The concept of a birth-goal was still bothering Isaac when he got into Mike’s car with the others. His brick returned a sort of simplified description of it as a ‘Noun-neuter. 1. Merfolk construct of identity, purpose, and lot in life. 2. Final, total goal. 3. Destined fate.’
It was as clear-cut as any definition, and yet it threw up a dozen questions.
What was it like to grow up knowing exactly who you were going to be and what you were going to do with your life? Maybe Isaac would have been happy as a potato peeler, or a sports team mascot, if he’d been brought up with fifty other kids that were all wanted to be some variant of one or the other. Or maybe it would have sickened him, knowing that every step he took was laid out ahead of time, would have driven him mad.
Maybe Zach’s fear of fate was justified. Or maybe merfolk society was just different in a way that simple orphans like him could never comprehend.
Enough thoughts about merfolk. It’s time to concentrate on the here and now.
Isaac had never seen Wett-city from anywhere but the comfortable distance of a TV-screen. It was the big city on Wett, and yet, it would have barely counted as a drab provincial capital on most non-frontier-worlds. Skyscrapers did scrape the sky, and huge supermarkets and department stores did eat up space like land-born leviathans, but what magitech there was was subdued.
There was no endless DIY superstore due to lack of resources and demand, no flying vehicles besides mundane blimps and helicopters. They passed what looked like a construction site, where a handful of delvers in worn gear were on a smoke-break before or after a delve.
Now, he couldn’t exactly say he’d ‘seen’ the city either. The city was draped in a perpetual mist, deep-hanging clouds filling the sky equally with a gray drizzling wetness. Sophia and Andri were busy with Isaac’s black brick while he watched the raindrops race from left to right on the window. Mike the cab driver took a right and then they were on the freeway.
Isaac had to admit, the way the old car rattled was dredging up old memories, the good kind for once.
“Excited for the exam?” Mike asked. “It’s something you don’t wanna miss, I hear.”
“I guess so.” He was mostly feeling nervous. “I don’t drive in cars too often.”
“You’re an islander then. Let me guess… orphan?”
Isaac squinted. “Not all orphans live on islands.”
“But a lot of islands have orphanages on them. Probably ‘cause the real estate’s cheaper that far away from everything. Couldn’t convince me to go out there though, with all that water and humbug swimming below, no siree.”
Isaac raised a brow. “Are you afraid of water too?”
“No, but I wouldn’t have anywhere to drive my cab. It’s all I do for a living these days.”
“Oh.”
They drove for another few silent minutes.
“Why do they call you Five-finger-Mike?”
With a smirk, he undid his right glove with his teeth and Isaac’s eyes went wide. His fingers on that hand were missing down to halfway between the first and second knuckle, and in its place he was wearing prosthetics that were obviously made of metal and a semi-see-through plastic.
“I was part of a circus, once. Made tier three under my mentor there; great folks, great ambience. Used to be that I had three acts in one show — one with juggling firecrackers, one with mirrors, smoke, and razorblades, and one with turtle-lions. You can guess which one went awry, and after that they didn’t need someone who could only do three half-acts. Got to keep the skill though, no contract that said I had to eject it once I was done.”
“The prosthetic looks kinda cool at least.” Cool for an animatronic, or some biomechanical horror.
“You think?” He wiggled his fingers, the smudged off-skin-tone colored digits flapping about in a way that felt disturbingly uncanny.
“Well… sorry, it’s ugly as fuck.”
That got a laugh out of Mike.
“It’s true, isn’t it? Though, people usually aren’t cheeky enough to say that to my face.”
“You’re not mad?”
“It’s all I could afford at the time or since. The worst you could’ve done was treat me like I’m made of glass.”
“Oh,” Isaac said, then after a while added, “How much do you think it’d take to replace an entire hand?”
“It gets more expensive the more joints you have to replace. And believe me, you do not want a cheap hand.”
“Yeah, but it’s better than nothing, right?” As far as he knew, replacement limbs weren’t high on the birthday-gift lists for most people. Then again, most people didn’t have a limb in need of replacement.
Mike just breathed out heavily. “I’m sorry kid, one way or the other.”
<
“Ten minutes, or a bit more depending on traffic.”
“You said that ten minutes ago.” The freeway was completely clear, service areas filled with trucks and truck drivers idling about. It was a weekend, but even that didn’t justify the glaring emptiness they were encountering everywhere around them. There was barely a car on the road.
Andri suddenly hissed.
“What’s he saying?” Isaac asked, and Mike just shook his head.
“Boy, I can’t stop the cab. We’re going over a hundred on a freeway, I can’t—”
Andri leaned forward and suddenly, a glint of something metallic was pressed up against Mike’s neck. It took Isaac a few seconds to realize that he was staring at a chakram, then a few more to rationalize the situation.
“Andri, what the hell—”
“Alright. You got me.” Now it was Isaac’s turn to stare at Mike.
“What?”
“I said, you got me.” His eyes were still on the road. “Thought my act was good enough. What gave it away?”
Andri meowed and growled something that ended with a hiss.
Bird hopped forward onto Isaac’s lap. “If I may translate: ‘I knew your name was familiar, you rat bastard. Five finger Mike. You do standup comedy in bars.’”
“My bits aren’t exactly aimed at kids,” Mark said, keeping an even voice. He glanced at the rearview mirror as he pulled over into an empty parking lot. “Never saw you in the audience.”
“He says that he watched your recording and that your delivery was adequate. He particularly enjoyed how you incorporated your [Minor illusion] into the bit with the dog and the car.” The car rolled to a stop. Bird tapped Isaac on the forearm. “Isaac, I believe he is asking you to take his guide badge.”
The… guide badge?
Isaac wasn’t expecting anything when he went to grab the disc-shaped badge on Mike’s chest. He touched it, then touched it again just to be sure.
“It’s not solid.” Slowly, the gears in his head turned. “You’re not a guide.”
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Mike snorted, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “Afraid not. I’ve been hired to stop contestants like you.”
“Like captain Vincent,” Isaac muttered. He was here to thin the herds. Lies, deception, it was all part of the exam, part of the preselection process at least. For a moment, he felt deeply betrayed. “Why?”
“The adventurer association pays well. Very well. My niece needs money for her tuition.”
“And what about all that stuff with the circus?” Isaac asked. “About ‘islanders and mainlanders gotta stick together’?”
“That was all true. I only told one lie today. Now, could you please get your catboy off my throat?”
Andri hissed with sudden intensity.
“Oh dear. I think I won’t translate that. But he does say he could kill you now, sir Mike.”
“You’ll get disqualified,” Mike said.
“Door’s open,” Sophia commented meekly and Andri gave Mike a glare that was half reserved for Isaac before kicking the seat in front of him and strutting out.
Their driver rubbed his neck as everyone got out but Isaac. “Are you gonna come at me with a knife as well?”
“I didn’t bring one.”
Mike huffed. “The boy’s right, you know. You’re too gullible. Your mother never told you that you shouldn’t follow strangers into their cars?”
“We don’t have cars where we come from.”
“Right. Islander.” He pointed out back. “We’re on a freeway thirty clicks out from the city center. I’d wish you good luck, but you’ll never make it back in time.”
“We’ll see about that.” Isaac got out and slammed the door shut, perhaps a little bit too hard. With that, Mike was off. Isaac could practically see in the way he was driving that he wasn’t the only one who got a little bit too heated. The cab bounced until it joined the trickle of traffic and disappeared on the freeway.
“That could’ve gone smoother,” Sophia said, looking like she didn’t know what else to say to the catman, who was stewing in silent fury. His texts on the other hand were quite loud.
<>
<
<
If there was something that was the right thing to say, it didn’t come to Isaac. He was still trying to figure out what part of this was annoying him more, that he’d been so openly lied to, or that he had trusted so easily, and let everyone down.
“Sorry.” He sighed and went to grab his pack when he paused. “Hey, is this all our gear?”
At that, Andri whirled around in a way that would have dislocated something if he had been a human. He tore through the pile of bags, growing more desperate as he discovered by the second. He turned to yell at the passing cars before letting out a cry that slowly petered out into a mewling groan.
“You don’t even have to translate that. His bag is gone.” As was Isaac’s duffle bag with his pok-ball gear. All he had now was his bat. “Son of a bitch.”
“Andri spent many nights preparing its contents,” Bird commented. “I believe he is now lamenting his life choices.”
<
Sophia put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t have the energy to shrug it off, and who could blame him? Isaac surely wasn’t going to; if he’d taken any longer to react they would have been even further away from Wett city.
Not that that would have made much of a difference.
The issue wasn’t just getting back into the city after all, the issue was finding the place where the exam was being held. And now, now they couldn’t even trust anyone who approached them with a badge. He didn’t think that there were a lot of ex-circus cab drivers with a [Minor illusion] spell walking around the city, but the city was large. They didn’t even have Wettnet this far out, so he couldn’t check a map for the quickest route.
“How do we even get back? Do we follow the road?” Isaac asked, though the question was more directed at Sophia. Before her parents died, she’d grown up in Wett city. The past few months he’d caught her poring over pictures of the city and maps, and he’d never had the heart to stop her from retreading her past. She likely did out of the same impulse that always led Isaac to the ocean.
“I’m not from around this part of town, but I recognize this road.” Sophia perked up. “There should be a village or suburb every few kilometers. Maybe we can catch a bus from there?”
“It is climate and habitat day,” Bird commented as Andri groaned quietly. “There will be no public transportation, no open stores, and no Wettnett.”
“Alright.” Isaac rubbed his face. “Well, less than alright, but we can manage. Sophia? Let’s get to the closest place and see where we go from there. Andri, you still coming with us? You can blame me for what, but I’d like to try and make it up to you first.”
Andri sighed. He stared at Isaac’s hand for a long while before getting up by himself.
<
“You still have your chakrams,” Isaac noted. “And your scouter thingy. C’mon, we have the entire day to find some way to get back to Wett city.”
The mink scrunched his nose.
<
+++
It took two hours to get to the next village, a quaint little place going by the name of Quaintsburgh. Doubtlessly, that wasn’t the height of the settler’s naming ingenuity, as they walked past places so ingeniously named as long road, steep road, and, Isaac’s favorite, that pond by the riverside at the old castle beneath the birch.
Andri was sadly proven right. They didn’t find a single Wettnet hotspot that was turned on. The single bus that traveled between Quaintsburgh and Wett city on Sundays did not arrive as they waited for another hour. By the time noon had long passed, and the weather had cleared up a bit, they were forced to enact desperate measures.
Simon’s biking, kayaking, & axe-throwing was an odd sort of tourist-shop that offered rental equipment of every kind you would expect, and some equipment that you also never would have. There were bows and arrows next to axes and pok-ball bats that Isaac could see through the display window, tools that would have been useful to have on the exam.
Andri thought so too, apparently. He was eyeing a pair of throwing knives as if they were a five-course meal.
“We’re just here for some bikes,” Isaac said.
Andri was still staring longingly through the shop window, not letting himself be perturbed in the slightest. Isaac stared down at the rock in his hands, then at the catboy, who in turn stared at him with equal intensity.
<
“The rock. Is that for what I think it is?”
<
He raised a hand to strike, but Isaac caught it.
“I’m sure we can find an easier path, one that involves… less shattered glass.”
<
“I can… I can’t imagine.” Not the kind of stuff that would make Andri grab a rock first thing when he saw a closed shop front. And there were the scars too, jagged things that peeked out of every short sleeve and pants leg. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Andri snorted.
<
And then, after a while, he added.
<
“You could come back with us? I’m sure Claire wouldn’t mind another mouth to feed, if you help around a bit.”
Isaac thought it was a normal thing to offer. But Andri just stared at him like he was some sort of alien from beyond this world.
<<...>>
<
“I’m not… I have two siblings. It’s always been the three of us against the world. Maybe I was hoping you’d be our fourth. Or maybe I see you and I think ‘there’s someone who deserves better’.”
<>
<
Sophia was right. He did look a bit sad at that last text. And the way he turned his back, one could almost believe that he felt shameful.
“Ahem,” Bird said. “It is nice of you to offer though, on the off chance that you fail once more, young Andri.”
<>
<
“Great!” Isaac said. “But without that rock please.”
Andri grumbled and tossed it into the bushes.
“And the one in your other hand.”
Andri growled, dropping that one too.
“And the ones in your back, front, and side-pockets.
<
In the background, Sophia called them over. She’d found a few bikes that weren’t fastened at all, just strewn about a backyard, and for good reason. One of them wobbled with a wheel that was slightly out of whack, and another one was so rusted you could hear it coming from a kilometer away.
<
Andri’s entire body looked appalled at the pink lacquered bike. Its golden pom-pom tassels rustled as she shoved it at his chest.
“It’s the best one. Now, less groaning, more biking. With these, we’ll be back in Wett-city before evening.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Sophia.” Isaac grabbed a bit of paper, scribbled a small note, then put it under a prominent rock next to the back entrance together with a hundred gups. It was the last of his cash, and he didn’t have too much more on his bank account.
Bikes probably cost that much. Maybe. They couldn’t be that expensive, and they were just borrowing them for a week or so.
Unsurprisingly, we also don’t have much use for bikes back at home.
He sat on his bike, found that the gear shift was stuck in eighteenth out of twenty-one, then pushed his weight behind the squeaking pedal as they drove off and back towards the big city.