LOOT DROP Chapter: 23
In a restaurant that was more akin to a fantasy tavern, one laden with wooden tables, folksy music, and half-naked barmaids, Fisk scowled despite the woman across from him humming to herself and smiling ear to ear.
“Why is everything so damn expensive?! Why are eggs two hundred coins a piece?! A piece!” Fisk growled, eyeing the prices on every meal on the menu written on a wood tab he held in his hands.
“Inflation?” Faith offered, ignoring the stares from what few townsfolk remained in the tavern.
Word traveled fast, every denizen of the town seemingly aware of Fisk's debacle in the marketplace. Upon entering, the once crowded restaurant had cleared out, leaving only the brave and curious to bare witness to Fisk's complaining.
“More like a scam! I swear every damn ‘popular’ place upcharges just because they're in a premium location!” Fisk seethed, noting that any one meal on this menu would practically bankrupt him of what little funds he had left after buying overpriced armor for himself and Faith.
“Well, you aren't paying for the meal, you're paying for the experience.”
“Experience of what?! Throwing my money away? This is almost as bad as places that make you cook your own food!”
“There are restaurants that make you cook your own food?” Faith asked, setting down her menu, a spark of curiosity in her eye.
“There called #$&(/,” Fisk frowned, his hand moving to rub his face only to remember he still had the curse masked on. “Just order something.”
“You seem very upset.”
“I'm not upset.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really sure?” Faith asked as she scooted her chair over to poke Fisk on his temple.
“Yes.”
“Are you really really sure?”
Fisk closed his eyes, his head downcast with a sigh, “Please… just order something Faith.”
“What about you? What are you going to eat?”
“Porridge through a straw, on account of this CURSED mask you gave me.”
“In my defense, how was I supposed to know it was cursed?”
“You're a wizard aren't you? How can you not know it was cursed with your fireballs and healing spells?”
“First off, that's a hurtful stereotype. Second, I'm a cleric, and third wizards are male, witches are female and lastly if I were a witch I'd be a really good one,” Faith replied.
“Right… you're a cleric… so, does that mean you worship a god?” Fisk asked carefully, his curiosity winning out. “What's your faith?”
Faith rolled her eyes, “I can see you smiling behind your mask.”
“I’m not smiling.”
“Admit it, you're smiling,” Faith said, poking Fisk repeatedly.
“I'm not.”
“Uh huh.”
“I'm not.”
Fisk clenched his jaw, attempting to do his best not to smile despite the mask hiding his face.
“You-”
Then, Faith suddenly stopped talking, her face locked mid smile as she moved to poke Fisk again.
“Faith?” Fisk said, realizing she wasn't the only one that had ceased moving.
The barmaids were mid-stride, people mid-chew, while the air itself seemed to take on substance and become still.
“Well, you're certainly having a good time.”
Fisk spun, his gaze locking onto the petite fairy-like woman wearing an oversized lab coat laying on his dinner table.
“Eve? What is this? What did you do?” Fisk said.
“Time Stop. A nifty part about being an admin of a cyberworld, you get to glitch the world,” Eve said, “Fisk, you are in danger.”
“What?”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Your notoriety as of late has caught the eyes of individuals you shouldn't have,” Eve said, adjusting her big round glasses.
“Well, want to clarify or just be vague?”
“The egghead's that took over my life's work are after you. While I applaud your rapid acclimation to this new life, your recent antics have exposed yourself to my enemies. The game masters are targeting you.”
Fisk clenched his jaw, his heart rate beating a tinge faster as his brow furrowed, “So what does this mean? They're going to delete me?”
“No, fortunately for us both the laws of this world are firmly set, a fail safe I applied before they killed me. I just didn't expect them to exploit my work into a video game.”
Fisk cocked his head to the side, “You're dead?”
“I told you didn't I? I'm a ghost in this machine.”
“Like me…” Fisk said, the pair staring at one another.
“In a way.”
“But you can stop time.”
“I never said it didn't have its perks…” Eve’s face took on a sullen look, her hand, rubbing the side of a nearby barmaid's face. “But in reality, you could almost call it thought acceleration or time dilation, the world may appear frozen,” Eve said, a smile on her face as she floated in the air, “But I've merely stopped all programs for a fraction of a second while accelerating our thought processes to over ten billion bits per second. Imagine that kind of power in our old dimension… that kind of ability given to the people… and not just thought acceleration but flight, magic, an entire realm rewritten by quantum coding to become a paradise for all. No more hunger, no more pain. An eternal fantasy where desires were made manifest. Where dreams bled into reality… I was so close… so so very close.”
“I don't know,” Fisk said, sweeping the denizens of the tavern with his eyes who were stuck in limbo, “Eternal paradise seems boring.”
“That was the beauty of it!” Eve exclaimed, “You wouldn't know it was paradise! You wouldn't know it was just a dream! Be a murderer, a cop, an adventurer, a person seeking salvation or revenge, it was the perfect project to guide humanity into a new future. A new dawn where everyone could be whomever they were meant to be.”
Eyeing the crazed woman, Fisk could see pride on her face, joy in her eyes as they scanned the world she had created. But, there was also pain, a sadness filled with loneliness as she turned to Fisk.
“It would have been beautiful. Instead they used me! Killed me and took my own dream, years of dedication I gave them only for them to sully it, turned it into an amusement park for the gratification of others while throwing me away like trash!”
A glitch, the world seeming to lag and distort, a shocking development that jolted Eve from her scornful ranting.
She blinked, eyes removing the tears brimming at the edges of her eyes.
“Ah… I see, I seem to have burnt too much time,” Eve said, looking at Fisk who reached over, a firm hand on the woman’s shoulder.
Memories of his past life coming to him of his discharge from the army.
Betrayal. Sadness. Anger. Used and tossed away. Fisk felt almost a kindred spirit in the crazed woman who had been betrayed by a group she had dedicated so much to.
“I’ll be honest, whatever big picture you have going on here, I don't care. But you helped me, so… you have my support,” Fisk said, assuring the woman whose demeanor slightly shifted.
“Thank you. Fisk, but be careful. I can continue to shield you, but my power and time is finite. While they can't outright delete you, they can influence the world to hinder your efforts. ”
“How do I fight them?”
Eve smiled, “By playing the game. Even the game masters are subject to the rules of this world.”
The world around began to slowly shift, another glitch that appeared for a moment as time resumed.
“Be alert. Be careful. And good luck, Tony Fisk. You are my only hope.”
With that, she disappeared, a heavy burden on Fisk’s heart as he stared into open space.
“-Can’t be Mr. grumpy face all the time,” Faith said as Fisk stood up. “Huh? Where are you going?”
“To get a drink.”
Fisk couldn't get drunk. What little funds he had didn't inebriate him, but it did restore his Stamina bar as he sat at the tavern’s bar and awkwardly sipped his beer through a straw.
“Was it something I said?” Faith asked, joining Fisk at the bar.
“No, you're fine, just…” Fisk sighed, his hand gripping against the metal appendage that hid beneath his trousers. “Order something to go, we gotta visit the guild hall about getting some cannon fodder.”
****
Realspace.
Standing outside his patrol car, Officer Jack Ryan narrowed his green eyes, the brunette man, adjusting his body camera as his partner Tim Drake, a blading middle-aged man who was his training officer finished his coffee.
Before them, a rundown manila-colored home, one decrepit and lacking in upkeep as the front lawn was overrun by grass and weeds.
“Dispatch, show us ten-forty-two on Workshire street, making contact now,” Drake said, signaling to Ryan as the pair carefully wadded through the pseudo jungle by way of the cracked tiles that had once been a pathway to the door.
“Jesus, it's like the goddamn amazon,” Drake muttered, brushing a caterpillar off his leg. “You want point newbie?”
Ryan sighed, stepping up to the run-down door decorated with a sign that read Kingdom of Sonichu.
“Hello? Mr. Carnican, Greene Country police!” Ryan said, knocking on the door whose paint fell away as his knuckles tapped on the wooden frame. “Hello, this is the Greene County police responding to a welfare check.”
A few more tries but nothing was heard.
“What did the landlord say about this guy?” Ryan asked, turning to his partner who was trying to look through the nearby window.
“Recluse, shut-in, hoarder, typical no life,” Tim said, “Probably unstable but apparently pays rent on time. Hey, come take a look at this, what do you see there?”
Ryan moved to the window, his eyes taking in the copious amounts of trash, books, bags, and refuse that blocked most of the window view.
Then, he saw it, something that looked like legs strewn awkwardly on the floor.
“Looks like exigent circumstances,” Ryan muttered with Tim nodding and getting into position.
A moment later, and the door of the home was busted down, broken in by a single kick from Ryan who recoiled as a pungent stench assaulted his nose.
“Hell!” Ryan shouted, the sick and sweetly scent of trash and decay nearly causing him to vomit.
“Get it together, c’mon!’ Tim ordered, moving into the home to where the victim lay flayed out on the floor. “Aw hell… that ain’t right…”
Ryan clenched his jaw, his gaze locked onto the withered and fried frame of what had once been a human. Instead of a human body, it was more akin to a desiccated chicken, a shriveled husk curled up with its hands fused to the helmet on its head that read Gammex on it’s side.
