Chapter 12: Steak and Nanotech

Bent and I were putting a chicken coup back together for a property down river a bit from our house.  The remaining family were children, orphans now, but apparently old enough to work the chickens.  Which needed rounding up, so that’s what the kids were doing.  They’d found most of them, but some had wandered into the woods, so they were out with the dogs, chasing down chickens, and laughing, playing.  Children were better able to forget misery in the moment.

I worried for them, wondering what else lurked in those woods, but they seemed confident enough.

That left us to put the lattices back up, replacing the odd plank here and there.  It was slow going compared to the work I usually did, but enjoyable to be moving, using my hands, breathing in the fresh, outdoor life.  I could understand why people wanted to grow their own food, live away from the city, and all its pavement and neon advertising.

“Hey,” Bent said, “you think we caused the attack on the village?”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, this is a game world.  It wants to give us quests, but we abandoned ours.  The ‘save the villagers’ one.  We went after our supplies instead.”

“We didn’t have a choice.  Guns and food.  Definitely put the game in our favor.”

“Yeah, sure.  But I mean, by abandoning the other quest, it had those troglodytes attack the village.”

“As a punishment to us?  That seems a bit extreme, killing a bunch of villagers to guilt us.”

“I don’t know if it thinks like that.  The game system.  I mean that our actions had consequences and gave us a new quest line.  I wonder what would happen if we didn’t help get the village back in running order.  I think it would contrive a new quest line for us.”

That was worrisome.  “Would it leave the village alone?”

“Impossible to say.  Not if there are other, uh, players in the area.”

“Let’s hope we don’t end up with a ‘revenge the village’ quest.”

“Right.  Anyways, I think we should follow the quests.  I don’t think we have a choice.”

“We have our mission, Bent.”

He picked up a board, “People are going to die if we try to avoid the quests.”

“We have to find the mainframes running the nanotech and turn them off.  More people are going to die if we don’t.  Spread to other planets.  Possibly Earth.  You heard the message.”

“Marci confirmed they’re programmed from a mainframe somewhere?”

“Yeah.  They don’t recode on the fly.  That’s good for us.”

“I’m not sure it matters.”

“Of course it matters.”

He put his tools down, stood up and looked at me.  “We’re going to run out of MREs.  That leaves us a few choices.  Become villagers, forage for food, or become adventurers and make money.  Also, if we’re going to go traipsing around looking for computers, we’re going to run into monsters.  And that means we need levels or we’ll die.”

“I don’t know.  If we stay low level, maybe we’ll only run into low level monsters.  And we do have guns.”

“You might be right, maybe we’ll only get level appropriate monsters.  It really seems like we’re in a sandbox game, though.  And that means-”

“Sandbox?”

“Open world.  The opposite of a theme park.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“A theme park system has closed quests.  Like going on a theme park ride.  You get on, run through the quest, get off.  An open world allows you to wander around, do anything.”

“And some monsters will be higher level for higher level players?”

“That or different areas will be level gated.  Or level appropriate.  If we go into a high level one, we won’t be able to fight the monsters.  We’ll just be killed very quickly.  Or they’ll ignore us.  But who wants to test that?”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.  If you were the nanotech, where would you put the high-level areas?”

“Around the computer mainframes.”

A few white chickens walked by, a bunch of chicks following them.  They scratched at the dirt, quickly jumped back, at whatever bugs they stirred up, and continued.  If they were thankful we were repairing their house, they didn’t say.

“So, we likely need to level up.  Unless the nanotech doesn’t consider its own defense important.”

“I don’t like it.  But I see your point.  Maybe we do need to become more powerful.”

“On that topic, what’d you spend your points on?  For your level.”

“Uh, on intellect.  Whatever that does.  I can’t seem to open my character sheet.”

“No kidding!  That’s not good.”

“What about you?”

“Casting.”

“What’s that?”

“You probably don’t have it.  It’s for spell users.  It’ll allow me to cast more spells.  And make them stronger, I think.  The game doesn’t have a help function, so I’m figuring this out on my own.”

“All of us are, Bent, all of us are.  I wonder if Marci has a casting ability.”

“She must.”

“She can do that lightning trick.  What about you?”

“She’s a sorc.”  He saw me shake my head.  “Sorcerer.  She casts her spells innately, but I have to learn mine.  Fortunately, we got that spell book from-”

“The people we killed.  I’m honestly not sure how I feel about looting corpses.  And, yes, you’re going to tell me that’s just how the game works.”

“Yeah.  Right.  Maybe not so fortunately, then.  They tried to kill us first, though.”

“Yeah.”

“What else should we do with the book?  Burn it?  We didn’t set out to loot anyone.”

“I know, I know, I’m just having troubles with the whole morality of the situation.  And I get that if we don’t kill to defend ourselves, we won’t be of any use to the people here.  It’s just, well, not covered in our philosophy manuals.”

“We had philosophy courses?”

“Pilots don’t?”

“One, I think.  Anyways, I’m reading through the spell book.  Very close to learning my first spell!”

“Dude,” I shook my head, “you sound excited.”  I almost felt jealous.  No real connection to the game – everyone else could see their character sheets.  But that wasn’t it.  We had a mission!  And it was important.  If we could save this world, if we could switch off the nanotech, maybe we could reverse what it has done to these people.  Maybe even stop its progress across civilization.

He shrugged.  “Well, I kinda am.  Come on, magic!  It’s crazy.  Definitely going to work on it after we finish here.  Though, I wonder.”

“What’s that?”

“If the guns will let us bypass the level problem.  Like a cheat.  We could go to a higher-level area, just kill mobs for XP, gain levels.”

“Mobs?”

“Monsters.”

I stopped myself from crossing my arms and shaking my head.  “That sounds dangerous.  I think we’ll check out Lane’s cave first.  I know, it’s not computers.  But it’s our first lead.  We need to follow it up.”

***

Over the next week, we helped put the village back together.  Villagers who’d fled trickled in.  Some were embarrassed, having fled, leaving loved ones behind, others joyful at finding the village still existing, most stoic, immediately getting to work.

They gave us food.

Fred and Ave were getting restless.  During their free time, they trained by fighting each other with sticks.  Every now and again, one of them shouted in pain, but smiled the whole time regardless.  Bored with fixing the village up.

Bent and Dylan, all smiles.  They even fed the chickens together, gathered the eggs.  We mostly had eggs for breakfast.

Marci and I stopped feeling odd about our shared room.  Well, maybe.  We said good night to each other every night.  And she didn’t say anything about me snoring.  If I snored.  She didn’t, made barely a peep.

At the end of the week, I found Lane showing older kids how to build a fence, to keep their pigs in.  It was a touching scene, but I had to break it up.  “Hey, do you have a minute?”

He looked up from the fence, said, “Sure,” then patted the oldest kid on the head, telling him to continue building the fence, and walking over to me.  “What can I help you with?  Need more chickens?  Pigs?”

“It’s time for you to take us to the cave.  We’ve helped put the village back together, most of the villagers have returned, you’ve held the funerals.  We need to continue on our mission.”

“Ah, I see.  There’s still pig pens to be built, stray animals to round up, and-”

“You have enough people to do that on your own now.  Lane, either take us to the cave yourself or have someone bring us there.  We’ll protect them.”

He looked over at the children.  Two were busy turning a drill to dig fence holes, another two were holding a post in one of them, and the last was hitting it with a sledgehammer.  “Alright.  We leave tomorrow.”  He didn’t wait for me to answer, just walked back to the kids and joined them.

The tone sounded.

VILLAGE CLEAN UP: QUEST COMPLETE.  200 EXPERIENCE POINTS!  NEW QUEST GRANTED: REMOVE THE DANGEROUS DUNGEON.

“Dungeon?  What are you talking about?  Voice!  Damnit.”  I raised my arms to the sky, “Why is my game broken?!”

No answer.

***

Sitting around the campfire.  We were using half-burnt wood from ruined houses, so it didn’t sputter much, nor spark.  Though when it did, I wondered if it were termites exploding.  Marci beside me, Bent and Dylan cutting up some meat to cook over it, Fred and Ave drinking too much ale too quickly, all the while making jokes and laughing.

I stared into my cup.  The villager’s ale was dark brown and thick, and slightly sour.  Not awful, not a high ethanol content as far as I could tell, and drinkable.  And currently, they had an excess of it, and all their stored goods, like dried and salted meats and pickles.

Marci put her hand on my knee, “I’m going to miss being here, honestly.  It’s peaceful.”

I gave her a look.

“Well, peaceful now.”  She shook her head, blond hair shaking back and forth, “Helping the village, I mean.  This kind of outdoor work.  Peaceful.”

I couldn’t help but smile.  “Yeah.  Very different than living on a starship.”

“Real food – God, I love the taste!  It’s so different!  These pickles have real dill in them and other spices local to this planet.  Have you tried the peppers?  Here,” Marci passed a pickled pepper from her plate to mine, which had a distinct lack of vegetables.

“Thank you.”

“And no recycled air or water.  I guess,” she looked into my eyes, pulling her hand away, “I guess you and I still have shared bunks, though.”

“Ha!  So true.  Honestly, I find the outhouse a bit tiresome.  So far from the house and always flies, flies, flies, some spiders, and always too many mosquitoes!  Damn, I hate those.”  It was up a bit, closer to the road, probably because the river was in the other direction, and the ground would be waterlogged down there.  And if the river rose because of heavy rains, that’d be an issue.

“And gross.  It stinks in there.”

“No sink to wash your hands with.”

“Hey that’s why we put the washbasin near there.”

“You mean the mosquito breeding tub.”

Marci rolled her eyes, “Not if you use soap.  That kills them.”

I shook my head, “I’m pretty sure soap is an appetizer for these mosquitoes.”

“Here,” said Dylan, passing Marci a steak.  Steam rose off of it into the night, juices dripping the other way.  “Salt and pepper, cooked to perfection.”

“And not lab grown!  I find that the strangest, that we’re eating real animals.  I mean, I know some people do that back home, but it’s not something you run into often.”

“Careful,” he said to the elf, “it is a bit strong.  A touch gamey.”

“I like it,” Marci said.  “I grew up on a ranch, so we ate real animal meat when I was a kid.  This is nostalgic in so many ways.  I didn’t have lab-grown until I joined the academy.”

“Really?  Lucky you.  The rest of us think this tastes musky.”  Dylan shook his head, “Like sweat.”

“Please,” I said, jokingly, “let’s not denigrate the food before I’ve had some.”

“Oh!  Heh.  Sorry.  I’ll go grab yours, hold on.”  Dylan moved closer to the fire with two fresh branches in his hand held like chopsticks, turned over a chunk of meat on the grill, put it on a plate and gave it to me.

“I don’t like the idea of sweat in my meat.  Yuck.”  After cutting a piece, she took a bite.  “Nope, this is tasty.  I wonder if elves normally eat beef?  Maybe on this world, we’re the ranchers.”

Sitting on the other side of Dylan, Bent laughed, “The Woods Ranchers.”

“Huh,” I said, “Now that you mention it, we haven’t seen any others yet.  Or other people like us.  What did you call us, player characters?”

“You know,” said Marci, lifting her eyes off her new steak and looking into mine, “the nanotech might have saved the crew of the first lander.”  The elf’s eyelashes were long and black, highlighting her deep blue eyes when she blinked.

“Uhm, really?”  I tore myself away from thinking about her eyes, furrowed my brows and replied, “But it was destroyed.”

“The ship was.  It’s nanotech we’re talking about, though.  It could have brought them to the ground, turned them into players like us.”

“You really think so?”

“Let me ask you this: where does the game get its players from?”

“Uh, I mean . . . we’re the only ones we know of.  That implies that anyone landing on the planet would become players.”

She nodded, “Right.  Tiny, tiny sample size.  If that’s the only source of new players for the game, then it almost certainly rescued those people and turned them into characters, like it did to us.”

“Huh.  You might be right.  But Lane talks about other adventuring parties.  So, we know that other players must exist.  If, that is, all adventurers are players like we are.”

“Until we meet some, we don’t know if that’s simply part of his backstory or it really is part of his experience.  Remember, none of these people, these villagers, those monsters we . . . had to put down, were born this way.  Until the nanotech came, they were our fellow citizens, though the monsters might have come from animals.  Lane was not a farmer five years ago, but he believes he’s been a farmer all his life.”

I found my gaze resting on Fred and Ave, their green skin, large canines and new love of playfighting.  And actual fighting.  “Yeah.”  Then I realized, “That means Jordan might be alive, too.”

“She might be.  If we meet her, then it’s likely Alpha Team is, too.”

“And vice versa for Alpha Team?”

“I don’t think so.  We assume Jordan was killed because she didn’t make a choice for her character class or didn’t finish in time.  But we can’t verify that without finding her.”  She leaned in, “I suspect the nanotech turned her into one of these villagers.  Backstory in our game.”

“Huh.  That’s frightening.”

“Yeah.”

The implications hit me then.  “Marci, does that mean we have to play?  Does the nanotech turn non-players into backstory characters?”

“I don’t know.  These really aren’t questions we can answer until we learn more of the world.”

This time, I looked at her with worry.  It came to me that I didn’t want to see her hurt again.  “I wonder what we’ll find at the cave.”

“No way to tell.  But the fact that it’s now a quest we have to clear bothers me.  Really, really bothers me.”