This is perhaps the trippiest restaurant I have ever seen. It’s like the Rainforest Cafe. And if you haven’t heard of the Rainforest Cafe, allow me to paint a picture. It’s the kind of place that could only have been manufactured in the 90s when life was, according to my mother, a charmed and wholesome experience, bereft of social media, terrorism, vicious party politics, and Marvel movies.

It was a time when designing a restaurant to look like a rainforest, complete with animatronic elephants and hourly thunderstorms, made sense. A time when people had the money to waste on a chocolate cake topped with a sparkler that involved the entire staff halting in their steps and having to begrudgingly shout “Volcano!” to the joy of no one but the seven-year-old who ordered it.

This restaurant, Bear Bear, is like that, only that the forest it depicts is wholly alien. Dense purple and blue ferns sulk beneath looming stone arches and massive fungi that look like gooey, melting tentacles. From a branch above my chair, a head-sized ball of fur with three eyes blinks in my direction. I think it’s animatronic. I mean… I hope it’s animatronic.

Across from me, Ron gazes wide-eyed. We’re still waiting on Luci and Elias. For once in my life, I’m actually early.

“Do you think heaven looks like this?” asks Ron.

“What? Why? No.”

“Huh.” He puffs out his lips and nods thoughtfully. “I hope when I die, I turn into a ghost. And I get to do things that ghosts do. Not spook people. I don’t want to scare anyone. Just maybe float around.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

I sigh. “Ron, I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“But what do you think happens then?”

Jesus Christ. “I don’t know. It’ll be like when we were born. Just another period of forever.”

“So we’re just like, sandwiched between forevers, huh.” He thinks for a moment. “I hope it looks like this.”

This is why I don’t show up early to things. I flag down a waiter and order a cocktail. Something the menu calls a Backwards Updo. He tells me it’s made of juice from a tropical fruit and liquor distilled from a tropical plant, so that’s what I’m going with.

He also assures me that the food sits well in every hominid stomach. Apparently the only cuisine we should avoid is that from Logos and Mailleacha’a… something or other. The dominant species on both of those planets ended up great apes, so while we could eat the food, we probably wouldn’t like it.

“So somewhere warm, but not too humid,” says Luci, walking toward our table. “Maybe Portugal? I’ve always wanted to go to Portugal. Hi, Helen! Hi, Ron!”

Elias follows behind her. With his hands in his back pockets, he surveys the restaurant. I notice his gaze waver when he catches sight of some animatronic hippo-thing. Then his eyes catch mine, and he smiles.

Okay, maybe not a full smile. It’s subtle. No teeth. Just a little upward curve tugging at the edge of his lips. It’s more obvious in the eyes, the way they shrink against his cheekbones as a teeny trace of wrinkles crease at the sides. Even under those bushy eyebrows, I can see them shine. He seems genuinely pleased to see us.

Then I glance down, past his broad shoulders, past his clean but tattered flannel shirt tucked into his jeans, past his knees, and down to his legs. Plural. Sort of.

One of them is hidden beneath a layer of denim. That’s the leg I didn’t chop off. The other is exposed.

It’s not… well, it’s not what I expected. I think I was picturing either a stump or, at best, a janky half-assed prosthetic. In place of his flesh and bone, however, is something more advanced: like a leg belonging to a first generation Isaac Asimov robot, with exposed metal ligaments and wiring, semi-capped by a pair of sleek black shells on the shin and calf.

As he steps, the movement is a little stilted. It isn’t awful. It doesn’t take him out of the game - to my immense relief. But I have no idea how it will affect his mobility in the long-run.

Whatever the case, he’s alive. He’s moving. He can stay in the party, and he can fight to live another day.

But my guilt won’t be assuaged so easily. Maybe I saved his life, and maybe he’s okay. However I still panicked mid-battle, made a stranger take the fall, and then dismembered him for his efforts. So, yeah, the guilt’s gonna stick for a while - especially with the glaring robot reminder strollin’ around.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

Elias takes the seat beside Ron. “No. It’s unusual. But not painful.”

“They uh… didn’t heal you completely? They have laser showers.”

“They said it would cost more.”

“But they could have likely done it for free.”

“Yes.”

I sigh. “So… how much did it cost? Do you have to…”

“They had an installment plan for the prosthetic. It’s expensive, so I’ll be paying for some time. But it’s manageable. Fortunately, I earned a voucher for arriving through the first portal in critical health, so that covered the medical fee. Next time though, it will cost me.”

“Next time?” I laugh nervously.

Beside me, Luci rifles through the menu. “So have you guys ordered yet?”

Like the seats, the tables, and everything else, the menu is exactly like one you’d see on Earth, just a tad thicker. Apparently after tens of thousands of years of diverging evolution, we’re still human, and humans function more or less the same no matter where we are.

“Just drinks.” I point to one of the dishes. “They said this is a curry that tastes like chicken and pineapple, so I’ll probably go with that.”

“Ew, yeah, I don’t like pineapple.”

Elias sets down his menu, seemingly already decided. He rubs the bridge of his nose where his glasses usually are.

Hey, wait.

“What happened to your glasses?” I ask.

“They broke.”

“Oh. So you got contacts then or…?”

He shakes his head. “They offer surgeries, but I can’t afford it. You don’t need to worry. I’m not terribly near-sighted. I can see what I need to.”

“Sure.” So they got laser showers for free but won’t fix our eyesight. Great system they’ve got here. Totally not rigged.

“Have you considered a region yet?” he asks.

“I want to get out there first thing,” says Luci. “All this waiting around. I can’t stand it.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I look between her and Elias. “But I thought…”

“We’ve done the paperwork for Liam and written a message to my brother, Carlos, and Melissa, his wife,” he says. “Luci’s parents. They said it may take time after the reconstitution to access the list of survivors. So I agree we shouldn't wait. We will know when we know.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I reply, not wanting to press the issue. “You know how everything works then?”

“I missed my orientation, but Luci filled me in. Have you any considerations on where you’d like to go?”

“Well. I have places I don’t want to go,” I answer. “They said something about mythology which makes me think a lot of the monsters will be legends and cryptids and so on. Bigfoot. Goblins. Giants. Chupacabras.”

Elias nods. “I had the same impression.”

“Japan!” Ron exclaims. “Dude, I’ve always wanted to go to Japan.”

“No, see that’s the last place I’d choose,” I reply. “Their folklore is insane. I’d avoid Japan, anything Scandinavian or Slavic, and probably anything Scottish or Irish too. I’m not fighting banshees and spirits and undead horses and whatever else they’ve got.”

“We should also avoid climates we can’t protect ourselves against,” Elias says. “Most of the less temperate regions appear to be higher-level, so we’ll be avoiding them anyhow. However there are areas of Central America, South America, Africa, Asia, and so forth that require vaccinations. They have them at the medical center, though they cost a fair fortune.”

I snort. “They’re reassembling the whole world but keeping malaria?”

“Yeah, I can fight monsters all day, man, but mosquitos are not my jam,” comments Ron. “Got 52 bites at Louder than Life in Louisville. I counted. Fifty-two. I’m not doing that again.”

I turn to Luci, expecting her to jump in with her take on the matter, but she’s staring at the back of the menu, eyes glazed over.

“Luce? What do you think? Where do you want to go?”

“Oh. Uh. I don’t know. Somewhere nice.” She pauses, chewing on her lip.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. It’s fine.” She shrugs. “I mean, it’s stupid though, right? The whole visa thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we don’t have to just ‘not die’ next time. We have to win too, right? And who knows how long it’ll take. It’s just a lot.” She sighs. Then she glances up from the menu. “Guys. Oh my god, your faces. Seriously, it’s fine. I’m fine. How about Portugal? Or Spain. Somewhere warm and exotic.”

“Uh-huh.” I eye her carefully. Christ, she’s young. “Look. Today was hard. But it won’t be like that all the time.”

“Oh, I know. But like, for argument’s sake, how do you know know?”

“Because. Today was just a trial by fire. And we made it. Without knowing anything, we made it. So now that we know what we’re facing, we’ll gear up, we’ll get some awesome classes, we’ll pick a great location… It’ll be an adventure. Remember? You’re going to get a bow. We’ll fight dragons. It’ll be amazing.”

She glares skeptically. “Oh come on, you don’t need to lie to me.”

“I’m not!” I am, of course. “We’ll have to get good. You know, level up. Get powerful. But you saw what we did today.”

Elias nods. “Helen is right. Anything is possible.”

Ron gives a devil horns hand gesture, complete with a head bang. “Hell yeah.”

Luci surveys the table. “You guys are a bunch of dorks.”

“A bunch of dorks that fought an elite Level 10 miniboss,” I add. “So…”

“So maybe winning isn’t totally improbable,” she replies, rolling her eyes. “Also, what the heck is hanging over my head. Is that real?”

The possibly animatronic fur-ball blinks at Luci.

I shrug. “Do you want it to be?”

Soon, the waiter drops by and we order by pointing at pictures of dishes we know nothing about: curry for three of us, some kind of pancake dish for Ron. As we wait, we chat, the mood lightening once more. Then we dig in with a set of sporks - the only utensils offered.

Ron dips carby slabs of baked batter into a sauce none of us can identify, making a complete mess. When it turns out I ordered something way beyond my spice level, I switch with Elias. The man doesn’t even sweat. Luci tries it, and her face ripens like a tomato.

I’ve never traveled outside of the U.S., though my fiance and I often talked about it. For our honeymoon, we were thinking Santorini or Mallorca. Maybe both. He came from more money than I did, so we could afford the plane tickets. His parents would’ve gotten us a room somewhere for a few nights. Then, if we wanted to hop countries, it would have been just us, a pair of backpacks, and hostels congested with coeds.

So while I have nothing to compare this to, this feels like what I imagined traveling to be: taking leaps of faith with strange food in strange places, chumming around with travelers I just met. We’re all exhausted and traumatized, yet under these fake trees and fake stars, there’s a feeling. A feeling that everything will be okay, even if only in spurts and starts.

Maybe that’s how life will be from now on. Maybe life will be brutal and terrifying and depressing, but there will be moments, little moments, where we can catch our breath and appreciate what it means to be alive.

Is that what happiness is? It’s been so long. My jaw aches from smiling. As I look around the table, I see I’m not alone. Luci laughs mid-sip, spewing water across the table at her uncle who instinctively moves to clean off glasses he no longer has. Ron, oblivious, immediately starts looking around for where Elias could have possibly dropped his glasses which just makes Luci burst into giggles all over again.

Before long, the sky darkens from its alien twilight pink to a shadowy midnight blue. We split Ron’s bill of 25 gips between the four of us while Luci, Elias, and I pay with meal vouchers we earned from our “Party of Two” titles. Most of the titles seem like directly targeted insults, but at least some of them are nice.

We spill outside of the restaurant and into a night stifled with silence. The shops have shuttered, the lights over their doors casting dull shadows across the pavement. Whatever survivors haven’t tucked themselves away for the night are either alone or conversing in whispers. It’s like the entire city is holding its breath, waiting with dread for tomorrow.

The tone of our party softens too. Luci wanders ahead of us, punctuating her walk with random ballet steps and the occasional pirouette. After a moment, Ron mimics her actions, with all the grace and finesse of a middle-aged wannabe teen. She slaps at him and laughs.

Elias falls in beside me.

“An adventure?” he asks.

“Hey, when you’re depressed, you get good at finding the bright side.”

“I see.” For a minute, he says nothing. When I glance his way, I see his mouth moving, like he’s trying to figure out how to form the next thought.

“Something on your mind?”

“Yes.” He clears his throat. “I want to preface this by extending my gratitude for saving me. You risked your life. And I know it must have been a difficult decision.”

“Um. Well then, I extend my gratitude back at you, for, you know, not being mad I cut off your leg. Or making you lure the matriarch in the first place.”

“You can’t make me do anything, Helen. That was my decision alone.”

“Yeah, well.” His prosthetic catches the light. If it’s weird for me to acclimate to it, I can’t imagine how it is for him. “So that was the preface. What’s the real thing?”

He stares at me for a moment, the rhythm of our steps beating against the pavement. “I want to know why you did it.”

“I had to. The vine had-”

“No, why did you save me? You don’t strike me as a selfless person.”

“Wow, thanks.”

He sighs. “What I intended to say is that no one is that selfless. In my experience, a person doesn’t dive into the water to save a drowning man. So why?”

“Not to sound like Ron or anything, but have you always been this intense?”

He eyes me. “Is it so hard to answer the question?”

“Maybe I don’t know. There wasn’t exactly time to self-reflect. What does it matter anyway?”

“It matters.”

“Fine.” My breath feels heavy. Why did I do it? “I guess… We had seconds left. And I saw Luci standing next to me on the portal, and maybe… I don’t know. All I could think was how she said she was glad she wasn’t doing this alone, and there you were, as good as dead. I mean, if she loses her parents, then all she’s got is her little brother and that’s not a burden she should bear by herself. So, I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t want the parental responsibility.”

“Or perhaps you didn’t want to see her hurt.”

“Maybe.” Above me, the sky is clear and dark, a tranquil sea of fuck all. There are no stars. No planets. There’s nothing out there. Wherever we are, we’re here alone. “I don’t want to see her broken. Because maybe broken people heal, but they don’t heal right. Not always. And I like the way she is. She doesn’t deserve this.”

“Would you do it again?”

I look at Luci. Ahead of us, Ron elbows her and she buckles over with laughter. “Yeah. Without hesitation.”

Wordlessly, he nods. Even in the dark, I see his face relax, that consternated brow of his soothing into something just a little less fraught. Still, those gears are churning. His eyebrows twitch, his gaze flitting across the path ahead.

“I’ll try not to screw this up,” I say.

He smiles again, just with his eyes. “I believe you.”

When we return to the hotel, we say our goodnights and promise to meet at 8:00 sharp. We have weapons to buy, clothing vouchers to turn in, classes to choose, regions to see, and monsters to kill. And as my eyes close, I think about how Luci was right: It’s good to not be fighting alone.