Day 7 (Continued)

Ben felt like he had entered the Uncanny Valley of Normal as he sat in the hallway outside his supervisors office for his community service to the City of Solas. He wore, an admittedly futuristic, but still standard orange safety vest, had boots on his feet, and a brand-new orange hardhat next to him. All the new gear he’d gotten for this job was absurdly advanced compared to the shit he’d had back on Earth, but the problem was that it was identical to the shit he’d had back on Earth. It drove him crazy, and even more than the gear, was how everything as arranged.

He was sitting in one chair, in a row of chairs occupied by mostly Sunlets and a smattering of other aliens, set against the wall. On the other side of the hallway was another row of chairs, with another row of aliens sitting there, waiting for their [Supervisors] to come out of their offices and give them some work to go out and do. So far, it had been forty-five minutes of paid, hourly work wasted while they waited, and nobody seemed to have a problem with that, or with just sitting around and shooting the shit. Mostly, the aliens were Sunlets, but considerably rougher looking than any Ben had encountered so far. Literally rougher, like raw crystal to Anna’s polished perfection. Must be a class thing, er, an economic class thing.

So far, nobody had talked to him, and Ben knew enough about working to know that he should just shut the fuck up and wait till someone brought him into the conversation. That, and so far literally everything they were talking about was dense, incomprehensible work gibberish specifically related to city work in Solas. Ben didn’t speak that language, but he was quickly learning, and so far the hot topic was ‘Station 23’, and how it still wasn’t fucking working.

“Hey,” a deep, gravelly voice sounded out from a hulking, rough hewn sunlet. He looked like raw crystal blasted straight from bedrock, somehow giving Ben the accurate impression that he was a tough, crusty old bastard. “You, monster,” he elaborated, pointing at Ben, who noted that while conversation hadn’t stopped, everyone was watching the interaction.

“I’m Ben,” he said.

“You know what that thing is?” the old Sunlet said, pointing at the hardhat.

“It’s a hard hat,” Ben answered.

“Know what it’s for?”

“Protecting my head,” Ben said with all the understanding that, no matter what answer he gave, it was going to be wrong, so he might as well at least be accurate.

“Fuck no it’s not. It’s for looking like you’re working, and telling people to get the fuck off your jobsite.” Ben laughed, and the Sunlet was shocked.

“Fuck, that’s the same thing we use them for on Earth,” Ben said honestly, and the old fucker started laughing, slapping a knee with the sound of pool balls colliding.

“Well that’s fucking wild isn’t it, monster?”

“Ben,” he corrected, “And are we going to just sit around here all day, or actually go out and do something?”

“None of that shit in here,” another Sunlet said, this one not quite as crusty as the other, but still rougher than any other Sunlet Ben had seen, “I want a nice, quiet day without any. Fucking. Qu-” Almost as if on que, a somewhat well polished Sunlet, the [Supervisor], stepped out of his office, holding a sheet of paper.

“Quests,” the [Supervisor] announced, and several of the paid employees groaned at the prospect of work.

“You jinxed it you damn monster,” one of the Sunlets said, shooting Ben a dirty look as he, and several other senior looking workers stood up and piled into the [Supervisor]’s office. Ben prepared himself to get up and start working, when someone else started laughing.

“They’ll be in there an hour, minimum. There’s nothing so urgent going on here in Solas that it can’t wait an hour.”

“Or two,” someone else said.

“Or till tomorrow,” a third worker said.

“Or till I feel like doing it,” a gigantic Sunlet said, putting a pin in the conversation, “and I don’t feel like doing shit today.” He then sort of growled, looked around, and pointed at Ben, “I’m taking the monster.” It seemed like the statement was going to stand, and then the old crusty bastard spoke up.

“I think I’ll take him and do a few quests today,” he spoke, and the room stilled in surprise for a moment. Then, before anyone could say anything further, the old Sunlet stood up and entered the [Supervisor]’s office. Ben said nothing, and neither did anyone else for the long minute it took for the old dude to come out again, holding the entire stack of ‘quests’.

“Come on then,” he said, waving Ben to follow him. As they left, Ben heard excited conversation among the workers, which mostly revolved around ‘not doing shit today’. “Now, you’re here to do community service due to some legal shenanigans. The big rock fella who was gonna take you out, probably meant to just kill you for fun. Personally, I’d like to get some work out of you, and if you walk into that [Supervisor]’s office every morning and take all the Quests, ain’t nobody is going to try and kill you.”

“I can do that,” Ben said, nodding his head and holding out a hand, “let me hold those for you, sir.”

“Oh, getting called ‘sir’ by royalty,” he said, handing over the quests and letting Ben flip through them. “We don’t do anything important on our crew, just all the odd jobs.”

“I’m seeing a bunch of quests just called ‘City Inspection’, with a specific part of town listed?”

“We’re going to drive around all day and see if we can find anything to do,” the old timer said matter-of-factly, “now tell me, can you drive?”

--

As it turned out, Ben could drive, but he wasn’t happy about it.

“On the left,” the old timer said calmly, “On the left!” he shouted in sudden panic as Ben noticed the [Parasitic Building Worm] just in time to dodge the gigantic monster as it lunged at their flying vehicle. “What’s the matter with you, I thought you said driving on ‘Earth’ was dangerous?”

“I mean, I thought it was!” Ben said, his heart pounding as he dodged past some kind of flying swarm of monstrous insects. “We usually stuck to the road, and what the hell are those?” Ben had noticed a little too late that the swarm of insects were really, really creepy. And probably evil spirits of some kind.

“Just ignore them,” the old timer said, immediately recovering and returning to his very important task of ‘making sure the city was still there’. “Solas has a rhythm, and once you catch it it’ll all be smooth sailing. Nose down to ground level once you reach the spire and straight into the tunnel.”

“Which spire?” Ben asked, daring to look away from straight in front of him to glance around Solas, “there are spires everywhere!” the old timer didn’t bother to answer, having already fallen asleep. Which Ben considered a bold move, considering he was flying a ship for the first time, but if the old timer wanted to die peacefully in his sleep, Ben wasn’t going to stop him. His hands were gripping the two steering joysticks with enough force to crush an empty soda can, he was sweating and everything around him was a juxtaposition of the alien and the familiar. Flying around Solas was dangerous! Plus, to add insult on top of everything else, he was sitting on a booster seat due to the height of his [Magical] Leap-rechaun body.

Still, there was something undeniably thrilling about piloting a flying ship through an ancient alien city. They were so high up he couldn’t see the ground, yet the city extended so much farther up that he couldn’t see the tops of about half the buildings he was flying between. Ben tried to take in the details, but it was all such a blur of windows and colors and mega-skyscrapers that all he could do was not run into anything. Plus, there really were spires of some variety or another everywhere. Ben found a straight stretch of airspace that visually looked monster and hazard free, and dared to glance over to his right at the stack of quests sitting between him and the sleeping Sunlet. As fast as he could, he grabbed the top Quest and attempted to drive and read it at the same time.

“Well, none of this makes any sense,” Ben declared, quickly scanning the auto translating document, his eyes passing over the incomprehensible address and briefly reading the words ‘illegal dumping’. “Garbage pickup, fantastic,” he muttered, then noticed the brand new mini-map in the corner of his vision flashing with an exclamation mark. His attention prompted it to enlarge and start giving him directions to his ‘Quest Area’, which was labeled ‘Solas City Quest: Illegal Dumping, Recurring, Standard’. “Oh thank God,” Ben said, immediately swerving away from the building he’d been about to crash into due to his distracted driving, “it’s a GPS.”

This, Ben reflected, was familiar territory for him. Navigating an unknown city, guided only by a GPS, accompanied by an old dude with little interest in the work, towards a job he had no idea how to do. That pretty much summed up the entire first year of his real, adult career back on Earth. Ben, without thinking too hard how he did it, overlaid the directions from his [True Map] onto the world, creating a line of easy to follow glowing dots, accompanied by the occasional gigantic glowing arrow. “Working a job,” Ben said, relaxing into his old, mature self for the first time since coming to The World, “pff, I can work a job. I’m a grown ass man, I’ve been working since I was eighteen. Six months community service picking up trash, easy. Buddy, I’ve picked up trash before. Oh!” Ben said as he followed the [True Map] GPS, “that spire, ok, now I get it. Just gotta go nose down here and. . . into that. . . tight tunnel. . . fuck fuck fuck!”

Ben held steady as he pointed the extremely fast ship towards what looked like an extremely tight tunnel that pointed straight down and desperately kept from crashing into the walls. The old timer kept sleeping, snoring loudly as Ben utilized choice phrases such as ‘I hate this!’ and ‘No no no!’ and ‘Jesus fucking christ!’, along with a litany of ‘Fuck you’s’ and ‘fuck everyone, everywhere’. He followed the gentle swoops and curves down, until he finally made it out the other side, breathing hard and shaking with adrenaline.

His eyes adjusted to the new, dark area and took in the new color pallet. Mostly black, liberally spotted with bits of red. The buildings were all tall and thin, crooked, bent at weird angled while still generally pointing up. Smoke came from them, and his [True Map] informed him he’d entered a Forge District of The Roots. A, Forge District, not The, Forge District. Ben noted the grammar. But, all in all, it was a bit hellish, in Ben’s opinion.

He navigated the airspace, following his map, until they finally arrived at their destination. He circled the area uselessly for a bit while he looked for both a good place to land, and the necessary skills to land without crashing. He found neither, but attempted it anyways, gently hovering towards a somewhat safe looking patch of ground, before cutting the power too quickly and dropping the ship about two feet, slamming it roughly to the ground. That startled the old timer awake, who startled ready for a fight, looking around wild eyed for a moment before glaring at Ben.

“We’re here,” Ben said with an apologetic grin, which did nothing to sooth the feelings of the grumpy Sunlet, who grabbed the quest slip, quickly read it again, looked around, then crumpled it up and tossed it in the backseat. Ben’s eyes followed the path of the crumpled slip, and saw that the backseat was haphazardly piled up with both strange tools, and garbage.

“Let’s go, it’s over there,” the old timer said, opening his door and climbing out. Ben did the same and started following, doing his best to take in his surroundings. From the sky, this ‘Forge District’ had looked only a bit hellish, but on the ground, it was straight hellish. The ground was like a cross between obsidian glass and tarry asphalt, with no distinction between road and sidewalk. The buildings, which loomed high overhead and surrounded them, radiated heat and the muffled sounds of heavy industry. More than anything, it was the fact that Ben and the old timer were the only people around that gave the entire place an extremely spooky vibe. It was a bit like being in a still forest, surrounded by tall trees with no underbrush anywhere, giving someone an unobstructed sightline to the horizon, provoking some sort of liminal space based horror. At night.

“Fucking hate these forge districts,” the old timer said as they walked, keeping a close eye on their surroundings, “fucking hate those little fuckers who live here too. Right, here’s the job,” he said, stopping suddenly and facing Ben, “anything you find on the ground around here is trash. Pick it all up, and we’re done. I’ve got bags and tools back on the ship.”

Ben looked around again and saw, at the base of one of the creepy buildings, a bunch of glittering nonsense. He approached it and saw, to his amazement, what looked to him like perfectly good, highly advanced industrial goods. “This is trash?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I keep it?” Ben asked, looking at technology far, far beyond anything Earth had ever produced.

“Monster, I won’t say a fucking thing if you want to carry bags of literal garbage back to whatever lair you’re sleeping in, but if anyone in charge sees you doing it, it’ll be trouble.”

“[Whap],” Ben casually slapped the pile with his Utility Pocket, making it vanish. “So, it’s only a problem if they see me taking it home?”

“Huh,” the old timer said, looking at the place the trash used to be, “guess it won’t be a problem then. Do that again, over there,” he pointed at another cluster of litter, which once again looked perfectly valuable to Ben.

“[Wwwhap],” Ben said, drawing out the consonant playfully and making the trash vanish. Frankie, helpful, precious Frankie, was already gleefully sorting out all the junk in the Utility Pocket.

“That’s just damn useful is what that is. Monster, I’m gonna go take a nap in the ship, and you’re gonna make all this garbage go away, and I don’t care where it ends up just as long as it isn’t here when we leave. Deal?”

“Deal,” Ben confirmed, and the old timer nodded at him, then left. Once he was out of sight, Ben adjusted his posture and started stalking around the area, [Whapping] everything in sight. It all looked valuable to him, weird bits of technology, work out looking tools, canisters with a little bit of glowing liquid inside of them. It was the kind of stuff an advanced industrial society would throw out, stuff that could with a little bit of work be useful again. Some of it was obvious, actual garbage, but Ben collected that too. Eventually, he got tired of walking from place to place and started to use his [Kenetic Leap] ability, beaming around like a pinball in a pinball machine, bouncing from building to building and grabbing everything without looking too closely.

Until he found the biggest, baddest looking pile of trash in his quest area. It was piled up as high as a normal human, which was at least twice as tall as Ben was right now, and spread out at least four feet. Ben, having professionally picked up garbage nearly his entire adult life, took a moment to admire the trash, nodding at it, impressed.

“Now that’s a proper pile right there,” Ben said, walking around it and looking at it from all angles, still nodding to himself. “Some good looking trash too, I think I’ll just. . .” Ben started to open a Utility Pocket, when the trash shifted, and two angry looking creatures emerged. One, Ben immediately recognized as a Gremlin, instantly putting him into a combat stance. The other, Ben immediately recognized as a Gray, instantly putting him deeper in a combat stance.

“Thief,” the Gray spat at him, and the Gremlin said something in it’s weird language too. Ben guessed it was backing up the Gray, who on closer inspection, looked like a homeless junkie from back on Earth, the kind that could be found in any city. “Get away from my stuff.” It was as dirty as could be expected from having emerged from a pile of garbage, and Ben noticed that in addition to looking visibly unhealthy, it was speaking physically, rather than telepathically. Also, weirdly enough, it had a bunch of suspicious rainbow stains around it’s mouth and all over it’s hands. Ben glanced behind the Gray, where it had come from, and saw a bag of brightly colored candy. As soon as he put eyes on it, the situation got considerably more hostile.

“Uh,” Ben said, starting to back away.

“That’s mine!” Then, the Gray and the Gremlin attacked.