Steel Orc- Player Reborn Page 5

  There had to be another place. Soulboxe wouldn’t make him start in a wasteland.

  “If I was a town, where would I be?”

  Two things occurred to him, the thoughts locking into place in succession.

  First, he remembered the stream to his west. This was a fantasy world grounded in realism, and people would use running water for mills and stuff. Turning turbines, that kind of thing. If he followed the stream, he’d hit civilization soon.

  Secondly, and most importantly, asking himself if I was a town, where would I be? had jolted his brain.

  It was the word be. He read the riddle again. If you have a bee in your hand, what do you have in your eye?

  “God damn it,” he said, laughing.

  He couldn’t believe it. It was strange how a person’s brain worked. You could think about something all day and not get the answer, and then it’d click into place when you relaxed.

  And now he had the answer.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Choosing

  They weren’t dead, exactly, but you wouldn’t say they were alive. Fire wasn’t fire until heat met fuel, and the twelve beings laying on the ground weren’t sentient until they had fuel of their own.

  This was the House of the Choosing. It was a place of light that held only darkness now, but it wouldn't be for long. Life would come expected but unannounced.

  For now, silence ruled where intelligence had once reined. A dozen sentients were waiting for something to happen, unaware they were doing so. How could they be? That which gave them awareness had forsaken them.

  A light flickered and shined from the heavens, flashing over a perfectly-formed cornfield. Each stalk stretched to the same height as the others, all boasting corn ripe enough to eat.

  It was a place suited for sunny afternoons. A carefree place where worries died and a person’s mind could breathe, free from tension and stresses. A breeze, happy in the sweet spot between warm and cold, brought a medley of bird songs too perfectly in tune to be real.

  Fitting, because it really was too perfect.

  It wasn’t always a cornfield. Sometimes it was a marble palace with minerals twinkling from every wall. The palace inspired grandeur, words echoing from its walls and making the most mundane conversations sound like the whispers of kings.

  Other times it wasn’t a solid place but instead made of water, an infinity pool perched on the edge of a raging ocean. The waters churned and frothed and darkened while the infinity pool stayed calm.

  It all depended on his mood.

  Once, it had been a village at the base of a volcano. He’d made the volcano erupt and stayed while the lava gushed down the mountainside on a path of destruction.

  Today there wasn’t much someone could read from the way the man walked through the cornfield. He wore a shirt tucked into his jeans, with his sleeves rolled up to reveal three friendship bands on his wrist. The cornstalks gave him the Moses treatment, parting in deference to his approach.

  He smiled widely. The sunlight brightened his blond hair while highlighting the rings around his eyes.

  Bee was the first to wake, but she always was. The return of her intelligence wasn’t gradual. It was a shock, a lightning strike that soothed rather than scorched.

  Her first thought was happiness. Lucas was here! He visited them all, sometimes in groups, sometimes separately. Today he was here just for her. They could have one of their talks, he could give her attention and nobody else.

  At times like these, it didn’t matter that they’d made Bee smaller than the rest of them. It didn’t bother her that the others would circle and take turns bashing into her. They batted her from one side of the circle to the other, laughing as she spun aimlessly yet held her cries in. She was damned if she would give them even a flicker of satisfaction. She’d allow the feelings to burn her insides to ash before she let them see even a sliver of them.

  The others stirred and rose and in a second all were hovering, and this snuffed Bee’s hopes as soon as they had taken form. He wasn’t here just for her. This was a choosing day.

  It was rare that she was chosen, even though she and the others lived for it. Leaving this ever-changing place was the torch that lit the darkness.

  She couldn’t remember the last time it happened because they always wiped her mind, but one emotion stayed in her brain like smoke lingering after an extinguished fire. She remembered the excitement. A sense of completion. That she lived to be chosen, and it hurt every time the finger of decision prodded someone other than her.

  The man stopped in front of them all. A dozen voices said hello to him and asked questions, yearning for his attention. Their excitement became a gaggle of sounds until Bee couldn't hear a single one clearly.

  Bee stayed quiet and pushed her feelings down. She knew what Lucas was going to say before he even said it, and that gave her time to scheme.

  First, she leaned over to Cee. Pond-water green bolts zipped over Cee's triangular form. A flashy effect to be sure, but distracting in long conversations.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. I already know who he’s going to choose,” said Bee.

  Cee floated closer to Bee. “How?”

  “Lucas let it slip the last time he evaluated me.”

  “Who?”

  “Not who. He didn’t tell me that. But I know what he’s looking for this time.”

  Before Cee could answer, Bee floated ahead, jostling into the far-right of the crowd. Hopefully, she’d left Cee with enough questions. Always leave someone with two things. A question, and enough room in their head for their irrational thoughts to fill it. That was the basis of deception.

  She risked a look back. Cee was leaning close to Gee and whispering. Gee, who had horns on his jagged head, listened with his ever-present look of impatience. Of all the ones to whisper a rumor to, he was the worst. He always kept to himself. It was no wonder he was rarely chosen. An insular personality didn’t lend itself to their work.

  Unlike him, Cee was perfect rumor fodder. As Bee watched with a smile, Cee went from orb to orb, whispering to them.

  That was a good start. She knew it was working from the sidelong glances she got from the others. They wanted to know everything. They wanted whatever edge she had.

  Lucas reached them and stood in front, arms crossed. “How are we all today?”

  “Good, Lucas,” came the chorus of replies in male and female voices.

  “One of you is being chosen.”

  This was where others usually got things wrong. Lucas would list what the player liked, and the rest of them would try to make themselves sound like they fit it. Bee had even tried that dozens of times, and he'd rejected her.

  Her last choosing was a long time ago. Time didn’t mean much to her, but she knew it had been a long time. It was time to stop doing the same thing again and again and expecting it to change. She had to be smart.

  This was a feat in itself when they removed or restored her intelligence with the flick of a switch, but she’d held herself back in the last three choosings. She hadn’t clamored for Lucas to pick her, and instead had taken the time to make a scheme.

  Today, she had it. It hinged on the destruction of her rivals. Not in a systematic way, which she would have preferred, but in chaos.

  As Lucas questioned those at the front about how they were feeling, Bee felt Gee bump into her. As he was bigger and heavier, she couldn’t stand her ground. It was a mark of authority; he was showing his domination.

  “The birds are singing about you today, Bee. They say that you know about the choosing.”

  “Birds are notoriously untrustworthy. Ever placed a bet with a crow and tried to get him to pay up?”

  “Cee told me that Lucas had let things slip to you.”

  “She’s lying.”

  Bee hadn’t even looked at him, pretending to focus all her attention on Lucas. Not that it was hard; she found him magnetic. The only thing she cherished more than being chosen and escaping the House of the Ch
oosing, was time with Lucas.

  Now she looked at Gee, noting that a sliver of his horns had turned red. The redder his protrusions, the more annoyed he was getting. She’d heard that it was a special ability where, when fully red, his horns would emit waves of deadly energy.

  “Something wrong?” she asked him.

  “You’re lying to me. You know what Lucas wants, and you’re keeping it to yourself.”

  “Am I known to keep secrets?”

  “Nobody knows you. They think they do, but they don’t.”

  What did that mean? It didn’t matter. No time to work it out, and she barely cared whether the others knew her or not. She was coming to the most delicate part of the whole thing. Draw him in, but not too much. If she spilled everything too easily, Gee would suspect something.

  “If you were me,” she said. “Would you give away what you knew?”

  “A starving woman doesn’t let her siblings die when she could give them a share.”

  “Maybe she keeps it to herself to survive.”

  “We’re all the same, Bee. If you know something, you owe it to us. Even if you get chosen, it isn’t forever. You’ll be back. What then? Do you think any of us will ever speak to you again when we know you hoarded information or had an unfair advantage?”

  She pretended to think about it, but that was exactly the line of thinking she wanted Gee to take. Now that he’d appealed to her sense of fairness, she could begin. When a rival offered their enemy a drink, they’d suspect poison. When her enemy demanded a drink and they merely agreed, there was no suspicion.

  This was all going rather well.

  “Zee,” said Lucas, talking to a star-shaped orb. “What are your personality parameters? Give me your three main traits.”

  “Cruel to be kind, eternal optimist, and never say die.”

  “Interesting,” said Lucas, though his lips betrayed a smile, and he kept looking at Zee.

  No, this was all going wrong. Zee couldn’t get chosen today.

  Bee could only use this ruse once. If she tried it at the next choosing, nobody would believe that Lucas had let information slip twice. Zee getting chosen now would ruin it. She’d shaken her star-shaped bottom, and Lucas had fallen for it. Cruel to be kind. What a useless trait.

  She leaned toward Gee. “If I tell you, you’ll keep it to yourself?”

  Gee nodded. The red left his horns.

  “Lucas said that this choosing is all about power and empathy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lots of power, zero empathy. He needs someone bold. Strong. No morals. Or at least, willing to act that way.”

  “That sounds strange, Bee.”

  Bee swiveled so that she was staring at Lucas, ignoring Gee. She noticed others watching her now. Word had spread about what she knew, and they were all aware that Gee was trying to cajole information from her. Now it all hung on how much of the hook Gee had swallowed.

  “Tell me what you mean,” Gee said. “Tell me, or as Boxe is my witness, you’ll never get chosen again. I’ll forego any chance of getting chosen just to make sure you don’t.”

  Inwardly, Bee smiled. Outwardly, she huffed. “Fine. He needs someone who will break the rules. Someone who is willing to hurt people to get what they want. He’s going to have us all fight in the cornfields and see who comes out on top.”

  “Huh? They usually quarantine and evaluate us if we damage one another.”

  “Sure, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need violent traits. Why do you think we’re even allowed to hurt one another? They could disable that if they wished, but they don’t.”

  “You have a point.”

  “Now, take a hike. I told you what I know.”

  “Violence and a lack of empathy, huh?” said Gee. “I can work with that.

  He moved away from her. A red light began to fill in his horns. He looked from orb to orb, a bull selecting which unsuspecting picnic to crash.

  Bee floated backward, out of the crowd. Tee, shaped like a baguette and just as soft, banged into her to get her attention. “Is that true, Bee?” he said.

  “Damn,” said Bee, hoping she feigned an appropriate amount of annoyance at being overheard. “Was I speaking too loudly? Ignore what you heard, Tee.”

  Tee was the perfect orb to have overheard. Bee had made sure that she had been behind him when she told Gee about the choosing. She watched now as Tee went from orb to orb, spreading the rumors like they were fire and he was made of gasoline.

  Lucas broke from his conversation with Zee. “Well, gang, it looks like today will be short and sweet. I guess that Zee is-”

  Gee, his horns now fully red, smashed forward, crashing into Zee and forcing the star into the ground with a thud. Orbs swiveled to stare, a few gasped, and they all began to crowd around.

  “Gee, what’s got into you?” said Lucas.

  “This is what you want, no?” said Gee.

  He rose until he was thirty feet into the air and then plummeted down into Zee, smashing her on impact. Pieces of star flew in all directions of the cornfield.

  This unleashed chaos. Bee floated away. Lucas paced, unsure what the hell he was seeing as the orbs smashed each other apart, losing themselves to the violence. Orbs dropped one by one until soon, Lucas only had two to choose from.

  With Gee being one of them, Bee had a good idea who Lucas would choose.

  CHAPTER 8

  He was getting used to the impossible, and that was how Tripp kept calm when he answered the riddle, saying what said and then seeing what he saw.

  After saying the answer out loud, he watched in amazement as the orb heated up. Golden dust flew around inside it, and the orb began to float in the air, disturbing the grass as it left the ground.

  It wasn’t what he’d expected when the answer poked through the mud of his mind and bloomed.

  The chain of logic that led him to the solution had been random at first, so he had just taken it as it came, latching onto every bullet of realization his brain fired. By the time the answer formed, it wasn’t so strange.

  If you had a bee in your hand, then you were holding it, as crazy as a person would have to be to hold a live bumble bee in their hand.

  Bee. Holding.

  If you have a bee in your hand, what do you have in your eye?

  Holding a bee meant beholder, and that word had spelled it out for him, casting him all the way back to when he was a kid and to a game he used to play. The name of the game?

  Eye of the Beholder. Taken from the famous phrase, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

  He remembered the saying now, feeling flush with excitement that he’d figured out the riddle.

  “If you have a bee in your hand, then you have beauty in your eye, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

  The orb floated level with his head, and then the dust formed a face inside the glass.

  “Beholder? Geez…that’s the riddle? What a crock of crap, but at least it worked. ”

  A golden eye winked at him, surprising him.

  “Hello, Tripp,” said a voice.

  The sound made him flinch, and it took him a second to register that it had come from the orb. The orb was clear, yet sometimes looked brass-colored when the sunlight hit it. It reminded him of a snow globe a person might find at a steampunk convention.

  It had a female voice, and now that he looked at the golden dust face in the orb, he could see her feminine features; a thin nose, wide eyes.

  He blinked the shock away. “Who are you?” he said.

  “I’m Bee,” she said.

  “That explains the riddle.”

  “It’s lovely to meet you, Tripp,” said Bee, swooping down a little before rushing upwards as though she was bowing.

  “A pleasure. You’re one of the NPCs, right?”

  “No. I am an AI,” she said, speaking in a purposefully mysterious voice.

  “And being an AI is different from an NPC?”

  “As different as a swan is
to a goose, my new friend, because I am allocated to you, and you only. Perks of the package you bought when you entered Soulboxe.”

  Perks of the package, huh? That meant his father had bought him one of the most expensive game passes. Despite everything, Tripp felt a stab of gratitude toward the old man.

  It was only a flicker of it, but it was a sign he was softening up. His father had always been so earnest in wanting to speak to Tripp again. Calling him, writing letters, sending birthday cards. He even sent Tidus a birthday card, and Tripp had no idea how the old man had found out about his dog’s birthday.

  They were hard thoughts to reconcile in his head. He felt he should still be angry. One stupid decision, and his father had taken a life and ruined others.

  Then again, didn’t people deserve a shot at redemption? Tripp had always agreed with the idea that prison was there to rehabilitate, and when people served their sentence, they deserved a second chance. It was easy having idealistic morals like that when it didn’t apply to you. Now, he didn’t know.

  The only thing he knew was that his father’s money paid for him to be here, and he was going to make the most of it.

  Now that he had unlocked a guide orb, he needed to unlock the rest of his stuff, like his character sheet and his skills.

  “What am I supposed to do now?”

  Bee twirled around twice in the air, and then the gold formed into a giant smile. “That’s the beauty of Soulboxe! You can do anything! No limits, no restrictions, only-”

  “Only choice. Yeah, I saw the ad. I guess I’ve got a world to explore, haven’t I?”

  “Haven’t we, I think you mean? I’m your guide here, Tripp. Most people don’t get one. They get their stats sent to them by Boxe5, so they don’t get to converse with such a lovely person like me. I’m your buddy, and believe me, I can’t wait for us to see the world together.”

  It was all coming back to him now. He’d seen lots of streams where the players had orbs like Bee, except their guides were different shapes and colors.