“Oh, right; the one who wants to start her own commune and thinks I should encourage you to express yourself in artistic media rather than apply yourself to your schoolwork. Rather an interesting attitude to find in a school counselor.”
“Everyone loves her,” Tara protested, her hands gesticulating at she talked.
That was another trait she got from her emotional father; generations of phlegmatic Scandinavian ancestors who preferred to keep their emotions tightly reined did much to give me control over mine. “She’s all that,andshe knows the coolest people. She got me an interview with PC Monroe.ThePC
Monroe—I’m going to meet him next week. Sarah promised she’d give me the front page of the school paper for the interview.”
“Ah. Good. Er… who’sthePC Monroe? Singer? Actor? One of those guys on the reality shows who eat insects for insane amounts of money?”
She gave me a look that wouldn’t have been out of place had I been a five-headed alien that popped suddenly out of a potato. “He’s only the hottest thing online in the whole world!”
“Internet boy toy?” I asked, sidling toward the door. Although writing press releases for the conservancy organization I worked for wasn’t part of my job description as a financial analyst, I had volunteered to do it, and it irked me to leave any task undone.
“Try millionaire software genius,” she answered, swiftly moving to block my retreat from the kitchen. “He lives here, right here in Merida. He’sonlycreated an inexpensive virtual reality unit that will revolutionize the Internet world by making fantasy real, and bring the unbelievable to the grasp of everyone with a computer and an Internet connection.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Get that from a press release, did you?”
“Yeah.” She had the grace to look a little embarrassed but quickly covered it up with antagonism. “PC Monroe and his VR game are the hottest thing on the whole planet! He sent me a beta version of his new VR simulation. Everyone is talking about it. It’s due to be released in two months, and it’s going to totally blow every other online game out of the water. Don’t you pay attention toanything?”
“I’ve been busy trying to set up our lives.” By dint of a slight feint to the left, I managed to squeeze around her and out the door. She followed me down the hallway.
“You’re always busy; that’s my point!”
“Yes, I know; you think I need to play. I heard you the first time. Hold on a sec.” We paused to count between the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder. “Five miles. It’s getting closer. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get this press release done before the storm hits, then I think I’ll do a little research for Robert. He’s never as prepared as he should be for staff meetings.”
“Free Spirit says people who work all the time and don’t give their inner child time to play die of heart attacks before they’re forty.”
“Ah?” I asked, sitting down at the computer.
“You’re almost forty,” she pointed out.
I shot her a narrow-eyed look. “I’m thirty-six, missy. That’s not even close to forty.”
The little rat smirked. “Four years, Mom. Four years, then ziiiiiiiip!” She made a gesture symbolic of imminent death. “Dead as road kill.”
The press release nagged at me, but behind Tara’s flip tone, I sensed real concern. I was well aware that I hadn’t been spending as much time with her as I wanted to, but starting a new life and a new job in a new town took a lot of work. “Point taken—you believe I need a few more leisure activities in my life.”
“Anyleisure activities. You don’t do anything but work.”
I let that slide. “What would you suggest?”
She took a deep breath. “Buckling Swashes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Buckling Swashes. It’s the online game PC Monroe created, the one he’s converting over to a VR world. I told you that he sent me a beta VR unit. It’s part of the next-generation release, and I got to see it months before it’ll be made public.”
I frowned, absently counting the time between lightning and thunder, a horrible suspicion coming to my mind. “You wouldn’t be referring to that RPH that you were so addicted to during the summer?”
“RPG, not RPH. It stands for role-playing game and technically it’s MMORPG—massive multiplayer online role-playing game.”
The way she avoided my eye said a lot. “I see. That would be the same online game that I forbade you to continue playing because you did nothing else but pretend you were a pirate for three solid months?”
Belligerent blue eyes suddenly met mine. “You didn’t forbid me to play. You just stopped paying for it.”
I thought for a moment, mentally reviewing the latest credit card statement.
“Ah. That would explain the rash of phone calls to your father when we moved here last month. You talked him into paying for that game.”
