The door at the end of the hallway, the steel one that looked like an elevator, led into the private Link. Just inside the doorway were three short steps down, and the room opened up into a giant glass-screen plated box, 40 feet to a side. The glass walls shifted from a metallic sheen in a wash effect to display a similar rainy forest theme as the screen over my bedroom windows, while the floor remained a grid of tiny raised circles.
A Link saddle and rig hung from the ceiling, just off center, on a long arm with a half-dozen joints, and I glanced around to see if there was an Impex station for the import and export of items though the game.
Tevin, Rin, and Ali had all three followed me into the room. Ali looked impatient, and Tevin craned his head around with a look of wonder clearly marked by his dropped jaw and huge smile.
Not seeing an Impex, I asked Ali about it. “How do I get things in and out from the Hub? A Link is not much good without an Impex box.”
She nodded and hooked a thumb over her shoulder to point at the back wall, next to the door we had come through. “It’s built in back there on the east side of the door, and will automatically open if you import something. Food and drink items will be delivered while you are still Linked as normal.” She turned and stepped over to the wall, pressing her open hand on the center panel and pushing it in. There was a satisfying mechanical click, and the panel slid partially up into the ceiling, the image of the forest sliding down the screen to maintain the illusion.
Revealed behind the panel was a large empty cubby, about a meter square, with what looked like a pull-out shelf along the bottom.
“It serves as dual purpose, but it takes a few moments to load and unload from the building's system. These boxes are all tied into a central Impex system that the rooms share across the whole floor.” She explained.
I nodded, the system was worse than I had hoped, but better than I’d expected. “Alright, that’s a pretty good deal. Any other quirks I should know about?”
She nodded. “This room is built with an accessibility system, that's why the walls and floors look like they do. It offers limited functionality, but it's capable of letting you log into the Hub without interfacing with the saddle and helmet. It will only work to link-up to the Hub however, it's not compatible with the Factions layer.”
I whistled and nodded as she stepped away and the panel lowered back down. “That’s pretty cool, but I doubt I use it much.”
Tevin nodded and stepped over to the Link rig, tugging on the arm a little and nodding at its apparent solidness. I walked up next to him and sat down in the saddle. “Alright. I’m going to Link up. I need to talk to my new faction and sort out whatever check-boxes the transfer needs checked. I’ll see you on the other side?” I said to Tevin.
He nodded, all three of them moving towards the doorway. “I’ll be there in 5. Ping me with your location when you’re ready to meet up. I’ma go spend my latest bonus on some new toys.”
Ali was the last to leave the room, lingering at the doorway and watching me as I reached up to grab the helmet. She gave me a downwards nod and pointed at one side of the door before it closed. A light hidden behind the screen panels where she had pointed briefly glowed red, then shifted to green after six solid steel rods crisscrossed over the doorway and clicked into place.
I shook my head and smiled, grateful for her pointing out the strong lock on the door, feeling some unexpected relief from the unconscious worry of someone breaking in while I was Linked. A moment later, I pulled the helmet on and was transported to the foggy gray void of the Link-up lobby.
Nothing felt out of the ordinary as I was shunted out of the Hub-side Link portal, other than the lack of the comforting weight of my plasma knife in my pocket. I looked over myself, feeling more comfortable in my Holo work clothes, and frowned when I realized I was barefoot. I thought again about exporting my new mag-boots along with my knife to the real world and not retrieving them yet. I thought, maybe I should invest in a set to keep at home and another for the Links, so I would not have to keep paying the tariffs each time I transferred them.
I left the portal building and padded down the clean street, looking around for someplace I could get a cheap pair of Holo boots.
As I walked, keeping my eyes out for a street vendor hawking footwear, I opened up my message screen and sorted through it.
4 new messages:
Sender: Duirtak Galidurn - Subject: Welcome, beardless.
Sender: CLE Admin K.S.R. - Subject: Housing Contract
Sender: Counselor A. Nakoma - Subject: Conditional Faction Reassignment
Sender: Kanduirik Hammerting - Subject: A Hearty offer
I thought about which message I should open first for a moment, then decided it would make the most sense if I read them in order, so I opened the message from who I assumed was an important dwarv I’d yet to meet. I willed it to open, and leaned against a random shop's wall as I read it.
A Hearty offer:
Salutations, Nicholas “Kaninak” Spenser.
I am Kanduirik Hammerting, elected King and Voice of Clan Theedrite. House Galidurn has found success with your petition before the Moot. As one, we will negotiate with your birth faction to secure your Juvenile status within our great Clan under the banner Galidurn. We are pleased to hear of your open hearted offer and look forward to adding you to the alloy of our society.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
If all goes well, expect to hear from your House, and I look forward to meeting you on the fields of initiation.
I read the message over again, thinking it over for a moment. I worried about the implications of the need to dance around the subject of the Heart of Stone. Was my Faction allowed to read my private messages? That thought scared the hell out of me as I opened the next message.
Conditional Faction Reassignment:
Diplomat-Consul, Guy Nicholas Spenser - C-class Citizen
The council has approved a Contract with the Masked Ambassador Faction known as Clan Theedrite that calls for the transfer of your Faction Membership. Your Social Ranking will be frozen and your Native Citizenship will be listed as De-Linked under special provision 216C of chapter 54 of our Diplomacy Regulation Measures.
You are hereby awarded the provisional Title and position of Diplomat-Consul specific to your new assignment, with all appropriate rights, rewards, and statuses that the position is entitled to.
Your contract will be re-negotiated once per year, at a time to be determined by the Director whose authority you may fall under at such time; or at any time with the recommendation of said Director due to changes of circumstance and actions taken.
Your revised and updated Citizenship Patence has been approved by the Council and will be attached to this message.
Your Director has assigned you a handler to ensure and assist your performance, designated as ‘CLE - Katie S. Roderegious - B-class Patriot’.
-Unity Counselor: Anang Nakoma
I read the message, then walked to the nearest vendor and bought whatever they had to drink. I didn't even look to see what it was or how much it cost me. I drained half of it and sat down on the curb, before reading the message again, and then checking over my updated Patence.
Sure enough, Diplomat-Consul was a full blown title, albeit one that was highly conditional and liable to be stripped away by a simple majority vote of the Council. It was not even all that high up the hierarchy of the Arktrian Administration, and still, it came with a lot of perks and as many responsibilities.
I decided I would have Rin and Dalls handle as much of it as possible, and moved on to the third message.
Katie’s was much simpler, and did not even have a main body of text, just the contact info and an automatically added boiler-plate signature. Attached to it was a simple contract laying out our agreement to cover the cost of my Retinue and housing. Also listed were the conditions for success at my newfound position.
Mainly, she seemed to expect me to push for greater trade relations, and an eventual full Faction Alliance. Mentioned at the very bottom was someone by the name of Colonel Barney Bray, who would be my in-game political contact on the Arktrian side.
I back-burnered that for now, not wanting to dig into the details and numbers that claimed most of the spotlight within the paperwork, and moved on to the last message.
Welcome, beardless.
The Moot has agreed! Which makes us family, of a sort. Things are moving quickly as we prepare what needs done when your Heart joins with our clan. I am too busy now for leisure carving at the shop where we met. When you are able, seek my nephew Chane at our Faction Central within our block of the Neighborhood. He has been tasked with welcoming you, and I think you will get along like alloy and flux.
I will seek you out myself when I get word you have made it to Underhome so that we might complete our compact. You’ll have your skills and secrets, and we’ll gain a new brother.
I welcome you again, beardless, I sense great things down the seam.
-House Patriarch, Duirtak Galidurn
Finally, a message that didn’t induce more stress, and even alleviated some of my worries. I had worried over where I should go to meet-up with my new faction, and knowing I would have a guide was a relief. It was interesting to hear that the elder dwarv who had taken a back-seat during the conversation at the shop was the House Patriarch as well, and I wondered why he had let Kazzad do most of the talking.
Thinking over the messages, I stood up from the curb and renewed my search for some boots.
After ditching the empty bottle, I just tossed it away and it disappeared after bouncing once against the street. I found a loud middle aged woman with a mobile pushcart stand who was selling sandals and flip-flops. She charged me another 25 credits for a flimsy looking pair of Trash rank Holo boots that looked to be made from canvas and mesh fabric. They were still better than walking through the crowded streets in my socks.
I left the lady behind, and checked my map to see where Theedrite Central was. On a whim, I decided to pay the 50 Cr. monthly fee to unlock the mini-map function.
Fifty-Four-Thousand-Seven-Hundred-Twenty-Seven-Point-Five-One-Five
I added the minimap to my hud, adjusted the transparency down a little bit and played with the size, before following the straight roads to the clearly marked Clan building.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe some kind of nod to the mythology of the Masks the beetles wore and a fanciful or possibly mountainous facade on the building. Possibly even design choices borrowed from a human culture's leadership, with columns or spires or tiers, to promote the ties between their Faction and our world.
What I was not expecting was what looked like a giant office building, or maybe a high-rise apartment complex. Fifty stories tall, the footprint taking nearly a quarter of the city-block that it lay within, the building rose above its neighbors as a giant gleaming glass edifice. It wouldn’t look out of place in any major city's downtown business district in all of Eora.
Maybe that was the point, breaking away from the norms of governance and old-world power, and appealing more to the business-centric image of the merchants and economics of those within the Links.
I pushed my musings from my mind as I walked into the spinning glass door at the front of the building.
I stepped through and had my initial preconception twisted back around on itself like a pretzel. Inside the building was a massive stone carving, hanging in the air above, and framed within the hollow gridded glass box. The whole interior of the building was filled with it, the hundreds of feet of glass-clad office building was only a shell that seemed to focus the diffuse omnidirectional and other-worldy lighting of the Hub onto the statue to create interesting shadows and contrast on the towering granite statue.
It depicted a pair of dwarves, back to back with their feet braced against the outer walls of the shell as they climbed a rope together. They each had one elbow locked into the other's belt, while one dwarv reached up and pulled on the thick cable that rose through the center of the building and the other braced the trailing cord below. The twisted line itself looked to be made of a darkly corroded metal that stood out darkly against the lighter colored stone.
The rope seemed to be all that held the massive statue in the air, hanging above me and balanced on the spiraling column of metal. I was blown away at the level of detail I could see, even though it hung 30 feet or so above at its lowest point. My eyes followed the pillar down to where it seemed to suddenly end, plunging into the ground at the center of the room.
There was a circular desk that surrounded the support with a number of dwarves waiting in orderly lines, as well as a smaller line of humans. I walked over and joined the line of humans, grateful for the clear and empty floor as I simply couldn't tear my eyes away from the massive statue hanging above me.