was the Cinder Alley concourse shorter on the way out? It felt like it, but maybe that was because instead of dwelling on every shadow and echo, I had a million thoughts rampaging through my head.

Or maybe the space had compressed instead of expanding on the way out. The opposite of the construction site, just as so much about the mall had been.

At some point, we needed to find a way to test spatial distortion more precisely. Better still would be to figure out how to predict it. Best? To control it.

Then again, what aspect of Third Eye could I not say that about?

We’d decided to leave right after Lena added Ryu to our weird little family. We probably could have learned more, and maybe acquired more Tickets, by continuing to play. We would definitely learn more by seeing if the place still existed the next time we tried it. In the meantime, it was getting late enough to be a problem when half our party didn’t have HP to insulate them from exhaustion, and did have normal work schedules.

We left through the same maintenance area, then out into the runoff tunnel. Briefly, I wondered if we’d have to climb around the locked gate because the distortions were collapsing, but that didn’t seem to be the case. We walked right around it by following the path in Third Eye, the same as when we’d entered, the same as when I’d demonstrated how it worked.

And then? The outside world.

A blast of cold air hit my face and it made me miss a step. I didn’t find it unpleasant, just shocking. We’d been underground for – how long? An hour and a half, according to my offline clock app, a little under three hours according to my phone’s main clock. Not ages, but apparently enough to have grown accustomed to stagnant air the temperature of the surrounding soil.

“Something the matter?” Miguel asked.

I blinked up at the streetlights on Hampden overhead. “Nope. Just readjusting to the real world.”

“Ah,” he said.

I leaned against the railing and regarded him.

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you want me to ask if something is the matter again?”

“I think that’s our line,” Lena said. She looked down at her phone screen. A smile flickered across her face, which made me think she’d seen an emoji there. Whatever sentiment Ryu conveyed to her, her own happiness faded in an instant. She whispered, “Are you really okay?”

“I spent an evening at an arcade in good company,” Miguel said. “I solved some puzzles. I acquired many more data points for Joon Woo’s language project.”

Lena hung her head. “You know what I mean.”

Miguel reached out and lifted her chin. Her eyes widened.

“In all honesty,” he said, “I don’t.”

Lena blinked.

“Do you mean,” he asked, “I should be upset because I’m not the owner of a virtual pet to which I would feel emotionally obligated? Despite the fact that its existence in the real world seems to be in the form of a living glitch in the very electronics it is my work to secure?”

“Well... when you put it that way –”

“Or,” Miguel continued, “do you mean I should be upset because a video game that may have been made by wizards or aliens has failed to strike a psychological chord with me? That it has not instilled in me some new level of understanding about how my life, which I quite enjoy, actually begs for some drastic change?”

Lena’s freckles showed in the street lights. She pawed Miguel’s hand away from her face. “Okay, okay. I’ll believe you.”

Zhizhi came up behind him and touched his wrist. He let her guide his arm away from Lena.

Lena joined me by the railing.

Zhizhi arched an eyebrow. “You’ve got everything in life on lockdown, huh?”

Miguel regarded her. “I’m quite pleased with how things are.”

She laughed. She patted his arm and stepped away. “Works for me.”

Watching the two of them, I could believe it.

As we trudged up the ramp to the parking lot where Miguel’s Prius waited, I fell into step beside Lena. She tried to smile up at me and I beamed down at her, and that seemed, finally, to put her at ease. She hugged my arm. I felt the heat of her wing cradle my back. I pressed a kiss to the side of her head.

Ahead of us, Miguel and Zhizhi walked and talked. No PDAs, no reassuring touches, but an animated conversation. They were a good match. They didn’t seem to have many common interests, so I didn’t know if they’d last as friends. If they found one, or for as long as they had a project to bind them together, though? They’d get on forever.

How long would they date? Six months? Three?

In the years when Lena and I had been drifting apart, especially in the last year when it had seemed like we weren’t just breaking up, but had broken up, I’d always sort of expected Miguel to make a move on her. Never happened. He’d charmed, flirted a little, but only because that was a game he played with anyone who seemed comfortable with it.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I finally understood that it never would have happened. Even if Lena and I had broken all the way up, even if she’d thrown herself at Miguel on the rebound.

The reason Miguel stayed friends with his ex-girlfriends was because he only ever dated people who would be okay with being exes. Lena was like me; she hadn’t been okay with it even before it was true.

It made sense. I’d probably known it, intellectually. It had just never clicked for me because it was so different to how I’d ever approached a relationship.

Also, because you could probably add my and Lena’s emotional intelligence together and end up with less than Miguel’s.

As people went, he was a finished product. Maybe the most of anyone I knew. Good job, good friends, good times. Some of those friends became girlfriends, for a season or two; others were exes he’d drawn into his life. He could flit between an entire crowd of nieces and nephews, being a cool uncle.

He’d constructed his life with a degree of intentionality I was lucky to manage for the length of a 500-word clickbait article.

I’m not saying he couldn’t change or grow, just that he’d found a state of being he was comfortable with. He’d optimized himself for his habitat and his habitat for himself.

Which raised a fascinating question. (To me, at least.)

Why had Third Eye presented him with the same kind of blast from the past it had Lena?

We settled into the back seat of the Prius. I watched Miguel drive. His hand movements looked so languid I thought the car shouldn’t respond, but it curled gently into the roundabout and out toward Broadway. He reached the speed limit without a glance at the speedometer and, courtesy of a green light, cruised through the intersection without deviating a mile an hour off it. Smooth. Effortless. Because he put the effort in to know himself and his car to an exceptional degree.

Lena saw me watching and her lips curled down. I flashed her a smile to reassure her; she cocked her head, but shrugged, smiled back, and plopped Bernie on her lap so she could focus on petting him.

I think she thought I was going to beat myself up about the comparison in our driving performances. That wasn’t the point, though. I’d literally never driven his car before the first night we explored the tunnel, and hadn’t driven anything for years.

What interested me was not how badly I’d driven Miguel’s car, but the way in which he’d mastered doing so.

Third Eye had presented him with a Realm to challenge who he was, how he lived.

Increasingly, I thought the central question was, “Why?”

My first assumption had been that under the surface, he was as fucked up as any of us. Both Lena and I had approached the situation that way, had fretted when he refused to engage, had pushed him.

It’s not like we’d had no evidence! This evening might’ve been the most uncomfortable I’d ever seen him, and I included the night he’d gone over the railing and injured himself in the runoff tunnel.

“We’re here,” he said.

I blinked and shook my head. While I’d gotten lost in my head, he’d brought us to the parking lot of our apartment building. While I’d considered whether he might be a seething cauldron of unspoken traumas, he’d parked so softly I didn’t even realize we’d stopped moving.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “You want to come up and say hi to Ben?”

“Why not,” Miguel said. “Zhizhi?”

She shrugged. “More stairs? Well, I can’t complain. I haven’t been getting my reps in jogging.”

Our party ascended. Four people, two demons, and plenty to think about.

I thought about bringing my question up with the others, but I hesitated. Miguel had made it crystal clear how little he thought of Third Eye’s attempt to get in his head. Talking about it again would only annoy him. I wanted Lena’s and Zhizhi’s feedback, but I could get the former any time we had a few spare minutes, and the latter, any time I sent her a Discord.

Conversation could wait until I knew what I wanted to say.

So. Miguel’s Realm.

If I rejected the premise that he actually needed what it was offering, what did that leave me?

Third Eye had made a mistake.

Albie was a joy, Third Eye was actual magic. You want me to trust them over Miguel, where Miguel was concerned? Nope.

The game’s awful UI was one thing, not that it was something I really understood. Same with its business model. Same with its game design. Third Eye was deeply, broadly imperfect everywhere it intersected the real world.

When it came to the magic shit, though, I think all of us had tended to assume it would be perfect. The devs could do things we hadn’t believed were possible! They’d developed a technique or exploited a resource that had escaped human understanding for centuries. Surely they knew what they were doing.

Did that actually make sense, though?

If the devs had just discovered whatever power they wielded, they would be stumbling almost as much in the dark as the rest of us.

What if they were the first to share a secret?

Well, why were they sharing it? Albie had only talked about a brother, never parents. Whatever else she was, she seemed very much like a little kid.

What if we weren’t getting hints at wizardry from the grimoires of archmages, but the sum total of the knowledge of a couple of desperate apprentices? Not sufficiently advanced technology straight from the brains of alien scientists, but the equivalent of Physical Science from a pair of alien schoolkids?

Lena squeezed my hand.

When I looked at her, she said, “I think this is for you.”

“Huh?”

She showed me her cracked phone screen. It was dominated by an emoji with its tongue sticking out.

I breathed out a chuckle. “Is that from Ryu, or from you?”

“It can be both,” she said.

As much as I enjoyed the twinkle in her eyes, I’d have liked a straight answer for once. How attuned was Ryu to my (or Lena’s!) mood? How aware, from his dwelling place in Lena’s phone? Bernie seemed pretty empathetic, come to think of it.

Before I could ask, we reached our front door. I got my keys out and let us in.

Benji sprang to his feet. He was in pajamas, but he’d been sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop, his phone, and a pile of papers arranged around him. Late work?

He took a half-step back when the door opened, saw me, and glared. “Decided not to party all night, bro?”

Annoyance flickered through me. I fought it down. Mostly. “Somehow, I managed to restrain myself.”

“Cool.” Benji snapped his laptop shut and set it over his papers. “Hey, Lena. And Miguel. Right, you’re into this, too. And you’re –”

“Zhizhi,” said she.

“Right. From the park.” Benji shook her hand.

Between his pajamas and his unbrushed hair, he looked like he’d tried to go to bed but hadn’t managed to fall asleep.

“We got caught up in some Third Eye shit,” Lena said. “Good shit, this time, just fyi. I got a new Daimon!”

“Cool,” Benji repeated. He didn’t sound particularly enthused.

I thought about how haggard he looked, and about how badly I’d misread Miguel’s needs. Hell. How badly Third Eye seemed to have. I’d given Benji advice based on what the game had pushed Lena and I into.

Surely he wouldn’t have listened. Not to his little brother.

Right?

I swallowed. “Hey, Ben. Did you get a chance to talk to Sandy?”

“Just a call. We’ll hash things out this weekend.” He pinched his nose. “Actually, Cameron, I kinda expected to get a chance to talk to you.”