Metropolis - Goldilocks: Capsule Bay 57 - Unit 4

Tuesday, May 12th, 2089 | 11:45am

Chris logged out and the first thing she felt as she readjusted to her body was comfort. Relief washed through her as she adjusted to the nice room temperature and moisture level. Her b-link still provided her with nice soothing scenery; the prairie had changed to a sunny forest. She turned the smell settings up to max again, enjoying the fresh smell in the air. Chris had never realized how much she’d taken for granted until just then. She also knew exactly what she would do the moment she stepped foot into Era: buy a new cloak.

Taking a few steps forward, Chris shook the stiffness out of her body in what was growing to be a habitual motion. She’d seen women do it on the first day, but hadn’t felt the need to do it herself. Her body really wasn’t suffering from any kind of problems from lack of motion, but moving around helped reorient her mind with her real body. She was rotating her head, trying to adjust while simultaneously looking for Sid, when the customary platter of nutri-packs appeared before her.

“I’ve got vomit in a bag,” said the sweet, honeyed voice, gesturing at the nutri-packs “and puke in a bag. Might I interest you in either?”

Chris’ stomach revolted at the sight of the bags. Sid’s large brown eyes twinkled in amusement, making it hard for Chris to get annoyed. The woman’s features were so symmetrical, so perfect, it was hard to be angry at her.

“Hey, that’s not funny,” she complained, feeling queasy. “I’m gonna have to drink that, you know?”

“You don’t mean eat?”

“Oh, shut up!” Chris said, lips twitching in amusement as she reached for one. Chris had forgotten how easy it was to get along with the woman.

“So, a little bird told me,” Sid said, brushing back a strand of hair that had escaped her French braid, “that little Barbie wanted to talk to me.”

“Yeah…” Chris said, downing half the pack while searching the room for the guard. Once she’d located the middle-aged woman wearing the prescription plastic goggles, she resumed her conversation with Sid.

“Actually,” Chris began again, finding her train of thought. “I did. I wanted to ask you about Era.”

It was a straightforward question, probably the most straightforward question she’d asked since coming to Goldilocks, but for some reason she just trusted - or at least wanted to trust - the woman in front of her. Perhaps it had something to do with her striking beauty and flawless skin, but Chris hoped she wasn’t as superficial as all that.

“Oh?”

“Yeah…” Chris said, slightly discouraged the woman hadn’t immediately began talking. “Last time you told me that I’d have to—”

“Make it to at least level seven on the first day?”

“Yeah…” Chris said, nodding, “and I just wanted to know how you know that.”

Sid raised a perfectly arched eyebrow, making Chris realize her poor word and tone choice. “Well, you see—”

“Sorry,” Chris said, interrupting the woman in order to apologize, “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that… And I didn’t mean to interrupt you just now… It’s just… been a really long day.”

Sid nodded slowly as understanding flooded her expression, softening her features even more. Her face was absolutely mesmerizing and Chris found herself sinking into it, as if Sid was made out of cotton candy.

“I think,” Sid said looking around at the guard, “you’d better drink up and let me talk.”

Chris nodded and tipped back the rest of the nutri-pack while Sid spoke.

“I know a lot more than I need to about Era, this is true,” Sid smiled kindly. “But what would you do with your time if you were buried in a hole that had all its resources directed at a game? Sure, I can’t actually participate, but what else am I going to do? Even the b-links don’t work on me, so all those books—”

“Wait,” Chris said. “What do you mean b-links don’t—”

“Just that,” Sid said walking toward another woman who had just logged out. She came back a moment later, having handed over the nutripack, and continued the conversation as if she’d never interrupted it in the first place. “See this?”

Sid took the platter and wedged it between her left arm and hip so she could display her right arm with the b-link. It had a line of glowing blue light and looked just as active as Chris’ from the outside. She raised her own to compare.

“All the physical stuff still works, so like… heart-rate, temperature, perspiration, hormones, calories, vitamins, sleep and all that other jazz is recorded just fine,” Sid said. “But when it comes to all the other stuff, like all the windows and settings you see… I don’t get any of that.”

The woman shrugged and Chris was immediately empathetic towards her. Something about her just made you want to be her best friend immediately. She was so genuine and real compared to all the other inmates. Then again, it might just be a result of Chris seeing her through the lens of someone who had no self-interest in Era.

“Wow,” Chris said, letting her brain process Sid’s words. “I didn’t even realize that the b-links had anything to do with the Era hardware…”

“Well,” Sid said. “I don’t think it does. Nova Industries isn’t in charge of the b-link monitoring system.”

“They aren’t?”

“Nope,” Sid said, taking hold of her tray again with both hands when another convict logged out.

Aya took the time to down nearly all the remaining liquid. It went down a lot more easily than it had the first day.

“B-links are only being used as a test in a few select max-sec prisons,” Sid said. “Where I transferred from, they didn’t have any.”

Aya hadn’t realized that the woman was a transfer, and although the subject interested her, she simply didn’t have the time to go into it just then.

Sid must have sensed her unrest, because she smiled and asked, “So, what exactly do you want to know?”

“How can I guarantee myself a spot by Friday?”

Sid pursed her lips in consideration, “I’m guessing you don’t want the obvious answer…”

“What?” Chris asked, “Get ranked at at least 5,213?”

Sid smiled and shrugged before she gave another three convicts their nutri-packs. Not a single person was choosing to line up by the wall for cafeteria lunch. Chris considered the fact a moment before she realized it probably had something to do with the way people were behaving at breakfast. The atmosphere of the entire prison had changed from night to day as the women got ready to defend their spots from the new usurpers.

“All right, well. All I can really say is, you need to level and you need to do it fast.”

Chris hoped the dread she felt over the words wasn’t overly apparent on her face, but the woman had made Chris let her guard down so she wouldn’t be surprised if it was.

“Good thing for you…” Sid said, noticing Chris’ worried expression. “Is that you seem to be a case apart.”

“A case apart?”

“Pending Review.”

“Wh— Did Tiny—” Chris felt anger, mistrust and betrayal boil up inside her like a festering wound. She’d already primed herself to hate her roommate and Sid’s words had finally given her a real reason to do it.

“Tiny? Oh, no no no no,” the woman denied a little too emphatically for Chris’ taste. “I heard it from one of the guards.” The woman flashed a beautiful smile, once more setting Chris at ease, so much so that Chris felt herself wanting to get closer to Sid. “She’s still on the fence about which team she’s on.”

“Which tea—” realizing what Sid’s words meant, she clamped her mouth shut along with any desire to get closer to the woman. Could it be that she was being worked over somehow? Flirted with?

Sid flashed her a beautifully innocent smile, making Chris feel dirty for even thinking it. The woman had been nothing but helpful. Taking the next minute to compose herself as Sid handed out another two nutri-packs, she downed the rest of the packet.

“The important thing to note is,” Sid said, hurrying her words more now that all but one of the convicts had logged out for lunch, “whatever you’re doing is either really working or really not. Find out which one it is, formulate a plan and stick with it.”

“This Pending Review thing is taking a very long time to resolve itself,” Sid said. “Heck, even Shelby is getting irritated by the attention you’re getting from the Warden.”

“Attention?” Chris asked, excited she might still be in the running, after all.

“I’m afraid you can’t get your hopes up, Little Barbie,” Sid said with a sad tone to her voice. “By attention, I mean he probably gives your profile a thirty-second review every couple of days.”

“…Oh,” Chris answered, deflated.

“It’s time,” the goggled guard said from the door, face drawn in stern lines.

Chis nodded, not wanting to get in trouble, and started walking toward her capsule. Getting there, she turned around and asked the question she’d been burning to ask for the past fifteen minutes.

“Can I just ask,” Chris said, not sure she wanted to know the answer, “what level are people usually at by the end of the week?”

Sid smiled sadly, yet encouragingly, and said, “Anywhere from 19 to 24, but the lower levels always have some kind of ridiculous money-maker which keeps them in the game.”

The beautiful woman winked, clutched the empty platter to her body and waved goodbye in a quick, friendly gesture. Chris sighed, closed the capsule and got ready to re-enter Era. The conversation hadn’t revealed much that she didn’t already know, but it did confirm that she wasn’t going to make the ranks through leveling. Her only option was to succeed in other ways so she could convince the Warden during her interview.

The other thing she’d learned was that Sid wasn’t telling her everything she knew. Not about Tiny, but definitely not about the Warden. There wasn’t a doubt in Chris’ mind that the woman knew exactly what level Chris was at; the sad understanding look she’d directed at her had given at least that much away. How much else did she know? And perhaps more importantly, why did she know it? Wasn’t she supposed to be just a dud like all the others?

It seemed like the more she found out, the less she knew. Instead of getting caught up in things she couldn’t resolve, Chris shoved the conversation into a corner of her mind and focused on the task ahead of her that she could actually do something about: succeed enough to petition the Warden to keep her as a player. It was a new goal, an achievable goal… probably. All that she needed to do was figure out how exactly the achieving part was going to go down.

After logging back into Era, Aya tried leaving Durrenheim multiple times but seemed to always come across more Serving Time members at precisely the wrong moments. Eventually, she decided to just duck into the library for a while and see if a little time would lessen the guild’s search a little. She bargained with Aizan until he taught her another, more binding, Contract. She then spent almost ten hours paying for it in the form of the Contracts she had just learned.

Her speed had picked up so much that even Aizan was impressed by her progress. If she’d attempted the same task only days earlier, it would have taken her almost twice as long. After paying for the Contract ‘recipe’, Aya tried getting another out of Aizan, still not completely sure she wanted to chance the streets yet. This time, however, Aizan flatly refused. Maybe it was her reputation she needed to work on, maybe her bargaining skills, but whatever it was, Aizan said no.

In a last-ditch attempt to get something from the scholar, Aya asked, “Well, is there anything you can teach me?”

Aizan opened his mouth as if to deny the request as Aya was expecting him to, but at the last moment seemed to change his mind and said, “Actually, there is.”

“Oh?”

“Have you mastered cartography yet?”

“Car-Cartography? As in… maps?”

“Yes.”

“Then… no. Not yet,” Aya said.

“Perfect,” Aizan said. “I’ll teach you on the condition that—”

“Is there always going to be a condition for everything?”

“Welcome to the real world,” he said, almost making Aya laugh out loud. She wondered if game developers inserted lines like that into the game just to mess with people.

“What’s your condition?”

“That you give me a copy of all of your maps.”

“Oh,” Aya said, a little surprised the request was so simple. “I guess I can do that,” she said, and immediately wanted to smack herself for agreeing so quickly. She should have negotiated more. She blamed MageSlayer for her negotiation incompetence; the man must be rubbing off on her.

“Great!” Aizan said, again in full scholar-animation mode.

The librarian’s enthusiasm about the deal would give her some reputation points with the man, so maybe not all was lost. That’s what she told herself, anyway.

Aya was then subjected to a full lecture on map-making. Until then, she had already been making vague maps of the surrounding regions, mostly focused on the mobs of each region, their behavior and, as a side note, their respective habitats. Aizan’s lecture went into the method behind the process in far greater detail. He brought out little devices, a couple rulers of different shapes, sizes and slants, a protractor, a compass and a couple other things she couldn’t identify.

Aizan taught her how to measure and keep track of distance using a mixture of landmark choices, the sun’s position, the horizon and walking speed. He then showed her the Empire’s common map notation form, the symbols for trees, rivers, streams, lakes, oceans, hills, mountains, any kind of terrain you could think of. It was yet another ‘language’ she would have to learn, but most of the symbols were pretty straightforward. They consisted mainly of very simplified versions of whatever they were representing. A mountain was an upside-down V, a forest was a T, a jungle was a T with two horizontal lines and so on.

Next, they moved onto elevation. It was something she’d never really paid attention to, and Aizan showed her how to keep track of that, too. The method involved a barometer disguised as a hourglass. By infusing the clock with mana, it controlled the speed at which sand fell according to what you wanted to measure at that particular time. You could change it to measure temperature, weight, humidity and anything else you could think of as long as you infused mana into it.

Before giving her the Skill, he gave her the quest of mapping out Durrenheim. The recent Outworlder influx into town had changed its structure quite a bit and the Senior Librarian wanted it mapped out in its current state for the library records. He offered a sand-clock as a reward. Aya didn’t hesitate in accepting the challenge, but came to second-guess her decision later.

It seemed she came across Serving Time members every five minutes, making her have to duck into all kinds of nooks and crannies, some of which were very unappealing to be in for extended, or any, amounts of time. On the flip side, she continued to level up her Stealth skill. Every chance she got, she would ask locals for street and shop names, but many still refused to talk to her. The ones that did talk to her had some kind of connection with the people she already knew. Over the span of the day, her reputation with townspeople increased and at least that part of the job became easier.

By the time she finished all of her sketches and information gathering, twelve hours had gone by and she was no longer second-guessing her decision. No, she was absolutely certain Aizan had been outright taking advantage of her. However, she chose not to bring it up when she returned to the library. Pretending she had just had the time of her life, Aya showed off the cloak she’d bought and exchanged her old one for. She’d found it in a small shop, belonging to an old man who was apparently childhood friends with Aizan. Compared to her old one, it felt like silk on her skin.

Surprisingly, the conversation had led to a quest involving the old man, but Aya turned him down. She had too much on her plate already, and it was time she made her way out of Durrenheim. She stayed long enough for Aizan to teach her the Cartography Skill. Aya ended up having to activate the Skill eight times to complete the city map, as her expertise was understandably lacking. Luckily, Aizan’s copy was completed with a single Scribe activation and she didn’t have to wait all over again for her mana to keep recharging.

Aya hurried and snuck her way out of the city the same way she’d come in, and by the time met up with Xavier at Nelson’s place, there wasn’t much time left in Era. Donovan had been ignoring her messages all day, but Xavier had kept her posted on the progress at the shop. The man was getting oddly invested in the shop and even asked for permission to move his smithy there. Not seeing a reason against it, Aya drew up a Contract and expected him to move there by the end of the week. She didn’t want to give him any loopholes to take over her shop, but she didn’t mind having him there to supervise.

Then again, the shop was practically running itself. The Contracts were keeping all her hires on the production line going. Serving Time still hadn’t worked the process out, mainly because of all the Contracts Aya had created, which didn’t allow it. If anyone gave the information away, Aya would be getting that person’s gold for the next month, so no amount of bribery would get people to talk.

She knew it would come out eventually, but she’d been able to avoid detection for the first day, at least. Aya spent the last two game hours trying to find ways to keep it that way for as long as possible. Her hope was that it would last at least until the end of the week, and preferably until Serving Time completely defaulted on their loans. Spending more money she didn’t have, she used Xavier to hire a guild of smugglers and assassins to keep her metal source secret.

The players were going to follow the ore and metal shipments, disguising them as some other type of good. When Aya asked for an example of what she should expect, her contact said ‘dung’. Considering the metal purification process, it was quite appropriate, so Aya merely said thanks and moved on. The last couple of hours she had in the game she spent writing even more Contracts, needing to get as many done as she possibly could.

At this point in time, it was the activity that gave her the most money in the least amount of time. Sid had pretty much confirmed that leveling wasn’t going to cut it, so Aya was going to worry about it less for a while and instead try to focus more on getting as much money as she could. She realized that she was going to end the week in a tremendous amount of debt, but if she could use the little she’d scraped together to create Serving Time’s downfall in a shorter amount of time, she still might have something to show the Warden.

Goldilock’s notification came right after she accepted the last Commissioned Contract on the Forums. Aya finished it, started a new Contract and logged out at the last possible minute, taking advantage of every single Era moment she could.