“Evie? Evie? You OK?”
Her father’s voice finally filtered through Reeve’s anguish, but she didn’t move her arms from where they lay across her face. Moisture at the corner of each eye began to slide down and prickle her temples. This could not be happening. Even as she formed the thought, she knew it wasn’t true and felt like she would be sick. Not only could it be happening, but as the tentacles threatened to squeeze her out of existence, she remembered times when she’d wished for this very thing to happen, to her. She felt the jeering attention of millions and pressed the crook of her arm harder to her face.
“Evie? Come on, Honey, we’ll be OK, I’m just going to need your help.”
She squeezed her eyes tight. Her help was exactly what he was going to need. For months.
Something ran gently down the sole of her boot, and she reflexively twitched it away from the contact.
“Evie, really, I need your help here.”
She let out a dispirited breath, and her body went entirely limp, the tentacles relaxing as she gave up all hope. Finding some freedom in her despair, she started to sit up, making it to her elbows before she froze. Her father was leaning forward, straining to reach the boot she’d moved away from his fingertips. He wasn’t quite able to reach because his body from the waist down was buried in the packed dirt on which he’d been sitting.
“Dad?”
“I didn’t do this on purpose. I…I stood up to come over to you and all of a sudden the ground…well, it got a lot closer.”
“You glitched into the ground.”
“I’ll…,” he looked around and patted the ground in front of him, “I’ll take your word for that.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No, it’s just a bit tight if I breathe in too deeply. Could you give me a hand?”
Reeve rolled forward to sit on her heels.
“Why do these things happen to you?”
“Hmm.” Walter gave the question serious thought.
“Never mind, I’ll get you out.”
“Does this happen often?”
“No, I’ve only seen it once before in this game. I was helping defend a settlement from raiders and a barbarian suddenly was up to his armpits.”
“How’d you get him out?”
“I didn’t. Well, not exactly. He was one of the raiders, so…I just sent him back to his spawn point.”
Walter looked at her for a moment and then cringed. “Oh, oh, I see. Let’s not do that.” He started pushing against the ground, his motions becoming slightly wild. “Can we get me out now? Gently?”
“OK, just stick tight.” Reeve shook her head at her unfortunate word choice. “Sorry. Just be patient. I’ll need to craft a shovel.” She scanned the branches of the nearby trees.
“So, our bodies,” Walter said, “out there, they may be on their own for twelve hours?”
“Please do not remind me.”
“I’m…,” Walter’s hesitation caused Reeve to look at him, which seemed to prompt him to finish, “…just, you know, I’m not sure my bladder can—“
“Eww, seriously, Dad?!”
“Too much information?”
“That is a problem for Real-Life Walter to figure out. Real-Life Reeve and In-Game Reeve do not need to know anything about it. Your business.”
“It’s just…Real-Life Walter is lying on your beanbag chair.”
Reeve and Walter stared at each other.
Reeve turned back toward a branch that looked promising and tried to give that branch all of her attention. “While I’m crafting,” she said, her voice only tenuously under her control, “check your Inventory for anything you could use to help dig yourself out.”
“I have an Inventory?” Walter pinched the front of his shirt and pulled it away from his chest, looking down through the collar. “Wait!” He looked up. “In the UI?”
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With her back to her father, Reeve stared, tired, into the woods for a few seconds before she turned around. “Yes, in the UI. Take a look and see what starter items came with your Class.”
“Class?”
“Forget it, we’ll check your Class later. Just look in your Inventory.” She approached the branch and pulled a small hatchet from her belt. Checking over her shoulder, she saw that her father was staring into space, squinting. She turned away and used two sharp strikes and then her body weight to break the branch from the tree. She crossed to a downed trunk and sat. She opened her crafting blueprints and scrolled through until she found the plan for a Basic Wooden Shovel. It was a blueprint she hadn’t used since her first night.
Reeve stared straight through the blueprint as she absorbed the realization that tonight would be her parents’ first night. If her father thought a Level 1 Goblin was scary, he definitely wasn’t ready for the creatures that came out at night. They’d need shelter. Or at least a defendable position. Feeling like she was beginning to hyperventilate, she reassured herself that she just needed to take it one task at a time, like any game. Get her Dad unstuck, find her Mom, find shelter. “How’s it coming?” She began chipping away at the branch, then made an effort to slow her initially frantic chops before she lost a finger.
“Well, I think I found my Inventory, but it’s mostly empty, and I’m not sure why these things are in here.”
“What are they?” She held one end of the branch on the ground between her feet and used her raised right hand to rotate the branch slowly as she took practiced swings with the hatchet.
“A bee smoker, bee veil, ledger, and quill with ink pot.”
“What?” The hatchet paused, raised, as she looked up at him. “That doesn’t make any sense. Show me.”
He squinted as though in pain.
“Wait, I’ll tell you how.” The hatchet struck with a clahk as she returned to chipping away at the branch. “Things we keep attached somewhere on our body, like my bow or this hatchet,” she turned it in the air for him to see, “you just grab if you need them. Everything else you have with you is in your Inventory.”
“Where is my Inventory?”
“In your UI.”
“But, I mean, where is it physically?” He looked down at his small body, which was all the smaller with only half above ground.
“Nowhere, it’s a game mechanic. Just go with me on this for now. To access things in your Inventory, you just grab them out of your hammerspace.”
“Hammer-what?”
“Hammerspace.”
“Like, Hammertime?” The halfling looked down at his buried legs, his expression sagging into disappointment, then used his arms to try to give the impression he was shuffling to the side.
“Ohmagod, no! Not Hammertime! Not the hammer-space-time continuum! Hammerspace! You reach behind you—over a shoulder, behind your back, doesn’t matter—and imagine what you want. It’ll appear in your hand.” She dropped the hatchet to the ground, swung her hand behind her back at the waist, and brought it back out holding a piece of dried meat. “Venison.”
“Holy moly!”
She managed a patient half-laugh. “Yeah, Dad, holy moly. Try it.” She took a bite of the venison and then returned it to her Inventory.
Walter raised his right hand and reached tentatively over his suspendered shoulder. His hand returned, empty.
He reached behind his back at the waist.
It returned empty.
He frowned.
He tried his left hand over his left shoulder.
Empty.
Behind his waist.
Empty.
He twisted and reached his left hand across his body and around his right waist, straining against his dirt skirt.
Empty.
“I think mine’s broken.”
She pinched her eyes shut for a moment. “It’s not broken. Are you concentrating on what you want?”
“Yes.”
Reeve frowned. “Should work. Which item are you trying to retrieve?”
“Venison.” He nodded toward her side where the venison had disappeared. “I’m a little hungry. Do we have to eat in here?”
Reeve dropped her gaze and stared at the ground as she bounced the flat side of the hatchet against the top of her head. After a dozen bounces, she stopped and looked up. “Do you have venison in your Inventory?”
Walter pursed his lips and nodded. “Right. I’ll try something else.”
Reeve resisted the urge to throw the hatchet at him and instead returned to crafting.
“What the—”
She looked up to see her father drop something behind his back. The object bounced away from him with a crlack-k-kak.
“I did it, Evie! Now, if I can just…” He struggled to turn far enough to reach back and grasp the dropped object.
Putting down the half-finished shovel, Reeve rose and slid the hatchet into its loop on her belt. Her father was trying to bend himself backward, arms arcing behind his pointed ears, when she picked up the unfamiliar object that lay behind him.
He straightened up. “My back hasn’t been this flexible in decades. This is faaaaaaaaantastic!” He looked at her. “See. Bee smoker.”
“What…is…this?” Reeve cupped the odd object in her hands and used her thumbs to compress the bellows on the side of the metal can. “It’s like the Tin Woodman and an accordion had a baby.”
“It’s for smoking bees. It makes them…” Walter’s words trailed off as Reeve thrust the bee smoker at him. He took it.
“But you’re terrified of bees.”
“Come on, Evie—little tiny things that can fly, through the air, and just suddenly decide they’re angry at you, and inject you with venom, that hurts, a lot? It’s crazy we ever leave the house. Well, maybe the game knew how much I hate them, and so it equipped me to defend myself.”
“Against bees?”
“Against bees.”
“Dad, bees are going to be the least of your worries in here.”
“I really don’t like bees.”
“Let’s…just get you out of there,” she said. “We’ll deal with your Class and your Inventory items later.” She tried to collect her thoughts—finish the shovel, dig him out, find Mom, get them somewhere safe for the night.
“This is nice.”
Reeve looked down to find her father reaching up to examine one of the objects on her belt. He had to stretch, as his head currently rose only to her knee.
“It reminds me of that giant fluffy keychain ball you have attached to your chair. The one Nana and Papa gave you last time we took you to Detroit to visit them.”
“Yeah, me too. That’s part of the reason I keep it on my belt instead of in my Inventory. Reminds me of them.”
“What is it?” Walter squeezed it gently, and it emitted a sound like reeds rubbing against each other in a light breeze.
“Giant Wolf Spider Egg Sac. They’re valuable, but they’re also useful for crafting, and you can use them to spawn Spiderlings.”
Walter released the sac, looked at his fingers, and then wiped his hand on the front of his shirt. “Not a big fan of spiders either.”