avevale_intelligencer | The Shop, continued

So, I thought to myself as I sat on the edge of my bed looking at the sword in my hand and listening to a clock somewhere striking two, we knew there was going to be a catch, and now here it is. All the nice food, the warm soft woolly shirts, just softening us up for an invasion. Not that we weren't pretty soft to start with, beaten down and defeated by our own rotten self-engineered climate. Poisoned air, poisoned water, crappy food, had leached all the spine out of us. We were ripe for conquest by a stronger people.

Two questions were slowly emerging from the turmoil in my mind.

1.) Why?

2.) Whose side was I on?

The first question was one I would have to ask Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula about when I saw him again, because I was still coming up empty on what there could possibly be on this worn-out, half-dead planet to appeal to anyone. The second one was a bit of a surprise. Obviously the answer should have been a no-brainer, but there were considerations. For one, I liked Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula. It was purely an instinctive reaction, but he didn't seem to me the ruthless warlord type. If there were more like him at home, then maybe they could do a better job of ruling us than the current lot of clowns. They could hardly be worse.

This was the point at which I was supposed to put on a record of Land Of Hope And Glory and make a passionate speech about our right to be free and fighting them on the beaches and so on (not that any sane person would venture on to a beach these days, but you get the idea). Frankly, having seen what we had managed to achieve with our freedom, as far as I was concerned you could keep it. If the human race had accidentally created its conquerors in the form of the game people, then it served us right. Maybe all they would want from us was an assurance that the game would go on.

I went round and round the argument as the minutes and hours dragged by. My logic was impeccable. I had nothing invested in the world in which I lived, no particular reason to be loyal to it, and every reason to be loyal to my employer, who kept a roof over my head and food on my table.

And yet, somehow, by the time the dull brown clouds began to lighten with the approach of dawn, I had decided that the thing had to be stopped. Not because I had somehow discovered a hitherto untapped well of patriotic fervour. In fact I wasn't sure what my reasons were. I think I just didn't think this world was worth the life of even one soldier from the game world. Let alone the life of my boss.

I splashed some water on my face, used the inhaler, grabbed a piece of cheese and bolted it, and stuffed the sword into one of my saddlebags, from whence it poked out looking unsettlingly sword-like. I biked through the deserted streets, feeling as if the invasion had already happened, the people, my people, already wiped out by weird science from a virtual alien world.

I couldn't summon up enough feeling to be upset about it.

I arrived at the alley, dismounted and walked the bike through and on to the patch of waste ground. No-one was around that I could see. I tried to estimate whereabouts Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula and his chums had been standing, leant the bike up against the side of a building and walked out across the piled and drifted detritus to what I thought was the spot. I looked around, took a deep breath and started shifting the rubbish, looking for whatever they had hidden under here. I knew there would be something.

It didn't take me long. Something metallic emerged from under the drifts, something that didn't shift when I pulled it, something fastened down. It was a bronzy sort of metal, gleaming dully where the emerging sun caught it, obviously brand new, a shape enigmatic in its simplicity, conveying nothing. I spread my efforts a little wider, and found three more of them, arranged in a circle, pointing inwards.

A housing of some sort. A base for a machine. For a weapon.

I sat down on one of the things, and I think I cried. No, I'm being coy. I know I did. I'd been hoping, all this time, without even realising it, been hoping against hope that it wasn't true. I should have known, I thought. Life spares you nothing. It gives you just as much as you can handle, and then piles another lot on, and another till you break. There's no hope, and no salvation, and no happy ending for anyone who sees with clear eyes.

I wished with all my heart that I could die. I thought of the sword, over there in the saddlebag, but I didn't have the strength left even to go and get it.

When I finally wiped my face and got up and turned round, Zoltan-hound-of-Dracula was standing behind me.