“Chandana said the ship was dead. We trusted him. He was right. But even a dead god can dream. A god — a real god — is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does. That's what Chandana didn't get. Not until it was too late. The god's mind is gone but it still dreams. He knows now. He's tuned in on our dream. If I close my eyes I can feel him. I can feel every one of us."

—Indoctrinated Cerberus Member, Mass Effect 2

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Enough is enough.

For all that I have enjoyed the game, for all that it clicks beautifully into a niche in my mind of exactly what I crave in an experience, something is wrong.

I blocked off the internet connection. I know for a fact I blocked off the internet connection..

Wifi being always active means constant updates. It means downloads that I didn’t ask for from companies I don’t trust, a slowdown on my performance from the needs of the wider interwebs and the processing power required to keep that connection running.

And frankly, VR multiplayer games suck. If I wanted to play with others, I can play Fortsnite or Warframing, mediums that have perfected the mechanics of the system and requirements.

I made sure that the wifi was turned off.

But that… creature.

It waved back.

Which either means that a random area boss, potentially tied to some sort of advancement-trigger, was coded with an almost perfect reactivity… or that was a player.

In a game with no wifi requirements, and with internet access turned off.

There’s theoretically some normal way to explain this. Maybe they have a Dark Spirits-esque system of previous players and emote reactions coded into stuff. Maybe the boss always waves, a sort of cheeky challenge before it kills you dead.

…

No.

It doesn’t fit. It’s too much. Not even New Vegas, one of the greatest games in the world, built by some of the most talented, passionate studios in the world, had this level of detail on this intimidating of a medium. It shouldn’t exist.

And then there’s the other things. Small stuff, stuff I would normally disregard as a failing of the senses or a sleep-deprived mind, but that’s been building since I started. The forum thread that got deleted, the weird username I’d never seen before and which I saw twitch, and now that… eye-blink of the headset. Like a camera lens made out of meat. The way the haptic feedback is more precise and more intense than any other game, to the point where it’s genuinely painful and exhausting.

Something is off. Something should not be.

I put the headset and all its associated pieces back in its box before I go to bed.

I wake up sweating, wrapped in sheets. There is a sense of animal fear and discomfort, like I dreamt of something that is out of sight but which some part of me begged me to run from.

They say that you dream all night, but only remember short bursts at the beginning and end of true sleep. Whatever I’ve forgotten feels like it was crawling over me until the moment I woke up.

I shake my head. Dramatic ass bitch, thy name is Ilia.

As I go through the morning rituals (showering, dressing, packing my laptop) I make up my mind.

Research day.

Thirty minutes later, a car with its check-engine light on and a severely whiny suspension rolls into a coffee shop and deposits me onto its porch.

The door hinge squeaks as I shut the door (harder than is usually needed, which is already pretty much a slam), stepping away from my car and into a place of comfort. An oasis in a field of grim, poorly maintained city infrastructure.

The Golden Roast.

And there at the counter is its paladin, its joy, its greatest champion: Jay.

“Hot chocolate, two pumps caramel, and a peach tea?” he asks, the moment I walk in the door.

“You know me too well.”

“I like to think just well enough, thank you much!”

Infectious doesn’t quite describe Jay’s personality. A cough is infectious. Jay is a pandemic. I have yet to meet someone able to keep from smiling in his presence; he has an easy confidence, a casual comfort with people that never feels excessive, always ready with a joke, a wink, or a little tune he’s humming. I’d call him a golden retriever in human form, but he’s much too clever for that- he’s headed for a PHD candidacy, and damn passionate about his chosen field of Egyptology.

Which is why he has a job at a coffeehouse.

A very nice coffeehouse! One of the big three in the whole town!

But admittedly, the career paths for Egyptology are rather limited outside of academia, even in places with more than 6,000 people total.

I’ve known Jay since we met in (my) junior year. A whirlwind, and only a year into my transition, give-or-take. He’d been an unexpected source of support and brightness, a note of shocking stability in a time of chaos near-absolute, and I still haven’t paid him back for that, no matter what he might say (or how many drinks I’ve ordered here the last few years). If not for a stunning lack of ambition and the era in which we live, I’m pretty sure he’d be some genius majordomo, the power-behind-the-throne type of person. Except nice, and really passionate about old bones.

Instead, he makes some of the best hot drinks in the local area and, to my eyes, singlehandedly keeps The Golden Roast over its competitors.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

I find an open seat, one of the ones with comfortable cushions, and collapse into it, slinging my laptop out with the ease of a well-practiced motion. The place is a little pricey, at least on a bartender’s salary, but it’s worth it for the high-speed wifi and the drinks (and Jay).

All in all, it’s one of the places I feel centered. There’s plenty of good in creating a home environment that’s comfortable, a reflection of yourself, but in my experience, reflections are rarely your friend, even if they’re familiar, and something being comfortable doesn’t make it good. When I need to get out of my own head and get shit done, and going from my room to the living room couch isn’t enough, there’s few places in town that suit me better.

The laptop finishes booting up, and in seconds, I’ve got a VPN up to disguise my presence online and a search bar open for my query.

First, though, I open up a second tab, pulling up my email.

I tracked the game through every stop. Different mail services, different countries, it didn’t matter: two hundred dollars is not money I can afford to lose or get cheated out of, and my excitement for the game melded with that fact to make for near-obsessive tracking of the package. I start with my flagged and priority messages, checking backwards on every step on its journey.

Before Hollow Springs, it was with USPS, who are alright at tracking their packages. I check in on every address, finding three different warehouses- one in Montana, one in Oregon, one in Nevada, all small towns not much larger than mine. From there, overseas shipping from Hawaii, the first place I got confirmation from USPS that the package was on the way.

Before that, it gets weirder.

There’s about three weeks where I got no notifications whatsoever, but before that, I got news that it was in Madagascar, off the coast of south Africa. There, my messages came from an account I don’t recognize, but the address for the warehouse brings up images on google-maps of a building with the words “Paositra Malagasy” on the front. An even quicker use of a fresh tab lets me know it’s the official government post of Madagascar.

Tracking back from that, New Zealand.

That’s where the trail starts, but it’s not perfect. My email says that the package arrived at a processing facility there, and a quick search brings up news stories about a brand new facility, the largest in the country, processing hundreds of thousands of packages. I got a second email when it was shipped out from there, but the formatting doesn’t tell me if someone submitted the package originally from New Zealand or if it came from someplace before that.

There’s a number I can call, though.

Normally, the thought of a phone call is exhausting, but somehow, to a complete stranger for a completely strange reason, it feels easier.

Another search brings up substantially less results than before- there are no major VR gaming companies with a New Zealand office. The likelihood of someone having a secret game-development team there, or that team having someone leak a completed product early, or that product being a decade ahead of its time and weird to boot… well, it’s not high. What will I say on the call, then? “Hey, I ordered a package from a stranger on a forum that my friends vouched for, just wondering if you have records of a package you got two months ago headed for Madagascar and could tell me the return address on it?”

…It’s not as fantastical as weird meat-games growing out of my headset, but it’s not exactly the sort of thing likely to get someone to think I’m sane either. Unlikely to earn me any points on the intelligence scale either- most of a customer-service role in retail is dealing with idiots carrying the most weapons-grade stupid questions you’ve ever heard.

Still, I’m about ready to check the local time “across the pond” and call when someone interrupts me.

Jay puts down two takeout-cups of steaming hot drinks on the table, smiling at me. He’s got beads in his dreadlocks that clatter against each other very quietly, and I feel a bit of a flutter for noticing and for not noticing that he was coming over.

“Figured I’d bring them to you this time,” he says, leaning with his hip against one of the empty chairs at the table. “You seem busy.”

“Thanks, Jay. Sorry, it’s… it’s been a weird time the last two days. Doing some research on something funky.”

“Anything you need help with? You know I love funk.”

“Brazilian funk is not funk, it’s like trap-beats with rap.”

“What is any music, if not an exploration of style and genres? What is any new category of hot beats to funk to if not a blending and evolution of what’s come before?”

I snort, taking a sip from the hot chocolate. Scalding hot, but I don’t mind- the heat wakes me up more than the caffeine, and I’ve gotten over way higher pain thresholds than “hot cocoa”. I don’t flinch, even as it burns against my tongue.. “Far be it from me to yuck your yum, nerd.”

“‘Yuck your yum’. And I’m the nerd. Scoot over, what’s got you frazzled?”

I sigh, making room for him on the fancy chair. He takes one look at my open browser and flinches.

“Dang, girl! You still ain’t learned to put your tabs down when you’re done with them?”

“I’m cross referencing! Shut up. I bought this game online, off a forum. The guy I bought it from got vouched for, but I hadn’t met them before we started chatting for it, and when they sent it, it went through, like, half the globe before it arrived, and since I plugged it in, it’s been weird. It’s a weird game. I’m trying to see if I can figure out where it came from.”

Jay snorts, stealing a sip of my hot chocolate and flinching hard when he realizes how hot it still is. He shakes his head, putting it back with a sour look, before turning back to me as I (successfully, mind you) hold back a laugh.

“You bought a game off an internet weirdo and now the game’s weird. Who would have thought.”

“Not like that. It hasn’t glitched, or set up a connection somewhere, hasn’t slapped me with any viruses I found. If anything, it works too good- it runs butter-smooth, best graphics I’ve seen, and it’s got so many little details and gimmicks that it doesn’t seem possible. I’m trying to find out if I can see where the package got sent from so I can check for some big-name gaming companies there.”

“Sounds like a plan. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that the trail ends in New Zealand, and I don’t know if it starts there. And if it does, then some crazy savant coded this thing in a basement, cause there’s no VR-centric gaming companies doing anything like this over there.”

“Hmm.” Jay leans back into the seat, perching his head on his hand as he turns to stare at me fully. “Any reason this is freaking you out so bad?”

“I’m not ‘freaked out’, I’m just-”

“Freaked out.”

I sigh, turning a glare on him… but there’s no heat to it, and I end up rolling her head back with a groan.

“Fine. Freaked out. Just… it’s too good to be true, and it’s really weird. Like finding Freddie Mercury’s long lost cousin’s albums, except he’s just as good as freddie but also clearly high on bath salts. And last night, I swear I had my wifi settings turned off for the headset, but it felt like one of the boss characters that popped out waved back at me.”

“Maybe it was built in? Make for a fun little note?”

“If it was just that, maybe, but on top of everything else? It’s too much.”

Jay sighs, leaning into a fake pout. “Hate to see you so wiped. I can tell you were really looking forward to it.”

“Yeah, it’s… it’s a really good game. It’s just…”

“I getcha. Well, not really, I’m more of a moviegoer myself, but I can tell this frazzled you. I’ll be off work in a few hours, if you wanna stick around, maybe work on a few job applications…?”

I scowl at him, turning to take another gulp of burning hot chocolate (with two caramel pumps). “I like the bar job, Jay. It pays well and it’s simple work.”

“And you’re way too smart for that and I think you will have an even better time somewhere else and I’ve said this before so byeeee~,” he says, shooting up from the seat with an almost comically athletic ease. “If you do want to hang out later, just text and let me know, ok? Hot chocolate’s on me today. My gift to my weird, smart, delightful, in-need-of-comfort friend.”

I roll my eyes, but it comes with another sigh and a nod. “Thanks, Jay. You’re… thanks.”

He smiles, wide and like a sunbeam. “Ain’t no thang, gorgeous. I’ll get you for the tea when you head out, ok? And again, if you want to hang out, get some socializing time outside of work, wait here or just let me know, alright?”

Again, all I can do is nod. “I can do that. Thanks, Jay.”

He winks at me. “Hey, what are friends for?”

And with that note, he turns on his heel, practically jogging back over behind the counter, somehow magically just in time for a fresh set of customers to walk in.

I watch him go, his dreads bobbing, his skin almost glowing in the early afternoon sunlight. I take a deep breath, closing her eyes, refocusing.

Research. And hot drinks.

But I can’t help it. I look back at him one last time.

I almost choke on the hot chocolate as his dreads sway just right. As the shape of his head seems wrong, hitting a note of shadow out of the sunlight that reshapes the whole thing. As a wound in the back of his head opens a bloody, bruised, broken eye- and blinks.