The girl turned and gave me a pointed, ‘help me’ look before turning to the guy in the car and saying, “See Pedro, I told you I was cleaning the owner’s house. He hired me yesterday, and it's good money, so tell mom to get off my case.”
The guy spoke up, his voice sounded like he had been gargling glass, “You are so full of shit Liv…”
Raising a hand, I beamed at the guy as I took a guess at the girl’s name, “Actually, she is telling the truth. I’m paying Olivia twenty five dollars an hour to clean the house today. Sorry I couldn’t square it with her mom. I’ve been super busy.”
The guy’s eyes widened a little and he nodded to me with a smile filled with gold and silver teeth. He had beige skin, was bald, and had a face covered with tattoos. He said, “Holy shit, not bad. Imma tell your mom you got this job then. You better bring that money home Olivia. I’m not having her chew my ass because I didn’t bring you back when she told me.”
She gave him a rye half smile and made a ‘get along’ motion with her hand, “Yeah, yeah Pedro. I gotta get to work.”
He gave me another big smile and a nod as his small truck pulled away rattling down the street. Up close I could see that she was also covered in tattoos, mostly for comic book characters or sci fi movies. She was pretty, for someone I had nearly a decade on. I groaned inwardly. Imagine the random cancellation videos trolling for content if someone saw this girl with me.
“Industry pariah Malcolm Voss seen talking to some random girl who is maybe eighteen. Another reason he’s a creep.”
Turning to her with widened eyes I chuckled, “Welp, the toilet is overflowing as we speak and you are on the clock.”
The girl’s jaw dropped and she stuttered, “I… ugh… ummm…”
Grinning, I shook my head, “I’m kidding. You can roll on if you want. I just saw someone who might need some help and thought I could do something.”
She flashed me a bright smile and shook her head, “Really funny,” her eyebrow rose and she said, “Don’t I know you?”
Trying to maintain my strained smile I nodded, “If you are a gamer it’s possible.”
After a moment her smile widened and she covered her mouth as she said, “Oh my god, are you Malcolm Fucking Voss?”
Chuckling, I shook my head as I gave her a faux suspicious look and a finger gun, “How the heck did you know my middle name?”
She clutched her bag and walked in a tight circle as she got more excited, “You are a legend man. I have played EO since I was nine and I used to watch all your streams! No one taught me more about the game than you!”
My smile slipped a little and I offered a stiff nod, “I hope I didn’t teach you too much.”
Without warning she threw her arms around me and gave me a far too close hug.
My eyes went wide and she just as quickly pulled away, “Holy shit, I’m sorry.”
Chuckling, I held up my hands as I said, “I’m not going to complain but do me a favor and don’t spread the news that I’m here too much. It probably won’t matter too much. I already have angry locals throwing stuff at my house.”
Her eyes widened and she said, “Really? That is so fucked up. I mean, I know that all that stuff that happened is bad, but aren’t you like doing a bunch of charity stuff? I saw your ex on the stream the other day and she was begging people to leave you alone and like, focus on healing and stuff.”
I winced a little at that and nodded, “I’m glad to hear that Sydney is… helping out.”
My immediate thought was to try and contact Myriad and tell her to stop mentioning me. The idea was to burn my legacy out of the company and make it stronger going forward. They’ll stop. They have to. Cameron Lake might be a massive douchebag but at least he had enough sense to get Sydney thinking rationally again.
Olivia shocked me out of my thoughts as she said, “So are you really not playing EO anymore? I know you said you aren’t doing streams but…”
Trying to maintain a welcoming smile I said, “No, I’m done with EO. I’m doing some high end beta testing now as a subcontractor.”
She nodded and bit her lip as she said, “That’s cool. I’m so glad that all the stuff happening didn’t kill your love for games.”
I put on my best streamer voice and spread my hands as I recited an old line I used to feed to chat, “Olivia, games are my one true love. None of the rest of you have a chance.”
She fanned herself and shook her head as she whispered, “Malcolm Voss lives on my street, and I can’t tell anybody,” she paused and looked up at the house, “um, about that cleaning job?”
Chuckling I rubbed my face as I considered the offer, “Fine, just a couple hours a day twice a week. Also,” I pointed at her and gave her a roguish smile, “if you are secretly a journalist you aren’t going to find shit. I’m warning you now.”
She giggled and jumped a little as she asked, “Today?”
Sighing I made a sweeping gesture toward the house, “Go for it. Cleaning stuff is in the kitchen. Mind the bottle of booze on the counter. I’m going to be in the dive room. Lydia will shoot the pay to your app of choice when you head out.”
She pumped a fist and made her way toward the front door, speaking to herself in a low excited whisper. Sighing I let her lead the way back toward the house as I spoke in a whisper to Lydia, “Keep tabs on her when I log in to the game. I don’t care if she is a terrible house cleaner, I just want to know if she pokes into something she shouldn’t be into.”
We made our way back into the house and I walked her into the kitchen where I opened the broom closet, “All the stuff you should need. Don’t make too much of a ruckus up here and no need to clean the dive room. If you need anything,” I pointed to the ceiling, “talk to Lydia.”
My AI assistant answered in her thick southern drawl, “Hi there darlin, I’m Malcolm’s assistant Lydia.”
Olivia beamed upward and spotting one of the cameras waved, “Hey, I’m Olivia but you can call me Liv!”
I grabbed a jug of juice from the fridge and poured two glasses as I spoke, “Lydia, do me a favor, and we both know you would do this even if I didn’t ask, and make up a prioritized list of cleaning stuff we can have Olivia do while she is here.”
Lydia sounded more chipper than usual as she said, “Of course Mal.”
Leaning toward Olivia as I handed her the glass I whispered, “If she could climb out of the wiring and clean she would. She thinks I’m a slob.”
“I never said that darlin!”
Pointing my glass at Olivia I grinned and winked, “She didn’t disagree though did she?”
Olivia laughed at that and I started toward the stairs, “Remember, you are good to go but don’t come down the stairs,” I started down and spoke to Lydia, “Lyd, let me know if anything comes up.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Closing and locking the door I made my way down the stairs and started to change into my divesuit. Somewhere above I could Olivia roaming around. The screens above the rig flickered and came to life. Slipping on a haptic glove, I opened up a series of notifications. Most were unimportant maintenance messages for Dark Spiral, but there was a friend request from Nomura and Sakurai.
With a swipe of my hand I accepted them and turned to the last of the messages. It was from Larry discussing the events from last night. When I opened the attached video file, sound filtered through the speakers over a view of complicated code on a desktop screen.
Somewhere off screen, Larry said, “Morning Mr. Voss. This is the code for our NPC Theodora who you ran into last night,” as he spoke several sections were highlighted as the lines of information scrolled by.
“These areas here are the ones we are worried about. I am pretty sure I have ruled out everyone on our coding team for being responsible but we are still not one hundred percent. If you are still game to help us out your new race should be able to sense and sniff her out within the current level of the Spiral. Once again I apologize that you have to deal with her but this is going to help us a lot.”
The video switched to a view of five people, three men and two women, sitting in office chairs in front of their screens and waving toward the screen as Larry continued, “These are our QA team. You need anything, let us know.”
Sighing and managing a smile at that, I finished pulling on the suit and pulling the zippers closed. The lights in the room went dark and the red underlighting bathed everything as I felt the clips sink in and grabbed the helmet, pulling it on and bathing myself back into the Dark Spiral log in screen.
My character’s model appeared as I logged in and I couldn’t help but smirk at the ridiculousness of his darker than night leather chest piece, tattered cloth trousers, bare feet, and burned dagger and silver hammer combo. He was small and slender with hollow eyes beneath inky black curls and just the tips of his long pointed ears jutting backward through his thick hair.
His general appearance had changed as well. With the race change all the stitching and injuries were long gone, replaced by smooth unmarred lavender skin and handsome smoothly cut features. As I watched he cockily twirled his weapons and winked at me.
“Alright big man, keep your pants on,” I said as I hit the login button and my vision swirled to show the darkened stairs that led down into the Great Vault. Below I could hear a battle going on and assumed that someone else was fighting the Caretaker.
Standing, I stretched before walking up to the gate leading out of the Vault. There was a steady misty rain falling over the graveyard I emerged into. There were figures sitting or kneeling under the awnings of several mausoleums surrounding the great circular park that stood on top of the vault peering out through the mist toward me. Calling this area a park was a bit of a stretch. All the grass was long dead, replaced by stretches of barren and blackened ground between ancient pathways. Perhaps it had been a place of leisure in a long lost era? When the area was fully surveyed the expected musical sting and pop up filled my vision and Lydia read it out for my benefit:
“The Last Vestige
Remnants have always fought to save the Spiral but in recent years a terrible affliction has befallen those few that remain. This small camp represents the few that remain, hoping to train and prepare a new generation of crusaders.
HUB: Starting Area”
Other figures milled about the open area speaking amongst themselves or to the idle figures skulking under cover. A number of them, skeletons or zombies wearing similar attire to my own, took particular interest in me.
Other players, I assumed.
Pushing open the gate, I strode across the area toward a familiar figure. The female undead who I had seen during my spirit’s descent into the vault regarded me from the steps of a nearby mausoleum with glassy eyes. She stood in the rain, her robes soaked and her staff clutched in her rotting hands.
When I approached she bowed to me and rasped, “I am Prelate Tevis, a Remnant like yourself. I, like the others here, am one of the few that remain from those who came before. We had all but given up hope,” her voice broke into a dry cough before continuing, “the masters have sent you to us on the cusp of our destruction.”
Raising an eyebrow, I surveyed the darkened central square, noticing that most of the gathered Revenants were badly injured. Many were missing limbs or mangled in some way. Nearby a haggard zombie in a tattered robe was struggling to sew some of the dilapidated undead back together.
I asked, “What is the situation?”
She gestured toward the square and its denizens and the ruined city beyond, “The masters sent us here many generations ago.”
The glassy eyed prelate continued with a stutter, “They confined our souls into the recent dead and named us Remnants. We are the explorers and soldiers against the doom that threatens the entire universe. Th… They want us to descend the Spiral, to stop its spread to other worlds.”
She turned and gestured upward toward the impossibly distant glowing center of the Spiral, “Millenia ago the great convocation destroyed the First World and its destruction has spread outward continually consuming more and more inhabited worlds leaving fragments of their existence to drift to their doom along the Spiral Path while their denizens struggle to manage an existence.”
Her arm dropped and she turned her milky white gaze to me, “Our first crusade was a disaster. Our strongest Remnants either failed, losing themselves to the fade, or have fallen to madness. There have been two others and both suffered similar results.”
Her gaze became distant and she started to turn away from me in confusion. Studying the strange undead woman’s face I grimaced in sympathy. Her expression was even more vacant than her condition might have suggested. As I watched her she staggered and turned her gaze to me again, “Ah, welcome Remnant. I am Prelate Tevis…”
As she started to repeat herself I raised my hands to forestall her. She blinked slowly and nodded as she spoke with notable pain in her voice, “I’m sorry Remnant. That is happening far more often in these dark days.”
I was struck with a painful memory of my mother, still young but declining as her condition stole whole parts of her memory. Shaking off the painful thought, I put on my best smile and said, “I’m here to help. Where do you need me?”
The strange zombie woman's glassy eyes seemed to bore into me as she spoke, “You are not capable of facing the Order in your current state. Seek the one known as Lyvon Eickhart, who was injured in a battle with the Immolated Order. He will direct you to a task to aid our mission.”
Lydia announced the quest with her usual enthusiasm:
“New Quest, Evolving
Purge Your Forebears!
XP Reward: 55
Speak with Lyvon Eickhart. A footsoldier during the original invasion, Lyvon is the last capable Remnant from that age. He is now badly injured and struggling to get by. The old adventurer has a task for you to aid the war effort. Seek him out!”
The woman's gaze had already trailed away from me and back into the middle distance. Shaking off the strange encounter I turned away to survey the undead surrounding the area. One of them had placed a crude hand painted sign on a slate board with the word, “Shop,” written in chalk next to a pile of moldering old crates.
Before I sought out the next quest it couldn’t hurt to outfit myself with passable equipment.
Walking over I found a tiny skeleton climbing up onto the railing to look down at me. The skeleton had huge eye sockets and a wide array of needle sharp teeth. It hopped around above the sign as I approached and yowled in a high pitched voice, “Shop, shop, shop!”
Giving the strange NPC a tight smile I nodded, “I see that, I have a lot of things to sell and I would love to see what you have.”
The little shopkeeper gestured to me without saying a word and an interface of purple light appeared. I switched the screen to ‘sell’, and quickly put all the items I didn’t need into the box including the heavy armor, shield, spear, and all my old hammers. When I was finished the sell value was at six hundred twenty two gold and nine silver.
Studying the strange goblin creature I wondered how deep the social interaction went in this game before switching to the buy menu. Everything they had was common and F tier. Nothing they had appeared to be an upgrade except common daggers that were superior to my crumbling old scorched weapon and what appeared to be super basic leather armor.
Adding five basic daggers to the buy column, I went on to toss in leather boots, gloves, bracers, pants and a basic dark gray cloak. Throwing my old fire damaged dagger into the sell pile, I surveyed the new sell total: four hundred ninety nine gold and three silver.
Time to test the NPCs and the socialization. Looking at the strange little skeleton I asked, “Is this total the best you can do for that armor I offered you?”
The strange shopkeeper’s eyes snapped to me as if it had come out of a daze and it screeched, “Not know you. You take deal!”
Shrugging, I pulled the armor back out of the sell window with an indifferent smile, “I actually have a friend who will buy it for a higher price.”
It screeched and gestured at my window. Throwing the armor back in, the value that the shopkeeper was offering was already higher. Smiling up at them wryly I winked, “See, I knew you could barter. It’s part of the fun.”
The little thing muttered at me darkly and we proceeded to spend the next ten minutes talking about the different values of the mundane gear I was trying to push on them. This NPC was far more ‘there’ than the Prelate, to the detriment of my bartering. By the time the little merchant was fed up with me I had managed to get the sell price up to five hundred fifty gold and one silver. Noticing new flickering messages dropping into my notifications folder, I ignored them as I finalized the deal.
