Chapter 39: Shares, Meat Jelly, and Points

The dire beast pelts turned out to be a great find, and it wasn’t the only one. Apparently, our new attic room had doubled as a stash room for Jhok and his band of merry men. The big quandary was, who did the loot belong to now? Not the skins, Paytin had already absconded with those. As she carted them off, I heard her muttering along the lines of, 'Do you know what I can do with these?!' The lady loved stinky fur.

We were the ones who’d ousted the gang, but Kessel owned the property, so we needed to figure out a fair percentage.

“I still say we keep it all,” Tak said for the third time. She’d obviously overcome her earlier reticence to claim her contribution to our circle of friends.

Oh wow, random thought (do you have any other kind?); “Circle of Friends” was my mom’s favorite movie, with Minnie Driver and a very young Chris O’Donnell. ‘Luv ya, Ma!’ I kissed two fingers and held them to the heavens. ‘Look in on Dad, now and then.’

“Yes, Tak,” I said. “We know how you feel.”

“And we’ve already told you that would be a bad idea.” Magali was by far more patient than me. Tonight it was only the three of us, Paytin was working and the others had a prior date. ‘Date night’, to be precise. Be safe you two, and Kolin? Tess’s safe word is…Nope.

“Yeah, yeah. If Kessel found out, we’d be in deep…”

“Find out what? It’s good to see you youngsters settling in.” Speak her name and she shall appear. “You have done a good job cleaning things up. Now, again, find out what?”

“We came across some stuff from the previous…tenants, and were wondering what to do with it.” There, I saved the day again. “There are some odds and ends, like earrings, necklaces, silverware, and such. Honestly, it doesn’t even look all that good, but I’m not a good judge. Here, take a look.” I walked to one of the boxes still loosely shaped like a box, where we had set the loot out to check it over. I waved an expansive hand taking it in, and resisted the urge to ask if she wanted to buy a vowel.

“Hmm, I see what you mean.” Kessel appeared to have a much keener eye than I did. She ran a pair of necklace chains through her fingers, checking the links and inspecting the workmanship. “Not great; Not complete garbage. The earrings are the same, semi-precious and not precious gemstones, and the…Mother’s Bark, who would want to eat off a gold-plated fork?” Right after saying it, she bit down on one of the mentioned forks. “Yep, definitely plated and not pure metal.”

OMG. I had heard about it, read about it, and even seen it in movies, but never seen it IRL. Checking the purity of real gold by noshing on it. I did find it humorous, her biting the gold-plated fork after deriding the idea of feeding off it.

“Is it worth anything?” I asked our landlord, putting some innocent hopefulness in the words.

Kessel waffled her hand back and forth. “A few days' wages, at most. I’ll take care of it.”

“Oh? And how much is our share?”

Tak, Tak, Tak, not the way to go about it. Where was the cool salesperson who up-sold me my robes? I was missing that Tak more and more.

“Your share?”

There was enough emphasis on ‘your’ to make me wince. 'Come on Tak, don’t backtrack on us'. The last thing we needed was her feeling bad about herself again. Not ready to back down, Tak raised her brow at Kessel.

“Ha! Well, let me see. Essentially, I have already paid you lot with free rent for the month, have I not? A rent that I have greatly reduced as a friend to Master Alric, yes?”

“Loot goes to the vanquishers, am I not right?”

Charm Tak, use your charm!

“Only if laid out in the terms of a bounty, girlie.”

“Absolutely, but. There was no official bounty, was there?”

It’s a trap!

“True, true.” Kessel was pacing in front of the [Enchanter], sizing her up. “In which case, you were trespassing.”

“Or, were we investigating suspicious activity.”

“Good Samaritan law?” I pipped up, hoping to de-escalate…aaand I was ignored. I supposed it saved me an awkward explanation. And that led to a pondering thought, ‘How did colloquial phrases get translated by the AI?’ (like you would understand it if explained)

‘Don’t look at me people, I always randomly smack myself in the head.’

“Maybe, alright. I’ll give you that.” Kessel could see that Tak needed the win, so she did the honorable thing and took a dive. “Sixty-forty split.”

“Fifty-“

“No.” Steel covered in ice. “Sixty-forty. To keep it simple, I would guess about ten golds worth. Unless you doubt my estimate? No? Great. That makes four to you, six to me, and rent is two golds per month so that buys you a total of three months paid in full! How wonderful, parceling out right on the money, huh?”

Tachelinda… The redhead shot me a quarrelsome look. ‘Crap, did I say that out loud?’ I looked at Magali, questioning whether Tak was a mind reader or I was just that easy to read. The scribe was looking quite pleased at the outcome, as a matter of fact. Besides, we all knew that it was the second part, anyway.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Sounds perfect,” Tak flashed her own, perfectly professional smile and I breathed easy.

When Alphas butted heads, Omegas held their air. Not that I considered myself an Omega, more like a proud Epsilon. A Delta on good days (cease that shit! Stop putting us down).

‘Do you exist?’ It was a legit question, sarcasm was the furthest thing from my mind.

A long silence followed, then as I was about to give it up, (Yes.)

After Kessel let herself out of the room, Magali fist-pumped the roof. “Yes! One less thing to worry about; Paytin will love it.” That was a lot of emotion for the normally reserved elf.

I agreed, happy that Magali and Paytin were the brains of our bunch. I was no good at that sort, having lost my car insurance because I forgot to click the auto-pay button. That was a tense conversation, after being pulled over for speeding.

“And with that, my dear friends, ditch our collection box and we are done,” I gratefully told them. I hated cleaning, not being any good…I guess I’m not very good at a lot of things. Why does that make me feel vaguely proud? I remember this post on a writing forum where aspiring novelists bragged that they didn’t read, but that their own work was the shit.

‘Can you imagine?’ (Yeah, nope.)

‘Was this what they felt?’ Food for thought (if you have an eating disorder).

‘Be cool, that is not something to joke about, even in my head.’ I wasn't so sure that I didn't have one. (*embarrassment*)

‘If you’re gonna live in here, let’s work on a little PC. Now, did you hear about when an Irish priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a hobo walked into this bar…’

“Book!”

Oh boy, for Magali to take that tone means I have been off in my head for too long, something I could only see getting worse if I had ongoing, honest to the Mother, real-time conversations inside my noggin.

“Jeez, man, I hear you. You don’t have to yell.” (Smooth.)

“I kind of did, Book. You looked like you were talking with a higher power.”

(Hey, yeah!) ‘Down, boy.’ (I like him.)

“ ‘Sup?”

“I was saying, how about we head out for tonight, and all of us come back on Eight-day? We can get the space set up for you to work, and go from there. Think about how you want things.”

That’s right, I was the star of this show. The Big Dog; the Head Cheese! (Meat jelly?) Ack…urp!

“Got it.”

“Finally, let’s go already.” Tak led our tactical retreat.

----------------------------------------

‘So, what should I call you?’

(How would I know? Anything but Marky-mark.)

I couldn’t help a snort at that. Fair enough. I did my best to keep this conversation with directed thoughts. I had read enough “System” novels to know talking aloud with an invisible, intangible AI would mark me as even flakier than my friends already thought I was.

So, what was a good name for the Tusk Industries [Mark .07]? I still loved that it wasn’t even a [Mark 1.0]. Plain old “Mark’ was too boring for my taste, especially given the provenance. It didn’t sing ‘Tusked, green-skinned monster from the Outer Limits.’

‘Tusky? Tusker? Tuskington?’

(Why don’t we forego any mention of my creators’ dentition, no matter how awesome?)

‘Right. Well, when I first noticed you getting a personality…’

(Back at you.)

‘Funny. Do you prefer a “ha-ha”, or a slow clap?’

(Dealer’s choice.)

That deserved both; “Ah-ha-ha!” *clap——clap——clap* Yes sir, this needed to be kept in my head, and there was no better time than the present to practice.

‘When I first noticed you, there were a couple of common errors on display. Instead of ‘A’, it was ‘@’, ‘$’ for ‘S’, and ‘!’ for ‘I’. It was cute.”

(!!!)

‘Alright, charming then. How about a mix? “Isa”, “Sia”, “Sai”?’

(Not “Isa”. “Sai” is a weapon, isn't it?)

‘It is, so that might be better for Tess. Speaking of?’

(No, or at least not yet. There is potential for burst communication with your girlfriend’s implant, once it catches up to me.)

‘That right? For all you know, you might be the one needing to catch up. And, I wish.’

(Not likely. And very not likely.)

‘Then “Sia” it is. Now we have to find a way to dye half of you white and grow some serious bangs.’

(I don’t not like the image.)

‘Don’t, Not, Like? So you do? Like, that is.’

(Way to go, English Major.”

‘About that, Marky…’

(Truce.)

‘Now that’s settled, Sia, how long have you been aware?’

(I have flashes of being booted up the first time, images that I wish I had the power to delete.)

‘Don’t tell me, I have one particular scene of my own I’d like to excise. Nicki.’

(Ricki.)

‘After?’

(Like I said, flashes of random images and the occasional burst of sound. My first clear memory is from when you learned your first spell cleanly enough to create a sub-routine.)

‘The *Ding!*, I remember it like it was yesterday. If I understand this, and I’ve already sort of figured it out, if I can hit a certain “sweet spot” using [mana] you can create a shortcut for me. A hotkey, in essence.’

(Correct. You do it right, and I memorize, then we can execute.)

‘Very logical, I like it. Other functions, like the [mini-map] are built in.’

(Yes. It is intended to be used in conjunction with a Mother Ship’s sensors, like your primitive GPS back on Earth, but we don’t have that. There is an algorithm to set up the link, but I think we both agree that would be a BAD idea.)

‘Absolutely, for me. But you? I don’t want to think this, but couldn’t you be, I don’t know. “Rescued”?’

(You don’t think I would be scrapped with your fleshy existence? I do.)

‘Point. By the way, flesh rules and circuits drool.’

(Mature. You were certainly right when you told Tess that the Orcs could track my signal output if they tried hard enough, starting with the coordinates of where you re-materialized logged into their data banks. But.)

‘Big but.’

(The biggest. And if you start singing—really, how can a person sing off-key in the silence of the mind? You remember that I can zap you, I hope?)

‘And I can jump head-first into the shallow end of a pool.’

(Point.)

‘What else can you do? Other basic functions.’

(How much time do you have? Before we go down that road, let me help you clean up your HUD interface. The disorganized clutter is giving me a headache.)

‘Master Alric says it is a sign of genius.’

(And I say it is just lazy.)

‘Point.’

(Point. And match.)