[Vanquillon]
His name was Eric. And his world was tiny.
And I was trapped in his physical form, unable to extract myself from it. Limited. Confined.
And not, as it happened, alone. An echo of Eric remained, still somehow tethered to his body even if the bulk of his essence was simply not here.
Between us, we agreed on some basic facts about our situation, and he seemed to accept me at face value. Which left us with one huge practical concern among others.
To my surprise Eric had some rudimentary understanding of magical concepts – resonance, symbolic meaning, the power of names, and so forth. His mind was fairly analytical and open. We quickly deduced that it was fairly likely that Real Eric was wherever the missing part of me was. If he was on my world, he would likely go mad.
But there was a good chance that tug I’d felt shortly before I awoke was an attempt to summon or bind me, and if so, that’s likely where Eric was. With any luck, he had a piece of me to help guide him as well, because summons typically involved some sort of binding form, since I lacked a typical body. There were many variables, but the hope and theory was that if either side of this mess found a way to undo it, the essences would probably return where they belonged.
As for our dopplegangers, either they’d figured out at least as much as we did, together, or things might have gone terribly wrong.
Eric broke down our situation.
- Find a way to reverse it.
- Try to avoid arousing suspicion.
- Stay alive and retain our distinct selves.
In the end, I would need to keep up some pretense at Eric’s life, so he had a life to return to. That limited research time, but he was, as he put it, not in any hurry to resume playing his game. But there were hazards in that approach, and his default level of isolation was both a hindrance and an asset – there were few people who might be persuaded to help maintain the illusion, but that also meant fewer social situations that might reveal it as well.
I’m just saying, calling out is only an option for so long. If I stop working, they stop paying me, and I lose my house and my stuff. And what I do is so specific that you won’t be able to fake it. We need to find a way to share that knowledge. I’m going to hazard a guess you can’t type or read English, either.
I wanted to prioritize trying to find some learned sage to help extricate us from this distressing entanglement, but Eric’s arguments – namely that there were no such things because magic wasn’t really a thing in his world, and that he needed to keep up appearances or he risked being locked away – were persuasive.
We could try to reach out to the people behind the game, but it’s *just* released, or at least this expansion was. So probably half the developers are still on fixing bugs in the release and the leads are on vacation. I don’t think we’re going to find him.
Then we must pursue all options. Your computer has access to all this world’s knowledge, you say?
Kind of. Most of it’s available but there are a lot of dead ends, and too much bullshit.
By which you mean that the truth may be difficult to locate amongst the misinformation and distraction.
Heh, yeah, well, that’s the internet for you.
***
[Vanquillon]
Time doesn’t quite mean the same thing to beings like me as it does to mortals. Is mortals even the right word? It’s hard to describe what the passage of time means to me, but perhaps the easiest way is that it largely does not matter, except when it does. While I’m feeding, for example, I’m in the flow of time as much as those I feed upon. I share their sense of it. And now, I was stuck.
My frustration with the situation aside, Eric – or his echo, as he began thinking of himself – was handling things as well as might be hoped. In his mind, a lifetime of science and fantasy fiction and games had prepared him to accept the circumstances. Or perhaps it was because the Eric I felt was only part of the more complex real being whose form I wore.
Even so, I could sense his worry and almost panic over a situation he had even less control over than I did, which is to say practically none.
Stop doing that.
Doing what?
Grazing on the emotions in my head.
I can’t help it. I feel hungry, and that is my sustenance.
But you’re in *my* body. Did it occur to you that what you’re feeling is not *you*, but the needs of my stupid mortal flesh?
He was right, of course. And it wasn’t the first time I’d been confused by the needs of this flesh. The mundanity of eating, breathing, drinking, sleeping, relieving myself of waste… all of it was something rather unfamiliar, and certainly something I’d never experienced with the same urgency as I did now. I didn’t like it.
Me neither. Just wait until you get gassy, or get heartburn. Oh, and since you’re stuck with my “mortal flesh”, you also get to enjoy the middle-age aches and pains, the mild asthma, and all the other stuff.
I’m familiar with how your bodies work. I am rather good with certain parts of them. But being able to ride the wave of arousal is not the same as waking up from slumber and racing to the bathroom, or being shocked by a particularly sharp back spasm.
Luckily for us, once Eric and I figured out what he called “back seat driving” for certain mundane tasks, most of it was covered in muscle memory. His body was used to doing most of it, and required little direction once nudged toward the goal. Preparing a meal was a bit awkward, but the results were a fairly new concept to me. Taste and smell are incredibly strong senses, and I realized that I’d only ever really used them in conjunction with lust. And yet here I was, eating something called peanut butter and jelly, and finding it unexpectedly satisfying.
***
[Vanquillon]
As Eric predicted, his work demanded his attention. Numbers, apparently, were needed for Dave and Rebecca to finalize something. And once again, muscle memory helped considerably, and as I sat before his screen, he was suddenly in control, without any conscious choice. And so I simply watched and tried to learn.
I was experienced at this form of occupation. And on the surface, the gestures and routines were not too dissimilar to what the creator of the game had done. Something called “logging in”, tapping the symbol cubes with fingers in the correct patterns, and so forth.
I soon realized that Eric was wrangling with magic of a sort, too – he etched number-signs into a digital slab and used them to predict the future. For hours he did this, ignoring the needs his body raised. I began to appreciate his dedication.
Hardly dedication — it’s skill and a healthy dose of fear. I’m decent at what I do, but loads of younger people would do the same work for maybe two-thirds of what I bring home.
This obsession with currency…sometimes it’s just the money, sometimes it’s what the money represents.
Of course it is. I’m doing okay, but a few months without income would break me.
You don’t use it to care for yourself, only to sustain your whims, I thought. You buy toys and consume entertainment, and you eat far more than you should.
Welcome to America. We work really hard until we’re exhausted, then we do almost anything to restore the balance, and then we get sick because we don’t make time for real food or a little exercise. Do that for long enough and you look like me.
Eric had a pretty poor self-image. I could see in his mind’s eye the unflattering comparisons to athletes and entertainers; the regret and shame over his own form ironically kept him from working properly to improve it.
“Is that so bad? Would you fix the things that bring you shame, if you could?”
Of course it is, and of course I would.
“Then help me to sate my own hunger, and I will help you make some adjustments. That will help address your sense of self, and help me to attract more to feed on.”
…Seriously? I mean I won’t kill anyone or hurt them, he said.
“I can see we have had some…bad press? I do not need to kill to feed, but I do need energy to help you with your concerns. Merely being proximate to a large source of lust will fill me. You don’t even need to engage in anything yourself.”
Holy…Well we are in luck, V. Because this weekend is Pride…
