3.10 A Plot Of Pallets

“Do we know what to expect?”

“No.” Brother Whateverborn was pacing back and forth in the tiny office like a fangbeast in a cage. “Only that the messages continue for a long time after the mug goes in. That means he’s still partly of this gameboard. Hopefully, you’ll survive.”

“Hopefully?” snapped Silven. He brushed his fears aside. “I’m really going beyond the world. Is that actually even possible?”

“Hopefully,” the brother repeated. “Now let’s go, before we lose our chance.” Wordlessly, the king and the professor took his outstretched hands and appeared by a deep pit in the midst of a barren, eternal plain. It was night-time, and most of the houses had disappeared, but Silven was still brought back to that fateful day. “Nameless Village,” he announced. “Does it have a name yet?”

It did not. There was no sign of the poor souls that had once called it home. Of whether they were slumbering soundly in some cosy hamlet across the wasteland, or paying a little visit to the Cathedral of Dust, there was nothing.

Brother Whateverborn peered into the void. He drew his robe about him protectively. That vague look of bored superiority had gone. In its place, something like fear played about the shadows of his face. “We meddled too much here. Dug too deep, sought a cure too hard. This village will never have a name now. But the password lies close.”

“Can you retrieve it?” asked Grennel, looking suddenly concerned. Whateverborn studied the darkness carefully. His features became ever more taught. He sighed a long, haggard sigh. “I’ve done it before. Whatever happens tonight, good luck. To all of us.”

With that, he knelt in the dry dirt, touched a shaking palm to the brink, and gasped. The night seemed to grow paler around him. Gradually, Silven perceived the blue glow from deep within his moat. It was growing lighter by the second.

“Gah!” coughed Whateverborn. Silven went to him in alarm. The face beneath the hood was writhing in agony, yet the man pushed him away all the same. “Go. Now.” He waved vaguely at the pit. “I’m okay. I can do this. I can do-”

Whateverborn blinked out of existence. Silven looked at Grennel and circled the spot in confusion. “How did we get here again?” he said finally.

Grennel shrugged apologetically. “Beats me. But that shiny blueness sure looks like a portal.”

Silven strained out a smile. “And portals are good, right?” He edged towards the pit and eyed the closest shell of a cottage . “You keep an eye out for creepy dudes in hoodies. I’ll get on with the adventure.” He jumped down into the shadows and blinked out of existence himself.

When he re-existentialised, it was daytime. He could see that through the ovals of curiously thin glass high in the curious metallic white walls of the curiously curved warehouse. He turned to check out what was behind him, and heard a curious clunking noise. Then he realised he was made from metal and screamed.

A skeleton. He was just a skeleton, with metal bones tentatively held together with smooth threads of something black. He held up a hand and saw a claw instead. It wasn’t a chicken head, but it was still relatively unnerving.

No-one came to see what the fuss was about. There were a few humans, hanging out by a large open doorway in the back wall of the warehouse, but once they realised there wasn’t any sort of death or maiming going on, they put away their little grey oblongs of metal into their pockets with looks of tired disappointment. Silven thought of approaching, and found that got the skeleton bobbing along across the hard stone floor. Now he wasn’t a piece on a playing board, he felt like one.

He reigned up as another man emerged from a square cubicle against a stack of wooden lattices. There was the sound of churning water behind him, but the basin in the corner seemed empty. The eyes in that thin, stubbly face gleamed. “Hey, Crystal. Thought you needed the hours. You know you get three dollars less for shelf-shuffling, right?”

After a moment of awkward swaying, Silven realised the man was talking to him. He looked down at the real man for a moment longer. Blue shiny shirt full of tiny moth holes. Black trousers that looked like they’d been made out of a dusty old sail. Shiny black shoes that actually looked pretty trendy. There was a little piece of parchment pinned into his shirt that said Paul. Then the mission rushed back headlong into his bucket-head. If he was going to succeed rather than spend a night in the real-world dungeon, the eight-foot metal skeleton would have to act inconspicuously.

“Nah, it’s not Crystal. I’m Darkgurl, remember, Paul? Darkgurl4.” The voice was grating and tinny, powerful and pathetic at the same time.

The man called Paul took a step back, hands raised. “Okay, so that’s why you’re not in. Someone’s going to be playing all day. Just don’t think you’re swinging a sword while you’re putting out the cans. That’s how Bradley went, before your time. But-” He took a tentative step forward. “You alright, Crystal? What the hell you say my name was?”

Silven looked in panic at the badge and tried to play cool. “Sorry. Hiccup. Come on, fine fellow.”

Paul’s grimace broadened into a grin. “You get any sleep? The supervisors would be all over you today... if they didn’t want to be all over you in a different way.” He winked an obnoxious wink and walked away.

Silven stood motionlessly and considered the statement carefully. If he was to survive in this world of reality, he would have to use all clues at his disposal. It seemed that acting like a common whore from the Red Rider on Scratchyback Lane would help, so a common whore he would be.

He lunged after Paul clumsily, and caught up with five huge swings of the lower shafts. “Yeah, I’m really out of it today. Maybe you could help me through the day.... darling?” He stretched out one huge claw and squeezed seductively.

Paul responded to the seduction by turning red and squealing like a small child. He crumpled to his knees and puffed out painful gasps of breath, hands clamped tight to his groin.

“Sorry,” said Silven. Paul remained down.

When the group by the back door had held up their bits of metal and conjured flashes of tiny lightning in Paul’s direction, one finally stopped laughing long enough to haul the crippled man to the little cubicle from whence he came. “Could write you up.... but later.... you come and kiss it better?” Paul managed a pained wink. Silven stopped looking for a suitable escape route, pondered whether a skeleton could wink, and winked back anyway. “Sure,” he said. “IM me.” He jumped in horror when he realised what he’d said, but the little man only gave him a thumbs up and shut the door.

Disaster averted, apart from the fact that he’d removed his only contact in this strange world of whiteness and boxes and metal. He’d have to find that currency the hard way. He really didn’t want to expand on his role of common whore if he could help it.

The warehouse walls were lined with those lattices, all piled high with grey and brown boxes. To Silven’s left was a larger metal cubicle with ‘Manager’ stencilled in huge black letters on the side. Somehow, Silven didn’t feel Darkgurl4 was a manager, so he moved instead towards the larger wooden doors on his right. He emerged into an immense open room, larger than any temple or palace he had ever seen. It was criss-crossed with huge metal bookcases, upon which sat boxes and packets and parcels of all colours and shapes and sizes. It was like a market, he decided. A super-sized market.

Voices echoed from the far end of the hall. He moved on, lumbering awkwardly up the aisles. There was a vast array of clear crinkled material on the floor to tangle and ensnare his lower claws. There were also a number of large boxes waiting by gaps on the shelves. Silven made short work of them. The cardboard mashed and shredded easily beneath his steel grip, but he was left as disappointed as those men at the warehouse door. The crumpled remains were hiding no coins at all.

“Errr, what are you doing?” questioned a male voice behind him. He shifted to face the newcomer, a balding gentleman in a familiar blue shirt and black trousers.

Silven had no sane answer to that.

The man glared and sighed. “These transport damages are getting worse,” he muttered amiably, and then, under his breath, “It’s a good job you’re cute. When, you know, you ain’t a goddamn robot.” He stretched and hobbled off.

Silven decided that being Darkgurl was better than Darkboy.

At the lower end of the hall, the wooden blocks reappeared. Some were straining under the weight of cargo. Others stood empty in a stack by a long row of some sort of giant Silverview-type maps on stalks. Others were being worked by labourers. It didn’t look like a lot of fun.

“Phwoar! This is the biggest delivery I’ve ever seen since last delivery,” puffed a teenager beneath his mop of hair. “Gonna need some beverages tonight.” His cronies suddenly showed signs of enthusiasm.

“Hey, honey.... I need currency,” he grated in the general direction of the group of men.

“Then get to work,” one grunted. “We’ve only got two hours to get through an analysis of the Dark Times finale. See it?”

“I’ve seen plenty of dark times,” Silven grumbled. He thought about clawing a box off the top of the pile and hoisted it powerfully into the air. “But not the end, so be quiet.”

Silven had seen hard work before, when his factories were actually factories. He tried to replicate those observations, with mixed results. When he was concentrating, it was easy to plug a brightly coloured this into a dull and empty that. Then, his co-workers would grumble, flourish the black and white stripes on the cargo’s bottoms at his head, and move them round the corner. Teamwork.

When he wasn’t concentrating, things got real bad. He cast his head this way and that, looking for the elusive middle currency and, despite some old gossip, a glimpse of the Gems themselves. Then, he would pick up the howls of the others. Most were human, though a few metal skulls bobbed above the tops of the shelves. The words and notions that exited their mouths, however, were conjured from the swamps of the underworld itself. He heard terrible things that day, and learned of vile doings unrelatable to his simple world of doom, destruction and murder. If just half of their boasts were true, he could see why some may turn to him to take their minds off things.

At long last, the fascination with the range of what he had finally deemed to be powdered stews grew dim. He looked up at the white clock by the row of maps. He had been at this for ten minutes.

Bravely, he decided to engage Maz, the crone with the fiery mess of hair he would suspect of being a starved vampire back in Newburg, in useful conversation. This Maz, who had just been grimly telling the miserable little group how she had seen Donna up by the telebus without Pete and then caught him brubbing (but not quite duzzing, mind you) at the club by the rec after a few shots of lager, was glad to hear her friend speak up at last. She took the question almost as badly as Silven took the answer. “Paid? Not till quarter end, mate. Unless them rumours ‘bout you an’ Ste from accounts are true, like. Bet you get paid when you want.” She erupted into a throaty gargle of what Silven hoped was laughter and not the throes of a serious heart attack. “Least you don’t have to face the zombies in an hour. Elf ‘n safety gone mad, it is, not ‘aving the big guns clearing up til the end. Why just log in, anyway? Thought you needed the overtime.”

Silven was about to make enquiries as to when this glorious end might be, and if required, the location of this Ste, when a ragged cheer rose from the sweaty men. The final cargo had been cleared, and the challenges regarding who could down the most pepper steak rub on thirty-second break began in earnest. It only went on for a few moments, however, before another man appeared. He was sweatless, and clad not in worker’s uniform but an immaculate white tunic with a less than immaculate strip of black cloth dangling from his neck. Still, he looked more like Silven’s sort of fellow. He approached with claw extended.

“Right, lads, need to step it up a gear!” roared the supervisor. “Crystal, Jim, Baz, Boz, Biz, Jiz, off to frozen. Fifteen pallets there – piece of piss for the C team. Ricky, go get the brews.” He dashed off for the safety of the warehouse. Silven let his claw fall.

He dragged himself off to ‘frozen’, trying to wonder through the numbness how to get what he needed. That thirty-second break was sounding like a Thunderstring gig right now. He wondered how Whizz was getting on with the tickets in ‘reduced’ and shook the maddening thought away. It was none of his concern, yet something had to be.

Frozen was a breath of fresh air. This time, he was putting icy bags into glass boxes instead. The relief lasted five minutes.

Ricky came back with steaming mugs of muddy liquid. The humans gathered round for a brief moment, grimaced at the bitter brew, and pretended to be enjoying life. Skeletons, alas, could not partake. And it was all for three dollars less, too.

With the coinage still evading him, Silven raised the possibility of the aforementioned dollars being the currency after all. Yet he sensed the time of payment was yet far away; there was still another twelve pallets to go, and then it seemed he would get the wastage write-offs for- oh Ozwold Almighty, where was he going with this? He tried to study the script upon the boxes of bags as he clawed them into the coolness of the bigger boxes alongside other bags. He looked at the packets of Pizdos next to the multipack boxes and worked out it was cheaper if you bought it all separately anyway. He raised his head to behold the graceful glass-and-girder roof high above, and the blue sky above where metallic orbs raced and dodged with lightning speed. It should have felt magical, a cave of wonders, an unexplored territory like the moon. It felt soulless.

Then, Jez came on the scene. It appeared Darkgurl and Jez were quite familiar with each other. At least, Jez actually called her Darkgurl and did some sort of fist prod on his claw which he could only assume was a primitive form of greeting. Then, Silven realised who had created him and tried to convince himself to hold off on assessments of primitiveness for the remainder of the misadventure. He focused on what this Jez character was wittering on about. “What?”

“Hello? You have any sleep? I said have you tried out the new scenario yet? A3?”

Silven told the skeleton to blink in surprise and found the effort to be futile. “No,” he replied, and focused on guessing how many Sizleys he could fit on that shelf next to the ticket that said Sizleys. The labels were a new revelation. He was getting the hang of this work, at least. It must be worth a small fortune in Gems.

“Total waste of bloody time, those games,” piped up a scraggly female in a dirty shirt. “I mean, you don’t even play them any more, right? Just watch. We should bring back those reality TV shows – at least they were real people.”

“Were they?” grinned Jez, resulting in a ripple of enthusiastic cackling from the others. He was clearly hilarious. “Anyway, this is 2026, gran.” He turned back to Silven and rolled his eyes. “Where was I? Yeah, these new A scenarios. Fact is, they have brought back a little direct interaction. Players are actual NPCs that can like objectives for the PIC.”

“Aha,” said the robot.

“Some think they’ll go all the way back to playable heroes, but we’ve got the Zswipe for hack and slash shit like that. All the As are sci-fi so far. Three has one of those freighters from 42 going deeper into that purple nebula and discovering a tribe of players that hold keys to these, like, vast ancient weapons. How awesome is that?”

“Ever play the one with the big civil war and the....” Silven trailed off. Suddenly, he couldn’t think of many interesting things about the universe as he knew it. “...The.... flowers?” Jez looked blank. “With Silven?”

Dull recognition registered in Jez’s bloodshot eyes. “66? Oh, that.” Silven tried to narrow his eyes and again found it impossible. “What a flop.” Jez spread out his hands. “Nothing happened! Just kill a few generic raiders and settle down to play Monopoly or something.”

“Only because the.... the PIC was so clever,” blurted Silven before he deigned to think.

“The PIC is a selfish, greedy, sarcastic dick,” growled Jez.

Stay in character, thought Silven. He tried to grind his teeth but... well, you get the basics of the limitations of remote replenishment units in the 2020s. “He’s courageous. He just wants peace and prosperity after the brutalities of the chaos he found himself in at the start!”

Jez was looking bored. “Yeah, whatever. But have you ever considered what’s missing, Dark?”

“Like?”

“Golems. Goblins. Motherfucking dragons, man!”

Silven paused. He tried to grimace. “I’ll give you that. No motherfucking dragons. What an oversight.”

Jez shrugged. “I mean, they’re mentioned in Totempop’s Bestiary Volume 4 on the little shelf behind the pantry door in the Ruins of Galvolan. Maybe it was gonna be DLC before it all turned to shit.”

“It’s not all bad....” prompted Silven. He didn’t want to hear this, but he did.

Jez held up fingers one by one. “Dick of a PIC. Vague wishy-washy side-quests. Painful pace. Multiple badasses who flop into holes rather than hack said dick to bits. Too much freedom in the AI which allowed it all to turn into some sort of tech demo from 2012 or whenever. Especially after Voltz basically wrote it off for modding. Only good bit’s the fast-travel. Could do with that around here.”

Silven did his best to engage in interaction. “A locked class system which means the idiot blocked himself out of all those awesome spells that could be really really useful to him right now.”

Jez shook his head bitterly. “Don’t know, don’t care. I left 66 long ago. 42’s where all the action’s at. Do you know there’s only about twenty mice left on your server? Come off it Dark. It’s over.”

“Is it?” the robot almost screamed. A door slammed open somewhere down the store, and heavy boots clomped towards them.

Silven extended a claw to Jez’s blue shoulder. This was his chance to know if it was actually all worth it. “But, if the PIC actually did the quest he was supposed to....”

Jez laughed. “That won’t happen. But the aftermath was hyped to oblivion last year on that one. It was designed to go on forever, remember? Some sort of procedural plot generation. That little bastard could have lived happily ever after as a champion, but Voltz have got to pull the plug soon.”

Silven barely heard the supervisor march up and guide him to meat. He barely registered the strange chunks of flesh he pulled out of carton A and shoved onto shelf B. But that last sentence was irrelevant; that is a universal experience. He could only think of the chance.

Happily ever after.

But the excitement was mixed with a hearty dose of tragedy. They’d be pulling the plug soon. Just twenty mice. For now, at least, he could hope it meant that no-one had spotted the plot to invade the real world and decide to burn it all in face of imminent takeover by super-intelligent artificial warriors logged into giant metal suits. But he had to act fast. He had to get more on board.

He had to get those damned Gems.