Terra
“So… we’re all made up? People use controller-things to move us around?” Several of us had thrown up, and I was on my third bottle of whatever ‘mead’ was as Elle finished explaining what she’d discovered. Apparently, her access to the ‘Net’ had accessed some sort of higher dimension where we didn’t even physically exist—the thought of being run around like the Enclave had likely treated Luisa sent periodic chills down my spine. “Essentially. Here, look at this.” Video footage popped up on screen, showing Snake being moved around some sort of pre-war industrial area as someone spoke over it, afforded a strange birds-eye view on what looked like real footage.
“Well… what does that mean for us? If we’re not even real… what’s the point of the mission?” Jude swept into the room, clad in a slightly dusty set of red and black robes, pipe lit.
“Who cares? It’s not like we can do anything about it, and I don’t feel like I’m dying, so we should just keep going. Maybe this Hermaeus guy will know something.” Elle lifted a shoulder; James had moved over to stand in front of an unlit fireplace, occasional puffs of smoke rising over his shoulder.
“She’s right. Hermaeus Mora is the god of all kinds of cursed knowledge, and in this mangled dimension-timeline thing he might know a bit more than normal—but, if this world still operates off of the same rules as the video game version,” She jumped out of her seat, and marched confidently towards the staircase—it didn’t take long for the rest of us to follow. Out onto some sort of shoreline, a chilly and ice-capped sea stretched far to the north as Elle led our motley crew towards a town that lay around a ridge; near a tunnel carved into a rockface, she moved back and forth near a specific set of rocks—the townspeople didn’t interact much beyond a few glances and rambling about the inn or weird dreams—until, with a squeak, she leaned down and stuck her arm through the ground.
“Knew it. Oh, is—whoa.” None of us could see what she was doing, but all of a sudden a strange box appeared in the air in front of me simultaneous with her turning and holding out a small red bottle to me. It was magical, or technological, and inside a dark gray square, text formed that read ‘Elle wishes to trade Potion of Minor Healing. Accept?’ alongside two other, smaller boxes reading ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ “Uh…” I poked the ‘Yes’ with my finger, and a smaller box appeared beside it alongside a noise in my ear as the potion appeared in my hand, then vanished into something the small box called my ‘inventory.’
“We’re in a fucking video game. This is a chest for a traveling merchant that you can access by looking in the right spot—there’s more, too. If there are other non-canon people here, they may not know how to do this stuff. We need to get to either Winterhold or Windhelm—Winterhold is gonna be a cold one, though. If there’s an inventory screen, maybe…” She appeared to tap the air several times, swiping back and forth before grinning, explaining how to open the map, and vanishing with a pop! Figuring she’d gone to Winterhold, I tapped through the boxes and pressed on a marker with the same label—instead of the magical travel Jude and Siobhan did, I just appeared in the new place, a similar-sized town that also had a series of ruins leading to a sheer cliff; nearby, across a perilously-hanging bridge, sat a stone structure where various colored flashes of light would shine through windows or off of balconies. It was definitely cold, and I spotted Elle near the door to some sort of building as the others began to appear behind me.
“In here. Warm, and they have liquor.” Inside was a cozy-if-barebones stone and wood affair, tables lining the walls and framing a cooking spit in the center, with a bar at one end and various doors leading to sparse bedrooms; the bar didn’t have any seats, so I snagged a big enough table and shook some of the snow from my coat as the others joined me.
“Crazy, right? You think everyone has these box-things?” Zed, having donned her armor again, shrugged from beside me.
“Doubt it. Maybe just the people like us, y’know? Why not have some fun with it, eh? I dug around—there’s a whole section of the menus for magic, not to mention whatever a ‘level up’ is.” Elle interrupted, returning with a wooden plate laden down with mugs and setting it carefully on the table—various drinks floated to those able to do so, while I settled for lighting a cigarette and snagging one manually.
“If you get enough experience points—usually from improving a skill or killing enemies—you level up. You can increase your magic, stamina, and health. Would any of you like at least the basic chrome, to access the Net? I have enough components on me for that.” After a few drinks, I joined the others in agreeing and, one-by-one, we each followed her into one of the rooms. I was second to last, entering and directed to sit on the edge of a hay-and-animal fur bed as Elle fiddled with something in her hands.
“Gonna be a shock at first, but you’ll adjust fast. Here, lean your head back.” I did so, trying not to blink as she delicately lowered a small, slightly glowing circle onto one of my eyes—simultaneously, a stabbing pain struck the side of my head that was quickly replaced by a burning heat as something was inserted, then burned into place. As the thing on my eye adhered, the vision blurred briefly before clearing to reveal words seemingly hovering in front of my vision: Kiroshi Firm-Tech 8.1.
“Looks like it’s working. Uh… this is gonna feel a little weird, okay?” Without warning, a spark of light shot across my vision as she plugged in her wrist-cable-thing to whatever she’d just stabbed into my head; for a brief moment, it felt as though I was floating, then registered the room from a different—her—perspective, senses crossed with hers until they resettled into my own skin alongside a very hi-tech looking overlay on my vision.
“Have fun navigating—and, you’re routing through me, so I see everything you search until you figure out how to build a firewall.” A blip appeared on my vision bearing her name, which, when I focused on it, opened into a screen—browser, according to an informational box that appeared next to it.
“I downloaded a basic user tutorial as well; that’s the data for what I was looking at before.” The webpage loaded into some sort of list, bearing a range of topics centered onto ‘Skyrim,’ the game we were currently inside.
“You can also send messages to others in the system—visual, text, or audio. C’mon, I gotta do Jude’s still.” Back in the main room, I drank some more mead and sparked a cigarette off of James’, who was doing something on his Kiroshi—there was a sub-process that was downloading what appeared to be slang directly into my head, as well as a package of languages so that I could auto-translate at will.
“Going to be heading north, across the Sea of Ghosts. That’ll be the earliest shot we get at this elder god.” Jude, the last, stepped out with Elle and moved over to the table before Jude paused, cyborg thumping into the seat next to me and rolling her eyes at Zed.
“I told you I can see what you’re doing, right?” In an instant, two things happened: Jude’s sword appeared in her hands, readied above her head, as the roof vaporized into ashes and a massive metallic arm struck down at us. Sparks scattered in every direction as blade met steel—she’d caught the arm of what my Kiroshi scanned as a transformer (giant metal robot people) named Megatron—one of our enemies. With a titanic heave, the arm was thrown back only for it to be sliced off by a well-thrown lightsaber; smoke cleared to reveal a snarling robot face as townspeople began to scream in fear. In that moment, I truly realized what we were up against. Beings from other universes, like we were, far larger and stronger than a mutated Enclave sleeper agent—seconds after that thought, another struck me. If things were a bit loose in whatever a quangle was, then why not try to see what I could do? A quick search of ‘metal’ and ‘super-power’ gave me what I was looking for, and my head jerked to the side as a shock of electricity to my brain briefly blinded me—but when the other arm aimed a massive cannon down into the exposed inn, it froze completely.
“Nice.” With a straining, clenched jaw, I forced my hand in a throwing motion, watching with satisfaction as Megatron staggered backward, then groaning as a building was crushed under his fall.
“Sorry, still learning. Y’all should try this Internet shit, it’s insane.” In another instant, a terrific idea occurred to me, and when I leapt out of the roof to continue my assault, I was met with a fleeing plane-thing that was leaking green fluid—coward. Landing gently back where I’d started, I did a joking bow and ignored the needling pain that went along with what I’d managed to pull off—I was downloading stuff to my brain, which in this case could technically be referred to as modifying my save file, to use Elle’s lingo.
“What…” a small line of smoke poured out of one of my nostrils as two hundred wheels of cheese appeared around me, and I shook my head rapidly as my brain began to grow very hot.
“Urgh… shit, maybe this wasn’t my best idea.” A sneeze shot twin jets of fire out of my nose, causing the heat to dissipate and the others to calm down significantly, though most were still in awe.
“I have no idea what you just did. Can one of your teleport us, now that you have the technology?”
“Well, shit.” The six of us were standing in a semicircle, looking down at a body, and smoking. Blood coated the ice nearby in the iceberg this ‘Signus’ guy had lived in, his mutilated remains preserved in the chilling cold where he’d been gutted in his chair.
“Any clues?” A cursory search revealed nothing, smoke wafting up to the entrance in clouds that made the cow snort with distaste as it—wait, what? Six weapons were drawn, all of us simultaneously noticing the cow that had not been standing on the icy ramp that led down to Signus’ final resting place when we’d arrived.
“Do… did the cow do it?” Jude did some sort of magic, then refocused on the cow, sword ready.
“Hello?” Shocking all of us, instead of mooing, the cow stood up on it’s hind legs, leaned it’s head back and vomited up a completely dry person in a horrific suit before the cow turned into some sort of bug-cloud and swirled off towards the surface, leaving the person on the ground to slowly pick themselves up and smile down at us with far too many teeth. At our confused and nonplussed faces, he sighed and jumped twenty feet down to our level, landing in our midst and bowing.
“Wonderful to meet new friends! Why do you want to kill my dearest sibling?” He drew close to me, and the scent of some sort of salty meat wafted from his grossly hot breath.
“Without inviting me?!”