Today's Earth date: May 25, 1992

We're in our second week of staying in Maliit, a crumby little town at the edge of the Bata Desert. We were supposed to be in Bata days ago, enjoying ocean air and beaches while we prepped for a trip to the Free Continent, but nope. Horcus wants to grind.

The desert is loaded with orcs, and the XP they give is pretty damn good compared to our other recent battles.

How the orcs survive, I don't know. There doesn't seem like enough resources for that many monsters, but Horcus says the logic of it doesn't matter. Deserts always have difficult enemies. It's just a fact of video games.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

"A breakfast meeting was a divine idea," Kryss said, savoring a bite of crispy bacon.

Wayne noted that she still chose to cover her skeleton arm with a long black glove. Despite her efforts to normalize the procedure for amputees in Iomallach, the businesswoman was still self-conscious it seemed. Admittedly, he would have been equally self-conscious, but seeing someone with Kryss's confidence betray something so human was endearing.

That reminded Wayne of what attracted him to her in the first place, way back in Teagaisg, which also reminded him of her ending their one date with a door in his face. She seemed to have a thing for Vanilli now, so Wayne wasn't interested in revisiting that rejection.

"A meeting suggests that something was scheduled," Fergus replied. "The more appropriate description for this is 'crashing.'"

Wayne cleared his throat. Fergus took his food seriously, and he looked like he might lose his appetite entirely when Kryss stepped through the door of the small cafe. When she invited herself to sit, Fergus was beside himself. This was not the wholesome start to the day he had hoped for.

Still. They had to work with Kryss. A disagreement over breakfast plans was not a good start to what could be a long collaboration.

"We were going to go looking for you today," Wayne said. "This is lucky."

"Outlawson makes it news the second you get to the gate," Kryss replied with a shrug. "I knew Fergus would suss out the best breakfast place in town."

Fergus finished a drink of coffee and set the mug down. "Flattery will not fix this, but it is welcome nonetheless."

"Our leads for the original Earth Temple are pretty thin," Wayne reminded Kryss. "Have you picked up anything interesting while you've been here? We could be here a while regardless, but working together will shorten that at least a little bit."

"Calling it the Earth Temple has already confused my workers significantly," Kryss said. "We've taken to calling it the Desert Temple to avoid confusion with the Temple in the Cuts."

"That's a good idea," Wayne said as Fergus begrudgingly agreed.

"You know about the dorcs, I take it?" Kryss asked.

Wayne nodded.

"They're the biggest wildcard. The next problems are the heat, sandstorms, and fog."

"Fog? In the desert?"

"It gets pretty dense in some places from what I've gathered," Kryss answered. "Ocean winds cross the desert from time to time, and the fog it makes is supposed to be nearly opaque. In the past, explorers got lost because of it and either died or came near to it. My driver told me a lot of people believe the fog is actually from the afterlife and ghosts sneak into our world by hiding in it. The air of our world makes ghosts glow strange colors."

"Lots of cultures associate fog with otherworldly activity," Fergus said through a mouthful of toast.

"So people have seen these ghosts?" Wayne asked. "Were any of the sightings elves?"

"From the lost elven kingdom?"

Wayne smiled. "That's the one."

"My head went to the same place, but no. I didn't find any accounts like that. If there's a weird desert sighting, it's usually the Black Alchemist."

Fergus shook his head. "Seems inappropriate to refer to him like that."

"Why?"

"Can't we just call him 'the Alchemist?' Why does his race come into this?"

Kryss and Wayne looked at one another. Their cracked smiles gave way to full blown laughter.

"What?"

"He wears black," Kryss said. "That's why he's called the Black Alchemist."

Fergus sighed. "This is why we should have had this meeting after breakfast."

"This is all very helpful," Wayne added, steering the conversation back to business. "Doing more research is on our agenda, and this gives us a headstart. Any chance you've looked into local guides?"

Kryss grinned. "Working with proper professionals is refreshing. I have looked into guides, but the two most reliable are mercenaries."

"Ah."

"Yeah. On the one hand, I wouldn't mind having muscle around to deal with dorcs, but those types can be a little too quick to draw blood."

"Making the dorc problem even worse."

"Precisely."

"Maybe we'll have better luck," Wayne said. "What are you going to do while we're scouring the desert?"

"I was thinking of going to Bata, actually. Passing the time there would be more pleasant. The moment you send word you've found something, I'll come back."

"And if you learn anything new while you're there, you'll let us know?"

"Naturally. Well, this has been lovely." Kryss took the napkin from her lap and folded it carefully. "Might you know where I could find Van?"

"Van?" Wayne asked. "As in Vanilli?"

Kryss nodded and wiggled an eyebrow.

"He's helping Armond at the clinic, I believe. They set up near the front gate if you want to track him down."

"Magnificient. Thank you, Wayne. Fergus."

When Kryss departed, Fergus raised his hand to get the attention of the waitress. He ordered more bacon. "She didn't even ask if the bacon was meant to share. It ended up near the middle of the table purely for real estate reasons, not because I intended to offer my bacon to everyone else. It's bacon. She should have known to ask."

"Bacon crisis aside, running into her here made the rest of the day easier."

"The true tragedy of war is how quickly we rationalize and disregard collateral damage."

Wayne chuckled. "Alright. Alright. I'm sorry she ate your bacon."

While Fergus sought out the library, Wayne began the search for a desert guide. His first stop was local shipping companies. Those were people who understood travel and the importance of proper escorts, after all, but he quickly learned that no merchant or merchant-adjacent business had any interest in venturing into the desert, so they had no suggestions or insights to offer.

The two stables in town had a similar reaction. They specifically avoided the desert, so they had no suggestions for what guide to hire. In asking stablemasters about guides, Wayne uncovered a new problem that his party had to solve.

Finding Fergus in the Maliit library was simple enough because it was barely more than a large room. Iomallach's small University library was a colossus by comparison.

Wayne sat across from Fergus.

"Any luck?" the old scholar asked.

"Yes, but it was bad luck."

Fergus looked up from his reading.

"No one will rent us horses for a trip into the desert."

"What about donkeys or camels?"

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"No animals of any kind," Wayne clarified. "They won't risk losing their animals to dorcs or to heat."

"That's frustrating," Fergus said. "Do we have a backup plan?"

"When we test Digmaster later, we should see how Outlawson does in the sand. We might not be able to take the wagon, but maybe he could pull a sled or something."

"Which we would probably have to have built special for us."

"Probably. I hope you had better luck."

Fergus looked around. "There's more reading material in my bathroom, I'm afraid. I'm giving it a go, but I'm not optimistic. Two observations that might interest you: first, the location for the legendary elven kingdom is allegedly in this area."

The old scholar opened a book to a map of the Bata Desert and pointed to the edge of the desert where mountains bordered the ocean. "This part of the desert is fairly rocky, it seems. The rest is mostly sand, so it makes sense the elves would build near a resource like stone."

"Allegedly."

"Indeed," Fergus said. "That ghost fog Kryss told us about? Turns out that part of the desert gets the worst of it."

"Interesting."

"I thought so. Might not mean anything but does give us more to do while we're out there."

Wayne took a moment to take that information in. "What was the second thing?"

"Huh?"

"You said you found two interesting things."

"Ah! Right. The elf legend is pretty old, potentially as old as Maliit, but the Black Alchemist is relatively new. Last couple hundred years or so."

Looking at the map again, Wayne asked, "Any patterns to where the sightings happened?"

Fergus burst into a deep belly laugh. "That would mean actually writing something down. Reading and writing do not seem like popular pastimes in Maliit."

"Had to ask."

"I know. I'm just trying to make light of something that otherwise makes me very sad and very angry. Did you test Digmaster yet?"

Wayne shook his head.

"Care to do that now? This box of loose papers is depressing." The box Fergus referred to was the library.

The agreement with the dorcs specified that the desert was their domain, but defining where the desert truly began was a greater philosophical question than Wayne anticipated. Not wanting to disturb the peace for a skill test, he and Fergus agreed to stop in an area where tufts of brown grass managed to survive in sandy soil. That location was well short of the rolling sand dunes that were definitively inside dorc territory.

Wayne re-read the description for his Secret of Monkey Island unlock:

The Digmaster – "The only shovel for serious treasure-hunting enthusiasts."

He didn't actually have a shovel, so he mentally activated the skill. He felt the curt mental vibration of a failed input. Otherwise, nothing happened. Having tested several abilities prior to this, Wayne wasn't bothered or surprised. Instead, he focused on a point in the ground and activated Digmaster again.

A square plot of sandy soil about five feet wide highlighted in Wayne's vision for a brief second and disappeared.

Wayne tried again. The highlight appeared and disappeared.

"Hmm."

"Something wrong?" Fergus asked.

"Not yet. Just need to think."

Secret of Monkey Island was a point and click adventure game. Under those mechanics, activating a digging ability shouldn't be more than aim and activate. That obviously was not the case here, so Wayne thought through the many other games with digging. From Minecraft to Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, hundreds of games featured a shovel of some kind.

Ah. Resource blocks don't break instantly. Maybe that was it.

Wayne activated Digmaster again, but this time he mentally held the idea of activation, his best attempt at mimicking the act of holding a button press.

The highlighted section reappeared and stayed in place. Over several seconds, an overlay of cartoon cracks formed within the highlight. The cracks grew more numerous until the highlighted section disappeared, a 5x5x5 cube of sand and soil.

Wayne's HUD blinked out and text scrolled across his vision.

Loading…

Gain (1) Mixed Sand. [Failed]

Inventory Not Found.

…

Generate Inventory. [Failed]

Not Enough Memory.

…

Generate Local Storage.

Local Storage Added to the Digmaster.

Diagnostic Scan.

Installation Success Confirmed.

Reboot Recommended.

Rebooting…

Wayne's world went black. He woke up on the ground, Fergus gently shaking him.

"You passed out," Fergus said. "Take it slow."

"How long was I out?"

"Only a moment. What happened?"

Sitting up, Wayne said, "I got some kind of system error when I used Digmaster. My HUD went away, I saw a bunch of messages, and then it rebooted me, I think."

"Reboot?"

"Umm… Yeah, reboot. Earth machines often needed to be shutdown and restarted to resolve errors or to adopt a new change. It's like a refresh."

"Do you feel refreshed?" Fergus asked.

Wayne laughed. "No, no I don't."

Digmaster.

A window appeared in Wayne's vision: Collect / Build. He chose Build.

A semi-transparent cube appeared, and he could manipulate where to place it, just as he could with Pictionary prints or the screen for Replay Camera. A small text tag followed the cube wherever Wayne thought about moving it.

That tag read, "1 mixed soil."

Wayne mentally "clicked" the cube. A cube of sandy dirt appeared and promptly lost its shape, collapsing into a nondescript mound.

"So this world is patterned after a role-playing game, which you knew," Wayne began. "There is another genre of games that focuses on gathering resources and then crafting or building with them. These games usually sacrifice realism for convenience, so even if a person could never carry 99 units of stone, your character can because it would be really boring shuttling resources around."

"I believe I understand, thus far."

"I think the system wasn't meant for that, so it didn't know what to do when I gathered my first resource. Now it's stored in the Digmaster ability somehow."

Stepping away from Fergus, Wayne used Digmaster again. In a few seconds, he was ten feet below the surface. Knowing the cardinal rule of mining–never dig straight down–he cut a horizontal trench. Ten blocks later, he felt faint.

"Whoa," he said, bracing against the trench with a hand. "That wrecked my mana."

Fergus looked over the edge of the trench. "Yeah, I bet."

"I hardly dug anything, though."

Looking from end of the trench to the other, Fergus said, "How do you figure? This is over 1,000 cubic feet of soil, easy. That's over 40 tons."

"How do you know that?"

"I sold a bunch of fancy dirt in Iomallach, remember?"

"Ah. Yes. You do know your dirt."

"Damn right, I know my dirt. That's a mind boggling amount of material that you collected in what, 30 seconds? After that, you stored all of it in some kind of pocket dimension. That taking a lot of mana doesn't seem surprising to me."

Wayne thought. "You're not wrong. In a lot of those games you could level a mountain in an afternoon, if you wanted."

Blitz. Blitz. Brake.

Wayne dashed up and out of his trench, using his Brake ability to stop himself in mid-air right where he wished to land.

"Looks like we can tell Kryss to pack up for good," Fergus mused. "You can do the excavation yourself."

"Don't volunteer me to be a one-man dig team. I'll help, obviously, but I don't have enough mana to do all of it alone."

Insect Flute.

A giant bug fell from the sky and crashed into the sand next to Wayne. He hopped onto Outlawson's back and urged him away from soil and toward raw sand.

Wayne's mount sank slowly, the problem worsening the farther he pushed Outlawson. After thirty yards or so, Outlawson was up to his second row of eyes and struggled to push through the sand.

"Walking the desert is obviously out of the question, right?" Fergus asked when Wayne returned.

"Obviously." Wayne dismissed Outlawson and resummoned him on solid ground.

"Thank gods."

Both scholars climbed on top of the bug and headed back to Maliit.

"Perhaps we could outright buy the animals?" Fergus proposed. "There's bound to be someone in Gitna or Bata willing to sell if no one here will."

Gitna was the next town over and even smaller than Maliit. Gitna occupied the crossroads nearest to Bata. From there, a traveler could go north to Bata, southwest to Iomallach, or southeast to Cuan by way of the Gentle Forest. Wayne intended to stop by the forest to check it out at some point. He had heard several people talk about how beautiful and serene it was. He liked the sound of that.

"How much do you know about taking care of horses?" Wayne asked.

"Very little, but ask me what I know about camels and donkeys."

"What do you know about taking care of camels and donkeys?"

"Not a thing," Fergus said. "Is that true for you too?"

Chuckling. Wayne said, "Yes. It's the same for me. And we won't have Sammy or Vanilli to help us. I'd rather not force a bunch of animals to die in the desert, so I don't think buying mounts is a good option."

Wayne thought. Deserts were staples of RPGs, and they tended to be fairly hostile. Dehydration wasn't a mechanic in any RPGs he played, with the exception of a Skyrim mod that he uninstalled pretty much immediately. Lacking the survival risk and the fact that RPGs typically used a world map mechanic, a lot of desert sections were traversed on foot because the only thing that really mattered was the difference in enemy spawns or some fantastical narrative element.

There was usually an oversized worm of some sort–because every game designer loved Dune apparently–and then the player might teleport to another area via a sandwhirlpool.

Or a castle. In Final Fantasy VI, the player moved from one desert to another via a grand mechanical castle that traveled underground. King Edgar Roni Figaro, the genius inventor-leader of Figaro, joined the party afterward. All of his attacks involved an invention of some sort, from noiseblasters to drills and chainsaws.

Inventors were a trope in the Final Fantasy games, Wayne recalled. Meeting them usually led to unlocking a vehicle of some sort, like a boat or an airship.

And those vehicles allowed the player to cross terrain that they couldn't previously, opening up new areas of the game world.

"We need to talk to Kenny," Wayne said.

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