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Maxi gasped as air flooded into her lungs. She was disoriented, and the haze in front of her eyes didn’t make things any better. She blinked, wanting to get a better grasp on where she was, but something obscured her vision. In one swift movement, she pulled off her glasses, and the world cleared. She was on a resurrection chair, but not in her office. Rather, she was in a murky basement with several worktables full of parts and half-made contraptions. There was clutter everywhere, like she was in an electronics’ junkyard. The benevolent hoarder who had dragged her body to the chair didn’t seem interested in her stuff, as she still had her glasses, headphones, even her sword.
Every one of her possessions, as well as her hair and face, was covered with crusty, dried ooze. The only exception was her shirt, which maintained its vibrant yellow color as if fresh out of the box. She tapped a button on her headset to call Terry and said, “What the hell was that?”
“You seem to have died. Unfortunately, I am unable to record any events after you lose consciousness.
“You’re recording me?”
“For quality and training purposes.”
“Well, stop.”
“Very well. I will only keep a record of our conversations you deem necessary.”
Maxi wiped off her phone screen and found a message.
YOU HAVE DIED:
-2 Levels
-2 Ambition
-1 Dedication
-3 Luck
-4 Dodge
-4 Melee Weapon
-1 Swords
-2 Mind Shard
-2000 Credits.
“I was just out of debt! Come on! And what’s with the stiff penalties? That’s worth more than my Level loss!”
“Luck is a stat that cuts both ways. Not only are unlucky rolls more likely to compound into more unlucky rolls, but they can also lead to consequences greater than the normal death penalty.”
“But I’m lucky, that’s my thing. That’s my stat!”
“Even the luckiest person in the world has to have bad luck occasionally. Aside from less frequent unlucky events than a person with less of a luck score, it also prevents you from having worse consequences when you have a streak of unlucky rolls.”
“Are you saying this could have been worse?”
“Oh, yes. A reversal of fortune can bring down even the mightiest of players.”
“Better now than when I’m facing off with one of the Power Twelve,” Maxi muttered.
She folded her glasses, put them in her pocket, and turned to the workbenches accumulated with stuff. An old calendar had the same date markings that were on the others in Bobby’s world. It seemed she had never left, which was good for her. The fact she was back to full health meant she would have been on the chair for a while, and she was glad she didn’t lose too much time in her world.
Before she could begin to strategize about looking for the nearest elevator shaft, a woman in her thirties or forties burst into the room. She was wearing dirty rags for clothes and had wild brown hair and a face smudged with grease, dirt, soot, and filth. Her fingernails were caked with grime, and she held a can of beans in one hand and a tarnished spoon in the other.
The woman was humming a tune when she noticed Maxi and grinned. “It worked! I wasn’t sure it was going to work.”
The crazy-haired lady ran over to Maxi and began inspecting her. After several sniffs, pokes, and close, intense staring, the woman stuck out her tongue to lick, and Maxi pulled away.
“All right. All right!”
“Are you a dream?” the woman asked, poking Maxi again.
“Would you stop that? No, I’m not a dream. Just another employee,” Maxi said.
“Do dreams eat beans? I got green beans, baked beans, kidney beans, pimento beans... or is that pinto? I can never remember which. Did you know canned foods can stay good for hundreds of years if they are made properly? They found a 150-year-old can of tuna on a shipwreck. Fed it to a cat. The cat liked it. At least I think the cat liked it. I don’t know any cats. Do you?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Then you wouldn’t be able to tell me if I sound like one of them. Meow. Meow. Meow. Did that sound like a cat? I think I said my name in cat.”
“What is your name?”
“Belinda.”
“I’m Maxi. Thank you for saving me.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Todd.”
“Who’s Todd?”
“The slime I incinerated. You probably would have permadied if I blasted you without Todd cocooning you.”
“Right,” Maxi drawled out the word. “How long have you been here, Belinda?”
“I don’t know, ten years. Maybe twenty. I got back from the assignment, but then they were all dead. Except for you. Are you sure you’re not a dream? I sometimes dream about people. The people in the magazines sometimes smile at me.”
“Oh, dear, so you’ve been alone for quite some time?”
“Oh, no! Not alone. I got Federico, Rodrigo, and Darwin,” she said as she unburied what could be best described as a humanoid made from spare pieces and junk, aside from the head, which was merely cardboard with a magazine cutout model who looked like he was a toothpaste ad with a pearly white grin.
Belinda dug through the mounds of junk until she got to a battery bin and a dusty solar-powered charger. She put one of the batteries into the unit, and he started doing a very blocky dance that looked like a cross between the Macarena and the Robot.
There was also a tinny-sounding speaker that blared a kitschy pop song that didn’t exist in her world, but sounded like it might have been the basis for whatever dance craze was sweeping the place when everyone had died. After a few moments, the bot deactivated and slumped.
Belinda looked crestfallen. “I’m sorry. Batteries don’t hold as much charge as they used to, so the boys don’t get to go out much. Ah, I know what you want! Rat! They are quite crunchy. I can see why the slimes like them. I don’t eat them myself. Beans are quite delicious and full of protein and phytonutrients. Did I say that right? Phytonutragentic. Meow. Meow. Meow. You don’t talk much, so I thought you might speak cat.”
“I’m not hungry,” Maxi said. Considering she had Bobby’s phone and his journal, there really wasn’t anything left for her in this dimension, and if she needed more information, it might help to come back with a party, or at least weapons that could harm the local slime. As much as there was something rather amusing and endearing about Belinda, she had to go back to her Office Pool. “Do you know where the nearest elevator is located?”
“Just down the hall, but you’re not going to go, are you? All the best dreams go and leave Belinda alone,” Belinda said, tears welling up in her eyes.
Maxi grimaced, experiencing a sharp pang of guilt. She couldn’t really stay here and babysit, and something told her that promising to come visit wouldn’t quite work either.
She took another look around the room. A lot of what she had originally thought was junk were contraptions made by Belinda. While most of them were whimsical, like the pop-dancing robot, she figured Belinda could make something useful with a bit of direction.
Maxi had to admit the flamethrower in the corner—the same one Belinda had used to save her—could come in handy. A yellow suit hanging on a coat rack in the corner reminded her of those the government agents would always wear when they dissected aliens in movies. No doubt the suit had protected Belinda from the flame, and most likely the slime, too.
“Terry...” Maxi called. “What does the handbook have to say about taking employees with you from another dimension?”
“I can come with! Goodie!” Belinda said and hugged her. The woman had a strong grip, and Maxi had to push her off.
“Meow. Meow. Meow. I get to come with. Hear that, Rodrigo? I get to come with!” Belinda set to work packing a duffel bag while tossing items and equipment all over the room.
“While there are stipulations around transfers, I think Belinda’s case will be approved,” Terry responded. “So long as she is willing and promises not to divulge to anyone without clearance that she is from another dimension.”
“La la la! I get to live in the dream!” Belinda said, tossing parts and pieces into the air like it was confetti.
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” Maxi said, convinced no one would believe Belinda, even if she did say anything.
“La he ha la! Living the dream! Living the dream!” Belinda danced around and somehow made the place even more of a mess. She snapped to attention and turned to Maxi with wide eyes. “Do they have dreamcake in the dream?”
“Yeah, the cafeteria has cake,” Maxi said.
“WHEEEEE! Dreams and cake. Cakes and dreams. La la la.”
“There is a stipulation that there must be open positions at the new location,” Terry continued. “But Earth has been struggling for employees ever since the last raid that failed. She is also the Inventor Class, which requires such a high level of Adaptability and Creativity that not a lot of people are able to choose that Class, and fewer still make it through the trials. Most end up in the Technician Class that focuses on the maintenance of existing systems rather than the creation of new ones.”
“Right, so how do we apply for her transfer?” Maxi asked.
“I already did, and she was approved.”
After Belinda stuffed her armor and other items into her overfilled bag, she waved. “This way. Meow. Meow.”
Maxi followed her out of the room into a hallway where several of the gurglesnorps were oozing their way toward them. The elevators were just beyond the creatures.
“You must have bad luck,” Belinda said. “They have your scent. Now they can follow you anywhere.”
“Hopefully, not through a trans-dimensional elevator. Maybe you can give me a demonstration of how that flamethrower works,” Maxi said.
“Can’t. No fuel. Used it all saving you.”
“Is there more in your lab?”
“More at the gas station. Three-mile walk, one slime every fifty feet, over three hundred slimes. We’ll die. I never died before! Does it hurt?”
“Come on,” Maxi dragged her away from the approaching slimes. “We’ll find another way.”
They ran through the halls of the basement, which were standard industrial corridors with exposed pipes and wiring. There were patches where Belinda had no doubt used her skills to get the lights working again. Had they been running in the dark, Maxi would have died several times over, as they had on more than one occasion turned the corner, only to confront a group of the creatures and were nearly pummeled to death by the tendrils.
Eventually, after a race through endless tunnels, corridors, and rooms, they found themselves in a passage with slimes coming from both directions. They backed into a tiny room with four cubicle stations with a computer in each corner. Maxi slammed the door, and the thumping immediately began as the creatures methodically tried to break into the room.
Belinda casually wandered over to one of the computer towers and smashed it on the floor. The equipment in the room was all old by Maxi’s standards, when computers still had massive towers and giant CRTs. Belinda began kicking the beige behemoth, and Maxi chided her while she held the door shut.
“Be quiet. Last time I was able to just stay silent, and they moved on.”
“They won’t do that now. They have your scent,” Belinda said, then tore open the computer and began picking away on the electronics inside. She pulled out a multitool in one hand and a small handheld soldering iron in the other. Nipped a diode here and hard drive disk there. Rearranged capacitors, played with transistors, resistors, and other parts.
Maxi felt the door weakening behind her. Splinters flew off with each thump. She was getting tired. “Want to help me?!” she yelled.
“I am helping you,” Belinda said, then hummed while she soldered one last transformer into her creation. Whatever it was, the woman had made two of them. It was some sort of circuit board with a hard drive disk attached to a power source. Belinda rummaged through her bag and pulled out two larger batteries. She attached them to her devices and handed one to Maxi. “That end shoots, that button is the trigger.” Belinda pointed to the hard drive disk and a switch on the green circuit board.
Maxi nodded and counted to three. She opened the door, and they both aimed and fired. Electricity shot out of Belinda’s makeshift devices, hitting the first slime in line. It then bounced from the one in the door and surged through all the others gathered in the hallway.
Their bodies crackled, shriveled, and gave off the most horrible stench Maxi had ever smelled. It was worse than the breath weapon of the Antitrust Lawyer. But it seemed to do the trick. Just as the weapons popped and blew parts on the circuit board, all the creatures were shriveled masses of dried pink goop.
Belinda discarded her makeshift weapon and quickly put away her supplies. Maxi looked over her device before tossing it on the pile of computer parts. The thing was impressive, considering the woman had made it under duress. Belinda raced out the door, and Maxi followed. In the distance, the ruckus indicated more gurglesnorps heading their way.
Maxi supposed even one would have had sufficient time to turn into this horde, considering how long this had been a dead world. She couldn’t believe no one in the Company had been in to check on them in all that time, which led her to a couple of unsettling conclusions. Either the institution was so bureaucratic that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, or Upper Management didn’t care enough about what happened to bother sending someone to investigate.
Both were equally discomforting to her, because the former meant there could be a cure for the grutomaton virus, and the Company might either bungle the distribution of it or lose it altogether. The latter meant that she and everyone on the planet could be sacrificed on the altar of profit if the cure turned out to be too expensive.
They ran through the halls until they got to an elevator. Maxi hit the button while slimes oozed around the corner. The creatures were almost in range to whack them with their tendrils when the door opened and the pair piled inside. Maxi wished there was a “close door” button, and the door shut just as one was about to make its way inside.
They rode the elevator in silence, and it dinged when it got to her Office Pool. The door opened to reveal everyone was there lounging in their healing chairs while doing menial labor.
Daisuke glanced up at them. “I shoulda known it was you.”
Maxi checked her phone, where the quest results were now showing. She only gained her Levels back for the quest “GET THE HELL BACK TO EARTH” that was added while they were fleeing for their lives. On her Office Pool screen, she saw the Lus3rs number had grown to seven, and the name Belindaz4Real was added to the list.
She looked up from her phone and did a double take. There was one more cubical in the room. The room had Belinda and Yancy on the far side, Daisuke, Flav, and Patti down the middle, and Farhad and her tucked away on the other side. She would have sworn the room had been smaller when she had left.
“But how, I was in another—” Maxi caught herself saying. “She just joined...”
Belinda unceremoniously dumped her bag in her cubicle and looked at the dual monitors. “So thin. So pretty,” she said with awe and wonder.
“But how?” Maxi said again, indicating the new cube where none had been.
“The whole building is modular,” Farhad replied. “Each Office Pool can expand and contract to meet the needs of the Company.
Belinda let out a giggle. She tipped the monitor and then watched it rock back and forth with a glee in her eyes and a grin on her face.
“Where’d you find an Inventor? And such a high Level one at that?” Farhad asked.
Maxi checked Belinda’s character information. She was Tier 12.12. Tiers didn’t transfer and there was no tutorial to assign her rank. The woman was Level 349, making her the highest Level player in the Pool. The others had finally trusted her enough to share their basic information with her. Yancy was an Accountant, which was somewhat like a ninja with both numbers and combat. Farhad was a Hacker, who was mediocre with combat, but brutal and deadly if he had the gear. Patti was, of course, a Customer Care Advocate, who was functionally a healer. Flav was a Porter, which made him the tank, not surprisingly.
Daisuke was a Sales Associate. In game terms, it meant he could specialize in a weapon and had a high emotional intelligence score, but from the way he had treated her this whole time, she was struggling to grasp it. That was when she realized Daisuke could turn it off and on like a switch.
Before she had ditched out on the raid, and she had been the employee of the hour, she had seen a change in him where he seemed to open a little bit, but it was more than that. Anyone good at sales knew it was more about listening than about talking. The best salespeople were the ones who knew it was the right words at the right time that made all the difference.
It also made sense to her how sales and swordplay went together. Any decent blademaster knew the right strike at the right time was the difference between life and death in battle. She would have to be careful with him. She had just thought he was an asshole, but being a calculating asshole made him deadly.
“Maxi?” Farhad said, and she realized he had asked her a question.
“I found her on a mission,” Maxi said, and lowered her voice. “Hey, Farhad, you’re a Hacker, right?”
“Last time I checked,” he responded, smiling.
“Right. Stupid question. But I got this quest and I’m going to need information on the Power Twelve.”
“The Power Twelve?” he said a little too loudly, and she glanced at the others. None of them seemed to notice. As though sensing her distress, he resumed the conspiratorial tones. “Is it that quest for the higher ups?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask what it’s about?”
Maxi thought about it for a moment. Between her uncle, mom, and all the other things whirling around in her head, she needed someone to trust. She couldn’t keep it all inside. When she was a girl, she streamed reruns of an old Sci Fi TV Show called Warehouse 13. The premise was this top-secret organization that stored dangerous artifacts with magical properties.
While she had since forgotten the plot of the show, she did remember that every agent had their “one.” Each person working at the warehouse could tell one person everything. They could unload all their secrets on another person, and she needed that person right now.
Her first thought was that it should be her mom, but the woman had bought her freedom from the Company. Telling the secrets that weighed her down would only rope Tara back into the place. No, Tara deserved her retirement. It was Maxi’s turn to keep the Earth safe. Not to mention, she was still pissed at Tara with the whole lying to her thing.
Maxi couldn’t believe she was even thinking this, but she was exactly where she needed to be. All the jobs she had ever done before were meaningless. All her efforts were just making someone else rich, and she would slave away lining their pockets while they played golf.
At the Company, she could make a difference, and not just for individuals, like the office party that was cut short by murderous printers, but a difference in the world. She had finally found something she was not only good at, but that mattered. Most of her life, the world seemed like a shitty place for most people, and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Here, she could.
But not if she unraveled because of all the stuff she had been keeping inside. Her luck in Bobby’s world hadn’t been bad because of shitty rolls. She had been distracted. Her brain had been stuffed to the limits with everything that had happened to her, and she needed someone else.
There was something about Farhad that made her want to trust him. Perhaps it was the way he was easygoing, or perhaps his honesty. He wasn’t rude when he didn’t get his way, like Daisuke, yet he wasn’t a pushover like Yancy, who, if Maxi wasn’t careful, would willingly be her little lapdog.
She needed a friend, and Farhad had been nothing but that the entire time. Even when she had skipped out on the raid, his messages felt more like concern than anything else. Maxi had always been an introvert, only really getting to know a handful of people in her life. Farhad seemed like one of those people. One of her people.
“You okay, Maxi?” Farhad asked.
“Yeah, can we talk somewhere private?”
“There are conference rooms, but they charge by the minute,” Farhad said, then looked her over. “Tell you what, I got this. Least I can do after you figured out that boss.”
Maxi smiled and squeezed his shoulder. They stood up, walked over to the exit, and summoned the elevator. Once inside, Farhad requested a conference, accepted the charges, which were thankfully not on surge pricing, and the elevator took them to a room with a long table, projector, speakerphones, and all the equipment one would expect.
Farhad sat at the table and motioned for her to join him. She plopped down on a chair, and it all came gushing out. She told him everything, and to his credit, he listened.