(Continued from here)We had scrambled up through a maze of banlines and abandoned shopping malls scattered along the shore, and now the open plain stretched out before us - Sansara, the Old Continent of Second Life, where it all started. Many SIMs away lay the Statue of the Man, touchstone to the even older worlds of the Alpha and Beta grids. We had a long way to go.
I took a few minutes to change into the hazard suit I had bought all those days ago in the Shrine of the Broken Fan. It wasn't the best getup for hiking, but something about it made me feel safe. It was a sophisticated piece of clothing, technologically on par with a Lunar EVA suit, but it had a touch of magic woven into it by the Shrine's master Aragane Nishi. Normally I didn't trust magic, but the suit was kind of my good luck charm, and with all the wierd stuff we had seen I felt we needed all the luck we could get.
Natsumi and I picked up the pace now, pushing west as often as we could, turning right at banlines to take us generally north. Our map showed a road a few SIMs west of us that ran north to south and would lead us through the lakes in the middle of the continent.
3 times along the way we saw traces on our radar. 3 times we got within visual distance of people - sometimes groups, sometimes individuals. 3 times they blinked out before we approached.
"Oh...my...god! What is
with these people?" Natsumi exclaimed, exasperated.
I shrugged. "Dunno. Could be those hand cannons you're wearing around now. Maybe they think you're a griefer."
Natsumi had taken to wearing a brace of pistols in plain view to discourage the more malicious residents. Considering we had had one (two if you count the Mexican SWAT team guy) person actually approach us the whole time we had been on the hike they hardly seemed necessary.
In retrospect, I think it wasn't the people TPing away that was odd. We were the odd ones, and I don't just mean wearing guns and creepy clothes. This hike had sensitized us to movement through space. We ourselves never TPd while on the road, so seeing others do it was jarring somehow - an interruption of our new perception of the order of things. They were moving along a social axis - of groups and hangouts. We were moving along a spacial one. Was this what otherdimensional beings would look like to a casual observer? Ghosts that flitted at random in and out of our field of view?
We were both exasperated by these odd vanishings, so we decided to take a rest in the next open building we came to. It turned out, to our mutual delight, to be an arcade stocked with '80s video games!
Natsumi got the high score on
Tempest. I blew way too many L$ on a frustratingly difficult game called
Frogger.
We left the arcade in better spirits (if a little poorer) and made good time on our way to the road. Just as the mileposts were coming into view in the distance
we saw the starship. It hove in midair, frozen like a fly in amber. Probably just as well, the thing was totally unaerodynamic and probably not meant to operate in a planetary atmosphere anyway. Just ahead of the ship some sort of weapon it had discharged hung crackling in mid-air, frozen just short of the point of explosion. My guess was it was some sort of matter/anti-matter annihilation missle. We approached cautiously, hoping to get a closer look.
"Hmmm...this is kinda small for a starship," said Natsumi.
I nodded in agreement. "I seem to recall the Constitution class to be much larger."
Natsumi raised a querilous eyebrow. Seeing a chance to put my knowledge of atomic world history to good use I plunged into full on lecture mode.
"This particular class of starship comes from a rather dark time in your future history. Indeed, the NCC-1701 was the spearhead for a 5 year campaign of economic and ideological conquest by a crypto-socialist federation of planets. Their activities largely consisted of seeking out new life and new civilizations, and lecturing said civilizations on some perceived ideological flaw in their society, which they then corrected through the application of various forms of super-science and heavy weaponry. These lectures were usually delivered by the ship's captain, by all accounts a rampant egotist, whose duties also included sexual intercourse with local females in an attempt to spread the Federations genetic legacy throughout the stars...Ummm...Natsumi, what's the matter?"
Natsumi suppressed a giggle. "Nothing, Argent, nothing at all. Oh look! There's the bridge we were looking for down there!"
I guessed Natsumi had been giggling in denial of the stark realities of the future of the atomic world - there was no other explanation for it. Drawing attention to the bridge was just an attempt to stop me before I revealed any more painful secrets about her world's dark future. I decided to be more sparing with my lectures from now on, lest I shatter all hope of a bright future for her world.
And the bridge
was there, rickety and old, but still crossing the deep gorge and river that we had to cross to push northwards towards the center of the continent.
We jumped down from our perch on the hapless starship and ran down the hill towards the shore. It was the smell that brought us up short. That, and the flies...
We were less concerned about stepping in it than we were with meeting up with whatever had...deposited it there in the first place. The thing was bigger than both of us put together. Whoever left it did seem to have a taste for corn, though...maybe they were vegan and we had nothing to worry about. Regardless...gross, just gross.
We moved on to the bridge, keeping an eye out for trolls. What we found instead was a ghost ship. It lay at anchor with sails so tattered I couldn't imagine it would ever sail again. My radar showed a single trace on deck. Perhaps we would finally have a chance to talk to a mainlander.
"Natsumi, stay here and watch my back. I'm going down for a closer look." I leaped down from the bridge without further comment, leaving Natsumi to cover me with her guns.
The radar trace was erratic, shifting around in a darkened corner of the deck. I approached the figure closely, a man hunched down in the shadow of some stairs.
"It's ok, we're not going to hurt you. My friend and I are just passing through and we've been looking for a local to talk to." I raised my hands to show I was unarmed - except for the revolvers I kept at the top of my inventory stack.
"Who r u? A/S/L?" A man's voice, nasal and somewhat juvenile. He spoke in heavily accented l33t. Maybe a griefer? Or just one of the thousands of recent immigrants to SL? I moved closer.
"Argent Bury, Lieutenant - LCF, decomissioned. LIke I said, we're not going to hurt you. Come on out and let's talk." I took another step closer, my eyes flaring orange as I switched on the nightvision function.
I could see the man's face now, the pimply doughy face of someone who spent way too much time in their mom's basement. His features shifted from horror to rage in the blink of an eye.
"STFU! U fragged them! U and teh other 1!" He stretched out his hand, forces began to gather and twist around me. I felt dizzy and light, like gravity had become only a tenuous thread that tied me to the deck. I was so disoriented I never knew Natsumi had jumped down to the deck behind me until I heard her shout.
"Argent, get down!" Natsumi rose from her crouch and brought a gun to bear on the half-hidden man. I threw myself to the deck as gunfire rang out in the air.
The man ducked back behind the stairs now, puffing as he ran for the captains quarters.
Natsumi charged after him, but I was still disoriented from his failed attack. I stumbled after her like a drunk, but we were both too slow. By the time she inside the doors the man had teleported away.
We searched that ship from stem to stern. No sign of the man, no sign of any crew. Frustrated, we climbed back up to the roadway.
"Argent, I
told you we have to be careful. That guy almost orbited you. If I hadn't stopped him you'd be a million meters in the air right now and still falling. That ship was probably a griefer attack craft."
"Yeah, but where's the crew? And did you see how pissed he was at me? That wasn't a casual attack."
Natsumi sighed and shrugged. "Hopefully we'll find some answers tomorrow." That had become our mantra of late, when nothing made sense. But I felt more and more like we were approaching...something. The closer we got to the statue of The Man the more threads appeared, and sooner or later they were going to tie together.
Progress was steady after that. The Lindens laid down public roads throughout the mainland, no banlines allowed. Now our only real danger was passing up interesting things as the meters passed more swiftly under our feet.
We found a bare house in
Chicagon SIM and, exhausted, crashed right there on the rug. I couldn't sleep, though. I stared up at the ceiling for a long time, lost in thought.
What had that guy seen that scared him so much, and what about me had driven him to such anger? I don't know how long I turned the scene on the ship over and over in my head, until finally drifting off into troubled dreams.
(To be continued)
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