The Daily Grind - Chapter 178 (Patreon)

This one got away from me in length.  Again.

_____

“It is essential for our struggle for self-determination that we speak of love, as love is the necessary foundation enabling us to survive the wars, the hardships, and the sickness and the dying with our spirits intact.” - Bell Hook, Teaching Critical Thinking -

_____

Overhead, gray and tan panels of roughly carpeted material rose up, met, clashed, and merged.  Against a fluorescent sky, a horizon full of hard angles and massive constructs seemed to reach up forever.  An artificial horizon for an artificial reality; the form of an office environment stolen and copied over and over and over, until the lines blurred and went fuzzy, and what a ‘cubicle’ was became unclear.

Flocks of printer paper fluttered across the false sky, preyed on by the occasional vicious paper airplane.  Below, on the hard carpet floor, cautious, curious, and terrified life forms scavenged and fought, while dangerous apex guardians prowled among them, searching for any sign of intruders.

On a much more local level, two increasingly frustrated intruders were busy trying to cut through vines of dot matrix paper, hanging in dangling strips from overhangs formed from the cubicles that now rose to well over fifteen feet high around them.  The paper vines *looked* fragile, but the edges were far sharper than they had any right to be.

“Why are these… these… *paper things* so thinging sharp!”  Sarah was doing her best to keep from yelling, and it was going fairly well.  She wasn’t an idiot, and she had a lot of experience in this place that told her to keep it down.  But it felt important to give voice to her irritation as she tried to yank one of the vines in their way down and just got another shallow scratch on the blade of the machete she was waving around.

Anesh wasn’t having much more luck on his end when it came to getting a path cleared, but he was managing to not get too frustrated, or to giggle at his companion’s antics.  Perched on his backpack, Ganesh just held on and stayed out of the way, folded insect legs holding a flap of protective cloth over the drone’s head, just in case.  Ganesh didn’t offer commentary, but Anesh was pretty sure he’d be laughing if it were an option.

“I think that’s the closest I’ve heard you come to swearing.”  Anesh commented to Sarah, letting the machete he was holding swing down to hang at his side. “Ya know, I think this way might be a bit mucked.  Want to circle around?”

“No!”  Sarah exclaimed, taking another experimental jab at what looked like a thin part of the vine layers.  “It’s hiding something!  I can feel it!”

“Really?  Or are you just being dramatic.”

She turned and fixed Anesh with a withering glower, that no amount of acting skill would let her keep from cracking into a grin for longer than a few seconds.  “Okay, dramatic.”  Sarah admitted, stepping back, carefully dodging one of the strips of paper on the ground.  Even pulled down, they were still razor sharp.  “Also I swear!  I could totally do a swear!”

“Really?  Or are you just-“

“Oh hush.”  Sarah sheathed her machete and cocked a stare at the office jungle.  Hands perched on her hips, back arched as she looked up at the enormity of the problem.  “Okay, let’s try circling.  How far back was the last intersection?”

“Only a hundred meters or so.”  Anesh pulled out the notepad he had clipped to his side and was using to keep map notes.  “Just before that exploding water cooler trap.”

“Mmh.”  Sarah nodded nostalgically.  “Good times.  Good times.”

“Well, *times* anyway.”  Anesh countered, folding up his notes.  “We can try circling right, but I dunno, this place looks like it’s meant to be a threshold.”

It did, too.  Twenty feet overhead, the arch of cubicle walls dangled a thick forest of vines, but that wasn’t where the architecture ended.  It wasn’t like a normal wall, which they had found before in here acting as usually impassable barriers, but more like the geometry around one of the sunken caves.  Wall panels that just barely didn’t line up properly, giving the impression more of a cliff face than a piece of structure.  Officium Mundi plants growing out of creases and nooks in the edifice.

It actually reminded Anesh a lot of the cliffs in Winter’s Climb.  Only less cold.  And less…

Well, he was going to think ‘less hostile’, but given that they were being prevented from passing under the whole array by a riot of paper blades, maybe that wasn’t quite correct.

“You think it’ll just be more of this?”  Sarah asked.  “I dunno, I’ve never really seen anything like this.”  She folded her arms over her lightly armored chest.  “I’m curious.  And you know what that means!”

“That… you are… a cat?  I don’t know what that means.”  Anesh admitted.

Sarah’s shoulders sagged briefly.  “Oh. Right.”  She sounded, for a second, as small as she looked, standing in the middle of an endless Office.  But only for a second.  “Well, it means we’re going on an adventure!”

“I’m filled with a sudden inexplicable worry.”  Anesh blinked, speaking before he realized what he said.

“Oh, you do remember!”  Sarah sounded far too cheerful.  “Let’s go!”

“Wait, I never came in here with you the first go round!”  Anesh protested, adjusting his pack and letting Ganesh settle in on his shoulder before softly jogging to catch up to Sarah, who had almost immediately turned and started leading the way back down the hallway they’d taken.  “Why do I have a reaction to this!”

“We were friends outside Officium Mundi, you goof.”  Sarah told him, rolling her eyes.  “Also, would you believe I didn’t get up to many adventures in here?   Not that I really remember a lot of it.”  Her voice was wry, in a way Anesh didn’t hear from her often.

That said, Anesh hadn’t really hung out with Sarah that much.  And he suddenly realized that this exploratory delve was maybe the first one on one time together they’d had in a while.  Maybe since she’d come back.

“What adventures *did* you get up to in here?”  Anesh asked, trying to be companionable without prying too much.

“Oh, the usual, I guess?  We came in through a different door, but I don’t remember where it is, you know?  I know we *found* our door at one point, so it can’t be too far away, like, geographically, but it’s not like it’s easy to camp every door in a building for a whole week.”  She shrugged.  “I remember there was a big chasm we tried climbing down once.  One of the guys swore they saw the tops of light panels, but we ran out of rope.  Uh… there was an office that had shifting sticky notes all over the walls, like chameleon scales.  I remember a bunch of little stuff.  And all the skill orbs.  But I didn’t get too many of those.”

“Have you…” Anesh paused, both out of an awkward culturally instilled directive to not talk about emotions, and also because he needed to check a corner for ambush before he and Sarah moved on.  “Have you tried maybe asking Planner or Pathfinder to help you get back what you lost? Or making a new infomorph just for that?”  He glanced over at his companion.  “It sounds *horrifying*, not remembering like that.”

Sarah gave him a brittle smile.  “It’s not so bad.  At least I remember I had a team, right?  Even if I can’t remember their faces.”  The words were an obvious lie.  “And everyone now is great!  Even if you have been avoiding me for a *year*.”

“I’ve been busy!  Also I swear we’ve talked before now!”  Anesh defended himself.  He was going to say more, but they were caught up in conversation and didn’t properly check the corner at the intersection they were planning to use to circle the jungle, so naturally, that was where the ambush was waiting.

*How* a potted plant snuck up on them was not the issue.  The issue would be finding a way to edit the Ops Manual to inform everyone that potted plants could do that, without admitting that they’d just been jump scared by a stationary object.

“Here.”  Anesh offered Sarah one of the two yellows the potted plant had dropped, which she took with a stiff movement while Ganesh perched on her head and carefully applied a bandage to where one of the vines had cracked across her forehead so hard it had drawn blood.  “We’ve got a backlog of these to copy anyway, so have fun.”  He said, popping his own.

[+1 Skill Rank : Pilot - Fixed Wing Aircraft]

Sarah gave him a smile and did the same for her own, letting the brief alien thought in her head guide her to what new knowledge she’d picked up.

[+.9 Skill Ranks : Gambling - Baccarat]

“I’m still confused as to why some of these give part-ranks.”  Sarah said, watching the colorful dust of the orb fade to nothingness.

Anesh, pulling a chair in from an adjacent cubicle and sliding his backpack to the floor as he dropped into it, perked up at the question he could actually answer.  “They have a structured drop-off in effectiveness if they’re copies of an orb you’ve already used.  I think they stop doing anything entirely after four uses.  It goes one, point six, point two, point one, nothing.”  He thought for a second, then corrected.  “Okay, not ‘nothing’.  But ‘plus zero ranks’.  So, nothing.”

“Okay, but this one wasn’t a copy.”

“What did you get?”  Anesh asked.  “I got flying.”

“You can fly?!”  Sarah pouted at him.  “That’s not fair!  I want to fl… wait, wouldn’t that be a purple?”

“*Fly an aircraft* you… goof.”  Anesh couldn’t help but laugh at Sarah’s antics.  The girl was all over the place sometimes, but he *got* why she was friends with James.  And everyone else.  She was just… devoted to being a friend, really.  “Anyway, what did you get?  Because you get partial ranks if you’re already learning something.  I think it rounds you up to the next ‘rank’, whatever a rank is.  We still can’t figure out any meaningful way to measure that.”

“Baccarat.”

“The card game?”  Anesh tilted his head.  “I didn’t… I mean, I guess we haven’t talked much, but I didn’t know you were into that.”

“I’m not, I just know things, because I am wise and terrible.”  Sarah waggled her fingers at him like what she imagined a great wizard would.

Anesh stared at her analytically.  “Hmm.”  He said simply.

Sarah dropped her hands.  “Also I watch random stuff on Youtube a lot.”  She admitted.

“Me too.”  Anesh smiled.  “Well, at least now we have promising careers ahead of us as a pilot and a gambler.”  He stood and offered Sarah a hand up, wincing as the bruise on his arm pulled tight.  “Actually, that sounds like a great adventure show. We should make that.”

Sarah took the hand and sprung to her feet, light frame making the motion look effortless.  “Ah, and now we get to one of those depressing things James made me think about, so now you have to think about it too!”

“Oh bloody hell, what.”  Anesh resigned himself to his fate as he added a collection of pens from the desk to his backpack before zipping it back up and shouldering it.

“Well, you can fly a plane now, right?”  Sarah prompted.

“In theory.  Probably.  Yes.  Some planes.”  Anesh didn’t take any of the heavier stuff in the cubicle, because they still had kilometers left to go today, but he did scrounge fifty bucks out of a billfold hidden in one of the drawers.  “Okay, many planes.  Though only one at a time!”

“So you could get a job as a pilot?”  Sarah prompted.

Anesh stopped, and slowly looked up at her.  “...No.” He said, realizing where this was going.

“Yeeeeah!  You see it!”  Sarah looked a little too happy to have sprung this revelation on him.  “We live in a world where knowing how to do something and being good at a skill *doesn’t make you qualified to do it as a job*.  That’s weird!  That’s *bad*!”  She declared the last bit a little too loud, hand pointed up to the ceiling with her index finger extended as she passed judgment on society as a whole.

From around them, behind walls that didn’t muffle sound nearly enough, a burst of scratching noises and error tones came to life.

“Aw, piss.”  Anesh grumbled.  “Too loud.”

“I’m sorry!”  Sarah whispered.

“Sorry later!  Go!”  He hissed back, securing his bag and hoisting his hand into the air, launching Ganesh over them with a buzz of gossamer wings, while Sarah grabbed the bat she’d brought along and bolted.  Neither of them drew their machetes; those were for clearing obstacles, and basically nothing else.  Too many problems fighting with the tools had taught everyone that.

Despite Sarah’s careless slip, they *did* have a standard plan for this situation. Retreat toward explored sections, only fight if they had to, and remember that abandoning any gear was preferable to abandoning any people.

With that in mind, Anesh ducked after Sarah, who was staying low and running to the hall they’d came down to get to this part of the dungeon.  To their left, a pair of shellaxies making predatory dings were crawling out of holes in the cubicle walls, the larger of the pair covered with iLipedes that were latched on like lampreys.

Anesh pulled one of the electromagnets off his armor’s rigging, twisted it to engage the battery, and flung it sideways down the hall before chasing behind Sarah.

Swarms in Officium Mundi could come out of nowhere.  Sometimes, you could fire a gun and attract no attention.  Other times, a single word slightly too loud could trigger a horde of the local creatures pouring over walls and out from hidden nests to try to murder an unfortunate delve team.

Right now, it felt like ‘the locals’ were everything Officium Mundi had.  Ahead of him, Anesh saw Sarah leap over a snapping alligator clip before bringing her bat up in a whirling arc, taking a stapler out of the air with a shouted “Sorry!” Behind her.

Anesh snatched the yellow orb out of the air as it fell, making a less graceful and more violent jump over the black plastic snapper that tried to take his leg off.  As his boot crunched into its snout, he fumbled his gloved fingers into a pocket and pulled out the pen that got brighter and brighter the longer it was open, flipped the cap off, and dropped it behind him.

At the end of the day, a flashbang would probably be cheaper than a magic pen that accomplished the same thing, but right now, anything between them and the stuff chasing them was a perk.

Ahead of him, Sarah called a check in and Anesh answered, letting her know he was still good.  Without looking, she took a corner, sliding into an acrobatic roll along the floor that Anesh envied her for being able to do that casually.  He had to slow down himself, almost crashing into a vending machine, which *he* apologized to, slapping an electric mouse into the wall to his left with a chitinous crunch before it could try to electrocute him as he took the corner.

The place was crawling with life, all of a sudden.  When it had seemed so *empty* on the way in.

Anesh almost slammed into Sarah as he took the corner, the girl standing still right in the middle of the hall.

No, not standing still.  Unmoving.

Anesh uttered something he was pretty sure was a rude word as he *exhaled*, and pushed the magic from the Climb into the world.

James had taken something for architecture, because that’s who James was.  Nik had grabbed something he thought would be good for healing, because that’s how Nik was.  But Anesh? Anesh was a mathematician.  Not for an end goal, but because he understood it, and loved the work itself.  So he’d taken the tattered textbook on spatial geometry, and just accepted he was going to get what he got.

[Fractal Avalanche | Two Breaths | Seconds] had been the magic that settled into his lungs, just under the ball of power that accumulated as he breathed normally.  And now, he pushed out his Breath, and the spell along with it.

*Unfortunately*, this was one case where having multiple bodies wasn’t a great solution.  Every iteration of him, as long as they stayed ‘updated’, actually shared a Breath pool.  Which would mean that the rest of him would get a painfully cold signal that one of them was casting as the spell went off.

Fortunately, though, the spell worked the way he wanted it to.  Anesh moved *through* Sarah, his sensory self emanating from what would have been his actual position, but his physical form shattered into a dozen pieces.  He got a good look at the camraconda that was staring her down, too, all blue Ethernet cable and one of those domed pod cameras for a head.  And then, from a dozen different perspectives, Anesh slammed into the camraconda as he reformed into a single entity.

The end result was him on the ground with the snake in a chokehold, one hand clamped over its eye so hard he felt the plastic chitin cracking.  At least one of his projections had elbow dropped the monster in the side of its neck, and its thrashing was weaker than Anesh expected as he pinned it down and freed Sarah.

“Please stab it!”  He called, as the edges of the swarm still after them started to locate them from over the tops of the walls around their position.

Sarah, though, was not one for stabbing.  “Yup!”  She lied, a sparkling laugh in her voice as she ran over and threw a salvaged coat over the camraconda’s head, tying off the arms tightly in its mouth as it tried to bite her.  “Okay, come on!”  She grabbed Anesh’s arm and pulled him up with surprising strength, before hooking her fingers into the surface of the camraconda’s cables and yanking the heavy serpent form up over her shoulder as well.  “Let’s gooooo!”  Sarah’s adrenaline fueled excitement failed to infect Anesh, who just shook his head and staggered after her.  He felt out of breath and drained.  But at least he wasn’t the one hauling their new captive around.

A whole half hour of running, dodging, and skirmishing later, they found themselves sitting against a door to an actual office space.  The windows were frosted glass and obviously fake, the desk looked more like a grim altar than a place to do paperwork, and Anesh was pretty sure the lamp was staring at them, but the wall and door were a godsend for keeping them hidden.

Outside, the swarm still moved, but it was dying down as the humans couldn’t be found.  Next to him, Sarah was panting heavily, the camraconda being held down by her legs as she caught her breath.  Ganesh perched on his head again, similarly out of energy.

“Why… aren’t you… winded?” She demanded of Anesh.

“I don’t need to breathe much.”  He admitted.  “Mountain magic takes it out of me, but running? Running’s easy.”

“We should hang out more.”  She said, like the last hour of frantic survival hadn’t bothered her at all.

Anesh grinned.  “Sure.”  He said.  “We should get a group D&D game going again.  Somehow, I *know* you’re into that.”

“I’m friends with James, of *course* I am.”  Sarah sounded both excited and affronted all at once.  The two of them sat there for a bit longer, Sarah leaning against Anesh’s armor plate.  “How do you think he’s doing?”  She asked.

“James?  He’s fine.”  Anesh answered.  “He checks in on the server, you know.  He’s almost to his Map destination, should be home in a day or two.”

Sarah waved a hand.  “He *says* he’s fine.  But is he fine?”  She questioned.  “I posit that he is, in fact, not fine.”

“He’s… I dunno.”  Anesh sighed.  “He’s felt kind of exhausted lately.  And I know he’s still dealing with his depression.  I just wish I could help more than I am.”

“You coulda gone with him?”  Sarah suggested.  “Get some good road trip private time in, eh?”  She poked his arm suggestively.

Anesh snorted.  “That’s not what he needs and you know it.  Probably.  Also, are we back to the friend stage where you’re going to be shipping us?  I don’t know *why*, but I have this feeling that this was a thing.”

“This was absolutely a thing.”  Sarah confirmed.  “Also, I just realized, James has *my car*, so he isn’t allowed to telepad back.  So it might be a few more days.”

“Eh.  Let’s send the golem to pick him up.”  Anesh decided.  “Speaking of….” He looked down at the squirming camraconda, then back up at the standing lamp that was *absolutely* watching him.  “Do you want to telepad back to home base?  I feel like we’re not getting through that jungle today.”

Despite crushing her dreams of seeing an overgrown and living part of the Office , Sarah did agree.  After only a little dramatic bemoaning, too.  The two of them were welcomed back by the guard shift as they dropped off their findings, and the pile of orbs they’d collected.

Then they settled in to wait, or to be backup for someone else who might need it while they explored their own sections.

Just another day at the Office.

_____

Momo was having a bad day, and looking to express that in a way that was probably unhealthy and self-destructive.  Or, at the very least, just regular destructive.

“Oh, hello.”  Lua greeted her with a bit of surprise as Momo rounded the ramp leading into the depths of the high school.  It surprised Momo a bit to see her there, but then, the Order *had* been trying to keep an active watch on this door, and Lua worked here anyway.

The actual *why* of why Lua worked here made sense to Momo.  The woman just wanted to rebuild a life, do work with the skills she’d built up over a lifetime.  It was just strange to her, every time she met someone who tried to distance themselves from the hidden magic of the world.  Though Lua still did keep watch for them when it mattered.

Momo just wished that she wasn’t keeping watch now.

“Hey Lua.”  She returned the greeting pleasantly, making her voice as normal as she could.  “Just here to check a couple things.  Door’s not open, is it?“ What a loaded question.

“It *is*, which you should know.  School hours, until everyone has gone home for the night.”  Lua didn’t exactly narrow her eyes, but caught off guard like this, her voice betrayed suspicion.

“Wait, what about night security?”  Momo asked, legitimately curious and distracted by it.

Lua’s answer was, again, not openly scornful, but maybe had a hint of mild bitter amusement.  “This is a relatively small school in the middle of an upper class suburb.”  She said.  And then, more directly, “Momo, what are you doing here?”

If Momo could have hidden the duffel bag she was carrying behind her back, she would have.  But she’d been caught unawares, and now looked a bit *obvious*, didn’t she?

“Nothing?”  She ventured.

“Young lady…” Lua’s words were stern and disappointed as she crossed her arms.

“Does no one get that I’m *twenty three*?!” Momo was suddenly offended, and it merged with the lingering anger in her chest.  “I’ll be fine!  I’m just checking some stuff, or something.  I’ll come right back out.”  She pulled something out of her pocket.  “Look, got a telepad and everything.”

Lua’s voice was almost a whisper.  “That door doesn’t open from the other side, you know.”

“I *know*.”  Momo snarled.  “I don’t care!  Please let me get by, because we both know you can’t actually stop me.”  It was the closest thing Momo had ever come to threatening someone, and she regretted it instantly, but she didn’t know what to do to take it back.  Or if she could.

There was more worry than hurt in Lua’s eyes, though.  Even as she stepped aside, she was saying something reassuring to Momo that the younger woman didn’t properly hear over the rushing in her ears.

And then she was through the door.

As the rusted metal and flaked blue paint of the security door shut behind her with all the violence of a row of prison bars being slammed, Momo didn’t waste time finding a mostly dry spot on the rough concrete floor and dropping her bag.

The entrance room was as disgusting as ever.  Some kind of algae grew in dripping lines from broken showerheads around the walls that had probably never had actual water run through them.  The recessed drains in the floor had red and brown liquid stains surrounding them.  And almost the whole place was damp, which unfortunately probably explained why the room smelled like stale sweat and wet dog vomit.  Obscured graffiti lined the walls, wordless and intimidating.

Momo didn’t waste time strapping the hard shell armored plates over her clothes. She’d worn stuff she didn’t really care about today, which mostly meant she was wearing shredded jeans and a shirt so faded she didn’t remember if it was for a band or a con.  Nothing of value to be lost when something inevitably puked acid on her.

She fell into a rhythm with her motions. Armor out of the bag, pull it on, tighten straps, hook to another plate.  Repeat. It took her only a few minutes to be good to go; even though she wasn't used to doing this alone. Then, still moving rapidly so she didn’t have to linger, she brought out the bits of a staff, screwed them together, and leaned propped it up against the bag while she flicked a phone flashlight on and tucked the light into her armor’s chest rig.  The dungeon had stolen her knives, which was annoying, but at least all the thick glass bottles she’d brought were intact.  Then she added a half dozen inactive scrambler totems to her belt pouches, flipped open a pair of dungeontech glasses that highlighted sharp lines, and stood up to get moving.

Which was when she heard the door slam shut again, and jerked in startled fear as she realized someone had followed her in here.

“Fucking *dammit* Lua!”  Momo snapped through her filter mask as she turned.  “I don’t need…!”

She trailed off as Simon, already in his own armor, grimaced at the smell. “Ugh.”  Her friend muttered.  “Nope. Still hate this.”  He added as he rummaged through a much smaller bag than hers.  “Aw, it took my gas mask!”  Simon complained like Momo wasn’t staring daggers at him, before pulling out a much less effective mask that matched her own and settling it over his mouth and nose. Added to that was an aluminum baseball bat that he pulled off a loop on his backpack, before he set his own phone flashlight.  “Okay, ready.” He commented, ignoring Momo’s glare.

“What are you doing here?”  She demanded.

“Delving.”  Simon said, voice neutral. “You set?”

Momo tried.  She really did her best, to keep glaring so long that Simon just left.  But he wasn’t giving her a reaction to it, and she was wasting time, and it didn’t matter anyway.  So…

“Yeah, sure.”  Momo sighed angrily.  “Let’s go.”

So they went.  Into the tunnels of clustered pipes, their lights doing a poor job of providing any real light, but still letting them take cautious steps without the panic of walking in pitch darkness.  The smell of the entrance faded, slowly, replaced almost without notice by the scent of burnt meat and rotting fruit.  The sounds of liquids dripping and flowing would occasionally cascade through the pipes, sometimes with bits splattering out of jagged gashes in the walls around them.  Momo pointed those out, when her glasses lit them up for her, and the pair steered clear of the obvious hazards.

The dungeon, she thought grimly, had been growing.  Changing.  The path they were on had split multiple times by now, no longer a straight shot of a tunnel.  And not only that, but the tunnel wasn’t a straight line either; it had swells and dips in elevation, twisted and curved.  The branches were almost always very short dead ends, but that didn’t change that this was becoming less a hike and more a maze.  More like an actual dungeon.

One of the branches ended with a packed dirt floor, recessed into the pipes that still coiled around the wall like inorganic veins.  In the middle of the floor, two raised dirt pillars stood, one higher up than the other, both of them over a glowing green pond of thick slime.  The taller pillar had one of those handprint indentations that the Ops Manual mentioned.

They still didn’t know what these were for.  But Simon had just shrugged, handed his bag to Momo, gotten a running start, and then launched himself in a high jump that took him higher than a human should have been able to go.  He’d slammed into the taller pillar’s lip with his chest, and pulled himself up easily to press his hand into the waiting slot, and unleash a small burst of purple sparks to funnel into his arm.

“Show off.”  Momo muttered as she handed him back his bag.

The two of them kept going, Momo taking every opportunity to slam her steel toe boots down onto the skittering bugs that would sometimes dart out from hidey holes, or scatter across the pipes when the light touched them.  Every chitinous pop as she killed one accompanied by a single red spark, and a more human burst of a vindictive rush.

It was when they came to a more open section that things started to get really bad, though.

The floor fell away around them, as did the walls.  There was just the unstable pipes underfoot, a cavernous space overhead, and a black abyss below.  A musty wind whistled past, pushing them downward, while an unhealthy blue glow emanated from multiple holes in the pipes ahead.  The only thing that made this even remotely doable was that the pipe bridge was mostly flat, and still about eight feet wide.

Momo went first, Simon followed, both of them on high alert.

Which was the main reason why, when the first ratroach threw itself from a recessed hole in the side of the wall to land in front of them, Momo didn’t even let it get its knife up before she whipped her staff around, twisting her whole body to make sure it hit with as much force as she could muster.

The strike hit the side of the ratroach’s neck, and crushed it inward, snapping bone and chitin and pulverizing flesh.  It dropped limpy, and Momo howled at it as she stepped forward and planted a kick into the downed creature’s face, sending it sliding back and half off the tubes before it stopped.

Then the next ratroach hit the bridge, and Momo didn’t even hesitate before doing something similar to that one.

Her world narrowed to the fight.  Green-black ichor and red sparks, the burn of her muscles as she swung her staff hard enough to break bones, the screams of the bugs still throwing themselves at her, the clinical tactical choice of activating a few of her scrambler totems and flinging them into their nests along the wall.  It all blurred together.

She barely noticed when Simon’s bat whirled through the air just over her head and ricocheted off a diving wasp thing just before it hit her, sending both bat and wasp spiraling downward.  Or Simon kicking away the ratroach that had managed to get all three of its hands wrapped around her leg to try to drag her off balance and over the edge.  She didn’t notice much of anything, really, until there weren’t any more things trying to kill them.

Momo stood in the middle of a bridge over a hole too deep to see the bottom, panting through her mask, covered in other thing’s blood. She looked down at the broken staff in her hand almost curiously, before dropping it over the edge to soundlessly fall away.  But then she just… stood there.

“Holy shit.”  She heard Simon mutter from behind her.

“Let’s go.”  Momo said adjusting the strap of her bag, and taking steps that shook more than she had expected toward the other side of the room.

Once they were off the bridge, and the tunnel was more or less empty around them, Simon called for a stop.  “Hold up.”  He said.  “I need a drink.”  He pulled out a bottle of water, downed about half of it before offering it to Momo, who waved it off.  “Stay hydrated.”  Simon said simply.

Reluctantly, Momo took the accepted bottle, and sipped at it, before realizing how thirsty she was and gulping it down.

“Thanks.”  She mumbled.

“Of course.”  Simon said.

It wasn’t *fair*, Momo thought, how fucking nice her friends were.  And she hadn’t even really hung out with Simon or James for… since they stopped being two people.  It wasn’t fair, that he cared about her this much.  That he was here prowling through a sewer with her, instead of doing something useful.  That he was just being here, not prying or asking stupid questions or… or…

“Nameless died.”  Momo said, handing back the empty bottle.

Simon paused as he took it back, but only briefly, tucking the empty container back in his pack while Momo withdrew a shaking hand.  “The AI?”

“Yeah.”  Momo tried to take a deep breath through her nose, and instantly regretted it, snapping her mask back into place and coughing out the smell.  “The AI I made.  By accident.  And then let die.”  She trailed off, and then turned to look down the upcoming pitch black tunnel.  “Anyway, let’s…”

Simon’s armored form thunked into hers, arms wrapping around her front as he gave her the kind of awkward hug only someone very supportive and also wearing riot gear could.

There were a lot of things Simon *didn’t* say.  “I’m sorry”, because obviously he was sorry, and also there was no way to say that without it sounding hollow.  “That’s terrible”, because of course it was terrible; repeating that fact just drove it home, it didn’t solve anything.  And he absolutely didn’t go with “How are you feeling?”  Because Simon had approximately two lifetimes of experience telling him not to be *that* much of an idiot.

There were, it turned out, a lot of words that just didn’t mean anything when faced with the severing of a connection by the yawning void of death.

“It’s okay, you know.”  He said quietly, instead.

Momo’s fury spiked up, and she started to twist out of his grip.  “No it-!”

“To be angry, I mean.”  Simon said, still keeping his serene attitude, feeling Momo go still.  “To be… you know… pissed off.”

“I’m not angry.”  Momo lied.

She could almost *feel* Simon raising his eyebrows.  “Oh yeah?”  He asked, pulling back and using a gloved hand to wipe a smear of ratroach blood off his armor.  “Okay.  If you say so.”

“If I was angry, there’s no one to be angry *at*, except myself.”  Momo said, dropping her arms down to her sides, staring past Simon.  “Since I didn’t do enough.”

“That’s not true.”  Simon said with a shrug.

Momo dragged her line of sight over to her friend.  “What?”

“That’s not true.”  He repeated.  “There’s plenty to be pissed at.”  Simon gave another shrug.  “Just the unfair nature of the world, I guess.  At how cruel death is.  It doesn’t have to be your fault to be awful, and it’s okay to be angry at how awful it is.”

“...Lua’s a better therapist.”  Momo eventually settled on muttering.

“Ah, but Lua isn’t as good at watching your ass in a fight.”  Simon countered.  “Do you want to keep-“

“Is *that* why you didn’t hit the bird until it almost got me?”  Momo demanded.  “Too busy looking at my ass?”

“I blame James.”  Simon said without hesitation.  But Momo froze, the sudden reminder of their sort-of-dead friend bringing her up short.  “Oh.  Sorry.”  Simon’s eyes softened, the joke fading away.  “It’s… the joking helps.”  He said.

“Who are you, anyway?”  Momo asked.  Though her voice had lost a lot of her earlier anger.  She realized how much her legs were trembling with either exhaustion or adrenaline, and considered finding a seat, but then remembered where they were.  “Are you still Simon? Or…?”

“Both.  Neither.”  Simon shrugged.  “I’m who I am after the lines started to blur.”  He said, putting a tone to his words that made it clear he’d practiced that line.  “I’m not really ‘Simon’, any more than you’re ‘Momo from four years ago’.”  He paused to smash down some kind of bug with too many legs and what looked like canine teeth that had been sneaking up on him.  “Do you wanna keep moving? I hate this place.”

Momo nodded.  “Yeah.”  She said, kicking her legs out a couple times to try to reestablish control of them.  “Wait, back up.  James liked my ass?”

“Uh huh.”  Simon nodded.

“And you… sort of *are* part James now?”  She tapped a gloved finger to her chin.

“Yup.”  Simon agreed, reaching for something and coming up empty.  “Dammit, I lost my bat.”  He muttered to himself.

Momo nodded.  “So *that* means that *you* like-“

“Alright let’s go!”  Simon announced a little too quickly, pushing past her and leading them into the tunnel.

Momo followed.  Still not okay, but doing a bit better.

More pipes.  More branches, dead ends.  Sometimes, a door, which they mostly ignored.  Very occasionally, they’d find a question clawed into the wall that they could sometimes answer for a burst of green sparks.

They talked as they moved, now.  Momo opening up, the floodgates broken.

“I just didn’t know what to do.”  She confided in her friend.  “I tried different totems, I tried adding stabilizing programs.  Tried adding or removing hardware.  Fuck, we even tried giving Nameless an authority.”

“Did that not work?”

“It didn’t take it.  Wouldn’t accept it.  Planner said it had to do with the nature of how Nameless thought, but I think the AI just… rejected it.”  Momo seemed to deflate a little.  “It wasn’t even trying to stay alive.”  She said, pain in her voice.  “It didn’t care.  Like it didn’t *matter*!”  Her words came out bitter and obviously upset.  “And it *is* my fault!  Because I built the thing to find dungeons, and not to be a person, and it’s *exactly* the shit James is always saying, about how we *don’t build people to be tools*, and I thought I was *smarter* than than!  I’m supposed to be smarter than that!”

Her yell echoed off the pipes, and a screaming howl replied, something like a too-long multi jointed human arm with the skin sloughing off sliding out of the pipes overhead and grabbing for her.

Momo, having spotted the gap as they approached with her glasses, was less than surprised.  She *was* still pretty damn angry, though, and she grabbed at one of the elbows, twisted the arm around her own, and *yanked*, snapping the brittle bone inside and ripping the flesh away with a gooey splatter.

Behind her, Simon looked a bit sick as Momo threw the discarded lump of inhuman flesh to the side.

“You know what the dumbest part is?”  Momo asked quietly, beige liquid flesh dripping off her armguard.  Simon slid the knives he’d stolen off the dead ratroaches back into their loops on his armor, and made a ‘go on’ gesture at her.  “I think it learned more from James than from me.  Like, James-James, not… ugh.  I hate names.”  She muttered.  “You know, boss James.  The one who recklessly goes on dungeon delves and seems to risk his life sometimes for no fucking reason?”

Simon looked around them, looked back at Momo, and pointedly said *absolutely nothing*.

Momo opened her mouth to ask what he was getting at, when it clicked for her.  “Oh.”  She said.  And then, sorrow in her voice, repeated a very small “...oh…”

“It doesn’t mean anything, you know.”  Simon said twenty minutes later as they paused to collect from a no longer defended pool of shaper substance.  “The shared recklessness.  That doesn’t make it your fault.”

“Fuck off.”  Momo hissed as she filled bottles with the twisting fluid.  “I was supposed to be a responsible creator.  And I got my... my kid killed.”

“You can’t even come close to knowing if that’s true.”  Simon chastised her.  “You *built digital life*, Momers.  That’s probably a first for everyone.  There’s no parenting guide for this.”  He sighed into his mask.  “I know that I can’t make it better, but I’m telling you, it’s not your fault.  It’s okay to be angry, right? But it’s not your fault.”

“It feels like it.”  Momo sniffed back a sob.

Simon realized something, suddenly.  “When did this happen, anyway?”  He asked.

“Couple hours ago.”

He winced.  “And you didn’t… and you came here?”  For the first time, his words might have had a little bit of judgment in them.

“I was pissed.”  Momo sniffed.

“And now?”

“Still pissed.”  She said.  “But also feeling gross and tired and a different angry.”  She sniffed again.  “I should have just fucking gotten Marjorie to make me a cake, eaten a whole cake, and cried in my room.  Coulda saved a lot of trouble.”  Momo looked up.  “Also thanks for following me.”

“Anytime.”  Simon said, easily.  “Do you want to telepad out?”

“No.”  Momo shook her head.  “We’re almost at the exit, I want to grab some books, and also there’s something I need to do.” She said.

Simon shrugged, and followed her the last fifty feet to the mouth of the tunnel, and the arena.

The rest of the dungeon had gotten improvements, but this place looked as dramatic as ever.  A gravel basketball court, with stone bleachers and rusted chain link fence surrounding it.  The ratroaches were waiting for them, as always, a jeering crowd hissing and spitting for violence and death.  This time, though, more of those crow-wasp things were mixed into the crowed, and Simon swore he saw something that looked like a blend of a dog and a frog mixed into the press of matted fur and chipped chitin.

“Yessss.” The white furred ratroach in the middle of the arena greeted them, her voice rising to a howl that brought a reverent silence from the others around the place.  She’d gotten bigger, and seemed undeterred by James kidnapping her two lieutenants a couple months back; two other ratroaches flanked her now, both of them looking… worried.  Eight and a half feet tall, chitin polished to an opalescent sheen, the extra arm sticking out of her right arm now held up by an extra line of flesh that stretched like a ligament.  Five mismatched faceted pink eyes blinked at them out of sync, and the acidic blue drool dripping from her fanged maw ran down carved canyons in her chin.  “Welllcome-“

“Shuuuuuut up!”  Momo snapped out.  The words didn’t cut the ratroach off, but the pair of offensive red totems Momo clicked into place and flung out sure did.  As the white ratroach - Arrush had called her the Beautiful One, but Momo didn’t see it - and her squad collapsed screaming and clawing at their heads, she spread her arms and turned to the stilled audience.  “Anyone want a ticket out of here?”  She yelled.  “Sunshine, real food, and you can be *super* gay without anyone knifing you!  I’ve tested it!”

Simon moved with a little more purpose while Momo did her act, skirting the edges of the totem’s range, ignoring the increasing yells of the ratroaches behind the fence as they raked claws and bone knives over the rusted metal.  He held most of their green sparks, and he rushed to the lockers on the other end and cracked the first three he could afford, grabbing the books and shoving them into his bag as Momo kept yelling.

“Come on!  No one?!”  She yelled again, striding past the downed ratroaches in the middle of the arena, ignoring the information the totems crammed into her brain.  “You!  You want out?”  She jammed a finger toward a nervous looking ratroach in the front row, who promptly threw a wad of something wet at Momo.  The projectile was joined by others from the crowd.  “No one?!  Cowards!”  She screamed at them.  “Fucking cowards!  You could have a life!  We could take all of you!”  Momo howled, pausing only as Simon came over and set a worried hand on her shoulder.

He pointed with a nod, and Momo looked just as the Beautiful One snapped one of her totem balls open with a desperate claw, smashing the internal web.

“Time to go.”  He muttered, half dragging his manically laughing friend out the back door.

The transition back to reality was jarring.  It was suddenly quiet, the smell of wet linoleum almost overwhelming after the rancid scents of the dungeon.

“Ugh.”  Momo’s shoulders sagged as she stood at the bottom of the ramp that shouldn’t be here.  “I thought at least one of them would… ugh.”

“Peer pressure.”  Simon sighed.  Both sets of his memories were young enough to remember the feeling perfectly well.  “Might need a new tactic.”  He held out a trio of books to her.

Momo took one, and pushed the others back.  “Thanks.”  She said.

“You want to head back with me?”  Simon asked, still concerned.  “Magneto misses you.”

Momo thought for a minute, then shook her head.  “If you can take my armor, I’d appreciate it.  I think… I dunno.  I don’t feel better.  But I need to do something.  Obviously violence isn’t helping.  Maybe I’ll go wander around downtown and abuse my asphalt magic.  I’ll come pet the magnet dog later.”

“Abuse… how?”

“Like, fix potholes, make sidewalks wider.”  Momo shrugged.  “Fuck up those stupid anti-homeless spikes.  That kinda thing.”

“You’re like an altruistic chaos gremlin.”  Simon told her with a straight face.

“Thanks.”  Momo told him as she peeled damp armor off her sweaty limbs.  “And… and thanks.  For being… you, I guess.”

Simon smiled.  “Anytime.”

_____

In a place between worlds, two people sat in the front of a used hatchback that someone had salvaged out of a mostly intact two car garage in the ruined city of Townton.  Making conversation on their way to somewhere else.

“Hey, can I ask a favor?”  Alanna asked her boyfriend.

Anesh glanced over at her from the report he was reading in the passenger seat.  “Of course.”  He said, adding before Alanna could reply “You’re fifty percent of my favorite people on the planet.  You can always ask favors.”

Alanna sort of wanted to make an irreverent joke about him being sappy, but… well, especially after the memory loss crap, there was just a warm feeling that came from how emotionally earnest and open both her partners were with their affection.  And she didn’t wanna fuck that up, even if she was still getting back into the swing of things.  “Cute.”  She said with a smile.  “Anyway.  I wanna run an idea by you, and I want you to tell me if it’s one of my actively horrible ones, okay?”

Setting his work down on his lap, Anesh tipped his head back and gazed out the window into the white fog.  “You don’t have horrible ideas.”  He protested.

“The last time I had a big idea, I *basically* proposed making ‘having a body’ an upper class luxury.”  Alanna countered.

“Yeah… well…” Anesh opened his mouth and held up a hand to make a random gesture that didn’t actually indicate anything.  “It was… you… alright *fine*, that was a bollocks idea.”  He admitted.  “What’s *this* idea?”

She set her mouth in a smirk, refusing to be offended by what was simply acceptance of the truth.  “Okay.  So, is there a reason we aren’t working to set up Townton, or even one of the dungeons, as an easy patch for homelessness?”  Alanna asked.  “Especially Townton.  Because it’s got houses, and they’re basically ours, right?”

“Mostly.”  Anesh nodded.  “We own a shocking amount of it.  But yes, there’s servers reasons.  Active hostile threats are one, obviously.  Even in Townton, where there’s still a few thousand necroads wandering around.  But the infrastructure just isn’t there.  We don’t have an actual supply of basic needs like power, food, and clean water in Townton; remember, most people don’t even remember the place exists, right?  And most of the buildings are damaged, too.  It’s a terrible place.”

“Not better than nothing, at least?”

“Well, that’s the thing.”  Anesh said.  “I asked Karen basically this same thing, and I *think* I got an answer that’s not… Karen’s great, but she has biases, yeh?  But still.  Someone who’s homeless in a city can still access a lot of the elements of that city.  We don’t even have those. We don’t even have a grocery store to lift from if someone’s starving.  We’d basically be cutting people off, unless we covered everything.  And while that’s something we obviously want to work up to, we’re only barely affording operating the Order right now.”

“Bah.”  Alanna sighed.  “I knew it was stupid.”

“I mean, your heart is in the right place?”  Anesh tilted his head back down and his reading back up.  “That’s important.  And knowing why something won’t work helps us get to a solution that does.”  He paused, and then added with a comically grim tone,  “I learned that in *college*.”

Alanna gnawed at her lip as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel.  Her boyfriend wasn’t wrong, but he probably wasn’t psychic, and maybe didn’t know that her heart was… harder than it had been, a few years ago.

She’d never been in a great spot in life.  Taking care of her sisters, tolerating her mom, Alanna had grown up effectively in poverty, which was a sharp contrast to a lot of her long term friends.  But she’d always been able to think, big picture, about making things better.  About how circumstances could be changed, because it was circumstances and systems that were the problem.

Then she’d been stranded, alone and as vulnerable as someone like her could get without being basically chained to a wall, and Alanna had gotten to know a lot of different people.

And so many of them were assholes.

Not just ‘an asshole’.  There were plenty of benign assholes.  No, the people Alanna had encountered had been… cruel.  They’d probably say they’d been made hard by a hard world, but she saw what they were.  Greedy, selfish.  They operated in bad faith, and took what they could.  Petty tyrants and heartless bastards.

And then she’d seen that attitude, suddenly, mirrored in a lot of the people who built and ran the systems.

Alanna had started this whole magical world-fixer thing wanting to maybe start a renter’s union and make some new friends.  Maybe friends that weren’t human.  Now, though, she was trying desperately to convince herself that there was any value in building anything, if greed seemed to always overwhelm trust.

“Honestly kinda surprised the Route isn’t slamming the door shut on us.”  Alanna eventually broke the silence from the driver’s seat as their car sped through thick white fog, ephemeral hands tapping at the windows and pulling on the wing mirrors.

From the passenger seat, Anesh didn’t even glance up from the tablet he was looking at.  “Hm?” Was the most he acknowledged the comment.

“You’re doing *paperwork*, man.”  Alanna glanced sideways.  “I mean, management… work… whatever paperwork on a digital device is.  Bureaucracy?”

“It’s gotta get done.”  Anesh reminded her easily while he tapped out a response and sent a request for more information to someone, before realizing there could not *possibly* be internet in this liminal space.  “May as well be me, while I wait.”  He told her.

Alanna looked out the side mirror where a shape like a playful wolf the side of a mountain bounded in the fog, either four feet or four miles away.  “Yeeeeeah… but doesn’t this place like it when you’re… what did El phrase it as?  Running away from something?”

“I am running away from something.”  Anesh told her, tipping the tablet down and looking out the window at the hypnotic twistings of the fog between worlds.  “I’m running away from a world where I have to do paperwork.”

As if the words were a magic key, the world unfolded around them.  The fog pulling back in organic fractal patterns, building a dusty road under the wheels and an endless winding expanse of desert dirt and hot asphalt across the horizon.  Overhead, two suns blazed; one red, the other a pale purple and almost brushing against the horizon.  Together, they covered half the sky.

Alanna let the car roll to a soft stop with only a little help from the brakes, tires crunching on the loose dirt and sand that covered the pavement near this point between Earth and dungeon.  While she threw the car in park, and started rolling down her window to absolutely obliterate the lingering chill of a wet winter in Tennessee, Anesh clicked his tablet off and tossed it into the back seat.  With an awkward stretch, he pulled his feet up onto the car seat, and started trying to get a look at the road under them, trying to spot any speed bumps collecting around their tires.

“I *like* this place.”  Alanna said, closing her eyes as the dry heat washed into the car.

“Being honest, I’m also a bit ready for an environment that isn’t raining all the time.”  Anesh admitted.  A life in both England, and then Oregon, had mostly taught him two things; he liked sunny days, and for some reason kept ending up in places where those were in short supply.

The ground looked clear, so the two of them tentatively stepped out onto the hot surface.  It was ‘evening’ here, with the suns not quite exactly overhead, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still broad daylight, with the bright radiation painting everything in hot yellows and oranges.  Anesh gave a respectful nod to the Earth-original scrubgrass growing up out of the metal shard gravel that lined the side of the endless highway; James’ attitude toward the determination of weeds having work off on him a little.

“They come through yet?”  He asked, circling the car to see Alanna standing in the middle of the road, staring off into the distance.

“Nope!  They’re probably doing *paperwork*.” She grinned, her earlier bad mood banished by the sun and road.

Anesh wasn’t quite so giddy, still keeping an eye out on the road below them.  He and James had never actually had to fight a speed bump, and Anesh still wasn’t convinced they actually *could*.  A stone blister full of grinding teeth just didn’t sound quite so easy to drive off or kill as a tumblefeed or a dragon.

When he looked back up, Alanna was another twenty feet down the road, arms spread as she took in the dungeon for the first time.  Despite having been in Townton when they’d fought the Mechanic, and coming back a few times for supply runs or to help out, she hadn’t actually been *in* here before.

“You okay?”  He called out to her.

When she turned back to Anesh, it was with a wide smile on her face.  “This place is a *playground*!” She announced.

“What?”  Anesh looked around at the rocky desert, the uneven dirt and sand around them, and the road that stretched away eternally.  The only thing within sight was a speck on the horizon that was *maybe* a gas station.  “Are you… sure?”

“I get why El liked this place.”  Alanna nodded, walking back toward him.  “This is gonna be great.  Cars are an expression of freedom, and this is nothing but a place to go irresponsibly fast in a car.  This is perfect.”

Anesh cleared his throat.  “You get that we’re planning to get rid of cars, right?”

“What?”  Alanna looked like someone had just eaten a puppy in front of her.

Thinking quickly, Anesh patted her on the shoulder.  “I’m sure we can design some kind of magical future car that doesn’t kill the planet for you.”  He said.  “Because we love you, you can have a car.”

“That’s a terrible reason!”  Alanna laughed.  “But whatever.  I’ll just enjoy this place.  This place is *so cool*.

Anesh had his doubts, partially because he was already sweating and starting to miss overcast days, which was a bad sign.  But before he could protest, another vehicle cut through the boundary of the entrance, and pulled to a stop beside theirs.  Then another one, pulling up behind them.

Out of the pickup truck, the burly form of Bill swung out to the ground.  “We all just loitering around?!”  He called over cheerfully.  “I thought we were here to work!”

“I love his enthusiasm.”  Alanna spoke sideways to Anesh.

“I’m not here to work.”  Mark yelled from the cab of the moving van they’d swiped for this job.  “I’m here because no one knows how to drive stick!”

“I hate his enthusiasm.”  Alanna’s smile didn’t slip as she waved to the two of them, and the other two delvers with them.  “Okay!  Any last minute shit before we get moving?”  She asked, slotting in perfectly to the personality of the two older men from the construction field.

“If I die, remember to turn me into a dragon and introduce it to my wife.”  Bill said, getting a nod of solemn agreement from Mark.

“The dragon afterlife is popular.”  Anesh said as he ran final checks on all the rifle magazines he was handing out to everyone.  “You’ve started a trend.”  He told Alanna.

“Who wouldn’t want to be a dragon in a future life maybe?”  Alanna grinned wolfishly.  “Alright.  We all know the plan, let’s go!”  She was back in the driver’s seat before Anesh finished making sure every vehicle had a well stocked gunner.

The plan was simple, really.  They knew Route Horizon was still asleep, and from experience, they knew sleeping dungeons were often far less hostile. It was the perfect time to explore, not just the roads themselves, but the land around them.  The truck was stocked with supplies; water, food, tools, even sheet metal for driving safely over the caltrop trenches and out into the desert, and fifty gallon drums for siphoning gas.

And there was so much waiting here.  Weird materials, navigator seeds, magic gasoline, shards of spellmaps, it wouldn’t surprise Anesh if there was literal buried treasure in here somewhere.  And they aimed to find out if that was true.

Also to see what happened when you copied the map chunks.  Also to test the limits of what could ‘burn’ enchanted gas.  Also to… so many other things.

They were prepared to take a while here.

“You think James is gonna regret missing out on this?”  Alanna asked.

“Nah.  One of me messaged him earlier.”  Anesh said.  “He’s having a good vacation.  And he bloody needed one, whether he admits it or not.  This fun is *all* ours.”

“How many of you are there, anyway?”  Alanna suddenly thought to ask.  “I mean… if that’s not rude?  Wow, why do I feel like that’s rude? I mean, two of you sleep with me, so it’s at least two, but now I feel bad for asking, and…”

“Deep breath!”  Anesh laughed.  “It’s not rude.  We’re gonna need to establish a lot of new social norms, huh?”

“Like public bathing!”  Alanna cheerfully agreed.

Anesh snorted.  “Anyway.  It shouldn’t be rude, and there’s four of me.  Me, two that stay around the Lair and Office, and then the me that works at NASA.”  He shrugged.  “Probably won’t spin up any new mes for a while, though.”

“Why not?”  Alanna asked as their car flew past a rock outcropping that cracked a large orange eye at them before settling back.  “If that’s not…”

“Are you alright?”  Anesh asked her, concerned.  “You’re normally… look, James once described your personality as ‘like a social bulldozer’, and you’re being a lot less like you, and I’m worried.”

“I’m worried I’m gonna offend you!”  Alanna threw one hand into the air, keeping the other on the wheel as she sped onward.  “I love you and shit! I don’t wanna fuck this up!”

“Okay, that’s better.”  Anesh nodded knowingly.  “Anyway, the thing is, each of me has a set of memories.  When we sync up, I basically ‘remember’ all of us.”

“Unspeakably cool.”  Alanna editorialized.

Anesh nodded.  “Correct.”  He said, pausing only briefly to make sure the black speck off to their right wasn’t something closing in on their convoy from the desert.  “But!  All of those memories are real, and valid.  There isn’t ‘one me’.  All of me live all my lives, okay?”

“Still cool.  Hey, actually, how *does* that work with the romance thing? Like, do you get double the feeling when James does that dumb lopsided smile at you and everything feels wobbly for a second?”

“Remarkably specific.”  Anesh closed his eyes and let an amused laugh pass through him. “Also *yes*!  Which is, as you subtly alluded to, *cool*.  Exceeeeept… well, there’s two of me that aren’t around for that.”  He shook his head, voice quieting to the point it was almost hard to hear over the engine and the tires on the road.  “So, the me that works at NASA is adding a set of memories of getting to work on space probes, but also… that me also doesn’t go into dungeons.  Doesn’t get to kiss you.  Doesn’t have a lot of friends.”  He shrugged.  “It’s not that bad; that me is still a me and still has all the memory sets of everything else.  But they’re also adding in memories of lonely days, which are *just as valid*.”

Alanna glanced over at him with sympathetic eyes.  “So, you don’t make more of you, because you’re kind of competing with yourself for social needs?”  It wasn’t really a question.  “That sucks!”  Alanna announced.  “I feel bad for all the other yous now!”

“I mean, it’s fine.”  Anesh chuckled softly.  “Though I appreciate it.  And it’s not like it’s a solvable problem.”

“Hell it isn’t!”  Alanna announced, slapping a heavy hand on the wheel.  “Bring all of you to wherever I am!  I can handle four Anesh at once!”

Anesh coughed into his hand.  “Uh…”

“Yeah, I heard what I said!”  Alanna barreled through.  “It wasn’t explicitly meant to be that but now it is!”

“Well, I...“ Anesh trailed off, face flushed from something that wasn’t the heat.  “Oh thank fuck there’s a parking garage coming up.  I’ll radio back.  Let’s get ready to stop for a bit.”  He furiously groped for any way to pull the ripcord on what had become an intensely embarrassing conversation.

Alanna shook her head as she passed the radio over to him.  “Oh, come on!  We’re forging new social norms, remember?”

“I’m glad this place is improving your mood so much.”  Anesh murmured as he clicked the radio.  “Car one to convoy, we’ve got a point of interest coming up on the right.  Slowing to investigate.  Over.”

Alanna let the conversation go.  They had plenty of time for personal conversations, deep discussions, and goofing around.  They’d be on the road for a couple days.  For now, though, she rolled her shoulders as she let the car start to drop down from eighty to something more manageable in a parking lot.

There were places to explore, and monsters to fight, and Anesh was right.  This place really was helping her mood.