Chapter 34: Lounging Around

Marci walked into the room looking fresh. Face gleaming, wet hair, a spring in her step.

Fred handed her the glass of the ridiculously expensive cognac we’d set aside, that he’d been trying to ignore so he wouldn’t drink it, “Here you go, very smooth.”

“Thank you, Fred.” She plopped herself down in a sofa chair next to me, “The showers are wonderful, but then I had to get back into my dirty clothes and armor.” Marci tasted the dark brown liquid, “Very nice. Sippable. Is this some kind of rum?”

Fred gasped, “No, it’s . . . cognac. Very, very expensive cognac.”

“Tastes kind of like rum.”

Eyes wide, lips trembling, Fred said, “It’s nothing like rum.”

“You know,” she winked, “like the longer aged stuff. Stored in different barrels. All that.”

“But,” the green barbarian looked at the ground, “ah . . . this has been aged well over-”

Bentley cut in, “These guys have wardrobes, closets. Probably some clothing in them.” He sat down, picking up a glass, “You have any more of that rum?”

“It’s not . . . oh!” The big man closed his eyes and slowly exhaled.

Setting her more or less full cup down, Marci tilted her head, “I’m not sure I want to put on evil panties.”

“After all that rum,” Ave smiled at that, tapping her belt, “how about naughty panties?”

“It’s cognac! Rare and expensive cognac!” Waving his hands in the air, eyes wide, Fred said, “It’s so much better than rum!”

Marci picked up the glass and stared at it, “Are you sure?”

“It’s at least a hundred years old!”

“I’ll admit,” the wizard nodded at Dylan in thanks for pouring him a glass, “I took some. Underwear.” He took a sip, “Oh, this is pretty good. Cognac you say?”

Both girls immediately looked at Bentley, Ave saying, “Are you wearing the evil underwear now, Bent?”

He shrugged, a ‘what-are-you-going-to-do’ look on his face. “Not yet, not until after a shower. I think clean clothing matters. And so,” he gestured to the other room, “did they.”

Marci scrunched up her face, “I guess. I think she’s bigger than me, though. And clearly too small for Ave. Though, maybe the guys have some boxers or something?”

“I’m definitely bigger than all of them,” Ave’s bicep bulged as she brought the cup up to her mouth. “Much bigger.”

Marci touched Fred’s arm, “The cognac is good, thank you.”

“Whew! I thought I was going crazy. Entirely my pleasure.” Fred visibly relaxed, “Hey Boss, where do you think my sword is hiding?”

“The treasure could be anywhere, if there is treasure.” I breathed out a sigh, rubbing my temples, “I really just want to sleep for a week. But we should make sure this place is safe first. Hopefully, no horrors hiding in the closets and no evil animated undergarments.”

After setting the bottle down, Dylan looked over at the entrance to the living room, “They haven’t banged on the door in a long while. We should probably take a look, see what’s going on in that hallway.”

“I think they’re destroyed,” said Bentley. “Or, at least, the magic keeping them alive stopped working the moment altar number three was broken.” He looked down at the table, “These weren’t very powerful necromancers.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “They filled an entire hotel with the dead.”

“We beat her so easily. Yeah, the whole quest has been tough, we’ve taken a lot of injuries. But a powerful necromancer would have been much more difficult to fight. Better protection than these animated . . . bodies. And they wouldn’t need altars to power the magic.”

“Listen,” I said, “none of this is magic. It’s all the nanotech. It’s just creating artificial rules, like that you need these crazy altars, which are symbols instructing the nanobots to roboticize dead bodies. The zombies aren’t magically animated. They’re only moving because tiny little machines are powering the muscles and keeping bacteria and fungus from digesting their remains. They probably don’t have working senses, either. Fields of nanobots are likely sensing our movement, relaying that to the bots inside the bodies.”

“It’s honestly easier for me to understand as magic,” said Avery, tilting her glass to one side.

“No,” said Marci, “you’re right, River. And it means that we could disrupt the bodies – the magic – by using Faraday cages or EM interference if we knew the frequencies they use. If we could find military hardware, like a missile or drone defense system or, I’m just brainstorming here, a radio station, maybe we could disrupt the nanotech’s communication in a localized space.”

Tapping my fingers on the chair, I said, “That would be useful if we wanted to send communications to the Victoria, except that she’s out of range except for FTL coms now. But if we could set one up in case a ship returned, that’d be great.”

“Or if we needed to get away from the nanotech. Or whatever they’re controlling. The zombies would cease functioning, cease being dangerous.”

“Ah, then we couldn’t gain XP,” said Fred. “How would we level up?”

“It’s not going to work,” said Bentley. “Unless you want to hang around a surface to air defense system the entire time we’re on this planet. Plus, we don’t know what frequencies the bots talk to each other on.”

“If we had a handheld device, like the kind you target drones with, we could create local bubbles of interference. That might prevent an enemy from attacking us.” Marci paused for a moment, putting her glass down, looking at me, “Take that woman. You fired upon her, but she was immune to nonmagical weapons. Had we disabled the nanotech around her, those bullets would have been lethal.”

I nodded. “That seems feasible. But, when we first landed and you got these . . . electrical powers, you remember explaining that it wasn’t just the nanotech creating the, uh, magic. It changed how your body works, added a new, I don’t know, organ I guess. So, it’s not doing everything. It’s also creating the ability to do some things.”

Marci looked at her hands. “Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think I need the nanobots to do this anymore. But I don’t know how much electricity my body stores without them. If I was inside a Faraday cage, I might only be capable of one discharge. We’d have to be careful using an interference weapon and think of the target as dangerous regardless. But I don’t see how, you know, necromancy could work like,” she held up her hands, “electricity does.”

“I think the better play is to keep leveling,” said Bent. “How long would it take to test an EM jammer on the nanotech? And that’s assuming it didn’t evolve to counter the jammer. Remember, this planet was taken over entirely. It beat the military.”

“Yeah, that’s our next quest,” I said, stifling a yawn. We all needed a good night’s sleep, which meant we really needed to search through this place soon. It was either make sure these rooms were safe or go back down to sleep on the floor in the restaurant.

“Yes!” said Fred, “A new quest already!”

“Not like that. We won’t get any XP for it. After a rest, we’re going down to the security room and watching the footage. We need to know how quickly the nanotech took over. Security videos might have captured the attack and, if so, it’ll give us some understanding of how quickly this threat can take over a planet.”

Dylan spoke up, “I would think pretty fast. It changed us,” he looked to Fred and Ave, then back to me, “before our ship crashed. That’s in the space of minutes, not days.”

Marci opened her palm, “We don’t know that. I experienced total sensory deprivation. I assume you all did, too? Right, and our craft was nowhere to be found. There was no wreckage, no crash site, no smoke off in the distance. Nothing. We could have been out for days, weeks, we wouldn’t know. It’d be like the old cryosleep containers.”

“Suspended animation? Until we were completely changed?” asked Ave.

“Maybe.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Bent. “Look, sorry to be taking devil’s advocate here, but the Victoria was still in orbit a couple days after we woke up. They urgently left after nuking the planet and sending us those boxes. Would they really have waited weeks or months to do that?”

I said, “They did all of that without communicating with us. It’s possible they remained to analyze the situation, then got recalled to Earth. There may have been no urgency up until that point. So, that doesn’t give us a timeframe by itself.”

Bent sat back, “That seems like a leap. But, I guess. I suppose that’s possible. It’d be quite the coincidence, though. If we were unconscious for weeks, I mean.”

“We’ve overlooked something much more troubling.” Marci pushed her hair back as all our eyes focused on her. “Uhm, Earth. The captain’s message said the nanotech spread to two other planets.”

“Not quite,” said Dylan. “It said two more planets went dark. It might not be the same situation.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Ave stood up, “we know it’s the nanotech. Planets just don’t go dark.”

“Right.” Marci nodded. “So, what I’m asking is . . . how long till Earth gets hit?”

Silence. Marci and I locked eyes, Dylan looked down, Ave took a sip and Bent put one leg over the other, sitting back in his chair.

“Uh, yeah.” I said, trying to think of what to say. “We have to stay focused. We’re trapped on this planet, we’ll focus on this planet. But, if we can find something out, something about how its moves from one planet to another, that would be key to solving this problem.”

Bentley shook his head. Closed his eyes. Opened them on me, saying, “She said something, the lady. These altars, this whole hotel and their setup wasn’t just about the undead. She said it would make her a god.”

Marci said, “What does that mean? And how does it pertain to the nanotech spreading?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s no connection.” He looked at the floor, “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, no,” I said, “it’s important, Bent. All information. But we should separate game info versus mission info.”

“That’s just it,” he continued, “biotech engineering is difficult. Nanotech is difficult, especially on this scale. Look at what it’s doing: making the dead walk, giving us magical powers,” he looked at Marci. “Alright, apparent magical powers. That’s just the basics, though. Like, these games often involve teleportation and whatnot. It’s possible that-”

Marci stepped forward, “You think it can build wormholes?”

Bent looked away, then at her, “Until proven otherwise.”

“Fuck me,” said Ave. “Guys, it would have gotten all the information we have about Earth from our brains.”

“But not,” added Fred, “spatial coordinates. I mean, unless you pilots actually know where Earth is relative to pulsars.”

Dylan waved his hand, “Uh, it’s part of basic training. Yeah. With a powerful enough telescope, I can find Sol in the night’s sky.”

“Yeah,” said Bent. Lifting up the glass, he drank deeply.

“Shit. Ok, guys,” I looked at each one in turn, “we have to focus, be much more focused. And solve this mission with all possible haste.”

“I’m not convinced nanotech can build a wormhole,” said Marci. “It’s one thing to know a star’s location and an entirely different matter to build a viable bridge there. I mean, we have FTL travel and coms, but no wormholes.”

“Right,” I nodded. “Let’s keep this discussion in mind but shelve it for now. All that matters is that we take our mission more seriously.”

“On that note, Boss,” said Fred, “we should level up as quickly as possible. I vote we undertake XP quests. Fastest way to beat the game and, hence, the nanotech. And,” he placed his empty glass on the table, “a little more to drink. And find that sword of mine.” Fred stood up, facing the bar.

After closing my eyes, sighing inwardly, I opened them and said to everyone, “Let’s keep in mind we’re in a game simulation. A very complex simulation, but one nonetheless. If we find any EM jammers, we’ll test out whether we can create interference for the nanotech.” I stood, too, “Leveling isn’t as important as our primary mission. Which is to learn more about the attack on this planet. And what we can do to stop it here and, if possible, prevent future attacks on new planets. In the meantime,” I held my glass out to the barbarian, “Fred, yeah, let’s check every nook and cranny in this place, feel free to look for treasure and all that, but let’s also make one hundred percent sure these rooms are safe before we spend the night. In the morning, we are going after those security videos.”

“I’ll join you,” said Marci.

Dylan stood as well, “Ave, come with me to check on the front hallway situation?”

She smiled up at him, “Sounds good.”

***

Marci and I started in the altar room. We’d found treasure or whatever in the previous room housing one downstairs, so we figured it was as good a place as any. Except that it wasn’t good. Acrid, oily smells wafted through the air from the candle smoke, even though they were out now, debris from our rampage was scattered across the floor making it trying to move around the room, and the dais upon which the altar rested blocked a fair amount of wall space.

“There doesn’t seem to be any treasure chests here,” I said.

“You can’t feel anything with that explorer sense of yours?”

“Just that I really dislike this place.”

“You should try the showers. Nice water pressure, warm, they even have pretty decent soap. Clean people for those raising the dead.”

“Maybe they had to keep clean in that profession, dealing with all that filth.”

“Probably.”

“Hey, Marci, how much do you think the game is changing us?”

“A lot, actually,” she brushed her hair off her face, “I, uh, really understand what Fred means when he talks about leveling. I know it’s crazy, but I want to level up, too! I spent points in spellcasting again and charisma and I feel amazing! I want more, I need more.”

For a moment, it was like she was somehow more radiant, more attractive than before. I looked away, “Like a drug?”

“It’s certainly giving me a dopamine response. What’d you spend your points on?”

I shrugged. “Nothing yet. I don’t know. Whip again? Intelligence?”

“Go with intelligence. And whatever weapon you’re using the most.”

“She disintegrated my whip. So, I guess the sword is all I have left.”

Marci leaned over the dais, “Hey, what about in here?”

“Inside that box? Well, let me check.” I bent down to inspect it. Nothing I could see visually. It was an ornate piece of wood, dark walnut, carvings of people kneeling in obeisance to some distant figure on the surface, decrepit looking people on a hallway or level, I guess, directly under them. Maybe they were zombies. A larger face on the left side of the mural, mean looking eyebrows over red eyes that somehow made me wonder. Leaning forward, I pushed the two eyes inward. The box clicked, face opening slightly from the top. “Huh. This might be it.”

“I wonder if the treasure had some purpose being underneath the altar. Like, if it helps power the altar or something.”

“What do you mean?”

“A kind of offering. I’m just guessing, though. Maybe it’s just convenient.” I could hear her walking around as she talked, “Is this part of being an explorer getting easier for you? Finding traps and secret compartments?”

“Yeah. It strangely is. I just know where to search now.” Pulling open the door, I peered inside. A kind of metal club resting there. It looked similar to Ave’s new war hammer, except that the head was like eight thick triangles lying side by side each other, equidistant, tapering to a point at the top. Beside it, four dark potions, and two metal wrist bands. I pulled them out. “This looks like . . . a club?”

“It’s a mace. Like a hammer.”

“Or a club.”

“Sure, like a metal club. Used for bashing.” Marci took it from me, testing its weight, “I think Dylan uses these. Fred’ll be disappointed.”

“And these? Wide, steel bracelets?”

“I think they’re called ‘bracers.’ For, uhm, deflecting bullets. If you’re Wonder Woman.”

“I don’t think she’s on our team. She’s missed all the meetings. You want them?”

Marci took them from my hands. “Not for sorcerers, I think. They feel wrong.”

“I guess we’ll ask the others.”

“Anything else in there?”

“A pouch. Let’s see . . . it’s got coins inside. And, I don’t know, some kind of gemstone.” I passed it to her, then touched the walls, ceiling and floor of the storage area, checking to see if another compartment existed. It was solid, there was nothing else here.

“Coins! This really feels like treasure now. We found stuff!”

I stood up and turned to her, “Hey, Marci, what do you think about Bent’s reaction?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok, Fred and Ave, they’ve changed. It’s obvious. Green skin, sure, but also they seem, I don’t know, less focused. Except on the game. They both really want to fight, and they want XP. And to quest. That’s all Bent was talking about back there.”

“Right, but, we are in a game. Ergo, we need to level up.”

“Sure, but that’s not the point. I don’t know, he almost, it was as if he’d forgotten that everything in here, this game we’re in, is powered by the nanotech. And we have a mission to stop it. He seemed to be arguing not just to level up to protect ourselves, but almost like he’s forgetting that this,” I opened my arms to the room, “none of this is real.”

Marci looked at the floor. “The hotel seems real. The environment, the effects of the nanotech, it’s all pretty real.”

“Yeah, sure, but that’s not what I meant. Our purpose here isn’t to play, it’s to end the game. Or learn more about how it functions, at the structural level, so that our fleet can undue the damage or stop the progress, even if we can’t make it out.”

“I’m not sure we can. River, this is a planet. An entire planet! We can’t search it all.”

“If we have to, we have to! But I don’t think we do. That woman, the necromancer, she sounded like she knew what I was talking about when I said we were looking for the mainframes. If so, they’re probably not so far from here.”

“That’s a big if.”

“And we’ll check the security logs. They might give us some clue. Like, what direction the nanotech came in from.”

“How . . . wait. Outside cameras. The direction of the attack. River!” She smiled up at me, “That’s brilliant.”

“Let’s keep it to ourselves for now, ok? I don’t feel . . . something’s going on with Bent. I don’t fully feel like we can trust him. But he’ll find out tomorrow, when we look at the video feed.”

“Alright.”