NOVEL NEXT WiWi 3, Chapter 7
Today's Earth date: June 10, 1992
I don't know about this ship journey anymore. Bata got hit with an actual storm today, and I was scared for my safety on land. People ride boats through that kind of shit? Apparently, hurricanes were a semi-regular threat, but a bunch of mages just made a new mountain range out at sea to shield the city.
That makes this a "small" storm, but it was anything but. I'd hate to be in the middle of the ocean when a "big" storm hit.
Wilmond is for sure going to drown if we have to ride out a storm like that on a boat.
-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin
As far as rich businessmen were concerned, Henry was no Blackwell, but his home was very clearly the largest in town. It reminded Wayne of a housing development mcmansion on Earth. A little over inflated, slightly tacky, but still far larger than anything he'd ever afford.
Well, no. That was no longer true. It was far larger than anything Earth Wayne could ever afford. Zero Hero Wayne was flush with cash.
The interior of Henry's home had the ostentatiousness of a 1920s oil mogul. Every surface was finely carved and polished wood. The sconces and candelabras looked like real silver. If there wasn't a floor to ceiling bookshelf on a wall, there was a massive painting of some kind. All portraits, all men who vaguely resembled Henry.
After declining a beverage from a dour butler, Wayne followed Henry up the grand staircase and to a large room with tall ceilings. The walls here were covered in paintings and drawings of the Chosen Heroes from several eras. Those were this world's equivalent of fan posters, and Wayne had seen a wide variety of them over the years. The cheapest ones, of which Wayne only saw a handful in this particular room, were woodblock prints, but most of Barry's collection looked handpainted.
Statues and busts of Chosen Heroes sat on tall bookshelves that flanked a grand fourpost bed. It looked so fluffy that Wayne, a proper adult, desired to run and belly flop onto it.
Barry sat at a large desk in the corner with a few books and an open notebook. In his mind, Wayne pictured a squat gremlin of a person. That was usually where his mind went when he thought of rich kids. The real Barry looked like a typical thirteen year old boy. His frame was thin, stretched by sudden growth spurts, and he had a bowl cut. He didn't turn around, and there was no way he hadn't heard Wayne and his father come in.
"Barry," Henry said.
"What?" He still didn't turn.
"A guest would like to speak with you."
"I don't care."
Henry cleared his throat. "Barry, please give us your attention."
With a belabored sigh, Barry threw his pencil onto his desk and spun in his chair. "Hi. Good to meet you." Then Barry turned back around.
"This is Wayne. He's the Zero Hero. He's interested in one of your toys."
"Collectibles," Wayne and Barry corrected simultaneously.
Barry turned again, this time with a bit more interest. "The Zero Hero? The one who didn't get Diary access?"
"That's me."
"That must have sucked."
Wayne nodded.
"What do you want?"
"The Mayor of Maliit said he sold two pages from an Earth magazine–err, book–to you. I was interested in buying them."
"Why?"
"I'll leave you to discuss your business," Henry said. He didn't pause to see if Wayne or Barry protested and wanted him to stay.
Wayne very much wished Henry had stayed. Turning back to Barry, he said, "The pages are important to me. I'm trying to collect as many as I can."
"What are you offering?"
"May I see what pages you have before I make an offer?"
"I don't feel like looking for them." Barry stared blankly at Wayne, looking over the back of his desk chair.
"I kind of need to see them and the condition they're in to give you an offer."
"No, you don't. All you have to do is say a number."
This was going great. "How about you give me a number?" Wayne suggested.
"50,000."
Laughing, Wayne replied, "What? 50,000 as in 50,000 gold pieces?"
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry, man, that's absurdly overpriced. How about 3,000?"
"Nope. Goodbye."
Barry spun around and resumed ignoring Wayne.
"That's it?"
"I gave you the price." Barry didn't look at Wayne when he spoke. "Not my fault you're cheap."
"I'm not- Look, 3,000 gold pieces is a good price."
"I think you're ripping me off."
Wayne felt his blood pressure rise. He took a breath. "I'm not. I can connect you to other collectors so you can confirm that."
"Get on your knees and say, 'please.'"
"Excuse me?"
"On your knees. Look up. Say, 'please.'"
"Jesus Christ, kid," Wayne said. "No, I'm not doing that."
When the Zero Hero turned to leave, Barry spun and said, "Wait!"
Wayne waited. He felt like a dog doing tricks and very much disliked it.
"What about a trade?" Barry asked.
"For?"
"Take me on an adventure, like a Chosen Hero."
"Umm… That's really not how adventures work. I can't just snap my fingers and summon an adventure."
"Why are you traveling then?" Barry asked. "You're not doing anything exciting?"
"Yeah, I'm not going to bring you along while we run around the Bata Desert. I have a good streak of not getting kids killed, and I'd like to keep that going."
"I'm not a kid," Barry retorted.
"My streak of not getting young adults killed then."
"There are dwarven ruins in the Gentle Forest. Take me there."
"I could give you a ride around town on Outlawson. He's our bug mount."
Barry laughed. "Nice try. I'm too old for pony rides."
"I don't know what ruins you mean, so I couldn't guarantee your safety. Is there something else you would trade for?"
"The Gentle Forest is safe."
"Maybe for most people," Wayne replied. "Monsters have a way of finding me, two or three times a day if I'm not in a city. That's not an exaggeration. I can't put you through that risk, and there's no way your dad would allow that either."
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"Let's ask him." Barry popped up and went for the door.
"Wait. Hey." Wayne followed Barry into the hall.
The young adult leaned over the railing of the stairs and yelled, "Dad! Wayne said he'd take me to see the Gentle Ruins. Can I go?"
"That's not what I-"
Henry yelled back up. "What did you say?!"
"I said, Wayne offered to take me to the Gentle Ruins. Can I go?"
"Sure, kiddo. Let the staff know when you plan to leave."
"See?" Barry grinned.
Wayne was gobsmacked.
"I don't leave the house with fewer than two bodyguards. If I leave town, there's four. Or is it that you're scared? Not being a Hero and all."
An overwhelming itch compelled Wayne to hit this twit with Hrglut, like his finger was right over the button. He resisted the urge but very much believed it was justified.
The random encounters in this corner of the continent had been pretty unremarkable. The Zeroes came out of the Cuts with a decent amount of XP, and defending Iomallach gave that a big bump. Nothing had remotely challenged him as an individual or the party as a whole.
And the Gentle Forest was supposed to match its namesake. That's what made it a popular route between Bata and Cuan. It was the longer way, sure, but long and uneventful was better than getting eaten by manacondas in the Cuts. The random encounters would happen regardless, but was that a big deal if it was Wayne and four bodyguards? If all those dudes did was stand around Barry while Wayne fought, they'd be perfectly safe and so would Barry.
What if he stumbled on a spawner? If he tripped a trigger for a Charybdis-scale encounter, Barry's chances of survival plummeted, bodyguards or no.
Then again, he could see spawners on his HUD map. All he had to do was stop if he saw one and refuse to go any farther. Or he could run ahead and clear the spawn to get some XP out of this fieldtrip too.
No, that was dumb. Barry was thirteen years old. No way were a few unlocks worth a child's life.
"Too much of a pussy?" Barry asked.
Even if that child was a total dick, Wayne mentally reaffirmed his position. A child's life was more important than new skills. "Sorry. My answer has-"
"I'll give you both pages. Would that make you less of a vagina?"
Wayne was for sure getting manipulated. He knew that. His greed for more power knew that. "Can I see them first?"
"If we have a deal."
This was a bad idea. Invariably, any adventure that began with assumptions of total safety went awry, and those odds were higher if a key NPC was with him. No, not NPC. Key person.
"Four bodyguards?" Wayne asked.
"Want me to ask for eight to make you feel safer?"
"Are they experienced with fighting monsters?"
"Yeah. They're not little bitches like you."
The manipulation, the goading, the bait–it was so obvious. "Fine. Let me look into these ruins first. If they're safe, I'll take you. There and back. Quick trip."
"Aw, you're so brave."
"And that shit end. If you can't stop being an asshole, I'm out. If you disobey an order, I'm out."
"Tough guy, calling a kid an asshole."
Wayne shook his head. "Nah, I called a young adult an asshole. Now show me the pages."
The first page Barry showed Wayne was from the Electronics Boutique Christmas Catalog. Not only was it in terrible condition, but something dark and sticky had been spilled on it at some point. Anywhere someone tried to remove the brown goop, the stickiness took pieces of the magazine with it.
While the state of the Page of Power was disappointing, the specific page was very interesting.
Pages 49 and 50 were dedicated to hardware and peripherals. On page 49, Wayne could clearly see a black joystick and an old printer, the kind that printed with little tear-off borders. The legible blurbs read:
Thunderstick – Here's a joystick made for rugged use under the most difficult flight simulator conditions! Quality engineering and construction provide the look and feel of high performance. A five year warranty, too!
1800 I Printer – This fast, reliable dot matrix unit prints 192 cps in draft elite, 160 cps in draft pica. A wide variety of fonts are available; you can create almost anything from logos to photo-like images.
If the joystick description mentioned flight simulators, there was a good chance the unlocks would be for Skykat. As for the printer, he was certain that "192 cps" did not mean "192 child protective services," but he couldn't find that acronym in his memories, no matter how deep he plumbed. The description did remind him that printers used to come with all sorts of packed-in software, however. He remembered getting grounded for running the printer at his dad's work out of paper with a ginormous Super Mario III birthday banner, graphics courtesy of one such pack-in.
When he unlocked a word processor previously, he essentially got a version of a word processor. If that same logic applied here, where would the paper come from?
He only had one idea and didn't like it.
Wayne flipped the page over. This side was in better shape but still quite sticky. The image showcased a soundcard, three floppy discs, and two boxes for modems. Three of the four blurbs were in good enough shape to read:
Sound Blaster – Turn your PC into a super entertainment, education and presentation machine with this - the ultimate sound board. It's a 14-voice, all-in-one sound card with features that blast away the PC sound barrier!
Prodigy Hayes Personal Modem 2400 – Connect Prodigy to your PC and you'll have a world of information and services at your fingertips. Book flights, buy stocks, go shopping, catch the news, play games, much more… all for a low monthly fee!
That ellipsis after much more had to mean porn, right? Young Wayne for sure didn't pick up on that when he read this catalog for the first time. Then again, was porn possible in the DOS era? Probably. Pornography always found a way.
And the last blurb:
3½ Disks - 10 Pack – Sony double-sided, double-density disks. Special DDL binder process for uniform dispersion and increased durability. 80 recording tracks per side. Full lifetime warranty.
"Lifetime" warranty made Wayne chuckle. Did they even make floppy disc readers anymore? Not in this world, obviously, but on Earth. They probably did, but what a niche business that must be. How many people a year are in a market for a floppy disc reader?
Two? Three?
At any rate, those three unlocks were also interesting. Anything audio-related Wayne unlocked thus far integrated with BGM Switch from Pat Riley Basketball, essentially allowing him to play random music from Earth. A Soundblaster card could very well do something similar, but like printers, sound cards came with a bunch of software too. He distinctly remembered a truly awful music program that let you make MIDI tracks, which was a file type for music composed of electronically generated sounds.
Beeps and boops, mostly. Or fancy beeps and boops that kinda sorta sounded like instruments.
Now a dial-up modem unlock? That looked juicy. Even if he only had access to the internet as it was in the 1990s, Wayne would be ecstatic. The more likely result would be some sort of backend system upgrade, like the upgrades that enabled voice and text chat for the party.
As for the other page, Wayne didn't know what to make of it. Resource Values said that it came from the same December 1998 issue as his other GamePro pages. He now held pages 195 and 196, specifically.
196 pages of gaming content? Damn. He had forgotten how packed gaming magazines used to be.
There was a little of the sticky substance on this page, but nothing was totally obscured. Page 195 was a Target ad, but Wayne didn't understand it at a glance, so he flipped over to page 196.
There were reviews for two PlayStation games: Motorhead and Running Wild, one was a racing car game and one was some kind of Mario Kart knockoff where all the characters ran on foot instead of racing in vehicles.
Wayne laughed out loud when he read the review for Motorhead, written by Dan Elektro. The first line said:
Motorhead is the Backstreet Boys of racing games; It sure looks pretty, but it's hollow inside.
And the review for Running Wild by "Bad Hare" was just as good:
Some games offer goofy fun; others are just goofy. You can file Running Wild into the latter category. This animal footracing game just feels stupid.
And look at that, the original review called it a Mario Kart rip off too, so Wayne's assessment had been pretty spot on.
Unfiltered video game reviews? How refreshing. Modern gaming blacklisted journalists or pulled advertising dollars if they got a poor review, turning formal reviews into public relations fodder instead of meaningful content. There were independent reviews too, but even those couldn't fully be trusted. Games companies threw money at YouTubers and Twitch streamers all the time, motivating them to say what the sponsors wanted to hear rather than any objective reaction to the quality of the game.
Wayne wondered if games journalism even still existed on Earth. When he isekaied, it was on a dire downhill slide with most major gaming websites shuttering after years of being in business. They didn't have three-hundred page monthly issues where they could stuff in 150 pages of ads, and few gamers were willing to pay for written content any more.
Speaking of ads, that's what perplexed Wayne about page 195.
The full-page Target ad was designed to look like a genuine magazine article, which was pretty standard for magazine advertising in general. In this ad, a quarter of the real estate promoted Twisted Metal III and Crash: Warped, a Crash Bandicoot spinoff.
The other three quarters were an article written by "respected coach and video gameologist Tom 'The Thumb' Blake." This piece was titled Video Games That Never Made It.
Roman Debate was described as a game where players "would square off against computer-controlled debaters on a variety of civic topics relevant to the Roman Empire."
Sewing Up a Storm was praised for capturing "the thrill and excitement of competitive sewing." The article went on to say that the game had been stolen before release and lost forever.
Scott Bailey CPA: "It doesn't add up 'till I say it does" was "designed to change the way America looked at Certified Public Accountants."
Wayne was almost entirely certain that these were fake games made up to make an ad entertaining, but Roman Debate actually sounded pretty interesting. Something like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney set in ancient Rome? He'd play that.
If they were truly fictional games like Wayne suspected, maybe the other two games on the page would work. He already had a page for Twisted Metal III, but Crash: Warped was new.
"Alright, Barry," Wayne said, rubbing his fingers together in an attempt to escape the stickiness that now clung to them. "Please don't get yourself killed."