“Right, pleased to meet you.” Melinda obliged me with a handshake and I stole a good look at her.
She wore a black turtleneck with jeans, all old world wear. Her blond hair was bundled up in a ponytail and she had freckled cheeks with blue eyes to compliment them - those had the telltale glint of a functional brain behind them. Her button nose completed her innocent appearance, although she radiated an aura of being all business. Based the conclusion on the baggy eyes, the office being full of stuff, and that I’d been told so before.
She offered me a seat, which was just a log, and sat down on a real chair, behind her real desk, full of real documents with black writing visible on the wrappers, and a rune pen holding the pile down. Oh.
She gave me a once over. “Viktor told me he’d brought you up to speed, is that correct?”
It was - do crime, receive disproportional punishment. Didn’t like how things were run? Kristen took all complaints. Just had to listen to the government, pay my taxes, and vote for the party. Dissidence was treason, yada yada.
“I’ve got the gist of it.”
“Excellent. I’m going to need some basic information from you.” She handed me an empty wrapper and the pen. “Write down your full name, class primaries, and current level. Leave a row of empty space for revisions, which profession you chose on level five, address – I understood you’d be staying with Barry, so that would be South Seven – and the names of any family members and close friends please.” I returned the rune pen so she could get off my back and used my own instead. “Oh, if you don’t mind, could you drop that off here when you’re not using it? You can pick it up anytime, of course.” And I’ll fucking hate it whenever you do.
“Sure thing.” I filled out a side and handed it back to her. She took the liberty of reading through it.
“Same as Gerry, we can use that. Well, you’re off to a good start. Damn it.” That was near the end.
“Something wrong?” Besides your copycat style, way to be original.
“No, but because of your late arrival I hoped to see some familiar names.” So Mel read literally everyone’s sheet like it was her personal NSA database. Industrious, that evoked some approval from me. But not much.
“Speaking of, there’s some stuff that you should probably know about the North.” She listened patiently to all the tales of my survival adventure, significantly embellished of course.
“That’s... Well, the information is useful, although I don’t think there’s much we can act on here.” She put a little green metal pin on a makeshift chart.
“Mind if I take a look?” She waved me forward, all agreeable. Didn’t trust that at all. It was a distribution of levels among the village. Mine stood surprisingly far above average, for now. She provided some unasked-for commentary that there would be a spike as the other happy campers returned from their expeditions over the next day or so. Our group hadn’t fully updated either. Wild estimation indicated that I’d probably end up only slightly ahead of the curve. She interrupted my musings on objective superiority.
“I know you only just got here, but I have a task I’d like to assign. You would be compensated with exemption from the next wave of community service and a token salary.” Taxation, community service… As if it wasn’t enough to steal my wealth, she eyed my time too.
“Depends, what do you have in mind?” No, fuck off.
She explained, which shed some light on how they managed the crystal supply, and now the level curve. Our currency had a strong deflationary aspect, econ speak for one step short of unusable. But an obvious solution existed, sending a group of people into the Underway - the local name for the mazing tunnels – and intentionally setting off the swarm-mode. After that they only needed to keep up with slaughtering them. Some random folks were also added to the kill-team, taking potshots. The government regulated the shit out of it and voila. The recipe resulted in a cake of government income with population wide benefits, seasoned with some theft and nominal slavery. And thus a successful banana republic was born.
I didn’t want any part of this, had no objections against the mode of government, but volunteer work wasn’t my style.
“Uhm, I don’t think I’m a good fit for the kill-team.” Finally that frozen expression of hers showed some change, not to my benefit alas.
She leered at me like a predator considering a snack. Yep, corporate snake. “But you’re the same class as Jerry, and he excels at clearing out lesser Errant. Not everyone with the same class can do the same things but by and large the roles are similar.” I won’t take no for an answer, you mean.
“Well, I don’t know about him.” Screw that dude, no one was like me - I was unique, just like everybody else. “But I’m more of an anti-tank rifle I guess?” So try not to piss me off too much, eh? “Give me something tough and I’ll put a hole in it. What you’re describing would pretty much just get me killed.” I’d actually given some thought to what my role was supposed to be in a group setting, and reached the conclusion that hanging in the back, shooting, and then fucking off sounded ideal. Her face was a carousel of expressions.
Stolen story; please report.
“Show me.” I don’t believe you.
My sword appeared and floated while I made a gun pantomime accompanied by pew pew noises, then extended my hand along with a homemade whoosh sound effect. Unbeknownst to them, every five year old that had ever lived carried the secret on how to circumvent the censorship committee. She understood.
“That’s… very different.” Too stupid to make up. “Didn’t they mention a doubles theory…? Alright, never mind in that case. I’ll be expecting you to show up for community service on the thirtieth. That’s a few days from now. I’ll send someone for you if I need anything else. Any questions?” Didn’t want the carrot? Have a stick. It was time to get away from this serpent.
“I’m good, thanks. I’ll let myself out.” She didn’t even get up for a handshake, just a nod. What a shame, made me feel like runescribing… a lot.
Barry waited in the central area and he immediately set himself on an intercept course after I closed the door behind me..
“Sure took ya long enough. Everythin’ went well with Mel?”
“Tried to put me to work, but I got out of it. Your place next?”
“Good for ya, lets pick up our stuff from the warehouse first.”
With our crates in hand, we nearly headed off towards South Seven.
“Hold on a sec, I want to check things out for a bit.”
“Do what ya gotta do, we got time.”
I dropped my luggage at the base and climbed up the watchtower to have a proper gander at our surroundings. Had to push through my mounting anxiety while climbing the ladder, two stories might’ve been underselling it. The lord of the tower accosted me immediately. He was clad in street wear, with a hide parka and a leather cap on top. It was really windy up here. Dude definitely dressed like a guard albeit a bit silly. His shoulder length black hair escaped from under the hat and almost obscured his face by constantly flapping in front of it, but the sun scarred Hispanic origin shone through regardless.
“Hey, just having a look-see, new arrival and all. Name’s Gabriel.”
He nodded in the affirmative. “Carlos.” Chatty fellow, should make friends with the System.
Well, at least the surroundings weren’t bland. The village was quite a ways away from anything. At least there were no Errant in sight.
To the west we had the good ol’ river, thinner here. Couldn’t make out anything beyond tundra wasteland across it. A lake of astronomical size dominated the south. Eastward the waters edge gently rounded off towards the south, where the once-flowery tundra wasteland made way for a sandy stretch which continued on in the distance, made for prime beach front real-estate. The remainder of anything notable was towards the far, far north, where an ever-widening stretch of forest spread. Couldn’t actually see anything except for a small bit, but had been told about the rest. A stony peak popped up over the horizon. Mel had explained that it contained an extremely narrow path leading to a stairway down. The far distance showed only mountain ranges. Everything else was bland and I quickly lost interest.
A quick ‘I’m heading off again, have a nice day.’ and another nod later left me stuck hesitating. My heart rate spiked while the looming drop twisted and shifted. A sneaking suspicion crawled through my head, that I would have to get over my fear of heights sooner rather than later. Unguided exposure therapy was only effective at fortifying trauma, but even if a therapist popped up somewhere the waiting list would likely be even worse than it had been pre-Godstrike. Also, fuck therapy – I refused to pay good money only to get nothing in return. At least my buddy cheered me on.
“Do a flip!” Barry proved an expert at soliciting for middle fingers.
I jumped and the ground sped up towards me amidst rushing air. It was a goddamn harrowing experience. Nailed the landing at least, should’ve probably rolled though. The impact shook me to my core, but it only hurt a little. One of the benefits everyone now enjoyed was that tumbles and scrapes didn’t do anything but ruin your clothes. The jury was still out on how far that could be pushed, and it depended on physical endurance, but if you could survive it before then it likely wouldn’t hurt you… much. I felt calmer now that it was over.
We lugged our crates to the south part of town. Barry’s place didn’t look shoddy at all, a welcome relief. It had a larger center room with two smaller side rooms and boarded windows here and there, with a lockless lift-and-slide door. The inside had been sparsely furnished with a desk, some shelves, a chair, more sliding doors, a greenly barrel and an overwhelming smell of rotting fruit.
I gagged and pinched my nose. “What the fuck is that smell?” I said nasally.
Barry took a long, enthusiastic whiff. A contented smile appeared on his mug shot of a face. “That, my friend, is pruno. Lil’ project o’ mine, recipe courtesy of Vik. Should be ‘bout ready. Ya want a taster?”
“Holy shit no, distill it first. Anywhere but here.”
“An’ how ya expect me to do that? No can do my friend, this be the best we gettin’”
“Well shit, fine.” Beggars and choosers.
We stashed our stuff first in one of the smaller rooms, a dedicated storage area. The other was Barry’s bedroom. I could sleep in the main room. Despite the designation there wasn’t an actual bed. Treasury let me bum some hides to use as padding and cover. My winter jacket did better duty as a pillow - the cold didn’t really bother me anyway so comfort won out.
Barry fished out a paper cup worth of red liquid disgust only made appealing by its alcohol content. Even untrained pure mages and idlers barely fell ill, so we weren’t overly worried. He had a skill for brewing, the barrel was the tool. That said, some powdered crystal in the mix made the alcohol content shoot way up, a story told by the smell. We both popped some mcd’s into existence, and then we ate the whole burger although we only finished half the coke. Had to mix our drinks or relinquish any chance of keeping them down.
Barry raised his paper cup. “To a successful experiment.”
“Cheers.” My eyes watered and my mouth filled with saliva as I held my breath, it tasted like shit and piss. It only took about a minute for the feeling, a hard burn and a bad aftertaste, to pass.
Barry had seconds, making faces. “Ooh yeah, this here’s the good stuff,” he coughed, “gotta be 60 proof at least,” he said, wheezing.
“I’m more of a whiskey guy, but booze is booze. I’ll take what I can get.” Drinking the prison wine was an effort. I finished it up with the second swig while Barry started on thirds. Neither of us had gone easy on ourselves, probably part of why it was horrible - but it was better to bite the bullet.
Another minute of making faces finished the nightcap. I bid Barry goodnight, grabbed my ‘bedding’ and climbed onto the roof by using the handy ladder, affixed to the townward side of the building. The stench inside was unbearable and it hadn’t rained so far. Fortunately the alcohol worked just fine and a pleasant buzz eased me into slumber.