Vermifuge: Zero Day

The flyer on the light pole just said “Who will be the first to unlock seven crowns? Play Vermifuge and win everything!” Under it was a QR code. I’d seen stuff like this before. It was usually some interactive art thing but I was finally on a date with Tansy and I knew she was deep in the art scene. I stopped to look at it, considering. I liked art shows when they were good. The problem was they usually weren’t. The ratio of narcissistic cringe to engaging art in my neighborhood was often lopsided.

I looked at Tansy. She’d worn a sweater that left her midriff exposed and a long, flowing skirt, and had a long scarf that made me think “no, we have Timelords at home; the Timelords at home:,” when I first saw it. I’d said it out loud and she’d laughed and pulled out a folding knife she kept in her pocket, waving it without unfolding it and promising me, “Be careful or you’ll find out if this is sonic or not.”

I couldn’t wait to see the quilt she’d knitted entirely out of grippy socks.

Some part of me sensed this was a red flag of some sort. Well, to be fair that part of me was screaming through a bullhorn and marching back and forth across my brain stomping and playing a bass drum. Still, I’m sure there are definitely cases where people can be eccentric but not dangerous to your tires, windows, and the paint job on your car. Anyway, I don’t even have a car.

The QR code led to a page. A really weird page. It looked like the green on black text output of a terminal program. It had a bunch of ASCII art text and a cursor at the bottom, like some kind of text adventure. I didn’t like text adventure games. I sighed and locked my phone, turning my attention back to Tansy, whose chaotic red hair was everywhere. She shook it out of her face, looking at me with those green eyes from their fortress of freckles, and said, “OK so what was it? Wait. I’m guessing -” she paused for a moment, crinkling her face up in mock deep thought, “- coupon for a two for one tarot reading?”

She looked up at me, moving close, and I just grinned, “I guess you’ll never know,” I said, and lightly tapped her on the nose.

She looked at me in mock outrage, raising her voice like the Queen of Hearts, “How dare you, sir? One more like that and it’ll be snicker-snack, off with your head!” As she pronounced sentence she imperiously pointed at me, then drew a finger across her neck, eyes scowling in mock outrage.

Then she lunged and grabbed at my phone, saying “OK now let me see!” I held it out of her reach with one hand, holding her back with the other, and suddenly we were close, face to face. She closed her eyes and I thought we were about to kiss, but at the last second I let her go and she fell into the snow. I meant it as part of the bit but she leapt up, clearly angry, and pushed me back a bit. “Fine, I’ll do it myself,” she said.

She walked over, pulled out her phone with a quick, jerky motion that radiated her annoyance, and scanned the code. I watched her tap to go to the strange site, and her body language instantly changed. She’d forgotten she was angry, distracted by the site’s strange layout.

“It’s like a MUSH,” she said. I had no idea what that was. “I bet you have no idea what that is,” she added.

“Ma’am, I’m just a simple man, who makes simple dough, and covers it in the fruits of the Earth,” I said in the Texas accent I knew she liked. I only pulled it out for special occasions, unlike most Texans I wasn’t fond of where I’d grown up, but she’d heard me using it at the coffee shop a week before and suddenly decided we were going on a date.

“It’s a multiplayer game from the old days, before the internet had graphics. It has rooms that are just little descriptions and you can type to interact with some of the items in the room sometimes, but mostly you interact with other people. Some do more combat stuff, some are more role playing. My dad showed me when I was a kid but I haven’t seen one in years.” She delivered this sudden exposition in an entirely serious voice, what I thought of as her “work voice.” We both liked the same coffee shop and she’d work remotely from there sometimes and I’d heard her in meetings. She did cybersecurity of some sort, and when she was working she was all business. She hadn’t bitten on my accent bit at all. She seemed captivated.

I saw her focus in on the game and start typing things in. “Come on,” I said, “the show is starting five minutes ago.” She looked up from her phone, shaking her head as if to clear it a bit, then I saw her switch out of work mode and back into fun mode. She got a big grin, put her phone in a deep pocket in her skirt, and charged past me, pushing me over into the snow with surprising strength. As she ran past she laughed and called out, “Come on, the show is starting five minutes ago!”

I brushed the snow off. Under the inch of fresh powder it was wet chunky stuff and some of it had soaked into my pants a little. I looked down, sighing, but shrugged and ran after her.

The show was actually really good. A band from Austin called The Deer. They’re legitimately great and I’d seen them before, but it had been a while, and they were one of those bands that was better every time you saw them. Tansy fell in love with the lead singer, a common occurrence since her voice was like something a Fae prince or Greek Goddess would have burned a continent to possess. Their music got into you and made you feel like you were finally awake and the rest of your life was a dream. We ended up with merch, which I got to carry as we walked the few blocks back toward the complex we lived in.

Tansy ended up coming over to my place, but once we finished doing entirely chaste and sweet calisthenics and playing twister in my bedroom she’d decided she didn’t want to sleep over and said she’d come by for coffee in the morning. Her building was right next to mine so it was a short walk.

As I lay there, relaxed and happy, reveling in how that had been the best chaste calisthenics and twister game of my life, I pulled out my phone. When I unlocked it, the last thing I’d had open popped up: the weird art site.

I looked at the text. At the top it said ENTERING VERMIFUGE! Vermifuge was spelled out in big ascii bubble letters. Under that it said:

YOU ARE A NEW PLAYER

LOGGING IN … LOGGED IN

WELCOME NEW-PLAYER#591

You are standing at the precipice. You have a torch in your hand. In front of you, the sharp edge of the cliff drops away into darkness, you can not see the bottom. It is windy. Ahead of you lies mortal danger. Behind you a path leads to safety. How do you proceed?

> |

I stared at the flashing cursor. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I remembered that Tansy said something about typing to interact with the game. I figured I should play it a little. It wasn’t a BOGO Tarot deal at least. Plus I’d seen how entranced she was with it, so I figured it’d give us another thing to talk about.

I typed> I look around

Text scrolled up from the prompt:

You see the precipice before you. The wind is stronger. If you do not make a choice soon you fear you might be blown away. You see the torch in your hand.

I typed> I light the torch

You pull out your lighter and attempt to light the torch. Despite the heavy wind it lights quickly and easily. The area around you is now well lit by the bright light of the torch. You still can not see the bottom. The wind continues to strengthen.

I thought for a minute. The game clearly wanted me to do something with the cliff, but it seemed like it might be a puzzle. I considered dropping the torch down to see what was at the bottom of the cliff, but then I thought about the wind. I was pretty sure if I wasted another action the wind was going to kill my character, and who knows if the game would let me play again.

I shrugged. If I was going to die anyway I should take a chance.

I typed > I jump off

You leap from the precipice. As you fall you see the cliff face, and into it a map has been carved. You are moving too quickly to take in all the details, but there is clearly a route leading down the cliff face. Or maybe up it? Along the way, there are many stops, many side paths, many shortcuts and dead ends, but you know that if you ever return to the top you’ll be able to finally take the path to safety.

As you plummet, you hear a voice, deep and sonorous, speaking in your mind. It asks, “What is your name?”

I stared at the cursor. Damn this game was weird. What a bunch of ominous arthouse bullshit. Still, it looks like that was the right choice. I decided to go all in.

I typed> Marcus

You hear the voice once again, “Welcome, Marcus, to Vermifuge.”

Then my phone screen went black and a glitched version of the bootup logo flashed briefly, then vanished as it went black again. “Oh shit,” I said out loud. “Fucking hackers. Fuck.” I’d heard about this kind of thing but never encountered it. I saw a small progress bar appear on the screen, and under it it said: Installing … 37%

I tried holding down the lock button but nothing happened. I couldn’t pull up any screens. Whatever this was, it had total control of my phone. I watched as the number steadily climbed until it hit 100%, then the progress bar went away, the message vanished, the screen flashed once and then my phone started its normal boot sequence, like I’d just restarted it. I felt dread in the pit of my stomach, wondering how I’d be able to afford to replace it. I’d just upgraded and had two years of payments to make and I’d skipped the insurance.

Then my home screen popped up. I saw the familiar background image of my childhood cat Bonnie, a really small maine coon (so just regular cat size). I saw all the normal icons. I felt relief for a moment, but then I realized there was a new icon. It looked like a planet Earth with a cartoon worm crushed under it, the worm had X’s for eyes that signaled death in low res graphics. Under the icon, it said “VERMIFUGE.”

I didn’t know what to do and at that point I was exhausted. It seemed like my phone was fine but I was worried it might be stealing my identity or whatever in the background. Not that there was much to steal. I had seventeen dollars and one cent in my checking account since I’d just paid rent, and I had a little over six hundred dollars in debt on my credit card because I’d just been on a date. Also because doordash. They were welcome to it.

I decided I’d just turn my phone off and ask Tansy in the morning. She was a cybersecurity person. Surely that meant she could fix a hacked cell phone. I brightened up. She’d probably already figured it out since the game was on her phone too.

I watched as the phone shut down. As it went through the normal powering down screen, a little animation popped up. It was a little animated planet Earth guy with arms and legs. The Earth was just a big head with a bulbous nose and the eyes had giant exaggerated eyelashes. As I watched, he waved and made a goofy expression, marched across the top of the phone screen and “jumped” down, falling to the bottom of the screen, an animated cliff illustrating his fall. As he fell along it, little creatures would stick their heads out of holes and burrows in the simple line art cliff face, and as they did he would bounce against them, crushing them in little bits of animated gore, until he finally reached the bottom and crushed a simple worm. He rotated around and retracted his limbs and I realized I was looking at the Vermifuge logo.

“Fuck,” I said, then shrugged and closed my eyes, trying to sleep.

I actually slept really well. I’d been exhausted from dancing a bit at the show and the “exercise” session we’d done afterward. Don’t make me describe it, just google Penthouse Letters and pretend they really happened.

I was dragged out of sleep by loud, insistent knocking. I grabbed a random shirt as I walked to the door and realized as I started to pull it on that it was the band shirt I’d bought last night. It felt stiff and smelled a little weird, like new shirts usually do, especially with screen printing. It had a strange picture of a giant whale made of birds swimming across it.

It was still early. Maybe seven. I’d only had four or five hours of sleep. When I opened the door I saw Tansy, still wearing the skirt from the night before and her Timelord scarf, but she’d traded the sweater out for an oversized shirt. There were dark circles under her eyes and she was slightly flushed under her freckles. I realized she hadn’t slept at all.

She walked into the room and immediately began pacing. She clearly wanted to say something but every time she tried she second guessed and interrupted herself. “Have you… no.” “Did you… of course not.” Things like that.

Then she finally stopped and looked at me. “Marcus, did you play the game?”

I just looked at her. She looked exhausted and a little scared. I’d never seen her scared. I couldn’t have imagined her scared before this moment. She didn’t seem the type. That nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach from the night before came back. Not the one when she asked if I knew what pegging was, the later one.

“Is it bad if I did,” I asked.

She stared for a second. Then she said, “I don’t know. Let me see your phone.”

I went and got it and started it up. She stared at it impatiently, waiting for the boot sequence. I went to my small kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a kitchen island, and got out the stuff to make coffee. My only real luxury in life was how big my place was. It was technically a two bedroom that I shared with a guy named Carlos. We’d been friends in high school and when we came to college his parents, who were inexplicably rich, had given him an allowance and a stipend he could only spend on rent. We’d decided to get a place together and he’d use the full stipend and I’d pay the difference. Two weeks after we moved in he met some girl at a party and went to sleep over at her place, and now he only came back to trade out his clothing or grab some of his adventure sport stuff, almost all of which he kept stored in his room. I don’t think he ever made it to a class.

That had been five years ago. I’d graduated but his parents kept paying the stipend so I never moved. Every time I saw Carlos he’d say “Oh man we need to hang out some time, I’m just so busy.” Last time I saw him he said she was pregnant. I tried not to think about it.

As I got the kettle going and the coffee ground, Tansy came over to me. She gave me a big, sleepy hug, relaxing against me for a second, then as I started to put my arms around her she pushed back and held up my phone. “Unlock it,” she said. I was too worried and tired to overthink it and just did as she asked. Once I’d pressed my thumb on the sensor and opened the phone she turned around and went to sit back down on the stool on the other end of the kitchen island. The kettle began to make that strange wooshing sound electric kettles make when they’re heating up.

She looked intently at my phone. “I see you jumped,” she said, thumbing through screens. I moved around so I could see, and it looked like she was in the settings menus. She tapped through a few things and said, “Well, it looks like whatever this thing is, it isn’t ransomware and it is platform agnostic. Your crappy little Motorola is just as owned as my iphone.” I noticed she was using her business voice, though she sounded as tired as she was. “It doesn’t seem to have permissions but I also can’t uninstall it. I also can’t bring that QR link back up.”

I watched for another minute as she continued to flip through screens. She had me put in my pin number at one point. I figured if she was planning on fucking me I already knew she was really good at very chaste games of twister.

The kettle beeped and I started pouring hot water onto the grounds. The smell of the Costa Rican coffee beans filled the space, a slightly sweet medium roast with classic coffee flavors and a chocolate and plum finish. Absolutely fantastic stuff, the guy who owned the shop roasted it in a converted industrial space behind his shop. He said he had a special hookup with a farmer in Costa Rica who sold only to him. I believed it.

As the smell wafted over to her, she looked up from the phone and, despite her tiredness, smiled big. “I see you can make coffee and pizza. A man of many talents.” A little of her playfulness had crept back into her voice. It suddenly dawned on me that she actually, truthfully liked me.

My stomach did other weird things. I realized I actually liked her too. Damn. That was never good.

I removed the ceramic funnels I used to make the pourovers from the two coffee mugs and brought a steaming mug over to her. It was the first thing I’d noticed about her other than the fact that she was pretty. She also drank her coffee black. We’d briefly bonded over it when she’d been behind me in line and confused my coffee order for hers. We’d both gotten the same thing: black coffee in a ceramic mug.

I sat on the other stool next to her, holding the coffee and letting it cool to drinkable temperature. I watched as she changed a few more settings on some kind of screen I’d never seen before. I realized she’d downloaded something else onto my phone, some kind of software tool, and she’d been using it to access things that mere mortals were not meant to see.

“Holy shit, I thought computer people being able to fix phones was just a stereotype,” I said.

“It is a stereotype,” she said, “but sometimes it’s also true.”

She yawned big. “Come back to my place,” she said, “I want to show you something.”

Part of me was excited, part of me was sad because in another context I’d think she was inviting me over to do chaste calisthenics, but mostly I was just curious enough and too tired to argue. She grabbed the coffee cup, looked at me and said, “You really like that band, huh?” She smiled big and said, “Actually, first put on some shoes, and then come to my place. I’m going to borrow this,” she pointed at my phone, “and this,” she pointed at the cup of coffee in her hand. She walked out carrying both.

Her apartment was like if a cult of anime egirls decided to go in together on a storage unit but still couldn’t afford it because of their funko pop addiction so they brought in some witchy hippie girls to cover the difference, ending up with tapestries, feathers, and on one entire wall the thickest floor to ceiling red velvet curtains you’ve seen since the last time your soul was trapped in a place of unspeakable evil. It didn’t smell bad and there were no slimy bowls or rotting half consumed boxes of takeout, but other than that it was one Surugaya shipment away from being an episode of Hoarders.

I’ll give her credit, she did have shelves and display cases for a lot of things, and there was a walkable path from the door to the couch, and then one from the couch to her computer setup, which took up the wall adjacent to the red curtains.

Her “computer desk” was two sturdy tables in an L shape, one with a four monitor setup floating over it on a movable wall mount and a glowing desktop case with a glass side, glowing pink and cyan LEDs shining out of it off an all white build. Her keyboard glowed with the same colors, as did her mouse. It honestly looked pretty rad. Her other table had all kinds of random electronic devices, some small shelves with bins that had electronics parts, a partially assembled drone, and her phone laid on a pad and connected to a laptop with a cable. It wasn’t a macbook, and the laptop was the only thing that didn’t seem to fit. It looked plain, grey, and businesslike. It had a sticker with a bar code and a corporate logo, some kind of uppercase E tilted 45 degrees to rest on the back corner of the letter. I knew that company was really big and did something with computers. I assumed it was from her work.

She opened up the laptop and it powered up from a sleep cycle, then she plugged my phone into it using a USB cable she randomly grabbed out of one of the bins. Something popped up on her screen and she clicked it away, then something else that I briefly saw before she clicked it away too, something about “Sandbox Cell Emulation.”

A black window popped up with a command prompt on it. I saw some flickering text and then it stopped and next to the prompt it said, “Execute Safety Audit? <y/n>”

She hit y and suddenly all kinds of text I couldn’t decipher started scrolling. It seemed to be doing some kind of scan or check. She had just been sipping her coffee and hadn’t said much other than hi when I came in. When she finally spoke against the quiet hum of the fans it seemed incredibly loud.

“I wanted to see what would happen if we simulated a cell tower and then let both phones load the game at the same time.”

I looked when she pointed at the screen, “I wrote this script earlier, it’s modified since I know you have an android phone but it’s just doing some hardware agnostic connection tests. I’m basically poking your phone to see if it will roll over and do a trick.”

We waited a while. She got up and went into a closet and grabbed a folding chair, setting it down for me so I had a place to sit. I sat next to her, watching the screen, and she leaned against me, wrapping her arms around my right arm and leaning in. She was warm and smelled both good and bad at the same time in the way that people you’re attracted to can when they played a vigorous game of twister with you a few hours before and then stayed up all night trying to crack the malware you’d both installed on your phones and then her smell was mixing with the smell of really good coffee and the slight sweet rubbery smell of imported Japanese toys.

The script finished and displayed some results. I didn’t understand most of them except one that said “Threat responses: 0.” I sat there for a minute waiting for her to do something, growing concerned that the result said something so dire it had frozen her in horror. Then she let out a wheezy snoring sound and I realized she’d fallen asleep.

I untangled her hand from the coffee cup so it wouldn’t spill, setting it down on the work table, then reached down and picked her up. I was bigger than her by a large margin and she weighed hardly anything despite being weirdly strong. I carried her over into her bedroom and set her down on the bed. Every wall of her bedroom was lined with bookshelves, all packed with books, mangas, comics, and board games. Then I realized my phone was still hooked up to her work rig and I had nothing to do. I didn’t want to leave, especially with my phone stuck here, so I went to the living room and started browsing her extensive Bluray collection.

About six hours later I woke up when she shut off the show I’d put on. I’d found a bootleg of a show called Gurren Lagann, the entire series burned onto a single Bluray, and I’d put it on. I’d picked it just because I’d heard someone say it was good once, but it had actually exceeded my expectations and I’d stayed up for a full two hours before exhaustion overwhelmed me.

She smiled at me and said, “You have good taste. Next time just sleep in the bed, it’s fine. Come on, let’s see what kind of trouble our phones are in.”

She went over to the computer. It was still on and had the same screen as it’d had when she fell asleep. She looked it over. “Well, according to this, things are basically fine, so it’s not trying to use our phones for a DDOS attack or anything and we don’t seem to be on a botnet.”

She looked down at our phones and said, “I’m starting to think this was just incredibly clever app marketing. Maybe a little too clever, they somehow bypassed the app stores on both platforms and loaded their software directly. That’s generally frowned upon. Still, I have a honeypot on my phone with some unsecured banking stuff that should have pinged if they were trying to steal data. It might be on some kind of trigger or time delay.”

She picked up her phone and unplugged it from the machine. Then she waited a second while it looked for a data connection now that it wasn’t on the simulated cell tower and logged back into the network properly.

Her phone buzzed in her hand as notifications rolled in. She scrolled through them, then flipped to her apps, paused a minute, then tapped the Vermifuge icon. She looked thoughtful as the app loaded up.

She indicated my phone, “Go ahead and give it a try.” I unplugged mine and it underwent a similar ritual, except I only had two notifications. One was a push ad from doordash with a coupon, which I mentally filed away for later, and the other was from the Vermifuge app itself. The notification window looked similar to the terminal, with its black background and white text. It said:

New Side Quest Available:

Recover and Deliver Essential Supplies

“Weird,” said Tansy, who was looking at my screen, “I got a similar notification last night, except mine said ‘Receive and Deliver Essential Supplies.’”

I tapped the notification and the screen went black, then the word VERMIFUGE appeared centered on it again, once again in big ASCII art bubble letters. Under it it said “Loading …”

About two thirds of the screen flickered to life in a simple green on black graphics display. There were several icons, of a similar art style to the Vermifuge logo, with labels under them. The options were: Journal, Community, Quests, Market, Character, Inventory, Skills, Spells, Cohort. All of the options were greyed out except Character. I looked at Tansy, who shrugged at me, and then tapped the icon.

The screen flipped and I saw a blank, genderless humanoid figure, like an old 80’s wireframe of a person. Next to it were some fields: Handle, Background, Class, Perks, Abilities, Achievements. This screen also only took up two thirds of the available space, leaving a big black section on the bottom with a console and a cursor. Before I could tap anything text typed itself on the console, Hello Marcus, let’s begin character creation. Please hold your phone up in decent light so the front facing camera can see your face.

“What the fuck?” I said. I looked at Tansy. “Should I do it?”

She shrugged, “Your phone is owned but I’m not sure how bad it is. If it’s a ransomware scam the only way you’ll get your phone back is to cooperate. If it’s a game, well, all the social media apps have your face already anyway. If I was at work I’d tell you to throw it in the trash and light it on fire, but in this case, it’s really up to you. I’m curious to see what they’ve got up their sleeve. They might get some info from us but we can probably learn a lot by playing along for now.”

“What if they like, steal my bank or something?”

She grinned, and slugged me in the shoulder, “You already told me you’re poor. I’m not after your money, I doubt they are either. Plus, if we can reverse engineer whatever they did, we can probably collect a pretty big bounty”

“Well, as long as we’re on the same page,” I said, and raised the phone up to my face. A small popup took over the screen and said Working.

After a few seconds it finished and the green wireframe began to deform and morph. It did this for about ten seconds, gradually looking more like me, then all at once the graphics popped and I was looking at a three dimensional animated version of myself. In the game I was wearing a simple charcoal long sleeved coverall. I looked like an extra from a 90s sci-fi action movie. I even had a little charcoal grey ball cap and simple black work boots.

I put my thumb on the figure and found I could rotate it. It was pretty accurate to my build.

The text on the bottom said, Avatar complete. Thank you. Now, please choose a handle.

Tansy said, “Wow, that scanning tech is amazing. I don’t know who built this game but it’s incredibly well optimized to run on your phone like that.”

“What the Hell is it asking for? It wants me to pick a handle? Like for a door,” I asked.

She sighed dramatically, “Come on, aren’t you up your old school slang? It just wants you to pick a name to use in the game.”

I looked at the prompt and tapped on it, bringing up the screen keyboard. I thought for a second, then typed: Hyperion. I’d always thought the name sounded badass and my dad had given me a book with that title to read when I was a kid. I’d struggled a bit because I was young but I thought it was neat and I kind of wanted to impress him. I didn’t expect it to work, it was pretty much always taken.

On the console I saw: Greetings Hyperion. Based on your profile your background is: Former Gifted Kid. Your class options are as follows: Infiltrator, Social Engineer, Heavy.

On the screen above the console the graphics changed. There were brief descriptions of each class. Tansy said, “Oh wow, definitely pick Infiltrator,” before the descriptions even came up. I glanced over at her and she just grinned at me. “It sounds badass,” she added.

I read through the descriptions:

Infiltrator - An expert at getting into places they shouldn’t be. Your unobtrusive presence and ability to pick locks allow you to make your way into all kinds of situations and then slip out without anyone noticing. While the shadows and hiding are your friends, with the right amount of preparation you can quickly and decisively end combat encounters.

Social Engineer - You know how to talk to people, and you know how to guide a conversation in a way that lets them trust you. That lets you gather information you shouldn’t have access to and get access to things, people, and places that you normally wouldn’t. Your ability to quickly improvise stories allows you to maintain a cover as long as you can avoid heavy interrogation.

Heavy - You’ve thrown a punch and taken one, and you know how to wrestle and box. When everything else fails you step up and slug it out with the threats, be it with fists or weapons.

“At the risk of repeating myself, what the fuck?” I looked at Tansy, who shrugged. “I wrestled in high school and did some boxing for a few years when I first got to college. How does the game know that? Or that I know how to pick locks? My friends all got into lockpicking in high school and I got really good at it, but I never really talked about it except with them.”

She said, “Well, it seems like they don’t need to steal your identity, they already have it.” She paused and said, “Oh damn.” I saw her typing intently into her phone for a second. “Damn damn damn,” she muttered, seeming to forget my existence.

I looked back at my own phone. I sighed. In for a penny or whatever. I tapped Infiltrator.

The console scrolled:

You have been assigned the following perks: Line Cook Ally, Underworld connections 1, Security connections 1, Lucky, Crackerjack

You learned a new skill: Lockpicking - Intermediate

You have the following trait: Everyman

You learned new spells: Shroud, Distraction, Clear Pursuit, Power Outage, Noise Cancellation

Your abilities are now calibrated.

New Achievement Unlocked: A Man of Character - Awarded One Uncommon Cosmetic Token - you completed character creation and activated yourself. Your world just became a little smaller, and your place within it a little larger.

Please check the Quests tab for new available quests. Please check the journal screen to track existing quests. You are now in tutorial mode.

Tansy spoke up then, “I just got an achievement, ‘Woman of Character,’ for finishing character creation.”

She showed me her screen. Her avatar was a pretty good representation of her petite form. I saw her background said Ex-Egirl Sellout, which seemed kind of harsh even if it was a bit on the nose, and her class was InfoSec Bot Herder.

Despite her concern from just a minute ago, she seemed to be having fun.

“Isn’t this against every kind of rule you guys send in those security emails,” I asked. “Like, aren’t we giving them everything?”

She shrugged, “Yes and no. Look, they have everything. Like I said, they could have totally owned us if they wanted to. I’m guessing whoever made this spent a fortune buying into personal data and they’re using it to populate the game with our private info. But still, it’s a game. I think it’s an ARG. The thing is, whoever did this seems to have not consulted legal, and they are using security exploits of some sort, and whatever it is it’s probably one of the biggest vulnerabilities since Log4Shell.”

I looked blankly at her. She was cute as Hell but I had no idea what she was talking about. “You’re cute as Hell but I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

She gave me a look that was equal parts mild annoyance and amusement and then started explaining, “You’re cute too, but don’t push it. ARG means alternate reality game.It’s a game we play out in the world. Like Pokemon Go but with less focus group testing.”

She tapped on her screen a few times and said, “Look, under Quests, that quest is still there. Mine says the same as your notification. Pull yours up.”

I backed out of the character screen and pulled up Quests. I saw it there, the only quest available: Recover and Deliver Essential Supplies.

“I wonder if we can both accept it,” she said, and tapped it on her phone. As soon as she did I got a notification popup: Player Cass has accepted this quest and is at your location, would you like to form a cohort and accept it as a cohort quest? Y / N

I tapped the Y and it paused, I saw Tansy tap something on her phone and another popup came up: Player Cass accepted your petition to join her cohort. You are now a member of her cohort. You have accepted the cohort quest. See your journal for details.

I switched to the journal screen and saw the quest there:

(Cohort Quest) Recover and Deliver Essential Supplies

When I tapped it, the console expanded and filled with text.

Your cohort is tasked with recovering essential supplies and delivering them to the target location. The supplies in question consist of: 1 shipping box of commercial grade light bulbs, HYPERLUX branding. The box was originally left for pickup on the shipping dock of the permanently closed Rance Building at 1803 N Sequoia, 80203. No players accepted the quest and the supplies were recovered by members of the small local criminal gang DIOSES GIGANTES. They have the supplies stored at an abandoned house at 1519 N Sequoia St., 80203.

Objectives:

Enter 1519 N Sequoia (primary)

Retrieve the full box of light bulbs (primary)

Deliver the full box of light bulbs to the destination: 1259 N Canyon St. Suite 300 [Rear Entrance] (primary)

Avoid detection (gang) (optional)

Avoid detection (guards) (optional)

Leave no evidence (optional)

Reward: 1000 Gold, 100 xp, 1 Uncommon Crate, 1 Uncommon Cosmetic Token

Set quest as active and add to your map?

Next to that last bit was a small square checkbox. I tapped it and the box filled in, then my phone switched to the maps app. I saw a pin dropped on the abandoned house. It actually wasn’t far from where we were right now.

I looked up at Tansy and glimpsed her phone screen, which also had a map opened. In the soothing iphone voice it said, “Head west on 14th Avenue.” She quickly zeroed out the volume.

“Have you ever run across the DGs? I’ve seen their tags and my roommate likes to talk shit about them being scrubs when I run into him. He calls them De Gens, but he says it with a spanish accent that I can’t do,” I said.

She nodded, “Yeah I’ve heard of them but I don’t know anything about them. I thought they mostly stayed on the other side of Colfax. I know they did a pretty big tag in an alley nearby recently, I got a good picture of it.” She pulled out her phone and started flipping through pictures. I saw a picture of some weird little donuts, one of a coffee cup on an old wooden railing, then a pretty interesting nude picture of her that she quickly flipped past, only to see another one at a slightly different angle. She looked up at me, her face turning a little red, and pulled her phone up so I couldn’t see. She flipped through a few more and then turned her phone around, showing me.

The picture was of an alley close to the coffee shop we’d met at. I didn’t go that way often and hadn’t seen the tag yet. It was a pretty big mural, colorful and actually well done. It said DIOSES and then under that GIGANTES, both in big graffiti bubble letters. Woven into it was a grim reaper figure with a sugar skull painted on its head and a long scythe running along the top. They might be degens but one of them was royalty with a spraycan.

“Fun,” I said, hoping the sarcasm came through. I wasn’t sure about this. Still, it was a game, I figured these guys must also be playing. I looked at Tansy and I could see she was actually excited. She grabbed my hand and started to pull me towards the door, then looked down and realized she wasn’t really dressed properly and it was mid day now. Not the best time to be looking like a crazy homeless person trying to break into an abandoned house.

“Go grab that camera I saw on your shelf,” she said, “and wear your most pretentious hipster clothes. We’re going to do a photo shoot!” She grinned and practically flew into her room, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll meet you at your place in ten minutes.”

I shook my head, wondering what I was getting myself into, and not just with the game, but I was energized. The camera technically belonged to Carlos but I doubted he’d stop by, he’d just come by two days ago for a few minutes and left with his winter camping stuff. The dude had weird hobbies.

I called out through her door, “Sure, but wear something really hot so it’s believable.”

I half expected her to bundle up just to spite me for that last comment but she went the other way. I’d gone home and changed into a button down and put on my leather suspenders, which I rarely wore but always kind of liked. I had a pair of black skinny jeans still, which were kind of uncomfortable and stupid but I figured I needed to go all in. It was too cold for them but not so cold it’d be a problem as long as we were moving around. I had thrifted a Northface jacket that seemed to fit the bill so I pulled that and a classic black beanie on and grabbed the camera. It was a simple mirrorless Nikon with a strap and 50mm prime lens, and the battery was at half charge, which was good enough.

There were only five pictures on the memory card and all of them were of Carlos in his ski gear smoking a giant blunt on the mountain. They were clearly shot on automatic mode and looked pretty bad, I figured his girlfriend (wife?) shot them but who knew. I flipped through the settings, disabling the pop-up flash and the focus beeping and giving myself manual control. I’d done some photography for the football team back in high school in order to get out of class when wrestling was over and knew just enough about cameras that I could put a decent shot together.

I heard a knock and then immediately my front door, which I had not locked, opened. Tansy was standing there, looking pretty great. She’d washed her face and put her curly red hair into twin ponytails. She had eye liner and maybe a little other makeup on but she was skilled enough that it was hard to tell, except the dark cherry lipstick. Her top was a plunging v-neck with flared long sleeves, kind of an El Vira goth vibe, and despite her petite build it showed off just enough to really catch my eye. The collar flared out into a thin strip of lace and the bottom of it had a faux built-in corset which worked well on her naturally slender waist and tightened very slightly over the roundness of her belly. Her pants were hip hugging and rode low, with crosshatched lacing running down the sides of each leg to flared out bell bottoms.

Under the bellbottoms she had black boots that came to the middle of her calf, and each of them had a white anarchy symbol drawn onto the outside heel. She’d somehow transformed into a goth’s wet dream in ten minutes. Slung over her shoulder was her heavy coat. I just stood stunned for a second, then without breaking my gaze brought the camera up and took a picture.

Her smile widened and she turned around, swinging her hips and saying in an over the top sexy movie star voice, “Well, mister, take a picture, it’ll last longer!” She shook her butt a little, and I just laughed and walked out, closing the door behind me. She slid her black jacket on, which I now saw was a short faux fur, and put her arm in mine as we headed out to steal from organized crime.

It was a nice day for a walk despite it being the tail end of winter. The snow hadn’t properly gotten slushy yet, though I could tell by the end of the day it would, and the roads were a little muddy but clear. The sidewalk had a few ice patches but nothing especially challenging.

When we arrived at the house, we saw it had a security fence surrounding it. There were big KEEP OUT signs and another one that originally had some threatening language about city codes and ordinances, but which now was primarily a vehicle for a quick and dirty DIOS GIGANTES tag. Definitely not tagged by the same royalty who did the mural.

We walked around the front edges of the house, and it seemed quiet and totally abandoned, with no way in through the fence. An old man, out walking his dog, went by on the sidewalk, bundled up and giving us no more than a glance, but I turned to Tansy and smiled an overdone big smile and said, “OK babe, bring the heat and melt this snow.”

She rolled her eyes and made a gagging motion but then grinned impishly at me, lowering the jacket off her shoulders and posing with one hip out, leaning forward a little. I could see how pale her chest and minimal cleavage was and her exposed skin was covered in goosebumps, but she didn’t complain. I shot a picture and then looked over my shoulder in the direction the man had gone. He seemed to be the only foot traffic for the moment and there weren’t a lot of cars on this side residential street. I saw him and his little dog turn the corner on the next block over and walk out of sight.

I felt my phone buzz but ignored it.

Tansy grabbed my arm and led me around the corner into the alley behind the house. There was no one back here other than a scraggly orange cat who angrily meowed his outrage that we were in his alley. I ignored him.

We walked around the back of the house, which had a tall privacy fence instead of the chain link security fence on the street facing sides. There was a small driveway and a garage that had plywood nailed over it. The back door was also covered in plywood.

“Well how the hell are we supposed to get this stupid box,” I asked the cat.

“Moww,” he replied, still sounding annoyed.

Tansy punched me in the arm, a little harder than was necessary, and whispered loudly, “Keep it down, the game said someone was here.”

I looked at her, confused. “What are you talking about? It didn’t say that,” I said, lowering my voice a little to match her volume.

She pulled out her phone and thumbed the app open, then showed me the quest. “See, right there, it says we have an optional goal to avoid detection by the gang. That probably means one of them is nearby or maybe even in there,” she whispered.

She pointed at the door, “Maybe it’s rigged or something, see if you can find a catch or a handle.” Without waiting to see if I complied, she walked over to the fence, looking at it. It was about nine or ten feet tall and came down to a solid, foot high concrete embankment. The edges of the alley were still packed with plowed out snow berms. I shrugged and started looking at the door more closely, then felt around the edges of the plywood, seeing if it was loose. It seemed solid.

I heard a scraping sound to my right and looked over. Tansy had lifted up a section of the fence, which looked like it swung away from the concrete. She pointed at the bottom and whispered, “No snow here, I thought it might open somehow.” She grinned big, lifting the fence section on its hinge a bit more. I saw that four of the boards had been connected together on the other side and then attached to a metal pole that let them swivel up, making a secret door.

I walked over to look in through the gap and saw the back porch. I also saw the big hispanic man, bundled up against the cold, sitting on the porch, a smouldering, fat, hand rolled cigarette in an ashtray on a small table next to him. He was wearing a folded handkerchief on his head and sunglasses and he was looking right at us.

I froze. Tansy froze. The cat dashed through the fence and straight toward the man.

The giant, sleeping man.

The cat leapt up onto the porch and directly into the man’s lap, nuzzling it’s head against him, and he didn’t move at all. It settled down, turning around a few times, making a typical production out of it, and Tansy and I just watched, dumbfounded.

He moved.

Specifically, his right arm clumsily came up, settling unevenly on the cat, like he was half assed petting it. His head lolled back a bit and to the side. His mouth drooped open and some drool dribbled out. He said, “Hraggugh, ughhh hah haha” and other half-snore half-coughing noises for a moment, then settled back in, clutching the cat.

I leaned over, as close as I could get to Tansy’s ear, trying to whisper something to her, but when my shoulder brushed hers she started, turned and slapped at me once. She whispered, very quietly, “Don’t do that!”

I gave her my best hurt expression, then gestured into the hole with my eyes. I mouthed: Come on. Then I grabbed the lip of the concrete and pulled myself carefully up through the hole in the fence. I held the secret door open while Tansy climbed up, and I could see in her eyes that she was both scared and incredibly thrilled. I slowly let the fence down.

The grinding noise it made when it closed the last two inches made us both flinch, and we immediately looked over, but our friend with the cat seemed to have done himself in pretty well.

We carefully walked up to the house, the snow in the yard had been packed down in a path to the back steps and I decided it was a bad idea to make fresh footprints. When we got up to the steps I could see packed snow on them, the whole back yard was shaded and none of this would melt for a while yet. I also saw the telltale salt and quietly sighed. I very carefully made my way up the steps and felt incredibly lucky that none of them creaked. It looked like the whole back porch had been redone shortly before the house was abandoned. A solid handrail ran up both sides, firm and unweathered. When we got up to the porch itself I looked over. The cat briefly, sleepily looked at us with half lidded eyes, and I hoped that meant it wouldn’t be moving any time soon.

The DG on the back porch had a heating pad on his lap, and I saw another electric cable going under his jacket, where I presumed he had another one. That cat wasn’t going anywhere. Its orange fur was already shedding all over the heating pad and the guy’s pants. A small trail of smoke rose up from the fat spliff in an ash tray on the small table next to the man. I wondered if he’d spiked it with melatonin or something. I’m glad we were trying to be quiet and I didn’t have a chance to say that particular bit out loud and out myself as being in way over my head. Gangbangers weren’t consulting their nutritionists and making a Whole Foods curbside order, I thought angrily at myself. Also I was immediately sure that you couldn’t smoke melatonin.

We carefully went to the back door and I slowly turned the handle. The door had a big clear window so I could see no one was in the room. It was dim and the room was largely empty, except a big dining room table that had been pushed to the wall and an old china hutch with the glass broken out of one of its doors, which now hung ajar and partially broken off. A door led into the kitchen and a doorway into what I guessed was the living room, though it seemed to be full of random boxes and furniture.

The door creaked as I opened it, but I looked over and our friend the DG didn’t react at all. The cat looked at me and narrowed its eyes. I narrowed my eyes back at it. Tansy lightly shoved at me, indicating my dick swinging contest with the cat was over. I walked into the room, trying to do it quietly. She followed me in and I could hear her boots on the floor.

Just as she was slowly closing the door, the goddamn cat dashed through the opening and ran into the kitchen.

I looked at her, and she closed the door, slowly sliding the handle into position until it was solidly closed. The interior was slightly warmer but not enough to take my hat off. I took a step toward the kitchen as I could now see the living room was a minefield of boxes and haphazardly piled furniture from the house, and as I did I heard the cat from the kitchen. It was loudly, insistently meowing.

I quietly speed walked to the kitchen and as I entered the room, I saw what the problem was. The cat was sitting in front of its bowl, looking expectantly at me. Inside the bowl was approximately a metric ton of cat food, but he’d eaten a hole down to the bottom of the dish in the middle of the pile. I narrowed my eyes again, staring at him, exasperated beyond belief. He looked innocently at me and said, “Mrrroooww.”

From the porch, I heard an annoyed, exasperated voice say, “Vete a la chingada, pendejo, ya voy.” I have no idea what that means but I knew what it meant. We had only seconds to get the hell out of the kitchen.

I looked back at Tansy, and she looked at me, clearly realizing the same thing. We sort of awkwardly grabbed at each other and tried to walk quickly but quietly through the kitchen to the only other doorway, which led to a short entry hall. The end of the hall had the front door, there was a short hall that ran across the front of the house to the right, a doorway into the living room on the left, a big closet door on the right, and what I recognized as a basement door just past that. Tansy and I pushed toward the front of the house, but as I went for the hallway she grabbed me, opened the basement door (which was mercifully quiet), and directed me to the stairs. I went down, bumping my head on a beam hard enough to leave a mark as I did, but managed to get down into the basement, Tansy quietly closing the door behind me.

The light was off but there were front windows letting daylight in, though they were half covered in snow. The basement had a couch in it and what looked like a shitty old laptop on a little desk, a folding chair leaning folded against the wall next to it. In the corner of the basement was a folding card table and on it was a small horde of treasure. There were two catalytic converters, obviously brutally ripped out of their donor vehicles, a box with random bits of copper pipe and a spool of wire, four wallets, one purse, six cell phones with the cases ripped off and discarded into a pile of rubbish in the corner, an open takeout box with the remains of some corn chips and an almost entirely gone plastic cup of salsa, and one big ass box that said HYPERLUX on the side, along with a bunch of random chinese characters. It had a picture of a regular LED lightbulb next to the logo and in one corner it said COUNT: 128 (8 cs). There was only one door out of the basement, which we’d entered it through.

I felt my phone, still on vibrate, buzz in my pocket.

It only took a few seconds to see all this, and above us I could hear the guy as if he was right next to us, though he seemed to still be on the back porch, which the basement ran partially underneath. I heard the chair scrape as he stood up, then heard him coughing for a good while. Then we listened as he walked into the house. I looked around frantically, sure he’d notice something and find us. I looked at the front windows. We could probably get out that way, but there was no way the bigass box of lightbulbs was going to fit.

I started considering how bad I wanted to play this stupid game. The reality of what we were doing hit me. That dude was in a gang. A shitty gang, sure, but his job was just crime, full time with salary hours.

I wondered why I’d done something so stupid. Then I looked over at Tansy and remembered. I wondered if she had any grippy socks in my size. I’d earned them.

Above us, the guy made it into the kitchen. I heard him say, “¡Pequeño bobo, ya tienes comida!” I had no idea what that meant either but he sounded both annoyed and amused. Then I heard the sound of cat food spilling out of a bag into his bowl, and a few bleats of loud praise from the cat.

The whisper came out of nowhere, right in my ear, “What are we going to do?” I startled and looked over, barely catching a yelp of surprise before it escaped me. It turned into a weird hiccup.

“Jesus Tansy, don’t do that,” I whispered.

She pushed at me again, looking annoyed, then walked over to the table. I saw her looking in the box of metal scrap. She grabbed a copper pipe. When she tried to slide it out I heard it scrape across some other metal, making a ringing sound. We both froze, as did the noise of the guy moving around above us.

Then he laughed and said, “Pinches ratas, cabrón. Pendejo, ese es tu jale, tienes que ganarte el pan.” I heard the rummaging above continue as he moved around the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors. Tansy took that opportunity to finish pulling the pipe out.

It was a thin gauge copper pipe, it looked like it had been plumbing at some point. A lot of it was covered in green corrosion. It was light in her hand when she gave it a few test swings, then looked at me and shook her head: No. Not going to cut it.

Above us the man stopped screwing around in the kitchen and we heard his footsteps heading toward the hallway. I looked around, trying to figure out a plan. Tansy grabbed me and flattened us up against the same wall as the door with the stairway. He’d at least be a few steps down, hopefully, before he noticed us, and there was nowhere else to hide in the room.

I hoped he would head for that front hallway and what I assumed were bedrooms. Or maybe the closet. Or anywhere.

The damn door to the basement opened.

An idea hit me. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and unlocked it, then quickly thumbed over to the game. I had no idea how anything actually worked but the game had given me “spells.”

He took the first step down the stairs. I looked up. I could see him, he was carrying a tray down the stairs and it was blocking his view down, otherwise if he looked down he’d see us standing right there.

Tansy’s grip tightened on my upper arm but I ignored her and thumbed to the main menu, then selected Spells.

He took another step down and I heard the clattering sound as a red solo cup came sliding off the tray and tumbled down the stairs, spilling what smelled like generic beer all down the steps. He stopped, let out a big sigh, and said, “Puta madre, mi vida está del nabo.” I actually knew what that meant. I kind of felt for the guy. I’d been there.

He paused for a moment, sighed again, then took another step. I stopped feeling for him. I was too busy feeling for me. I did not want to fight this guy, he wasn’t as tall as me but he was huge.

My eyes refocused on the phone in front of me. I saw the short list of my spells along with the customary text box at the bottom. I clicked the little button next to Distraction.

A window popped up, at the top it said, Select Target.

He took another step down, moving slow and careful so as not to slip on the beer.

The window had a small map which looked a little like a floor plan of the basement. I could see three dots next to the door, two greyed out who were clearly Tansy and I, and another on the stairs. I tapped that one.

The window vanished. It was back on the Spells screen, and in the text box under it said: Casting…

Under that was a little animated cursor created by alternating the |, /, -, and \ characters in the same space.

He took another step.

I cringed. He was sure to see us at any moment.

The cursor stopped and on the next line it said: Cast complete. New Achievement Unlocked: Magitek Apprentice - Awarded Title: Apprentice - You’re not a wizard, Harry, but any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from being able to fake it.

From the vicinity of the guy I heard the sound of norteño music, just a few seconds and then it looped. I realized it was the guy’s ringtone.

He muttered under his breath and then turned around, walking a few steps up and setting the tray down in the hall, then answering his phone. His voice was loud coming from only a few feet away. When he started talking he had another coughing fit, which took a little longer than it should. His voice got quieter and more serious. Then he said, “OK. OK.” He hung up and, without another word, started half walking, half running. In his haste he kicked the tray and I heard it clatter across the hall along with its contents.

I heard his steps through the house, heard the back door slam and even heard him make his way down the back stairs, then heard the secret door in the fence slam shut.

I looked at Tansy and a laugh briefly escaped me.

“Holy shit,” she said, and she started laughing too.

We stood there for a minute, both panting, my heart hammering. I walked over to the box and hefted it. It was big but not too heavy.

“Come on,” she said, “this is fucking crazy.”

As we walked out the back door, me carrying the box, I looked over. The spliff was still smouldering somehow and it smelled awful. The back door had been left open, apparently not closing properly when it was slammed, and the cat had gotten out again. He was sitting on one of the heating pads and I actually heard him purring contentedly. As I walked down the stairs he watched me, then started casually licking at one of his paws.

What an asshole.