“We bought the island for the equivalent of 60 guilders, an absolute bargain.”

There was not enough silver polish in the world to remove the rat essence from my mother’s locket and after the 14th time I had buffed every arc and curve, I contemplated shutting it away in a drawer with the three stupid tokens it had earned me.

But I couldn’t and back it went around my neck. One day soon I hoped not to remember in crystal-clear detail what I had gone through to get it back, but that day had not yet come.

The momentary burst of courage I felt when I faced down the rat hadn’t taken root and so I was skittish in my selection of the next few Quests, staying within the safe parameters of fetching tchotchkes from random stores around town. It was boring and I knew it, but I couldn’t bring myself to venture outside of my Questing comfort zone.

Besides, what was the point of this whole exercise? I was still half-convinced that this was an elaborate marketing campaign for some new game (maybe even my own company’s) and if so, I probably wouldn’t even have cared. Any game that spent this much on advertising was probably going to be something incredible. Or a PR nightmare. “Woman sues gaming company after catching rabies from rat.” Heh.

But I was growing tired of the fetch Quests for random junk. And I was tired of watching my stack of wooden and iron tokens grow taller bit by bit with absolutely no idea of what to do with them. Fortunately, good things come to those who wait, because one night when I went to check the Quests, there was a new section:

“D. Quester Profile”

I hit D and a new screen appeared:

“Quester: JadePhoenix42

Quests completed: 11

Tokens earned: 23 wood, 2 iron

Level: 1

Token experience: 27

Level up: 30”

Now we’re talking! If there’s one thing that will get someone to keep playing a game, it’s the sense of making progress. It doesn’t matter if it’s steps on an endless, meaningless ladder, people will continue to climb even after their fingers are numb and their wallets are empty. It’s one of the directives we received from the higher-ups at work: keep the fish coming back for more.

And now they had a hook in me too. As much as I wanted to think that I was immune to such tactics, in truth it activated the same dopamine trigger in my brain like everyone else. Show me that I’m three experience away from the next level and I’ll play all night to get there.

I clicked from the profile screen to the Quest list to look for something that would get me there in one hit: either a three wood for three experience or a two iron for four. I scrolled through several pages, looking for the perfect Quest that would elevate me. Finally, on the fifth page, I found one that stood apart from all the others:

“Testing out a new shell game in Times Square. If you win, or even if you don’t, I’ll give you two iron. Come by the northwest corner of 47th and Broadway tomorrow at 2 PM.”

I clicked quickly to accept. Two iron for losing at an obvious con game was a no-brainer, and I didn’t want anyone to grab it first. Plus, I would actually get to meet a fellow Quester in the flesh.

Eleven Quests in and I still hadn’t made contact with the people whose Quests I had completed, or Requesters, as I had dubbed them. My standard operating procedure was to have the token sent to the front desk of my office building, which was 70 stories tall and afforded me anonymity from potentially crazy Requesters.

I had to sweet talk the security guy to be on the lookout for envelopes addressed to JadePhoenix42. It took a bunch of cups of coffee, plus some borderline flirting, but he finally agreed. I’m sure he thought the whole thing was a poor attempt at covering up a pot delivery, but thankfully he never opened any of the envelopes. And, after all, this was Manhattan, the land where people hired other people to do every menial task they couldn’t be bothered with.

Now I know the Quest said that win or lose, I would still get the two iron, but that didn’t stop me from looking up all ways to win the shell game or its cousin, three-card monte.

You could just refuse to play the game, knowing that you were going to be cheated, but that didn’t seem appropriate. You could delusionally convince yourself that you could follow the correct shell all the way to the end, but somewhere along the way you would miss the trick and lose everything. Or, you could just trust your fate to the goddess of chance and guess a shell at random. That seemed to be the best option at the end of the day.

I sat at my desk all morning, watching the minutes tick by, until finally it was 1:30, and I darted out to the subway. When I got to the Times Square station, I bounded up the stairs and into the madness of thousands of people looking up at giant billboards while walking very slowly. Finally, I arrived at the designated corner. Which was empty. I looked at my watch and then at my phone to make sure I wasn’t late. I wasn’t. In fact, it was precisely 2:00 on the dot. I pulled out my phone again, trying to access the Quest Board to see if I had misread the Quest when I suddenly felt something sharp push into my back.

I turned and looked down, half expecting to see a bloody knife sticking out of me, but it was just a cardboard box. A sharp box at that, but still only a box. Phew. I stepped back as the box was lowered to the ground by its owner, who I could now see was a young girl who couldn’t have been more than 12.

“Oh, hey! Sorry about that! Are you Jade?” the girl asked cheerfully. She was on the shorter side, with blond hair done up in pigtails, big gold hoops in her ears, and a denim knapsack on her back.

“Umm, yeah, that’s me, and you are?”

“I’m Polly!”

The girl stuck out her hand, which I reluctantly took, and she gave me a vigorous handshake.

“Of course you are,” I said. “Aren’t you a little, err, young to be trying to scam people out here? I was expecting someone who looked a little more like your typical grifter. You know, worn face, missing teeth, poorly made leather jacket.”

She frowned, and let go of my hand.

“I’m not so young, I’ll be 11 next week!”

“OK, OK, sorry I asked. And happy birthday I guess. So, are you going to show me this trick of yours, or what? I need to head back to work soon.”

Polly bent down to push the box toward the Starbucks near the corner and I walked with her as she positioned it just so.

“Yes, yes, have a little patience, lady. I need a few minutes to set up.”

Polly plopped down her backpack on the box and began rummaging inside. I tried to look away to avoid the passing judgment of the Starbucks patrons filtering in and out of the store, but no one seemed to pay any attention to us.

“So, Polly. You been Questing long?”

The girl looked up at me as if I was her grandma asking how to use an iPhone.

“Whatever gave you the idea that I was that desperate?”

“Well, uh, because you’re posting Quests on the Board?”

“Right, exactly. I’m paying you. Not the other way around. If one day we ran out of money then I gueesssss I would have to start from the bottom like you. But if that ever happens, shoot me. Can you imagine, me, a Janssen, Questing? Ridiculous.”

Ohhh-kay then. Obviously what I thought was a simple question was actually laced with insulting underpinnings. This girl’s family was evidently a big deal in the Questing social circle, but what that circle even was, I had no clue, and was a tiny bit scared to ask more. I didn’t get the chance though, as Polly had finished setting up, and on the cardboard box were three identical shells, painted in bright pink. In front of them was a little blue ball that I guessed fit under the shells.

“All right, Jade. Time to play. Now, I’m not sure if I got all the kinks out, so that’s why I’m giving you two iron even if you lose. Which you probably will, just going to warn you.”

“I know, don’t worry about my ego. So how do I play?”

Polly smiled.

“Easy. I’m going to put the ball under one of these shells, like so.” She covered the ball with the leftmost shell. “Then I’ll shuffle all the shells around.” Her hands deftly swapped the leftmost and rightmost shells, then further swapped the rightmost shell, which had the ball, with the middle shell. “And now you guess under which shell the ball is hiding. This first one’s easy, so you should get it ... if you’re not a total idiot.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. The middle one.” I tapped it twice with my index finger for extra emphasis and she turned it over, revealing the ball.

“Very good! Well, not really. That’s the warm-up, the one you do to show the mar-errr, contestant that they have a chance. Now I’ll speed it up a bit, to see what you’ve got.”

Polly put the ball back under the middle shell and then began swapping at random with blazing speed. Sometimes she would move the shell to a different spot; other times, she would move it right back to where it was. Luckily my years of gaming had trained my eyes well and I spotted all of her feints and swaps with relative ease. So when the shells stopped and I pointed to the left one, I wasn’t surprised to see the ball underneath.

“Well done, lady. Most people usually can’t follow me that quickly. I think it’s time, though, for the real game to begin.”

The ball disappeared back under the left shell and off it went. The speed was even greater and I felt myself losing the ball several times. It was then that I noticed the tell. To move the shell with the ball required just a little more energy, which Polly’s hand betrayed ever so slightly. With that piece of intel, I stopped watching the shells and focused only on Polly’s hands. But when I confidently tapped the rightmost shell at the end of the round, it was empty.

“Ooh, so close. Care to go again?”

I cursed under my breath. I was not going to let this little punk best me so easily.

“Yes, let’s do it.”

This time I had the benefit of my hidden edge the whole round and, again, I felt sure that I had tapped the correct shell, only to come up empty-handed a second time.

“Again,” I said.

Polly just smiled as the shells began their dance anew.

Finally, after countless more rounds, I relented.

“Enough, enough. You are something else.”

“Why thank you Jade,” said Polly with a smile dripping in condescension. “You were watching my hands, weren’t you? That’s smart, but it won’t do you any good with these particular shells.”

“And why’s that?”

“Oh come now. If I told you that, I’d have to kill you, now wouldn’t I?”

I stared at her as she made her pronouncement with a matter-of-fact tone.

“Just kidding. Geez, can’t you take a joke? Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. If you can win the next round, I’ll not only show you how the shells work, but I’ll double your tokens. If you lose, you get nothing, plus you’ll owe me a favor. Do we have a deal?”

I didn’t give it a second thought.

“Done.”

Next: Jen dips her finger tip into the world of alchemy.