Soda Pop Soldier (19 page)

Yet another reminder of how I'm getting cheated out of my thousand bucks. If Iain weren't an armed psychopath, I most definitely would express my customer dissatisfaction.

The Troll is probably one bad dude. My simple trap may not even kill him. I scan the tent for something else I can use against him. Maybe I can find a one-handed weapon I can at least cut his throat with, or maybe even use to blind him. Nothing. There are a few chests, but rattling though one of them or picking a lock would probably alert the Troll. I eventually do want to alert the Troll to my presence. That way I can lead him to the trap. One of the chests might contain something useful. If I work quickly, I can get whatever I find equipped and then use it on the Troll before he attacks. If he wakes up and finds me looting his stuff, I'll just run and lead him back to the trap.

It seems like a good plan. But doesn't it always seem like a good plan? It's later on that you learn, not so much.

There are three chests half buried among the piles of silver coins. Through the fabric of the tent, I can see the lowering sun turning an afternoon bloody red. It's still bright out, but in-game late afternoon seems to be happening. Soon, nightfall. My guess is, that's when the Troll wakes up. I examine the three chests.

Chest number one is composed of pale wood and a blackened grimy lock. Chest number two is more of a delicate sandalwood box. I could smash it open with my hand, but the noise no doubt would awaken yon grumpy über-Troll. The third chest is large, large enough for a good sword. Its wood is highly polished mahogany, its lock a shimmering silver. Along the sides, ornately carved runes pulse rhythmically.

I really don't have much choice. The third chest is no doubt trapped with magic runes. The first chest is probably locked and mechanically trapped. I target the second box and deliver a judo chop with my attack button, disintegrating the top of the box.

Almost instantly, the Troll is bellowing and rising up from his pile of silver coins. Even though he has no scimitar to cut my few remaining health points to shreds, he raises a large bronze buckler strapped to his other arm, which I hadn't noticed earlier, it being thrown off to the other side of the coin pile. My only hope now is the box. Inside are the shattered remains of a crystal decanter. I move my mouse over it and a QuickNote lets me know that it was some kind of perfume. Incense of Mermaid. Useless, shattered, and a poor choice. My only choice. The Troll's great shield slams into my side and I'm airborne. I watch the Troll recede away from me as I fly through the air, through the flaps of the tent, as I pass into the pool with a splash. The Troll is moving, and as he hits the flap of the tent, all bellows and indignation with added threats of grinding bones promised, the taut rope arrests his stride and down he goes cleanly on his own wicked blade. He's grinning, smiling as the scimitar pierces his throat and comes out the top of his warty wide forehead.

Silence.

I'm down to 3 percent Vitality. I should be passing out, fading into death. But I'm not. My health is rising. I stand still, not wanting to jeopardize the healing process. Near the edge of the pool, a thin line of dark blood streams down from the Troll's gigantic misshapen head, dyeing the pixilated sand a deep crimson. I wait. My health continues to climb through the forties, the fifties, and surprise, surprise, my hand is growing back.

At 100 percent health, the blazing red sun melts into the dunes, leaving the oasis bathed in the long cool shadows of early evening.

My hand has grown back.

Torchlight flickers to life near the Troll's tent, and still the desert flute gives counterpoint to the steady beat of the soft drums over the game's soundtrack.

I exit the pool and enter the tent. I left-click the pile of silver and am rewarded with a QuickNote from the game:

Congratulations on defeating the guardian of the Pool of Sorrows, the Desert Troll Khalabash. His corruption of the pool is ended. Six hundred e-bucks have been deposited to account #98402374727-111122338. Please note this account and enter your password for confirmation.

Yes!

I think of two things at once. First, how did I defeat an überboss without being in the game in any reasonable starting position? Second, what should my password be?

Sancerré?

I still care for her. If I had a moment to catch my breath and get some sleep, maybe we could sort this thing out between us. Maybe I can make enough money tonight to keep her. Maybe enough to keep her away from that whoever it is she's with. Maybe.

I enter her name.

Next I turn to the chests. The one with the runes is definitely going to be tricky. Maybe it'll even outright damage me. But I have the Pool of Sorrows behind me and all the free healing I can ask for. Still, maybe I should wait.

I check the mechanical one with the grimy black lock.

Just a touch and it springs open.

A full-sized view of the chest's bottom fills my screen. Over the top of the chest, I see flashing golden text.

Choose Now 10, 9, 8. . .

The countdown is accompanied by a loud dull
gong
ringing out across ambient. In the bottom of the chest lies an ornate double-bladed axe and a slowly revolving holograph of one of the LuxIsland resorts.

I spend
7
through
2
of the countdown considering LuxIsland. These are the ultimate in actual real-time getaways. I could lose myself in every indulgence from an Undersea Hotel suite beneath the floating island to survival contests that dot the tropical paradise above. Fight a giant on a rope bridge and win a night with one of their repudiated world-class courtesans. Just the thing to forget Sancerré. Rope climb a dangerous cliff to get to the best restaurant this side of the Grand Concourse of Upper New York. Anything and everything I could earn for a week in paradise on earth. But at the end of that week, what? My stuff in boxes. Sancerré gone and my professional status most likely finished. At
1
I click the axe and am rewarded with the grinding sound of forged metal being sharpened on a spinning stone.

“The
Axe of Skaarwulfe
is yours, brave warrior!” reports the game. I heft the axe and check its rating, noting its severe edge and a silver skull worked into the haft.

Now for the chest with the pulsing runes.

I move forward, bracing myself for what will most likely be an explosion of computer-generated death. I position myself so that if the chest does actually explode, it'll blast me back toward, and hopefully into, the Pool of Sorrows.

I touch the lock and wait.

The lid slowly rises, filling my screen with a pink background light. Over ambient, the tribal drums stop, and only the crooning of the desert woman continues. Low, humming monastically, as if she's in a trance.

“Hang on,” I mutter to the dark room and my Samurai.

As the pink misty light fades, I find that the chest contains an Escher-like maze of fractal open-ended paths. My mouse cursor literally becomes a mouse on the screen. I need to move it through the maze to unlock whatever is beneath this layer of security. I move the mouse across ribbons and paths, looking for the end to the maze. Some stairs lead down, then up, and occasionally I pass the little cartoon mouse through a door and the screen tumbles onto its side. There seems to be no solution to this maze. Again, the maze cants over onto its side and I find myself titling my head to keep up with the on-screen madness.

Then I realize that sliding the Escher-scape onto its side is the key. It isn't a maze so much as a tumbler in a lock. On the fourth perspective-shifting turn, a ding rings out loudly over ambient and now the maze itself, the stairs and platforms, all of it, begin to turn like some ancient lunatic grandfather clock. My bewildered little mouse wipes sweat from his brow as I race him forward into the tick-tock madness. A missed turn or a badly timed leap from a sliding stair will send him scrabbling into the machinery of the maze. Twice he narrowly avoids being squished by the coglike turning platforms and grinding gearlike stairs. I have no doubt that if that happens, whatever deadly surprise the chest is trapped with will present itself momentarily. Slowly, the plucky little mouse manages to avoid getting crushed or pinched, and again the maze turns. Again and again until on the fourth turn, the ringing
Ding
is followed by a loud
Baaawawawaooooongggg,
signaling another “tumbler” has unlocked. Two tumblers down, how many to go? I scan the Escher-scape for some clue and find none. Time is passing and how long this game will go tonight I have no idea, but I need to get this chest open fast so I can get what's inside and get moving back to the tower. Wherever that is. I still have to complete the quest and get a return on my thousand. So far all I've managed is this lousy axe. Oh yeah, and the six hundred e-bucks.

Now the maze begins to whirlpool as stairs and rooms come together, then part in concentric rings. I stare at the screen looking for a pattern, waiting. Obviously this has gone Mario on me and I'm going to need to make the mouse perform a series of jumps and hops to get to the center of the whirlpool.

A missed step or jump and what happens next? No doubt nothing good. And what if this is the trap? What if the tumblers never unlock? What if this chest is designed to keep me waiting and playing while the game moves on and the other contestants grow powerful enough to come looking for me and earn their kill bonus on my distracted hide?

What if . . . everything bad happens to me?

Forget about it. Play the game you're playing.

The spinning whirlpool of flipping staircases and platforms is beginning to pick up speed.
Now or never,
I think to myself and dodge the plucky little cartoon mouse into the maelstrom. Hop, jump, skip, roll a few times, and the little mouse almost tumbles, or skids, into the rendered oblivion below. Again the view tumbles to the side, and now the platforms and surfaces begin to secrete an oily sheen and instantly my mouse is sliding toward a rotating edge.

Back in my room, my eyes and skull ache with fatigue. The concentration required is beginning to take its toll. I bend forward, craning my neck close to the screen, willing every ounce of focus onto the mouse as I slip and slide toward the center of the whirlpool. Now there is no stopping, no resting, no waiting; the little guy has to make it, and as he nears the center of the whirlpool for one last jump, the badly timed leap has him grasping a ledge that is rapidly spinning him toward a vertical descent. Viscous, clear sludge, oily and bright, races down, dripping onto the head of my gasping mouse. The muscles in my neck feel like taut iron cables coated in rust. I can feel their connection to my eyeballs screaming blue murder.

Then a descending ledge below my mouse cantilevers itself into position and swings upward. I drop and bounce off this rising ledge and rocket skyward. The mouse lands on a narrow beam that seesaws upward and away from him. I race him up the rapidly rising slope and, with a final strained leap, make it into the whirlpool at the center. At last,
click;
it's the final tumbler. After a
ding
and a
Baaaawawawaoooong,
the screen mists over and the depths of the chest are revealed.

Complimentary dinner at Seinfeld's
floats in cold blue letters across the screen.

Then a crunchy bite from an apple can be heard over ambient, as a hollow bass voice like a gong proclaims, “Warrior needs food, badly!” Then more words appear.
To redeem this complimentary meal, present self at eatery after nine thirty and simply say”Gauntlet” to Tony.

All that for some lousy meal.

I'd never even heard of the place.

Generally I preferred places like Chilibee's or California Pizza Fixin's. Anything high-class is usually beyond me. Sancerré liked the cool spots and hip eateries. Me, meat on the street is good enough. The only problem is that most vendors have mortgaged everything they have to get up onto the Grand Concourse, and with the latest batch of winter storms, the few that remain find it a little too much to brave the icy New York streets to sell hot dogs or somesuch. But a free meal is a free meal. Or maybe I could trade it out.

Closing the chest with my Samurai's hand, I survey my in-game surroundings. The light from outside the tent has faded to a dusky blue. I search the tent once more before going outside and find something I'd missed, a large, freestanding mirror hidden underneath a sheet. I pull back the sheet and confront myself.

Or at least the self of my Samurai.

He's of medium height, more Anglo that Asian, though his burning coal-black eyes seem to hold some trace of the East in them. Behind him, I can see the flapping tent as the first night winds begin to blow across the desert sands. Palm fronds rustle above me on ambient sound, and once again, I have to admit to myself, the level of detail in this game is amazing.

Unnerving at times.

Smoke begins to cloud the mirror. It swirls softly beneath the silvery surface then resolves into the sanguine face of an old man, kind eyes sparkling, whiskery and a gap-toothed smile. He's bald other than small bristles of white hair on the sides of his close-shaven head.

“I'm Callard the Wise; come and hear my wisdom.” He speaks in a genial, almost wry manner.

I open a voice link. “Who are you?” I ask.

“I am Callard, sage, imminent philosopher, and wandering nonplayer character. I must tell you, Wu the Samurai, that even now, dark forces are pursuing you, thirsting for your untimely demise.”

“I've barely played this game,” I almost shout back through the screen. “The one player I've met, I can only hope is dead. Otherwise I'm in big trouble. Anybody who can survive a fall like that . . .”

“Alas, ChemicalFairy, the player you threw into the abyss, did perish. He expired after losing a contest of ‘Is This Poison?' inside the Gorgon's Jest within the very same Oubliette of Torment you fell into. But that is no longer important, wandering and enigmatic Samurai. I must warn you that Plague, a special buy-in character, has recently purchased a place in the game with the sole and consuming purpose of eliminating you.”