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  Two more in the front were still around. HotPants and Shadow were busy finishing off the latest wave. She swung her staff in an arc through the last mass. The sudden collision sent it flying into the nearly solid bushes. Shadow stepped in and gave it a final slice, and the creature’s arms died down.

  I huffed, feeling suddenly worn out. The blade shimmered out of existence. Soon I stood there taking the deepest breaths I could manage while bracing myself on the cane.

  “Did you see that?” SweetPea asked Awesome Jr.

  He turned around with a confused look and saw four dead monsters in addition to the five in front of us.

  “You are broken,” Awesome Jr. muttered.

  “Stupid computer. If you were hiding that kind of ability, why even need us?”

  “I bet it was an event attack. Look at how winded he is,” Shadow stated. He busily inspected the corpses that lay about.

  “You know I can hear you.” My response was amazingly calm. Maybe the exhaustion of having no stamina was catching up.

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” At least the young assassin apologized.

  I shook my head and tried not to roll a tired set of eyes.

  “You’re right though. I don’t think I can do that again anytime soon.”

  The stamina bar I had off to the side was down near critical. If we did anything more strenuous than stand here, I would need to be carried.

  SweetPea was muttering to herself and seemed to be arguing with some sort of internal monologue. I was still reeling from the exertion of a single swing and raised an eyebrow.

  She shook her head at my quizzical glance and instead pointed toward the ground under our dead assailants.

  “There’s that green again.”

  I gave it some thought.

  “Back to basics.”

  “What?”

  “It’s something you should all keep in mind.” This deserved my best imitation of Carver’s grumpy but guiding tone. “When you get stuck or reach a dead end, go back to the beginning.”

  This strategy worked for dancing. It had worked for accounting during my prior career. It also worked when Hal Pal actually ran into odd problems out in the field. Start the whole process over and see what had changed.

  “Think so?” Shadow mused.

  “The entrance is this way.” SweetPea had pulled out our map and tilted it around while muttering.

  “Let’s move. I don’t want to spend all weekend in here.” HotPants marched down the hallway.

  William Carver’s body didn’t have much energy left after our second lap around, but I managed to keep a decent pace.

  Turned out going back to the start was a good idea.

  “Is that new?” Awesome Jr. was pointing at the ground.

  There had only been dull purplish tiles an hour before. Now a stream of green had invaded, reaching out from our location toward the center of the labyrinth.

  “Think killing those creatures has something to do with this?” HotPants asked.

  “Look at the plants,” Awesome Jr. said. “These are nothing like the others. Look here, and here.” The goofy male was feeling leaves of different colors.

  Green ground transformed the landscape into something a bit more normal. It felt as though the hallway where it was had grown smaller as well. This almost matched the first maze before the portal. Natural hedges came out of the ground and fought back the purple-and-black ones.

  “That’s weird.”

  “It’s transforming. Like an infection, you think?” Awesome Jr. speculated while straddling a border between normal and dungeon bushes. His neon green cloak stood out far less among the natural greens.

  “So we kill more?”

  “Yeah. Probably. But look. Here, it’s forming a path.” Awesome Jr. pushed some of the bushes away and showed us how our current portion of the maze connected to another path a little ways over.

  “This stuff is way easier to walk through. I can actually see the path on the other side.”

  “You think we can kill a bunch more?”

  “No more packs like that last one though.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think Carver can help us much.”

  “I guess we should rest. Even if he’s a computer, he looks worn out.”

  These players were starting to piss me off, constantly talking about me as if I wasn’t here. Though HotPants had almost sounded pleasant there.

  “Please,” SweetPea said.

  We set up a small fire pit in the transformed portion. No one wanted to rest near the inky maze walls. Hips ached and groaned as I lowered this old frame to the ground. Sleepiness washed over the ARC’s feedback in a simulation of William Carver’s exhaustion.

  Shadow and Awesome Jr. fought over the food. Finally, SweetPea managed to edge them both out of the way and make something. She was one of the few who’d directly asked me about cooking in-game. The others had gone down very different paths, and there was a clear difference between what they supplied with the same materials. I didn’t want to give our meal of [Rat Meat] too much thought. Newbie players meant poorer food.

  “This food’s way better than the scraps my Master gives me,” Shadow said while noisily chewing.

  SweetPea didn’t respond.

  These guys were so chatty too. I had been subjected to a few players, especially those new to a virtual game like this, who gabbed about everything under the sun. One middle-aged woman had loaded into Continue with her husband. Both of them went straight for the beach and played around in the water until their health dropped to zero. They were confused upon resurrecting at the starting point. Both laughed themselves silly before moving on with their day. I would have asked them to join our quest, but they were rarely logged on. Most new players acted as if the game was more of a hobby. These four players actually played the game.

  “We ready?” HotPants asked.

  “I guess. How many of those things have we killed?”

  “I don’t know. Thirty or so?” Shadow responded to SweetPea.

  “Look here.” Awesome Jr. pushed the bushes out of the way completely and made a path between the maze’s edges. “SweetPea, this spot on your map, should be right outside the unexplored area, right?”

  “I think so.” She nodded with a frown. Her finger trailed around the map, recounting curves and details. Then she nodded again.

  “Then if this, I don’t know, detoxification? If it keeps going, we’ll open up the inner portion with a few more?” The boy was fairly quick.

  “Sounds like a plan. Let’s go.”

  Shadow interrupted the forming plan with both hands up in a stop motion. “How about you stay here, and I’ll pull some of those monsters to us.”

  “Only a few at a time please,” SweetPea said while standing behind Awesome Jr.

  “Of course, I’m not some idiot who’s going to try to light the place on fire.” Shadow gave an unsubtle glare Awesome Jr.’s way.

  I loved the idea of them fetching monsters. Shadow seemed smart enough to navigate most of the easy turns. Moments later, he brought another two to our doorstep. HotPants and Shadow finished them off fairly quickly. Awesome Jr. had sat down with a depressed look on his face and seemed to be concocting something. SweetPea was staring wide-eyed at the two doing most of the actual fighting.

  Old man deaf ears heard no real dissension. There were brief pauses when it seemed as though HotPants and Shadow were communicating silently. I hadn’t experienced any sort of secret whisper method in this game like others had. If the theory held true, there should be a method, however. Were they trying to oust the other two? Hopefully not.

  “Those explosives of yours are useful,” I said to Awesome Jr. “Do you have any other mixtures?”

  “I guess. I’ve been trying to find a freeze blast of some sort. All I’ve got is one that drops goo on the ground.”

  SweetPea twisted up her face. “It’s gross.”

  “There might be a use for it.” I stood peering over his shoulder. A little close
r and I would actually be able to see what he was doing with some clarity.

  “Glad you think so. I spent all my money on these vials at noon, spent another six hours testing things out. Then I had to pay Miss Robuls for her highest-proof alcohol in order to have something.”

  “The night in the cave didn’t go well?” I’d thought he would have learned something magical from the game by the end of the night.

  “Not as well for me as it did for Melissa. I mean, SweetPea. She won’t tell me what happened, but when I try to use the skill I got, she lights up like a beacon.”

  “You sure that’s not the infatuation speaking?” Now that we had a moment of downtime, I felt comfortable poking a bit of fun the youngster’s way. He reminded me a lot of myself at that age, though chemistry had never been my forte.

  Awesome Jr. flushed and looked over at the girl. She was drawing lines of chalk on the ground, measuring who knew what.

  “No, it’s not that,” he said.

  The other two kept right on pulling single creatures down the lane and killing them. We were lucky that this cleared area seemed safe enough. My stamina was back to nearly full, so I could probably pull another one of those blade swings out of nowhere if things got dire. After I figured out how this cane transformed.

  “How do you do it, Mister Carver? Everyone looks up to you. You’re a hero,” Awesome Jr. was speaking, still while staring at the girl of his dreams.

  They may have grown closer in the last two days, but I could detect his worry. Those days felt familiar—the worry about if I was lacking compared to all the other guys out there.

  “I don’t know how to be a hero.” Not like William Carver did. “I don’t know how to be a villain. I only know that there are things in this world I must do.”

  Awesome Jr. chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment, both hands frozen in the air with two test tubes of swirling colors. Then he shook his head again, seeming to banish the fuzzy-headed thoughts.

  “That reminds me of a poem. ‘Invictus.’ He said, ‘It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.’”

  “Good kid. You know your stuff,” the older female said. HotPants was huffing while holding her staff.

  Shadow looked worn out behind her. A pile of dead ink monsters littered the ground. Emeralds and other greens bled across the landscape to slowly meld with our safe zone.

  “Yeah. We studied Mandela in history. It came up twice, along with another passage,” Awesome Jr. responded.

  “Yeah? Anything good?”

  “Yeah. Wait, hold on. I’ll grab it. I think you’ll like this one, Mister Carver.” Awesome Jr.’s form turned into a dull, lifeless version. His hands went back to mechanically mixing potions as he tried not to sneak sidelong glances at SweetPea. Autopilot was not flattering on the teen.

  Clearly the machine AIs that ran Continue knew exactly what kind of personality Awesome Jr. had. I would love to see his autopilot get caught stalking SweetPea. The Event message from that would be hilarious. Awesome Jr.’s object of affection was completely oblivious.

  SweetPea was jumping up and down for joy. Hair flew everywhere as her skinny body danced around.

  “We did it!”

  “Oh yeah? You mean we did it,” Shadow said. “You two sat there.”

  “Hey, you leave the kid with the bundle of explosives alone. We’ll probably need them.” HotPants was completely onboard with Awesome Jr.’s mixtures. “The robot here can probably only do that whatever-he-did a few more times, and I’m not going to wipe in this dungeon.”

  “Wipe?” SweetPea stopped her happy dance and tilted her head.

  “It’s where we all die and fail,” Shadow said. “And I have no plans to die.”

  “No one plans to,” I muttered, sinking into my sad mood once more. Maybe I should invest in some anti-depression medications. They’d helped last year during my second relapse.

  “Here. I wrote it into my journal,” Awesome Jr. said when he came back.

  “What did you write down?” HotPants asked.

  “It’s another quote. This one’s not a poem. It’s from Theodore Roosevelt.”

  “Come on, walk and gab.” HotPants recovered enough to start pushing bushes out of the way. She huffed and pulled out a much smaller dagger. Slowly she sawed at branches to clear a solid path that any of us could walk through.

  “‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.’”

  “Sounds like someone I know.” Shadow gave his snark-filled opinion, obviously about the work he was doing to kill our invading monsters.

  Awesome Jr. flipped off the would-be ninja.

  “This isn’t about you, this is about Mister Carver.”

  “Keep going.” I motioned.

  “Right.” He took a breath and tried not to look embarrassed.

  I had forgotten what being a teenager was like. For me, everything had been steps away from an ego-crushing event.

  “‘The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly.’” Awesome Jr. was emphasizing many of the words, as if trying to give the great speech himself.

  It was impressive to me. Even HotPants seemed appreciative and halted her hacking of bushes.

  “‘Who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds. Who knows great enthusiasms.’”

  “Sounds pretty wordy to me,” Shadow blurted.

  HotPants punched the young assassin and gave him the blade. He grumbled and started sawing away at the cleansed plants.

  “Shut up, Shadow. Keep going, Awesome.”

  “Awesome’s my father,” Awesome Jr. absently mumbled while gazing at SweetPea. His head shook, and he consulted whatever notes his ARC displayed. A moment later, and he recited the remaining passage.

  “‘Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions. Who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.’”

  Mere moments after finishing his quotation, a box flickered into existence on his screen. I gave a smile. The machine had rather enjoyed his touching rendition. It might have been the effect of Awesome Jr.’s new skill or it might have been the fact that we’d ventured into a new room, but I felt better than ever.

  A wave of energy washed over me, reducing the wear and tear that plagued William Carver’s computer body. My hand gripped the cane eagerly, and I could almost feel the hilt of a blade shifting beneath my fingers. It would only take a moment of intent to transform this walking stick into its outrageously giant form.

  “So there you have it,” he said.

  “You keep reading your history.” HotPants looked the happiest she had ever been. “Some of those presidents, they may have screwed up as much as they fixed, but they knew how to give a speech.”

  “Anyway. I figure you’d like this one, Mister Carver. The people in town, they tell stories about your adventures. The people in the tavern practically tell your top ten greatest stories every night,” Awesome Jr. said.

  “God help me, Peg wouldn’t shut up about you. She was so excited to see you getting back in the field. Drove me batty.” HotPants still had a lingering bit of cheer, but her memories of Peg must not have been positive.

  “I guess that’s true. Even my master respects your journeys,” Shadow piped in.

  “Anyway. You’ve been the man in the arena. I don’t know about the others, but I’ve never done much of anything with my life.” Awesome Jr. sighed. “So this has been—is like serving next to a legend.”

  “Mh.” This was embarrassing. I was being prai
sed by players for the work of another user that I was only pretending to be. Awkward.

  “Well.” I thought about what Leeroy had said. The last boss in here was unlikely to be anything these plebs—his word, not mine—could handle. “You’ll have your own story to share by the end of this.”

  “Why did you pick us, Mister Carver? You could have taken any number of fighters from the town. We’re nothing, even if we’re Travelers.”

  “I’ll answer your question with one of my own.” I grumbled and got back into my role as Carver. My cane banged against the ground. This was a really good chance to execute my Carverisms. There was no progress bar anymore, but that didn’t mean I should break character.

  “What do you want from this world? Why did you come here?”

  That was a question I had posed to these players before.

  Shadow was the first to respond. “Fame.”

  “Adventure.” Awesome Jr. was looking at SweetPea when he responded.

  She pulled down her hood and didn’t have a response.

  “I just want to hit things,” HotPants said. “A lot.” Her faded red clothes seemed to stand out even more among all the greens and blues in our landscape.

  “Whatever it is you want, whatever you feel your world is lacking, you can find it here,” I said.

  “And you, Mister Carver? What do you want?” SweetPea asked.

  I wanted one thing for myself. One item honestly and deeply. I wanted the hurting over my deceased fiancée to stop. James had given me this chance as both a distraction and a lure. But Carver wanted something else entirely. Giving my answer would be invalid and cheapen this whole event.

  “Me?” I hummed a bit and banged the cane once more. I knew what Carver would want. But saying it out loud and not sounding goofy was another matter.

  “Yes, Mister Carver. What do you want?” SweetPea asked again.

  In my four weeks, she was the first player to actually turn the question around. SweetPea, my first Traveler.

  “You say the people tell stories about me?”

  Awesome Jr. nodded.

  “Well, no one tells them to my face. They let me sit on the bench day in and out because they think I’m done with it all.”