JoshuaCole374
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Chapter 48: A Little Knowledge
🕑 Added 2023-10-19 12:00:05 +0000 UTCI watched Erin’s hands, because I trusted them more than her face or voice, but she didn’t give anything away.
Maybe I was wrong. Believe it or not, it happens. Erin’s reaction might have just been delayed because she wasn’t used to how Miguel liked to end his proclamations with a leading question.
I didn’t think so.
Erin had at least two Reactants. If I stood there and said Third Eye felt real to me in the moments I got Air and Water, if we were in a position where she felt comfortable being honest with me, even if it made her sound kind of crazy? I was sure she would nod and say the same thing about her Fire and Earth.
But we weren’t in that position.
We were in Miguel’s den, and I didn’t want him to believe. Nor did I want a conversation with Erin to be Lena’s first inkling that I was starting to.
Miguel was probably a lost cause. I saw the way he watched Erin and I. He’d caught the same thing I had, if the way his lips curled into a smirk around his cigarette was any indication.
“Of course,” he said, “it’s an absurd notion. Keep playing because you look amazing, and because it really does look like a blast.”
“Damn right we will,” Lena said. She brushed her hands on her pants and stood up. “Speaking of, you mind if we snag the Materials on your block?”
“I have no use for them.” He shrugged. “Be my guest.”
“Even split?” I said.
“Nah,” Lena said. “I’ll take ‘em all.”
Erin blinked. “Oh! You’re kidding.”
Lena laughed. “I mean, if you were gonna let me, I wouldn’t object. But yeah, I’m kidding. Even split.”
“You’re welcome to stay for lunch,” Miguel said. “But considering your terrible taste, you’ll hate it. I need something with kick to welcome myself back.”
“Excuse me for wanting to keep some taste buds unburnt,” Lena said. Her voice softened. “Are you going to be okay? I’m kidding about lunch, too. We’ll stick around for as long as you need.”
He waved us toward the door with both hands. “I’ll be fine. The best thing for me will be to get the three of you out of my hair. I can finally get some rest.”
“Just ring us if you need anything, man,” I said.
“If I need something, Cameron, I’ll call someone who could get here in less than a half hour.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “But I did have a great time watching your video. I think you’ll do great.”
“Thanks.” Now I had a frog in my throat. I patted his hand and stepped toward the door.
Lena beat me there. Over her shoulder, she called, “See you soon!”
“Much to be looked forward to,” Miguel said.
Erin nodded to him. “It was really nice meeting you, Miguel. I’m sorry it happened the way it did. That you got hurt, that you lost your beta access, and that I did something you found intrusive.”
“Water under the bridge.” Abruptly, he scowled. “There’s an idiom that’s ruined for me.”
Erin grinned. “You’ve been a very gracious host, and you made me feel very welcome. So... thanks.”
“That’s because you are very welcome,” he said.
She looked away. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.
“Out, the lot of you.” Miguel produced a lighter from his pocket. “I hate to be rude to my guests but nicotine waits for no one. Thus, no more guests.”
I chuckled. “All right. We won’t keep you any longer.”
Erin unrooted herself and I followed her out the front door.
We found Lena standing on the sidewalk where we’d spotted the arbor in Third Eye. She had her phone out and her finger outstretched, not quite touching the space where one of the trellises would be. “Have you two both got your XP for this one?”
In answer, Erin got her phone out and panned it up and down. She didn’t speak. Still seemed choked up from Miguel’s words.
“I’m good,” I said. I scanned the surrounding area, for one to check if we’d missed any subtler Third Eye objects, for another to look away from the flash when Lena collected the arbor.
“Hey, Erin,” Lena said.
“Hm?”
“No worries about the PVP thing,” Lena said. “I don’t think we wasted our time anymore.”
“I still should have warned you,” Erin said softly.
“Yep!” Lena shrugged. “Water under the bridge.”
I shook my head. Erin giggled.
“Now that’s what I like to see,” Lena said. “While we’re talking about shit you should’ve told us, and bad game design decisions, you got any idea why Materials flash when we pick them up?”
“For that, I’ve got nothing.” Erin shook her head. “It really is just shitty design.”
“I put it in the feedback form the first day,” I said.
They both nodded. “Same.”
And still no change. Lena grabbed the arbor and the light was too bright even out of the corner of my eye.
I hadn’t seen any new objects, so I focused on the next one in line, the weird hedge maze.
I was going to tell Erin to take it, but it occurred to me that we were all slipping back into treating these things as just potential Materials.
We needed to go deeper.
“Did you take a picture of that arbor before you grabbed it, Lena?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
Erin perked up. “Are you going to start posting images of your finds on the wiki?”
“Not a bad idea,” I said. “Mostly, though, I just want to make sure we think about all of these as potential clues, too.”
“This is the ARG thing you were talking about?”
I filled her in on the website we’d found and the broad strokes of how we’d tracked it down. I considered it very much to her credit that she laughed when Lena and I explained how we recognized the meme. Like us, she could appreciate classics from before her time. I tried to ignore the fact that “before her time” was “our time.”
“It’s how I found Water,” I explained. “Maybe if we understand what the objects here are trying to tell us, we can get –”
Lena elbowed my arm. “Something even cooler. Maybe Crystal, for real. Or Gold.”
“If we do find a Reactant,” I said, “it’s your turn.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Which was apparently as close as we were going to come to admitting that she didn’t have any yet. I didn’t understand why she insisted on trying to front that her avatar’s flames were the result of Fire, not a Custom Personification. Erin, at the very least, had to have one of her own, so I couldn’t imagine she’d have any objections to overspending on the Kickstarter.
Whether I thought it was a stupid secret to keep or not, though, it was Lena’s.
And I had promised to keep my mouth shut.
“So,” I said.
“What does an arbor mean?” Erin asked.
I nodded.
We clustered around Lena’s phone and looked at the pictures she’d taken. Two wooden trellises with vines weaving between them, too vibrant for the middle of winter. Three curved pieces of wood linking them together, forming an archway over the sidewalk.
“How much Wood did you get for this?” I asked.
“Seven,” Lena said. “I guess one per vine, and then one for each component?”
Made sense.
What didn’t, was what deeper meaning the arbor could have.
“It’s a dividing line between Mr. Herrera’s house and the street?” Erin suggested.
“Is it supposed to lead him out to look for shit,” Lena asked, “but he can’t because he got kicked from the beta? Now I feel like I should’ve left it here so he could pick it up at full release.”
“I doubt anything here will still be around at full release,” I said. “They’re going to have to refresh all the objects at some point. Nobody’s noticed that happening yet, have they?”
“No,” Erin said. “I’ve made a point to check the spots near DU. Nothing has respawned, and no one has made a reliable report of it doing so anywhere else.”
“Maybe they’ll do seasonal refreshes,” I said. “One at full release, and then another one down the line when most of the objects have been picked up.”
“That would make sense,” Erin said.
“Doesn’t tell us what this is for, though.” Lena wiggled her phone. It didn’t shake any secrets loose from the arbor in her photo.
We stared at it for a while.
“Let’s check the others,” Lena said. “Maybe it will make more sense in context.”
Hope springs, I thought.
But since none of us seemed to be able to figure out what the arbor was trying to tell us, assuming there was anything to figure, we headed down the street.
We stopped in front of the hedge maze. This one seemed much better as a clue. Which wasn’t to say I understood what it meant.
The yard it occupied was one of those with the house all the way in the back, no backyard at all, so the maze had plenty of space to spill out. If it’d been head high, you could have even gotten lost in it for a minute. Assuming you didn’t lower your phone.
As it was, though, it only came up to our waists. Well, mine and Erin’s. It was up to Lena’s stomach.
“I wish we could see it from overhead,” she said. “Maybe the pattern is a rune or something?”
“That reminds me,” Erin said. “I’ve talked to Shake about writing a program to brute force solve what the runes mean, assuming it’s a substitution cipher for English.”
“Sick,” Lena said. “Remember what Miguel said last night, though?”
I nodded. “Make sure whatever you set up, it tries French as well as English. Since the devs are Canadian and all.”
“That’s a great idea,” Erin said. “Maybe Salamancer can help. Of course, that means the two of them working together. They always fight, but I think they’re just becoming friends in their own way.”
Lena gasped. “I can’t imagine fighting with your friends!”
I was sure she’d be wearing one of those saccharine, angelic smiles.
But I wasn’t looking at her.
I was looking at the maze.
I really wanted to step into it.
It was stupid. Crazy, maybe. I felt certain, though, that if I walked through the maze, respecting its rules, treating it like it could really stop me, I’d find something on the other end.
“Cam?” Lena shook my arm.
I blinked. “Sorry. Spaced for a minute there.”
“Did you think of something?” Erin asked.
“Nothing relevant.” Nothing we could act on without tromping all over someone’s yard. “You take this one. I’ll get the flag.”
She frowned, but knelt and touched the edge of the maze.
Another flash, and it was gone. Just another too-large, too-empty yard, with nothing but dry grass in or out of Third Eye.
I still wondered what lay at the other end of it, though.
