carl@fire

"Okay, fuck, that took… Eh." Vol stretched an arm over her head. "Gonna get that drink now. We'll hang out later when you come back."

Then she vanished.

Carl frowned at the memory, though it wasn't like he needed to change anything since he'd already been frowning, just like he'd been doing for most of the day, which was kind of weird since, all things considered, today was a pretty awesome day.

Where'd she go? How… He again forced himself to stop thinking about it before he got stuck in another infinite loop, instead shifting his focus back to the near-infinite applications and CVs he'd been going over for most of the afternoon—by which he meant, of course, the parts of the afternoon that he wasn't spending going up to the top floors of the building to receive accolades from the higher-ups while being incredibly stressed over how awkwardly he'd fabricated a story of coming in that morning after having a brainstorm and figuring the whole thing out in a lucky couple of hours.

Let's see here. Graduated with honors, master's degree, a few years in—

His personalized news crawler popped up a headline from his new Architecture query, which he'd hastily set up during a moment of downtime on the way back from Sammy's basketball game the night prior. Lightning storm on top of the Burj Khalifa yesterday? Huh, that's kinda neat. He delved into the article and skimmed, but there wasn't much substance other than how improbable the event was and a series of photos. Nice coincidence though. Give me something cool to talk about with Mina later. He flagged the article for further research on his way home and returned to the hiring.

A short while later and having discarded a number of candidates for various reasons—which were all very legitimate and not at all based on personal feelings about the value of certain current-year buzzwords and jargon that might have sounded good to a lesser hiring manager but did not at all sound good to a Director like him—he fired off the forms for the dozen or so potentials he'd managed to select to Adi—who had already left for the day and wouldn't be checking his mail again until Monday under pain of getting a stern talking to about how valuable it was to be able to disconnect from work and really spend time with family—to get his opinion like usual.

Normally he'd have included Erica as well, with her being the other senior member of the team who had been there longer than him, but he absolutely wasn't about to bother someone who was out on maternity leave with work stuff, and, given how slow processes were at a big-ish company like Fire, she'd probably be back by the time they were able to take any sort of action anyway. He was a big believer in getting buy-in from existing team members for all new hires to ensure team harmony, so it was important to him that he solicited all the feedback here.

Carl turned his head from side to side, stretching his neck, and then took a sip of what he'd tentatively decided was going to be the Last Cup Of The Day—subject to change in the event that the title would go to a subsequent cup, of course. What a weird day. I gotta talk to Vol and figure out what happened this morning. There's no way I'm gonna be able to keep stringing everyone along about this, and I'm gonna slip up sooner or later if I try. I wonder…

His eyes widened fractionally as a thought with preemption enabled broke into his consciousness. I wonder if she's looking for a job? I mean, I've got that network engineer role open, and it's a senior spot, and even if twenty seven is kinda young to be senior, she's apparently got the skills for it and then some.

Obviously this was an idea that was in no way related to his friendship with the profanity-prone woman and was instead based solely on the prowess she'd displayed—even if it didn't make any sense whatsoever that such a thing was possible just at a physical level, let alone a technical one, because how could she even have gotten down to the basement and back in thirty seconds, assuming she actually had, since after entering the building she'd immediately sprinted straight through the security gate and into the just-opened elevator, which had closed its doors unusually fast, and then she'd strolled out of the hallway leading to the mail room a few seconds later, and now that he thought of the moment once more, temporarily ignoring once more how weird it was that the security gate had opened for her without anyone badging through since the end result had greatly benefited him, he realized that, after recalling again Mina's fascination with architecture, from an architectural perspective, wouldn't the mail room be more or less directly above section C where Gary's computer had been? He wasn't entirely sure what bearing that might have on anything, but…

Before he'd realized what he was doing, his hand had already reached for the brain link headband hanging off his desk drawer. He stared down at the black ring as he turned it over in his hands. Alright, I'll log in—because I guess I did promise we'd hang out today, even if I didn't expect to have to actually make good on it—and ask her what the heck's going on. Yeah, I gotta get some resolution on this, otherwise it's gonna bug me. Then maybe I'll call it early today and head home for a mental reset. He nodded to himself. Yup, just for a little while today. Need this craziness to end. After this I'm gonna take a break and not log in at all for a while. Maybe like three weeks or so. Make sure it's not becoming a problem.

He'd begun to nod along with his thoughts as they progressed, but now a slow grin spread over his lips. As he considered the matter of time more deeply, it was three thirty now, which meant, based on the message Annie had sent just after lunchtime, that Bobby probably already had her friends over for her just-approved LAN party…

The timing couldn't be more perfect.

His mind already deep into the process of devising the perfect dad joke to drop when he dad-bombed their raid or whatever—because he was sure there had to be some way to do that kind of thing, and probably Ir'alith or Vol knew all about it and would be willing to help since they were friends—he slipped the headband over his head and logged in without further consideration, immediately touching the dark orb to select his character and returning to the annoying post-processing effects of being dead in New Era.

What the heck. This is so annoying. He looked around, seeing the same endless stretch of fogged-over, deserted prairie that he'd last seen the day before when he'd had his unfortunate driving-related mishap. Guess this arrow really must point back to my body? Can't believe there's no freaking distance indicator or anything.

He started to trudge forward with a sigh that transcended his physical body. Should've read more of Roger's quick start guide for the dev console between meetings. Only managed to get through the parts about changing character locations and stats. Being able to rez myself would've been a smart thing to look up. Well, whatever. If I log out, then…

He came to an abrupt halt as he realized he'd been totally distracted by all the work and Vol stuff that he'd forgotten something critical. I never did figure out the time scaling. What the heck is…

He started walking again, feeling a distinct urge to scratch his beard but being somehow unable to do so, necessitating that he perform the action mentally as he sometimes was required to do when an intriguing thought occurred to him immediately after he'd executed his Dad's Serious Now skill, which inhibited such actions for a brief duration. When he looked down at his hands, he realized immediately the source of the problem. Huh. They changed the death effect? Last time I still had a body, but now I'm this wisp-y thing? He pulsed a little in agitation. Kinda neat in the graphical sense, but also kinda annoying.

Whatever. "Friend list," he tried to say as he started moving again—which felt just like walking but wasn't actually walking since he didn't have legs—but because he didn't have a mouth, obviously he couldn't say anything. A status window appeared.

Friend list access is disabled while you are discorporated.

He rolled his eyes—though he couldn't actually roll his eyes because apparently he didn't have eyes at the moment due to how awful the game was. So stupid. Why do they change stuff that's already working and make it worse?

The status window faded away, seeming to be on a timeout, which was great since he couldn't say anything to dismiss it.

Since he was just floating around, he decided to float at a more brisk pace. Can't even use the dev console to warp myself because I don't know where I'm going. Ugh. Afraid to even try activating it now. If it says I can't use it because I'm dead, I think I'd just log out again. So freaking annoying.

His annoyed mind wandered back to a previous idea as he put himself on auto-Carl on the path to reaching his body. The game doesn't have time scaling according to Roger. But how is that possible? Every time I've logged in, I've logged out three minutes later, which doesn't make any freaking sense now that I'm really thinking about it. But then…didn't I talk to Vol about it that one time, and she said there was? Is—

A different, slightly more familiar status window popped up, breaking him out of his thoughts.

Revive?

No Yes

Carl wearily pressed the Yes button, feeling like he was already getting pretty worn out despite not having been logged in for very long. The window disappeared, and the post-processing effects followed it, restoring the virtual world to its way-too-bright state under the dual suns and him to his virtual body.

Naked.

You gotta be freaking kidding me. He turned from side to side, surveying the rocks, the sand, and also the spot where the car had rammed into the side of a giant rocky outcropping, which he deduced by the amount of shattered chunks of rock strewn about in various shapes and sizes, but he didn't see any of his gear laying around. Ugh. How people can like this type of stuff is beyond me. "Inventory."

He flipped to the page where he'd haphazardly stashed the clothes he'd bought back in Vol's city and set about getting dressed as a brief, hot breeze assailed him—a weird feeling that he'd never expected to experience, kind of like having a hair dryer blowing on his whole body but sandier.

Now dressed, he stared down at his feet with a grimace. Man, I can't believe I lost my freaking boots so soon after getting 'em. He sighed—for real this time since he had a body again and was thus free to sigh at how annoying everything was—and trudged forward across the annoyingly hot, annoyingly sandy, annoyingly rocky ground to where the mass of destroyed rock chunks looked to be the biggest and most annoying and started chucking rocks out of the pile. Kinda feeling like it's wasted effort to even check here, but maybe…

After a minute or so of putting his ten million Strength to use clearing out the rocks, his annoyance had risen sharply. Yup, they're gone. This game is actually the worst.

Memories flooded back from the last time—well, not the last time, since he'd only been on long enough to die in a car accident, which was totally unlike anything that would ever happen in real life given how much work he put into avoiding any sort of risk, but the time before that—when he and Mina had been building and racing cars, and bonding, and then there was all the weird, fun stuff he'd done while hanging out with Vol…

Alright, maybe not the worst, but it's definitely way too freaking annoying in some places. Feels like I need a long break from it after this. Or wait… He looked around again, this time noting the conspicuous disappearance of the car. Maybe Vol or Ir'alith picked up the car, and my boots are still in it? He felt a sense of hope burgeoning. Yeah, maybe… Game's super realistic about a lot of stuff, so maybe if I died in the car, then all my gear is in the car. That's gotta be it.

Confident in the knowledge that he was absolutely not going to be some kinda barefoot noob again for too long, he returned to a previous action. "Friend list."

The window appeared in front of him.

BobTheGreatest Tomb of the Intrepid

Ir'alith Shadewoods

Mina Offline

➤ FE 0/2 Online

A small grin crept onto his face as he stared at the window. Never actually been on at the same time as Bobby before. She must not have noticed since she's busy raiding. And maybe… Well, if there is time scaling—which it seems like there is despite what Roger said, so maybe it's a top secret feature or something that he couldn't even mention in emails in case there was a data breach, but I can get to the bottom of that next time I see him—then it's gotta be just on the beta continent, which means…

His head was starting to hurt at the prospect of differently scaled timelines for people who were logged into different in-game locations, but he persevered since this was obviously a really important matter pertaining to dad-bombing his youngest daughter's raid during her first-ever LAN party. Which means that probably I have lots of time to think about how exactly I wanna do it since she'll be going much slower than me until I get over to that Tomb place? Yeah, definitely. Great. I'm gonna make this the best freaking dad-bomb ever. Need the perfect dad joke.

There was a rumble underfoot that might even have been too subtle for him to detect if he wasn't barefoot, and then a short chasm opened up nearby. A conveyor belt of sand carried something up out of the depths and onto the ground before the whole thing caved in and restored the sandy rock-dirt to its natural state.

The something rolled over, coughing a few times, and then stood up, revealing itself to be a sand-covered person wearing jeans and…

Carl's eyes widened as he stared at the blonde woman who was patting the sand off herself, and she froze when she looked up and met his gaze.

"Carl?" exclaimed Rebecca.