Van felt pretty excited as he realized he had just duped the sheriff. All he had to do was lead it to some kind of mountain range or place with tunnels and then he’d quickly escape. Preferably while laughing.
He turned and walked back up the hill to where he and Sang had been before the dragon arrived. He knew there would be some tunnel networks near the castle, which would be a fine place to ditch the Dragon. He felt the ground shake behind him as the sheriff followed him. Van glanced behind him to see that the sheriff was intensely looking at the boulder where the glitch had been. The sheriff had seemed to lose all interest in Van. He felt a hand suddenly cover his mouth, and another hand grab him harshly, dragging him back down the hill.
“Shhhh!” Sang said. “What’s it doing?”
“I dunno,” Van said as he rushed over to one of the scorched trees and crouched down. The sheriff was busy pawing at the boulder. Then, it gripped the massive stone and tore it out of the ground, promptly flying off with it and leaving them behind.
“Interesting,” Sang whispered.
“Ha—I bet that when it saw the bug, it probably somehow re-set it’s scripting or whatever!” Van said triumphantly. He’d never been so happy to see something end a quest so suddenly. He glanced at his experience bar and noticed that it hadn’t gone up at all, though. “Hmmm, maybe it’s not as much of a victory as I hoped. Look! No experience!”
“We’ll live,” Sang said. “Let’s get out of here before it comes back.”
“Where did you go, anyway? Why’d you bail on me?”
“Sorry, had to do some briefing with the team... CIA stuff... uh, very important,” Sang said.
Van cocked his head. It was a little odd, but for the first time ever, he saw her stumbling over an answer. That wasn’t like her at all. It made him feel as if she were up to something, but he had no idea of what he could say to confront her, and anyway, she was always up to something, wasn’t she, being in the CIA and quiet about whatever they were doing?
He still wanted to yell at her for leaving, but then again, honestly, if she was fine with leaving in the middle of a fight, so be it. He wasn’t really invested in this game anyway, so it wasn’t as if it was that big of a deal. This was her mission, and he was just along for the ride.
“Whatever,” he mumbled. “So, what’s the plan? We go to the mountain and investigate for glitches or whatever?”
“Yeah, that’s the exact plan,” Sang said. There was a quietness in her voice, though—a gentleness that hadn’t been there before. She sounded perplexed.
“What’s up? You seem off,” Van replied.
“Oh, I just had an interesting debriefing is all,” Sang said as they began to walk out of the forest and toward the village where the Dwarf NPC would be located.
“Care to share?” Van asked.
“No,” Sang replied. She wasn’t as stiff as usual, he realized, so something was definitely up.
“Come on, you can tell me a secret! I mean, let’s face it, I’m already up to my eyes in CIA secrets, so adding one more can’t hurt!” Van prodded her.
“No; leave it at that and move on,” Sang said as she pushed Van away and tried to walk a little faster.
“Something’s not adding up is all I’m saying,” Van said. “You say we’re here to investigate Draco, right? Then, next thing I know, we’re poking around and looking at glitches. When we find one, it’s all weird. Come on, what’s the truth? This some sort of terrorist thing? Like, are the glitches Al-Qaeda trying to blow us up in the game? And if we die in the game due to a terrorist attack, do we die in real life? What if this isn’t the game, but is in fact real life and the terrorists have somehow—”
“Enough!” Sang shouted, her voice echoing throughout the valley. “Van, I said I am not going to share, so I am not.
“But for once in your life, you look like you want to talk about something!” Van protested. “I can see it all over your face! The way you seem perplexed, the way you open your mouth to talk but then close it real fast. You’re burning up from the inside! Tell me! I won’t tell anyone!”
Sang sighed very deeply. “Log out, you jackass. We’ll talk.”
Van complied and logged out of the game, immediately feeling the sudden stiffness of his return to reality. He groaned as the haptic pod opened up. Sang was standing there.
“How are you able to get up so quickly?”
“I exercise, Van—you should try it sometime,” Sang replied as she grabbed him and hoisted him out.
“Come on,” she said as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the abandoned building and out through the back. There was a small black car sitting quietly by the rust-worn dumpsters.
“Get in,” she said as she opened up the passenger side door and threw him in. Was he being kidnapped? Kidnapped from being kidnapped? Did that count as a rescue? Did he even want to be rescued at this point? Honestly, the mission wasn’t bad so far, and while there was a lot of frustration with Sang, he was enjoying the real experience of being in one of those pods.
“So, what, are we going to get ice cream?” Van asked as she climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Enough, look. I’m going through a lot right now and you have a right to know.”
“Know what?” Van asked.
Sang took a deep breath and began to speak.
Van sat in the car next to Sang and just stared forward. He wasn’t particularly sure what to do with all of the information that she’d just unloaded on him. It seemed that she was very confused and unconvinced of anything she was saying... but at the same time, the way she was so out of sorts had convinced him that she was telling the truth, or at least what she knew of it. There would be no reason for her to lie to him. She wasn’t a particularly cheerful woman, and she didn’t seem interested in making jokes, so there was no room for error here. Whatever she was talking about, she believed it to be real.
“So… what do you think?” Sang asked quietly.
“Aliens? Maybe... I dunno. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but at the same time…” Van trailed off. He whispered, “There was this rumor a while back, like a long time ago. That when this game was first being developed, there was some kind of line of code that was discovered by a beta tester. It didn’t make any sense, you know? Like, it was all squiggles and stuff, and he posted a screenshot online once, but it was immediately taken down and no one ever heard about the beta tester again. There was this whole thing circulated on the internet for a while after that, saying how the code was some kind of alien message and Draco covered it up.”
“Really?” Sang asked, cocking her head.
“Yeah, I kid you not. I mean, you hear all kinds of rumors about this game, like the survivalist rumor we were talking about before. This one was extra spooky, right? But no reason to think anything of it. But now that you’re bringing this up… well, I saw some bugs a while back, too. Not particularly as strange as the constellation one, but definitely weird enough to warrant a few mentions.”
“So, you think it could be aliens?” Sang asked again.
“Look, I have no idea, but I’m open to the concept,” Van said. “I mean, I’ve looked up at the stars, in-game, of course, and asked if there was intelligent life out there. It definitely makes this job a whole lot more interesting.”
“So, you aren’t freaked out?”
“Freaked out? No. I mean, look, I spend all of my time playing in a fantasy world where literally anything can happen. Am I intrigued by the idea of there being actual aliens? Yes. Am I worried or startled by it? Not really. It’s about time the real world caught up with my own world. Aliens are cool—like, I love science fiction. Not as much as fantasy, but hey, whatever. It might actually make the real world interesting enough for me to want to be a part of it.”