Chapter 97: Hot Ticket

“Sorry, little guy,” I told the screen. “You’re stuck with me again this evening.”

My computer bleeped with a series of notifications. Although I’d heard him trigger .wav files before, these text popups seemed to be Ryu’s favorite way of communicating when he occupied a desktop. By the time I clicked on them to check their details, all but one had vanished. The last read, “Warning: User Conflict.”

“I know it’s not my turn,” I said, “but your mom needs her beauty sleep.”

“Mmhm,” Lena murmured from the bed.

As I’d expected, spending most of the afternoon talking to people outside her established friend group, all while bouncing around as The Magnificent Ashbird, had left her utterly spent. She’d kept up her smiling, energetic front to raise Britt and Jim’s spirits after they lost two-on-one against Michelle, and to keep them and Zealia entertained while we scouted the nearer part of Palo Duro.

What had surprised me was that, while Lena dropped part of her act after we separated from our fans, she’d kept on smiling and chattering to the rest of the team right up to the moment I locked the door of our hotel room behind us.

Then she’d staggered to the bed and flopped atop it, face down.

I glanced back at her.

She still wore her muddy boots and her dusty jeans and long-sleeved tee from the day’s expedition. At some point, either she’d found the energy to roll over or Bernie had nudged her onto her back. His plushie form rested against her side.

I smiled at them, but I turned back to the computer.

I uploaded the information about our most recent find, a rack of postcards and brochures that Third Eye had displayed in the hotel lobby. We hadn’t grabbed it because the desk clerk kept talking to us and I didn’t see any way to hide the flash from her. It would probably amount to just one Wood (for the paper) and one or two Iron (for the rack), but I went ahead and recorded it. If another player stayed at the Best Western in Canyon, maybe they would get the chance to grab it. Maybe someone could extract ARG clues from the images on the brochures and postcards.

Then I swapped to Steam. “How’s this, Ryu? Your pick tonight.”

After a second, my copy of Civilization: Beyond Earth fired up.

I tried not to wince, although without a webcam hooked up, I didn’t know if Ryu could see my expression.

It wasn’t just that the game itself was kinda mid. I’d only left it installed because I’d insisted to myself that I should give it one more try after picking it up in a bundle. Still, this was the kind of game I’d play for fun, at least, if not my first choice example of the genre. A lot of the games Ryu modified were outside my usual interests and I only tackled them to get my Tickets.

No, my problem with playing Beyond Earth was how long a game could take. If Ryu expected me to finish a whole campaign before he coughed up any Tickets, I’d have to slog through it all night.

I wondered if it was his little revenge for taking Lena’s turn in the queue. Not that I blamed him for preferring her company, but there were limits.

Apparently, he agreed. I had barely finished zipping through faction customization and building up for a few turns when one of my scouts spotted a unit of wireframe gold figures, clearly not part of the intended structure of the game. Upon mousing over them, I found their name and stats to be a garbled mess.

I moved my scout unit adjacent. The gold unit moved away. A few turns, a second scout and some careful maneuvering later, and I was finally able to move my first scout into contact.

Both my scout and the wireframe unit vanished, briefly flushing the whole screen with the latter’s golden color palette. On my left, the printer coughed to life and loaded a sheet of letter-sized paper. It moved like it was printing something but the sheet appeared blank when it settled into the tray.

When I looked through my phone, I saw an image of six old-timey arcade prize Tickets printed on it.

“Thanks, Ryu,” I said.

I chose to interpret the notification that popped up in the lower right corner of my computer screen as a positive one.

I saved my campaign, curious what the game state would be after Ryu decamped to Lena’s phone, then stood, stretched, and shifted to the printer. I hesitated before I touched the paper. From prior experience, I knew that when I did, it would flash and the Tickets would disappear into my inventory, leaving a blank sheet.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I turned to the bed. “You could still take these if you want, Lena.”

She cracked one eye open. “You gonna carry the printer over to me?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Then pass.”

I chuckled. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to try something.”

I conjured Wood with Earth and spent a few minutes folding the resulting object into an inverted ‘u’ shape in the air. Satisfied, I closed the open end of the construct over the paper and tried to lift it from the printer.

The paper rustled, but didn’t rise.

Because I hadn’t grasped it tightly enough, or because my conjured object wasn’t aligned enough with the real world? At minimum, I hadn’t collected the Tickets by touching the paper with my Third Eye powers. That was the most important test. From here, I just had to refine my execution.

I reshaped the object until the end of it resembled a hole punch. I tried again. Through my phone camera, it looked like I’d pierced the paper with a wooden dowel. It even crinkled where the halves of wood met. I glanced around the camera. The paper looked creased, but not torn. I tried lifting again but wasn’t surprised when it didn’t work.

“Watcha doing?” Lena asked.

“I want to be able to manipulate objects without collecting them,” I said. “I’d love to read the insides of those pamphlets in the lobby, for example, or the yellow pages we found the other day. Plus, this would let us give stuff to each other.”

She smiled and dragged herself to the edge of the bed to watch. “Cool.”

“It will be once it works, anyway.” I used Earth to clamp the Wood shut over the paper one more time. This time, however, I swapped to Air before I tried to lift it. Not so much for precision movement, although if I could just get the paper wafting on the breeze I could control it like I had the napkins at Benji and Sandy’s house. More importantly, I had more Air than the one Earth I could bring to bear.

One Air would work no better than one Earth, despite how much overkill it would be to move paper around if it were fully a Third Eye construct. Two might work, but if it didn’t, it would mean reverting to Earth to reestablish my grip and each of those MP I spent was one I wouldn’t get back. Ultimately, I settled on three, the same as the amount of Fire Lena had used to turn on the LED bulb back at our apartment.

Carefully, I raised the sheet from its cradle and lifted it into the air.

Even when I looked at it without my camera, I saw the paper hovering in place. Since it wasn’t moving with an air current like the napkins had, it looked even more unnatural. Straight up poltergeist shit.

Lena scooted a little further off the bed and stared up at it. “Oooh! Spooky.”

Moving the paper meant not overdoing my hand gestures. Three Air could conjure enough of a gale to send every loose scrap of paper in the room flying, just not anywhere I wanted it. Also, enough to tear this piece out of the grasp of my conjured object.

Instead of using the properties of Air, I backed around the room, holding the paper steady. I was almost to the door when it lined up over Lena’s chest. Her eyes followed it.

“Ready?” I asked.

She raised a limp hand and made a crab-claw motion. “Sure.”

“Catch,” I said.

I swapped back to Earth. The paper stayed suspended in midair. Had the object’s alignment with the real world been “set” by the single largest stack of Reactants used on it? If so, we’d have to workshop ways to use that with Erin in the morning.

This evening, I adjusted my fingers until the object lost its grip on the paper.

It fluttered down. Lena made a halfhearted swipe for it, but when it blew out of her reach, she just craned her neck to watch it fall to the carpeted floor.

“Shit.” I pushed my bangs back. “Sorry, I’m still working this out.”

“It’s fine, Cam.” She smiled up at me. “The show was awesome. Anyway, you basically played two minigames to get those Tickets. You should keep them.”

I ambled back to the bedside. I shunted my object aside and looked down at Lena and the paper. “Even though it’s your turn?”

Her head bobbed. “I passed, remember?”

I deselected my object and it fell against the side of the bed. Instead of picking up the paper with the Tickets, though, I sat down beside Lena.

She tilted my way. “Sup?”

I touched her cheek. “Are you okay?”

She swallowed. “It was... a lot, today.”

“Too much?”

“Nah. I’ll have to stay switched on like that at the tournament, you know? Gotta get more practice.”

“Plus,” I said, “you made some fans for life.”

“Totally worth.” Her eyes half-closed. “They were great, huh?”

I thought the way Britt and Jim acted toward us seemed pretty silly, but I was glad we’d been able to put smiles on their faces. No doubt Lena and I would act just as dorky if we got to meet someone who counted as a celeb in our books.

“Especially Zealia,” Lena said.

I kissed her forehead. “Somehow, I figured you’d say that.”

My fingers brushed the paper on the floor, but for once I hardly saw the flash. My whole world was Lena’s little smile and the way her curls dangled every which way as she lay on the edge of the bed.

I laid down beside her and pulled her to the middle so she wouldn’t fall off. She snuggled into the crook of my arms. I pressed my smile to the back of her head.

Totally worth, indeed.

From the sound of her slow, steady breathing, I thought she’d already dozed off. The rhythm would lull me down with her soon enough, even with the lights on. Who cared if we fell asleep in our dusty clothes? Maybe the hotel staff.

I imagined them bitching about us like we were rock stars who’d trashed the room.

Then, and if this didn’t prove my brain was as exhausted as Lena’s, I imagined them gossiping about how they’d played host to rock stars.

My eyes closed.

I’d almost joined Lena in sleep when I realized she wasn’t there at all.

“Cam,” she whispered, “do you think I’d be a good mom?”