Two and a half minutes was not, as it turned out, enough to get me from point chase scene to point B, the area Big Boss needed his crates to be. I looked here and there for the hoverboarders, but couldn’t sight in anyone not in greasepaint and squeaky shoes.

As the time ticked down, I started to feel a headache, and see… a sexy dragon? Also my hands began to disappear. I stared at them on the steering wheel, beginning to fade out of existence.

“Not cool,” I said, and heard myself saying, ‘...sorry Empress. Hina. Roger. Duty calls.’

I also knew who these people were, which was especially headache-inducing, because I hadn’t met any of them. I mean clearly I had. Hina and I had a love-hate relationship and were destined to be great between the sheets, even while we outwardly couldn’t stand each other. And of course I knew Roger, the actual human being still playing the game… who’d come out of the mountain with his leader, the dragon empress.

The headache blossomed behind my eyes, and my XP total went a little haywire in my periphery. It shot from early in 11th level to just a shiver shy of 12th.

I needed to park Black Betty on the double. Soon enough my fading hands phased completely out, the headache went supernova, and it got so bad my vision went totally white.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing in front of Doug. Or rather, I was standing in front of Doug, and stepping into the back of my own head. Merging with myself.

The headache went supernova, and I fell to my knees.

Doug seemed amused by this, but he seemed amused by literally everything so it wasn’t easy to tell whether he seemed more amused now than before.

“Welcome back,” he said. “We’d like you to take part in a customer satisfaction survey. If you would kindly rate the spell you’ve just been under on a scale from one–”

“Never again,” I hissed, and resisted the urge to vomit all over his shoes.

“It’s probably best to have a nap,” he said. “You’ve just been under the effects–”

“If you keep talking, you’re fired,” I told him. The ordeal had left me feeling exhausted, like maybe I really had gained two free hours, but my body was jetlagged by a good eight hours.

And this was no time to go have a nap.

I staggered to my feet, immediately felt a wave of vertigo and dizziness assault me, and grabbed onto Doug’s shoulders.

“I take back my offer of free shopping,” I mumbled. “Now, you have access to a portal, right?”

His voice immediately lost all its cheeky overconfidence, and was replaced with unease. “Dirk–”

“You will call me Grand Poombah, or I will have you put in stocks.”

“This is not a good idea, your Poombah-ness. We don’t know what affect the spell will have on your body.”

I sighed. The man’s head was never where it needed to be. He needed to understand the intrigue and diplomacy that lay all about him. Maybe it was my fault, and maybe, if I’d had time, I would have taught him how this all worked. But there wasn’t.

“One of us is the supposed expert on these matters and should’ve thought of that, shouldn’t he have?” I shook my head to clear the cobwebs, the dizziness, and the time travel hangover. This didn’t just fail, it backfired, and I bit back a groan of pain. “I’ve been fine before, I’ll be fine now.”

“If you insist.”

“Just shut up and make me a portal.” I reached for my phone, staggered to prop myself up against the wall of Doug’s boudoir, and called for Dragon and the boys.

A swirling mass of bluish, purplish light opened, hissing with lightning. I squinted and swayed on my feet.

Dragon answered. “Poombah? Where you at?”

“I’m sending my coordinates,” I said, hoping it was true. So far the phone had been intuitive enough. “Double time it, okay? This is big.”

But when I stepped through the portal, Black Betty was gone. The crosses were gone, the car was gone, and of course the crates were gone. A few scared faces peered down at me from the high rises nearby.

Much swearing followed.

I turned to the portal, which was still fizzing and swirling, to find Doug staring at me, mouth agape. He must’ve read the fury in my eyes well, because his mouth snapped shut, and he strapped together a few rogue brain cells for the smartest thing he’d done thus far. He waited.

“Tell Nolan I want a refrigerator I can strap on my back,” I said, eyes boring directly into his slack face. “Repeat this order back to me so I know you understand.”

“Y-you w-w-want… a s-strap on… uh… hehe… uh, that’s not funny. Not funny at all.”

“Doug.”

That one word was enough to slap him in the face. He winced. “Y-yeah, okay. A refrigerator you can carry.”

I nodded slowly, exaggerating how much I was treating him like an infant. “That’s correct. Do that now.” The portal fizzled out and left me in frustrated silence.

In the meantime, the Quest notification came up as a failure for the first time ever. It was shaded red in my Quest log. It mocked me. I had a string of completed quests, and now this one.

Worse, my reputation with The Godfather of the Ringo-Dango had fallen by 200 points, and the quest screen mentioned ‘He is very disappointed in you.’

I wondered if that disappointment was just something the system assumed, or if it had monitored the feelings of the real human behind that character, and was just straight up telling me that I had things to worry about.

I growled. I need to get that all figured out and sorted. I still didn’t know if he was someone I could work with. I needed to get in with him far enough to talk to him one on one.

I fumed for a couple of minutes there by the side of the road, in a continual mist that bobbed up and down on the ghost of a breeze. It was the kind of mist that could get right in your eyes because each drop was so small they barely fell toward earth.

Doug should’ve known what would happen. But I had also agreed to go along with the spell. I could’ve just said ‘screw you, hippie… this version of me is gonna crash.’ Instead, I’d gone and done what I’d been doing since waking up in this new reality: more than I could really handle.

A new Quest appeared.

 

QUEST RECEIVED! Retrieve the Lost Cargo

The good news is, there are ways of locating the cargo crates. The bad news is, time is running out to get to them before the Brass Crosses gets their grubby mitts on what is not rightfully theirs. The Godfather is counting on you to make this right.

Objective: Locate and secure the crates you lost

Reward: restored reputation with The Godfather, +2000 xp, +1 uncommon card

 

I stabbed at the little Insight button on my screen hoping it would give me a clear and direct path towards putting this catastrophe right.

The crates are in the possession of the crosses, right? Why not just go and stomp them to death?

Garbo wasn’t the head of frickin hydra; two more weren’t going to come back stronger as soon as I cut him out of the deal. If I’d learned anything in this whole mess, it was exactly that: gangs depended on a strongman in charge. Delete the strong, charismatic, cackling bravo foxtrot at the top of the pyramid, and the pyramid might just collapse.

He was also most likely to have his top people near him. This meant he would be surrounded by the only people capable of getting those crates open, and possibly to operate whatever might be inside.

I hoped it was just a bunch of crates full of the Godfather’s favorite type of cigar, or his collection of Best Gang Leader of the Year trophies. I doubted it, but you never know.

“Poombah, what happened?”

Dragon and the others had arrived, along with Patches. They’d all ridden the mecha suit, except for Sug, who still had possession of his, though he was still missing a mecha suit arm.

“Sug, you’re subbed out. Take the armor back and get a tiny refrigerator installed.”

“How’s that then?” Sug asked.

“Let me finish. Grab a new arm, while you’re at it. That’s an order.”

He seemed confused, but my take charge attitude and no little bit of righteous fury had snapped him into that military mindset. He snapped off a salute and muttered something under his breath before heading back to base.

After this, I climbed into the cockpit and gave Patches a great big hug. He licked at my face a bit, and the mecha suit went a little haywire trying to figure out what exactly what was going on. There was a lot of nuzzling and ‘I missed you too buddy’ to respond to a bit of whining. Maybe he could sense that I’d been somewhere else. It was good to have him back.

Eventually though I climbed back out, let the mecha suit stop jerking around trying to decide which of us was piloting the damn thing

“I don’t have a lot of time to explain,” I started. “But we’re going to need to hit the crosses fast, and hit them hard.”

We took a minute to take stock of our weapons, levels, and cards. I was a hair away from level 12, and my platoon was just about to hit 11.

Unfortunately we didn’t have any cards that were groundbreaking, except for the bizarre amalgamation rare I’d lucked into in the Heso market situation. I’d have Doug give me an opinion on it before I went and tried to become a werewolf.

We melded a few cards, but weren’t ready to meld any rares or mythics. That was when the getting would be good. We had another few Boosted Reflexes, but I swore the boys off anything less than the rare version, whatever that would be. We hadn’t gone looking for a cyber surgeon yet, hadn’t come across one, and that meant I might never have a chance to get this card unequipped.

The new red flashing dot, the crates, led us on.

I pressed a button that shared out the quest to my boys, and presumably Patches, and it was off to the races. The mecha suit bounded into action, while I considered.

First, I spent an Insight and asked about the quest sharing business.

 

Too slow to have figured it out all by yourself? Well you’re in the right place, asking the right question!

 

Re: Quest sharing… You are welcome to share quests with a dedicated group of allies! Doing so will either a) spread out the current quest rewards with your party, or b) increase the difficulty of the quest in order for each member of your party to receive the same quest rewards. Depending on how Deus Ex perceives the quest, the party, and the rewards, you may indeed end up with a bit of Column A and a bit of Column B.

 

Well.

All this was great, honestly. I was enjoying the tangible rewards for doing clearly laid out quests, the upward trajectory of life. There was nothing worse than constantly feeling like everything was far too complicated and you were just flailing at staying afloat. In this game, you knew what was possible and what you were getting for your hard work.

None of the flirting with success of the real world, or the sudden and ridiculous accidents of everyday life. With Deus Ex, you didn’t misplace your keys and end up forty minutes late for work because the dog was laying on them, you didn’t have to worry about a drunken idiot plowing into your car when you were parked on the side of the road, making you take the bus, making you defend some random girl from a creep who was trying to hit on her, and then when you knocked his ass old cold, Deus Ex didn’t have the cops called and charges pressed. The creep didn’t then hire overpriced attorneys to cook up some convincing and fabricated defense.

Those things did not happen here.

And med packs were a thing. Instant nano healing. Old folks could have perfect sight, straight backs, their hips wouldn’t act up, and neither would their arthritis… or maybe it would, but you could ask Calamari for an item and heal it right up. No muss, no fuss.

“Maybe Jack was right,” I breathed.

“What’s that, Poombah?” Dragon asked, over the sound of us bounding through the dank streets, getting soaked by the pervasive mist, and getting closer to the crates.

“Hang on, I’m thinking.”

“That explains the smoke.”

“Ha ha.”

On the other hand, there were kids who’d been swept up in this. Kids had probably been killed by these jagoffs, for attempting low level quests so they could afford the food to survive, never mind the expert gear to thrive.

Well, we’d see what happened once I got things figured with the Godfather.

Step one, Garbo the Gorilla. Step two, annihilate The Boss, get summoned to account for my actions by Hirataka and Flicker Blue, and step three, murder or friend the Godfather. From there, with the main quest complete, I’d activate my gift ability from Dr. Kevin Brightley.

And I’d set everything up here so no more humans got killed. Make everything into the paradise it could be. Then set off for the next game world.

I nodded. It wasn’t a very detailed plan, but it was better than having nothing at all. Besides, it was said that no plan survived contact with the enemy. It was better to be ready to spin and pivot on a moment’s notice.

I pondered the future. What would happen if I had the option to shut this gaming burough down? I couldn’t see it ending well. Likely Deus Ex would come flooding back into the town, change up the genre, and it would start all over again. I might even lose the card from Dr. Kevin all together.

And if Deus Ex just let it go back to being regular old Earth life, it was a section of Earth that was dry, hot, and not good for farming. Plus mostly urban. People would starve to death.

The system provided, despite its murderous tendencies. And it was the made-up drama fueling the deaths.

Yeah, this was all staying up until the very last moment. He’d shut down the system—but only when he could turn off the whole thing.

“You done, Poombah?” Dragon asked.

“Huh?”

“We’re there.”

“Oh, right.”