CHAPTER TWO
Disclaimer:
Not mine.
Brent had had a long day. His morning had been filled with a lecture on the relation between the romantic movement and the 'age of enlightenment'. This wasn't exactly a riveting subject to begin with, and to make matters worse, their lecturer wasn't the most inspiring in the world. He had found himself nodding off a number of times, and was almost certain he had heard one of his classmates snoring. The afternoon had involved a lecture on the mind-body problem, which in contrast, had been surprisingly interesting.
He'd rounded off the day with several hours of solid procrastinating on the upcoming philosophy assignment, and was now ready to relax. His computer finally finished loading, Brent prepared himself. Headphones firmly in place, lights turned off and monitor in front of him, he double-clicked the shortcut to his favourite tactical shooter, and relaxed – as the world of assignments, deadlines and lectures slipped away, to be replaced by...
The stables. Again.
A young boy in plain clothes was walking past, carrying a bundle of hay. Or at least, he was till Brent appeared. The boy froze. Brent had never seen a deer caught in headlights, but the clichéd old saying certainly came to mind. The boy stood there, still frozen, and slowly twisted his head, to see if Brent was really there. As though if he looked quickly, it might provoke Brent to attack. Brent straffed sideways a tad – just to see what the boy would do. Which turned out to be shrieking, throwing his bundle of hay in the general direction of the ceiling, and disappearing faster than logic in a religious debate.
Brent sighed. He didn't know why he was back in the stables, and he didn't really care. 'ESC' still bought up the main menu, and he was able to quit with no problems. He restarted his computer for good measure, and had managed to finish off a quarter of his pizza before he was back in the game. Or, to put it more accurately, back in the stable.
'But I swear on Brimir it was here!'
The boy was facing away from him, towards two older gentlemen in robes – both of them carrying staffs. Wizards, obviously. He vaguely recognised one of them as the man in charge of the group from yesterday. On his appearance, the two men tightened their stance, and gripped their staffs firmly – almost, but not quite pointing them at him.
The stableboy – who had his back to Brent, noticed their eyes focusing at a point behind him his protest petered out, to be replaced by a kind of petrified silence.
'He's... he's behind me, isn't me?' His voice was very quiet. Barely above a whisper. The two wizards nodded, not taking their eyes off Brent. One of them – the man from yesterday, spoke. 'Thank you Patique. You may resume your duties.'
The boy walked steadily from the stall, not daring to turn around. Once outside, he not-quite-ran out of sight. The two old men motioned off to the side, and a young girl – the girl from yesterday, entered.
'Now, Louise tells us you can understand speech. That you can talk. We have never encountered a creature like you, and wished to find out more about you. We'll need you to answer some questions.'
Brent considered disconnecting again. He just wanted to unwind, not try to work out whatever was going on here. Or help these things with whatever they wanted. But... could it be some new kind of game? They had magic here, and that girl had mentioned him being her familiar. Perhaps this was the start of some epic quest?
As Brent considered the merits of not disconnecting, his avatar stood still, staring soullessly past the two men. They endured it's thousand-yard stare for some time, before one of them – the white-haired one, whispered to Louise 'are you sure it's intelligent?'
Brent, who had his headphones turned up quite loud, responded.
[Ub3rL33t1: I've never made any pretensions about being especially intelligent. Perhaps before questioning my intelligence, you should establish your own?]
The bald man frowned.
'Miss Valliere, A Familiar's actions – and its words, are a reflection of their owner. If your Familiar is sarcastic with…' His lecture was interrupted by Osmond. 'Under the circumstances, Jean, this can be overlooked.'
Colbert nodded, and the mortified girl breathed her relief.
Brent, looking on, felt a bit sorry for the poor girl. Perhaps he should be a bit more polite. At least, unless they said anything else especially stupid.
[Ub3rL33t1: My apologies. You may call me Uber. So… you said you wanted to know about me. I'm a bit curious about your world too. Do you mind answering my questions?]
The old men nodded.
It was the bald one that eventually spoke. 'We've never seen anything like you before. What manner of creature are you?'
[Ub3rL33t1: It's a little complicated, so give me a minute.]
He took a bite of his pizza, and wondered how he was going to explain this. The figures in front of him waited with varying degrees of patience.
[Ub3rL33t1: Ok. So. First of all, there's two of me.]
Brent paused, trying to think of how to phrase this.
[Ub3rL33t1: You know when you dream? And even though you can see and hear things in your dream, there's still a part of you that can hear what's going on in the real world? It's like that, for me. What you're seeing in front of you isn't my true self, it's something like my 'dream self'.]
The two men looked at each other, while Louise, trying to make sense of it, spoke up.
'So this is a dream for you? You think we're just a make-believe world?'
[Ub3rL33t1: Yes. No. Perhaps it was a bad metaphor. Let me think…]
Brent tried again.
[Ub3rL33t1: Do you have stories in this world?]
The figures nodded.
[Ub3rL33t1: Have you ever wanted to be in those stories? Because in our world, our… uh… magicians, have found a way of letting people be characters in stories. These stories aren't told any more. People can see them. In things like magic mirrors. They watch their character in the magic mirror, and tell it what to do using uh…]
How on earth was he going to explain a keyboard and mouse?
[Ub3rL33t1: Well we control the characters with special magical instruments. But since controlling another character is somewhat difficult, only very simple controls are needed. I can move its head to look around the room, and the magic mirror will show whatever it looks at. I can hear anything it can hear, and do most things a real person can do.]
The girl looked at him, while the wizards looked at each other. With his sound turned up, he was able to catch a whispered comment '… a little hard to believe'. But the next question came from the girl.
'If what you said is true, why does your… your character not look right? It looks kind of creepy. If it's supposed to be a character in a story, why make it creepy? Why have something the other characters will run away from? Or are you playing as a villain? '
Brent sighed. How to explain the uncanny valley to people who had never encountered it?
[Ub3rL33t1: Making controls for it are difficult. Controls that aren't useful aren't designed in. So it can't smile, it can't walk naturally, it can't eat. There's a lot of actions it isn't able to do. And other characters in these stories don't notice the 'creepy look' because they're designed not to. Have you ever noticed in stories, how sometimes characters act really stupid, or wear really obvious disguises, but no one notices? They don't notice because the story teller doesn't want them to notice. The stories told with the magic mirrors are a lot more complicated than those spoken by a storyteller, but they follow many of the same conventions. If characters noticed how unrealistic everything was, it would ruin the story.]
The wizard with the white hair spoke up.
'I have been the headmaster of the Tristanian Academy of Magic for over half my life. Yet I have never heard of spells like this. Where in the world are your people based?'
Before Brent could answer, something seemed to disturb the man
'Wait, you said this… construct in front of us isn't your real body. This means you're not necessarily human. Are you an Elf?'
The question seemed loaded. At the word 'Elf', the girl had shrunk back, and the two wizards grew a lot more tense.
[Ub3rL33t1: I'm not an Elf. They don't exist here. Except in stories.]
They didn't relax.
[Ub3rL33t1: I'm human. While my character is standing in that barn talking to
you, I'm sitting down with my dinner, typing… uh, using magic to write these messages. I've never heard of the Tristanian Academy of Magic, and a lot of what I've seen in your world just doesn't exist in mine.]
They seemed somewhat relieved at this.
[Ub3rL33t1: I have a few questions of my own. The girl mentioned I'd been summoned. How did she do that? Why did she do that? Is there some epic quest I'm supposed to start? I mean you kind of ruined my... the story I was playing. Looks like I can't play it any more. So what am I supposed to do here? And for that matter, who are you people?]
The bald man – who finally introduced himself as Mr Colbert, told him he had been summoned as a familiar to the girl – Louise. Further questions revealed no epic quest. Rather, it seemed his main objectives would consist of collecting ingredients of spells.
[Ub3rL33t1: So, 'collect 10 wolf-pelts from the nearby forest', that sort of thing? Sounds kind of boring. Sorry, that sort of story isn't really my thing. If you want me to hunt dragons or something, I'm up for that, but if it's just acting as a servant for an apprentice mage, you'd have to at least pay me.]
The old men looked at each other. Louise looked... upset.
'Your able to defeat a dragon? While we have never encountered a creature such as you, this is still hard to believe. Perhaps you could provide us with a demonstration?'
Brent shrugged. He was kind of curious to see how his guns would work here.
[Ub3rL33t1: Do you have a large open space somewhere?]
AUTHORS NOTES
I know Loúise seems crazy OOC at the moment, but this isn't the original series. Rather than having what she considers as a peasant as her Familiar, she's got something that borderline scares her. On top of that, the headmaster – who she's not too familiar with yet, has taken a personal interest in her familiar. Is it any wonder she's OOC?
Also, my apologies for the dialogue-heavy chapter. I promise something will actually start happening next chapter.