Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

Before him the main causeway of the city was dusty and empty, lined on both sides by ancient buildings and rubble. He listened intently, but the ambient noises coded into this area were just a whistling breeze and the scratch of ragged linen on stone. He found himself checking his other screen for approaching PCs, but there was nothing to be seen. He could not tell if he was in danger or not. This was living. This was not spectating, orchestrating, or destroying. This was life.

He stood inside the gates of this dusty old city and surveyed the rough streets, crumbling red stone buildings. At the bottom of his screen, a text box informed him that he felt a thin breeze, and smelled something sour. A horned lizard watched him from the railing on one battered patio. Belion moved toward the first intersection, and almost immediately he was attacked. The thing came at him from the side: a woman with the body of a four-legged beast. It pounded at him with gnarled fists, licking its lips greedily. After the initial shock of seeing his own hit count go down for the first time in a year, he removed its head with one stroke of his club. When he clicked the command to search its corpse for valuables, he removed from it a lavender stone.

He crossed a bridge over a wide river. There were no boats on the river; nothing floated there. On his left he saw an official-looking building, and inside he opened a glass cabinet and withdrew a silver flute. He smashed a table and found nothing underneath. In a murky fountain he saw what he thought might be a rotted arm, but the graphics were so lame, he wasn’t sure.

He turned down a side street, killed two more of the woman beasts, and came to an abandoned marketplace with tattered awnings stretched over dusty stalls. There were stalls that had held tapestries, stalls that had held furniture. In one stall he found something he could pick up—when he examined it, the game told him it was a chunk of venison. Venison. He shook his head and dropped it. He checked the map on his other screen and saw that he was coming near to the dot that marked Silvergirl’s presence. She was alone at the edge of the city.

There were four watchtowers, one at each corner of the city wall. He thumped up a circular staircase, a squeeze for his wide shoulders. No more shrinking, thought Belion. This is it. Upstairs, he found a stone golem and the back of a girl. He saw the wrinkle of her silver cowl at her neck, and knew that it was she. Silvergirl sat in the window, her feet outside, the robe puddled on the sill around her buttocks. The world outside her window was blurry and incomplete. It had not been properly coded and the textures were rough, but she looked at it as if it were some kind of damned sparkling vista or something.

“Stand down,” she said, and the golem, who was silently standing there, not looking at Belion or anything else, dropped his weapon and dissolved into dust, leaving a full set of mithril armor on the ground.

“Put it on,” she said to Belion. “You’re going to need it.”

“I don’t mind the lamia,” said Belion. “I already killed five.”

“You’re going to kill something else,” she said. “A beholder.”

“Wait a minute, am I in Thalos? Where did you get the code for this area?”

“You’re in Babylon,” she said. “Think about it. Did you ever see a river in Thalos?”

With that she dropped out the window. Belion leaned out after her, aghast, and could see her down below, on the ground, collecting herself and walking away down the street. He rushed down the stairs to catch up to her.

The phone beside Belion’s desk rang. He picked it up quickly, discovered it was not his phone, but rather the house phone at Irene’s mother’s house. Mentally staggering through layers of disorientation from coming out of gaming and into this unfamiliar house, he jabbed the wrong button and turned it off. He stared at the phone until it rang again.

“Hello?” He jabbed the right button. “Hello?”

“Belion?” It was Irene. On the screen in front of him, Silvergirl was passing him a smooth ball of quartz.

“Yeah?” Belion did not want to be interrupted.

“Belion, I need to break up with you.”

“Yep, OK.” He examined the ball of quartz in his inventory. A light source. He followed Silvergirl down a wide main street and saw a domed temple before him, rising up out of dried gardens, the desiccated vines and trees still climbing colonnades and statuary.

“I’m breaking up with you now,” Irene was saying.

“Got it,” said Belion. “Thanks.”

He moved his avatar over to the doorway to the temple and angled himself to be able to peer inside, but it was dark. Silvergirl stood at the entrance to the temple, and she put out a hand to stop him from entering. She pulled back her cowl, showing her face to him, and then she leaned over and gave his avatar a kiss on the cheek.

“Belion,” said Irene in his ear, “do you understand what I am saying to you? We are broken up. I had sex with another man. Penis sex. I am not your girlfriend as of now.”

“Sad,” said Belion. “Sorry. Miss you. Gotta go.”

He pulled his broadsword out of its sheath and strode into the temple.

George and Irene sat in Irene’s car in the parking lot of the Metropolitan Funeral Home. They’d stopped at Frankie’s to eat breakfast: jalapeño eggs for Irene and coffee for George. Then Irene had said she needed to run an errand.

“I hope you’re not tired. Are you tired?” she asked. “I’m not tired a bit.”

“Not tired,” said George. He was not tired if tired meant she was going home without him. He would stay awake forever.

“Maybe you should go home,” said Irene. “And get some sleep.”

“No,” said George.

George’s head pounded. He palmed a small, flat vial out of his pocket and twisted the cap. Painkillers. The only way to get on with the day, sometimes. He stuck the cap in his nostril, squeezed the vial, and sniffed. Then he stretched his mouth open and gulped a little.

“What was that?”

“I’m fine,” said George.

“I’m sure you are,” said Irene, “But what did you just put in your nose?”

“I take medicine,” said George. “Vitamins, really. For health purposes.”

“Vitamins don’t look like that. And you don’t put them in your nose. What was that thing?”

“Irene, I love you,” said George.

“Wow, that must be some interesting stuff, for you to deflect like that.”

“Yeah, no, it’s just a vitamin. But maybe we should go home. We.” George emphasized the plural. “We should go home to my house together.”

“Aren’t you working today?”

“Not this morning,” said George. “I don’t have a lecture until three.”

“Fine, then,” she said. “We can squeeze in my errand. But we have to hurry.”

“Here?” asked George groggily. He could feel the painkiller invading his skull from the top, like a dripping river of precious ice water numbing his head, making it all so much better.

“Yes, here,” said Irene.

“But they don’t open now,” he said. The sky was barely pink, and it couldn’t have been after seven.

“Now is the right time. They’ve burned her up, but they haven’t opened for the day.”

George put his hand on Irene’s leg. Maybe she would crawl out from under the steering wheel and into his lap, and she would fold herself up under his chin and rest her head on his chest. He would put his arms around her, around all of her, her folded legs and her small back. He would lock her in, and they would fall asleep for a little while, her cheek against his throat, his cheek against her hair, just for an hour or two. It couldn’t hurt.