Episode 2 – Mega
The two rooms across from mine have been vacant for weeks, getting me used to being the only person on the third floor. My greatest hope up to this point was that whoever moved into one of them wouldn’t have a bunch of overly energetic kids and / or noxious pets with them. The last lady with the cats had the entire third floor smelling like ammonia and tuna.
But there was no way in a million years I would have even entertained the thought that Mega would become my new housemate. Why in the hell would a filthy rich, world-famous person be moving into a boarding house in her own hometown? She lives in Atlanta now, presumably to be closer to GameOnyx HQ, but she has a house here, and her mother still lives here, so it’s not like she doesn’t have other places to stay.
Before I get too far down the rabbit hole of trying to guess her motives, I put a strong, conscious effort into getting my legs moving again. Mega descends the metal ramp holding a stainless steel box, focusing on the ground in front of her, being careful with whatever cargo she’s carrying. A bright-white droid about the size of a five-year-old walks between us, headed toward the house, bags hanging from its arms and neck while it carries a full-sized, black refrigerator like it’s a toy. These models are clearly high-end. They’re fully bi-pedal and that alone is a hefty upgrade over the ones with lower bodies that look like miniature tanks. These should have the fine motor skills for handwriting and flower arrangement, but the power for lifting cars and knocking down doors. They’re generally shaped like human beings, but they have no facial features, just LEDs that glow as needed under the hard plastic of their casing.
Mega notices me as her foot touches the asphalt of the street in front of the house and she smiles, halfhearted, just being polite. But she puts the box down on the curb, dusts off her palms on her pants and holds her left hand out, palm up. The right hand lifts toward me, fingers relaxed, like she’s ready to hold a stylus.
She thinks I want an autograph.
And, honestly, I do. But that probably isn’t the best way to start off a…housemateship?
“Uh, no, I…why…are you moving into my house?” Okay, that wasn’t much better. I may have gotten my legs working again, but my brain still needs time to catch its breath.
She stiffens, both hands dropping to her sides like lead weights.
“Sorry, I thought the lady I met last week was the owner. But you own it?”
The emphasis on the word was clearly directed at my ratty sneakers and dusty coveralls. Too starstruck to realize how I must look, now I break eye contact.
“No. I live here. I didn’t mean—I just live here.”
She’s quiet for a couple of seconds. My hands are balled into anxious fists so I can feel how sweaty my palms are.
“I’m your new housemate then. You know me. You dive?”
Shame crawls up my face like a giant spider as I shake my head, hearing that tone again like she can’t believe I would have enough money to play her game. And, technically, I don’t.
Most people who play Trop 99 have sophisticated VR equipment like helmets, haptic vests or even suits, and intricate speaker systems surrounding their gaming desks or even entire rooms. For them, they do dive into the world Mega built. I’ve done the best I can with a console and some code I scraped off Reddit. My imagination has to fill in the blanks, but it works for me and fits my nearly non-existent budget. Still, the fact that she knows I can’t give her crowning achievement in the world of gaming the respect it deserves is crushing. She must not think I’m a serious gamer. She can’t possibly believe I love it as much as I do without the proper tools to play it fully.
“Emulator?”
I nod and am surprised to see she looks impressed instead of disgusted or pissed off.
“There are a lot of games that function well on a CPU without a rig, right?” she asks, bending to pick her box back up.
“Yeah. But…they’re not…yours.” I shrug feeling helpless and idiotic.
Her eyes widen, then narrow, then start darting around like she’s making quick, complex calculations in her head. Finally, she bites down on her bottom lip, slowly release it from behind her front teeth, a motion that seems to say, “I’m probably gonna regret this, but fuck it.”
“Are you claustrophic?” she asks, turning to walk up to the porch, leaving me confused and frozen again for a beat. What does claustrophobia have to do with anything? I grab a box from one of the drones, which gives me a quizzical head tilt, yellow lights on its face flashing as it processes the interaction before returning to the truck to grab something else.
“No,” I respond, catching up to her as she starts up the porch stairs.
“Grave,” Mega mumbles, like she’s already thinking about something else. There’s apparently something she wants me to do that I shouldn’t be claustrophobic for. I’m lost, but intrigued. And if this particular favor just so happens to pay well, I wouldn’t argue.
As we make it to the second floor landing, she seems to snap out of it and says, “You don’t have, ya know? Got bots for a reason. I’m stretching after the drive.”
“I want to.”
She doesn’t respond to that, seeming to fall back into whatever unseen contemplations were dominating her mind before as we make it to the third floor, turning left toward whichever room belongs to her now. I toss my pack over in front of my door and then make my way back toward her.
“You can sit that down anywhere in the office space,” she said, pointing to the room right next to the staircase. “This goes in my room.”
In the back of my mind, I’d wondered where the truckful of stuff was going to go, but now it made sense. She had rented both of these rooms, not just one. One room as a workspace and the other to live in. I followed her instructions and entered the workspace. It already had a few holosters shining on the walls, mainly of scenery from Trop 99. City Hall with its massive, golden gavel at the bottom of a dizzyingly high set of marble stairs. The lush, artificial greenery of Hueng Q. Seng park. The sparkling, nighttime view of the city from the bedroom of the mayor’s penthouse.
There’s still quite a bit of floor space left, but my curiosity pulls me over to the crimson pod I’d seen the drones carrying in earlier. I sit my box down in front of it and stand to take a closer look. Its oblong and is only slightly smaller than the white platform that it’s sitting on top of. It takes up nearly the entire wall on this side of the room, large enough for me to fit inside of with room left over. I reach my hand out to touch the matte surface.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard,” Mega’s voice makes me jump and I turn to find her leaning casually against the doorframe. “But it tends to be a bit easier to have a conversation with somebody when you know their name.”
Confusion and then embarrassment hit me.
“Shit. Sorry. Faun.”
“Right. Gonna assume that last word was your name. Nice to meet you, Faun. And the apparently monstrous love of video games you have.”
“What?”
She chuckles and walks over to me.
“Can’t remember the last time I met someone in real life using an emulator on a PC. No offense, but renting a room here means you’re…not wealthy. Bet major dits your setup is over five years old.”
“You’re renting here, too,” I say, hoping this will lead her down the path of explaining why.
She grins down at me, at least four inches taller than I am, if I had to guess. It’s nothing like the spine-popping that happens if I stand too close to Chapman, but because of who she is, it almost feels that way.
“Fair point. But I’m renting two rooms, most of this floor. Still got more than you, newb.” She sticks her tongue out at me and I bite back a smile. She’s not ridiculing me. Just stating facts, finding her way to conclusions, being observant. I’d left because no one was paying attention to us, so I shouldn’t balk so much at her focusing on me.
“Since we’re on the topic, might as well get the rest out of the way.” She lays a hand on the surface of the pod. My questions about what she’s working on, what all this equipment does, and specifically what that coffin-like thing is doing here are just barely held at bay out of respect for her. “I am working on a secret project for GramOnyx. I’m here because it seemed like a good place to hide. But also because I have personal business to take care of in Louisville. They want me to get moving on this, I need to be here, it all needs to be kept…gamma.” She raises her eyebrows. In Trop 99 ‘gamma’ is slang for something being invisible or a closely guarded secret.
So, of course, my very next thought is how everyone on the boards will freak out the second they find out about Mega being here while she’s working on the secret project she talked about on Game Gab. My smile fades into me tucking my tongue between my molars and biting down slightly.
Keep it together. You’re a mature gamer who understands professional boundaries. This is no different from when you were pretending to date a member of Talis Tyzer’s band to get access to her phone.
“Of course,” I say, hoping it sounds casual and doesn’t signify any of my disappointment at the fact that I won’t be getting any further juicy details than this. A brief, NDA-compatible statement like that makes my role as her housemate and nothing more perfectly clear. “You’ve got a job to do. That makes sense.”
The way she looks me up and down makes me wish I’d changed out of my uniform before helping her.
“Faun,” she crosses her arms over her chest and leans back slightly, “what if I asked you to help me with that job?”
