Gamelit 32 (just a game)

           She hated hospitals, and her diagnosis had been so minor that every hour she’d been trapped in one had felt like punishment. But they’d refused to release her until her obstetrician visited and confirmed she’d fainted from anemia, and it had taken forever, or felt like it. Her poor family had been so grateful to have her back, and so exhausted from their worries, that after their reunion they’d collapsed. Even Nick was sleeping like someone had knocked him out. But she’d just spent most of two days lying on her back in a hospital, and she was not even slightly sleepy. She wanted to do something, and without making enough noise to wake up Felix or her son.

            Who knew a game would be so useful in that regard?

           The world of Omen Galaxica appeared first as stars behind her closed eyes, stars that gleamed on a sky that saturated from black to a purply-blue that wouldn’t have been out of place on a girl’s poster of floating unicorns. Amanda stared up at that sky, marveling, then sat up. She was still sitting near the firepit in what remained of the inn… which gave her an avenue for addressing her case of the fidgets. She would have preferred to cook in her actual kitchen, but clattering in it would do no one any good, so a fantasy kitchen would do.

           Apparently no one slept in a fantasy town, because there were some centaurs on guard who were happy to find her supplies. While they trotted off on their various errands, she flipped through a mental cookbook… and to her surprise, a dialogue box opened that looked like a book, with recipes. The stew she’d made the very first day was there as “Pony Mother Stew,” which tickled her. But she didn’t want to make stew again. Too many of the entries on this virtual cookbook were empty. Maybe she could make something with shredded meat? The centaurs had flour… that could be turned into tortillas, if there was a baking powder equivalent, and there must be.

           This time the centaurs brought her pork, and she wasn’t complaining. Within short order, she had her supplies and a plan… and the fact that she could do this without having to stir from bed or disturb the household… so nice! Could she sing? Yes, she could. She wondered if she was whispering the words aloud, or if it was completely in her head, and hoped it was the latter.

            The boar meat was browning and the first of the vegetables—it looked like a parsnip but smelled like an onion—was mostly chopped when footsteps distracted her from her makeshift cutting board. Hooves, she’d learned to dismiss, but boots? When she looked up, it was into the flat, helmeted face of a human in full plate armor, like something out of a museum. The pieces were scuffed and in places dented, but the tabard strapped over it was pristine. Who did laundry in a game? And how did they make white look so very white? She imagined an army of grumpy centaur wives bleaching linens—wait, did centaur children wear clothes?

            With a creak, the man pushed back the visor. “I can’t believe it! Mandypony, online, and cooking!”

            Amanda’s mouth worked but no sounds came out.

            “What are you making?” he asked, enthusiastic. “My roommate tried your roasting technique and almost burned the apartment down! It was wicked, I got to use the fire extinguisher!”

            She found words then. “How… how did they manage to do that? Was the oven broken?”

            “Oh, no, he made a fire so we could try to do it exactly like the video. That turned out to be a bad idea, but it was hellafun! Very excite! I’m talking like a meme again, oh man.” He crouched, or tried anyway… his armor made it hard, and he settled for falling onto his hind end with a rattle. “Sorry, I’ve never met a streamer I actually cared about meeting. My name’s Carl.”

            “Hi, Carl,” Amanda said. “If I asked you to turn the meat on the spit, would you fail disastrously?”

            He started laughing. “No! No, I promise.”

            “Then help a pony out, will you? I’m almost done with this.”

            “Bet you don’t want to let me near a knife after my intro. I swear, I’m not totally useless.” He proved it by dealing with the meat. “Anyway… this is so cool! I love your videos. I swear we’re learning to cook from them. Much more fun than the reg.”

            “I guess these are on our channel?” Amanda said. “I had no idea people were watching it.”

            “Hell, yeah! Why not? Everyone’s watching the beta channels. That’s why I’m here. I wanna help you and Thorol defend this place from Killz! My partner’s scoping the perimeter now, checking for him or Goldie. You just know they’re gonna come back and stomp this place flat again if they find out we’re trying to build it back up.”

            What on earth was she supposed to say to any of this? When so little of it mattered? It didn’t, did it? She couldn’t make it feel serious, not after coming home from the hospital. “We appreciate the help. And I’m glad I’m accidentally teaching people how to cook.” She imagined herself as the Wolfgang Puck of gamers and started laughing. “What a weird thought that is!”

            “Tell me about it. So what are you making? Looks like fajitas!”

            “It was going to be burritos, but fajitas are probably closer. Too bad there’s no cumin in the game… is there?”

            “Got no clue, Pony Mom, what even is cumin?”

            “It’s a spice made from a ground-up seed. Here, hold this pan over the fire and shake it one in a while. So, you’re in the beta too?”

            “Yeah, so cool! My roomie’s been running a big game news site for almost eight years now, and he’s on board, too.” He thumped his chest, which made a metallic sound. “I’ve been playing Omen since it came out. Minmaxed the best stats for the argent cavalier class, that’s what I am. And knights gotta knight, you know, so what better thing to do than PVP against an actual villain?”

            “And your friend?”

            “He’s playing an outrider… sort of a cross between a hunter and a rogue, you know?”

            Amanda didn’t, but she nodded along anyway.

            “He likes the solo gameplay, which is cool because it’s a challenge to be playing a tank who doesn’t have any DPS, you know? He can bring the deeps but he has to be around. But as an exploring duo, it’s been awesome, especially since the game feels a lot more immersive now with the wireset.” He tapped his temple.

            “It really does,” Amanda agreed. “Also, shake those until they flip over, or they’ll burn.”

            “Right, right. You really are a mom, aren’t you? I can call you Pony Mom?”

            “Absolutely.”

            When the fajitas were done, she knew more about Carl’s life than she expected to know about an internet stranger – that he was in college, that he had a dog and was feeding a stray cat, that his roommate liked pie but he liked cake and they tried once to make a pie-cake by buying a pie, scooping the filling out, and putting cake in it. “It was great,” Carl said. “Especially with the filling on top.” More importantly, she knew Carl yearned to be a hero, that he wanted to do the right thing not because people would appreciate him for it, but because he wanted to be like the “cool characters” in the stories he grew up watching or playing—watching or playing, because he wasn’t much of a reader. He’d consumed most of his stories through games and movies. He was, she thought, a young man with a good heart, doing his best. It was hard to blame him for finding outlets for his energy in games, when real life didn’t seem very heroic. Especially, she thought ruefully, to the young, who wanted extreme experiences and obvious battlefields.

            Carl was a dab hand at baking tortillas. She had a great time, cooking with him, and together they put together a feast fit for… well, more than two people. Setting out the meat, Amanda said, “Can you call your friend in? No reason to waste all this.”

            “Heh, yeah. More incentive for him to burn the kitchen down! No, seriously, I like experiments. I’ve told him to come by.”

            Amanda scooped the filling into a tortilla and rolled it. Would it taste as good as real food? Wasn’t anything better than hospital food? She tried it: hearty, meaty, a little minty from the parsnip thing that had smelled like an onion but now had a parsnippy flavor, perfectly browned tortilla….

            “This is so good!” Carl exclaimed.

            “Too bad it’s your last meal.”

            Carl, still holding his fajita, said, “The footsteps behind me weren’t my dude, were they.”

            Amanda looked over his shoulder at the thin figure shrouded in black leathers with the deep black hood pulled over his face… and the long knives in each hand, gleaming with greenish fire. “I… don’t think so.”

            She assumed the assassin-looking man was about to slaughter her companion, but Carl leaped upright, whirling. A sword the length of his body appeared in his hand, and then the two clashed with a screech of metal and hissing flames. Her snack grew cold in her hand as they battled, because Carl kept fighting, and not dying. It was like watching a cobra attack a rhino—for a while, she wasn’t sure who was going to win. She was, in fact, not sure who was going to win for at least five or six minutes, because they kept rushing one another, parting, circling, attacking…

            …but Carl was tiring, and his opponent never stopped being faster. One solid hit might have shattered him, but the cavalier couldn’t land one. And then a knife cut through his throat and out the side with a spurt of blood, and he was down, and one he was down it was done. The assassin stuck a greenish blade straight through his armored back and killed him. “Get more good, newb.”

            He turned to Amanda.

            “Would you like a fajita?”

            Had she said that out loud? She had. The words were hanging there in the blood-soaked air between them. The stranger’s blades flickered and spit, like a fire spattered with water. Would she feel them when they killed off her character? What would that be like? Would it be good practice for actual dying?

            “Sure, thanks.” The assassin sheathed his blades on his back and dropped onto the ground near her. “These look good. You made ‘em?”

            “Yes. With Carl’s help.”

            The stranger glanced at Carl’s body. “He’ll rez once his timer’s up. Hopefully he’ll come back smarter.” He accepted a tortilla. “I’m KillzYourFase.”

            “I see that.”

            He paused, guffawed. “Anyway. I’m gonna eat this and then—sorry—I’m gonna raze this place again.”

            Why was he explaining any of this to her? “So you did it the first time?”

            “Yep.”

            “Why?”

            “Because it’s a game, and if I bother to play games, I win them.” He ate half the fajita in one bite. “Hey, this is great.”

            “Thanks…?”

            He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I don’t kill people like you. Just stay out of my way.”

            “I will,” Amanda said, meaning it, but went on to say, “If you’ll leave the tree alone.”

            “The wh—” Killz twisted around until he spotted the seedling in the center of town. Did he hesitate? “That thing? Hardly worth stomping.” He finished off the rest of the food and stood. “Thanks for the meal.”

            “You’re welcome.”

            From the darkness came a call. “Hey, Killz. I did for the outrider, you got the tank?”

            “Yup.”

            A second player appeared, saw her, did a double-take and pulled an arrow from a quiver. Before he could nock it, though, Killz held out a hand.

            “Let’s go. We’ve got some buildings to set on fire.”

            “That’s Thorol’s par—”

            Killz overrode him. “She’s not a gamer.”

            Amanda wasn’t sure whether to characterize the next half hour as comedy or nightmare. The invading players jogged around, torching what little had been resurrected of Donner’s Beck, and she cantered in their wake, hauling buckets and trying to put out the fires. Once in a while, the second player, Goldie, started toward her, but Killz always pulled him back with a sharp command. By the time they were done, Donner’s Beck was once again a ruin… except for the tree, marked now not only by the fence her son had erected around it, but by an arrow Killz plucked from Goldie’s quiver and stuck into the ground alongside it. A warning? A sneer? A signature? ‘Killz and Goldie were here.’ She put her hands on her hips and watched them depart, melting back into the dark.

            “At least, he didn’t kill everyone this time,” said one of the centaurs behind her, subdued.

            “No,” she said. “Well, let’s get to work. Those fires won’t douse themselves.”

            “But if we put them out, they might come back!”

            “Then let’s build a big enough bonfire that it looks like something’s burning.” She patted his shoulder. “If you’re worried, I an handle it on my own.”

            “No! We’ll help.”

            “Then I’m glad.” She smiled. “Cheer up! We can have a party afterwards. Roast marshmallows.”

            Glumly, the centaur said, “All our work….”

            “Oh this?” She shook her head. “We were barely started on it. It won’t take long to get back to where we were. You’ll see.”

            With Killz and Goldie gone it was actually satisfying to start work on the town again. She supposed she could be angry about it, but it was, after all, a game. In the real world, she had a husband and a son, and another baby on the way, and she’d been released from the hospital with nothing more than a prescription for iron supplementation. How could she be mad about a made-up fantasy world that would vanish when someone decided to pull the plug on it? And in the meantime, her pony body could haul wooden limbs she would have had to cut apart to handle as a human, and that was satisfying.

            She even found herself singing.