The first Quest was simple.

I went to Chelsea Market, bought a handful of raspberries, a tillandsia, a grape popsicle, and three pounds of 75/25 ground beef. I left the goods in the windowsill of a brownstone on West 9th Street and then headed to Prospect Park, where a plain, white envelope was waiting for me under a random bench. Inside was a wooden token, the size of a half dollar, with the number one intricately carved in the middle. I quickly tucked it into my pocket and began the long trek back to my office, a new swing in my step.

I progressed quickly through the next series of Quests. It was as if someone had copied down the tutorial section of World of Warcraft and was playing it out in real life.

Kill three pigeons.

Fetch some random plant.

Buy two rats from a particular pet shop.

They were a fun diversion at first and luckily I had no girlfriend at the moment to distract me, but I didn’t see the point. Sure, I was quickly earning experience points, but what were they for? Some sort of secret contest, where the guy who racked up the most XP got a year’s subscription to the newest MMORPG? I mean, that did sound awesome, but was it really worth my time? Yes, yes, it was.

One day, about a year since I’d discovered this whole thing, I was minding my own business, picking which Quest to tackle on my way home from work, when I saw a message waiting for me in my Q-mail inbox.

“Twelv3_parsecs,

Congrats. You’ve passed my test. If you’re ready to take your Questing to the next level, then go to the NYU library and bring me the book at call number 949.278.01. I’ll be waiting for you at Bleecker St. Grounds on Monday morning at 10:30.

See you soon,

Trinity”

I read the note over a second time. Then a third. And then probably six more times after that. It’s no secret that I loved The Matrix, so now to be getting a cryptic note from someone named Trinity was making my head spin. I had to find that book, so I could meet her. If it even was a her.

The task seemed simple enough, except the book had been checked out of the library by a patron with no name the day before. I tracked down all the library employees to see if someone remembered who it had been, but all that got me was a vague description of a man in his seventies with a tweed jacket. I pressed on though, and after some subterfuge and a lot of phone calls, I was walking out of the smelly professor’s office with the book in hand and only an hour to spare.

My breath was nearly gone by the time I made it to the coffee shop downtown, but there she was, waiting for me. Her hair was blond and her eyes were green and when she looked at me that first time and smiled, I swear my knees almost gave way.

I tried to play it cool at first. Girls don’t like a braggart; they want a confident, suave guy, or so I’d read on the Internet. So I downplayed how hard it was to find the diary and she seemed impressed at my Questing skills. But the whole time my heart was racing and I felt the sweat pooling on the back of my neck. Man, I wished I had talked to more girls in college.

She asked if I had read the diary and I told her that I’d only just retrieved it.

“Oh,” she said. “Then you don’t know the truth.”

“What truth?” I asked.

“The truth about magic.”

She then launched into a tale so ridiculous, so out of this world, that it made me feel like the sane one, and I was the guy who had been running around town fetching stuff in exchange for weird tokens for a year. But then she took out a small plastic container from her bag and placed it on the table.

Inside was a tiny brown mouse, scurrying about. Next, she produced an ornate dagger sheathed in leather. She withdrew the gleaming blade, popped the lid off the container, and then, without warning, plunged it into the little rodent and then removed it just as quickly.

My eyes went wide and I was about to get out of my chair and run away, but she pointed into the container and I looked inside. There was the mouse, except instead of a furry creature, there was a stone statue of a mouse in its place. She lifted it out of the container and put it on the table, and I cringed.

“Magic,” she explained “is everywhere. It’s in the soil, in the water, in the plants, and even in the metals in the ground. This blade,” she said, as she resheathed it and placed it back in her purse, “being just one example.”

She kept going, explaining how she had uncovered the truth on her own, how she had developed a knack for alchemy and amassed a collection of rare prima materia that she still needed to experiment on, but how she had hit a wall in her progression up the Questing ladder.

I stared at her in silence, trying to take in this new world she was revealing, but I couldn’t help noticing the dimples in her cheeks, the way her hair fell on her face, and the sparkle of the mid-morning sun in her eyes.

It was literally something out of a movie: the dorky yet secretly brave and heroic and awesome main character being chosen by the drop-dead gorgeous but also brilliant and funny girl of his dreams to learn the truth.

I took that as a sign that she liked me. I mean, if you learned there was a secret magical world, you wouldn’t go around telling every idiot on the street, would you? Of course not.

I was so absorbed with her entire being that I didn’t actually hear the question the first time.

“Will you be my new trainee?”

“Y-yes,” I said without a second thought. If she had asked me to cut out one of my kidneys and lay it on the table, I probably also would have said yes.

It was only later that I found out she was taken.

We were at her apartment, fresh off our first successful Raid, and she had just revealed the secret room hidden behind a bookcase where she hid her alchemy lab from the rest of her life. The room was stocked with shelves and bookcases full of vials and jars, and she began explaining what everything was. I tried to pay attention but it was all just so much to take in, on top of the fact that I was actually alone with her in her apartment.

But before I could try to make a move, I saw the picture out of the corner of my eye.

“Oh,” I said, pointing at it. “Is that your brother?”

It wasn’t.

Worse, the guy was a jerk. It wasn’t that hard to figure out that he was cheating on Trinity. And I only followed him for one day. She must have known, but I held my tongue. Well, for a while anyway.

It took me a couple of months to work up the courage to tell her, and when I did, you’d think she would have thanked me. But she didn’t. No, she pretended I hadn’t said anything and then abruptly left the coffee shop. I waited a few days before reaching out and wondered how long I should wait before asking her out. After so long with that dipshit, she would want a change, I was sure of it, but I wanted to give her some space.

Six weeks later though, she showed up at our usual table at the coffee shop with a rock on her finger. That should have been the end of it. I should have pushed down my feelings and moved on. We could still work together. I didn’t want that to end, because I was learning so much about alchemy and prima materia and magic and, well, I couldn’t go back to how it was before. When I was just grinding up a down escalator with no hope of getting to the top.

But the heart leads and the brain follows. It started small at first. I began stopping by her apartment building each morning, waiting across the street until she went out for her morning jog. God, she looked good even in sweats. I figured out her running route after a few weeks, and then one day ran into her “by accident.” She was a little weirded out, but I explained that I had started exercising and the West Side Highway was really the best place to run near my apartment.

Next, I started following her to her tutoring appointments at our coffee shop. I showed up at one of them and pretended that I thought we were meeting that day. She gave me an awkward hello and then told me I was mistaken. Finally, I executed the last part of my plan: confront the cheater head on. I took a break from tailing Trinity to document that scumbag’s extracurricular activities, printed out all the evidence, and then waited for the perfect opportunity.

I waited outside a restaurant where they were having dinner, dressed in my finest suit. When they were done with their entrees, I strode up to their table and plopped the folder of pictures down.

“You deserve better than him,” I said. She went white as a ghost while he turned beet red. The entire restaurant was staring but I stood my ground and waited for her to say something. Except she didn’t. She just sat there, refusing to look me in the eye, until finally her fiancé got up and cocked me in the face with a right hook. The next thing I knew, I was out on the pavement, stars swirling in my vision. She never came out.

I realized on the way home that the whole plan had been so inartful. If I really wanted to win her over, embarrassing her in public was not the answer. I just needed to tell her how I felt.

I penned a long missive and sent it over Q-Mail to her. She didn’t respond. So I wrote another one, then another, and then another. The last one may have been too over the top, and I immediately regretted what I had called her. I quickly wrote a follow-up note profusely apologizing and asking if we could meet, so I could sort this whole thing out.

“Hello, Doug.”

It’s the day after my last note and I’m making up some work that I had blown off in one of the public atriums on 6 ½ Avenue. I look up and she is standing at the doorway.

She is stunning. Even more so than usual. A long black dress hugs her figure and her heels clack along the marble floor as she walks toward my little table. I quickly get up to leave, afraid that the cops are going to jump out from behind the corner, but she motions me to stay.

“H-hi Trinity,” I say.

“You can call me Beatrice.”

“OK, Beatrice.”

“Can I join you?” she asks.

“S-su-sure you can, please.”

I get up and pull out the other chair for her and she sits down. She stares at me in a way she’s never looked at me before and I feel my heartbeat quicken.

“H-how did you know I’d be here?”

“You’re not the only one good at stalking.”

I start to protest, but she holds up her hand.

“No. It’s fine. I understand. You were just looking out for me. It was sweet. In a way.”

There is something tender in her voice now, and I know that my notes must have finally gotten through to her.

“I just wanted to say that you were right about everything,” she says, leaning in close to my face, so that our mouths are just inches apart and I can see the sheen on her lips. “And, well…”

She leans forward suddenly and we’re kissing. After about half a minute, I open my eyes a crack to convince myself that this was real, that this was actually happening, and there she is. Kissing me of all people. Her lips taste like strawberries on a summer’s day and her perfume smells like lavender and I just want this moment to continue on forever.

But finally, she breaks away, and I sit back in my chair and let out a deep breath. I can still taste her on my lips, and I run my tongue over them to experience that feeling again. But when I do, the strawberries are gone and in their place is something foul, something I remember from that first visit to her apartment all those months ago.

“Goodbye, Doug,” I hear her say, as my throat starts to swell and my vision becomes blurry, and the last thing I see is her in that black dress, walking through the empty atrium and into the night.

Next: Jen returns with a vengeance, as she awaits Beatrice’s summons.