Chapter 86: The Invader

“Good evening, Mr. Green,” Erin called.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw her waving.

“I wish it were under better circumstances, Erin.” Matt trudged through the slush toward us.

“I know you don’t approve,” she said. “I promise we’re trying to be careful, though.”

I looked back and forth between them, feeling, not for the first time, like I’d stumbled into a parallel universe.

This was the same Matt who had lured me into a trap and ambushed Lena, and those on our only solo scouting trips. Not only was he a PVPer, not only was he an invader, he seemed to be a crazy active one. Erin had once talked about defending her castle from “barbarians.” As far as I could tell, she was welcoming the chiefest and greatest among them in the whole metro area.

Should I say something? I had to, right? Yet I hated to, especially after all the crap Lena and I had said about a wiki admin needing to trust people.

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

Lena stomped past me and jabbed her finger into Matt’s chest. I should’ve known she wouldn’t hesitate. “You’re worried about being careful? Since when?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What part of our interaction didn’t seem carefully planned?”

“Oh,” Erin said, “you’ve met before?”

Her voice faltered halfway through the question.

“Yeah,” Lena said. “I tried solo scouting exactly one time and this prick turned up to farm me for XP.”

“Matt here is the guy who invaded me right before I met you the first time, Erin,” I said. Now that Lena had uncorked the topic, I saw no point in hiding it.

Matt, of course, just kept grinning his shit-eating grin.

Erin sighed. “I know you believe we’re supposed to be engaging in PVP, but really, Mr. Green? Invasions?”

“Absolutely invasions,” he said. “You know as well as I do that they are exactly what Third Eye is set up to encourage.”

“And you know,” Erin said, “I think they’re too dangerous.”

Matt eyed the construction site looming at our backs.

I heard the snow squelch beneath Erin’s boots as she shifted.

“So is that what you came here to do, Matt?” Donica said. “Lecture us?”

“It is my job, you know,” he said.

“Weird,” she said. “Here I thought your job was to grade papers so the actual professors don’t have to do any work.”

He laughed. “I see somebody hasn’t been out of school long enough to forget what teaching assistants actually do.”

“I don’t get it,” Lena said. “Erin, if you know Matt is an invader, why is he still on the wiki team? Why haven’t you banned him? What was all that castle shit?”

“Miss Marshall and I have a philosophical disagreement about games,” Matt said. “Not, I hope, an irreconcilable one.”

“I hope not, too.” Erin clasped her hands. “Mr. Green is my game design teacher. At DU, I mean. I was thrilled when I found out he was also a Third Eye backer. Of course, I learned it because until a few weeks ago, we were using its Kickstarter as an example of how feature creep could derail the crowdfunding process.”

“Which isn’t an inapt description of what we’re seeing,” he said. “Although the failure state looks a little different than I expected.”

“A ‘little,’ huh?” Zhizhi asked.

“Okay,” Lena said, “I get he’s your teacher. Is he going to flunk you out of his course if you kick him from your server?”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Matt said.

Lena glared at him, but she addressed Erin. “So how come he gets to hang around and spy on us while we talk about how to stop people from invading?”

Matt spread his hands. “Spying? You make me sound like an enemy.”

“Can’t imagine where I got that impression,” Lena said. “Oh, right. Maybe it was the part where you ambushed me and kicked my ass when I couldn’t fight back.”

Erin stepped past her, despite Donica’s hand on her arm. She frowned at Matt. “Even people who didn’t have Reactants, Mr. Green?”

“Especially those people, Erin,” he said. “I regard it as rescuing their XP from leaving the game’s ecosystem before they’re dropped from the beta.”

“I regard it as picking on helpless people,” she said.

“Is that your concern, now?” He swept his gaze over us. Then past us, back to the construction site. “I don’t doubt your idealism, Erin, I’ve heard ample evidence of it. But let’s not pretend that the reason you were concerned was entirely selfless. You care a great deal about this game and you don’t want it shut down.”

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Erin lowered her eyes. “I suppose... I don’t really believe it will be canceled. Not anymore.”

“That being the case,” he said, “what would you say your most important role is now, as a community leader in the player base?”

“I...” Erin studied her boots.

“Her ‘role,’” I said, “is to play the game she enjoys as much as she wants to.”

Matt raised an eyebrow.

Erin looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

In fact, I had a feeling everyone was looking at me, which wasn’t something I much cared for. I stepped forward anyway. “Anything past that – running the wiki, organizing the community, trying to teach people how to play safely? That’s stuff Erin chose to do because she’s a hard worker and a good person. Not an obligation.”

Matt inclined his head.

“What about you?” I asked. “I can tell you’ve picked up on stuff the rest of us don’t know. I’m not a hundred percent sure how you pulled off your attack on me that first day, and it seems obvious that you’ve got some way of tracking other players that you haven’t shared with us.”

“As you said. I’m just playing the game I enjoy.”

“Bullshit!” I pointed at his chest. “It’s pretty fucking obvious you’re as invested in your philosophy about the game as Erin is, considering you came down here just to push it on us.”

“Harsh,” he said.

“But fair?” I asked.

“Not quite.” He reached into his bomber jacket and pulled out a brass pocket watch. “To this point, I’ve just brought over a tool because one of my students asked if she could use it for one of her experiments.”

I rolled my eyes.

So did Lena. “Talking to you makes me glad I did all my classes online.”

He chuckled. “In a way, you’re right. I do have my beliefs about how the game is meant to be played. I happen to think that mine are backed by everything we’ve seen of its design.”

He waited for us to come back at him.

Lena shoved one hand into the pocket of her coat and reached back with the other to scratch Bernie, who had begun to growl as she got agitated.

“Daimon?” Matt asked.

Lena gave him the finger. “None of your business.”

I touched her elbow and guided her back. She let me, the clearest sign that, like me, she didn’t really have a comeback to his point about Third Eye’s game design.

Instead, she muttered, “If we’re not going to get kicked for invading, I’ve got a Reactant now. Maybe some turnabout –”

Erin pressed her hand to her chest. “Please don’t.”

Lena sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Cycle of violence and all that. Anyway, however much I might enjoy invasion PVP, I get why you think we shouldn’t do it. I don’t want to risk anything going wrong with the game, either.”

Bernie burbled and she tickled under his chin.

“Oh,” Matt said. “While I have you here, Ashbird and OldCampaigner, I did want to congratulate you on your latest video.”

We both glared at him. “Lena tells me you talked shit about the last one.”

“I think you were wrong in what you recommended the first time,” he said. “Not that your video was poor.”

“And now I guess you’ve got the chance to explain our deficiencies again?”

“Not at all. As far as it goes, I think you’re on the right track – you and Erin alike.”

I raised an eyebrow and waited for the other shoe to drop. My hand circled around Lena’s shoulder and tugged her closer. If he said something really obnoxious, I didn’t want her to pick a fight.

“I’m in favor of invasions myself,” he said, “and I believe all the evidence we’ve assembled to this point suggests that Third Eye is designed to support them – indeed, from the revelations you’ve made about the game’s real world effects, I’m coming to believe invasions may be even more central and important than I first guessed. With that said, I also believe that those who don’t want to challenge themselves that way should find a way to send a clear signal to those who do that they’ve opted out.”

Maybe I imagined the hint of condescension in how he described people who didn’t want to engage in Third Eye PVP.

Yeah. Maybe.

“Traveling in groups, you mean,” Erin said.

He nodded.

“Take this little gathering.” He swept a hand to encompass us. “Even with one non-player, one ex-player, and one who doesn’t have a Reactant, there’s no question that you could repel an invader. If I see you traveling like this, I’ll shrug my shoulders and move on.”

“A man’s got to know his limitations,” Lena murmured.

“Dirty Harry! You know your classics,” Matt said.

“My parents used to run a video store,” Lena said.

Even Matt winced. So did Miguel and Donica. I couldn’t see Zhizhi, and I thought Erin was probably too young to remember a time before streaming had killed that business model.

“My condolences,” Matt said.

Lena shrugged. For my part, I already knew what she was about to say. “That was half their business. The other was selling vinyl records.”

Matt’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Damn.”

“Yeah,” she said. “At this point I’m basically a princess.”

From what she’d told me, that side of their business had upped its profits tenfold in the last decade. It would’ve been even more impressive if the store hadn’t been just above breaking even beforehand.

“By the way,” Lena said, “Clint Eastwood doesn’t say that until Magnum Force. Not Dirty Harry. Maybe you should study up on your classics.”

Matt’s eyes narrowed and he sucked his cheeks in like he’d taken a bite out of a lemon. I thought he might counter, “But the character, I mean,” but, in the spirit of the quote, he knew his limitations.

In fact, we all did, Matt and Lena both stewing on what the other had said, Erin abashed, and the rest of us unsure of what we were even supposed to talk about.

“As fascinating as a discussion of the history of action movies might be,” Miguel said, stepping around us, “perhaps we could have it in a more appropriate venue?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “You don’t find it cozy out here?”

“Amazingly, no,” he said. “So. Matt, was it?”

Matt nodded. “From the plans I saw on Discord, I’m guessing you’re Miguel?”

“For my sins.” Miguel inclined his head.

“Pleasure to meet you. And you as well, Ms. Wong.”

“Don’t mind me.” Zhizhi waved from the back of the group. She’d picked up her camera and pointed it at Matt. “I’m just back here taking it all in.”

“If you think I’m bothered by the camera’s attention, I’m not,” Matt said. “Despite what you may believe, I haven’t approached any of this incautiously. When I invade someone, I’m doing so entirely within the confines of the game, and I’m doing so in circumstances that will be safe for everyone.”

“Which works right up until you turn out to be wrong about what’s safe,” Zhizhi said.

Matt’s face settled back into the smug grin that seemed to be its customary configuration. “Exactly.”

“You’re talking about our expedition,” Erin said.

He shrugged.

“We are being cautious,” I said. “We set up as many safety measures as we could, we’re staying in constant communication with each other, as well as Erin and Miguel, and as soon as things got too weird, we backed off to process it and try to figure out how serious it was.”

“All of which sounds great. As far as it goes.” Matt looked down at the pocket watch in his gloved hand. He tossed it and caught it midair. He held it out.

I reached for it.

At the last second, he closed his hand over it and snatched it back. “I’m not convinced it’s enough.”

I glared at him.

“Speaking not as a player, but as a teacher.” He shook his head. “I can’t let you go any further without knowing that I prepared you as much as I possibly can.”