"No, no, no, no, no! You've got to be in here." I fretted. I repeatedly closed and reopened my menus and accessed the friends list. Each time hoping the list would refresh the missing information. But the list always displayed the same thing. No matter how I looked at it, no matter how much I begged it to change, the list remained the same. Karla's name simply wasn't there.
I jumped up in a panic I looked around wildly. I stopped myself and thought for a moment, she could still be at the inn. I ran to it and burst in. I quickly looked around the common room. Not surprisingly it was empty, most players were out doing stuff at this time of the day. She had to be elsewhere. I ran up the stairs and stopped in front of Karla's room. I took a deep breath and knocked. After a brief moment of silence, the door opened.
"Hello? What do you want?" said the guy standing at the door. "Um, I was expecting someone else. Is this Karla's room?" I asked. "Nope, this is my room, and there's just me here. You've got the wrong room." he replied. "Oh, sorry about disturbing you. But if you don't mind my asking, when did you rent it?" I inquired. "Since yesterday, it had just freed up when I asked the NPC downstairs for a room." he said.
I left the inn feeling disoriented and upset. What was I going to do now? I really wanted to talk to her, but how could I reach her if I had no way to find her. I needed to figure this out. I leaned against the side of one of the buildings and dropped down to a sitting position. I crossed my hands over my knees and leaned my chin on them. What could have happened to her?
My imagination got the better of me. "What if she went out into the wilderness and didn't make it back? What if she's ... NO! It can't be, she's way too smart for that!" I shuddered at the thought and it made me feel sick. I wasn't ready to face that kind of prospect, if it turned out to be true I would never forgive myself. I had to convince myself that it just wasn't true. I opened my friends list again "If she was gone her name would still be here, just grayed out. She must be ok; she has to be alive!" I told myself, as I tried to remain calm.
I was thinking through all kinds of scenarios as to why she was no longer on my list. Form the silliest of reasons that maybe I was cramping her style, that I just wasn't cool enough, all the way to the darkest ones that maybe she had become a red player and was now out to get me. None of them were remotely plausible, but my imagination being what it was created them nonetheless. It just hid the fact that I didn't want to face a very real possibility: maybe she had given up on me.
Had I done something that warranted such a cold separation? In retrospect, what I did wasn't cool and I could understand her getting on my case for it. I occasionally did stupid things with school mates in the past. And we paid the price for our stupidity. But no one ever gave up or left saying they didn't want to hang out. "Could she really not want to be my friend anymore?" I pondered. Friends don't usually quit on each other.
I did make her mad, I couldn't deny that, but to the point of breaking off all communications seemed a little harsh. The intensity of her reaction the other day, and now the break up of our friendship doesn't match with a regular friendship. "Friends just don't break up., The people who break up are ..." I never finished my thought. I sat there with my mouth opened like a fish. An electric surge ran up my spine to the back of my neck. With what I realized at that moment, it became essential that I find her now more than anything.
I'd heard that going back to the beginning was always a good place to start. For most players, in this world, that would be the town of beginnings. But in my case, my life here really started on the second floor, near a small town, where I rescued a girl from a giant spider. I thought back to that time, to all that happened. The monsters we fought and barely escaped in some cases. Learning to work together, pooling our strengths, keeping each other safe and the evenings where we talked and connected. Even if this world only existed inside a computer, that connection was real. We had forged a great friendship. And now, I realized that it was much more than that.
I stood up with a jolt. Sitting around wasn't going to help me find her. I headed to the floor teleporter and called out : "Urbus". I was instantly enveloped in bright light and the scenery faded away. It was quickly replaced with the familiar setting of the second floor. I got off the teleporter and headed down one of the main streets. This town was only a way point on the way to my final destination.
I walked straight out of town without even glancing back and headed down a road I had traveled before. It snaked through the valleys and crossed the plateaus. Many creatures wandered near the road, but few bothered with my presence. I had leveled enough that they no longer detected me as a target. Those that remained aggressive were quickly taken care of. Two or three hits was all that was needed. The rewards hadn't changed but were meager compared to what could be gotten on higher floors.
A doubt entered my mind. It was unlikely for Karla to come back to this floor to hunt. It would simply be too tedious. If she was here it would have to be for other reasons. The thought was not cheering me up to say the least, but the fact remained that I had to start my search somewhere. This place might just hold enough memories for her to come back to it. I was certainly the case for me.
It was evening when I came in sight of Taran. The sun was setting, and some lights had already been lit in some of the darker areas. The road and the buildings were all too familiar to me. I entered the town and headed to the inn where I previously had stayed and booked a room there. I reserved only one night, I would take it one day at a time. I would start my search tomorrow, for now I just wandered the streets aimlessly. I sighed and nostalgically said :
"I'm back where it all started."