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  “You should have taken him for child support,” I said.

  Beth’s father had demonstrated absolute scum qualities by running off like that. We never tried to track the man down, and my sister refused to pursue the matter.

  “No, no, I wanted nothing to do with that man, and I still don’t. That’s not the point,” Liz said. I could almost hear the coffee mug in her hands cracking under pressure. “If you’re in trouble, then let us, let me know. We—I—owe you.

  We’re family.”

  That was the same line I had used when helping her with the bills after Beth’s father dropped out of the picture. The simple statement made me feel guilty all over again. For being so broken, for being unable to keep it together. Other people moved on after a year. It hurt, but they somehow did it. Not me. In my heart, I still clung to her memory as if it was my only lifeline, which was almost spitting in the face of my sister’s kindness.

  “And if you ever scare me again with these sorts of threats, I’ll kill you myself,” Liz said. She walked off down the hall and left me alone at a kitchen table full of my future.

  Two months after that conversation, everything got a final seal of approval. I was certified as tentatively stable. My insurance company was on board. My old house had been successfully sold to the renters, who seemed eager to make things official. My new home was hours in the other direction but still close enough to Liz and Beth. That way if I had a bad night, home was only a car ride away.

  I had set up a few other purchases as a result of my job. Things that Trillium easily provided to all contractors. Liz could have her coffee as comfort; I would have a dance program. Part of me felt ashamed to use a dead woman as my dance partner. The other part of me wanted to hold onto any remaining image of her in order to keep myself together.

  The doctor said I had complicated bereavement issues. None of the clinical explanations helped. My psychiatrist had said that finding the will to continue was an exercise in distraction. Not avoidance, but finding other things to focus on and live for. We had discussed the move, and he suggested that it might be a good way to progress with my life. Changing where I worked and lived was a thin line, he warned. Overworking was my last major crime since I had given up drinking again.

  This was my life now. If overworking kept me around for Liz and Beth, then it was a small price.

  Session Eight — Grumpy Old NPC

  Transitioning wasn’t hard or sudden. I basically went to sleep and woke up as another person. A doctor could have told me to count backward from ten with the same impact.

  After waking up, there were a lot of changes. Everything ached immensely. The throbbing pain served to remind me how amazing this game was. These weren’t sharp jabs of simulated pain. This was everywhere, from everything. Breathing was hard too, but getting easier the more I looked around.

  I tried to lift one arm, and weakness stole my strength. Lifting my arm took too much energy. My eyes drifted around and took note of a cane that I had gripped to near death. My fingers were locked in a curl that seemed permanent.

  The view was probably beautiful. I was sitting on a bench while staring at a sunset over the ocean. Things were fuzzy, and no matter how many times I blinked, it didn’t clear up. Birds cried out from above. Squinting wasn’t bringing them into view.

  “Ehhhhhh.” A noise escaped me as I shifted to one side. Switching which leg was crossed over the other hurt.

  People chattered nearby. Children played on a beach and built sand castles. Some adults did as well. Keeping my eyes from drifting asleep took some focus, but I could see a difference between the figures. Players had visible icons above their heads—simple green ones and a red bar that would fade in and out as I stared. Everyone who didn’t have bars must have been computer-generated characters. In other games, they would be called nonplayer characters, or NPCs for short. Parents dodged after little ones. Guards patrolled the beach in twos. I saw a vendor selling items out of his little cart.

  “Hhhhhrrr.” Movement hurt again. I winced and tried to make out people.

  A few things were extremely clear. Pop-up boxes had formed nearby, each one citing bits of information about the NPCs around me. When one middle-aged woman came nearby, she waved. A box spun into view, citing who she was, how long this body had known her, and other tiny details. I grunted and lifted the cane a little. She smiled and kept on walking. It gave me another moment to review my current situation.

  A meter? I squinted and looked around trying to bring something up. Wait, there—a tiny percentage bar was hanging off to one side.

  Progress: 12%

  Was that measured based on my single feeble cane wave? Or maybe sitting here half asleep?

  Quest: A Last Gasp

  Difficulty: Unknown

  Details: You’ve chosen to take up the mantle of William (Old Man) Carver. The duration of this act is four weeks. Many of Old Man Carver’s skills and knowledge are still functional. Results will be measured based on performance as Old Man Carver. Review synchronization meter for progress.

  Special circumstances tied to this quest have imposed the following restrictions:

  Autopilot time will not impact completion.

  Failure: Complete failure is impossible.

  Success: Possible information (Restricted)

  What exact kind of NPC was Old Man Carver? There were too many questions. I would have to make it up, to the best of my ability, as I went along. Logging out would be counterproductive too, unless my progress reached far enough. With vacation time, I could finish this quest up and maybe settle my thoughts before going back to work.

  That fuzzy sunset was impressive. I sat there and watched while time passed in-game. Well, it was more like a background as I dug through informational pop-ups. Plus, with focus, I could see what sort of system windows other players were getting. The man on the beach building a sand castle received small bonuses to [Coordination] with city reputation boosts. Every so often there would be another trickle to [Focus].

  Neat.

  Once I was really playing the game as myself, I would know all sorts of tricks. Was that intentional or a side effect of being an NPC? All this assumed that I wouldn’t try to rip out my ARC’s hard drive upon this big reveal.

  Another player was marching around with the guards, doing patrols. Her [Strategy] trait was going along with her [Endurance]. She had other notifications that didn’t display. They were all grayed out, probably due to being traits or skills that I hadn’t unlocked. This whole system, this game, was like nothing I had played before and was so strange. At least these results made sense. One gained points for doing work, and the points gained went together with what actions were performed. Two hours passed in-game as I watched people go about their actions.

  “Excuse me, sir?” A female voice came from nearby.

  I groaned and turned, but couldn’t quite swivel my head enough to see.

  “Yes,” I repeated three times before the word made it out.

  “Can you help me? The guards over there said I needed to talk to you.”

  “Eh?” The noise came out of me automatically.

  “I’m trying to find a place to learn the cooking skill,” she said.

  “Eh?” I said even louder. Why would I know anything about where to find a skill? How much knowledge would a game NPC have of these kinds of things? Two pop-up boxes flipped up as I chewed on my cheek.

  Warning! Your recent actions have demonstrated confusion. Old Man Carver was not a confused sort of person. In order to maintain an effective facade, you will need to perform better.

  System Help! Old Man Carver has been numerous things in his life, but in his twilight years, he became a guide to new Travelers. In his pocket are maps that provide information from locations around [Haven Valley]. Most who visit him are sent on a task prior to being given a map. This task varies based on Old Man Carver’s whims. In order to succeed while standing in for Old Man Carver, you must fulfill his duties.

&nbs
p; Progress: 10%

  Well, crud. I had lost points already.

  “Cooking. What good is cooking to you?” I had to stall and think of a task. Who cooked in today’s world? Oh, besides my mother on holidays. Wait. Right. Video game world. Cooking was probably fairly common by necessity.

  “Mister Carver, sir, I need cooking before I go out of the city.” She was so soft-spoken and timid-sounding. Not at all like the Voices I’d dealt with. They were each a heavy personality.

  “Fine. What’s in it for me?” I came up blank on the questing part.

  A system notification cropped up again, telling me of the latest failure to perform.

  “Bah. Never mind, you probably don’t know how to do anything useful. You visitors are all the same.” My hasty attempt at back pedaling knocked my progress down another percentage point, making me wince. Wincing also hurt.

  System Help! Old Man Carver is grumpy and looks constantly sour, but his words often cut straight to the point. He never asked others what they could do for him and would always assign them a task.

  Progress: 9%

  “Go clean up the beach for me. Pick up the litter your buddies left behind. Maybe then I’ll get you a map to your precious cooking instructor.”

  That little decision prompted another window refunding one of my failed points. System notifications were going off like crazy as the game tried to adapt me to this new role. I wondered how they had even programmed something for a player pretending to be an NPC.

  No. I had to think of little tasks for players who decided to bother me. This area was one of the starting cities. Slowly, painfully, while trying not to groan and bellyache from the pain, I reached inside the robe I was wearing and dug out a rolled up parchment. Great. I really did have a map, and from the brief feeling of sliding my hand under this brown robe, there wasn’t much between a breeze and me.

  Old Man Carver didn’t like putting on much in the way of clothing, among all of his other features. With a lot of strength and determination, I pushed up from the bench and wobbled a bit, trying to get the ground under me.

  “Ooooh.” Groan prevention was impossible.

  I managed to lift an arm to about chest level and unrolled the map. It flopped downward, and my eyes dropped with it. These words were far easier to see. Continue Online had dubbed Old Man Carver as nearsighted. There were dots all over the map, even some weird half-image ones. Notes were scribbled about. Focusing on specific dots revealed a myriad of information. There were tasks on here, mysteries of the area to send players out to, common items that needed to be resolved.

  Goodness, this thing was a wealth of information for new players.

  “Where’s cooking?” One of the dots lit up brighter than the others. Go NPC powers!

  “Ah ha.”

  A name, a face, almost a miniature dossier came into being. Not only was the game showing me where cooking was, it showed me details about who was involved.

  Turned out the person in question, a chef working at one of the three inns in town, preferred those who were very clean and well-kept. He hated disorder and often fired people who couldn’t keep a kitchen polished. The man also worked nights for hours, prepping for the following day.

  “Hah.”

  The girl who had spoken to me earlier was still out there cleaning things up. She seemed to be looking at a progress bar similar to the one I had. Hers, at least from this angle, looked to be tallying up garbage collected. This character’s eyesight officially reached terrible. The Voices hadn’t completely crippled me though. The beach and garbage were fuzzy, but the game windows were amazingly clear. I felt a little dirty for peeping on her system text like this.

  Sunset would be ending soon. The long fading brightness was losing to nighttime. A chill blew in across sand and sea, then crawled inside my skin, down to the bone. There was a pop-up telling me that Old Man Carver didn’t like to stay out too far after sundown.

  I gained another percentage point for turning to watch the dying light. Maybe William Carver had loved to watch sunsets. Maybe he liked the ocean. Mysteries abounded for my temporary acting assignment. I stood there, holding myself up against the wind. My job would only be completed if the girl, young lady, finished her beach combing. Hopefully before I started taking a hit to my own progress bar.

  She was scrambling, looking upset and tired as time went on. About halfway through, she stopped to pull some bread out of the player bag at her waist and shoved it into her mouth. Moments afterward, the revitalized player stood and kept picking at the ground.

  Was there a hunger bar?

  Probably. This game was intended to be realistic, and she’d asked for the cooking skill trainer. I squinted and tried to focus on my statistics. There was more information available now than there had been in the trial room.

  There, that had to be a hunger bar. I pointed one gnarled finger and slowly dragged the bar to one side. I learned, from watching other players do their thing, that it was possible to lock status bars into view. That way it was always present instead of only coming up when something critical was happening.

  A game manual popped into existence, displaying information about all interface methods, but there seemed to be a lot that was left uncovered. Most things only showed up once I’d experienced it for myself. Losing health to an evil puffball fantasy chicken-thing had rather clearly shown me what a health bar looked like.

  I sat on the bench again, cane still in my hands, fingers curled in their death lock. To my side sat the map.

  “Mister Carver.”

  I managed to work the kink out of my neck enough to turn and look. This was a city guard, an NPC judging by all the information that came up.

  “Dayl,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. I’m glad you remember me, sir. Father says sometimes you forget, sir.” He rushed his words together.

  Dayl had to be in his younger years, but there was no age on his information window. He wore armor and had a helmet that covered most of his face. The body under it was clearly trained and worked out.

  Apparently Old Man Carver drifted off sometimes. A constant stream of information was pelting me. Maybe it was a case of having too much knowledge in your head and getting lost trying to sift through an ocean. I read the messages regarding this new person. Turned out Dayl would escort me home or sometimes wake me up if I passed out on the bench. No, if Old Man Carver passed out. Not me. A yawn escaped, and both eyelids sank for a moment.

  “Are you ready to go, sir?” Dayl asked.

  “I’m watching this one.” I tilted the cane. The action gained me another point of progress, bringing me up to thirteen percent.

  “Another Traveler, sir?”

  My head nodded. “Another.”

  “They’ve slowed down a lot in the last few months.” Dayl’s voice broke in the middle of his sentence.

  “Happens. Did you think they were endless?” I had almost said “we” when responding. There were only so many people on Earth, and of those not everyone would be interested in a game.

  “The big cities got it the worst. Father says we should be thankful for all the work they’ve done.”

  “You disagree?” I said as another window drifted by. This one contained information about Dayl’s father. Being city guardsmen was a family tradition.

  “I don’t know, sir. Things are changing. Six years ago, there were no Travelers. Now they’ve started to appear out of the blue in our city,” Dayl said.

  “Times always change,” I responded slowly. Hopefully things changed around here. A game with a stagnating world would be mind-numbingly boring.

  “They used to only appear in the bigger cities. Father says that stopped once the Kingdoms started to recruit them. Travelers only appear in neutral areas.”

  “Mh. Makes sense.”

  Games had capital cities, places where trade, meetings, or whatever would be handled. Normally, entire quest chains would start from there as well.

  It would be interesting to
see exactly how big those major cities might get. Especially since there weren’t only NPCs wandering around all day and night. They had homes and, judging by the last few hours spent on the beach, they lived their entire lives here in a simulated world.

  “Father says I worry too much. But, sir, there’s been a shift toward violence since they started arriving. And more of them are being elevated to important roles.”

  “So let the Travelers choose what they do like everyone else does.”

  “But Travelers are frightening. That girl over there, she looks stronger already, sir, and she’s only been picking up trash.”

  “She’s about done.” Her progress bar was reaching completion. Which was good. Every time I talked to Dayl, my own progress for this NPC quest went up and down in bits.

  “Do you think there will be war? Father says there won’t be one, but I can’t help but shake the feeling,” Dayl asked.

  “Oh, yes.” I nodded and watched my own progress bar jump up five percent in one go. “There will always be a war.”

  There I sat, an old man chewing on his lip while watching a young girl about my niece’s age clean up the beach. Most NPCs were gone by now. Those who lingered were escorting carts and headed in various directions. While a guard who was entirely too young babysat me.

  How odd this whole situation was.

  The girl finally finished her task as I slowly tapped my foot in time to the music in my head. I recalled a song that had played weeks ago. That four-minute dance had taken me hours to learn. Maybe Old Man Carver had a bit of dance in him somewhere.

  “I’m done, Mister Carver, sir.”

  This player was so soft-spoken that I almost missed her. At some point, my eyes had drifted out to the sea, watching blurry swells fade closer to shore.

  “Here. A map.” My arm felt leaden, but I tried to point.

  She carefully took the scroll from where it sat. I didn’t have the energy to lift my arm and actually hand it over.

  “Mister Carver, sir, where’s someone who can teach me cooking?”