CHAPTER 11
Kopius had stopped counting rope-pulls at one hundred and twenty-one as he had the sudden, brief memory of him stumbling into his apartment at 1:21 a.m. He couldn’t recall if it had been the night before this whole debacle or not. He had been lost in an internal debate as to whether it was, in fact, last night or just any other random night he had arrived home in the same condition. By the time he had given up on the whole matter, he had no idea how many times he had pulled the rope.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kopius said aloud, continuing to pull. After several stops for rest, Kopius could start to hear the squeaking of a second pulley wheel. With the prospect of an end in earshot, Kopius gave some extra effort and powered himself to the top.
Like coming to the top of an old goldmine shaft, a pulley was attached to a heavy wooden beam, supported on both sides by larger–most likely heavier, Kopius thought–wooden beams. With his limited Night Vision active, Kopius navigated and parked the wooden platform with little effort. A small window populated in his vision, blank like the others.
Stepping off the lift, he found himself in a small tunnel, the width no bigger than the shaft he had just ridden up. The ceiling was short like that of Oh-jin's lab, and it smelled of earth just after a short rain. Moving at an upward angle, Kopius walked for several minutes until he could make out light emanating from around a final turn. His Night Vision adjusted off and he took in the site just beyond the cave’s mouth.
The valley was riddled with still erect, barren, dead trees. The leafless branches were numerous enough that the sunlight had issues breaking through to the floor. They reached well above the mouth of the cave and were too dense to see how far across the other side was. It reminded Kopius of a creepy forest a person might be chased through in some low-budget horror film.
The cave mouth itself sat roughly ten feet off the valley floor with a steep drop from where he stood. Rocks and various boulders looked as though the cave had shat them out and they’d collected together at the bottom of the near vertical drop.
Kopius gathered his swords to one side and sat at the lip of the cave. He then turned his body until it was teetering over the side, his flat palms holding his entire weight. He slowly let himself slide down the side embankment until he hung fully outstretched. The drop from there was just over a foot, but Kopius slipped on a boulder causing him to stumble and then fall on the valley floor. The hilts of his swords clattered together. The pinging of metal clashing filled the space before returning to silence.
He got to his feet quickly, taking a few steps to press his back against the cliff wall. Worried he had alerted every creature in the general area to his presence, Kopius withdrew the short sword and listened. After a few moments of silence, he dusted himself off and looked about.
“Which fucking way is north?” he complained. Doesn’t moss face north? he thought.
“Do you see any moss!?” Kopius answered himself, sweeping his hand out in front of him. There were dense dead trees to his right and the same to his left. If it were not for the side of the cliff, Kopius would have no idea where to start.
Taking a step away from the rock face, he turned around and looked up the wall. Not too far above the cave mouth–forty maybe fifty feet, Kopius guessed–the valley walls came to an end. After taking another few steps away from the cliff Kopius could make out a gradual incline where the valley floor met the wall.
With a direction in mind, Kopius took a few moments to situate several large boulders roughly below the cave entrance. He wanted to make his trip back as obvious as possible. Kopius removed his gloves while glancing back up at the cave mouth and muttered something about needing a ladder. Sword in hand and the cliff wall to his left, Kopius began to walk.
The walk started off arduous and remained that way for much of the trek. Kopius stayed as close to the cliff wall as he could but often had to climb around large boulders or fallen dead trees. Sunlight peeked through the various gaps in the branches, showing a barren, congested landscape. Some trees felt petrified, while others seemed fragile enough that a sharp look might knock them over.
Kopius continued to zig-zag through the valley until the other cliff came into view. The size of the valley had shrunk to that of a four-lane road before Kopius noticed the other rock wall. It was just as tall and steep as the one he had been walking along.
I could climb that if I wanted to, Kopius thought, knowing full well he would not be making an attempt. He had steadily watched the ridge of the valley and felt he was headed in the right direction. The way became increasingly more clogged, forcing Kopius to abandon the comfort of the cliff wall and forge into the center of the ever-thickening dead forest.
“It’s no wonder nobody comes down here,” Kopius groaned as he slogged over fallen trees. “How could you run for your life in this mess?”
After twenty to thirty minutes and a rest, Kopius came to a stop when he smelled something other than dead wood and dirt. The aroma was faint, too soft to garner a guess but distinct enough to be noticeable. He waited and listened.
I’m waiting for a plant to make a sound, Kopius lamented, shaking his head.
He sniffed at the air but that produced nothing. Moving forward at an even slower pace, he smelled the air like a hound in search of game. At first he couldn’t detect anything, but he soon caught a steady whiff of something wonderful. Kopius drifted forward, weaving between dead husks and frail bark until, before he realized it, he had come to a small clearing.
Like walking through a corn field to find a baseball diamond, Kopius was looking at a space a bit larger than Oh-jin's lab. One side of the area was neatly tilled and had several rows of the same plant in various states of growth. The other side had a crude stool sitting next to a fire pit long neglected. There were other wooden beams sticking out of the ground a short distance from the firepit and another hastily put together object that reminded Kopius of an old western tanner rack. Sunlight spilled into the small enclave, with the plants getting the majority of the rays. The aroma coming off the crops filled the space, and Kopius wanted to get a closer whiff.
Someone had to have uprooted every tree to make this place, Kopius marveled as he glanced back and forth.
After further inspection, a crude, medium-sized pile of cut wood lay to the far side of the open space. Behind the pile, which Kopius had first mistaken for further congested forest, was a rat’s nest of roots and tree stumps. Circling around the encampment in that direction would not be an option.
Why do we need to circle the camp? There’s nobody here, Kopius thought to himself.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Maybe strolling through a perfectly manicured glen in the middle of an otherwise dead forest is a recipe for disaster? Kopius countered.
Are you suggesting that someone boobytrapped a garden in a valley where people are afraid of shadows?
No. I’m saying the only thing it’s missing is some smoking-hot siren luring us to our death.
Kopius took the time during this debate to further scan the open area for anything out of the ordinary. No rope or noticeable string could be seen on the ground nor heavy objects hung about any tree limbs. He briefly considered throwing branches into the glen to trigger well hidden traps, but ultimately voted against it.
Once he decided things looked safe Kopius stepped into the glen and walked to the crude wooden stool. The ground around the firepit was flat and dense, as one might sleep there to keep warm. Some metal rods had hooked ends and rested on the inside of the pit. Kopius picked one up and guessed it might be to lift a pot or something out of the fire. He tossed the metal rod back in the pit and proceeded over to the manicured plants.
The aroma they gave off was still faint but consistent, like a person with the proper amount of cologne or perfume on. The smell did not mug his senses, nor did it linger long enough to savor. It was a perfect balance of scents, like a freshly cut rose mixed with citrus undertones. A glimmer just above the crops caught his eye as he approached. Thinking nothing of it, he bent down as if to smell a fragrant flower. Only a few inches from the plants and Kopius felt a resistance against his forehead. When he tried to pull away he found that his forehead was stuck to some invisible surface.
In a half-bent position, Kopius instinctually placed both hands on the barrier to push with more force. Those too became stuck. No matter how hard he wiggled or wormed, he was glued fast. Panic set in. Kopius jerked and wrenched until his neck tweaked in such a way that pain brought him to his knees. He was already getting sweaty and heaving.
“Get it together, man!” Kopius growled.
He closed his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing. With his eyes closed, he saw a flashing indicator softly throbbing in his peripheral vision. He mentally opened his profile page and was surprised to see a new item. In the upper right corner was a small, white hourglass, lightly covered in spiderwebs.
Focusing on the hourglass, another window with a bronze border popped into his field of vision. Nothing was on the new window, and he closed it in frustration. Looking at his profile again and focusing on the hourglass, he made out some numbers that were counting down.
“86,000 of what!” Kopius exclaimed, before lowering his voice. “Seconds?”
He stared at the descending numbers and started to keep the cadence.
One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand. Damn.
It was seconds.
After doing some quick calculations and carrying several zeros, Kopius deflated. If he was still good at basic math then whatever trap, barrier, or magic spell he was caught in would stay active for just under twenty-four hours.
He wanted to scream and felt that he had enough pent-up rage that doing so would break him free. Before bellowing his disdain to the Universe, Kopius came to the grave realization of his overall predicament. More specifically, his inability to even swat away a fly. He basically looked like a man on his knees paying homage to his plants.
This is worse than… Kopius’s thoughts trailed off as he wondered.
This is it. This is the worst, he concluded. The irony of his situation wasn’t lost on him either.
“I’m stuck in a game while stuck in a game,” Kopius said, unable to shake his head in disapproval. He was dead meat to anything, big or small, that came his way. His only saving grace was that he had not come across, alive or otherwise, any creatures on his journey.
Additionally, with the marshromo he had eaten, Kopius would not have to worry about growing hungry or thirsty. Those two thoughts eased his mind a bit, and his composure started to return.
“Okay,” Kopius said, ”That just leaves the owner of these plants, shitty weather, ominous shadows… and everything else that might kill me.” He chuckled. “So much for being quick about my business.” Though Kopius didn’t know what Oh-jin’s version of being ‘quick about it’ meant, he assumed it was faster than twenty-four hours. “At least this plant didn’t try to eat me.”
For the first hour or so, Kopius recounted his day. His walking through the cave, his sprint through the valley, and his conversation with Oh-jin. He had a growing phobia of plants and wondered what Lexsore could possibly say to someone showing up like Kopius had to put their minds at ease. He told them, “Hey, this is just a game! Go have some fun,” slaps them on the butt, and throws them in, Kopius thought.
He would occasionally peek at his profile page to look at the counter. He concluded that the webs about the hourglass stood for ‘stuck’ or ‘sticky’; Kopius couldn’t figure if it was a magic trap or magic spell. Not that the distinction made any difference at the moment. It just gave him something to think about other than being stuck.
Images of mice trapped in glue, inches away from cheese, sprang about in his mind. He remembered as a young boy watching Tom and Jerry while at his grandparents’. Papa would let him watch in the morning before the day started. The cat found magnificent ways to be outsmarted, Kopius thought.
“I am Tom,” he murmured, before having a chuckle at himself. Papa, for all his infinite advice, had little to say about traps.
“Avoid them,” he would probably say, simple as that.
At some point Kopius settled on the topic of using the bathroom. He had no urges to speak of, but he did wonder about it. As with all human bodily functions, the gaming companies of the world attempted to simulate general bathroom activities in the virtual world.
In the earlier days, some connected users actually wet their physical beds. This first led to the global popularization of wearing Depends before connecting to the virtual worlds. Eventually, with improved O.B.S.E. functionality, players had optional gear to capture whatever they may be relieving themselves of. Where things could get messy in the real world, it went poorly in the virtual worlds too.
It was a clusterfuck of degenerates, peeing and pooping where they pleased. Wherever and/or on whomever. Before that implementation, the worst a player could expect was to have other players teabag their avatar in a PvP area after being killed. This was the final view for many gamers as they waited to respawn. After the bathroom measures were introduced, shit literally hit the fan; hit the walls, ceilings, front lawns, car seats—along with any other tangible surface. It got so bad that whole areas of virtual worlds were shut down, erased, or reprogrammed. After a very short debate, virtual world leaders blacklisted the poo-code, and shit was no more.
Grateful that he had no urges to relieve himself, Kopius returned to his profile screen and stared at the hourglass. It read 75,142 at this point.
Only three hours! Kopius grumbled.
With the sun starting to set the shadows of the plants had grown long and the tall, dead trees further blocked light from entering the small space. The temperature had not dropped, and Kopius was thankful for small favors. He had situated himself in such a way that he could lean against the magical barrier in relative comfort. With his knee tucked under for support and the stickiness of the barrier holding him firm, Kopius could relax his muscles.
He settled in and opened his profile for the millionth time, content to watch the counter do its counting. The aroma of the flowers had finally breached his racing thoughts and found a hold in his mind. The plant, roughly six inches from his nose, smelled wonderful. The mixture of roses and freshly cut citrus filled him with a sense of wellbeing and calm. He sat there smelling the refreshing plant until his eyes grew heavy and he drifted off to sleep.