Chapter 82: Storefront

I’d chosen a little shop, like the one Donica and I pushed through to the warehouse on our first trip.

Not exactly alike. This one had a peculiar arrangement, the shelves forming concentric semicircles around a central display table. I didn’t think it was any kind of mystical, Third Eye shit, just a weird shop layout. But who knows? Maybe if I knew how to read the runes, I’d find the whole place represented some kind of seal holding back ancient evils.

Not that ancient. A decade ago, it had been part of Kmart, where the only evils were poorly stocked shelves and, occasionally, my brother Benji.

I looked it over without Third Eye, then raised my phone and checked it again.

The shelves had the same design we’d seen before, metal frames with wooden slats. Through Third Eye, the ends of each shelf had another wood piece, a rounded triangle with decorations carved into it, and the slats were stained a rich dark red brown. IRL, it was all plain boards and metal.

I turned to Donica, who’d crowded up behind Lena and I, seemingly as much to get further from the elevator as to explore. “Did the shelves have boards on them last time?”

She frowned. “I... don’t think so?”

“Do you have any pictures?” Zhizhi asked.

“Only with Third Eye open,” she said. “Cameron?”

I shook my head. “At the time, I just wanted to record any Materials we found so we could try to figure out if they represented an ARG clue.”

“Plus,” Donica said, “we never actually visited this store. These could have always been more finished than the ones in front.”

“Why are they here at all?” Zhizhi asked.

Shrugs all around.

“So weird,” she said.

“It’s also possible,” Erin said, “that these shelves are closer to their Third Eye selves.”

Which was the thought that had made me ask in the first place. I scratched the back of my neck. At the last minute, I remembered to press my headset’s earpiece. Consistency for the video, you know? “Assuming that’s even possible, Erin, why would they shift toward the game state?”

“I did a test with Wood and Fire this morning,” Erin said, which didn’t really sound like an answer. I waited for her to bring it around. “I was able to move my thermometer a full twelve degrees.”

“Same here,” Lena said. “You sure it didn’t work that way the first day?”

“Absolutely.” Erin made a sort of “hrm” noise. “I wish I’d known to test this daily. We’d have so much more data. Do you have only the one Reactant still, Lena?”

“Just Fire, yeah.”

“And only one unit?”

“Oh, no, I got three. ‘Cause my source was bigger, maybe? You got yours from a candle, right?”

“It was more like a torch,” Erin said.

Which made me wonder what her Realm had looked like. She’d never described it, and as personal as Lena’s had been, I didn’t think I had any right to ask.

“My source was a fire that covered most of the floor of an apartment building.” Lena cocked her head. “I don’t know how it scales, but I guess it means I got more of it. Why?”

“Because that leaves us with two equally valid hypotheses.” Erin sighed. “One is that Third Eye phenomena are growing more real globally. Or at least, as we shouldn’t be presumptuous, in the Denver area. That would go along with the idea that the physical versions of these shelves and other details you find at the site are more similar to their Third Eye versions.”

“Or?” I asked.

“Or, how real your effects are scales with how many total units of Reactants you have,” Erin said. “I have three different ones, but only one of each.”

Which meant I had the same total as both of them, one Air and two Water. Before I squandered my Water at Lena’s old apartment, I’d had five total. What could I have done with that if I’d realized?

“Since Cam doesn’t have any Fire, we can’t do a one to one comparison.” Lena shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t change anything about this trip. We’ll just have to keep testing every day.”

“You’d better make sure to grab plenty of kindling,” Erin said.

“Working on it!” Lena rubbed her hands and surveyed the little shop.

I swept my phone over it as well. No spinner racks to grab, but the central table did display a series of odd, abstract wooden sculptures that weren’t represented at all outside of Third Eye. When I checked my XP, I saw I was getting ten for each one I focused on.

“Looks like this is our best bet here.” I approached the sculptures. “Hey, before we start grabbing these, can you get XP for looking at them, Erin?”

“Over the phone?”

“Why not?” I asked. “It’s how we look at everything else.”

She hummed through my earpiece. “Oh!”

Stolen story; please report.

“Sweet,” Lena said. “You think it works on recorded images, too?”

“I know it doesn’t,” I said. “I’ve browsed a lot of the pics of objects people put up on the wiki and I never got any XP for it.”

“Why did you think I might get something for this?” Erin asked.

“Because I finally figured out how we got our first XP totals, way back in the beginning,” I said. “Actually, I got the clue when I realized we could get an Achievement for something we did on the PC, not just through our phones.”

By now, everyone on the wiki team, at least, had secured their thousand XP for visiting the site we’d discovered with Miguel.

“Every time we see a new avatar, we get one XP for it,” I said. “That even works through photos, and I assume videos, too. Static images of Materials don’t, but I wonder if that’s just because we have to focus on them in ways that we’re not really understanding consciously.” Yet?

“We’ll have to add this to the wiki,” Erin said. “I don’t think most people realize they can get XP for things they do without their phones yet.”

“That is most likely,” Miguel said, “because if they did realize, most of them wouldn’t be smiling like you are.”

Erin fell silent, except for an audible gulp.

“Another creepy thing,” I said, “but it’s not news to you, Miguel. Weird how you still reinstalled the app, even though it was basically useless to you.”

“If you think it’s useless, you’ve forgotten what your avatars look like.” Well, he had a point. He might only be able to see Third Eye phenomena, not interact with them – at least, not interact by his choice – but seeing them was what had excited most of us to begin with.

“So. These wooden objects,” Zhizhi said. She paced around the display table. “Hook a poor little non-player up with what they look like?”

“Check ‘em out.” Lena took out her phone and extended it to Zhizhi. “I’ve got my glasses paired and we need to stick close together, anyway. You want to hold onto this?”

“Yeah, no. Not until we know if staying one step removed from the game offers me some kind of non-player protection.” Instead of taking the phone, Zhizhi leaned down and peered through it. “Weird toys, or sculptures, or whatever they are.”

She wasn’t wrong.

I couldn’t even tell what they were supposed to be. There were different shapes, but the majority had a prism-like structure, if the prism were melting or twisted. Abstract depictions of whales or dolphins, maybe? Something in their lines gave me a cetacean vibe. They were way more geometric than animalistic, though.

We checked them all out, but none seem to have any markings on them. Not that we would likely have been able to read any we found, but if we somehow translated the runic characters down the line, it would’ve become another data point.

“You don’t want us to save any of this for you, do you, Erin?” Donica asked.

“You’re the ones taking the risk of going in, so you should get the reward,” Erin said. “Just getting some XP is an unexpected bonus.”

Donica nodded. “Everyone ready to avert your eyes?”

“Why?” Zhizhi asked.

“There’s a weird flash when you pick up a Material,” Lena said. “Speaking of which...” she pulled her smart glasses down. I hadn’t thought about how miserable it would be to keep getting those flashes directly in your eyes.

We divvied up the pile of sculptures. Each one gave a single unit of Wood; we ended up with three each and let Donica take the extra.

We explored the rest of the shop. The other collectible objects were the cash register, once again – Iron and Wood, which I let Lena have – and a large poster on one wall.

“What do you make of this?” I called.

We gathered in front of it.

“Looks like a motivational poster,” Donica said.

Lena shuddered. “The only motivational posters I need are the ones with the cat hanging from the branch. Hang in there!”

“Maybe this is the equivalent for whoever puts these things in,” Donica said. “We know the devs have an inexplicable fondness for our memes. Why not their own?”

Lena grabbed my arm. “Can you imagine, Cam? Alien memes!”

“Or wizard memes!” I clutched her hand.

“Or both!” We grinned at each other. Mine faded first. “I’m not sold on this, though. Looks more like AI art to me.”

It depicted what was probably the surface of an ocean or lake, still except for three disturbances that sent ripples through the middle of it. Something about the lighting of the scene seemed wrong to me, vaguely uncanny in a way I associated with pictures cooked up by a mainframe.

Ultimately, it was just a bunch of blue and purple squiggles, more suggestive of a scene than a scene in actuality.

This one did have runic characters on it, and I understood why it seemed like a motivational poster to Donica, because they were set at the bottom of it caption-style.

“It would say, ‘Just keep swimming,’” Donica said.

Lena shook her head. “I think it’s more of a, ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’”

Donica groaned. “Let’s just collect it and move on.”

“See? You’re taking its advice and everything!”

Donica looked ready to gag.

I touched the poster. Unlike the last obviously Third Eye wall hanging we’d seen here, this one did turn into Materials. One Plastic.

After I grabbed the poster, Lena showed Zhizhi her photo of it. “What do you make of it?”

“I make of it something that doesn’t show up on film, like everything else interesting here.” She sighed and glanced at her camera. “So far, we haven’t actually seen anything worth lugging this around for.”

“It’s going to be great to have a record of what was happening IRL,” I said.

“Sure, great for your science experiments. I’m still hoping to get a story out of it.”

“Want to turn back?” I asked.

She arched an eyebrow. “Are you kidding? The minute I walk out of here, that’s when all the interesting stuff will start.”

“Then I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep you along the whole time,” Donica said. Uninterested in living in interesting times, her.

Not that I blamed her.

Which was great and all, but we seemed to have exhausted the shop’s resources, and if it held any clues, we didn’t seem able to interpret them.

I turned to the door behind the register. No handle, and a frame that let it swing both ways, the same as last time. Third Eye depicted it with a handle, but the same configuration.

Maybe Donica and I had imagined that the shelves seemed closer to their Third Eye versions?

“The elevator didn’t come down, did it?” I asked.

Lena poked her head into the lobby. “Nope.”

“What a shame,” Donica muttered.

“We could still go back,” I said. I saw her start to roll her eyes and doubled down. “I’m serious. We’ve learned some interesting things already, right? This place isn’t going anywhere.”

Donica completed her eye roll. “Not all of us can cancel our plans every night to go traipsing through abandoned buildings.”

My eye twitched. Lena’s, too. We’d postponed our Monday game night to be here.

“Also,” Erin said, “if it does turn out to be growing more real over time, it may actually be safer to explore right now.”

The corollary to which was that it might already not be safe.

I hesitated near the swinging door.

Lena didn’t. “You heard the lady. There may be literally no time like the present!”

She pushed into the warehouse and the door swung shut behind her.