carl@fire

Then he stopped and tipped it up again. Nah, I'd probably just blow myself across the zone and have to run all the way back. If that's even the kinda thing I can use more than once without having to recharge it somehow. He considered the matter. Maybe I can make it spray a little water out the top like a…

Water began shooting out the tip of the spear, raining down in a wide area like it was some sort of fountain.

Carl grinned. Nice. He jammed the butt of the spear into the soft dirt at the side of the road, then started rubbing his face clean under the rain of water. Yup, too much realism. Shouldn't have to take a freaking shower after I kill one mob. He tried rubbing the suit jacket he was wearing, but the blood was absolutely not coming out, so he took it off and threw it off into the woods where he imagined it'd probably disappear or something. He examined the rest of his clothes. And of course everything under it is all bloody. He sighed. Now I'm gonna have to figure out new clothes and shoes if I ever need to talk to people again or else they're gonna role-play me. I guess I can always move myself back to Ingrid's to pick up my boots once enough time passes, but that's still gonna be a while.

He looked down. Oops.

Mina's body was getting a little soggy under the continued shower from his spear.

He put his hand on the shaft of his pretty cool weapon. Good work, buddy. Gonna need you to stop that sp…

As though he'd shut off a faucet, the spray of water immediately ceased.

"Huh." Carl gave his spear an approving nod. "Maybe this water god guy was a pretty cool guy, even if I'm not gonna read up on all the lore to figure it all out. Good job on the implementation, Roger."

He bent down and grabbed the drenched, headless, teeth-marked corpse, then hefted it over his shoulder. It began to drip down on him. Feels not great, man. He picked his spear up with his other hand and started back towards the car, which had continued on for quite some distance.

Yeah, definitely worse than giving Bobby a ride on my shoulders. I bet Mina'd be about the same size, though; she's pretty small. When she's got a head, I mean.

Carl grimaced. What am I even doing. I guess I'm not really…focusing on…my problems that much…

He paused for a moment, then shrugged and started walking again. Seems good. I sent out a department mail yesterday telling everyone to take my headband off if they ever see me in here with it on past one, and I've got my file-maker script going, so I guess I can just do whatever for a while.

Carl had taken precautions before playing this time. He'd sent out a department mail to all of IT, and he'd also set up a local cron job to run a script which would, beginning at seven every day, create an empty file in the directory /home/c.weathers/time at five minute intervals after creating an initial startup file. Each file would be named with the timestamp of its creation time to save him the hassle of checking, and the script would automatically clean the directory both upon starting and after creating two hundred and twenty eight files—which it would achieve at midnight, its time of exit. It wasn't an exact clock, but he was pretty sure it would…

He frowned. I guess I didn't actually test it, did I. I mean, it's just local files, so the game can't screw that up, right?

He began to walk faster, though this was totally unrelated to his current line of thinking. I just gotta check, that's all.

He set the corpse down on the passenger side of the bench seat, tossed his spear back into his inventory while wondering why he'd carried it all the way over to his current location, then stood back up. "Dismiss," he said, banishing the inventory window. "Keyboard."

His most reliable companion appeared—slightly too low as always, since it was positioned for the average height of Engineering and not based on his own height. He raised it up, then entered a quick command to list the contents of his time directory, filtered to only display the last-created file. The result appeared in the accompanying terminal window.

/home/c.weathers/time/11:55

Carl sighed in relief. I logged in a couple minutes before noon, so it makes perfect sense that…

Carl frowned. I've been in-game way more than a couple minutes. What the heck is going on here? He entered another command. The script is running… He hesitated. Maybe it just feels like I've been in-game for a while but it's only been a minute because I've just been driving around and thinking. Thinking a lot always makes time feel like it's going slower, doesn't it?

He started nodding to himself despite the obvious flaw in his reasoning. Yeah, that must be it. He knew that probably wasn't what had happened, but he was pretty set on trying to unwind just a little and not worrying about some minor problem that didn't seem like it would have much of an immediate downside since he'd already taken precautions.

And he could log out whenever he wanted. He didn't do that right now, of course, since he was still very much not-relaxed, but he definitely could log out at any point if he chose. He wasn't worried about that even the tiniest bit.

Carl chucked his keyboard away as he so very much enjoyed doing, watching it vanish as it reached the maximum allowable distance from his character model. Then he stretched a little.

I guess it's a good thing I'm not wearing shoes or whatever now or they'd be all soggy. He walked around, got back into the driver's side of the car, and grimaced once again as he wrapped his arm around the wet, blood-drenched body. Mina, I know you've gotta deal with your stuff, and I wish I could help somehow, but this is pretty gross.

Carl's hand squelched unpleasantly against her shirt as he started driving again. He reached the car's top speed and maintained it. Probably don't wanna hang around here if those things are lurking nearby. Not really looking to farm the whole zone trying to protect a body. Pretty sure this isn't a starter zone either considering I just got ten levels from killing one dog-wolf-stegosaurus thing. Oh, well, I don't really have the patience to play through this thing from the start normally anyway.

A long period of time passed and Carl managed to zone out as the car rocketed along. He found himself enjoying the peace and quiet of the scenery as it blurred past. Only the top edge of the big sun was visible over the horizon, providing what he imagined was probably only the most minimal of illumination. There were a bunch of stars and maybe a moon or whatever visible overhead, but Carl had never been too into astronomy.

Another signpost eventually came into view, and Carl slowed to read it.

Alright, that's another town name—not interested—or Stadal, which could be just about anything. Guess I'm heading to Stadal. Carl took the road which looked to be very well-traveled and again accelerated.

The scenery changed again, going from the hilly, forested zone of wherever he'd been driving since he'd had his first monster encounter to a flatter, less forested zone that had much patchier grass interspersed with plains of mud.

Carl stared as a lizard-y-looking thing flew overhead, shot lightning from a horn at a flock of birds, and flew through their bodies as they dropped out of the sky to grasp some number of them in its talons. What the heck.

The night—twenty eight thirty, according to the in-game clock—seemed to be in full swing. A variety of creatures inhabited this new zone, from large frog-things to confusingly-small, possibly-hippopotamus-things, to a tall, wingless, glowing bird that he slowed to watch as it shot some goo onto a hippo-thing and then squawked loudly as it moved towards it, and then Carl sped up because things started to get too real again.

But it was still interesting and distracting, which Carl appreciated. He passed a group of people along the way, but he wasn't about to stop since then he'd have to explain why he was driving around with the headless corpse of a girl who was actually a princess, and probably people were gonna start role-playing, and then he'd have to…

Well, it just seemed tiring, so he didn't stop, even when one of them waved their hands at him like they needed help or whatever.

Carl wasn't in here to be helpful and rescue people. He was just trying to chill out a bit and escape the continuing stress of his daily life for a just a few freaking minutes, even though he wasn't gonna think about how long he was actually in-game for at this exact moment considering it seemed like several hours had already passed since he'd logged in.

Things were going perfectly according to the non-plan he'd made to drive until he felt like stopping, right up until the car stopped before he felt like stopping.

What the heck… He pressed the steam pedal and released it, then repeated the action several times until it became clear to him that there was no more steam forthcoming. You gotta be kidding me. A car breakdown in a freaking game?

Carl blew out a long breath. I guess Mina did say she wasn't sure how long it'd last. I can't be too upset at that. He looked around. The mud-and-grass plains seemed to be giving way to a drier climate with more sparse vegetation. Also a little hotter. That's a plus; it was kinda cold driving so fast with my clothes all wet before.

He moved his right arm, stretching it a bit to restore the feeling as he'd slowed to do every so often along the drive, then glanced over at his "passenger". She's gonna have a heck of a run back when she logs back in… She'll probably be fine with it. Seemed like she'd rather be anywhere but there. Not like I'm running away with her car or anything.

Still, though… He looked around again. Not a lot of mobs that I can see, but they're probably just waiting underground or something to annoy me. Today's definitely one of those kinds of days.

Carl drummed on the steering wheel as he pondered his circumstances. He knew a little about cars, but not enough that he'd bother popping the hood of his own car if it ever broke down. The current situation seemed like it would be even less benefited by such an action considering he didn't know how to use magic.

Or did he?

Maybe it's some kinda mental control thing. Like, if I just think about really hot things…

Carl thought about fire while grasping the steering wheel. He thought about volcanoes. He thought about, uh, stars? Because they were pretty hot. Also the sun. His car's heater seemed to also be…

Nope, not working. Maybe if I… "Heat," Carl called. "Fire. Fireball. Cast heat. Activate: fire. Fire activate. Fire, uh, energy?" He continued to call out fire and heat-related terms and potential keywords for some time.

Nothing worked. He'd tried literally every possible way of using magic in existence, and it was impossible for him to use it.

He was sure of that much.

It wasn't that he'd given up or gotten fatigued. Definitely not.

Games are so tiring nowadays. Carl sighed, not for the first time. No clue where I am, no idea where I'm going… "Keyboard."

He moved his keyboard up into place, having to twist around to his left to type since the steering wheel was practically touching his chest, and there was a player corpse resting against his right side. Then he checked his time directory.

/home/c.weathers/time/11:55

Carl again decided not to think about why the next file hadn't been created. Just gonna annoy me the more I think about it. I know if I log out to check it's gonna be like, one minute before I'd have had to log out anyway, and then I'll check and all the files are gonna be there. Like when I wake off just before my alarm goes off in the morning. That minute's important. If I wanted a minute less sleep, I'd have set the alarm to go off a minute earlier.

He chucked his keyboard away, an overhead throw this time that spun it end over end until it disappeared.

His vision darkened at that moment. I guess the nightvision potion ran out. Good timing, I guess, but kinda annoying since it's so dark out. Should I take another one? What would I even do with it?

He thought. Really don't feel like walking right now, but…

An idea occurred to him, and he brought his head up. That's probably a good idea, actually. "Friend list."

The window appeared before him above the steering wheel.

Ir'alith Khir Turuhm

BobTheGreatest

Offline

Mina

Offline

➤ FE 0/2 Online

"Message: Ir'alith," he called.

"Message activated," the game's androgynous voice announced.

"Hey, Ir'alith," Carl said, scratching his beard. "My c—if you're not too busy, I could use your help with something."