Metropolis - Goldilocks Cafeteria

Wednesday, May 13th, 2089 | 6:59am

Like every other morning, Chris found herself waiting beside Tiny for the cafeteria doors to open. Biting her lips and wringing her hands, Chris wondered how long it would take for her roommate to find out about her petition to join Velma’s faction. Surprisingly, the previous night had gone by without a hitch. Chris had expected Tiny to find out somehow and had been waiting some kind of reaction from the woman. Instead, they’d just gone about their usual routine like any other day. During the exercises, Chris was barely able to keep up. In the shower, Chris tried to stay invisible. They studied, they slept, they woke up and made their way to breakfast.

The previous night, Chris had noticed that her new faction wasn’t yet completely aware of her position amongst their ranks. As she stood in the crowd, Chris saw that it was no longer the case. Unknown faces started looking at her with interest. They weren’t all black or Asian, but enough were to convince Chris she was right. Shifting from foot to foot, Chris became increasingly aware of how anxious the whole situation was making her. She hadn’t expected to feel that way the night before. She’d walked away from the dinner table feeling quite satisfied with her position in the world around her. Perhaps it had something to do with how she’d felt in control of the situation for the first time.

Preoccupied with her thoughts, Chris almost didn’t notice the doors opening. The usual stampede took her by surprise, almost knocking her over. Tiny had already gone her separate way and Chris wasn’t expecting the helping hand that came her way, pushing her back up. Chris didn’t see who the hand belonged to, but its skin was dark. Wondering about the implications of what had just happened, Chris made her way to the dispenser line while keeping an eye on the women around her. Over the next couple of minutes, she noticed women suddenly look in her direction. Some would keep their attention on Chris for a little bit while others lost interest the moment their eyes landed on her. She hadn’t been the topic of conversation the day before, but she definitely was today.

After grabbing a tray, Chris made her way to her usual table and found Tanisha already sitting there by herself. The woman looked up when Chris approached and smiled. Tanisha’s face was just as bruised as before, if not more, but the swelling had gone down significantly, revealing high cheekbones Chris hadn’t been aware of. Chris smiled back and took a seat.

“Good morning!” Tanisha said, beaming a large, white smile.

“Morning,” Chris replied.

“How are you?” Tanisha asked.

“Fine, you?”

“Fine.”

Chris waited a moment to see if the woman would say anything else. When she didn’t, Chris grabbed her spork and got to eating while continuing to survey the rest of the cafeteria. The edginess from the previous day had receded but wasn’t completely gone. Chris wondered if Tanisha having joined Velma’s faction had anything to do with it. Chris’ eyes scanned the room while she scarfed down the gruel as fast as she could. She really didn’t have time to keep worrying about prison politics when her position would be determined by her performance in Era, not the real world. She was almost done with her meal when her eyes landed on Doris. The gruel in Chris’ mouth got stuck in her throat as she swallowed and Doris chose that exact moment to look right back at her.

It took Chris less than an instant to look away, but it was enough to know that Doris knew. The woman knew about Chris’ faction choice. Oddly, Chris felt like she’d betrayed the woman somehow. Doris’ expression had been one of cold cynicism, not very different from her usual expression, but her eyes had revealed a cold fury that shook Chris to the bone. Finishing her meal quickly, Chris got up to leave when she realized Tanisha was in the middle of saying something.

“Sorry,” Chris said. “What?”

“No… It’s all right,” Tanisha said. She looked a little worried for a second, but then shook her head and smiled. “We can talk at dinner… Same time?”

“Same place,” Chris responded, smiling back.

Chris looked at the door to check on the filling deck. Seeing that it was almost full, she hurriedly excused herself and made her way to the nearest conveyor belt. In her rush, she didn’t notice two medium-sized women approaching her from both sides. A moment too late, Chris saw a broken spork, sharpened to a point, coming straight at her abdomen. Her reaction consisted of widened eyes, raised eyebrows and an open mouth as she ducked, trying to move her tray to block. However, before reaching the defensive position, she knew that she had reacted too late. She felt like she was moving in slow motion in quicksand. Clenching her eyes shut, Chris waited for the pain to arrive, but even after the tray was in position… it didn’t.

Her other senses suddenly caught up to her, breaking the time-suspended bubble adrenaline had created. The echo of her fallen plate was still reverberating through the cafeteria, slowly being replaced by more and more voices. She opened her eyes, slowly, afraid of what she would find in front of her. Chris had no idea what she expected to see, but two pairs of women hugging definitely wasn’t it. Velma was one of the women hugging one of Chris’ attackers, while another tall, dark-skinned woman was hugging the other. There were no signs of blood, wounds or weapons in the vicinity. In fact, the whole room was already calming down in the time it took for Chris to get back on her feet. Standing there, lamely, not knowing what to do, Chris continued to watch the four women until she heard Velma whisper forcefully through gritted teeth.

“Get… out of here… now,” Velma said.

Chris jerked, and directed her attention to Velma, who was smiling manically at Chris in order to speak without moving her lips. The squat, bulky woman was unrecognizable from the day before. The manic smile paired with the murderous look in her eyes made Chris want to run for the hills. If Chris had met this Velma last night, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to talk in her presence, much less talk back to Velma until she got her way. Frightened into motion, Chris sank to the floor, grabbed her plate, spork and shot away from the scene, looking for the nearest conveyor belt.

Chris walked quickly, trying to keep her head down yet remain vigilant at the same time. Her legs were shaking, threatening to buckle below her. Every time a woman got too close, Chris had to fight the instinct to flinch away. She started seeing threats where there were none. The guards stood motionlessly at the doors as if nothing had taken place. Chris ventured a quick glance behind her and was surprised to see nothing aside from the usual commotion of the cafeteria. All signs of the encounter, if there had been any, were gone. The women had dispersed, leaving no signs of their whereabouts.

Fear started to well up within her again. Chris quickened her pace as much as she could without breaking into a run. She tried to keep her eyes focused on the guard at the door, trying to get the woman’s attention, but eventually she couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder. The tall, black woman that had defended Chris alongside Velma, was following a couple feet behind her. Chris’ heart beat wildly in her chest. She hadn’t felt her follower’s presence at all, but knowing that she had someone on ‘her side’ to watch her back gave her enough fortitude to keep her wits about her as she put her utensils away and headed for the doors. As soon as Chris reached the guard, the woman following her vanished into the crowd.

Chris was still recovering, her breath leaving her lungs in shaky breaths. Surveying the room from a safe position, Chris tried to let her mind catch up to what had happened. She wasn’t given much time; less than half a minute later, two more women arrived and their deck was complete. As the guard led them out of the cafeteria, Chris couldn’t help looking back one last time, trying to wrap her head around the last five minutes. It seemed like she’d imagined the whole encounter, doubly so because of the total lack of evidence or even reaction from the rest of the cafeteria.

She had no clue what it meant, why anyone would want to hurt her. Chris wasn’t a threat to anyone. Who had done it? Doris? Tiny? Was it because she was new? Or maybe because she’d joined Velma’s faction? Chris hadn’t the faintest clue. The whole experience was as surreal as the cold mountain air blowing in the background.

Chris followed the line of women out of the cafeteria. Her legs followed in mindless synchrony with whoever was in front of her. Her thoughts were still reeling, trying to come to terms with the event. What if she’d been hurt? What if she’d been killed? The thought hit her like a freight train. In Era, it didn’t matter if she died, but there was no coming back in real life. Until that moment, everything that had happened since she’d met Suerte a week ago had seemed like a game. The lawyer had made Chris his pawn and asked that she learn the layout of the board. He’d given her the basic guidelines and thrown her into a snake pit advertised as opportunity to save her sister. The stakes had always been high, but Chris just hadn’t realized how high.

“… Barbie.”

Hearing her ‘name’ snapped Chris’ attention back to the moment.

“Waiting for it…”

“Then again, Doris…”

Chris was hearing snippets of conversation from the front of the line. Towards the back it was hard to hear, especially with the slight howl of the wind. Turning down the wind settings, she could hear a little more clearly, but not enough to make out every word.

“Well, she’s with Anna now.”

“Anna!? No, I heard she…”

Chris instinctively leaned forward, trying to hear the next words, but felt someone yank her uniform from behind.

“Stay in line, Barbie,” said a gruff voice behind her. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you… now would we?”

Chris flinched and looked back. The woman was of medium height, had dark skin and white hair. Not being able to immediately place her, Chris was opening her mouth to ask when she remembered. Her head snapped forward and all the blood drained from her face in an instant. It was one of Doris’ cronies, one of the old women always hanging around at her table. Chris looked down the line to see if there were any potential faction ‘friends’ but as far as she could see, there were no small women with black hair and no dark-skinned women to be seen. Nibbling at the inside of her bottom lip, Chris clenched and unclenched her fists, telling herself over and over that they wouldn’t go for her in a place so public. The cafeteria was one thing. There, you could blend into the masses. Here, there were only corridors upon corridors of virtual images to the configured outside world. There was no escape, no real escape.

Unfortunately, the same was true for Chris. By the time they reached the Capsule bay a couple minutes later, Chris’ nerves were completely frayed. When it was finally her turn to get to her capsule, she realized that she was wrong; there was an escape. Era. Relief surged until she logged in and remembered that prison wasn’t the only place in which prisoners wanted her dead.

Aya logged back in and found herself in Nelson’s shop. On edge, she looked around, checking the interior and all the exits for any potential signs of danger. When the survey was done, Aya took a deep breath and tried to calm her nerves. No longer looking for sources of danger, Aya finally noticed her surroundings. The shop she’d left the day before with a few customers here and there was bustling with activity. There were at least a dozen players scouring the shelves while another handful waited at the counter, where Xavier was ringing up items at the register.

The man was truly transformed. His leather blacksmith's apron had been replaced with something more shop-friendly. When he turned around to grab an item, Aya got a good look at the frilly bow tied around his back. The vision of the stern man dressed up in a housewife’s apron made Aya snort. The shopkeeper-to-be must have heard her because he suddenly looked straight at her and scowled. The action only made it funnier and Aya ducked between shelves so she could laugh outright. Tears came to her eyes as she guffawed to her heart’s content, releasing some of the pent-up tension of the day. They might be ready to kill her in the real world, but they couldn’t get her here. Era was a completely different world, with completely different rules, the only thing that connected it to the real world was…Her rank.

The thought brought her up short.

She hadn’t checked her rank from the day before. In her conversation with Sid, the woman had pretty much confirmed that unless Aya got to level 19, leveling wouldn’t get her out of the bottom ten percent. Instead, the woman had advised Aya to find a different way to stand out. The advice hadn’t really been directed at her since Sid couldn’t know for sure what Aya’s rank was, but that was how Aya had chosen to take it.

Going by her own past rankings, days with significant debt increase led to significant rank reduction. Conversely, debt decrease should lead to rank increase. It made sense, considering all the Warden wanted to use them for was gold-farming. Thus, Aya decided to dedicate the entire day to getting rid of the debt. She had so much debt she, didn’t know where to start. There was Nelson’s debt, her guild’s debt over Serving Time’s debt and her personal debt. Short term, the one that hurt the most was the personal debt. The interest rate she’d agreed to for the start-up costs was ridiculous. The other debts were so big that a day’s work wouldn’t even put a dent into them. Having decided which debt to pursue, Aya headed toward Xavier.

“Hi…” Aya said.

“Gimme a sec,” Xavier said, getting back to customers.

Nodding, Aya took the opportunity to check the forums for ‘work’. The sheer number of Contract requests brought a smile to her face. It was easily three times higher than what she normally saw. A featured post at the top revealed the reason fast enough.

[OMG, SO MUCH EASIER TO GET CONTRACTS HERE NOW. SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY DOING THEM! SO MUCH CHEAPER THAN THOSE DAMN LIBRARIANS!]

There was no mistaking the fact that she was the ‘someone’ in question. The stupid grin on her face only got bigger when she saw that not only the quantity, but also the magnitude of the Contracts had increased. With so many mid-level Contracts to go through, she would be busy for quite some time. It was a perfect opportunity to avoid Serving Time altogether, holed up somewhere where no one could find her.

“What do you need?” Xavier asked gruffly.

“Oh!” Aya said, having completely forgotten about the man. “Right. Well, I just wanted to ask if you’re okay. I mean, I saw you working the counter and I was pretty sure that I’d hired some—”

“That guy?!” Xavier asked, jerking his head towards a tall elf who was dusting off shelves.

“I don’t know,” Aya said. “Lemme check…”

Bringing up the Contract with Leviathan the elf, she turned back to Xavier and answered.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Why?”

Xavier rolled his eyes and directed a glare at her.

“Do you really have to ask?” Then he muttered, “No wonder you never finished your training…”

“…”

Not sure which comment she should be replying to, Aya simply sighed and glared right back at the man before she directed her attention to the elf to see what Xavier meant. He was a Moonlight Elf, the exact race Aya would have chosen herself before doing her research. Moonlight elves had milky-white skin that shimmered in the daytime but darkened in the night. Their ears were large and pointy, reaching long past the top of their heads. They were already beautiful creatures, but this particular player had taken it a step further and given himself waist-length white hair that hung loosely down his back. His face was narrow and his eyes were a dark blue impossible to achieve in real life.

“Okay, so maybe he’s a little…self-indulgent, but that doesn’t mean that—”

The words got stuck in her mouth when she saw the elf swing his hair back over his shoulder as if he were in a shampoo commercial. There were two human priestesses looking over the metal grails in the artifacts section that Xavier had insisted on and the elf was now unsubtly hitting on them while he twirled a lock of hair around his index finger. He wore a lazy smile that was obviously forced along with the ‘sexy’ narrowing of his eyes. The two girls were giggling to each other, which only encouraged the elf’s ‘charming’ act. His lips took on an exaggerated ‘sultryness’ that made it look like he interpreted ‘duckface’ as ‘pelicanface’. The giggles increased and other people looked his way. It hurt to watch.

“You were saying?” Xavier asked dryly.

“So he was…”

“All over the counter,” Xavier finished as he turned to answer a player’s question about where to find broadswords for the mid-twenty levels.

When Xavier turned back to her a few moments later, he simply crossed his arms and looked at her.

“I will not have my name associated with such trash,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, we are going to do this right. I will not be a joke.”

“Okay… and by that you mean…”

“By that, I mean I’m going to be in charge of operating this shop,” Xavier said with absolute finality.

“… Are you sure?” Aya asked. “I mean, it’s nice and all, but are you sure you want to be spending all your time at the counter instead of out…. Hunting or something? Exploring? Whatever it is that you do in Era?”

“I’m a blacksmith,” Xavier said, tone flat. “I make weapons.”

“Well, if you want it…. The shop is all yours… I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay you more but…”

“Ten percent of revenue,” Xavier said.

“Wh— No,” Aya said. “This is my shop, you get your cut when I buy the weapons from you. The price is already very fair…”

Too fair, considering how broke Aya was.

“If I am here to sell the weapons, you’ll be able to charge fifteen percent more… easily.”

“But… they won’t be your weapons you’re selling.”

“So?” he asked. “If I’m there to guarantee their quality… it doesn’t matter.”

“That—” Aya said, wanting to debate, but realizing it was true. The real world revolved around branding and marketing, why would Era be any different. Xavier would give the shop an image of prestige. If a master blacksmith claimed a weapon to be good, you knew it to be true; no true artist would put his good name on the line for a few bucks.

“Five on profit,” Aya countered.

“Nine.”

“Six.”

“Eight.”

“Six point five and that’s as high as I’ll go,” Aya said.

Xavier stared at her with steely intensity, testing her resolve, but Aya didn’t back down. Compared to Doris, the large man was child’s play.

“Fine, you drive a hard bargain…”

“Yep, just a few things I picked up while not completing an apprenticeship…”

Xavier’s expression went from intense to contemplative in an instant.

“Touche, my friend. Touche.”

“Oh, we’re friends now, are we?”

“Don’t push it,” Xavier said, “Why don’t you—”

“Get a Contract ready?”

“…Yes.”

“On it,” Aya replied with a satisfied smile.