Chapter 67: Disruption

I could tell Benji wanted to drop a bombshell on us.

It half worked. Lena stared at him. I shook my head, though.

“I did wonder if that was what Omar was up to,” I said, “but the timing doesn’t work out.”

“You sure about that, bro?”

I had been, until I saw the look on Benji’s face. “I thought it must all tie together. Omar closed down his weird VR amusement park in the middle of tourist season, but he kept all his staff. Couple months later, and he seems to have far more Third Eye resources than anyone else, and he’s offering the vacant park up for this tournament. Crazy suspicious, right?”

Benji nodded.

“Except,” I said, “he closed the park in December. Before the beta started.”

“When did you find out you’d gotten ripped off, Ben?” Lena asked. Either somewhere in the haze of the last night and day, I’d remembered to tell her he wanted to be called that, or she’d picked up on the change in how I addressed him.

He scowled at her phrasing anyway. “I started sweating in December, yeah. Didn’t know for sure until later.”

Lena cocked her head. “How exactly did you find out?”

He ran his hand along the Sonata’s armrest and opened the door. “Let’s walk while we talk. You’ve got scouting to do, right?”

We both knew he was putting off the answer.

He wasn’t wrong, though.

We got out, I loaded Bernie into his sling on Lena’s back, and we looked up. The rest area where Benji had pulled off extended a dozen feet from the road. The only indication it was more than a wide shoulder was a sign, dry and worn, near a trail of compacted dirt that led steeply up into the foothills.

Lena pointed her phone at it, then looked over the top. “Oh, that’s a real sign?”

Benji nodded. “Mt. Glennon. It’s not much of a park, so I figured maybe nobody else would scout here.”

“You figured right,” I said.

Lena and I both focused our phones on a rock formation that only existed in Third Eye. It blended in better with the surroundings than the weird mounds we’d seen south of Denver. As long as we switched between our phones and the naked eye, though, we shouldn’t have too much trouble scouting. Our phones flashed as I collected it. Three Stone, one Wood. I supposed the latter accounted for the moss.

“Can you turn that flash off?” Benji asked.

“I wish,” Lena said. “I’m not saying it’s the worst thing about Third Eye, because those’re the parts where we’re scared for our lives. This comes right after, though.”

“So weird.” Benji shook his head. He made for the path and grunted as he started up.

Compared to the Rueter-Hess Incline, this seemed like much rougher going. Wilder. No signs telling us where we couldn’t or shouldn’t go.

Which left us free to roam. As we began our ascent, we soon saw the value in that. Even more than the day before, Materials and XP started to flow in. The reason we were out here, or distractions? They could be both.

After twenty minutes of hard, uphill hiking, in which Benji stuck to the patchy approximation of a trail and Lena and I rushed around grabbing Materials, Benji sank onto a seat-high rock and held up his hand.

We joined him, but didn’t bother to sit.

He sucked down a breath. “You really don’t get tired, huh?”

“I know, it’s crazy,” I said.

“I go to the gym every couple of months,” he said, “go hiking every summer, and this is what I get. I should’ve spent all my time playing video games after all.”

Lena grinned. “Of course!”

Benji chuckled, briefly.

A rare cloud passed over us. It seemed to match the change in Benji’s mood. “Okay, so. First some background.”

We blinked at him.

“I found out about Odyssey Futures from listening to Omar’s podcast.” He watched our faces for the hint of an eye roll and wasn’t disappointed. He scowled. “Say what you want, but I got a lot out of it. The dude’s an expert at selling himself, obviously, but that wasn’t the focus of the pod. Good vibes. Energetic, optimistic. Not afraid to get weird. Honestly, even you two might’ve enjoyed it.”

I kept my opinion to myself.

Lena nodded, though. “I can believe it. When Omar hit me up on Discord, I was actually kind of looking forward to playing with him. Until you told us about the scam, I mean.”

“That’s how he gets you.” Benji sighed. “Change. That was his whole thing, the thing he was interested in.”

“Disruption,” I said.

Benji shook his head. “I listen – listened – to enough podcasts and TED talks to know all about disruption. It amounts to the same shit, but Omar always insisted it didn’t. His favorite saying was, you get enough oars and you can row in whatever direction you want, but it’s smarter to use a sail and let the wind work for you.”

“The ship in his logo has oars,” I said.

“I know it was all bullshit now, Cameron,” Benji snapped. “You want me to explain, or you want to spend two days mainlining old podcasts so you understand the vibe?”

“Both,” Lena said.

My eyes snapped to her. “You’re going to listen to Omar’s podcast?”

“Sure,” she said. “You should, too. Know thy enemy, yeah?”

“The two of you shouldn’t have anything to do with him,” Benji said.

“That’s not on the table,” Lena said.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Benji pinched his nose. “You’re seriously still planning on going to this tournament?”

“We got a lot riding on it, Ben,” I said. “I told you before, the Third Eye community is paying a ton of attention to it. Lena’s got to be there, whether she competes or not, to keep growing her channel.”

His head bobbed in something that could have been a nod, or just him breathing hard.

I hesitated. Which was stupid. I forced myself to keep talking. “It’s also where we’re going to spill the beans about Third Eye being real magic.”

Benji closed his eyes. “I don’t know whether I think it’s crazier that you haven’t told anybody yet, or that you’re planning to.”

I forced a smile. “It can be both.”

One of his eyes cracked open. He saw my expression and tried to grin. “I guess that would be the place. You’ll have as many eyes on you as you’re going to get. Assuming Omar lets you get away with it.”

“Why would he stop us?” I said. “From what you’re telling us, we’d be doing exactly what he wants. We’ll cause a disruption, then he can ride the wave.”

“And don’t I just hate that.” Benji slapped his thighs and dragged himself to his feet. “Let’s keep moving.”

We continued up the mountain. Twice, the trail seemed to peter out, blocked by a boulder. The first time, I collected it as Stone. The second time, I was astonished to discover it existed IRL. We had to pick our way around.

The route made no sense to me for a public park, but it did take us close to a copse of trees that didn’t really exist. Forty three Wood! Absurd. I rejoined Benji on the trail. “So you listened to Omar’s podcast. Then what?”

“Sandy and I were looking for ways to jumpstart our investments,” Benji said. “We were hoping...”

I could practically hear him grinding his teeth.

My voice softened. “Hoping what, Ben?”

“The money wasn’t supposed to just be Mason’s college fund,” he said. “At this rate, I don’t know if that’s even going to come up.”

For reasons I didn’t understand, he looked to Lena.

She’d started smiling when he brought up his son. Until we got Bernie, I’d never seen her more content than the times we’d visited my nephew; Lena seemed like she’d have been happy to push Duplo blocks around with Mason for hours.

Under Benji’s gaze, she looked down at herself and brushed at her stockinged knees. “Did I get dirt on me?”

Instead of answering, he said, “Cam told me you did a weird path through school?”

“The weirdest,” she said. “Montessori when I was little. Half a crappy year of public high school, then my parents pulled me out and homeschooled me the rest of the way.”

“And that worked out for you?” Benji asked.

Lena spread her arms and did a little twirl.

Benji sighed.

She hooked her finger through a ringlet of her hair. “I’m happy where I ended up, at least. You’re thinking about something like that for Mason? If I can help, let me know, okay?”

“We were,” Benji said. “He’s... struggling. It’s hard for Sandy and I to understand, ‘cause at home he’s always such a bright and curious kid. But we get him in a classroom and he just... can’t. Can’t concentrate, can’t remember anything, gets frustrated, gets disruptive.”

Techbros can’t get enough of disruption. Teachers, not so much.

“Shit,” I said. “I had no idea.”

“We didn’t exactly blast the news on our socials, Cam. You think Mom and Dad would be happy to hear it?”

“Of course not.” I thought about their disappointment with me, first at my choosing an unconventional route, then at my, from their perspective – and let’s face it, from mine – screwing it up.

But that was me, the fuckup. I got some passive aggression from Mom and not much of anything from Dad, but they could only be so disappointed when they hadn’t expected much to begin with.

Benji was the golden child. Mason, the adorable heir apparent.

My parents weren’t monsters. They wouldn’t blame a little kid for not excelling at school. But they were, quite frankly, kinda assholes. They would totally blame his dad.

“What was your plan?” I asked.

Benji stared off into the thin blue air. It refused to give him another cloud to match his mood. He muttered, “If we could get ahead on our finances, not just investing for the future, but short-term gains, too, we’d have options. We could look into expensive private schools. If the money really came in, Sandy was even talking about quitting and trying the homeschool thing.”

“And you sold her on Odyssey Futures as a way to make that happen,” I said.

“Sold hard,” he said. “It started off so goddamn well. Number goes up! This summer, we paid for a whole vacation off pure gains. That’s when I started roping the rest of the family in.”

“And it kept going well?” I asked.

He nodded. “Right up to December. Based on where the markets were at, I could’ve pulled out an entire year of Sandy’s salary and we’d have still had plenty ticking up. That was gonna be her Christmas present.”

He fell silent.

Lena collected a Third Eye sign, almost without looking at it. Two Iron. Over her shoulder, she asked, “And instead?”

“I tried to sell some of my coin,” Benji said. “Got a message saying, ‘Due to temporary market volatility, we’ve put a stay on short-term sales for the protection of our customers.’”

“If it was temporary,” Lena said, “couldn’t you have just waited it out?”

“‘If,’” Benji repeated. “When it didn’t change, I put in an emergency sell order with customer service. You know what I got?”

We didn’t.

“An error message,” he spat. “Which I’ve gotten ever since. Me and everyone else who’s tried to cash out.”

“Even if it was a temporary measure, it would still be bullshit,” I said. “A volatile market is exactly when people might want to sell, either so they could get into something safer or so they could buy back in at a lower price.”

Benji raised an eyebrow.

I flushed. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t think you were interested in finance.”

“I’m not interested in finance, but I’m as interested in money as only a person who doesn’t have much can be. Lena and I do a really small-scale version of market trading with the stuff we buy and sell on eBay.”

“Cool.” He picked his way around another boulder.

We followed. The other side offered more, harsher slopes, and more, richer deposits of Materials. Nothing that looked like a Reactant yet, but maybe when we got near the peak, we could get more Air?

For now, we swept our phones over all the Third Eye objects, racking up XP.

“If all this happened in December,” I asked, “how come you think it’s connected to Third Eye?”

“First, because of Omar’s podcast. Late last year, starting, like, September, he got really hyped about something he wouldn’t share the details of. He kept telling everybody to ‘keep their powder dry,’ because the next change that was coming was going to be bigger than anybody could imagine.”

“I looked at the Kickstarter,” I said. “There was nothing about Early Access for somebody who backed at the First Circle level.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Benji shook his head. “I looked it up, too.”

“What was the second thing?” Lena asked. “You said the first was the podcast.”

“The Kickstarter,” he said.

We stared.

He smirked. “All you checked was backer rewards, yeah?”

I nodded.

“I looked up the backers themselves,” he said. “Only four people went in at that top level. Three of them had their usernames listed in the special thanks. And those three? They all started acting screwy last September.”

I wanted to zip to the site and check what Benji was saying. I also wanted to kick myself for not thinking to do so before.

“Screwy how?” Lena asked.

“I’ve told you about Omar,” Benji said. “The second one was an influencer. Streamer. Kinda funny, what with how you’ve done well for yourself, but instead of showing off Third Eye, he said he was going on vacation in September. Hasn’t streamed since, which you know is death in that business. The last one was a telecom engineer in Mexico. She quit her job and her Twitter feed was a bunch of responses to people insisting she’d found a great opportunity, but her LinkedIn hasn’t updated with anything.”

Not definitive proof, but it would be a damned weird coincidence. I said, “Nice detective work.”

For some reason, that put a scowl on Benji’s face. “I literally just did a search on their usernames, Cameron.”

I scratched the back of my neck.

Lena nudged her way between us. “There’s just one thing I don’t get.”

Benji shifted.

“You found out about your investments being frozen in December, right?” Lena pressed on before he even had time to nod. “And that’s what you and Sandy had a fight about? So how come you didn’t come stay with us until February?”

Benji turned away. He put his hands on a boulder to prop himself up and tapped his forehead against it. “That’s where the loan came in.”