#41

He quit out and sipped some water. His eyes hurt and frankly, the idea of playing this for a prolonged period of time didn't seem like it would be that intelligent of an idea. He'd been doing speedruns lately and you can't do that on this game. It can't be won, though he remembered the story of a guy who spent twenty years or so building the “perfect” Sim City. Maybe he could do that. But he also had some pages to ink.

Someone was up on Skype, trying to talk to him. His eyes hurt too much to check it out for now. He decided to get up and see what Amos was doing; until he remembered that his brother, the self-proclaimed “Slimechap”, sealed in his study-chamber of terror and shittiness, was probably either in a bitter, neurotic writing session, or was watching the new Herald deKÖÖl movie or something by someone equally pointless and irrelevant. To this he sighed and decided to instead go make some fried rice.

His name was Jacob Berkley. A few weeks back, at the start of summer vacation, he had started up a session in a dieselpunk-style farm simulator called Dieselworld. It was an interesting enough game, combining Harvest Moon-type social interaction with some RTS technology research. Basically, your farm is in charge of collecting your town's diesel, which comes from a wheat-like crop that you can grow. You also have to grow food to support the town. The diesel that you harvest helps you do research to enhance the town. Supposedly, like in Sim City or whatever, you can convince the game to go into an infinite self-perpetuation cycle (a “perfect” game) with enough months of work put into it. The issue that Jacob found with it, though, was that the technology was the only real fantasy element. There was no conflict in the game. Everyone in town was happy-go-lucky or had some fake E-rated anger about fashion or crushes or whatever. It was just sort of boring and complacent.

Still, boring complacency was alright, because it was filler time between other things like D&D campaigns, and inking commissions. He'd been trying to hit it big with a webcomic for some time, but the Internet was a big place, full of dark things. He had to be honest to himself. It could be scary sometimes. Dipping one's work out there into the briny deeps was risky business. Fortunately, at seventeen, below the age of consent, he figured himself exempt from smut drawings, so he managed to escape drawing erotic fanart. For now.

The rice had started sizzling when his phone went off. He wondered if it was Lex, trying to set up campaign time, or perhaps the Slimechap himself, pulling one of his pranks where he claimed to be a serial killer clown or some nonsense, disguising his number. (It was an unbelievably shitty idea to teach him how to do that.) He pulled it out, but the caller wasn't in his contacts; the phone said it was coming from London—at least, from the London area code. It was probably Mina, his cousin, then; she wasn't in London, but she was the only person close to it who would call him. He answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey!” It was Mina.

“Ah, yes,” he said, answering with the fake dinner theatre accent he often affected. “Hello, Wilhelm. How goes the firm?”

“I hath not a firm, ye worthless chump,” she replied. “Listen, get your miserable fucking ass on Skype, or I will fly all the way out 'cross the Atlantic to whip it into shape.”

“I'm making some bloody rice, ye pointless scum,” he said. “What's so important?”

Her voice suddenly dropped to normal. “Do you remember my friend Aurel? The Scottish dude?”

“Yeah. Are you guys going out yet?”

There was a pause. “No. Dude. I'm only here for a month or two more.”

“Just askin'.” Which is true. Jacob's voice betrayed no feeling, but there sincerely was no feeling involved. He was good at conversing without having any emotion in the matter.

“Well, he found that one cave not far from the school. He ended up exploring it, and, well...he found something. He's Skyping me from the cave right now. I've got Premium, I can put his feed up on your computer.”

“That sounds great, but I really have to keep cooking this rice. And I've got a headache, dude. I was playing that shitty farm thing today.”

She sighed. “Jaaake,” she said. “This is really cool!”

“Well, what is it?”

“It's some sort of underground...” Suddenly, there was static.

“An underground what?”

There was only more static. “An underground bay...” But that was all; the call cut out.

After a faux-angry glance at the phone, he tried to call back. It rang a couple of times, but then: “I'm sorry, but the call could not be completed as dialed. Please hang up and...”

He grunted, and then cut the call again. He figured she would have to call him back. Or, he would have to get on Skype. Maybe take an aspirin and then do it.

But first, finish up the rice.

She would be there when he got back.