The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 3 (36 page)

“The long game?”
What long game? What is it that you’re doing that Charles, the nationalist and the humanist, would want to stop?

“Come on, Kass. You haven’t figured it out yet? Why do you think Charles wanted you to spy on me by hanging around Darwin?” Stephanie’s tone was condescending as she shook her head. “It’s all about Darwin. It’s all about the species. Charles is using Tiqpa to study Darwin because he thinks that he can find the cure to all of humanity’s problems. Every disease, every aging issue, every medical difficulty a human being can suffer--he thinks the cure can be found by studying Darwin and his own daughter. That’s why he agreed to work with me in the first place. Once he found out what I’m trying to do, however, he panicked. He’s been moving every piece possible to stop me and to keep Darwin contained within Tiqpa at the same time.”

“Wait, what you’re trying to do? Keep Darwin contained?” Kass’s curiosity pushed her pain aside as her need to know drove the questions out faster than a hare running from a wolf.

“Yeah, don’t know how to say this without bothering you, but I’m trying to end humanity--wipe away every trace of it from this earth before the final coming. At first, I was going to do it through violence, but then I realized that there were easier options, more efficient options, that would further my efforts to save my people. The differences between the two races were so small in certain demographics that I could slowly change them before they even realized what was going on. Actually, I initially believed that this would put me in line with Charles, that our goals would line up. You might say it was my greatest miscalculation, and it has cost me and others dearly. I found out very quickly that he wasn’t just about science. He’s about purism within the human species. He thinks that if a person changes into a demon, then they might as well be dead. It’s a thing he can’t tolerate,” Stephanie sighed. “Immortality and the key to all his problems are already within his reach, but he’ll continue to reject them if it means he won’t be human.”

“But . . .” Kass’s mind tried to wrap itself around everything, but it was all too much. She had already fainted once when finding out that Darwin was a demon, and she didn’t want to do it again, but everything from being shot to hearing this story was leaving her head spinning like an old disk drive trying to load every file on a computer at the same time. “What do you mean about trapping Darwin in the game?”

“Kass, haven’t you wondered why Charles really shot you? He wants Darwin to lose control. That has to be it; nothing else makes sense. He wants to leak it to Darwin that you’re dead. He’s counting on the fact that you’re the first real friend Darwin has made in over thirty years of life. He thinks it’ll do two things for him. I’m only taking a stab at figuring this out, but my guess is that he thinks Darwin will go mad with rage, and he’ll transform again. If Darwin isn’t sane, if he permanently loses control, he won’t be able to exit the game. We designed a fail-safe to keep Darwin in Tiqpa if he ever went ballistic. It will keep him in Tiqpa and give Charles even more data to study.” Stephanie’s face slumped as she said it. “I think the reason he shot you right after you met with Darwin today had less to do with you being ‘unreliable,’ as he said, but more to do with what he saw with Valerie. I think he’s finally put together my plan. That’s why he’s rushing his side of things. I don’t know how he plans to break it to Darwin that you’re dead--or if he even plans to keep up friendly appearances anymore--but you can be assured he’ll act soon.”

“Your plan?” Kass didn’t understand.
Is there more to it?

“Of course, my plan. It’s already in motion and going smoothly. Charles may have played a role in developing Tiqpa, but I still snuck some things into both the hardware and the software. I still put together conditions he won’t realize until it's too late. The funniest part about it is that Eve even tried to stop me and warn him, yet he thought she was just trying to undermine him again.”

“Why do you hate us so much?” Kass closed her eyes as the question left her lips. The talk was fascinating, and there was so much she wanted to ask about, but she could only put together pieces of it, and, even as she strove to stay engaged in the conversation, she also reasoned that closing her eyes again was fine. She also figured that it was okay to relax more and to rest a little.

“Hopefully, one day, I won’t hate ‘you all.’ We’ll just hate ‘them.’”

Kass could hear her footsteps as Stephanie walked back to the computer. The clicking resumed, and Kass felt herself being pulled once more into the dream world by the heavy hand of the sandman.

Darwin
:

Darwin leaned back in his chair as he waited with Kitchens. He had planned to wait just half a mile outside of the main gate, which he knew Alex and Daniel would pass, but several of the new servants and henchmen he had acquired along with the crown had insisted on setting them up with very comfortable rocking chairs, snacks and beverages. The heads of the councilmen he had so expediently killed earlier were impaled on wooden pikes stuck upright into the ground. It wasn’t Darwin’s idea, nor was it Kitchens,’ but a very eager and enthusiastic guard, aptly named Tepes, had personally requested that Darwin let him take care of the project. He had insisted on properly displaying the ‘traitorous scum’ in a place where they would be visible to anyone coming or going through the city. Inevitably, almost everyone would have to pass the grotesque display. He was so zealous in his work that he had even taken the mop and bucket used to clean up the blood-stained palace and dabbed it across the severed necks where the flaming sword hadn’t left enough blood to ensure there would be the ‘proper dramatic effect.’ Tepes, who had eagerly transformed a simple, large, brown bag of morgue leftovers into lawn ornaments out of someone’s worst nightmare, continued to come up with one lurid stroke of decorative genius after another.

“I need more heads,” Tepes muttered to himself as he continued to work on the display set up behind Darwin’s rocker.

“Do we have any more heads?” Kitchens inquired, lazily enjoying the back-and-forth movement of his chair and looking over at Darwin as they heard the rat-man working.

“I mean, I get a feeling we will be acquiring more, but . . .” Darwin trailed off as he turned around to look at Tepes’s work. Every man, woman and child directly related to the Panda King’s old empire sat with their heads on display, the fresh blood Tepes had added still dripping from the necks and open eye sockets onto the earth below. The scene was truly horrific, but Darwin had already grown numb to such sights since coming to Tiqpa. “Do we really need more?” he completed the question.

“I don’t know. We might. We might not . . . but one way or the other, you’re probably right, and we’ll have plenty soon enough.” Kitchens shrugged and then went back to rocking slowly and sipping his drink.

“Don’t the heads of dead players despawn? Wouldn’t it be weird for the NPCs if they saw fifty identical dead bodies?” Darwin laughed. “It would be like a scene out of a clone war or something. If they didn’t already have suspicions that something was wrong from the way players usually behaved without any mind for roleplaying, then they would after seeing the same person dying multiple times and with the bodies to prove it. The undertaker would have to know something was up.”

“Yeah, but with all the dead bodies the players would generate, you’d think he’d keep his mouth shut. I mean, it might not be the noblest profession, but a gravedigger in a video game centered around blood and violence is probably a heck of a lot richer than the standard furniture salesman.”

“I guess the players coming into the town would artificially inflate certain parts of the economy without contributing anything to others. I mean, most players probably only come back to town to logout or restock weapons.” Darwin tried to think about how the players would impact the city's standard economy. “You know, with every mob always carrying some sort of tradable or equipable item, and those guys dying at rates of at least one per player per minute, what do you think that does to inflation? I wonder if that’s why they always make repair and training costs so expensive, to try and curb the influx of resources into the town.” Darwin felt the influence of his pencil pushing days start to surface, his love of numbers bubbling up as he started to put together the pieces of how certain game mechanics had to exist to reduce inflation--game mechanics that weren’t in Tiqpa.
Why aren’t they used here? The developers--or, well, Charles--had to have known they would be essential. What am I missing? With countless other online games out there, in-game inflation isn’t something they could possibly not have been aware of in their industry.

“Maybe? But I think you’re going too far off topic. Let’s stick with the main concerns: like how come the Panda King Robin had plenty of milk and cookies, but they claim they don’t have any available when we need them the most? It’s left me a bit disgruntled, I won’t lie.” Kitchens frowned as he looked at the sake in his cup.

“Does anyone actually say the word ‘gruntled’? You hear ‘disgruntled’ all the time, but is ‘gruntled’ even a thing anymore?”

“Maybe? Maybe not. Language changes, and people twist and change words often. Just look at the word ‘nice.’ it came from the word ‘
nescius’
which basically means ‘ignorant.’ It used to mean ‘idiot,’ but now it’s supposed to have a real positive denotation,” Kitchens elaborated as he continued to poke his rice cake unhappily.

Darwin paused a moment and thought of all the times someone had used the word ‘nice’ in reference to him. “I think it still means ‘idiot,’” he laughed.

Kitchens joined in his laughter, replying, “Yeah, when you hear someone is a ‘nice’ guy it might as well just mean ‘sucker.’”

They continued to laugh and joke for a while, but as time wore on, so did their patience. When Darwin had finished his third cup of tea, he finally started to voice his frustration. “Do you think they’re going to get here anytime soon? I don’t know how much longer I’m comfortable waiting. I thought we’d be pressed for time, but does it really take that long to pick a team? Alex didn’t make the mistake of asking them to name their teams, did he?”

“If it’s Daniel, he probably did just to stall them. That kid thinks well on his feet.” Kitchens nodded to himself. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, once the groups were formed, he did that just to put the heavy brakes down on them getting here before sunset.”

“Well, here’s the big question: After we finish up here, what do you want to do?” Darwin stood up and stretched his legs. The rocking chair was nice, but after sitting in it for almost an hour, he felt a strong need to move around and get his blood flowing.

“There is the town to the north . . . Jotunnheim? Or something? We already talked about it. Is there really a discussi--” Kitchens was cut off by the appearance of Daniel and Alex walking in front of hundreds of players with what looked like ten yellow snow cones escorting them. “Looks like they finally decided to show up.”

“Yeah, it does at that,” Darwin said, signaling Tepes to stop his work and take away the chairs. “Showtime?”

“I think so. You got a plan for this, right?” Kitchens puffed out his chest and tried to look intimidating, causing Darwin to mirror it to the best of his ability.

Yeah, I do need to look scary, don’t I?
“Of course I do, I always have a plan,” Darwin lied. He had been kicking around what he was going to say in his head the entire time they were drinking and eating snacks, but he still wasn’t confident about where he would begin.

For the most part, the soldiers were in a tight formation, one that wouldn’t normally lend well to traveling through a forest, but they had somehow managed to stick together without a problem. As his army marched into sight, Darwin also noticed that everyone was paying unusually close attention to Alex and his sword. That is, of course, until they caught sight of the heads. Their heads swiveled from side to side and their mouths and eyes opened slowly, one after the other, like retail workers on a Black Friday facing down a mob of unruly and impatient shoppers. Darwin couldn’t help but grin as he saw their terrified and awe-inspired stares.

Alex raised his sword, and the entire group came to a stamping halt. “Great Lord Darwin!” Alex exclaimed, bowing his head and lowering his sword. “We apologize for the delay. It took me some time to whip them into shape so that they wouldn’t embarrass the name of the StormGuard Alliance. It’s a good thing we did too. We’ve had to kill almost a hundred foolish soldiers who were on their way to assault Mt. Lawlheima in the most pitiful and disorganized band I’ve ever seen.”

“So that explains the delay: an unsatisfied perfectionist,” Kitchens quietly whispered to Darwin.

Yeah, that will do it.
Darwin almost nodded in agreement, but then caught himself. He needed to be scary, and there is little frightening about an agreeable man who goes around politely nodding at people. “And tardiness is any more acceptable?” Darwin glared at his new followers more than Alex. “I grew so bored in your absence that I had to devise ways to entertain myself,” he bellowed and gestured at the heads without ever turning his glare away from the army of players. “And then, when I couldn’t find any more royalty to kill, I had to start killing their families, their servants and their neighbors. Do you see how many people had to die because you made me wait?” Darwin made sure to project his voice as he laid shame upon Alex’s feet.
Please don’t take this seriously,
Darwin wanted to say.
You did great. I just need to be the villain to keep this plan in motion.