Chương 52: It pays to be a telepath

Entering Hunting Room: The Mall, 1995 >>OK. We're back on the map. I know where this place is. The view through the portal appeared to scroll sideways because it was positioned on the edge of a slowly revolving carousel. Instead of normal animals for seats, all the seats on the carousel were weird hybrid animal-vehicles. To their immediate left was a motorcycle with an ostrich head sprouting up between the handlebars.

On their right, George could see a Jeep with sides painted to look like gorilla fur and four stubby arms planted into the ground beneath it. Beyond that, a tiny dinghy had swan wings curving up from the sides of its hull. The seat that should have been where they were standing had disappeared, leaving only a bright brass pole sheared off where it intersected the portal. The mall around them was packed with people.

The carousel was in the center of a food court, and the edges of the large room were lined with counters sporting food from different eateries. Strangely, none of the people around them seemed to take issue with two people appearing in their midst dressed in sci-fi armor. All the mall-goers just walked around them like they weren't even there. >>Those screens are a big score. >>Having surveillance on everyone is going to make our "get everybody's ability orbs" plan a lot easier to pull off.

"We'll actually be able to go find people," Cassie said.

"Or avoid them," George said.

"We'll be able to see who they're working with. Or who they are working against."

"Or how to find them, steal their orbs, and then make them do what we want," Cassie added. >>Spoken like a true telepathic evil mastermind, Cass. >>That literally brought a tear to my eye.

"Cassie, can you pull a specific one out of your storage?" George said.

"Yep. I tagged them," she said.

"Who do you want to see?"

"It would be good to see if any of our biggest threats are in this room or if we're alone here," George said. She pulled out the screens for Neco, Sarala, Pine, and Hollywood Cole and none of them looked to be in a hunting room like theirs.

"OK," George said.

"We're still at threat level one. I think we're safe. Does anybody have any ideas about what to do next?" >>We're surrounded by people. All we'd need to do to hide is sit at one of these tables and pretend to have a good time. I bet there are 200 people in this food court right now. >>Granted, I don't see anyone wearing armor and a mirrored helmet, so it could be a bit tough to fit in…

"If we're going to sit down, can it include eating some food from wherever that amazing smell is coming from?" Cassie said as she was already walking toward the pizza counter and joining the back of the small queue. >>I doubt the employees of Sbarro take gold, Cassie. Should George and I be ready for a smash-and-grab? Cassie just smiled and shook her head. When it was her turn at the front of the line, the young man behind the counter greeted her and she ordered two slices of pepperoni and two drinks.

He told her the total, and she raised an empty hand to him. He made a gesture as if he was picking money from her hand and thanked her. >>Whoa. She mind-judoed him. >>It pays to be a telepath. Cassie winked up at him and did a little curtsy.

"Controlling trial-generated NPCs is a piece of cake." >>Does that mean we might have an NPC army somewhere in our future? >>Could you make all these Saturday shoppers go ballistic on the next player who teleports in here? >>Or, you know, break out into a Fiddler on the Roof flash mob?

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," Cassie said. >>No one ever does think of a Fiddler on the Roof flash mob. That is why they are so delightful.

"No, I mean the NPC army," Cassie said. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. >>Yeah, Cassie… I know. >>I don't know how these soccer moms would fare against Urdo, the living suit of armor, anyway. Too bad this room isn't "The Somme, 1916." >>But then I guess we would have other problems on our hands. >>And less pizza. >>And more rats and trenchfoot.

The boy behind the counter returned with two enormous pieces of pizza with a paper plate beneath each one. He pushed them across the counter toward Cassie. She picked up one and handed it to George. George shook his head, tapped the helmet, and said, "It's OK, Cassie. You eat them both."

"Oh, sorry about that," she said and picked up both pieces of pizza and walked to a table in the middle of the crowded seating area. >>Since we have a bit of downtime and George's threat detector is basically a danger radar, I vote we take out those screens and have a Big Brother spy session. Mmmk? Cassie nodded as she lowered the tip of one of the giant slices of pizza into her mouth, like she'd been doing it her whole life. She took a big swig of the soda and then coughed and said, "Whoa! It is bubbly."

She took another sip and said, "And it tastes like candy." >>You know, Cassie, you seem to fit right in with us earthlings for being an extraterrestrial. >>How much earth culture do they cover in that training of yours?

"Plenty. Your planet is a keystone world for this AI, so knowing things about Earth falls into the 'basic survival skills' category," she took another drink and added, "But I've never had whatever this is. I love it." >>Yeah, so did the earthlings until they all started getting diabetes for some reason. Cassie started setting the screens out on the adjacent table. When she was done, the screens were stacked in a curved arc, one on top of another.

They stared at the screens silently for a minute or so, taking it all in. >>This is a game changer. Cassie pointed at one of them and said, "Look, the image of the slime keeps switching from room to room. That stuff is all over the place." The screen was cycling through views of the slime, and in most, it was inert except for the occasional ripple of movement that looked like something writhing beneath its surface. However, in one of the views, a steady stream of fire fell on it from outside the frame.

Everywhere the fire touched, the slime blackened and melted away. >>Did you see that one where the slime was on that clothing rack? I bet that is somewhere in this mall. >>Oh, look at our pals, Pine and Top. >>They killed whoever was shooting at them. Pine's screen showed him bending over the body of a woman lying face up on the ground. He held his hand over her, and five prestige tokens zipped upwards from her body to his hand, where they disappeared into his storage. >>R. I. P. Veronica.

"Aeternum is still just standing in that room," George said, pointing to another screen. >>I wonder if he's generally a pacifist or we got a pass for some reason. >>Dude is level 178 so I pity whoever gets on his bad side. TLX was flying from room to room. Sometimes he only spent a few seconds in a room before zipping through a portal. In some of the rooms, he stopped and did his scanning thing before moving on.

"At that rate, I bet TLX has been to every room by now," George said.

"I wonder how many players he has tagged with his little arm tracker." >>Well, would you look at that. Neco and Sarala are having a chat. >>Hmm… >>That seems like bad news for us. In two screens, Neco and Sarala were standing close to one another having a conversation. They were in a narrow stone alley with what looked like a market visible at the alley's mouth. >>That's the Khan. It is the room that is just a network of narrow alleys lined with shops and food stands.

"Well, we knew they are both in the Rook, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they would be working together," George said.

"Maybe he's telling her to lay off us because he's got us in his back pocket already." >>Somehow, I doubt Neco has our best interests in mind. >>I wish these things came with subtitles. On another screen, Tycho was trudging along through the woods in the snowy cabin room. There was a small creature that looked like a bulldog walking ahead of him and occasionally blasting fire out of its mouth to melt a path in the snow. Grey and Misco Narisco were walking together in a room George couldn't make out.

Grey had Misco by one arm and seemed to pull her forward while Misco walked numbly along. The gnacker was asleep in a corner somewhere. The Concept of Imbalance was hovering through the halls of a spaceship with a dense field of stars visible through one long window. The Concept of Metamorphosis was moving in and out of patches of light in what looked to be a factory with thousands of intricate machines whirring in the background.

"Look, there is June," Cassie said. June was pressing her body against a wall and slowly inching her head around a corner to peer around it. The way the camera was positioned, they could see some sort of creature creeping away from her on the ground, with its back to her. She saw it and ducked back behind the wall, slowly moving away from the corner.

"What is that thing?" George said. The creature had passed out of the frame as the screen followed June. It looked like a cross between a crocodile and a medium-sized black dog with a long, sharp tail and a long face.

"That is a Vordigan," Cassie said.

"They are nasty little things. They're black as shadows and like to ambush their prey. They are mostly teeth and claws. They are relatively easy to kill individually, but you rarely see one of them alone like this. June better be careful. If one of them is visible, you can be sure there are lots in that room tucked away into little crevices and corners." Ability Notification! Threat Level 2 Knickknack Savant: Level 3 >>Ok. What was that? >>Initiate Knickknack Protocol!

"What the hell is that?" George said. >>That is where we take a hint from your spidey sense and figure out what just changed.

"It is Ezra," Cassie said.

"He's here." Cassie pointed to the screen. It showed Ezra's back as he wended his way through crowded tables.

"You sly dogs," Ezra said, pointing at the screens.

"Where did you get those?" >>Cassie. Store the screens. Cassie started to tap each screen one by one and send it back into her dimensional storage.

"Mind if I sit?" Ezra said, lifting his pizza and soda.

"I saw you with pizza, and I couldn't resist. I can't remember the last time I had pizza." Ezra sat down without waiting for a response.

"I don't know what team you two are on, but I say we call a truce and have a chat. The game is about to change, and we've got front-row seats," he said.