I set out the next morning with a full pack on my back and Merlin and Gorgon peppering me with tidbits of ‘useful knowledge’ as we trudged behind Golem and Rhodes in a series of tunnels. Despite everyone acting like a scrapper dive was just another video game, I’d spent enough nights at the clinic reading up to know how horrifying these could get. These weren’t just dungeons like I’d initially thought but were instead whole simulated fragments of reality we’d be dropping into.
“Pop quiz, what’s a sync event?” Merlin asked.
“It’s an event I need to make sure happens correctly to avoid having the dive collapse.” I replied wearily.
“And what happens if you screw up?” Gorgon countered from the other side.
“The dive desyncs and things get harder-” I said and rushed on before Merlin could interrupt. “Ooor if things have gotten off the rails enough, the whole dive fragments and we’re either ejected or erased.”
Merlin snapped his mouth shut and nodded seriously. “Good. Look, the dive we’re going to is an old one that’s been mapped tons and we keep it really pruned so there’s no reason for this to go bad but… be ready. There’s no such thing as a safe dive, and even with CoRe’s database over half of the newbies who go into these things don’t come out.”
“That’s not helping, Merlin.”
“I’m not trying to help you feel safe, Tee.” He said with a stern face. “I’m trying to help you be safe.”
“The newbie gets it, you guys. Get your war paint on and get ready.” Golem leaned back and added.
The rest materialized their weapons and I called my knife into existence. From what I’d been told, when we stepped into the dive we’d take on a whole new life with a new outfit and memories and even face, but our gear would be ‘translated’ into the setting. I didn’t fully understand the details but I got the impression it was hard to explain.
“And keep an eye out for Variations, Parallels, and Causations kiddo. It’s not all doom and gloom.” Gorgon added after a moment of silence.
I nodded and wracked my head over it all. “Variations are when the dive changes something unexpectedly and Causations are like side quests to change the dive, right?”
“Yeah, and parallels are when you have to choose. Every choice matters.” She added.
“Remind me why anybody does this?” I asked.
“Because these things are full of chances to grow stronger.” Merlin replied.
“And resources! Beautiful, sellable resources!”
“We’re here,” Rhodes said, coming to a stop in front of us. I stared across at the massive, circular portal. A couple of men in sharp, enameled armor sat on crates to the left of the entrance with their CoRe badges on full display. Holographic Syslang labels littered the outer frame of the gateway above them, shifting and squirming as my filter translated it for me.
[HAZARD LEVEL: MINOR-I]
[MANTLE STABILITY: 99.24%]
[DENDRITIC ACTIVATION: 0.04%]
[DISCHARGE CIRCUITS ENGAGED: 3/4]
The taller of the two men, a burly guy with a heavy tan and dusty grey hair, erupted to his feet with a smile.
“St. Johns! Good to see your crew is still kicking around after…” He paused lamely. “Good to see ya!”
“You too Manny. The Guard still treating you boys well?”
“Doesn’t pay like scrapping, but it also doesn’t leave my family wondering if I’m coming home this time.” The guard quipped back. The other guy stood up and elbowed him before Manny winced.
“Good point,” Rhodes replied with a forced smile. “Anything we should know about?”
“No sir, same as usual.” The second guard said. “A little glitchier than normal but there are already three other teams running the dive. Your reserved slot is open when you’re ready.”
Rhodes nodded and turned to the rest of us. “I’ll repeat this for the newbie’s sake but this goes twice that for the rest of you: Remember, don’t trust menus. This might be a green zone but dungeons don’t play nice. If you see a dive window it might just be there to distract you and get you killed.”
The rest nodded and I paused. “All the references I read talked about that. Is there some way we’re supposed to recognize dive windows?”
I nearly screamed as a giant, glowing window popped into existence between us. It wasn’t like the others at all. It was the same green but edged in sharp red like blood and instead of the familiar rectangles, it looked like glass fragments grafted or stacked together with sharp edges around the outside. The familiar Syslang on it glitched as well before settling and translating.
Everyone else flinched back from the window too. Apparently we were all seeing it hovering in the air.
“Seems the dive is a bit more active than usual.” Rhodes joked. His eyes never left the window. “There’s your answer.”
“Same system gibberish, new unappealing package.” Merlin muttered.
“Oh, and newbie? Keep an eye out for us. Dives separate us, but if you stick to the story it’ll make us cross paths.”
I nodded slowly. We lined up shoulder to shoulder in front of the circular gate as the guard pressed a series of buttons on a small console hidden on the far right side. The whole thing unclenched to reveal an inky black plane of nonexistence. Whispers echoed out that could have been one of a thousand conversations in another room. A breeze twisted between my fingers before abruptly cutting off. I took a breath and stepped through the darkness.
* * *
“MOM! RAY’S NOT GETTING READY!”
“Ray, if you’re just sitting on the toilet, let your brother use the sink.” I yelled around my toothbrush from my own bathroom. It didn’t really matter since we were already going to be late to school but like ma used to say, it’s about the principle.
I froze and stared at the woman in the mirror. At me. For a moment, the two identities crashed into each other and I watched my face flicker in and out of existence alongside a tired-looking white girl with bags under her eyes and too much makeup. It settled on the girl’s face. On my face. Shit, I thought. Now I see why all the docs said this would be hard to describe.
My kids were always slow and to get ready and—I had to remind myself that they weren’t really my sons and that this was a simulation. As if to confirm it, lines of Syslang rose from the surface of my mirror before resolving into text.
[Welcome Remnant]
Sync Event: Get your sons to school
Causation: Arrive by 9:30AM
“It’s time to go! If you’re not ready, it’s too late buckos!” I hollered. Please let Principal Figgins not be waiting for us. I can’t take one of his judgy glares.
“But mooom!!” The eldest whined.
“I wasn’t asking, Zachary. NOW.” I said, heading to get my keys.
9:17. We were out the door in under sixty seconds once I started hustling them. I glanced down at the car keys and the outline of my knife flickered in and out of existence like my face had.
Our neighbor’s son Kevin was waiting for us on the stoop outside and for a moment I considered telling him that today was too hectic to swing him by the high school. No, it’s on the way between the kid’s school and work. There’s no reason not to.
Kevin smiled at me and his face flickered back and forth with Merlin’s “Morning Mrs. Webber. I don’t suppose you’ve got time to ferry me over to school?”
“Of course Kevin. It might be a tight squeeze in the back.” I replied.
“Appreciate it!”
The kids rushed to the car parked on the street despite my hollering for them to slow down. Kevin-Merlin and I paused as they left us alone.
“This is creepy, Merlin. Why is everything in this damned place so creepy.” I asked.
“Comes with the territory, Tee. This looks like a school trip scenario. We lucked out. Those are usually pretty safe.”
I smiled back weakly. “Don’t jinx it.”
We climbed in the car and set off and I eyed how little traffic there was. I’d never driven a stick shift in my first life but the memories of ‘Mrs. Webber’ filled the gap uncomfortably well. Kevin sat between my boys smiling wanly as they worked off their morning energy.
Glitch.
9:18. One moment we’d just turned onto a main street and the next I was staring at the dashboard clock, back at the turn. The car stalled mid-turn but luckily the closest vehicle was a garbage truck stopped before a light a couple blocks away. I tried to remember how to get the engine to turn over. My hand landed on not one clutch, but six chrome levers on tracks that converged. I stared down at them dumbly. The kids in the back slowed to perfect stillness.
“Tee, I think we’re stuck in a Variance.” Merlin called from the back seat.
“Yeah, there are six stick shifts instead of one.”
“Sounds like a puzzle. Is there anything that you can see to tell them apart?”
I glanced down again. Where the usual handle would have been located, each had their own black orb with a symbol crudely etched on top. Tooth. Bell. Knife. Door. Boat. Scroll.
“I think so. They’ve all got stuff on them.” I said before describing the icons.
Merlin met my gaze from the back. “Okay, puzzle variants usually fixate on things we’ve experienced already. Do any of these mean anything to you?”
I thought back hard. “I was brushing my teeth when we dropped in.”
Merlin nodded. “My alarm went off. Maybe that’s the bell?”
I stared at the other four, wracking my brain.
“Do we just shifted the two we know?” I asked, hesitantly.
Merlin stared back. “I… guess?”
I grabbed the bell handle and shifted it forward smoothly. I tried the same with the tooth and—
Glitch.
9:19. I looked up from the dashboard and finished looking both ways. Still no traffic. Garbage truck frozen in the middle of the intersection up the road. “It let me shift the bell handle but not the tooth.”
“Okay, order matters.” He replied.
“Yeah, and the time changed. We lost a minute.”
“Damn,” Merlin cursed. “Guess we don’t have unlimited tries.”
I nodded before thinking back. I stared down at the truck and thought back. I could swear it was still at the light.
“I got it!” Merlin said, scaring the shit out of me. “Oh, sorry.”
“What is it?”
“I had breakfast after I woke up. Buttered Toast. Knife. I think they go in order.”
I shrugged and pulled the bell handle forward and then the knife. No glitch this time. We’d made the right call.
“Okay, did you write something or read something maybe?” I asked.
“Nooo…” Merlin paused. “No, I just talked with my mom.”
I thought back to Kevin’s mother. She was a mean drunk and I couldn’t imagine it was a nice conversation. The sooner he graduated and got out of that house, the better.
“Then I guess I try the tooth again?”
Merlin nodded to me. “Might as well.”
I pulled the tooth forward and it neatly slotted in behind the other two.
“Bell, Knife, Tooth down.” I said while staring at the others. “I don’t get what a boat has to do with anything. I guess the door could be you or me heading outside.”
Merlin shrugged. “Try it. This shouldn’t be a hard variant. This is a newbie dive.”
I pulled on the door and—
Glitch.
9:20. I frowned at the dashboard clock. This time the truck was noticeably closer, soon to cross the intersection a block away. Sweat beaded on my forehead.
“Okay, not the door. What else did you do before you left?” Merlin asked.
“Nothing. I pulled out my keys. Maybe that’s the door, but it didn’t like the door. It’s got to be you.”
“I didn’t do anything but argue with my mom.” Merlin groused. I could see my memories of his mother weren’t an exaggeration.
“What did you argue about?”
“Same stuff as always. She wants me to quit school and get a job to help support her, I’m just waiting to get back an acceptance letter from a college and I’m out.”
I paused. “Wait, repeat that last part?”
“About the job?” Merlin asked.
“No, about the—”
Glitch.
9:21. The dashboard blinked at me. The truck was now half a block away and its low lights illuminated the road in front of us.
“Shit, we’ve got a timer on pulling the levers and that truck is closing.” Merlin said. “You thought you were onto something. Just go with it.”
College. Getting a diploma. I pulled the levers again: Bell, Knife, Tooth, Scroll. The third lever clicked into place.
“That worked. It was the college diploma.” I heaved a sigh of relief.
“That leaves what… door and boat?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I still don’t know what the boat is and we can’t afford to be wrong. Last glitch moved the truck a half a block.”
Merlin shrugged at me. “We can’t afford to wait either. Go with your gut. If we’re wrong we probably won’t die but we may desync some or be too banged up to finish.”
I gulped before staring at the two levers and finally putting my hand on the door. “We went outside. We opened the house door, the car door. Doors take you places… Door.”
I yanked the lever forward. Click. Immediately I pulled the boat after it and the six levers collapsed back into one as everything started back up. The kids behind me screamed, the truck nearby barreled towards us. I yanked the wheel to the right and avoided it as it screamed past.
[Desync Event Detected]
MANTLE STABILITY: 97.84% (-1.4%)
“Not bad for your first Variation, Tee. Less than 2% desync is pretty solid.” Merlin smiled back at me.
"You can read that?"
Merlin shrugged. "The stability messages are one of the ones that every scrapper memorizes all the Syslang sequences. Too important not to. Says we're sitting pretty at 97.84%"
"Huh." I said.
"Good work, Mrs. Webber." Merlin said with a wink.
I glared at ‘Kevin’ in the rear-view mirror. “You could still walk to school.”
We arrived at the front of the kid’s school at 9:29 sharp. Ray and Zachary poured out of the backseat and ran through a throng of kids behind shepherded inside by the vice principal Mrs. Filloe. She smiled up at us while adjusting her thick glasses. Gorgon’s face flickered in and out behind them.
“A word, if you will Mrs. Webber?”
[Causation Update]
Causation: Arrive by 9:30AM
Outcome: [SUCCESS]
Results:
-0.08% Dendritic Activation
+12% Completion Incentives