Maxi gasped for breath as she woke up on a resurrection chair, but it wasn’t her chair. The family of Patrick Von Patrick was grinning back at her from the family photo spread on the wall of his office. She coughed and cleared her throat. Once she composed herself, she checked her quest log.
Printer of Never Jamming V. Goal: Learn vital information from Von Patrick in IT failed. -5000 credits, -3 Levels -2 Ambition. -3 Dedication. -1 Creativity. -10 Listen. New goal assigned: Find out what Von Patrick knew about the Printer of Never Jamming.
Every Creature Everywhere All at Once complete. +2 levels. +1 Ambition. +2 Creativity. +4 Stats. +8 SP. Pet acquired: Dalek, Grutomaton Drone, Life: 200/200, AR: 15, Att. +12 Pincher (13-24 Dmg.), Att. +30 Blast Beam, (31-50 damage, 500’ range, 30 second cooldowni). She tapped the more information but on her phone, and the laser could be used before the cool down but would damage the critter.
She glanced around to see who put her on the chair but there was only drag marks and blood on the floor. She was about to check the data that had been made available to her when she accepted A Favor for Patrick Von Patrick, when Daisuke entered the room. Followed by her new found pet.
The creature flew through the air and nuzzled against her. She pet the critter and it cooed with delight.
“You need to heal before you go out on quests. That was reckless.”
“I survived,” Maxi said.
“Patrick Von Patrick didn’t.”
“Let’s put him on the resurrection chair. I’ll help you move him.”
“It’s too late. There is a limited window of time to reach a resurrection before the person is permadead. Since Von Patrick’s chair was the only one close, I had to make a decision whether it was him or you.”
“Thanks…” Maxi said. She hadn’t realized that there was a ticking clock each time a person died to get to their chairs. “Expediency explains why Janitorial charges so much for their services.”
“You can’t joke about these things,” Daisuke yelled. “A man is dead.”
“You think I don’t feel anything? I only joke because its better than crying.” Maxi said and glanced to the children who would never see their father again.
“Maybe you should cry more often, and maybe you wouldn’t be so reckless.”
Maxi exploded. “How many more would have died if I sat around my computer sorting products while IT fell apart? I must have saved five or six people on the way in.”
“That’s why we have the PI branch. They have enough people on shift that there is always someone who can respond to a crisis.”
“The PIs don’t care about the people they are saving. I saw a PI blast an entire room with a psychic inferno just to get one creature they could have handled with a sword.”
“Their Branch is well funded. They don’t care about collateral damage.”
“That’s just it. They don’t care if they leave an entire Office Pool in debt, as long as the battle makes them look good. Those Workers we saved this morning would be paying off debt for years if the PIs got there before us.”
“Be that as it may, that still doesn’t change the fact that your actions have consequences.”
The last part stung. Part of it was the death of Von Patrick. The other was that it wasn’t the first time she was hearing those words. If Maxi had found herself in an isekai dungeoneering adventure, she would be kicking down the doors, and gotten the whole party killed at the first Mind Flayer.
Her dad had said something about consequences to her on more than one occasion when she was growing up. A girl at her school had engineered a cyber bullying attack on Maxi’s Spasm channel. Maxi filmed herself smashing the bully into her mashed potatoes at lunch and posting it to Chirper. When Maxi was nearly expelled, she heard the words.
She hated those words, especially when they were right. The least she could do now was solve the quest for Von Patrick, and give the rewards to his family. Not that her gesture would mean anything. She would live to fight another day, and he would be a casualty in what was shaping up to be the worst day for the company since she had been there.
Daisuke stared at her a few moments and then said softly, “I’m going to see if I can find a stairwell.”
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“The elevators still aren’t working?” Maxi said.
“No,” he said and wandered off.
Maxi sat alone for a moment then muttered to herself. “How are the elevators not working?”
“Upper Management can shut down local nodes of the elevator network in response to a crisis,” Terry chirped in her ear.
“Why didn’t they shut it down when the PIs were after us?”
“Even the Power Twelve doesn’t have access to shut down the elevator network.”
“Upper Management doesn’t trust us with the car keys, huh?”
“Upper Management rarely gets involved in day to day operations. They mostly let the subsidiaries govern themselves so long as they are following the terms and conditions.”
“So that means whatever is happening is pretty bad to cut off elevator access.”
“Enough for them to fear it leaking from our world into others. The alternative is that the network is down entirely which would mean that the entire multiverse is in a state of catastrophic failure.”
“Okay, okay, Mr. Doom,” Maxi said. “Let’s assume Upper Management shut down just a part of the network, does that mean if we get to a different floor, the elevators start working again?”
“Yes, depending on the area of containment.”
“So, let’s just climb up the elevator shaft to the next floor. It wouldn’t be the first time since I crawled through the network.”
“The next door up could lead to any elevator door in the multiverse. The network has never been mapped. The next door up for you may lead to an aquatic skyscraper full of fish people.”
“What’s with you and fish people analogies?”
“I’m not aware of having made any such analogy,” Terry said.
“We were,” Maxi said. “Nevermind, it was probably when I told you to stop recording our conversations, so can we at least get to another world and take the next elevator home?”
“The lockdown would prevent you from going home if it was the entire Earth.”
Not wanting to spend the rest of her life in an aquarium for fish people, stairs were probably the safer bet. Since Daisuke was already on it, she decided to poke around Von Patrick’s office for clues as to why he invited her down in the first place.
She glanced at his computer and wished Farhad was there. He would have been able to hack into it. Though she vaguely remembered something Terry had said about quantametrics or something like that. Still, she decided to boot the device and see. Her desktop didn’t have a password as far as she knew. She just booted, and it worked.
After the computer went through its loading sequence, it came to her home screen with the Misfits of Carnt graphic and everything. It was color reversed so the browser windows would have white text on a black background and everything. The computer was functionally hers.
“Terry,” Maxi said. “Why does Von Patrick have my computer?”
“He doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“The PC detected your quantum signature so it booted to your log in.”
“But don’t computers have localized hard drives? Even if it was logged into my account, it would be set on default settings because I never used this one before?”
“Sure, if you used outdated networking technology. Remember that your storage is located in another dimension guarded by the Archivist Branch. That includes your configurations, even the operating system itself. The local computers are nothing more technical than a transdimensional telegraph.”
“I guess that means getting Von Patrick’s computer access is out.”
“On the contrary. Since he is dead, his Branch Manager has access to everything in his storage. You can file a data access request for relevant quests you have open with him. There is a good chance it will be approved being you have not just one but two with him.”
“Let’s go ahead and do that. It’s better than nothing.”
“Done, but I imagine with the apocalyptic outbreak in IT, it will be a while before the Branch Manager has time to respond.”
“Fair enough, I supposed we do this the old fashioned way.”
She went to the drawers next, looking for thumb drives, notes, or anything that would be of interest. She found a whole filing cabinet full of sketches of various beasts and creatures. Considering the various photo equipment in addition to the autopsy in the next room over, the sketches looked like it might be a pastime, something to do while healing in his chair after a raid.
She perused them nonetheless, looking for anything that might be relevant. She was about to give up when she found one that had slipped below the hanging file folders or maybe it was deliberate. There was a sketch of a gleaming printer with lines to indicate that it was catching the light. It was one of the larger variety that seemed to be parked in every copy room in America. Scrawled off to the side was, “The printer that never jams?”
Maxi wasn’t sure if he had seen it or just imagined what it would look like. Being that most of the sketches were probably creatures that had passed through monster holding at one time or another, she figured she should keep the drawing just in case. She folded it and stuffed it into her pocket.
She also noticed a flier just like the one on Rudy’s desk, except the shadowy figure with a top hat was circled with question marks around it. She tried the QR code on the flier but it gave her a 404 error.
She checked the rest of the drawers, the cabinets and shelves. There was nothing noteworthy and was just finishing up her search when she heard clanging outside. It sounded like large metal boots clomping on the ground. Dalek growled and lunged toward the door.
“Hold on,” Maxi said. “We don’t know who it could be. It may be Daisuke for all we know.”
However, Maxi knew it wasn’t Daisuke. Dalek already had his scent and grutomatons could smell humans from miles away. If she had asked Dalek to find him, Maxi bet her new pet could find him no matter where he wandered in the building.
She pulled out her blade and positioned herself on the threshold of the door. She was at full health and psy now. She was ready to put up a fight no matter what came through.