Cuckoo's Dream (CD) Chapter Four (Patreon)

Ava sat up in her pod so quickly that she banged her head against the closed door. Newer models were padded, for just that reason, but this was an old, basic model. She grasped her mask and pulled it away from her chin, peeling it up and away from her face. The old gaskets gave way easily, though she knew they’d leave telltale marks on her face.

“What the hell was that?” she shouted, starting to throw the mask out of the pod. Belatedly, she remembered that there was no way she could possibly replace the flimsy thing if it broke or tore, and she dropped it back into the pod instead. She practically threw herself from the pod, her long legs eating up the small space of the apartment so she had to turn around and go back after only a few steps.

Reaching up, she tugged at her short hair. “What,” she repeated, furious, “was that?” She needed to send a message to the developers of the game. Right? Because something was clearly wrong. Everyone knew there were no race change items in the game, and someone else being able to force a change like that on her? That was absolute crap!

Halting in the middle of the tiny ‘kitchen’ - which was really just one cabinet, a not-quite-mini fridge, a single-basin sink, and a microwave - she stared up at the water-stained ceiling, biting her lip. She wanted to howl in frustration, but she couldn’t. She was the quiet one in her building, but the hophead next door and the guy upstairs who blared music at all hours of the night would both report her if she made the slightest noise. It was bad enough that the lady below her banged on the ceiling when she just walked too hard.

Speaking of which… Thump th-thump thumpthump. Yep, there it was. How dare she actually walk around her own apartment? It wasn’t her fault that she was nearly six feet tall, and weighed a corresponding amount. She used to tease her mother, who stood barely over five feet, that she must have picked a giant for a donor when she walked into the fertility clinic all those years ago.

Blinking, she forced back the tears burning her eyelids. She didn’t have time for this right now! She only had a few hours before it was time to get to the Buy Fresh, and she had a scathing message to send to Veritas Corp about their broken game!

She slapped her hand against her behind, where her screen usually sat in its protective pouch inside her back pocket. Growling, she realized that she was still in her bodysuit, and quickly stripped down. As angry as she was, she handled the fragile fabric with careful fingers, before inserting it into the receptacle built into the end of the pod. A trickle of cleaning fluid swirled in as she latched the compartment closed, and a red light appeared as swishing sounds accompanied the slow movement of the garment. Damn it. She was almost out of cleaning solution. Veritas Online was already a fairly expensive hobby, between the monthly subscription fee, and the amount of electricity the old pod used. She’d heard the new ones were more efficient, but she’d probably never actually be able to afford one, so what did that matter to her?

The special suit was designed to last a long time, and she had to admit that it really had. Her mother had given one to her, along with the pod, when Veritas Online was first released. That had been when they lived in a house, her mother had been healthy, and Ava had been bored over the summer break between her junior and senior years of high school.

After she got the game, that summer had probably been the best of her entire life, and she’d never given a thought to how much it must have cost to replace the cleaning solution at least twice, pay for electricity and high-speed internet, and buy a new suit when Ava accidentally tore her first one while running through the house to tell her mother she’d finally reached level twenty, and she could leave her starter city. Her mother had had a good job, and was well-paid, and money just wasn’t something Ava ever had to worry about.

Then, of course…

She shook her head, glaring around at the narrow, grubby apartment where she lived now. Her life had been turned upside down by a single word, but she would trade everything, everything she used to have, and live here in this tiny hole forever if she could just change one thing. If a single one of the treatments they had tried to fight her mother’s cancer had worked. If they had caught it earlier, before it spread through her body, like some kind of parasite, invisible and unstoppable.

Her short, ragged nails dug into her palms as she drew in a deep breath through her nose, held it, and slowly blew it out again. It was done. It was done, and all she could do right now was write a message.

Without even bothering to get dressed (it wasn’t like there were any windows in her apartment through which anyone could see her anyway) she scooped her worn screen from the small table by her pod. Angrily, she thumbed open the screen and began to type.

❦ ❦ ❦

By the time she made it to her shift at the Buy Fresh, Ava had managed to get her emotions under control. Once she fired off her angry message, took a quick shower, and got dressed, she had barely an hour before she needed to leave, so she gave up any thoughts of grabbing some sleep and just left. It wasn’t like she would have been able to rest, anyway.

Tom, her manager, greeted her heartily as she entered. “Ava! Good time to be a little early. We got a big shipment in, and we need to get these shelves stocked. I can give you half an hour of overtime if you start now.” He wore his usual white button-down shirt and dark blue slacks, the ‘uniform’ of the Buy Fresh management, but his thinning brown hair was slightly disheveled, and he clutched a full tote.

He didn’t usually like to get his hands dirty - he claimed it was because he needed to be available in case he was needed, but whatever - so Ava knew he was serious. It was going to be a long night. Still, she could certainly use the OT, and the Buy Fresh almost never gave her any. Honestly, the only reason she worked there was because of their generous employee discount, especially when it came to bruised fruit and nearly expired products. She could have made more money working elsewhere, but when you factored in the fact that she could get groceries and basics for next to nothing, the Buy Fresh was by far the best job for her.

Plastering on a fake smile, she grabbed an apron from the hook labeled ‘Large’. “Sure, Tom. That sounds great. Let me just clock in, and I’ll head back.” Walking over to one of the cubbies in the break room, she stuffed her jacket into it, She headed over to the fingerprint time clock, and let it scan her thumb. It flashed a red light at her, and she rolled her eyes. Offering it her forefinger worked, fortunately, and her name appeared on the screen in the ‘Available’ column.

“Hey, Tom. Scanner needs cleaning. Want me to do it?” she offered, glancing at her boss, who was carefully removing some high-end liquor from his tote and attaching ‘theft prevention devices’ to the bottles. The Buy Fresh wasn’t in the best part of town, and anything that cost more than twenty dollars got a security tag.

Absently, the man glanced up, then back down, shaking his head. “Nah. Bill will do it when he gets in.”

Ava rolled her eyes. Bill was Tom’s pet. He got all of the easy but time-consuming tasks, like taking apart the scanner and cleaning all of its bits. Ava, on the other hand, was a grunt. She was tall, she was strong, and she never complained, no matter what they asked her to do. At least, as long as that didn’t involve helping customers any more than she absolutely had to when one came in in the middle of the night and asked the person who was clearly busy stocking shelves where some random item was. Fortunately, thanks to the fact that Ava was the primary stocker, she actually did know where everything was, so she could usually get rid of them quickly enough.

“Gotcha. Okay, I’ll head to the warehouse.” Traipsing through the store aisles, she forced a smile for each of the lingering customers. This was the worst time, as far as she was concerned. It was only ten, and some people were still out shopping. By the time midnight rolled around, the place would be dead except for the employees, the occasional drunk, and a few other night-shift workers on their way to or from work.

Lyle was her work buddy, and he grinned at her as she entered the warehouse, shivering at the chill. It was kept cool, so the produce would stay fresh, but she wished she could wear a jacket back here, at least. “How’s it, Ava? Ready to work?”

She shrugged. They knew each other well enough that if she just didn’t answer, he’d know that meant she just didn’t want to talk, not that she was being rude. He shrugged back, and pointed at the gray plastic totes stacked near the parking bay door. “Gotcha, chickie. Tons to do, you know the drill.” He shot her another grin, unfazed by her silence, and returned to his own work, tallying up what they’d received against what they’d ordered.

Sighing, she picked up the first tote and got to work.

❦ ❦ ❦

She didn’t get her first break until four hours later. Technically, she knew they’d skipped one, but she didn’t really care. She was working through a fog anyway, and had stopped really paying attention to anything except the next crate of oranges or box of facial tissues. When Lyle tapped her on the shoulder and called her for break, she just followed automatically after him, and didn’t even notice the difference until her butt hit the uncomfortable break room chair.

Lyle shook his head, a blonde curl dropping over his forehead. It bobbed as he gave his usual charming grin, leaning forward so he could peer into her face. She blinked, and he nodded in satisfaction, pushing an energy drink into her hand.

“Drink up, chickie. If I didn’t know this was the real world, I’d think you were a Zombie.”

She shook her head, glaring weakly even as she popped the seal on the beverage. “You know I hate these things, and I don’t like being called ‘chickie’.”

He leaned back, crossing his long legs beneath the table. “Yep, that’s why I do it. At least it gets some reaction from you. Lately, you really are like the walking dead. Like you’re just on auto-pilot all the time.”

Her eyes slid to the side as she took a sip of her drink, grimacing at the foul taste. She shrugged uncomfortably. “Not like it takes a lot of thought to work here.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Hey,” he protested mildly, and her cheeks flushed.

“You know what I mean. At least you check stock. I just take things out, load up the shelf, get more stuff, and repeat.” She slouched down in her seat, unconsciously trying to bring her height down to match his. Boys had been letting her know since middle school that girls weren’t supposed to be so tall. Certainly not taller than the boys.

Lyle just popped his own drink and started chugging it. He was a good two inches shorter than she was, but it had never seemed to bother him. In fact, he’d tried flirting with her when she was first hired, before she made it clear that she was utterly uninterested. “Yup, I know what you mean. Still, it’s not a bad gig, especially as a backup job. When are you finally going to tell me what else you do?”

Her cheeks lit up again. One of the many problems of having skin so pale she’d been called an albino was that every emotion was visible. Angry? Cheeks, ears, and everything else went bright red. Sad? Same, except blotchier. There was no way to hide when she’d been crying, either, so she just… didn’t.

“Not,” she said simply, taking another swig of the canned cesspool he’d given her. There was no way she could tell Lyle what her other job was. He’d make a point of showing up, and if he saw her in one of those outfits… Just no.

He shook his head at her, and tried again. “How ‘bout your VO tag? Where are you? It’d be cool if we could play together sometime. I bet you’re a hot Valkyrie with boob armor.”

And this was why she’d never consider going on a date with him. Even if, someday, Ava actually felt any romantic interest in anyone, which she doubted, it certainly wouldn’t be a guy like Lyle. She rolled her eyes and sighed.

“No,” she said firmly, and Lyle sank back, looking like a puppy who’d been denied a treat. Relenting, she offered, “I’m an orc. A half-orc.” Or I was, she thought, angrily.

Lyle’s brown eyes widened. “Seriously? I thought you’d been playing since the beginning. You acted like you fought in The War.” The war between Lich Lord Akuji had been the first world-wide event in Veritas Online. It was the first time the players had been allowed to choose between the Light and Dark races, and the way they discovered that the game developers really would let the players determine the course of the game’s history. A lot of players who started out fighting for Akuji, just because it was fun to get to be the ‘bad guys’ for once, had turned around when they realized that no one, either in-game God or real-life developer, was going to help the humans win so that the game didn’t go all grim-dark.

Whether or not a player had been around long enough to fight in the first war was used as the dividing line between ‘veterans’ and ‘newbies’. In fact, when a new war started six or seven months ago, the veterans had come down hard on the side of light, because they’d seen what the game looked like when the evil people were winning, and it wasn’t a fun place to play.

Ava just shrugged, putting down the empty container. She shivered as she felt the first hit of fire rise up from her belly, and sat up a little straighter. She might hate the stuff, but, sadly, it did work. “I started a new char when the game started allowing half-bloods.” She left out the fact that that had happened less than a month after her mother died, and she hadn’t played VO at all during that time, because her mother had helped her build her character, and it was as much hers as it was Ava’s.

Lyle looked properly impressed. A player could only have one character, and since the game recognized each person’s biometric signature, there was no convincing it you were someone else and setting up a second account. “You wiped a prime character to become an orc?”

She shrugged again, glancing at the clock. They still had a few minutes left on their break, but she was feeling twitchy. She shouldn’t have drunk the energy drink. She’d revealed more about her private life than she had since being hired, and now she couldn’t sit still any longer. She stood up, ignoring the fact that she was now towering over him.

“Seemed like a good idea,” she said, shortly, and walked back to the time clock to check back in. The fingerprint reader was still dusty in the back, and refused her first four fingers, threatening to lock up. Growling, she tried her left thumb, and the device finally beeped its approval for her to go back to work.

Lyle was right behind her. Having seen how much trouble she’d had with the time clock, he’d cleaned his left thumb of the grime and debris that built up from unpacking hundreds of products, some of which would inevitably have leaked all over their container and everything else inside. The time clock beeped cheerfully at him, and they walked off through the aisles, which were thankfully empty of anyone who didn’t work there.

“Come on, Ava, tell me more!” he chirped like an eager bird, hurrying to keep up with her as she stretched her long stride to its limit.

As the swinging doors of the warehouse closed behind them, she just gave him a tight-lipped glare. “There’s nothing else to tell,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to play any more.”

That set him off worse than ever, but she just put her head down and worked.