Jasper watched with bewilderment, exhaustion, and a dash of depression as a series of notifications appeared in his field of view:
Gained 40 XP!
Received 30 Silver!
Received one Heirloom Feather!
He and Rosalind had concluded their victory dance. The battle was over.
“...Can I go home now?” Jasper asked.
–
Martin was frantically pacing back and forth in a large boardroom. The room was packed with disheveled-looking engineers, fancy-looking designers, and professionally-dressed PR folks who all looked at Martin stoically (a few occasionally showing cracks of a ‘thousand yard stare’). Outside the glass panels of the boardroom was the city, usually a wonderful balance of lively and serene, at this time showing early signs of pandemonium: fires, civilians running madly in the streets, and what looked to be a large Cerberus-like creature patrolling the area.
“Excuse my language, but we are hecking screwed,” Martin said.
One of the more seasoned PR folks leaned into the intern standing beside her and whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Hecking is like the ‘f bomb’ times a thousand for Martin.” The intern nodded and scribbled down some notes in a booklet she was holding.
Martin continued, “The security restrictions for the game were breached and disabled, somehow…”
Martin glared at the engineers who were responsible for coding the project with what were supposed to be premium universal backend security protocols. The engineers averted eye-contact and tried their best to ‘act natural’ while secretly praying that they could somehow sink into the floor and disappear.
“Which means there’s blood on all of our hands. Not only will people get hurt, possibly killed, by the, frankly, badass bosses that we’ve programmed into the game - seriously design team, killer work -”
The designers begrudgingly shot back a mix of smiles, stilted ‘woos’ and awkward thumbs ups.
“But very very expensive buildings are probably gonna get damaged as well.” Martin let out an exasperated sigh. Then, with a dramatic wind up, he punched the wall, making sure to avoid the section of the wall where an expensive screen was broadcasting an interview of him on loop. “It’s not fair! Why is our god such a cruel god?! Why must we be damned to this fate?!”
A member of the HR team who was standing in the corner of the room tried his best to hold back tears at Martin’s impassioned plea against an unlistening and unkind world.
Martin’s assistant, who had been standing beside him the whole time, a man whose big shaggy hair and bright polka-dot bowtie made him stick out like a sore thumb (or any sore appendage really), softly saddled up beside Martin and whispered, “You’re very strong, sir.”
“Shut up you idiot I know that, and thank you I love you,” Martin whispered back. He gathered himself and addressed the group with vigor, intention, and focus. “Do we have more information on how widespread the launch was?” Martin asked.
An eager bespectacled engineer staring at a small, ultra-lightweight, transparent screen in her hands responded. “So far, we have reports of both bosses and basic enemies showing across all three continents.”
“And parties, what about people who have been activated as protagonists to play the game?”
“We have fifteen,” responded a gentleman in a suit and dark sunglasses hovering over an ultra-thin laptop on the table. “Half of them have no idea what’s going on, but for the ones who do, they’re starting to orient themselves to the game, figuring out the settings, and slowly gathering their party members. No casualties so far, though some folks have come close to losing all of their HP.”
Martin shook his head to himself and stared out at the city. “Groups of rookies… assigned to be heroes at random, playing through a narrative that could potentially sweep and destroy the entire world. Team, we’re gonna need to do everything we can… to make sure that we squash the public backlash that’s going to come our company’s way.”
“...And help save the world?” one of the engineers chimed.
“Yeah yeah, that too.”
—
The video of a live news report played on a cellphone held vertically by Jasper. He was sitting cross-legged in the field, focused intently on the contents of the broadcast.
“Continuing our coverage of the catastrophic XPeriential Points launch,” the reporter spoke, “we can confirm that mythical beasts have been spotted all around the country, wreaking havoc and destroying very expensive buildings across major cities. While the military has had some success stymieing the movement of these fantastical creatures, they have yet to report any success in outright defeating the powerful monsters.”
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Not too far from where Jasper was sitting, Rosalind was pacing back and forth while holding her cellphone to her ear. “C’mon, c’mon, answer the damn call,” she muttered to herself.
Jasper eyed her for a brief moment, and then returned his attention to the broadcast. The reporter continued. “While the world waits for someone to put a stop to this horrific game, experts on the matter have chimed in with the following warning: If you come across an adorable creature that looks like a cross between a bunny rabbit and a Maine Coon asking you if you want to ‘save your progress’, you need to get in your car and drive far far away, as this creature is a sure sign that some sort of Cthulhu-esque boss is right around the corner.” The broadcast then showed a series of police sketches of the adorable creature. “We have received no word yet from Martin Barr or any representatives from the XPeriential company.”
Jasper turned off the broadcast, taking some time to let the strange information seep in.
Instinctively, he scanned his immediate vicinity, sighing a breath of relief when he was unable to spot any tiny, adorable creatures near him. He noticed the large group of participants from Medieval Madness! standing gathered in the nearby forest. Together, the group was a perfect picture of shock, confusion, and awe, as most of them were continuing to take the ‘no technology’ policy very seriously, leaving them with very little idea of what was going on.
Jasper softly lifted his hand to give the group a wave, which elicited a gasp from the crowd. To the LARPers, Jasper and Rosalind were demigods who had just slain a powerful knight.
Jasper raised an eyebrow, and then turned to Rosalind, who was continuing her desperate journey of trying to get someone, anyone, to answer her messages.
“Who are you trying to call right now?!” Jasper shouted.
Rosalind lowered her phone for a brief moment. “No one you would know! My old boss! My coworkers! That creepy voice that called me before the game launch telling me that it’d been sabotaged! And literally no one is answering me!” she yelled out.
“I see! That’s unfortunate! Hey, so, can I go home?!” said Jasper.
Rosalind, incredulous, hung up her 50th failed call attempt and walked over to Jasper.
“Home? You are aware that the news is reporting that there are monsters from the game unleashing destruction all across the world, right? What makes you think that home is a safe place right now?”
“...Well, even if it’s not, it’ll be cozier than out here. I have blankets at home. And bath bombs.”
“You’ve been assigned as a player. You’re officially a member of my party, which means that you and I hold in our hands the power to save the world, and the power to get to the bottom of this strange myste -”
“Yeah I truly don’t care about any of that. I’m sure that saving the world is your fantasy scenario come to life, but I would much rather go to my bed and take a nice long nap.”
“My fantasy scenario?! You do realize that this is serious, don’t you?! I mean…”
Rosalind trailed off. Any indignation she was feeling due to Jasper’s attitude - his approach to life being one that she frankly couldn’t fathom in the slightest - wore off as she realized that he was an adult with his own identity who could make his own decisions. More importantly, she could finally be rid of him and assemble the dream RPG party that she needed to get to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on in the world.
“...I mean, wow, as much as that stings, and maybe it stings because it’s true and I’m in denial about it, if going home is what you really want, then I suppose I have to humbly respect your wishes. It pains me to say this, but Jasper, you are free to go.”
An awkward silence lingered between the two of them as an aggressive gust of wind blew past.
“...Great. So… can you use your special coding powers to do the beep boop with the global quantum breakpoint or whatever -”
“Universal backend…”
“Right, and get me out of this ‘party’, this ‘game’, these…” Jasper swatted at the menu that was overlaid in the right-hand corner of his line of vision, almost as if he was trying to wipe it away, “These things that I can’t get out of my sight...”
“Yeah yeah, I’ll get to it,” Rosalind replied. She held out her hand towards Jasper, flipping through the options available to her on the full extended menu in her view.
Jasper impatiently tapped his foot as she worked through it. “C’mon, how long does it take to release me?”
“Easy now, we’re almost there.”
Finally, she arrived at the section she was looking for. A prompt appeared in her sight:
REMOVE [JASPER WHITEMORE] FROM THE PARTY?
Without hesitation, she selected yes. Immediately, a harsh buzzer sound played, as the following text replaced the prompt:
CANNOT REMOVE. YOU HAVE NOT COMPLETED THE GAME YET.
“Oh c’mon, you never had to actually beat the game first before you could remove someone from your party…” she grumbled to herself. She went back to the prompt and tried pressing ‘yes’ again, only to once again receive the same harsh sound as a result.
“...Is it not working?” Jasper asked.
Rosalind stalled. She wasn’t sure what to do.
But it didn’t really matter anyway, since Jasper had more than thrown in the towel at this point.
“You know what, I’ll let you figure it out,” Jasper said. “I’ll be on my way. Wishing you all the best on your journey. May you have a wonderful rest of your life!”
“Yeah. Have a nice life too, I guess,” Rosalind said back.
And with that, Jasper picked up his helmet from the ground, donned it, and awkwardly clunked away from Rosalind and toward the destroyed manor. He didn’t know what his plan was, but he had a weird confidence inside him that he’d get home somehow, and that it would all be okay.
Rosalind watched as the image of him became smaller and smaller as he trekked home. Jasper eventually blended into the background of the field and the night sky altogether, occasionally re-appearing as a brief but distinct spec that she could make out. She couldn’t help but be frustrated that the lazy literature professor had essentially taken up one of her party slots, and would likely be using it to sleep through the apocalypse.
…
A new message showed up in her line of sight:
DISTANCE OF 1KM BROACHED, RECONNECTING PARTY MEMBERS. 5… 4… 3… 2…
And as the countdown hit 1, Jasper materialized beside her again, as if he’d never left.