NOVEL NEXT Reverie – One
“So, you might want to give it a try,” Harley said, and picked a piece of tomato out of his salad to bite into. “Since you’re always looking for little apps and things you can do quick videos about. It has more complexity than I’d expect from an idle game to fill in the odd moment of boredom. Graphics are cute, gameplay is solid for what it is, no stress, and you can do the dog version or the cat version. I’m probably going to do a proper review soon, but I have... I think it’s three sponsored articles to write first.” He grinned across the table at Marisa. “Besides, that gives me a chance to hear your thoughts before I do.”
Marisa rolled her eyes, but returned the grin. “I can take a hint. I’ll check it out. Not that you know my weaknesses or anything.”
“You talked me into agreeing to let you foster rescue cats, with the understanding that you’re going to want to adopt once your income is stable enough to do it responsibly. Your bedroom is half fantasy posters and half cat posters, and your computer wallpaper and screensaver both involve cats. I don’t think it takes a degree in psychology to know that you like cats, Ris. Not that I’m complaining. I never really appreciated them before. The house would probably feel pretty empty these days without one.”
Marisa used her fork to cut off a bite of her battered fish fillet. “Muahaha, I have successfully inducted you into the cat-lover cult. Before you know it, your phone will be ninety percent cat pics.” She glanced up and smiled. “Hey, Claudia! Was wondering whether you’d gotten so wrapped up in a project that you forgot about lunch.”
Several people in the restaurant glanced in Claudia’s direction as she passed their tables. First they registered the presence of an attractive blonde woman in a close-fitting knee-length raspberry-coloured dress under a black leather jacket; then they noticed that from just below her right knee down to the top of her ankle-height boot, they could see only a complex cylinder of steel and black.
Women being evaluated on sex appeal generally irritated Marisa, but Claudia enjoyed drawing attention, and Marisa couldn’t deny that she was well worth a second look. She still wanted to smack the ones who hastily looked away. That wasn’t respect prompting it.
Honestly, beside Claudia, Marisa tended to feel a bit mousy. She was shorter, less curvy and possibly just a little overweight though she tried to stay active and it was easier to eat right more often when sharing meals, her short hair straight and black, her skin too light to match her Indian grandmother’s pleasant brown although she rather wished it did since her Nani was, in many ways, still her hero. It didn’t seem to bother anyone else—she’d had people of all genders, both in person and in the comments of her videos, make that abundantly clear—and she was comfortable enough with herself to make videos frequently. Mostly it was just when she compared herself to Claudia that she felt, well, like she came up a bit short.
Harley, well... gender divisions were stupid, but she still never found herself feeling like that with him. He was also taller than her, his build wiry and he didn’t seem to gain weight no matter what; the soft light rosy-brown of his skin contrasted nicely, she thought, with his short dark hair. He was always immaculately clean and shaved and dressed, usually in neat jeans with a dress shirt of any colour, although he’d unbend as far as a T-shirt under extremely casual conditions. With a short-sleeved shirt, like today’s, the tattoo on one forearm was visible, an intricate knot that she knew she couldn’t reproduce in reality because she’d tried, but Harley could in no time flat. Several times, people had assumed that he was the one who did videos and she wrote blog posts, not the other way around.
“Not a chance,” Claudia said cheerfully. She leaned down to give Harley’s cheek a fleeting kiss, letting her ever-present laptop bag slide down her arm to her left hand, and set the bag on an empty chair before slipping her right arm around Marisa’s shoulders for a quick hug. If her smallest finger was missing on that side, so what? Her nails were painted in an iridescent shade that matched her dress and her lips. “Not when I need beta-testers.”
“For this big secret project you and the others have been working on?” Marisa said. “I’m perfectly happy to keep telling my followers that your utility apps are stable and practical and easy for even beginners to use, which is what they’re usually looking for, and the games are fun, but you did tell us ages ago that they’re to pay the bills while you’re developing something spectacular.”
“I really hope so,” Harley said. “I can hardly wait to see what an all-witch dev team can come up with. The traditional apps are well done, but nothing that any good dev team couldn’t do. Nine assorted witches, on the other hand... I’m expecting more. Preferably something worth the fact that I rarely get to see you anymore.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Claudia said. “I miss us spending time together, too, and I wish I had more time to get to know Marisa better. But there really is a reason. Promise me you won’t repeat any of this to anyone ever?” She paused to accept a glass of water from the waitress and told her, “I don’t need the menu. Sweet Thai chicken wrap, please, with the fries, and cola. Thanks.” Only once the waitress had left did she look back at the other two.
“No gossip goes without saying,” Harley said. “I’ve lost count of how many non-disclosure agreements I’ve signed. You know I can keep my mouth shut.”
Marisa nodded. “Of course.”
Claudia glanced around them. The restaurant was fairly full, given the time of day and the reasonably good food at tolerable prices, but everyone nearby was deep in their own conversations. She leaned forward anyway. “It’s a kind of enhanced augmented reality,” she said, her voice lower than before. “And oh, man, we broke so much amazing new ground figuring out how to integrate the different components seamlessly together. There’s a small bit of hardware, a box you can hold in one hand, that creates an interface between up to three phones and a witchy charge, like a secondary battery and connection in one. The app on your phone interfaces with that and shapes the base power. Right now, what we have is a straightforward game, but it’s a whole new way to play. There is nothing even close out there. The details come from some questions the app asks you when you start. It has a mind-witch component so it actually matches with what you visualize while answering the questions. It’s within all legal guidelines in most English-speaking countries and some others, I promise, we don’t want anyone feeling like we’re spying. The illusion component creates the effects in the enviroment around you, without any need to look at everything through your phone. The mind-witch component allows you to interact with the illusions as though they’re real.”
“That sounds incredibly impressive,” Harley said. “It would genuinely change the whole face of technology and have some mind-boggling applications. If it’s real. Sorry, but I’ve heard claims like that before.”
“I know. Everyone has. Any day now, they’ll figure out how to genuinely integrate witchiness with technology.” Completely unfazed, Claudia grinned, her blue eyes dancing. “But we’ve actually done it, and I’ll prove it. I talked to the others. We’re still running on whatever we can make from the traditional apps. We really want to do some sponsorship deals to promote it but we’re still working out the funding on that. Once we have a working and beta-tested prototype we might look at crowdfunding so we can do a first run of the hardware, and if we do that, we’ll make sure the budget allows for advertising, and the best way to do that is to sponsor people who already have an appropriate audience, right? But we can’t afford that right now. On the other hand, you two can have the first official reviews of something that is going to be totally new. You can have the inside story, too, if you want it—other than some proprietary details.”
“Obviously.” Marisa knew Harley: Claudia had emphatically captured his interest.
“But it’s really meant to work best for two people playing together—if there’s a third, they can interact but they’re not part of the customization and adapting beyond their own avatar, because we haven’t yet been able to reach a point where it can fully process three unique input streams. Plus we do want feedback from someone who’s more about usability for the average user as well as someone who’s more specialized in the technical side. So I suggested to the rest of the gang that we have two very good friends who are both good at this stuff and would be a perfect fit and could absolutely be trusted to stick to the NDA no matter what.” She batted her mascara-darkened blonde eyelashes at them playfully. “Because if we’re going to get in bed with anyone, well, better with friends than strangers, eh?”
“Agreed,” Harley said, though the joke did elicit a brief smile. “I’m not a fan of people sponsoring their own reviews. Things get messy. And I’d rather only accept sponsorship when I can honestly recommend the product or service or whatever in question.”
Marisa nodded. “That goes for both of us. If this test goes well, then yeah, sponsoring a video from me and an article from Harley will be fine, I’m sure, but not the review.”
“I’m certain you know,” Harley added, “but your partners do understand that neither of us will lie, even for friends or a company we generally support, and we both have an obligation to our followers to tell the absolute truth?”
“Well, yeah, of course,” Claudia said. “I wouldn’t hang out with you, if you were selling positive reviews with a price list for what each star out of ten costs. They know. We’re that confident that you’ll be impressed.”
Marisa and Harley traded glances. Over a year of close friendship, sharing a house while they both got established, and mutual support with their respective avenues of creating content, was enough to make it easy to read: both were interested, and both knew they were both interested.
“This weekend?” Marisa suggested. “I’ll get my regular video up Friday morning. I can field comments on my phone for a while, then let my mods take over and have a bit of freedom to indulge myself in a new game for a good cause. I’ll try to get some work done ahead by then, even, so I don’t need to worry so much about time.”
“Sounds like a viable plan,” Harley said. “My next couple of articles are already set up so I’m working with my buffer right now. If I get a bit caught up in something new and cool, it won’t be catastrophic.”
“Awesome!” Claudia said happily. “I’ll catch you Friday at lunch with the NDA, which apparently we have to actually do even if we trust you, and the hardware, and send you the link to the most up-to-date version of the app right after that. Make sure you have a lot of space free, it’s pretty big. I’ll check the current size and text you later, although it will probably still fluctuate right up until you download it. Send me all the specs on your phones, please, just so I can make sure that it’s all compatible.” She tilted her head to one side. “Do you even care what the game is about?”
“Not really,” Harley said. “I’d do it anyway.”
“Unless you’re planning to plunge me into really disgusting horror,” Marisa said, “or a sports game with rules I don’t understand, or some sort of brain-dead strictly-hetero dating sim, then I should be fine with it.”
“Brain-dead non-hetero dating would be okay?” Claudia laughed. “Nah, it’s none of those things. Honestly, the game itself is fairly basic, because this is really more just proof that we can do the technical side than proof we can write a spectacular story. Mostly it’s a series of puzzles that will adapt themselves to your preferences and your real-world environment, but the game is going to use a loose premise to give it a sort of flexible framing concept and theme—depending on what you tell it at the beginning and what you visualize, it could be anything from sci-fi to noir to fairy tale or anything else. We’ve all tried it with no complications, and a healer-witch married to one of our mind-witches scanned us all just in case. No side effects. We don’t have a morph-witch or anything like that, anyway, no one who does changes to the physical world except our wright-witch who shaped the hardware prototypes, and it can’t last longer than the hardware charge no matter what. What’s the worst that could happen?”