12:15 P.M.
Minutes after the greyskins were repelled, Enzo found himself sitting on the ground under the gate. The group had formed up in a circle, with the corpse of Melkior sitting in the center. There was a distinct feeling of listlessness now that the sense of danger was gone. The party didn’t know what to do next. Elias was pacing along the outside of the circle. Tantalus stood with his hands on his hips, looking down at the corpse with a mixture of sadness and regret on his face. Volta sat off to the side, her back to a wall and knees pulled to her chest.
Rachel was the first to speak. She said, “How did you guys know him?”
“Huh?” Elias said, pulled out of his reverie. “We all know each other from our college’s Gaming Club.”
“Which college?” Tantalus asked.
“Does it matter?” Elias muttered.
Tantalus shrugged.
“The University of Iowa,” Elias said. “His name was Kevin Avery. I never really knew the guy that well, but… He didn’t deserve this.”
“Come on,” Enzo said venomously. “He’s not dead.” Everyone in the group looked at Enzo as he spoke, some with hope, and some with anger. “Our only reason for believing he’s dead is that an entity claiming to be a malevolent AI said so. It’s science fiction! There’s no way something like that would happen in real life! There are so many simpler explanations! Show me evidence that this isn’t some kind of prank meant to freak us out! Trust me, nobody’s in any actual danger!” Enzo was shouting by the end of my short monologue. Enzo didn't know if he was shouting in response to the concerned looks he was getting from the rest of the group or if he was shouting in order to convince himself of what he was saying.
Enzo suddenly felt a sudden pain, and the force of some unseen blow knocked him to the ground. For a moment, he thought he had been shot. As Enzo looked up, he saw Elias standing there with his fist clenched. Elias had punched him.
“There’s your evidence!” Now, Elias was shouting. “That pain you’re feeling, the photorealistic fidelity of the world around us, the feeling of your heart pumping, none of this could have been modeled by mortal hands! Not in this century! Only a god could create the world around you. For a game like this, a rampant AI is the simplest solution! Snap out of it! Open your eyes and see what’s in front of you!”
Enzo got to my feet, willing the bruise to heal, and he looked at Elias. Elias was clearly upset. If Enzo had said anything in that moment, Elias probably would have hit him again. Enzo was probably just as angry as he was. Enzo had never been punched in the face like that before. It hurt a lot, but it mostly just angered him. Clearly, the hit had activated his “fight” response. Enzo wanted to punch him, but, on some level, he knew that he was probably in the wrong, so he turned and walked away.
Enzo started walking toward the City, but he had no particular destination in mind. Tall buildings towered in the distance, but the structures closer to him were significantly smaller. Enzo wasn’t paying attention to where he walked. The anger pushed him forward like a riptide. His heavy footsteps struck the sidewalk in a repetitive series of thumps. Eventually, Enzo found himself in a public park. He could still see the wall from the park. It was a massive, featureless edifice of concrete that seemed totally impregnable from Enzo's limited perspective. The huge sixty-foot-high wall made him wonder what threat could possibly warrant such a massive undertaking.
Certainly, the Deluvians weren’t such a threat that the NPCs had to build something so huge. Sure, they had lost Melkior, but that was only because the greyskins had caught them off guard. "Lost." Was he actually dead? Enzo turned around in a circle and tried to really take in the world around him.
It was summer in the City. The trees proudly displayed their green leaves, and a thin coating of pollen stuck to the benches, tables, and sidewalks. Enzo's uniform was uncomfortably warm in the summer heat. He heard the breeze flow over a nearby pond and felt it on his skin. This world felt exactly like the real world.
Enzo fell to my knees. He felt the dirt on my fingers. his body was different, but the world around him was real. He closed my eyes and saw the menu shining back at him, a bright argent contradiction. Yes, he was in a video game. Yes, he was in the real world. Somehow, both of these things were true at the same time. In that moment, Enzo realized without a doubt that Elias was right. Such a world could only be created by a god-like AI. The world around him had been created by GM, and he could die just as easily as Melkior did. Kneeling alone in that park, Enzo wept.
“Umm… hello… umm… mister? Are you okay?” The voice of a child drew his attention. Enzo looked up and saw that the source of the voice was a five-year-old girl that was peering at him curiously. Concern was evident on her face. Enzo quickly wiped the tears from his eyes. She wasn’t wearing a blue uniform, so she must have been an NPC. The kid was wearing a patched-up dress, and she held a stuffed rabbit that was similarly patched. Was this some kind of scripted event? Enzo's confusion pulled him out of his mental breakdown.
“I’m fine,” Enzo said automatically. He looked around. Tents had been erected all around the park. There must have been two dozen tents in that park. It was a shantytown. “Do you live there?” Enzo pointed to a tent.
“Oh, yes, mommy and I have been living in this park for a long time,” she said. “You’re a Revenant, aren’t you?” the little girl asked, but she continued a second later without waiting for my response. “I've seen a loooot of Revenants today. Mr. Duke said you’d save us and defeat the day-loog.”
“Mr. Duke?” Enzo began to ask, but the girl kept talking.
“Mommy says you Revenants don’t have souls. Do you have a soul, Mr. Revenant?”
“What? Yes, I think so,” Enzo said, baffled.
“That’s good,” the girl said. “Mommy’s probably wrong. Animals don’t have souls, and they can’t talk. Revenants can talk, so they must have souls.”
There was a long silence. She was done talking, apparently. “Actually, I have a question for you,” Enzo said. He reached into the satchel at his waist and pulled out some of the black slips of paper they had given him when he first arrived. The slips of paper were decorated with grey designs over a black background. The edges of the papers had small, elaborate designs that looked like words or numbers. However, if the designs were text, it clearly didn’t use any kind of European alphabet.
“Is this money?” Enzo asked, holding out a few bills.
The kid’s eyes went wide with surprise and jealousy. “Yes. Did you go to school, Mister?”
“Kind of,” Enzo said quickly. “How much money is this?”
“A hundred Ren,” she said as if Enzo was really stupid. “Everybody knows that.”
“And how much could I buy with a hundred Ren?” Enzo asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, annoyed that Enzo was now asking difficult questions. “Really nice shoes, enough food to feed ten people, a hundred candy bars.”
“Is a candy bar one Ren?” Enzo asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, excited to be talking about candy bars. “It says so on the vending machine.”
“Thanks,” Enzo said. He held out the two black bills. “Take these to your mom, okay?”
With a smile, the little girl enthusiastically grabbed the bills from Enzo's hand. “Thanks, Mister! I’ll make sure to tell mommy that Revenants are nice.” She ran back to the shantytown. After a few minutes of staring out at the pond, Enzo decided to go back to the West Gate.
By the time Enzo came back, the four college kids had left with the corpse of Kevin Avery. Tantalus, Redgrave, and Rachel remained. Redgrave and Rachel were standing near each other, and Tantalus was shouting at some NPC’s. Now that Enzo really looked at Redgrave’s model for the first time, he was struck by how strange it was. Redgrave absolutely towered over Rachel, and his hair was snow white even though he couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old. As Enzo got closer and compared his own height to Redgrave's, he figured Redgrave must be six foot six inches tall. This paired with his body’s muscular frame made Enzo thankful it was Elias and not him that had hit him. Tantalus, on the other hand, was only slightly taller than Rachel. Tantalus must have been about five and a half feet tall.
“Sorry about all that,” Enzo said sheepishly as he got closer to Redgrave and Rachel. “Now that I’ve had some time to think, I realize I was wrong. Even if I was right, I shouldn’t have put it like that.”
“We understand,” said Rachel with a faint smile, gesturing slightly to Redgrave. “We all experience trauma differently. I just wish Elias hadn’t resorted to violence like that.” Enzo smiled meekly when she said that.
Redgrave looked at me for a long moment, appraising Enzo, “As long as you’re not crazy, that’s good enough for me. Plus, it’s not us you’ve gotta reconcile with, it’s the college kids.”
Tantalus passed by the three of us on his way to the next group of NPCs. While he was passing, he said, “Oh, Enzo, you’re back. Good. Red, send him a friend request.”
“What’s he doing?” Enzo asked soon after he was out of earshot. A ringing in Enzo's ears indicated that he had received a message. He closed my eyes and saw [Friend Request: Redgrave22].
“He’s organizing the defense,” Redgrave said as Enzo accepted his friend request.
“He started shouting about the NPCs’ lack of guns soon after they left,” Rachel said, gesturing as if to indicate the college students. “I heard him say ‘I want to talk to the West Gate’s commanding officer’ while he passed by last time.” Rachel put on a poor southern accent when she quoted Tantalus, causing me to chuckle slightly. “Anyway,” Rachel continued, “Redgrave here was just telling me that Tantalus and he are internet celebrities.”
“Minor internet celebrities,” Redgrave said, not making eye contact.
“Apparently, Tantalus won some Ninth Oasis tournaments in 2029 and 2030, and he used this popularity to start a YouTube channel. Redgrave was a big fan of his and started a YouTube channel of his own last year. Tantalus’s channel has a million subscribers and Redgrave’s has half a million."
“It sounds kinda lame when you put it that way,” Redgrave said.
A deafening gunshot interrupted our conversation. At the epicenter of the sound, Tantalus stood with his sidearm pointed to the ceiling of the West Gate. He was shouting, but none of us could hear him. Some of the NPCs around him had drawn swords and were eyeing him with concern.
“Hey! Hey!” Redgrave shouted as he drew his sidearm and started running toward Tantalus. Rachel and Enzo followed close behind. Some NPC officer was trying to say something, but Tantalus was shouting over him.
“No! You don’t seem to fully appreciate the power of a 1911! A man armed with one of these things is easily worth ten men armed with swords and spears! I’ve got seven shots left in this gun, so I could easily kill seven of you in less than ten seconds. That’s to say nothing of the angry albino standing behind me right now,” Tantalus leveled his gun at the officer. “So... I’m going to ask nicely one last time… Let me talk to the commanding officer.” After a long pause, the officer stood down and allowed for Tantalus to talk to the commanding officer.
The three players walked closer to Tantalus. He said, “I’ll be fine by myself. Trust me,” he scoffed derisively, “they couldn’t kill me if they wanted to.”
After about ten minutes, Tantalus rejoined the group, his gait indicating a deep anger. Redgrave asked, “What happened?”
“Their religion, Nurism, prevents any mortal man from touching any ranged weapon due to their similarity to the profane instrument that killed their messiah,” Tantalus spat. “This holy law doesn’t apply to Revenants… which is what we are, apparently,” as Tantalus said this, he gestured vaguely to the four players arrayed there. “As 'homunculi created from blood and dust,' we are not bound by the laws of the God of Nurism.”
“I guess the Deluvians are also excluded from God’s edicts?” Enzo asked.
“Well, they were using guns, so...” Tantalus said, "probably."
“What you’re saying is they won’t be any help at all in killing GM. God, our NPCs suck,” Redgrave spat.
“I’m sure we can find some use for them,” Rachel said diplomatically. “We need supplies for war, right? I’m sure we can use them to help supply us Revenants who are actually doing the fighting.”
“You’re right, Concerto,” Tantalus said, calming himself down with some effort. “I just got angry because I assumed they’d be able to fight, but we’re going to have to do all of it. By the way,” Tantalus said casually, “we’re gonna need to be ready to air this place out if the NPCs get in the way of the defense of the West Gate.”
“What do you mean?” Rachel said, genuinely confused.
“I figured it’ll be our job in the early days of the game to defend this gate,” Tantalus said diplomatically. “And it seems that, lore-wise, the NPCs consider the Revenants to be second-class citizens. I'm not a hundred percent sure of that, but I got that vibe from the officers. They’ll probably have us serve as auxiliary soldiers, meaning they’ll be expecting us to follow the orders of NPC officers. If our leaders are really stupid, that might hinder our ability to defend the gate. In that case, it would be better for us to just kill all of the NPCs at the West Gate and let the players take control.”
“What? We can’t just kill them!” Rachel said.
“We totally could,” Redgrave said with clear confusion in his voice. “There can’t be more than forty of them here. Tantalus and I could probably do it ourselves.”
“No!” Rachel shouted, shocked. “They’re self-aware. GM said so.”
“Technically, he said they’re shards of himself,” Tantalus said. “That's not important. What I mean is... I understand your perspective, Concerto, I really do, but... from a certain perspective, it’s the same as killing an NPC in any other game. They’re still... at their core... just ones and zeroes.”
“My name is Rachel York, not Concerto,” Rachel said angrily.
“Right,” Tantalus said, surprised. It seemed that he himself wasn’t fully aware that he had referred to Rachel by her username.
“What are your real names, anyway?” Enzo asked Tantalus and Redgrave. “If we’re gonna be stuck here together, we should at least know each other's names.” He mostly asked this question to move on to the next topic before Rachel and Tantalus killed each other.
“Do you really gotta know that?” Tantalus said quietly. His response was strange. Usually, Tantalus was outgoing, domineering, and arrogant, but this response was the exact opposite. He broke eye contact, and his posture suddenly indicated a lack of confidence.
“Our identities aren’t exactly secret,” Redgrave said. He sounded like he was trying to draw attention away from Tantalus’s behavior. “When you reach a certain level of popularity without hiding your face, people figure out your real name. My real name is Simon Miller. I’m a twenty-year-old high school dropout from California.”
Tantalus took a moment to compose himself and said, “My real name is Vincent Blackwell, if you must know, but Red and I will probably stick with our usernames for the foreseeable future. For us, our usernames are kind of like stage names. I have frequently introduced myself as ‘John Tantalus’ to people IRL if I know them through YouTube.”
“My real name is Geoffrey Lachlan,” Enzo said. “I’m an accountant and amateur writer from Wisconsin.” The other three looked at me in confusion.
“Huh,” said Rachel. “I figured Enzo was your real name.”
“Me too,” said Redgrave. “Why’s your username EnzoTheBaker, then?”
A look of annoyance passed over Tantalus’s face, mirroring Enzo's. Enzo opened his mouth to speak, but Tantalus began speaking a moment before him.
“Come on, don’t tell me you guys haven’t seen The Godfather," said Tantalus.
“What?” asked Redgrave.
“Oh, yeah,” said Rachel. “The mafia movie. I’ve heard of it but haven’t seen it. What does that have to do with his username?”
“Enzo the Baker's a minor character who…” Tantalus began before shaking his head. “No... it’s not important.”
Enzo pointed to Tantalus and enthusiastically said, “Yes! Somebody gets it! You’d be surprised by how often people don’t get the reference.”
“Kids these days, they don’t have any respect for the classics,” Tantalus said in an almost perfect impression of Marlon Brando. From this brief sentence, Enzo could tell that Tantalus was particularly good at impressions. Any evidence of his Southern drawl was completely absent from this sentence.
Tantalus's apparent age made it strange that he would make this comment. He seemed to be in his early twenties, but the “Kids these days” line made him seem much older. When Enzo thought about it, he probably was much older than he looked considering that Enzo was actually looking at his Tantalus and not Vincent Blackwell. Tantalus was completely in control of the age of his avatar's age at character creation, so his apparent age had no bearing on his real age. What a strange concept. Enzo could tell that it would take me a long time to get used to that.
Redgrave turned toward the road that led from the City to the Gate. The rest of the group turned, and they saw that two of the college students were stepping out of a car that was a few hundred feet away. They couldn’t get any closer by car because there were hundreds of abandoned cars in the way. In fact, cars completely surrounded the West Gate on both sides. It seemed that, at a certain point in time, cars could no longer pass through the Gate, and people just had to pass through on foot. The Gate was so congested by abandoned cars that no one could possibly pass through by car. Our work was certainly cut out for us.
Volta and Dendrite approached the Gate. Tantalus waved them over. When they rejoined the group, there was a moment of silence before Dendrite said, “We buried Kevin.” The two of them peered warily at Enzo. They probably expected him to say something else to deny his death.
“Good… good,” said Tantalus. “Everybody deserves a funeral.” He seemed like he was somewhere else for a moment, but he lightly shook his head and continued speaking. “So what’s the plan? What’s your next move?”
Volta and Dendrite looked confused by the question. Dendrite began speaking first. He said, “I guess we’ll just hang around the City until we figure out what to do next. There’s not really a ‘next step’ yet.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing I’m working on your ‘next step,’” said Tantalus. “I’m thinkin’ about starting a guild, and I want you guys to join. What do you say?”
The two college students whispered back and forth with each other for a moment. Volta said, “Well, you guys did save our lives, and you seem like relatively solid people. Yeah, we ought to stay together.”
A smile appeared on Tantalus’s lips. “You guys are good judges of character. I'm impressed,” he said. “Stick with me, and you just might be able to survive this game."
“Come on,” said Tantalus as he started walking toward the City. “If we’re going to survive, we need to be proactive. By the end of the day, we should have a good understanding of the City of Osiris."
He started striding confidently toward the City, and the rest of the group followed close behind him. Skyscrapers rose in the distance bearing neon signs in a language Enzo did not understand. Fear had settled firmly in Enzo's stomach, but it became somewhat more bearable when he was following Tantalus. Despite everything, Enzo felt that he could survive this game as long as he followed Tantalus. Only time would tell whether his instinct was correct.
[Concerto622]
