The City: PuzzleLocked Book 1

Congratulations! You have pet a cat!

You have met Lady Eulalia Grier. {Cat 08, Lady Eulailia Grier is an excellent specimen of British Shorthair. Aged 14 years, she is decidedly against being pet by commoners unless offered substantial payment in the form of jellied fish eyeballs, one of which the pleasant Home Owner 1 had provided to Flor.}

Congratulations! You have unlocked Maps 1!

“Great. Someone gave us a map and then the system also gave us a map. Maybe objectives work the same way. Hey, computer! I’ve set an arbitrary objective of getting off the island, now please unlock my objective menu!”

“I’m not sure it works that way, Alastair. I wish it did, but still.”

“Well, what do we do now?”

“It’s still a couple of hours until lunch slop, but we have forty coins, so maybe we should get a croissant. After that, we could inquire into more traditional lodging for tonight. Now, lead the way to that cafe.”

Alastair looked agitated but began walking from the cottage along the street. Flor followed. She caught up to him a moment later.

He remained silent for a few minutes before he said, “I’m not even caught in the full repetitive loop yet and already I’m burned out by the monotony of this place.”

She remained silent, figuring he had to work through these issues internally before they talked productively about it. Not like I’m having the best time over here, either, bub. They had been together long enough that she knew that would be extra antagonizing, and she didn’t want to get into a fight right now. He’s probably just hungry.

They walked along the manor wall road, past the clock tower to the city common. They walked around the street rather than through the common, which seemed unusually soggy. Alastair directed them into a shop in the market.

Vendor: Welcome. Buy/Sell?

“Buy.”

Vendor: Croissant - 1; Pain au chocolat - 1; Palmier - 1; Macarons (1) - 1; Chouquettes (3) - 1; Pain au raisins - 2; Tarte aux Fraises - 3; Tarte au Citron - 3; Tarte au chocolat - 3.

Flor checked her coin purse. Sure enough, twenty coins. “One pain au chocolat. For here.”

Alastair spoke up, “And a pain au raisins.”

Vendor: “Three coins, please.”

Flor paid for both of them. The Vendor gave the pastries over on small plates and Alastair carried them to a small table. He ate about half of his pain in a bite, breathed a sigh of relief, then settled into his chair.

After another minute, he said, “I don’t know why I’m so convinced I need an objective.”

“It is a bit curious. You seem worked up about it.”

“We need objectives. All our lives, we’ve had objectives. Every game we play now has an objective. Go here on the map. Help that person with this quest. Rescue the princess from the castle. Defeat the big bad guy. And then we get plopped in a game with no objective.”

“It’s a bit like real life, huh? Could you imagine what it would be like if we were plopped down into life fully grown and just sort of had to ‘figure it out?’ It would be chaos. Well, more so than it already is.”

“Yeah, that would be a bit of a nightmare. But at least in real life, we’ve been guided toward something all our lives. Even if those things we’ve been guided to have been misconstrued or downright irreconcilable with how things turned out, we’ve made good efforts to be good people and accomplish what we’re meant to accomplish. There is a sense of progression knowing that, regardless of how good or bad today was, at least tomorrow is the start of a new day. The weather will probably be a bit different. The interactions with people will be unique. The things you gained or spent yesterday will still be yours or not in the morning. You won’t wake up in a different skin suit.”

“Temporal metaphysics.”

“Yeah, exactly. Events proceed other events, they don’t loop endlessly.”

“You mentioned something about making our objectives. What if this place allows us to do just that?”

“What, like applying a handwritten sticky note to our mental interface? ‘Objective: Pay the phone bill.’”

“Yeah, why not?”

“It’s just silly.” Flor felt so agitated that he dismissed her outright. He must have seen the flash in her eyes because he followed up with, “I mean, silly from the standpoint that we can’t modify our interface, not that it’s silly to create our objectives. But seriously, what’s even the story of our being here?”

“Oh, yeah, you haven’t watched the intro cut scene. You’ve got to blame yourself for that one, a little. No, rather, a whole lot.”

He sat there thinking, then shoved the last bite of bread in his mouth. Around the bite, he asked, “So, what’s the cut scene backstory?”

“We’re prisoners in a work release program. The boat skipper tells the warden that we’re just another batch from near the front. So I guess that means the war front, but he doesn’t go into details there. Then we’re released to the warden with the instructions to go out and repay society for the ills we’ve caused. We’ve been accordingly handicapped to prevent overpowering the locals, because that might be bad, and we’re implored to bring order to our lives and be productive members of society.”

“That’s pretty vague. Not much of a beacon there. What if we talk to that boat skipper? Maybe we could find out more about the war we escaped from?”

“Yeah, but he disappears down the street before the tutorial. I don’t know how we’d find him.”

“He’s got to stay somewhere. The boat is still tied to the pier when we return through the day.”

“Yeah, but he could be anywhere on the island. Maybe he goes to the keep, home to the farm, or somewhere else. Maybe he’s at any number of legit taverns here getting shmammered as a reprieve from war. Or maybe he has a house with kids,” Flor said.

“We could ask the warden.”

“Not a terrible idea, but there is no certainty he’d answer us.”

“If we end up at the prison tavern for slop, let’s ask. Or on reboot tomorrow after release.”

“This almost sounds like an objective!”

“Let me get my sticky notes out, Romy and Michele.”

“Those were two people, and obviously neither is my name. {In 1997’s Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, the titular character Michele lies to her former classmates about being the inventor of the Post-it note. Having not seen the movie, Alastair wouldn’t know which character had that line. He only knows that sometimes others talk about it regarding the movie. I promise there isn’t a subtext in this.} Your diminutives are getting worse.”

“I’ve had a lot on my mind recently, so I haven’t focused on them.”

“Maybe that’s a benign side effect of being whisked away to a fantasy land. Benign for me, at least.”

“You know that’s going to make me redouble my efforts. I’ll find a nickname that sticks!”

“So, back to task. We’ve got a map but no objective. My map, at least, shows where I am and where I’ve been.”

“Mine has a fog of war function. It shows where I’ve been but dulls out if I can’t see there currently.”

“Same. I’ve got dark sections, but Kec records things I’ve seen on previous days. Meaning places we haven’t been today since we got the map.”

“Looks like mine does the same. Too bad we can’t overlay the maps and figure out where you went on day one.”

“Well, we have a physical map. We could mark out what we have and I could see if there is anything derivative.”

“Should we head back to the tavern? We could do the map part and inquire after the boat skipper, then plot out our next objective.”

“As reasonable as anything else we might do.”