“Aye, I like my sheets spread, but that be not what I’m shakin‘ me head over, dearie. It’s this idea ye have about leavin’ us and returnin‘ to yer previous life.”
“Don’t let it worry you,” I said, waving an airy hand. “I promised my daughter I’d make it to the officer level of the game, and I thoroughly intend to fulfill that promise. To be honest,” I said, leaning forward across the table, “just between you and me—I’m getting a kick out of this whole thing. It’s going to cost me to admit to Tara that she was right about a little playtime, but the truth is, this pirate stuff is a bit of a long-suppressed fantasy of mine. I’m not so sold on the game as she is, naturally, but I can see the attraction of such a virtual diversion.”
Renata’s rheumy-eyed gaze held mine. “ ‘Tis not just virtual, dearie.”
“What isn’t?” I said on a laugh, my smile fading when her face remained watchful. “Oh, I get it. You’re not programmed to acknowledge that this world isn’t real. Sorry. Didn’t mean to—”
“Nay. I ken well enough the origins of this world. But ye don’t be understandin‘ that for ye, it’s more than just a game.”
A faint prick of unease skittered down my back. “What do you mean by that?
Of course it isn’t real. It’s pretend, a virtual world, nothing more.”
Silence filled the room for a moment while she worked through what she wanted to say. “For others, that may be; I cannot say. But for ye, dearie… ye’re a part of our world just as much as Red Beth and her Jack Tar are.”
“No, no, no, no,” I said, mentally asking myself why I bothered trying to argue with a computer character. “I’m real. You aren’t. Neither is Red Beth and her boyfriend, or that dead man outside the inn, or that handsome Corbin, or the sheep that woke me up, or anything else here.”
She just stared at me with a bit of a pitying touch to her eyes.
“Fine. You want me to prove it? Watch.” I reached up to my face, intending to pull off the virtual reality glasses, but there was nothing there. “Um… okay.
There’s got to be a trigger or something somewhere to generate the computer interface.”
I looked around the room for inspiration, examining everything from my hands (you never knew) to the surroundings for something that would bring up the computer interface. A sense of claustrophobic panic welled up within me as my searching grew more and more frantic.
“Maybe it’s where I woke up,” I said, dashing out of the building to the nearby alley. As I searched the alley for a magic door, or computer keyboard, or even just a big button that said PUSH HERE FOR REAL LIFE, the panic was joined by a horrible sense of life spiraling out of my control.
“No,” I said after a fruitless twenty-minute search. I kicked at a wooden water bucket and spun around, desperate for something that would take me out of what had turned into a nightmare. “No, this can’t be happening to me. It’s a game, a computer game. There were virtual reality glasses. I put them on and, whammo, I was in the game. So, therefore, I must be able to take them off to return to life.”
My face was just as barren of glasses as it had been the thirty-odd other times I’d checked it.
“No,” I whimpered, remembering the storm and the zap of electricity that had knocked me out when I was in the process of logging in to the game. What if it had done something to me? What if it had somehow rearranged reality and sucked me into a world where the unreal became real?
“Aye, dearie, now ye understand,” Renata said, watching me from the mouth of the alley. I slumped dazedly against the wall, my knees threatening to give out under me. “Welcome to Turtle’s Back. I hope ye’ll be happy with us, since ye’ll be spendin‘ the rest of yer life here.”
A black maelstrom swept up out of nowhere and claimed me, sucking me down into its inky depths, but before it wholly consumed me, my mind managed one last coherent thought.
I wasn’t going down without a fight.
Chapter 4
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
—Ibid, Act II
I have always maintained that tears serve little purpose. They are a waste of energy, they are purposeless, they seldom serve to make you feel better as you might think they would, and they can leave you with red eyes and blotchy skin.
Many has been the time I’ve counseled my emotional daughter that it would be better to channel the energy expended upon emotional outbursts into more proactive, positive actions.
The thought came to me, as I sat sobbing my eyes out in Renata’s house of ill repute, that there were times when I was extremely full of it.
“Ye feelin‘ better now, dearie?” Renata asked as the sobs trickled to heavy sniffling, nose blowing, and the odd hiccup or two thrown in just to make things interesting.
“Yes, thank you; I think I’m past the worst of it. I’m mostly worried about my daughter. How is she going to cope with a vegetable for a mother?”
“Ye’re not still thinkin‘ of throwin’ yerself off the dock?” the concerned woman asked.
