The Daily Grind - Chapter 168 (Patreon)

This one's a little shorter, and a little low stakes.   We'll be back to dungeoning fun next week!

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“You’re a genius!  Like a human astronaut!”  - Friday Nights, The Masters -

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James’ hand moved steadily over his latest project. The smooth knife he was holding dripped a steady stream of liquid, the material hardening already as it contacted a cold surface. Perfect patterns emerged as he dipped the knife again, and continued.  He wasn’t blind to the world around him, but his focus was narrowed to a razor’s edge.

Then his Velocity ran out. Maker’s Hand Upon The Wheel fizzled away, and his control over the chocolate he was making shapes with faltered so bad he snapped one of his designs in half.

“It bothers me how bad I am at this without magic.” He grumbled, staring down at the metal sheet tray sitting on his kitchen counter.

From their living room, Alanna perked up.  “Does that mean you’re done now?”  She asked.

“Nay.  I have failed in my task.”  James shook his head solemnly.  “Now, it will never be good enough.  Never shall this see the-”  Anesh snorted.  Loudly.  “Oh, you doubt my failure?”  James challenged his boyfriend.

“Man, you’re making homemade ice cream sandwiches, entirely from scratch, when two years ago you literally did almost cause a structure fire in that exact kitchen.”  Anesh shook his head, though keeping his eyes focused on his own task.  “I feel like you’re overvaluing the magic.  Or undervaluing how far you’ve come?  Look, you’re wrong somehow.”

James shrugged, sliding the tray of mostly complete chocolate designs into the freezer.  “I mean, half my cooking knowledge is skill-injected.  But holy shit, I figured at least my Aim stat would help me make chocolate drizzles!”

Alanna gave him a mock glower.  “What I’m hearing is, I don’t get an ice cream sandwich.”

“It’s sorbet, really.”  James told her with a smile.  “And they’re setting right now, so you have to wait a while.  Also *I* haven’t had real food for a while.  So I dunno if eating one of these would kill one of us with flavor.  And also heartburn.”  James rinsed off his hands, wiping down and setting aside a few of the kitchen tools he’d been using before wandering out of the kitchen to join his partners, idly picking up a couple of the metal spikes on their table and fiddling with them as he did so.

“Well, I’m confident I could survive!”  Alanna declared.  “Gimmie the cold goods!”

“How confident,” James asked Alanna, “one to ten, are you, that you could climb a frozen cliff face?”  He cleared his throat.  “Unrelated.  I’m just gonna distract you from the ice cream for a while.  It’s already working, I can see you thinking about it.”

Alanna glanced over at her partner.  “Bare handed, or what?”  She paused for a second and then added, “Also do I get to use my magic stuff?  Like, is this counting the fact that I can cut rock with my fingernails?”

Snapping his gaze up from the metal pitons he was balancing in his palm, James raised eyebrows at her.  “Really?”  He asked.  “I’d forgotten that, somehow.  But also yes, all magic.  *You*, not a random you-shaped person.”

“Okay.  Two.”  Alanna answered with a nod.

“Stop bloody fidgeting.”  Anesh grumbled, fussing with the nylon straps running under Alanna’s arms.  “This is hard enough already, considering I don’t think I know what I’m doing.”

“Didn’t you get at least one skill rank in some kind of BDSM thing?”  Alanna quipped with a grin.  Though she did stop moving so much, and raised her arms back up for Anesh to make adjustments.

Anesh didn’t even get embarrassed; he was too focused on being annoyed at her climbing harness.  “First of all, I did not.”  He said.  “Second of all, even if I did, this is completely different.  The whole point is to *not* restrain motion.  Unless it’s falling.  And then, I’d prefer it happen without your bones shattering.”

“Can that even happen?”  Alanna asked.  “I mean, to us.  Not to normal people.”

“You, I know for a fact, have exactly one thing that prevents broken bones.  And I would be *shocked* if you hadn’t used it up for the year already.”  Anesh retaliated.

James cleared his throat.  “Not to sidetrack you too far, but you can, in fact, have forms of rope play that don’t impede movement.”  The other two shared a look, then slowly turned to stare at their boyfriend. “I’m just saying!  Not that I… know anything about that?  Wait, why I am I being defensive?”  James pursed his lips and gave a *very* defensive glare back at them.  “It’s twenty-twenty-one!  I’m allowed to know about shibari!  Besides, we all literally get stronger from learning things!”

“He’s really defensive.”  Alanna commented.

“Yeah, we should get more info out of him on this rope thing later.”  Anesh agreed with a nod.

“Also!”  Alanna pointed out, “*Your* lessons are for basketball and biology!  *Sarah* is the one who levels up from learning about Japanese light bondage!”

“Also I don’t have a lesson yet.”  Anesh reminded them.

James waved his arms in a rejecting gesture, the metal spikes clinking in his hand.  “Hold on!  Back up!  Alanna, you sure seem to know a suspiciously specific amount about what I was talking about!”

“I can’t hear you, I’m being fitted for a climbing harness.”  Alanna deadpan replied, staring straight at James.

There was a pause, and then the three of them erupted into shared laughter.  Their apartment living room lighting up as they shared a moment of happiness.  The shaggy white dog taking up most of the couch lifted her head to peer at them curiously, before deciding she didn’t need to share their weird sense of humor and laying back down to turn her attention back to the show playing on the TV in the background.

It was kind of a slow day for them.  There hadn’t been any new huge problems for almost a whole week, and they were taking advantage of all being in the apartment at once to discuss a certain short term plan.

The mountain.

Hence the climbing harness, really.  And a few other pieces of gear they’d had delivered.  Though surprisingly less than James had assumed.  As it turned out, though; when you planned to climb a mountain under your own power, you couldn’t be carrying an entire suite of specialized tools with you.  You took the minimum weight possible, and you made it work.

Though he wasn’t exactly an expert mountaineer.  Didn’t even have a skill rank in it.  But they’d been doing some heavy research into what they’d need to survive an environment like that.

And then adapting it.  Because, as it turned out, even the most dedicated and skilled men and women to surmount Everest hadn’t needed to do so while dodging snow golems.

Anesh called them back to reality with a *zip* of fabric as he figured out how the buckle worked and properly tightened the harness onto Alanna.  “Okay.”  He said.  “I think I’ve got this.  Wanna try it with the full suit?”

“Ugh.”  Alanna groaned.  “It’s such a pain to put on!”  The ‘full suit’ wasn’t really *that* hard.  But it was a wetsuit worn under their warm weather clothing worn under armor.  Which, all things considered, was about as constricting than some bondage rigs, yes.

“Look, I need to practice this.”  Anesh poked her on the nose.  “And we don’t have the one sized for James yet.”

“Not my fault he’s a foot shorter than me.”

“I’m six one!”  James sputtered.  “You’re *some inches* taller than me!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be studying biology?”  Alanna stuck her tongue out at her boyfriend.  “Or anything else?  At all?”

James draped himself backward over the dining room chair he was in.  “Well, turns out, I’m not good at learning things when I’m exhausted.  I’m up to four fifty-ish out of five hundred for the next rank.  And by the way, the progression gets *really* high when you’ve got multiple lessons.  But I should still know enough facts about emus to get me up to a significantly more durable body before we tackle the mountain.”  He lolled his head forward to watch Anesh and Alanna still fiddling with the climbing harness.  “And I’m kinda done with most of the little things I had to do.  I think the most annoying little task was turning all the copied Status Quo gloves inside out to inside out to draw circles on their insides.”

“Why?”

“To the copied gloves, or the pen?”  James asked.

“The pen.  The gloves are the ones that fuck up, like, wood and rock, right?”

James nodded.  “The copies just hit wood, for now, but the copies also level up pretty fast, so we should have the second power in the near future.”

“So the pen?”  Alanna prompted.

“There’s a pen that confers tactile sensation through aligned circles drawn with it.”  Anesh explained, stepping back and flexing his fingers to get the soreness out of them.  “Alright, I’m done with this.  See how fast you can unclip everything if you need to.”

The answer to how fast Alanna could get herself out of the climbing rig was ‘surprisingly fast’.  Though still taking about a minute to fully shake the straps off.  “That pen seems like the kind of thing that could be useful for…. you know…” She waggled her eyebrows at James.

“I do not know.”  He lied, giving her a wide eyed naive look.

Alanna turned and waggled her eyebrows at Anesh instead.  “*You* know.”  She insisted.

“I know most things.”  Anesh agreed, staying noncommittal.

“Sex.  I am talking about sex.  Sex things.  Oh my god, how are you both so awkward?”  Alanna kicked the harness up onto the arm of the couch, stretching out stiff arms and rolling her eyes at them.

“Okay, first of all, I’m not awkward!  I’m… considered!”  James protested.  “Second of all, I actually don’t think that’d be very comfortable? I’m actually having trouble thinking of how you could apply this in a sexy sense.”

“I mean, I’m sure we could invent a new fetish of feeling through people.”  Anesh suggested brightly.  “We haven’t invented a new fetish in a while.”

Alanna held up a hand.  “Stop.”  She ordered.  “Wait.  Go back.  When did you do that in the first place?”

“I actually don’t have any specific examples,”  Anesh said as he untangled the mess Alanna had made and carefully hung the harness up.  “But we’ve had camracondas interacting with humans for months.  I promise you, someone’s come up with something.”

“...Okay, hot.”  Alanna flopped onto the couch, nodding thankfully at the dog who scooted over to give her a little more seating room.  “Do you ever think about quitting the whole ‘save the world’ thing and just opening a really elaborate sex dungeon?”

“James no.”  Anesh cut off his partner with a leveled finger before James could say anything.  “Also, you can’t say ‘sex dungeon’ in our group anymore and not have it mean something different.  Also there’s something that Research will tell you is a strategic projection and everyone else will tell you is fanfic of what a sex dungeon might look like on the Order’s server somewhere.”

“Also!”  James chimed in, unwilling to be interrupted forever.  “Not even related to the sex dungeon!  *You* were the one who encouraged us to better the world around us!  This is your fault!”

“We could better the world as… purveyors of… magic… smut?”  Alanna lost control of her sentence.  “Okay nevermind.  Yeah, yeah, I know.”  She chuckled.  “That said, when I said ‘fix the world’, I feel like I was talking about getting elected to a local school board and making student lunches free or something.  You sorta aimed higher.”

“I do worry, sometimes,” James started to say, “that by aiming at… hang on.”  He gave a small frown as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the caller ID.  Not recognizing the number, he shrugged and swiped to answer the call, turning off the ringtone version of the Pacific Rim title song as he did so.  “Y’ello.”  He projected down the line.

A man’s voice answered.  With a cadence and tone that instantly made James feel like he was talking to someone a fair bit older.  “Ah, Mr. Lyle, I presume?”

“...If I say no, can I dodge whatever you’re selling?”  James asked, getting a snort of laughter out of an eavesdropping Anesh.

“I’m afraid not.  You are remarkably easy to get ahold of, compared to what I was expecting. Your actual number is on file with your service record.”  The man didn’t laugh at the comment, which was something that put James on edge rather rapidly.  He put a lot of value on someone’s propensity to recognize and react to humor, and the lack of even a small chuckle was a warning sign.  “I’m executive director Brians, I’d like a word with you.”

“Director of what?”  James asked, standing up and starting to pace back and forth behind the couch as he talked.  Slouched over the chair didn’t seem like a good position for this conversation.

“The Critical Incident Response Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Ah.”  James paused and glanced over at his partners.  “The FBI wants to talk to me?”  He raised his eyebrows.  “Soooo…”

“I mean, unless they can kill you over the phone, there’s probably no harm in talking.”  Alanna shrugged, while Anesh just shook his head wildly.  “Oh, right…. I forget sometimes!”

James put the phone back up to his ear.  “Quick question.  Can you kill me over the phone?”

“...No.”

“Okay.  I’ve got a minute to talk.  What’s up?”

The older fed cleared his throat.  “You recently broke contact with one of my employees, and by association our agency.  It seems prudent to attempt a peaceful resolution to this scenario, if even half of what Ms. DeKay says is accurate.”

“Oh yeah, that.”  James sighed.  “So, you do get that she was trying to steal from us, right?”

“Confiscation of dangerous and unregulated weaponry is well within the authority of…”

“Please.”  James cut him off.  “If you actually wanted to confiscate our ‘dangerous technology’, you could have just sent a few hundred people to our headquarters.”  He grinned wolfishly, even though he knew the other man couldn’t see him.  “Or did you try that?”

“Yes.”  Brians admitted easily.  “Which is when DeKay’s concerns began to make more sense.”

“Yeah, well.  Wizard.”  He said, as if that explained anything.  “Alright, let’s skip to the end of this.  What do you *want*?”

The man cleared his throat.  “To know if you’re going to be a threat, or a resource.”  There was the sound of shifting paper from the other end of the phone.  “It’s really that simple.  And, more directly, to ask you: are you going to stop?”

“Stop what, exactly?”  James put a hard tone on his words.

“Stop interfering in police affairs.  Stop drawing attention.  Stop your little revolution now, before it becomes violent.”  The man spoke, and James heard something in the background.  Suddenly he realized he was probably on speakerphone.

He sighed, and looked over at his partners, who were watching him with a worried look.  “I have a fundamental problem with how you phrased that.”  He said slowly.

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  You’re probably not stupid, so you’re looking at the history of the world, and seeing every revolution being one of violence.  Break the old system to build the new, right?”  He didn’t wait for a reply, just kept talking.  “Well, we’re not super interested in that.  Because it’s obviously never worked.  The people who hate the new systems will never see them as legitimate, because they took power with violence.  And, like, a lot of other reasons involving *not killing people* too, which I thought was obvious, but I just realized what I’m talking to, so I feel I should mention in.”  James’ voice held an amount of vitriol.

There was a sigh from the other end of the line, and James stopped his pacing to lean forward and prop his elbows on the back of the couch as the director spoke again.  “Your subversion of police authority is already an implicit threat.  Both to the safety of the public, and the structure of the legal code.  Specifically, the technology you’ve demonstrated to, and I cannot believe I need to say this, teleport.”

“Oh, fuck off.”  James couldn’t help bark a laugh.  “The existence of a group that has a state sanctioned authority to… you know what?  Nevermind.  We don’t need to cover that right now, and you don’t care.”  He gave his own sigh.  “No.  We won’t be ‘stopping’.  Though I appreciate you asking politely, so thanks I guess.”

“We can offer you a number of incentives to disband your organization now.”  Brians suggested.

“Pass.”  James said.  “Also, seriously, DeKay’s take on us as some kind of destabilizing factor is weird.  I didn’t really get to talk to her much about it, what with her trying to shoot me and everything, but you do get that most of our objectives involve radical improvements to the daily lives of people, right?”

“And the removal of the federal government.”

“And the *obsolescence* of the federal government.”  James corrected.

“You know, most of your activities are actually illegal.  You could be arrested quite easily.”

James snorted, but did it away from the phone.  No need to show *that* much contempt.  “I would argue that you have bigger problems.”  He said.  What he did *not* say was that he doubted it would be that easy for them.  “You also glossed over that part where one of your agents tried to shoot me.”

Executive director Brians continued to gloss over that fact.  “My job, and the job of my staff, is, on a bad day, to respond to attacks on the American people.”  He said.  “On a good day, it is to prevent damage from becoming a pattern.  What I would like to do, now, is take an opportunity with you, to keep it from even getting that far.”

“You really don’t believe me when I say we won’t kill people, huh?”  James grimaced.

“No.”  The man replied.  “Whether by malevolence, accident, negligence, or simply introducing disruptive technologies.  You are going to cause deaths.”  The words were delivered with absolute conviction.

James was kind of sick of it.  “You know what?”  His voice was strained, as he tried to refrain from simply throwing his phone through the sliding glass door and off his patio.  “That’s pretty goddamn rich, coming from someone… no.  No.”  He took a deep breath.  “Okay.  Look.  I can appreciate what you’re trying to do here.  Really.  But you cannot bribe or threaten me, and the fact that you’re trying is annoying.  That you seem to have missed that we’re making the world safer around our home, which is *the country you claim to protect*, is annoying.”

“I have not missed that fact.  You’re not seeing the bigger picture.”

“Ah, the endless rallying cry of the status quo.”  James let out a low grunt of exasperation.  “Again.  Kinda tired of hearing that one.”  Anesh and Alanna tensed up as he said that.

Brians gave a small laugh.  The first James had heard from him.  “And you don’t know how tiring it gets to hear people adhere to destructive ideologies.”

“I’m getting there, though!”  James told him.  “Look, I don’t think either of us are going to change our minds in this one conversation, right?”  His conversation partner made a hum of assent.  “So,” James continued, “I’m gonna just go now, because I actually do have a life outside of getting in ideological fights with authority figures.”

“Of course.  Understandable.”  Brians sounded resigned, but not surprised.

“That said,” James added, “just in case it was ambiguous; we do not have to be enemies.  Please don’t try to dramatically arrest me or my people, and in return, I promise that we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.  Which is, you know, acting as a magical ambulance service and trying to kill cancer.”

There was a noise from somewhere in the other room, and James knew for *sure* now that he was on speakerphone.  “If only those were the only things you were doing.”  The director sighed.  “I won’t promise you anything.  But this conversation was more productive than I had worried.”

James smiled.  “Well.  It’s been nice talking to you too.  I’m going to go back to researching transit networks now, so that I can build a magical utopian city.  And when it’s done, you’re welcome to come live in it.  Hell, this isn’t even a bribe; you can come live in it even if you try to arrest me or something.  I’m even building the thing in the US, so if you need to sell if to your bosses or something, you can talk about how it generates jobs or something.”

A long pause followed, and he half figured he’d already been hung up on.  Just as he was about to lower the phone from his ear and hit the red end call button, the older man laughed.  Actually laughed.  “Well.”  He said, voice warmer than when the call had started.  “Isn’t that interesting?”  And then, a moment later, “We’ll be in touch.”

“Yeah, don’t bot… he hung up.  Wow.  Rude.”  James shook his head at his phone, and then looked up to see Anesh and Alanna staring at him with concerned looks.  “Soooooo.  The FBI called, I guess?”

“Which department?”  Alanna asked.

“Incident response division, or something?”  James had forgotten the full name already.  “At risk of sounding dumb, I had a hard time focusing there.  Holy shit, why is my heart beating so fast?  I feel like I just got in a fight.”

Anesh gave a nervous bark of laughter.  “I mean, you did just get called out by the government.  Kinda nerve wracking, huh?”

“What did they want?”  Alanna asked.  “Are we in trou… no, of course we’re generally ‘in trouble’.  Are we in *actual* danger?”

“I think…” James rolled his phone idly in his hand, fidgeting with the electronic.  “I think he just wanted to evaluate me?  Nothing he said was actually that… uh.. how to phrase this?  He didn’t seem like he was seriously invested in the conversation? Like it was just a trial run or something.  Or like he was just taking random guesses and gathering information.  Fuck, fuck!  Now that I say that, it is *instantly obvious* that I gave away more than I probably should have!”

“Okay, take a deep breath.”  Anesh set a hand on James’ shoulder.  “You didn’t say anything that isn’t basically public information.  The two of us *were* in the room, remember?”  In response to that, Auberdeen raised her head off of her front paws and shot a low and rumbling woof toward Anesh. “The three of us, yes, thank you.  That’s… still getting used to that.”

Their lives were full of so much magic, it was hard to keep track of the small things sometimes.  Like whether or not their apartment dog spoke English or not.

James smiled wearily.  “I’ve given up getting used to things.  I just assume everything is fine, even if it’s not normal.”

“So, getting back on track,” Alanna tilted her head back over the couch to look at the two of them, “are we getting arrested or not?”

The question was harder to answer than James had expected.  He actually tried to think as hard as he could about it, letting his eyes fall out of focus as he stared at the floor and rubbed at his forehead.  “Not?  I think?”  He concluded. “Okay, so, things to take away from this.  They can’t find the Lair, unless he was lying.  At least someone at the FBI finds our long term plans interesting, unless he was lying.  Also, I need a new phone.  I am zero percent confident that they can’t track me, if they know my phone number.”

“Good call, I’ll get on that.”  Anesh said with a nod.

“No!”  James drew the word out with a smile in his voice.  “No you will not!  You’re gonna get me a phone I won’t like!”

“I’m going to get you a perfectly functional device that…”

“Just get me an iPhone!  I know they’re not as good, I don’t care!  I use it for phone calls, and the chat server, and sudoku.  I do not need something with flexibility, I need something tiny that won’t break!”

Alanna stopped flicking her attention back and forth between her two boyfriends.  “Sorry, hang on, I’ve never heard this particular dumb opinion from James before.  You think iPhones are… *less* likely to break?”

“Uh… I mean, I was going to say mine hadn’t broken, but I had to get a new one after it… broke.”  James faltered in his defense.  “But it got shot!  That doesn’t count!  Also I’ve seen Anesh’s phone, its the size of a tablet.  I may as well just get a whole laptop.”

“You do get that modern iPhones are also kinda thick, right? Like, thick with two or three c’s at least.”  Alanna challenged him.

James groaned.  “This isn’t the important part of this conversation!”  He tried to escape the trap he’d set for himself.  “Look, aside from trying to get the personal electronic I desire, what do we do, right now, about this?”

The three of them stopped making jokes, just for a minute, and tried to figure that out.  But in the end, there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done if the government decided to try to arrest them on the street out of nowhere.

But there were a few precautions.  James updated Order’s chat server to keep everyone informed that the FBI had taken more of a notice in them than sending a single overworked agent.  The glasses that showed affiliation were put into the standard kit of Response teams, just in case; they didn’t have too many copies of those, but being able to have even a little warning was important.

“We could just build a memeplex around them, right?”  Alanna asked.  “I’ve read the ops manual.  We can do that.”

“First off, we absolutely cannot just do that.”  Anesh corrected her.  “Second of all… when you say ‘build a memeplex around them’, you mean the FBI as them?”

“Yeah, I don’t think it works that way.  Though, that said, I don’t think we fully understand what’s going on there to begin with.”  James said.  Briefly, he had a flash of understanding that they had, at one point, gotten information from a source he couldn’t remember anymore.  The thought hurt briefly, but he set it aside when he remembered the cost of pressing it.  “Also, the FBI aren’t, like… neutral isn’t the word, exactly.  But they *do stuff*, beyond just being a problem for us.  They actually do solve some crimes, I assume.  We can’t just throw up a memetic wall around them.”

Especially not one of the ones like the memeplexes, the large scale unfeeling mental machinery that was designed to isolate and pressure delvers into making bad choices.

After that, no one had any other ideas, terrible or otherwise.

Ultimately, though, the entire conversation left James feeling powerless.

“The government” was such a massive abstract.  It could be everywhere, it could include anyone.  And now, a chunk of it was watching him.  He, personally, felt like he had lost a form of security that he had mostly been taking for granted.

On a tactical level, the Order had always been going to attract attention. Already, there were more and more people who shared rumors about them, across the several locales that they operated in.  Preparing to fight a public relations campaign had been something they’d already started working on.  Sooner or later, they were gonna be answering questions to the news media and showing up on Youtube.  But this wasn’t a high ranking federal employee calling The Order Of Endless Rooms.  This was one man with a lot of power to cause problems, calling *James*.

Just as the abstraction of the government being huge and all encompassing made them seem invincible, so too did being noticed on an individual, deeply personal level, make James feel vulnerable.

Which, he suddenly realized, might actually be the point.

Thirty minutes later, while James was sitting on the couch wishing Auberdeen could actually *speak* English too, so she could explain the plot to this show, his phone rang again.

He looked suspiciously at the buzzing electronic device sitting on their living room table.  It was on one of the few clear spaces among the piles of climbing and camping gear they’d stacked up.  *Why* they’d stacked it up in his apartment, on the table they used for D&D and social dinners, and not in the Lair, on a table they used exclusively for stacking gear on, was beyond him.

The phone buzzed again.  James glared at it.  “If this is a different government agency, I’m throwing my phone in the pond.”  He casually told Auberdeen.  The dog, fluent in English now, but still not understanding humor that well, gave him a small glance that looked somehow vaguely pitying.

He sighed. Lack of appreciation for sarcasm, it seemed, transcended species boundaries.  James picked up his phone, and saw an actual name he recognized.

“Hey Alex, what’s up?”

“Hey, uh, sorry to bother you on your day off.”  The young woman sounded apologetic.  “Just wanted to ask something before I say anything stupid to the interns.  Is it okay to let people know that everyone’s orbs drop when they die?”

“First off, not my day off.  Second off...Ooooooof.”  James drew out the word as he stood and stepped over to the patio door.  Fresh air sounded nice for this conversation.  He caught Alanna’s eye as she poked her head out into the living room.  “It’s Alex.”  He said to her, covering the phone with one hand as he slid the door open and stepped outside.

“Yeah, oof.”  He could practically hear Alex nodding.  “Like, I don’t think anyone cares?  Or, you know, *you’re* not gonna kill me and eat my orbs, right?”

“I love our conversations.”

“But it just seems kind of awkward to tell everyone? Like, I don’t wanna make people think that’s an option, you know?  Anyway, Sarah said to call you, since she was busy.”

James paused.  “Busy with what?”  He asked.  “Wait, no, that’s not important, and knowing Sarah it could be one of thirty different reasonable things.  Okay.  Looting the dead.  Hm.”  He thought for a second, until a certain tangential thought struck him.  “Hey, question.  What do you want done with your loot drop?”

“...Are you planning to kill and eat…”

James rolled his eyes and cut her off.  “No.”

Alex made an uncomfortable noise.  “I dunno.  I don’t really think about that a lot, for… reasons…” She didn’t elaborate, and James didn’t need her to.  He was familiar with existential dread.  “Anyway, I don’t really know? Like, if you can bring me back to life with it, then fuckin’ do it I guess.  Otherwise, just give it to someone.”

“You’d be okay with that?”  James was a little surprised.

“Sure, why not? I’m not using it.”

It made sense, and standing there on his back porch, feeling his feet get colder and colder on the stone patio, James realized he more or less agreed. “Yeah, I guess… yeah.  Ugh.  Don’t like thinking about that.  But I guess I’d rather it not sit on a shelf.”

“I did wonder why we had the shelf.”  Alex half-asked.

“No one told us what they wanted done with their… remains.”  James struggled on the last word.  “We should really… shit, this is actually important.  I can’t believe we haven’t one this before.”  He sighed.  “Okay, so, *yes*, tell them what happens.  And then, get informed consent from everyone on what to do with their final loot drop.  Because that *does* matter.”

“Kay.  Thaks!”  Alex said, and hung up before James could keep rambling.  She’d gotten her answer, and knew that this conversation could continue forever if she didn’t cut it off and get back to what she was doing.

James looked down at the phone in his hand, now showing a black screen.  “Thaks?”  He muttered.  “Am I out of touch with The Youth? Is this a meme thing I don’t get again?”  He shook his head, trying to push off the feeling of being old, and stepped back inside.

He let the warm air encircle him as he padded down the hallway to the bedroom where Anesh and Alanna were relaxing.  He politely didn’t just kick the door open - just in case - but upon poking his head in, mostly just saw Anesh sitting against the wall reading something, and Alanna pulling thick socks on.

“Oh dang, I missed the thing.”  He said as he stepped into the room.

Anesh made a confused noise, while Alanna just snorted derisively and stuck her tongue out at him.  “Oh.”  Anesh said.  “Oh!  You mean sex.  Of course.  Right!  I mean, no.  But we could…?” He set his book to the side and moved to pull off his shirt.

“No!  We’re going out for pizza!”  Alanna chastised him.

“I could just make…. hm.”  James paused.  “Actually, yeah, going out for pizza sounds pretty good.  Or… wait, did I just invite myself along? Sorry, I wasn’t thinking there.”

“Nah, it’s fine.”  Alanna assured him.  “Was gonna ask you once you were off the phone.  What’d Alex want?”

“Oh, right!  Question for you.”  James cleared his throat.  “You know how if we die, all our skill orbs and stuff actually drop, like we’re dungeon creatures?”

His girlfriend froze briefly as she finished tugging on her other sock, before glancing up at James with a worried look.  But before Alanna could say anything, Anesh cut in with a casual voice.  “Yeah,” he said, “I’d like mine to go to someone who’ll appreciate the math skills.  Also, probably someone who doesn’t already have a bunch of delves; keep that generational wealth problem from building up.  Hell, don’t even give it to a delver.”

“What about your whole clone thing?”  James asked.

Anesh spread his hands out.  “Clones still age.  They’re copies of me as I am, not me as I was.”

“So.  You’ve thought about this?”  Alanna asked with a curious look.

“Sure.”  Anesh shrugged.  “Unlike James, I don’t actually think I’ll live forever.  But I still care about, you know, making a difference for someone who comes next.”  He pulled his shirt back down and smoothed it out, casually acting like nothing had been out of place.  “Why, what do you want done with yours?”  He asked Alanna.

She frowned, a bit taken off guard, until she had a small epiphany.  “Hey, Pendragon was made with a yellow orb, right?”  Alanna gnawed idly at her lip.

“A few of them, yeah.”  James nodded.  “Dave had no idea what he was doing, and somehow had fallen ass backward into the lap of success.”

“Cool.  Do that.”  Alanna said, brushing past James as she left their shared bedroom.

James and Anesh shared a look, before Anesh rolled off the bed and stood up, following James out into the hallways as he himself followed Alanna.  “Do *what*?” James called after his retreating partner.  “Make you into a dragon?”

“Sure!  That sounds fucking rad!”  Alanna called back as she tried to negotiate around the bulky dog still relaxing on their couch between her and where she’d thrown her coat.  “Maybe do some kind of weird ceremony for it? James, you like worldbuilding weird ceremonies.  Do something ambiguously spiritual like imbuing a creation with life under the light of the full moon in a lake, or something.   I dunno.  But yes, make me a dragon.  Or dragon adjacent.”

There was a certain part of James that found planning for death to be terrifying.  But there was a much larger part of him that latched onto the idea of a moonlit creation ceremony, and ran with it.  “Oh, hell yeah!”  He found himself saying with a grin.  “We could mix it with a sort of funeral, too.  Have everyone say kind words about you while we pay ritual homage to the different aspects of your final loot drop.  Do you think whatever comes out will keep the empathy power from the Lesson?”

“Yessss, I like that!”  Alanna clapped her hands.  “You have to say nice things though!  No one is allowed to tell the next me that I was kind of an asshole as a teenager!”

“Kind of?”  James smirked.

“Teenager?!”  Anesh added his own smirk.

“You are both fired from my funeral service.”  Alanna decided stoically.  “Gonna get Sarah to do it now.”  She promised as she led the way out of the apartment, stopping to pet the panting pit bull waiting on their doorstep for some affection.

Anesh patted James on the shoulder as he fetched his own coat and shoes.  “It was a noble attempt.”  He said.  “Maybe you can manage her second funeral, when her dragon reincarnation inevitably gets taken down with antiaircraft fire.”

“That’s kinda grim!  Also it’s fine, now I have slightly less work to do!”  James grinned as he waited for his boyfriend by the door.  “Anyway.  Let’s go eat.  Hey, side note, who should we build the mountaineering team out of? Do we want it to be more than just us three?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.”  Anesh snapped his fingers.  “We should bring Chevoy.”

“...The new engineer? Why?”

“It’s been months, and she’s *comically* well suited to being a delver.”  Anesh answered.  “Why, who were you thinking of?   Daniel and Pathfinder? Misadventures sound like a *great* idea for a frozen lethal pinnacle climb.”

James didn’t meet Anesh’s eyes, trying and failing to keep his complexion from reddening slightly.  “....No!”  He protested.  “I was thinking of...uh...Naaaaate?”

“You were not.”

“I was not.”  James admitted.  “You ready to go?  Alanna’s probably waiting for us, and I’m *sure* she has opinions.”

Anesh laughed.  “Yeah, let’s get lunch.”

James nodded.  “Okay, but we’re driving.  I need to top off my velocity so I can finish the damn ice cream.”

Hours later, sitting in his office at the Lair, James realized that somehow they’d gotten sidetracked again while having lunch together.  His partners hadn’t asked.  Neither had Karen when James had given her Recovery people a new project to collect this last will from everyone.

What *did* he want done with his remains, if the worst happened? Sure, with the purple orbs, and probably a few other dungeon nonsense effects, he could probably live a *very* long time.  Maybe indefinitely.  But James wasn’t just sitting still in a safe room.  He was constantly throwing himself against monsters and environments that threatened to kill him.

He had to, at least in the abstract, face the fact that there could be a time when he wasn’t around anymore.  But he’d leave something more than a battered corpse behind, wouldn’t he?

Give it to someone else sounded nice, in a vaguely adventurous kind of way.  Maybe he could arrange for his collective power to end up with someone like him; some kid who wanted to do good and felt crushed by the world.  But… even in death, it would kill him to choose poorly, to hand someone the tools they needed to do some real damage.

Alanna’s idea of being remade as a new creature had a certain appeal to it, too.  James knew it probably wouldn’t be ‘him’, but still.  Also, ‘knew’ was sort of fuzzy too; they had never really tested if that was the case, but without knowing the wishes of the people who had fallen, it was hard to justify testing in this case.

He didn’t think he wanted to be left on a shelf.  Unless Momo or someone else could figure out how to make a totem out of the orb.  Oh!  Wouldn’t that be something?  He could be a literal part of the arcology he had a grand vision for.

James blinked, and did a slightly double take of that thought.  “Is that… am I asking to be reborn as a dungeon?”  He muttered to himself.  “That’s… probably fine.  I’m sure that’s fine.”  He was not sure that was fine.

But he still sent an email to to Recovery updating his wishes to that anyway.