Chapter 10: Road Trip (Patreon)

Jeb loomed over a map of the west coast, practically butting heads with Smartass as they both surveyed the details.

“Okay, here’s the P.O.I.” Jeb, said circling the three oil refineries in California, Alcatraz off the coast of San Fran, the candy factories between here and L.A, Silicon Valley.

Jeb found his eyes sliding to the east, where Las Vegas stood. Only two hundred miles away from L.A.

“What’s in Las Vegas?” Smartass asked, following his gaze.

“Sex clubs. Lots and lots of sex clubs. They’d be my number two choice for places that can spawn good vibes lenses, right after hippy music festivals and right before SCA meetups. Except these are fixed locations.”

“You realize these places are actually twice as far away from each other as they would normally be because of the Stitching, right?”

Hmmm.

Jeb located himself on the I-5 then used a Blues Clues ruler he’d taken from the back of a car to measure the distance.

Eight hundred miles to L.A, where Solmnath would have dropped into existence. Double that number for stitched in wilderness, and you got about sixteen hundred miles, as the crow flies.

Of course, it would be a lot more, because Jeb wasn’t flying, and he didn’t trust himself to learn how to land a plane that had been left in disrepair for three months on the first try.

Jeb used the cartoon dog’s ruler to estimate the total distance of the trip if he hit each of his POI.

Twenty-seven hundred miles, give or take…

Let’s see, if we drive Mr. Jeep at about forty miles an hour offroad, ten hours a day…just under a week to check all the places I want to check. I could check all my POI and be to Solmnat two weeks ahead of these chumps.

Jeb tapped the map with his pen a couple times.

He would be a lot safer in the caravan, but he would also miss out on a –potential – boatload of sweet loot and lost time value.

What about my gas? Do I have enough to travel that far?

Assuming a paltry fifteen miles to the gallon, because Jeb had no idea what Mr. Jeep’s actual numbers were, the gas was old, and they were off-roading, Jeb needed….

A hundred and eighty gallons…

Jeb glanced into the back of his car, where two fifteen gallon plastic jugs full of unleaded rested. Plus the car’s tank is full. That only accounts for about a third of the trip…

Thankfully, there was a lot of road between here and there, Jeb was fairly sure he could scrounge up the fuel as he went as long as he didn’t try to cut a straight swath through the wilderness and stuck close to the I-5.

Jeb adjusted his trip plan to stay as close to the roads as possible.

“How do you feel about visiting the candy factory first?” Jeb asked.

“Eeehh, it’s fine, I guess.” Smartass said with a shrug.

“Fine? I thought you’d be losing your damn mind.”

“I do love candy, but the thing that makes your candy really taste good is the effort you put into acquiring it.” she said. “If you no longer need to spend any effort, I won’t get as much Impact out of it.”

“Ah.” Jeb put down his ruler. “Wanna renegotiate?”

“I don’t know, after you screwed me out of ten bulbs in the last Deal…”

“Hey, we weren’t actually in an agreement with Grenore when I claimed those bounties, so tough luck.”

Jeb took a breath. “How about we renegotiate the monthly candy payment to a two percent share of any Impact gained.”

“That sounds great!” Smartass said, leaping up in the air and zipping around in excitement for a moment.

“…with a few strings attached.”

“Aw…”

“General assistance and tutoring clause,” Jeb said. “Small tasks, basic information, teaching. Stuff that doesn’t cost you inordinate Impact or put you in danger.”

Smartass puffed her cheeks up and scowled at him.

“Come on, I know two percent is way higher than a pound of candy, especially if I find a sugar lens.”

Smartass scowled even more, her face wrinkling up comically.

“You’re gonna have to make a decision soon, because when I find that sugar lens, getting you your monthly payment will become effortless.” Jeb smiled, letting that last word hang in front of her.

“Gah, fine, two percent of your impact per month for a standard Familiar contract,” Smartass said with a huff.

“Hell no,” Jeb replied, shaking a finger at her. “Two percent of Impact gained, not two percent of my total per month, you sneaky fae.”

Smartass gave an irritated grunt.

“I don’t know Jeb. This is a long term investment here. You can’t gain a lot of impact right now, but if you regained your strength, your growth might make it worth my time. How do I know you’ll be able to go the distance? You might get killed by sand fleas tomorrow. I want five percent.”

“Please, I beat the impossible tutorial. You know I’m good for it. Two and a half percent.”

“Deal!” Smartass cackled. “I got you to raise your offer by a full twenty-five percent, you gullible fool! Two and a half percent is worth hundreds of times more than a pound of candy! Ahahahaha!”

“Here, help me out and cross off the candy factories,” Jeb said, holding out the pen.

“Oh, sure,” The fairy said, grabbing the pen and crossing out the candy factory locations, easily shaving a couple hundred miles off the trip.

The oil refineries should be first. Even if they don’t have a gasoline lens, they should at least have fifty-five gallon drums of gas I can load into the back of the car.

“I’m getting thirsty, snag me one of those root beers?” Jeb said, taking the pen back.

“Of course.”

“And run some river water over it until it’s nice and cold,” Jeb called after her.

“Sure – Hey WAIT A MINUTE!” Smartass glared at him the entire time she flew over to the jeep, rummaging through the supplies for the soda and river stone.

Jeb returned his attention to the map, plotting out the best route. A few minutes later, a can of soda was thrust under his nose, condensation beading down the aluminum sides.

“Here,” Smartass growled at him, holding it out with both hands, her cheeks twitching madly.

Jeb glanced down at the soda.

“Set it down over there.” He pointed to the edge of the hood of the car they were using as a table.

“Okay.”

“Open it.”

Smartass’s eyes went wide even as her fingers went for the tab. “You know, I really don’t think that’s necessary, you can jus –“

PSSHHHH!

Smartass gasped as ice-cold soda exploded all over her front. Thankfully the fairy was wearing a plastic Snickers wrapper tunic, which was mostly waterproof. She stood there in shock, eyes wide and shivering, dripping root beer from head to toe.

“Smartass, I’m going to make you a promise right here,” Jeb said, picking up the can and taking a sip. “I promise from this point on, I will not intentionally give abusive commands. This promise will last until our arrangement with each other has run its course or such a time as you try to sabotage or monkey-paw me. If something I’m asking you to do is abusive, simply let me know. With words. Does that sound good?”

Smartass nodded, staring into space.

“Excellent. Root beer?”

“I don’t like root beer anymore.” Smartass whispered.

“Alright then,” Jeb said, marking the new route down.

Jeb was wavering on the decision to go solo for a while, and the deciding factor was the time value. If he could get to Solmnath two weeks earlier, then he could catch the bad guy two weeks earlier, and that meant one or two not dead children.

Plus, with Smartass now obligated to follow orders and invested in his survival, he wasn’t completely alone, and that made a big difference in his survivability out there.

Jeb heaved a breath, looking down at the map one last time before rolling it up and shoving it in the back of the jeep.

“I’ll go say goodbye.”

***

The next week was a long string of monotony punctuated with nervous tension here and there, when they had to drive away from desert monsters and pirates.

Smartass’s new job was scout and lookout. She muttered a bit about menial jobs, but it wasn’t abusive, and they both knew it. She would scout out a place and see if anything was living there, and Jeb would loot it.

While Jeb was looting, the fairy would then watch the outside for any signs of monsters or bandits, informing him as soon as she saw something.

Three times, this stopped Jeb from walking out the door loaded up with loot while a horde of monsters wandered by.

Once she found an oversized lizard they had no desire to tangle with sleeping inside, and they avoided the location entirely.

Jeb shamelessly appropriated gold bars and coins from safety deposit boxes in banks across the west coast, tossing them in the small trailer he’d snagged for loot.

Rummaging through the safety deposit boxes wasn’t just gold bars and expensive jewelry. Jeb found all sorts of things that people found valuable, from letters from grandma, baby teeth, and even a snarl of gunk and hair that looked like it’d been thrown up by an owl. He even found some old blackmail material of various kinds, photos taken by P.I.s, a disc with ‘Night with Tim’ printed on the front, old Nazi paraphernalia…

Some truly weird stuff that Jeb shoved back in the boxes without hesitation. One would hope the Tutorial cleaned that kind of person off the face of the earth, but things usually didn’t work out that way.

A few things Jeb didn’t have the heart to steal. There was a gold necklace from a dead grandmother along with a heartwarming note that Jeb put back in the box and left for someone else. Anything that looked like it belonged on a rapper was fair game, though.

As it turned out, gasoline lenses did exist. Jeb found one in the second refinery he visited. The place was torn in half by the Stitching, and one of the massive steel vats they used to refine oil was cut in half, its contents long since spilled out into the dead brush and dried up until only sticky tar remained.

At the bottom of the apartment-complex sized tank was a white painted chunk of steel covered in thick sludge, its paint and markings suspiciously like those of the holding tanks.

Jeb funneled a drop of Myst through the fist-sized tank, and spent the rest of the day smelling like gasoline, much to Smartass’s amusement.

After that, he made sure to use a net and telekinesis to probe around the inside of all the sludge-filled tanks, scoring several more types of oil lenses, namely kerosene, jet fuel, diesel, lubricant and tar.

Thankfully, he managed to gather these without blowing himself up.

“I bet Elon Musk would pay a mint for one of these,” Jeb said when he found the jet fuel lens. That was the kind of shit that could launch a colony to another planet. Sadly Jeb lacked the technical skills to make that happen, so he would probably wind up using the priceless treasure to fuel an oil lamp or something.

Does Elon Musk still exist? Does Mars still exist? If Earth got torn up and moved somewhere else, it stood to reason that Mars got left behind.

Human refugees became more common the closer Jeb got to ‘civilization’, and Jeb found himself having to wave his gun around a lot more than he was comfortable with to drive off people trying to raid his trailer.

He even wound up running away from some mad-max types, spiky mohawks and AK-47’s and all. Thankfully any chase was made easier by pulling the keys out of the opposition’s ignition with telekinesis.

Smartass flipped their safeties on, too, which was nice of her.

Jeb visited Alcatraz using an abandoned ferry boat and found an Imprisonment and Hopelessness lens on the grounds of the historic prison, as well as several families of squatters using it as a fortress, a la The Walking Dead. Jeb was able to barter his way in with food and refilling their water tank.

Predictably, they tried to lock him up and force him to use his Myst powers to provide food and drinking water indefinitely, but Jeb politely unlocked the cell and left while they were asleep.

They took a few potshots at him while he was leaving, but none of them hit anything important.

The trip to Vegas was uneventful. The city itself was abandoned, already beginning to be reclaimed by the desert that surrounded it. Not even the Mad Max type people wanted to hang around a city that didn’t have any natural sources of water.

All the pools and fountains outside the towering casinos were all dried up, sand and grit beginning to coalesce around the entrances to the towering monuments to excess. Reclaiming them like the tombs of the pharaohs of old.

Jeb navigated the Stitch-torn city as best he could with fliers pointing out all the POI in the party town.

Jeb searched all the major casinos, the strip clubs, the escort services, banks, cash 4 gold places,

Jeb found a few Compulsive Gambling lenses that looked like poker chips, and a Euphoria (addictive) lens that looked like a lumpy white pill about the size of a pinky. several different flavors of Hedonism lenses, a glitter lens that looked like a disco ball, several different dancing lenses, a couple of them pretty exotic.

Honestly, none of them were particularly useful in and of themselves, but unless Jeb missed his guess, they were probably incredibly valuable to the upper crust of the empire, who would likely pay through the nose to have a good time.

Jeb stored the party lenses away in a small locking case lest he be tempted to misuse them.

After he cleaned out Vegas, Jeb headed back to the southwest, angling for L.A.

L.A. and Solmnath were both so big that the Stitching tore them apart, mixing them back together in a confusing jumble of architecture.

Ye Oldee castles stood right next to skyscrapers, and the city wall had a huge, ten mile long rent in the side where the American city and it’s paved roads spilled out into the desert.

On his way in, Jeb came across more and more people fleeing the city, cheeks sunken and hollow from lack of food. Men, women, and children were leaving the city in what appeared to be a mass exodus, carrying little but the clothes on their back.

People gave him strange, hungry looks when they saw the color in his cheeks, and Jeb didn’t stay long to find out what it meant. He faced forward and hit the gas.

Deeper into the city, he found the public order somewhat retained, as he came across the people who could afford to eat.

There was a port with a massive fleet of fishing boats just outside the torn coast, navigating the complicated Stitchwork that had been created when the two uneven coastlines merged.

Jeb’s opportunity to buy a mansion came easier than he thought it would.

As it turned out, the aristocrats of Solmnath had sort of…hermit-crabbed into the more impressive skyscrapers, bringing their servants with them.

This made it almost downright cheap to buy the recently abandoned mansions and castles. Of course, cheap meant cheap for a mansion, and Jeb still had to pay about ten pounds of gold bullion for a semi-abandoned property, with peeling paint and weeds choking the front lawn.

It was big though…three stories, with forty rooms on each floor, kitchen bathrooms, basic plumbing. With a little TLC, Jeb could see it housing several hundred people.

Now I just need to staff it. Jeb thought, scanning the massive building.

***Kol Rejan, level 57 Courier***

Kol Rejan walked through the doors of Garland Grenore’s office, head on a swivel, taking in every little detail, his heartbeat measured but heavy. He knew that he’d made enemies along the path of his career, and there was every chance this Grenore fellow had arranged a trap.

There was a bodyguard in the corner, but by the way gravity was pulling on his skin and hair, his Body couldn’t be any higher than twenty.

The dim look in his eye didn’t suggest much Nerve either. And the Melas certainly wasn’t a Mystic. They didn’t take low paying bodyguard jobs.

Kol dismissed the melas as a threat and reoriented on the slimy businessman in front of him. Garland Grenore was wearing typical loose keegan clothing, albeit made of rich Zanta silk and woven gold.

Tacky.

Kol was wearing similar loose clothing. Although his was far more drab, it was also concealing body armor and several hidden weapons.

“Kol Rejan!” Garland said, rising in his chair and offering Kol his hand. “You come highly recommended, I must say.” Kol stared at the hand until the buffoon put it away.

“Highly recommended by who?”

“Come now, I was instructed not to tell anyone that. You’re someone. As far as I’m concerned, it came to me in a dream. I don’t even remember.”

Good. At least the rich man had a modicum of discretion.

Kol glanced over his shoulder at the bodyguard.

“Your bodyguard might be more comfortable outside in the hall for the next few minutes.”

“Indeed it’s a rather hot day.” Grenore nodded to the muscle, who shrugged and left, leaving the two of them alone.

Kol briefly lamented not having a contract for the sleaze in front of him. If he had, he’d already be done with his job, and he’d probably enjoy it.

“You’re going to write a letter.” He said. “Address it to the target, pay me my fee, and I will deliver it.”

“Oh. Is that it? I thought you were going to –“

“Obviously I’m going to kill him,” Kol interrupted, his head pounding from the sheer stupid.

“Is there anything in particular I should write?”

“No, I’m gonna kill him. If you want me to deliver the letter first, that’ll cost extra.”

“Well then, what would that cost?” Grenore asked as he dipped his pen and wrote a big ‘Fuck You’ diagonally across the page in flowery letters.

“Two hundred, up front.”

“Done.” Garland folded the letter and slipped it in an envelope. “As for his address, just his name, or…?”

“Name and location, to the best of your knowledge.”

“Jebediah Trapper,” Grenore muttered as he wrote. “Solmnath.”

“There you go,” he said, sliding the letter across the polished wood.

“My fee.”

“How do I know you’ll follow through? I’m not so naïve as to part with my money before a service has been rendered. I’ll give you money when I see that bastard’s head bleeding on my desk.”

Kol gave a flat stare. “My reputation is sterling. Yours leaves much to be desired. You will pay me in advance. I could just as easily kill you right now and walk away with the money in your desk. Do not test me.”

“Ahem. Yes.”

Grenore pulled out a drawer and swiftly placed five leather cases on the table, each carrying forty bulbs.

Kol picked them up and slung their straps over his shoulder, hid the cases under his flowing clothes, then picked up the letter. He wasn’t actually going to deliver them, no matter what he told his clients. Who was going to contradict him? The target?

Kol had become fairly adept at lying, describing the anger, fear and anguish as his target read the final message from his employer. Actually giving them the letter was too much of a security risk, but that service was entirely for the client’s gratification anyway, so a lie worked just as well.

The moment the letter was in his hand, Kol’s second Class ability, Unerring Delivery kicked in, and he felt an immaterial tug guiding him towards his target. Towards the south.

“Thank you for your patronage. Expect word from me in about three grent.” Kol pocketed the letter and turned away, still feeling the gradual tug toward the recipient of the letter.

Become a courier son, there’s a lot of job opportunities out there for people who can deliver. How right he was. In the history of the world, how many couriers had reached level fifty? Not too damn many.

Which was why his ability to find anyone, anywhere, was so highly valued. Kol took the occasional side job finding lost children or relatives, but hunting down traitors and assassinating them paid much, much better.

“Three grent? It only takes four weeks to get there! I swear if this is some kind of scam….”

Kol glanced over his shoulder, and the windbag deflated, unwilling to complain to Kol’s face. Kol rolled his eyes and turned away again, leaving the office. Scammers see scams everywhere they look. It was the nature of the beast.

“Well, that’s settled. Now the…” Kol heard Grenore say before he faded out of earshot.

Kol left the way he’d come, stepping out onto the street and taking a moment to breath in the fresh mountain air. It wouldn’t be long until he had to deal with the stench of Solmnath He turned to the south, allowing the tugging sensation from his Ability guide his feet.

He had a letter to deliver.