The Daily Grind - Chapter 140 (Patreon)

Short chapter next week.  Seriously, this time.

_____

“You know, I’m sick of following my dreams, man.  I’m just gonna ask where they’re going, and hook up with ‘em later.”

-Mitch Hedberg-

The sixth floor of the hospital was more of a maze than James would have expected.  Though he’d be willing to bet that, like every building, if you spent every day walking around here for work or just to visit someone, it would start to feel more comfortable and less arcane in its layout.  He didn’t do that though, so he was at risk of getting lost just going to the bathrooms.

Though he’d also teleported in here, so he couldn’t complain that much if it took him an extra five minutes to find the office of the doctor he was meeting with.

It was a pleasant part of the hospital.  Despite the dark clouds and sloppy rain outside, this part of the building was warmly lit and carpeted. Used for administration offices and mental health services, it didn’t need cold tile floors for the wheeled beds to traverse, or glaringly bright lights so that practitioners could see their patients as cleanly as possible.  It tried to put people at ease, which was helpful, because James was not here for a pleasant reason.

“Your friend will live.”  Dr. Nikita was telling James.  By association and the magic of smartphones, he was also telling the dozen people waiting back at the Lair, who never would have been allowed to crowd into the hospital what with the whole pandemic thing going on.  “None of his injuries were critical, or life threatening beyond the bleeding. Some internal damage, nothing that will not heal with time.  Though one kidney was damaged, and may need to be removed.  I do not suppose you have the means to procure us a supply of perfect human kidneys?”

The doctor’s question came with a raised eyebrow, which James did not see.  He was too busy closing his eyes and breathing out a steady stream of stress.  The question, coming from most people, would be a joke.  But here was one of the Order’s more valuable contacts with the normal world; someone integrated with the bureaucracy of medical care, in a position to make changes, and also aware of the capabilities of the organization that James represented.

“We… probably could?”  James thought about it as he let the anxiety of Reed’s injuries leave his chest.  “We don’t have access to the stasis effect we used to preserve the heart anymore, but we may be able to find a replacement.  I think the biggest obstacle would be supply, and relative impact; we can only make so much.  Though, kidneys also keep longer, don’t they?  Like, compared to hearts?”

“Quite a bit so, yes.  Though not forever, sadly.”  The doctor shook his head.

“We can maybe arrange something.  I’ll get back to you.  Also…” James offered a weak smile, “...thank you.  For taking care of him.  We owe you.”

“It would have happened, even if you were not who you are.”  Nikita replied.  “Child, do not think I am a doctor for my own amusement.  Your friend would be taken care of regardless.  You owe nothing.”  He paused.  “Well, the payments office will disagree.  But you owe *me* nothing.”

James almost laughed.  But for some reason, the last year or ten of his life had sucked all the fun out of the cruelties of the healthcare industry.

“Well, regardless.”  James said.  “Thank you.”

“Perhaps I am owing you some more thanks, first.”  The director of surgery idly mused.  “I am hearing from my people that emergency patients are arriving as if they were injured only moments before.  And hospital security has been working overtime to delete footage of strange snake creatures.  Strange times!”

“Oh, right.”  James tapped his forehead as he remembered.  “One of those strange snake creatures wanted me to ask you about a job.  They can freeze people in place; might be useful during surgery.”

“...You know, it is a crime to surprise an old man so much that you give him a heart attack.”

“You’ve got spares.”  James shot back.

“Insolence!”  The doctor laughed, a warm sound in the cold hallway.  “Well.  You aren’t wrong. Now, duty calls.  Was there anything else you wished to tell me before I step back into the waking world?”

“We’re expanding the crisis response team.”  James said.  “I’m going to hire away all the EMTs and undercut the company that runs the ambulances in this county as a test run.  Can you have whoever’s in charge of that for this hospital call me, and we can set up more permanent arrival platforms for our teleporters?”

“...Honestly?”

“Yes.”

The older man closed his eyes, and for a second, James couldn’t tell if he looked twenty years younger, or a hundred years more tired.  Then he opened them.  “I will pass on your message.  Thank you.”  He said, a little stiffly.   “I must go now.  Good luck to you.”

“You too, sir.”  James nodded respectfully.

_____

“Alright.”  James was once again pacing back and forth in the briefing space the Order maintained in the back warehouse of their Lair.  This time, though, his audience wasn’t twenty new hires, but the collective roster of the Research division.  “Let’s get one thing out of the way early.  No one is getting punished for this, okay?  We’re taking a page out of the railroad handbook for this.”

“I have a question.”  One of the younger members of the audience’s hand shot up.  One of the high schoolers, an intern who’d been present for the test, but not responsible for any part of it.

James answered without waiting for him to ask.  “Railroads have a vested interest in fixing problems.  So if something goes wrong, they have a policy of not punishing anyone, so that whoever makes a mistake is encouraged to come forward and explain what happened.  So the mistake doesn’t happen again.”

“No, I mean… I didn’t make a mistake.  Can I go?”  The student asked.

“No.”  James answered.  “Because I still need to know what happened, and I want everyone who was there to be here for this.  So.  *What happened*?”  He asked, looking at the faces of the people before him.

Silence greeted him.  Everyone, from the interns who were barely more than kids, to the two older gentlemen who’d only recently joined Research as their upended lives stabilized after being rescued from the Office, to the handful of camracondas, to Momo and her new apprentice, to the hazy connecting form of the infomorph Planner, all of them met his question with shame faced expressions and quiet.

James sighed.

“Okay, let’s try this.  Nikhail, you’re the closest thing to a second in command, what-“

“I am?”  Nikhail’s voice slipped into a higher pitch briefly before he cleared his throat.  “Uh… I am? Okay.  I guess?”

No one contradicted James.  “...so, give me a timeline of what happened last night.”  He stared at the lanky kid.  “And remember, that no matter what, there is *no punishment for this*.  No one is dead, nothing cannot be fixed.  Just tell me what happened, as best you remember.”

“Okay.”  Nikhail started, and then took some time to think.  “Well, a lot of stuff happened, I guess.  But what you’re really asking about is the totem tests.  We were using the orange totems that got brought back, trying to figure out their limits.  Just turning them on and turning them off.  And that was, I guess, ten hours of work?”

“That’s a long time.  What were you doing?”  James prompted.

“Exploding the limits, taking readings, making notes.”  Nikhail answered.  “A lot of the early tests really were just turning them on and off, to make sure they worked.  We were using drones, though, and… oh, yeah, I guess we took an hour to actually get the drones working… and then we went really slowly once we started going into the spaces in person.  Most of the time was spent taking samples or going over footage of the totems activating.”

“Samples.  What of?”

“The material of the structure.  Concrete, mostly.  We also took a long break, before we started planning the first experiment.”

James held up a hand.  “Are you using experiment and test separately?”

“Yes.  The tests were just activation, with no modification.  The first experiment was our attempt to modify a totem.”

“Can you, or anyone here, explain your methodology?”  James asked, keeping a neutral voice.  He wasn’t pacing anymore, though he was wishing he’d turned the heat up back here.  The warehouse was cold, today.  A thought occurred that he should check the walls for holes, just in case, given what had happened.

It was Momo who answered.  “We compared the design of the totems we had access to, and also compared them to the red totems that we know worked.  I did some educated guessing, and Anesh explained it with math.  Basically, we worked out a formula that would only work if the totem would work.  So to test it, we made a small modification to the totem, and turned it on.”

“And that led to…”

“It didn’t work.”  Momo undersold the event.

“It blew a hole in reality.”  Nikhail corrected.  “And the ceiling.”

“It was an error.”  Taste-Of-Air added.  “Reed spoke.  The change was to the incorrect zone.”

“What was supposed to happen was that it would, we *think*, have grabbed a snapshot of a slightly larger zone, and copied that.”  Nikhail said.  “But it didn’t do that.  So either Reed was right, and we just put the change in the wrong place, or our math was wrong, which seems a lot more likely.  But then, Anesh did most of the math, and I’m not gonna pretend to understand it.”

“I feel that way a lot.”  James said.  “Momo, you disdain the math side of things.  Your thoughts?”

“The math is just how Anesh expresses his own instincts.”  Momo told him.  “He’s usually right, sometimes.  I don’t think he was wrong here.”

“So, what happened?”  James asked again.

It was one of the older men who spoke up next.  Davis, James was pretty sure his name was.  He’d been a call center manager before all this, and while he wanted to be useful, his main calling in Research was a lifetime of tech support experience, and being very meticulous, over being innovative and intuitive.  “I think… our method was wrong.”  He had his hand up, as a few heads turned to look at him.  “Ah, may I?”

“Davis, right?  Go ahead, please.”  James spread his arms.  “The method? How do you mean?”

“Well, I took the time to double check the formula Mr. Patel made, against the totem itself.  From the footage, not what’s left of it.  It *should* have worked.  Mr. Reed’s intuition at the end, I do not think, is the only solution.”  He cleared his throat, withering a little bit as Momo gave him a raised eyebrow. “It’s how we made the change that mattered, not the end state.”  He said.  “The formula is wrong, because the formula is only looking at the end product.  There is more to a totem.”

“You mean… how it was done matters?”  James asked.

“It’s never mattered for the reds.”  Momo rebutted.  “Though…” She paused, before shrugging.  “I mean, I guess I’ve never really tested that.  But I would have noticed!”

“Yes, yes.”  Davis agreed, nodding quickly. “You build them all at once, though.  They’re… I suppose the best way to say it is ‘they are yours’.  This one, though, was already made.  And we tampered with it.”

“So, you think that if we rebuilt the totem, from scratch, exactly the same, that it would work as expected?”

“I don’t know.”  Davis said bluntly.  “But we should try.  Methodically, and systematically.  Because if I am right, it will save us years of trial and error.  And if I am wrong, then-“

“Then another building explodes!”  Momo yelled.

“Oh, don’t worry.”  James interrupted her, holding out a hand.  “You’re never doing one of these tests inside again.  Also, chill.  He’s got a good point.”  Momo crossed her arms and grumbled something about controlled demolitions, but she did obviously let some of her anger go.  She wasn’t angry at Davis, after all, not really, and everyone knew it.  “Alright, does anyone else think they have an idea as to what the problem was? Any alternate viewpoints?”

“Um… am I allowed to…” The intern raised their hand again.

“Literally why you are here, yes.”  James pointed at them.  “Go ahead.”

“Uh… well, I don’t know about most of the magic stuff,” the kid started, looking really sheepish, “but what if it was the drone?”

James blinked, and glanced at Nikhail, who made a similar confused face.  “The drone?”  He asked.

“Well, yeah.”  The student looked like they were falling apart under the scrutiny of actually being asked the question.  “It’s… there was a weird feeling near the totem, for the first few tests, at first.  But when we knew it was safe, we turned it on without the drone, and those went away.  What if it thought the drone was part of the totem?”

Nikhail tapped the desk he was sitting at, before looking around at the rest of research.  “Did anyone else feel anything weird for the first few tests?”  He asked.  Almost everyone raised their hand or said something.  “Like your stomach dropping, right? But that went away after a few of them.  I thought… shit, I thought we just got used to it.”

“If it was the drone…” Momo’s face went white.  “We just stapled a whole extra chunk of white noise to the totem’s process.  No wonder it blew up!  Holy shit, it’s a miracle it didn’t blow up beforehand!”

“The dungeon made totems must be impossibly stable, to survive that.”  Nikhail started musing.  “There must be some kind of adaptation ‘code’ in their structure.  We need…”

“We need to put the orbs in by hand.  Or maybe by catapult.”

“Yes.  Yes!  Next time, we…”

James cut him off, stepping into the discussion with a very sharp, singular question.  “Yes, next time.”  He said.  “Which makes me wonder.  Why did you do this experiment at all, *this* time?”

His words quieted the room.  A minute later, Nikhail started to answer, saying, “Because we needed to…”

“No.”  James stopped him.  He kept a kind tone to his words and a peaceful look in his eyes, but nothing that allowed for argument here.  “I mean, if this is something that one brainstorming session has caught not one, but *two* potentially lethal errors in, then why didn’t those get caught?  Why, I am asking, are you all in *such a rush*?”

The assembled group looked at each other, at the ceiling, at the floor, anywhere but at James.  If it had been quiet before, now, everyone was hesitant to even breathe.

It was Momo who broke the silence, her chair scraping on the concrete floor as she pushed it back and stood up.  She wasn’t an especially imposing figure, but every eye was on her as she leaned forward, palms planted on the table, to address James.  “Because you need us to.”  She said.

“What?”

“You need us to rush.  You need more leverage, more options, and more progress, if your bonkers plan to improve the world is ever going to work.  You can’t afford to have us playing it safe!”

“No.”  James rebutted.  “No, you’re absolutely wrong.”  He told her, voice part sad, and part just tired.  “Momo… all of you… if you take away *one* thing from this whole mess, I want it to be this.  That sappy paragraph in the operations manual, about how you aren’t expendable? It applies to you too.”  He sighed.  “Yes!  There’s some big, stupid, splashy ideas floating around!  Yes, being able to speed-grow a city would be useful!  But for fucks sake, if you kill yourselves getting there, it will *never* have been worth it!”

“Sometimes, important things take sacrifices.”  Momo glared at him.

“Let me know when you find one of those things!”  James snapped back, finger joints popping as he slammed a fist into the table he was arguing with Momo over.

“I thought… we did!”  She trailed off.  “I thought that’s what we were.”

James noticed a few too many agreeing nods at that.  He suppressed the urge to sigh again.  Or maybe to start throwing things.  “Look.”  He said softly, and every ear in the room turned to him.  “The problems we hope to kill are problems that have been designed to be stable.  We aren’t in a hurry.  Some day, I may call on you to pull off something that will require an irresponsible amount of caffeine and risk.  But until then… it’s okay to slow down.  To take it step by step.  Okay?  No more accidentally making gods, no more giving yourself totem-based brain damage, no more *blowing up my car*.  There’s a time for that, but it’s not now.”

“Oh shit, your…?”  Nikhail coughed out an interruption to his own words.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”  James said, still in the same steady voice.  “But I want you all to understand me, okay?  If being safe takes an extra month, an extra year, it doesn’t matter.  Got it?”

Muttered assent and nods came back to him.

“Good.”  James said, relief running in his blood.  “Now.  Like I said at the start. No punishments for this.  But I *am* going to encourage everyone here to sign up for a training rotation with the Response division.”  He noticed a few winces.  “It’ll be good experience for you.”

The words he didn’t say were, ‘and maybe this will keep you out of trouble for a little bit.’  He didn’t need to say that part out loud.

_____

“We’re in trouble.”  Karen caught James just as the elevator doors opened into their skyscraper office floor.

He briefly considered hitting the ‘close doors’ button, going home, and going to bed.  His eyes flicked to the button on the elevator’s panel, before James remembered that he didn’t have a ride home until later.  He revised his plan to simply using the telepad tucked in his coat pocket.

Then he sighed as he realized he’d need to take the time to write the address down, and in that time, Karen would surely interrupt him.

“What kind of trouble? One to ten, ten being the death of all life on Earth.”  James asked, stepping off the elevator and nodding politely to their guard fern.

“Death of… *two*!”  Karen stared at him incredulously.  “We’re running out of money, that’s all!”

“Sorry, it’s been a long day.”  James tried to give her an apologetic smile.

“It’s 11 AM.”

“Yeah.”

“...Well.  Our issue may not be fully apocalyptic, but it *is* real.”  Karen shook her head, mostly ignoring James’ comment.  “Currently, our income sources are sporadic and unreliable, and our expenses are growing massively as we bring on more people.”

“Okay.  So we need to expand our income.  How’d the thing with the silver work out?”  James asked.

“I have a call scheduled for later today to finalize the exchange, which, if Officium Mundi operations remain ongoing, should net us twenty to thirty thousand dollars a week.”

James froze midstep, halfway to the vending machine that they’d relocated to this part of the office.  Looking down at the crumpled one dollar bill he was going to use to buy a random drink, he glanced back at Karen, slipped his money back into his wallet, and said, “Can I borrow a dollar?”

“Next week.”  She said.  “And while I understand *why* you react so strongly to that, it’s important that you know that isn’t enough to keep us solvent the way the Order spends money.”

“Fuck, really?”  James puffed out a breath, eyes wide.  “What are we spending so much on? I *know* what our equipment budget is!  It’s not that bad!”

“Again, it’s mostly people.  You’re paying full time salaries to forty seven individuals, sixty nine if you count persons like yourself and Anesh who don't draw normal salaries, which you should.”

“Nice.”

She *very deliberately* ignored that comment.  “And you pay generously.  Not competitively, mind you, but well above what most people could expect anywhere else.  Our payroll costs are currently at almost two hundred thousand a month.  And on top of that, we pay rent to use this…”  Karen looked around.  “Well, not *this* place.  But you are aware of what I mean.”

“The Lair, yeah.  Two hundred grand? Seriously?”  James thought for a second, then the math caught up with him.  It was surprisingly easy to hold all the numbers in his head, and it clicked suddenly which one was off.  “Wait, what about the camracondas?”

“They don’t collect pay directly, but there is a trust set up in their name that money is poured into.”  Karen said, and James eased a sigh of relief.  “I don’t want to question your methods, because clearly they are working, and also because I’m one of those people you pay so well, but you might want to cut back on payroll until we can balance the books.”

“First off, no.  Second off, where’s the money been coming from for the last six months then?”  James furrowed his brow in confusion.  “We’ve opened two briefcases, and Anesh has a real job now, but that’s not… close to enough.  Is it JP’s investments?  I don’t believe he makes us this much money.  Or maybe I do and I just think capitalism is gross.”

“JP’s portfolio isn’t where most of our funding came from.  It’s what’s left over after his consulting work with the FBI.”  Karen stepped past James and fed a pair of coins into the vending machine, pushing a seemingly random button and waiting for her drink to dispense.  “He extorted them for quite a lot.  But we’re running out, hence the suggestion for pay cuts.”

“Worrying.  But still, no.  We’ll find ways to bring in cash, but I won’t cut pay unless it’s a last resort.”

“Why not?”  Karen asked, more curious at his logic than upset at being told no.

“People want to give their best.”  James explained.  “People also don’t want to be cheated.  You try to take someone who’s good at what they do, and get a ‘good deal’ out of them, and you’ll find that in a few months, they aren’t so good.  If they stick around for more than a few years, then they’ve given up.  That’s not how you get the best out of someone.  You get that by handing them what they need, and cutting the leash.  And yeah, most people here would ‘understand’ pay cuts.  But it’s more than that.  It’s cultural conditioning.  I want everyone in the Order to get used to the idea of a world where they don’t have to be afraid of where they’ll sleep, or when they’ll eat.  I want that to be *normal* for us, so that when we slam a city-state down and start inviting people to come join us, we’ve got that foundation to our society.  It has to start small, or no one will ever believe that it’ll work big.”

Karen eyed him over the glass jar the vending machine had given her.  With a quick twist, she popped the lid off, and took a sip, still considering James.  “I worry sometimes that I may underestimate you.”  Karen said to him.

“I’ve been saying that to people all week.”  James admitted.  “Is that any good?”  He asked, pointing at her drink.

“No.”  She replied.  “But it’s very good for you.”

“Okay, sure.  So.  Options for money.  We could start selling skill orbs?”

“Absolutely not.”  Karen cut that idea down.  “And while I have personal reasons for why I think it is a terrible idea to spread knowledge of the dungeons, allow me to offer you a reason that you will find effective.”

“Go right ahead!”  James invited as he started browsing the infinite menu of buttons on the vending machine.

“The only people who could pay enough to make it worth it to us, are exactly the sort of people who don’t need the ability to turn money, into even more advantages.”

James paused.  “...wow, that’s surprisingly compelling.”  He admitted.  “Okay.  Software design.  Use the emerald chips to make some cool apps.”

“Already in progress, but they grow slowly.”  Karen didn’t mention that she’d been the one to suggest that idea months ago.  She was too professional for that.

“Do more jobs for the government?”  James almost used his dollar of vending machine credit to buy a drink called ‘Drink’, but moved on, letting his thoughts get back on track.  “Actually, wait.  Can we… ask the government for funding?”

“The US federal government?”  Karen asked.

“Yeah.  Couldn’t hurt, right?”

“You want to ask the people you intend to make obsolete, and undermine the global power structure of, if they will pay you to do so?”

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

Karen took another sip of her health drink.  “Yes.”  She said.  “It does.”

“Okay, ow.  I feel like you’ve been hanging out with us for too long.  I liked it more when you weren’t roasting me all the time.”  James clicked his tongue, giving up on finding anything on the buttons that resembled a clue as to which can might hold an elusive purple orb, and just closed his eyes and jabbed one at random.  “Okay.  Well, what about… hm, no, I don’t know about the ethics of that one.”  He glanced at Karen, who just raised an eyebrow at him.  “Well, what about selling insurance to businesses, backed up by Response? Like… like a home security system.”

“But the service is already free.”  Karen told him.  “And protecting businesses is much different than protecting homes and people.”

“I know.  Which is why I don’t know if it’s ethical.”  James shrugged.  “Maybe if it-“ He was cut off mid sentence by the ding of the elevator, and both he and Karen turned to see who it was.

The doors slid open, and Harvey took the six hundred mile step from the Lair into their off site office.  He wasn’t really focused on anything, though he did have a still steaming cup of coffee in his hand, and he got a good ways past the sun lit desks and conference table before he saw James and Karen and his walk turned into a slow stroll up to them.

“We’re in trouble.”  He said, voice just as deep as it ever was, but with the frayed edges of exhaustion creeping in.

“People keep saying that to me.”  James said.  “I really wish they’d stop.”

“Are you sure you should be in charge?”  Karen casually let the words slip out as she sipped her beverage.

Harvey ignored both of them, and addressed James more directly.  “People are starting to notice Response.”  He said.

“Good?”  James thought about it.  Then nodded.  “Good.  That’s the point.  Proof of concept doesn’t work if there’s no… proof.”

“Yeah, well, I get that.”  Harvey said.  “But the local police department just put a thing on their Facebook page asking for any information that could lead to arrests for the ‘dangerous vigilanties’ that have been operating in the area.”

“Okay, won’t lie, that’s worrying.  How’d they hear about us?”  James asked.

“Well, that’s not the first trace of us online.”  Harvey said, setting his coffee on a nearby desk so he could pull up a page on his tablet before handing it over to James.  “This is a post that showed up on an AskReddit thread about paranormal experiences.”

James skimmed the main story, and then glanced through the comments underneath it.  “Okay, so, this appears to be from someone who saw a camraconda while driving past?  That’s… I mean, I won’t lie, that’s gonna happen.  Not much we can do about it.”

“That one isn’t that bad.  It’s mostly just people demanding an AMA with the snake, and then fifteen comments of people typing ‘magic snake’ in all caps. The problem is mostly the police Facebook.  It’s got a half dozen comments from people we’ve either actually helped, or who might be aware of us.”

“Again, won’t lie, this is probably the best opening salvo we could have hoped for.”  James flipped through another screenshot Harvey had saved, a tumblr post that listed resources for mental health help and included their number.  That one was actually a bit problematic, because they didn’t have the resources for that yet, but it was nice to be noticed.

The point of the Response program was to be noticed.  The end objective was to passively replace the system of policing that had, in many ways, completely failed the people it was supposed to protect.  James had known going in the police probably wouldn’t *like* that, but fuck them.  They had their chance, and they whiffed it.  So he wasn’t as concerned as Harvey seemed to be that the local police department was already starting to get uppity; that was the point.  To be noticed, and to be public.  Besides, it wasn’t like the police could actually get to them here.

James hummed out loud as a thought occurred.  “Would a warrant allow the police through Planner’s smokescreen?”  He asked.  “Would that count? Let’s not find out.  Also, none of these posts have really gone viral.  I don’t think we’re in huge trouble here.  So what’s your worry?”  He asked Harvey.

“That we’re moving too fast.”  Harvey said.  “We’ve got no full time responders, except for Simon, and only three people working dispatch.  We’re not stable, we’re not ready for this kind of attention.  We need to do more, and be more, before we can handle the scrutiny that we’re inviting.  Also, this is *local*.”

“Yeah, because we’ve been operating locally.”  James said with a little confusion.  “As a test.”

“What I mean is, it doesn’t have to be.”  Harvey said.  “We can back off on letting people around here know about Response, and instead, focus somewhere else for a while.  Choose a few small towns in the midwest.  Don’t cut anyone here off, but pivot where we’re advertising.  If we keep things a bit spread out, it’ll buy us time before we actually have to have a full on confrontation and accounting of our operation.”

“What, like, just start policing Ohio?”

“Can’t do worse than Ohio’s cops now.”  Harvey shrugged.  “And if we spread out, it’s only good for us.  We teleport everywhere anyway.”

“Okay.”  James said.  “I hereby authorize that.  Also, I’ll see about getting you some new faces.  We can hire new… people… Karen, you seem mad.  What’s up?”

“You already know we cannot hire new people, James.”  It was impressive that she managed to *sound* like she wasn’t being condescending when she said that, while still making James *feel* appropriately chastised.  “We need our budget balanced *first*.”

“I’ll start a Patreon.”  James quipped.  But then, more seriously, “But no, you’re right.  We need a real income stream to offset costs.  And a big part of the problem is that the main buyers for a lot of our stuff are going to be people who we shouldn’t, ethically, sell to.  So, put the word out, to the whole Order.  We need good ideas that will keep us solvent, and also not make the world worse while we do it.  And if you really need us to, we can just devote more delver-hours to hauling out chunks of silver for you to sell on the… black market?”

“No.”

“Grey?”

“It’s perfectly legal.”

“I believe you.”  James chose.  “Karen, money.  Harvey, Ohio, and let me know what *kind* of people you need.  Now, I need to go talk to a few people about a stupidly dangerous expedition in a few days, so if you’ll excuse me…” James slid back into the elevator, abandoning the two adults in the room to the work they had lined up.  He’d only come up here in the first place to raid the vending machine.

The revelation that the drinks from the vending machines could, under at least one condition, contain the most rare purple orbs, had been an important one.  And the single vending machine that they’d hauled out of the dungeon and transplanted to this office space was an easy way to continue testing that, exploring the seemingly endless menu of options they had on offer.

Someone had suggested just cracking it open.  James put a stop to that idea pretty quickly, though.  He wasn’t the only one who had the *feeling*, when he looked at the drink dispenser, that the monolithic machine was somehow *very dangerous* if provoked.  After his personal encounter with one last week, he hadn’t even really wanted to move this one again.  Best not to risk it.

So far, they hadn’t uncovered any more secret orb purchases.  But James figured it was only a matter of time.

Honestly, what had surprised him most about today, hadn’t been Research punching a hole in the parking lot, or that more and more things were all starting to spin out of control at once.  No, it had been that Karen was… on board with everything?

James had this mental image of the stoic woman as exactly that.  A stoic member of the management caste of American society.  Someone who didn’t exactly ‘want’ the status quo, really, but who benefited from it, and whose job very much kept it propped up.  And that person, that expectation, came through sometimes.  She didn’t trust people she didn’t know, she didn’t want to spread around knowledge of the Order, and she *certainly* didn’t want everyone having magic.

But when James said “we’re going to replace the police”, Karen said, “good, someone needs to keep the peace properly.”  When James said “we’re hiring a bunch of high schoolers”, Karen said “fine, get their parent’s permission.”  When James said “I want a moon base”, Karen didn’t tell him that was stupid, or worthless, or that it wasn’t his place to make that call.  She *did* tell him that they couldn’t afford it, which… fair.  Disappointing, but *fair*.

The point was, she kept surprising him.  Kept being a better person than he expected when he wasn’t looking.  She was still grumpy all the time, still standoffish and pragmatic to the point of being cold.  But she never once acted like the camracondas weren’t people, she never told them they didn’t have the right to make the world better, and she’d even started bringing her daughter to the Lair on weekends.

It was a change, of sorts.  But a welcome one, a positive shift toward something hopeful.  And she wasn’t the only person who’d gone through something like that.

It left James feeling hopeful as he stepped off the elevator and went to plan something stupidly dangerous with the more reckless delvers in their Order.

_____

“What about her?”  Myles asked into his cell phone.  He was sitting at a side table in an alarmingly open bar, in the middle of nowheresville Texas, alternating between listening in on other patrons, and watching the entrance to a coffee shop located across the dying strip mall.  “She looks like she’s out of place here.”  What he didn’t add was the phrase ‘like me’.  But he thought it.

“Yeah.”  JP’s voice came back to him.  “Don’t stare too hard, but if she looks up, don’t shy away from eye contact.  You’re talking to someone, right?”

“Right.”  He answered, taking a deep breath and gnawing at his lip under his mask.  Nate had pointed out to them earlier that the pandemic made great cover for anyone learning tradecraft, because masks could smooth over a lot of facial tells and mouth movements that would otherwise give you away.  Of course, wearing a mask, in a bar, in the eastern edge of Texas, was the opposite of inconspicuous, but it was all about trade offs.  He’d also have to take it off to eventually drink the beer he’d got sitting in front of him.

Instead, he kept an eye on the woman who’d just walked into the bar.  Their target.

Their target, who was a spy.  Probably.

What in the fuck had *happened* in his life.

Well, he’d snuck into a secret headquarters for a clandestine society of radical anarchist dungeon crawling adventures, for one thing.  Everything else had kinda snowballed from there.  And before you knew it, an ex-agent was teaching you how to lose a tail and you were getting teleported across the country on stakeouts.

“Keep an eye on her.”  JP told him over the open line.  “Also, let’s go over a lesson.  How did we know she’d be here?”

“Uh… a tip?”  He asked, and could almost feel JP cocking an eyebrow.  “Sorry, yeah.  Legwork.  Nate talked to one of the bartenders, offered a reward for any unusual behavior, and he contacted us when someone new rolled into town and started asking questions.  So now I wait here, for that person to come back.  Um… can I ask something?”  There was no response, so Myles assumes the answer was yes.  “Why am I here, and not you or Nate?”

“Good question.”  JP said, like a bastard.  “So.  Now what?”

Myles blinked, and remembered what Nate had drilled into him.  “Keep watching, don’t get too close.  I’m just supposed to figure out where she’s staying, so don’t risk contact.  Um… drink some of my beer?  So it’s not suspicious?  Sit here and listen?”

“Good call, kid.”  Nate’s voice answered, though from a bit farther away and on speakerphone.

Myles sat for a bit, sipping his drink and puzzling something out.  He’d sat his phone down, but still had a Bluetooth earbud in; holding the phone up was just more obvious cover for speaking.  It didn’t take more than a few seconds for it to click in his head; he was here because the bartender knew Nate’s face.  If the person they were asking questions about who was asking questions about strange things on their own said anything, and the bartender glanced at Nate, that could give away the game.  And right now, it was more important that they identify who this woman worked for, and if they should pursue her as a lead.

A part of Myles’ brain heard JP make some kind of sarcastic comment through the headset, but he found himself suddenly distracted.  Something was *wrong*.  Wrong in a way beyond the weird perception skill orbs, wrong in a way past anything that was actually visible.  There was something… off.  Something instinctually problematic.

Myles told his teachers to shut up, and started scanning across the parking lot through the bar’s plate glass windows, hand unclenching from around his mug as he set his mask back in place.  JP kept talking, but Nate silenced him, sensing the sudden solidity in Myles’ voice.

Parking lot.  Too many cars for comfort, too much sun for December, even if it was properly cold.  Cracked asphalt, brown weeds growing up through the hard ground with slashes of green every now and then.  There was a grocery store that was doing a fair amount of business, a fabric outlet, two coffee shops, a sushi joint, and a mechanic.  And then six boarded up empty slots in the dying strip mall.  But even still, there were people moving around.  A family with three young kids, an old man getting some shopping done, a handful of people eating cake outside the coffee shop, a half dozen cars with people still in them…

Myles stopped, the tension in his gut unknotting a little bit, as he noticed something.

“Hey.”  He asked into the phone.  “Why am I out here?”

“Training.”  Nate said, giving him an over the shoulder wave from the front seat of the van on the outskirts of the parking lot.

“Uggggh.”  Myles groaned.  “I thought we were doing something important!  You told me…!”

“Hey.”  Nate cut him off.  “Getting you this kind of practice *is* important.  None of James’ bullshit skills are reliable, and so far, none of them have been about this kind of on the ground work.  Before we start sending you out to actually gather intel, you need to be able to do the basics with your eyes closed.  Good instincts, though.  And this *is* important, you *are* on assignment.  I’m just backup.”

“Yeah, I know…” Myles didn’t complain too much.

“So.  Walk me through it.  How’d you notice?”

“I just started looking.  Something felt wrong.  I guess…” He thought about it, before coming to a tentative conclusion.  “I could have noticed anytime, I just wasn’t looking until something was off. And the target started looking nervous too, I guess.  So I started looking.”

“So, next time?”

“Don’t stop looking?”

“You can’t look all the time, kid.”  Nate told him.  “But you can do a hard look more often, on your own terms.  Remember that.  You said the target looks nervous?”

“Kinda.” Myles said quietly, pitching his voice quiet, but in a tone that wouldn’t carry far, like he’d been taught.  “She keeps glancing at the door; she’s looked at me a few times.”  He evaluated the measure of her gaze as she looked his way again.  “Not that she’s suspicious, unless she can read my lips through the mask.  I think she’s waiting for someone.”

“Alright.  Act like you’ve hung up.  Set the phone down, then tap the earpiece and look contrite.”  Nate sounded weirdly proud of that word choice.  “Sit for a while longer, listen in if you can.  I’ll be on the line for backup if you need it.”

Myles sighed, glad Nate couldn’t see him rolling his eyes as he followed directions.

And then it was a waiting game.

Myles used the stuff that Nate had been drilling into him, making sure he could always see the woman they were surveilling out of the corner of his eye as he mostly focused on the bar’s TV.  Wrestling wasn’t his thing, but it was something to do, and he couldn’t really make small talk while he did this.

The one thing he hadn’t been made aware of, going in, was that spying on people was actually quite boring.

Eighteen minutes later - he counted - someone else sat down at the target’s table.

“Huh.”  He muttered.  He was sitting by the door, but hadn’t seen this other woman come in.  Was there a back entrance?  He didn’t want to jump to conclusions about this being the kind of arcane society they were hunting after.  But it felt weird.

“So good to see you!”  The new arrival said.  Except, Myles’ ears rejected that.  She’d said something else.  “Hey there, how ya been!”  And “Well hello again old friend!”  And… multiple sentences, all basically the same, all layered on top of each other.

The target muttered something in reply.  It didn’t sound happy at all.

The new woman spoke again, and Myles tried to sift out the meaning from her words.  But his head started to ache and his vision blurred.  This was wrong.  Something was going on, and it wasn’t too much warm beer.

“Weird…” He mumbled.

And the new woman’s head snapped around to look at him, smiling eyes meeting his own.

She had beautiful eyes.  One of them was red, the other was green, the other set was blue, her left eye was scarred over, her left eye was a little off center.  She winked at Myles.

He recovered from the shock like a champion, shooting her a goofy grin and raising his glass her direction.  “You ladies want some company?”  He asked, putting a tiny slur on his words.

“No.  Fuck off.”  The target barked at him, and he wilted under her stare as the newcomer laughed.

“Aw.”  Myles stood.  “Well, no worries.  Sorry to bother you, miss.”  He said, wandering down the bar’s back hall to the men’s room, putting a tiny tilt on his walk.

The instant the door closed, he hissed into the headset.  “Nate.”

“What?”

“Something’s wrong.  What’s going on with the new contact?”  He demanded of his backup.  Myles glanced around the dingy bathroom.  It hadn’t been cleaned since before the pandemic, and it also didn’t have a lock for the door.  Not that he thought that would matter.  Something about that woman set his nerves on edge; like she could wipe him out of existence without trying.

“What do you mean?”  Nate asked.  Over the phone, the sound of a door slamming echoed, and Myles checked his wing mirror to see Nate stepping out of the van for a smoke.  “The people you were talking to?

“Well, she doesn’t have a hair color.”  Myles said, confused.  “Or… skin?  What the fuck is the target talking to?!”  He was growing increasingly agitated.  Something was wrong.  The more he thought about how she looked, the more questions his brain fed him about the nature of the woman talking to the target.  “Nate?”

“...Leave.  Now.”  Nate told him.  “Telepad out.”  His voice was strained.

“But what is…”

“Stop talking.”  Nate said, the order so sharp and hard that Myles instantly remembered that the person who was training him had been a soldier, then a spy, and that when he needed to, he could project a scary level of violence.  “Out.  Now.  No questions.”

Myles obeyed without saying anything else, hanging up first to avoid causing problems with his connection, and then writing the rally point’s address on his telepad and blinking out.  They’d deal with the rental cars later, he guessed.

He caught himself as his feet touched down on loose gravel, slipping a little bit.  As Myles righted himself and brushed his hands off, Nate snapped into existence next to him.

“So, now what?”  Myles asked him, rubbing his bare arms against the sudden cold of the empty Oregon field where they’d parked their cars and were using as a rally point.  “What was that?”

“Now we wait here for a while.”  Nate told him, lit cigarette still held between his teeth.  He looked somewhere between angry and resigned.

“Um… what are we waiting for?”  He tried to calm down.

“Well.  If we’re very lucky, nothing.”  Nate said.

Myles didn’t feel very good, all of a sudden.  “What if we’re unlucky?”  He asked, his stomach doing somersaults in his gut.  “Is there a worst case scenario?”

“Worst case?  The Old Gun follows us somehow, shows up, kills us both, and traces us back to the Lair, where she kills everyone else.”  Nate said.

“The… what?  *What*!?  What the fuck?!”

“Calm down.  Deep breaths.”  Nate told him, flipping open the trunk of his car and extracting a gun that looked like someone had turned a shark into a very lethal firearm.  With a smooth motion, he slung the strap over his shoulder, loaded a magazine, checked the chamber, and got into a kneeling position.  Almost as an afterthought, he took a drag on his cigarette.

“What is going on!?” Myles demanded, panic rising.

“That thing you saw,”  Nate told him, “it’s the same thing James ran into in the school last year.  Probably.  The thing they fought was… well, there’s a lot of rumors, and no hard intel.  Some people think it’s what happens to people like us after too long.  Some people think it’s a god.”  Nate filled him in on the creature, relaying as much as he remembered off the top of his head, before ending with, “Either way, we don’t have a way to kill it right now.  But… we do have a protocol for dealing with stuff like that, and it’s ugly.”

“What is it?”

“Die quickly, and far away from anyone else.”  Nate said grimly.

Myles stiffened.  “Why was it talking to the target?”

“Good question.”  Nate said.  “I dunno.  You tell me.”

Even now, it was still training.  Myles glared at his teacher for a second, but then ran through his memory of the scene.  “She didn’t look like she thought anything was weird.  But she also didn’t look happy.  So… not working together, probably.  The target either couldn’t see it, or was used to it.  But she seemed… high school angry.  Like she was being forced to do something.”

“Did you overhear anything?”  Nate asked.  “Anything the Old Gun said that might explain why she was there?  Nothing the informant said made it sound like this was normal.”  He added, continuing to sweep his vision over the empty field.  “So?”

“Well.”  Myles thought.  That’s why they’d hired him, after all.  To *think*.  To find the weak spots and weird bits in the world.  “Okay.  So, the Old Gun isn’t local, then.”  He decided.  “And it needs people for something.  It sounds like… it sounds like it doesn’t care about killing anyone? Like, it’s not murderous, just that it doesn’t value life?”

“That’s the general consensus.”  Nate nodded.

“She didn’t look surprised.”  Myles said, shoulders slumping.  “It’s trying to get her to do something.  Or giving orders.  Checking in with an agent, maybe?  Or maybe… there’s too much we don’t know.”

Nate glanced at him, raised one eyebrow in appreciation, and gave a small nod.  He checked his watch.  “Alright.  We wait here another hour.  After that, you’ve got an assignment.”

“What?”  Myles tensed up.  “Doing what?”

“Actually keeping tabs on the target.”  Nate grumbled.  “Don’t look so glum.  You get off easy.  I’m the one who gets to tell James about all this.  You’re gonna get to play with the program that hijacks traffic cams.”

_____

James paused the YouTube video he was watching as his cohorts in madness arrived.  He was watching a thing about beetles, and while it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to be doing, it was useful, because it had been worth four points toward his biology Lesson.  And he was pretty sure he could push that one over the edge tonight.

Right now, though, they had a delve to plan.

For the first time in too long, they were actually using the warehouse to *plan dungeon activity*.  He’d set up two large boards next to the table they’d be using, displaying a sketch of the route to the goal, and then printouts of every relevant picture they’d managed to grab of the target zone.

The objective? The bathrooms.  That spire of blue and white tile that pierced through the false ceiling and plumbed the depths of the dungeon itself.  Pun mildly intended.

The crew? Well, they were filtering in now.

“Hey!”  James greeted Anesh as his boyfriend took a seat next to him, leaning over to give him a quick kiss.  And then, unsatisfied with that, a series of descending small kisses down Anesh’s neck that left his partner sputtering a laugh as he pushed James away.

“Hey to you too.”  Anesh said.  “I have a thing, courtesy of Sarah.”  He said, holding up one of Clutter Ascent’s bond sticks.

<| Connection Open : Anesh Patel - James Lyle : One Corridor Established : One Corridor Empty |>

The two of them hissed along with the rapid flare of light that marked a small circle on the backs of each of the right hands.  This was the second one for both of them, Anesh sharing a connection with Alanna and James with Sarah.  But the mental nudge they got when they cracked the stick didn’t mention those; so it must only count ones between the same set of people.  Each of them independently wondered what would happen if you stacked connections between two close friends.  They also wondered at what personal moment would activate the currently empty link between them, turning it into the world’s most powerful sharing tool.

“We’ll fill that in later.”  James smirked at his boyfriend as he lightly elbowed his side, eliciting a riotous blush from him.

“Please, not in public.”  Simon said, pulling up a chair on the side of the table and dragging a second chair out with a hooked foot for the dog shaped magnetic distortion that was his closest companion to hop up on.  “You’ll make Anesh implode.”

“That’s largely the idea!”  James kept the innuendo train going, shooting finger guns at Simon, before backing off into more serious territory.  “How’re you doing, by the way? Anything I can help with?”

“We’re alright.”  Simon shrugged.  “I’m alright.  It’s… I’m fine.”  It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it was obviously not the whole truth.  Simon noticed that James noticed, but he held strong under the disbelieving look the paladin shot him.  “Really.  I promise I will let you know if I need anything.”

“Alright…” James accepted that. He was still worried.  Or perhaps just concerned.  Ever since Simon’s partner had lost his body last year, and Simon had grabbed as much of his mind and personality as possible, the kid hadn’t been the same.  Obviously.  But while he seemed to be adapting well to whatever his new existence was, it didn’t mean James wasn’t going to be ready to help if he could.

“Hey nerds!”  The next person to approach was Alex, taking a break from assisting in the Lair’s kitchen for this, but still wearing a stained apron.  “Guess what I got?!”  She grinned as she slid into a chair opposite Simon.

“In trouble with Nate for not cutting the carrots right?”

“That’s weirdly specific.”  Anesh glanced at James.  “What did you do?”

“Not cut the carrots right.  Apparently, skill orbs for cooking don’t help if your chef is *super picky* about…”

“Yeah, that’s great.”  Alex cut him off.  “But I got my Lesson leveled up!”

“Oh, rad!”  James grinned as her enthusiasm bled into the group.  “That’ll probably be useful for this.  What’d you get from it?  It was home ec, right?”

Alex nodded, and motioned to the apron.  “Yeah, hence the… well, whatever.  I got Timing.  It’s kinda cool, because it’s, like, very dramatic how obvious it is when I need to use it?  It’s not just guessing what time it is or how long something’s been in the oven, it’s also how long things *should* be in the oven, even if I shouldn’t know that.  It’s cool, even if it’s not exactly for a fight, you know?”

“Still rad.  And every bit is valuable.”  James reminded her. “Alright, well.  Momo and Tyrone will be joining us on the expedition, but she’s busy right now, and he’s at work, so we’re the planning team.  So.  Let’s get down to business.”

Alex and Simon both opened their mouths at the same time, eyes glittering with smiling amusement.  “To def-“

“So anyway!”  James cut them off.  “Our objective is *this*!”  He turned in his seat, and slapped his hand under a printed image pinned to the board behind him.

It was a low resolution image of as far down to the bottom of the bathroom’s spire that they could see.  And the single strange thing floating there in what looked to be a bubble of some kind.

Alex raised her hand. “So, I got the invite here because I have two ranks in free climbing now, and that’s cool, but no one actually told me what’s going on?”

“Okay, let me explain.”  James said.

“No!”  Anesh cut in.  “Don’t explain, sum up!”

“Let me sum up.”  James reiterated.  “We want to try to get to the very bottom of the bathroom; or at least, as far down as we can see right now.  There’s clearly something down there, and I’m beyond curious what it is.”

“It’s a Nokia flip phone.”  Simon dryly stated.  “We know what it *is*.”

“Then I’m direly curious what it *does*.”  James told him with a rude noise.  “The dungeon doesn’t put stuff in places like this for no reason.  Or, if it does, then we need to learn that too.  So.  Enter the bathroom, secure the entry platform, and begin making our way toward the target.  Secure it, and leave.”

“How far down is that?”  Simon asked.

“Anesh?”  James prompted.

Anesh cleared his throat.  “Assuming no wonky space, rough estimate based on the size of the first platform is that it’s six hundred feet.”

“That is… a lethal fall.”  Simon commented.  “I don’t think we can do this, I won’t lie.”

“I know I can’t climb back up that far, no.”  James agreed with a nod.   “But I still seriously want that thing.  If only to settle the ongoing bet I have with Daniel about what it does.”  He gestured to the image of the phone.

“Well, we can put together a rough map of the inside of the spire, right?”  Alex asked. “Can we… I mean, why don’t we just take a billion ropes and spikes in, and set up a pulley up at the top?  Is there anything actually stopping us?”

“We have no idea what lives in there.”  Anesh pointed out.  “And what James isn’t saying is that we know there’s at least *one* thing that lives in there.  Check the silverfish entry in the manual.”  He directed them.

“Ew.”  Alex and Simon said in unison.

“Yes, ew, but they also aren’t that dangerous if we have a decent ranged weapon.”  James added.  “And we have those.  A lot.”

“Is that… sorry, these pictures are unclear.”  Simon traced a line on one of the images on the board.  “Is this water?  Just hovering in air?”

“Yes.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yes.”

“Right, sorry, forgot where I was for a second.”  Simon leaned back.  “No, I don’t think we can do this safely without a few blue abilities that make it possible.  Even if we build a rope pulley, and we *should*, there’s going to be something down there.”

“What do you mean?”  Anesh asked, curious.

James answered in Simon’s place.  “He means a boss fight, right?”  A nod.  “Yeah, it’s too… obvious.  It’s like the towers.  They get harder on higher floors, and the upper floors always have greens.  This’ll probably be like that.  We just don’t know what’s down there.”

“Oh!  Drones!”  Alex snapped her fingers.  “Don’t we have, like, a hundred camera drones in the basement? Next time we go in, just get someone to puppet a bunch in.  Hey, we can even time how long it takes to get there, too, so we’ll know how long we have.”

“About two thirds of the path there is this giant corridor.”  James tapped the map on the whiteboard.  “And we’ve got bikes ready to go.  If we want to set up the pulley ahead of time… no, wait.  The reset thing.”

“I know this is weird, but I kinda hate that the dungeon resets now.”  Anesh told him.  “It’s mildly convenient a lot of the time, but also a giant bloody pain for things like this.”

Alex rapped her knuckles on the table.  “Well, I wanna see this place anyway.  So we can go this week?  If that’s okay?  And I’ll learn how to do the drone thing, if no one else wants to.”

“That would be handy.  We don’t really have a drone enthusiast… anymore.”  James felt his energy die out, his eyes drifting shut.  He shook his head a couple times, and snapped back to the conversation.  “Anyone else have anything to suggest?”  He asked.  No one did.  “Alright.  Well, we’ll do more scouting.  But I want to tackle this within a month.  Obviously, yes, doing it safely.  But I mean…” He looked at them, and shrugged.

“The last thing we found at the end of a tower,” Anesh said, “let us duplicate magic items.”

“Maybe this thing makes us invincible!”  Alex suggested as they all stood and made to leave.

Simon glanced at her as the two of them headed for the door. “Why?”

“It’s a Nokia.” She answered simply, grinning.

“I feel like I’m wearing off on people, and it’s great.”  James muttered to Anesh.

His boyfriend nodded glumly.  “Soon all will be puns.”

“As it was meant to be.  Hey, can I get a ride home?”  He asked.

“Just teleport!  Or, hell, if you really want to drive, borrow my car, and I’ll teleport.  I’m honestly not sure why I drive anymore at all.”  Anesh tossed James his keys.  “Go.  Relax.  I’m mandating that you take the rest of the day off.”

“Yes sir!”  James saluted energetically.  And then waited for Anesh to respond.  After a slightly awkward pause, he leaned in, and asked, “Not gonna tell me not to call you that?”

“Not if you're following orders.”  Anesh grinned wolfishly at him.  “Yeah, you’re not the only one who can turn the tables.”  The two of them both laughed, any sense of awkwardness between them completely gone at this point.  “Seriously, go.  Play some games or watch some youtube or something.  I’m gonna hang out here for a while and do math homework, but I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“I thought you were done with homework?”

“Yeah.  And then classes started again.  College keeps going.”  Anesh told him.

“Didn’t you… graduate?”

“Yeah?”

“...And?”

“And what?”  Anesh had already occupied a swath of the table with notebooks and a textbook that looked incredibly threatening.

James decided he was going to have to concede this one.  “And nothing.  See you later.”

_____

James was taking a break.  A real break, not a working break where he was still trying to level something up, or was just relaxing in his office and still being available to talk to.

Though he did have youtube videos about deep sea life up on his other monitor.  So not one hundred percent a break.  But it wasn’t like he was listening to them with much focus, if his Lesson was to be believed.

[Lesson Continues : Biology 188/200

Lesson Continues : Basketball 71/1200]

He should play more basketball.  That one had been stagnating, since he’d gotten busy.  Get some pickup games going with the new people at the Lair.  It was great exercise, which he needed more of anyway, and as Anesh had pointed out, surprising fun once you got past the learning stage.  As with any skill, he supposed.  Once you were good enough, you could start getting better, and messing around a bit.  Like his personal journey to learn how to cook without accidentally killing his friends or his pots.

One worrying thing, which Sarah had confirmed for him when she’d stacked a second skill book from the school as well, was that the second lesson started out with a requirement twice what the first had.  James had hoped he’d been misremembering things; something that he didn’t worry about as much anymore.  But no, the threshold rose.  Which was a real problem, and suddenly made it clear how the Akashic Sewer was ‘cheating’.

They knew Officium Mundi cheated, in a way.  Well, they called it cheating, but it was really more of a real-world example of a balancing mechanic.  So many skills were just useless.  There were a billion rewards, and only three useful ones.  The Sewer, it seemed, was going a different direction.  The rewards were powerful, but there was a soft cap on them.  By your third or fourth Lesson, you’d be needing to be taking 300-level college courses just to put a dent in the requirements.

If he was lucky, it wasn’t also making basketball harder.  The reward for his basketball lesson was beyond powerful for someone like him who very often was called on to shoot things.  Or people.

Not missing was a real game changer.

James shook himself out of his thoughts as he felt a tapping on his elbow.  “Eh? Oh, sorry Rufus.”  He reached down and gave the little stapler a pet along its spine.  It was still a little unclear how, exactly, Rufus arranged transport between their apartment and the Lair, but he did it, and no one seemed like they were in a position to question it.  And it was relaxing, to have a low-energy friend around while you were playing video games.

Right now, James was playing Rimworld, while Rufus watched, and mimed out commentary.

“So, I’m thinking that what we need next is a hospital zone.”  James explained.  Rufus nodded enthusiastically, tapping at a part of the screen.  James quirked an eyebrow and scrolled over.  “The prison?  No, that’s not gonna…” Rufus cut him off, waving his forelegs in a way that made it eerily clear what he was trying to get across.  “Open up… take out… sell… Are you trying to get me to harvest the prisoner’s organs?”  James gave Rufus a disappointed frown, tilting his head down at the stapler.  “That’s just rude.”

Rufus scrambled around the keyboard to point at other parts of the screen.  Look, James!  Look!  You are low on silver and there is a merchant caravan *right there*!  Now is the perfect time to turn their delicious meat parts into cash!  He danced the meaning of his important message at his friend.

James ran his teeth over his upper lip.  “Are you… *sure* you’ve never played this game before?”  He asked Rufus.  The strider nodded, but then did that little side tilt he did when he had an addendum, and tapped at his forward eye, and then the computer.  “You’ve watched some, huh?”  A solid nod.  “I feel like we should get some parental controls for Twitch.”  James grumbled.

He put it on the list of things to do that weren’t dungeon related, right under paying rent, and getting a new car.  Though that second one might technically not count.  And he might not do it, since as Anesh had touched on earlier, it was probably more environmentally friendly to just telepad everywhere.

Almost everything in his life was dungeon related these days.  Half his friends were nonhuman, he made a living using skills and resources from the dungeons, even his casual hobbies and youtube habits were tilted now toward the things that would get him upgrades.  And since they’d successfully copied the potions JP had brought back, soon, not even exercise would be ‘normal’ for him anymore.

Not that he was complaining.  Far from it.

The video he was watching was talking about the blobfish, and it suddenly struck James, along with a point of biology lesson, that he was the reverse of that bizarre creature.  The blobfish was a perfectly normal looking fish, at its depth.  But haul one up to the surface, and the change in pressure basically liquified its flesh.  Hence the name; it turned into a blob.  James was the other way around; he’d been born and raised in a world that was *wrong* for him, where magic wasn’t real and adventure was replaced by going to college for a skill you didn’t care about and then not using your degree in a job you anti-cared about.

Stepping through the doors into Officium Mundi had been him settling into his proper depth.

It was really, really hard to be mad at Research for turning his car into a modern art sculpture, when he could teleport everywhere.  It was less hard, but still difficult, to be grumpy about the aches and pains in his body when almost every one of them was a reminder of some exciting moment.  It was a challenge to empathize with Karen about their finances when they had a literal goldmine under the building.

He should tell her about the gold mine.

Even now, trying his best to relax, to decompress from spending endless hours dealing with people, doing work, running errands, and being a responsible leader and mild folk hero… well, he was still thinking about the next delve.  About the next step forward.

Not that it wasn’t *fun* to interpret his stapler buddy’s charades-style encouragement to do space crimes in the game they were sharing.  It was fun.  In fact, life got a lot more relaxed in general the instant all his material needs were solved after one good day in the dungeon.  He was gonna take the dog for a walk in a little bit, and the fresh air was gonna smell *extra nice* without the lingering spectre of the threat of homelessness on it.

But it wasn’t the same as something magic.  Not really.

Maybe Momo was right.  Maybe he should take up totemic magic as a bonus hobby.