Lucia came back into baseline reality by taking her VR helmet off. There weren’t going to be a whole lot of things for her to take care of. The contract came with many benefits like taking over payment on her lease, which still had several months to go, and more of a stipend for moving than she would use. Looking around, she once more reflected on the lack of color in her life in Baseline and questioned if there was something wrong with that. Was it wrong that there weren’t any local friends who she would miss to the degree that she would if she lost some of those she knew from the game? Honestly she didn’t know. She wouldn’t miss any of her co-workers at the restaurant where she made a meager income. Her parents had told her of days from their childhood when people knew their neighbors and engaged much more with those in proximity. Lucia had heard of scattered communes where this was still true, but she had never been to one. People were more and more isolated physically but connected digitally.

Anyway, she needed to go downtown and quit her job as well as transfer her lease over to NoosCorp. She didn’t own a car, and usually took the bus, but knowing that her financial situation was about to improve remarkably, she ordered an autonomous Uber, which was there in only a couple of minutes.

She still hadn’t told her parents yet and had no idea how they would take it. Like much of the population, they each spent some time in virtual reality, although not nearly as much as she did. Her mom especially had encouraged her to spend more time getting away from it. How would she feel knowing that literally 1/3 of her life would be in a pod?

The downtown was one of only a couple of sections of the city that could be described as anything close to vibrant. Many office buildings had been transitioned to apartments and homes so just by population density, there were always people about. The tapas restaurant where she worked mainly serviced the tourist trade, or local couples having a special night out.

There was very little reaction from the manager on duty, Walt. She was hardly essential staff, working as a hostess. She had been able to stay sane through the 30 hours a week she worked by treating seating like a game, trying to make sure that all the wait staff got fair amounts of customers. Of course, some still complained.

With AI help, they would likely have another person in training later that day. She went around and said brief goodbyes to people working the lunch shift and decided that a text would suffice to the few other that she was friendly enough with to have their cell phone numbers.

Coming out of the restaurant, she decided that she would walk the distance to the rental office less than a half a mile away. If she was in-game, she would be running this distance for sure, and she briefly reflected on why that would feel weird to do so in Baseline. If she had worn exercise clothes and running shoes it would have been fine. Where did these social rules come from?

It could be a side effect of both being trained to tail people while also sometimes being tailed in game, but she noticed that two men on the opposite side of the street seemed to have moved out when she did. To see if she could confirm if they were following her, she started to stop and do some window shopping at random. The men weren’t amateurs as they didn’t stop when she did but just appeared to be going at roughly the same general speed. Lucia recognized it because it was much how she would have tailed a target.

Alright, maybe it was time to change this up. Making a bit of a production of stretching out her legs, Lucia decided that a run might be what was called for after all, and to hell with societal norms.

As she took off, she looked back and saw that the men had stopped. One had pulled a cell phone from his pocket and was talking on it. The other also had his phone out but was either typing or drawing something on its screen.

A small buzzing sound came from above and Lucia looked up. A small drone was now pacing her.

She was being followed and would have to map out what she would do to lose the drone. The leasing agency was only blocks away at this point. Getting inside there could give her some time to think.

Lucia made it to the agency and could still make out the sound of the drone. These guys were not being subtle, but then again, most people were sleepwalkers in life, so maybe they didn’t have to be. She compared it to the more skilled tails she had sometimes received after some of her in-game exploits and decided that these guys weren’t all that good. She herself did a fair amount of tailing, and though she didn’t have perfect success with that, Lucia felt like she could give these guys some pointers.

This must have something to do with the NoosCorp job but why on Baseline Earth would they be doing anything? Kyler had seemed genuinely surprised at what Harcourt had said about the Balance operating in the real world. Right now, it was the only thing that came to mind. She lived too boring a life in reality for anything else to be the case.

Lucia had to first wait at the agency office for one of the two clerks to get freed up, and then had to do more than the usual paperwork, first to get the appropriate person on the line to transfer control over to NoosCorp. After that NoosCorp just went ahead and just paid the final four months of her rent. It seemed to Lucia that they could have just done that and saved her the paperwork, but it was as it was. She had at least had time to plan for when she left.

Thinking of the layout of the area around the building, as well as the exits, she began to formulate some steps that could work.

The backside of the building that the agency was in backed up to a parking garage. The exit directly off the backside, however, was for emergencies only and would alarm if she pushed it. The right-side exit was not alarmed as the dumpsters were right off it. She could quickly get to the backside and into the parking garage.

Resigning herself to that path, Lucia exited and quickly moved towards the back. Looking way up she could barely make out the drone way above so it could cover all sides of the building. Getting to the corner she looked right and saw the two tails turn that corner. Racing across to the parking garage, she quickly made her way to one of the stair wells. Looking across she saw one of the guys take one of the other stairwells while the other looked to be positioning himself to wait where he could see all the stairwells.

Time for an audible to be called. She went up two of the four levels, putting her on the third floor of the parking garage, but due to ramps, not automatically visible from the stairwell the one guy had taken. Hoping her memories of the surrounding buildings was accurate, she ran a to the center and left-hand side. Visually confirming that she remembered correctly she jumped to the top of the concrete half wall of the parking garage and to the roof of the building across and one story down, rolling correctly to prevent injury. Coming up she ran to the left in the direction of the city library.

Looking down off the side of the building she saw a dumpster with its top closed. She got down to hang off the building for what would still be an uncomfortable drop.

“Hey, she’s dropping of the next building ahead and to the left.” Looking up she saw one of the two men now on the top of the parking structure.

She went ahead and dropped onto the dumpster but sprang into a forward summersault on impact to break up the force of the fall. Unfortunately, she still came down a little harder than she would have liked. One side of the library was now directly ahead of her, but this wasn’t the side of the entrance. Instead, it was a walkway about four meters above where she was, with square columns separated by about eight feet of empty space. Turning to the left, she ran ten meters before turning left into one of the three-sided hollow outs between the columns. Again, using her parkour skills, she wall walked up using the three sides, to till she could grasp the walkway and pull herself up. The key to the move was to put your force in perpendicular and opposed to parallel with the wall. Quickly she got squarely behind one of the columns so she couldn’t be seen.

Sure enough, she soon heard what she was certain were her tails. “…what in the hell, why wasn’t that in the report on the target. We should have had a full team out here, instead of the two of us and a drone that couldn’t even do its one job of monitoring.”

The voices were moving down the alley along the library side and were approaching the column she was behind, four meters above. “Pomeroy is going to be pissed if she can get to NoosCorp.”

“Look she has to be in this area. Let’s set up some type of perimeter, set the drone higher, it should still be able to find her.”

After the two went past her location she took a chance and looked down on the two. One had a what she assumed was the drone control and feed projected from his wrist phone. The other had what she recognized as a wireless taser. So, there to do more than talk, but less than to kill.

“How do we know the AI on the drone hasn’t gone rogue and decided to help her out?” asked one.

“ No where advanced enough but…” The voices began to fade leaving her with many more questions than answers.

She headed back towards the library entrance and went in, going back to the pod area. These pods were primarily designed for educational purposes in Noo Earth and couldn’t access the other six realms. Normally she would have considered their rental price extravagant but right now they were a perfect place to spend a few hours in.

Thinking on what might help her best in the immediate future, she investigated beginning dance classes. Quickly she discovered that Elcatrin had been right. It was something she found coming naturally to her. The pod training itself allowed her to about triple training speed, so the two hours would be like six, but with here natural synergies with martial arts and parkour, she went through more like 18 hours of training. Still well short of being able to test into a skill level in the game. Skills that you got credit for knowing in the real world started at a skill level of 10. Although she had no idea exactly where she was at, based on other skills, she would say no better than a 2-3.

Coming out of the pod, Lucia looked around to make sure there was no one watching her. At this point, the coast seemed clear. Step one complete.

Looking at her physical metrics on her phone showed her that the dance workout was rated as moderately strenuous and with her earlier activity escaping the two men, she was going toward strenuous for the day without any regular workouts at all

She wandered the interior of the library looking for what she needed for step two, and eventually identified a candidate.

“I loveeee Pink Pony!” she gushed at the woman in the pink hoody in approximately her size. This statement was, it should not need to be said, false. Even as a young kid she hated things like it. “I’ll double, no triple what you paid for it if you let me buy it.”

Seeing as the clothing wasn’t even particularly new, the offer was accepted, and soon enough Lucia was walking out of the library with the hoody pulled up. Her pace was good for a walk but well short of a run. She had thought about her next step and decided that going home was too much to risk. The bus station was more than a mile away. Of the main three possible ways out of town without a car, it would likely be the least watched. Taking the bus between cities didn’t have a particularly good reputation.

Knowing that it was something that a drone might be programed to look for, she changed her gait to one that was an amalgamation of her in game stealth walk and her qigong circle walking. It wasn’t particularly natural, but no one looked closely at her. On the way to the bus station, she bought a ticket, using a VPN and false name, to the bus departing the soonest after she reached the station. They never IDed on the buses, another reason to take it. The ticket was to a Charleston, S.C., about perpendicular to the NoosCorp facility north of D.C. where she was supposed to report to for work. That could be addressed later.

When the bus eventually pulled out, Lucia finally felt herself beginning to relax, and with that all the questions she had been suppressing began to come up for her. Why had she been targeted? Obviously her new job. Had she taken the place of someone who wanted to get back at her? It seemed drastic. Why had the men said that an AI more advanced than the drone might be possibly helping her? Most of all though, how had she, a restaurant hostess in real life behaved more like her game character? The things she had done almost instinctively were not individually beyond her capabilities but the only place she’d been faced with scenarios like it was in the game. It was very strange how instinctively it had come to her, almost like her brain was in overdrive.