Peter messaged his apologies to the team using a tiny bird-like construct. They were prohibitively expensive to use for a new player, but with the rewards of the Geas he felt like he could splurge a little. He watched as the micro-automaton flew away over the roofs of
On the other hand, he fully expected a text from Pham within moments of receipt that would roast him, his life choices, his ancestry and prospective life partners. It’s a good thing these messages were hilarious or they’d be quite hurtful.
Once the birds were out of sight Peter logged back off. A wave of tropical humidity washed over him and sweat rolled down his face, the salt stinging his lips. He’d enjoyed the momentary respite from the weather, but now someone was banging on the bathroom door and demanding he let them in. Peter tucked the black box his father had given him down the front of his pants, flushed the unused toilet and washed his hands. It was not unusual for him to escape the constant social demands of the house by reading on the bog, so taking a moment to log in and send off some messages shouldn’t have been out of place enough to warrant the battering the door was receiving so he assumed he was in trouble for something again and exited in a hurry.
“How many times have I told you that kids are not allowed to lock doors in my house?” his grandmother demanded.
It’s the TOILET door, Peter thought loudly but wisely kept that to himself. He just hung his head and hoped this would be a short lecture. The less he responded the fewer opportunities his grandmother would have to accuse him of “talking back”, “rolling his eyes” or “being just like his father”. He’d already heard, at length, about how bad all men were, how violent they all were, just looking for a chance to lie, cheat and abuse. He’d been denied all major sources of protein in his diet, because “men that ate protein beat women”. Ironic, Peter’s thoughts ran over the rehashing of the sins of every male ever, she’s never missed a steak meal and her broom has been on my ass more times than on the floor since I’ve been here.
Peter kept his face neutral with a hint of sadness, though the cold numbness of Bani’s embrace spreading again through his body made it hard to actually feel anything, Peter left the house under his grandmother’s pointed glare. Once he was out of sight, he pulled the key he’d found out of his pocket and watched it glint in the sun. Double checking there was nobody watching, Peter made his way to the shed at the bottom of the garden, unlocked the door and slipped in.
Peter’s grandfather had been an electrician and all his tools and manuals filled this dusty space. It wasn’t the beautiful view of his mountaintop retreat, but it also wasn’t exposed to the weather and was much closer to home so that he didn’t get another dinnerless night for being late back. Not that dinner’s anything to rave about, Peter considered, picking up a pair of sidecutters. You don’t make friends with salad. He clicked the cutters twice, in accordance with the ancient tradition, and found they moved freely - not even a speck of rust. In fact, every tool in the shed, despite the fine coating of dust, was virtually pristine. Peter turned a multimeter on and the screen sparked to life instantly. It was an older model and took a moment to pair with his implant but the built in self test reported all good. The shelf of books were similarly unblemished. Sure, the spines were sun-faded but the pages were free of the greasy fingermarks you would expect from a tradesman’s working manuals. Peter returned the book before he made a mark himself.
Looking around, Peter found a drop cloth on a shelf that looked clean and pulled it out. He checked the sight lines through the windows and found a nook that would fit him and laid the drop cloth in it. Sitting on the cloth with crossed legs he checked again that anybody passing the shed wouldn’t see him unless they were actively looking. At which point it would be over for him anyway, so he made himself comfortable and just sat, breathing the oppressive heat and humidity until the cold suffusing his body subsided.
Once he felt better, Peter’s curiosity returned. He knew his grandfather on his mother’s side had been a bit of a backyard inventor but this workspace was something else. There were three kinds of 3D printer and a CNC mill along the front wall closest the house. An early hologramatic display covered the side wall and window that looked out over the yard. The back wall was an impressive workbench, part metal with a robotic arm tipped with a TIG welder and part wood with a robotic arm tipped with a soft gripper. The sidecutters and multimeter were two of only three items on top of the workbench, the third being a Phillips head screwdriver.
Under the bench was a series of drawers, full of meticulously laid out tools, everything in their place. Peter slipped the three items into their slots in the drawers. There, he thought, back together. He didn’t know why the three items being out of place bothered him that much but they were like an itch he was compelled to scratch.
Over the workbench there was a full width window that looked out over the beach but as Peter reached out to touch it, it reacted, showing him what he recognised as an old computer desktop only transparent. Clearly the whole window was smart glass. There were no files or folders on the desktop but as Peter’s gaze lingered on the bottom edge of the window a taskbar popped up. There were a whole slew of unrecognisable icons in a row with one flashing red. It resembled a very flat cylinder akin to an ice hockey puck. Peter shrugged and turned away.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The wall to the right of the window was pure bookshelf. Now Peter understood why the books were so clean, they were, in the parlance of his grandfather’s day, shelf trophies for his ebooks.
The whole space was only as large as a bedroom, from the printers to the bench was about three paces and three times as wide on the long side. Peter didn’t want to turn on the light in case it attracted attention, and he certainly didn’t want to try the button beside the light switch marked “recliner”. He’d just been looking for an out of the way place to park himself and log in where it was unlikely he’d be found, somewhere out from underfoot of his mother, aunts, cousins and especially his grandmother. He pulled the remote access device he father had given him out of his pocket and put it on the bench near the power plate. A blue circle interrupted by a vertical line lit up on the top of the box - the international symbol for power - and a matching icon on the plate glowed as well. Unexpectedly, a green wireless signal lit up on the device, strobing gently to indicate there was a network it could connect to and a popup on the smart glass asked if he wanted to add a new device. Peter accepted gratefully as having both power and connection would mean he was no longer limited to an hour’s play up the hill before having to hide the little black box in his schoolbag next to the power plate in the house. “Unlimited powahh!” he chuckled to himself quietly.
Movement outside had him ducking back into his nook as one of his cousins wandered out the back door and scanned the yard. Obviously she’d been given a chore she considered beneath her and was looking for a minion to perform it for her. Peter knew he was the preferred victim, but anyone younger was fair game in the pecking order. Auntie Nina’s oldest - Nimona - was the oldest of all but she was typically off with her friends getting drunk or whatever people in their mid-twenties did. Auntie Innes’s girls Sondra and Marie came next. Sondra similarly preferred to be out shopping or sunning herself with friends but Marie was only just older than Peter with no job or means of transportation she was stuck at the house or within walking distance. Of all his cousins, Peter respected Marie the most because she didn’t play the silly games the rest did, unless their grandmother was there. Then all bets were off.
Auntie Nina’s daughter Alyssa was the same age as Peter though a few months younger. She, on the other hand, delighted in the games. Possibly because she was fourth in line and a regular target, having Peter around to shift the focus onto was a godsend for her.
Rysa was the youngest and a daughter of Auntie Innes. She was the baby of the family and knew it. At ten years old she had perfected the puppy dog eyes and the crocodile tears. She knew when to fake an injury and how to make it look like she’d been yelled at or even hit. Peter watched her slap herself once, wait until the welt on her cheek had formed, and cried to grandma that Sondra had done it. It had won her an afternoon of ice cream and a week of washup duty. You can only get away with disrupting the hierarchy in the short term and those above you will make sure you remember that. Still, Peter knew his place was at the very bottom so he was glad it hadn’t been him she’d blamed that one on.
Despite the older cousins preference for being away from the house during the day it was a matriarchal edict that they would all eat dinner together. As the afternoon wore on the likelihood someone would come looking for him to perform some menial task increased. So too did the chance of being found. Rather than taking the chance of being given someone else’s crappy chore Peter left his device on the bench and left the workshop with the intent on starting sweeping the house. If he was already working it was harder to give him their job. Not impossible though.
A thought struck him halfway across the yard and he went back and covered the device with another drop cloth so that the light wouldn’t attract attention. He didn’t see the pair of eyes peering through the window to his left.
Once inside and carefully sweeping the floor - a job nobody else wanted but simple enough that it was hard to find fault with - Peter tried connecting to the device in the shed. It was the longest throw he had ever tried and found the connection surprisingly strong. He queued up some music to listen to while he worked and got down to it.
Some time later dinner occurred. Peter had let his muscle memory take over and zoned out while he worked. He had finally managed to get all of the sand out of the bedroom he shared with his mother as well as the lounge, hall and dining room. Not that the last three lasted long. His grandmother and aunts had tracked the gritty white powder in the front door and all through the house before accusing him of being so incompetent he couldn’t even sweep a floor. His request for a vacuum had been rebuffed with a “you need to learn to do it right before you get to do it the easy way” and “you just need more elbow grease”. Any hopes of his mother defending him were washed away in a wave of vodka as she sauntered in the front door with a bottle in each hand.
She, of course, received hugs and commiserations to the tune of “look what a man will do to you”. The hardest part for Peter was acknowledging that they were, in part, right and this is effectively his father’s fault. He had allowed himself to be seduced into cheating on his mother even if it were by a collaboration between a human with a weird axe to grind and one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The whole situation made Peter’s head spin. He still had no idea how the two worlds had collided so, even after Lust’s villain monologue.
During dinner Peter kept his mouth shut and head down. He made no reference to the fact that he was given a vegan salad while everyone else had fish and chips. When asked how his day had been he answered in as few words as possible that it had been good and he had done not much, but not so few that he could be accused of being short with them. He timed his eating so that he finished second so as to not be accused of wolfing his dinner down, but not so slow as to appear ungrateful. Marie finished first and excused herself to go watch a stream in her room, which opened the gate for Peter to take her plate and his into the kitchen and start washing up. He remained at the sink until all the plates were in and washed then went out to clear the table. He remembered the one time he had tried to put the condiments away before his grandmother was finished eating and the hour long diatribe on how you shouldn't rush her that had resulted.
Once all the chores were done and everyone was happily entertaining themselves Peter retreated to his room to lay down. He thought about the discoveries of the day and felt a modicum of pride that he’d only been told off twice.
Maybe things are getting better?