Empty Names

5 - Rite of First Refusal

 

People often speak of places having a life and personality of their own.  Traits molded by but independent of their inhabitants.  And like most living things, places can dream.  And like most dreams, strange and wonderful things can result from them being shared.  

Or at least that’s the most common theory on how Crossherd came to be: The collective wistful dream of every small town that could have been a metropolis if only history had gone a little differently.  

These days it’s the largest and most connected-to pocket dimension in North America.  A shortcut across the continent for those in the know.  A transfer hub for travelers using the anchor world to ease the hop between realities.  A petri dish for imported magic and homegrown science to cross-contaminate and give birth to innovations both yearned for and unexpected.  A forest of concrete and chrome and color paradoxically vaster and less populated than its “real world” counterparts whose mystique its dreaming parents sought to capture.  A dialectical mess of half the population running translation charms at all times yet still unable to agree on whether to pronounce it as “Cross-Herd” or “Cros-Sherd.”

And yet, if you know where to look, those small town roots still show through.  Turn down the right alleys and linger on the right empty streets and you just might find a place like ’s Diner.  The name on the sign in front of the possessive ’s changes every week and the cook’s accent changes every day, but the waitstaff always remembers your last visit.  Even if it’s their first day on the job.  No matter the crowd there’s always a cozy booth waiting for you.  Just don’t think too hard about the floor plan or the fact that no one’s actually seen the inside of the kitchen.  

The endemic paradox of deep-seated nostalgia and ever-shifting novelty made ’s Diner Eris’s favorite restaurant from the first time she walked in.  So of course it’s here she brings her friend and soon-to-be-coworker to celebrate.

“I still don’t get how you order the same thing every time we come here,” she says once the waiter is out of casual earshot.  “The menu’s literally different every time.”

“I get what I know I like,” Lacuna replies from across the table with a shrug.  “The consistency is nice.”

“That’s not what I - but you know what?  That too.  We’re supposed to be celebrating.  Live a little!  Working together with professionals, traveling, doing good, and not to mention practically a blank check on equipment requests.  This is gonna be awesome!”

Lacuna gives a soft chuckle at Eris’s enthusiastic gesticulating followed by a sigh.  “Yeah.  Yeah, you’re right.  Maybe I’ll get a slice of pie or something after for dessert.”

Eris grins wide.  “That’s the spirit!”  She says in what barely qualifies as an inside voice.  A moment passes and the grin fades.  She leans forward, elbows on the table.  “But seriously,” she continues, more softly now, “what’s bugging you sis?”

“I… What gave it away?”

“You’ve been sighing all afternoon.”

“Oh.  I have?  I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah, that’s a thing you do.  A lot.  Worlds’ worst Poker face.  It’s endearing, really.”

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.  But between that and the hoodie you may as well be wearing a neon sign saying ‘I’m stressed out.’  That thing’s like a security blanket for you.”

“Oh…”

“Hey, nothing to be ashamed of.  We’ve all got something.  And dressing like a cute meme is probably healthier than some of the stupid shit I’ve done.”

“Ugh, I never should have shown you that part of the Internet.”

“Too late.  I’m thoroughly corrupted with the Internet brain rot and it’s all your fault.  I hope you’re happy.”

“Heh.”  Lacuna touches her fingers to her forehead and shakes her head in mock exasperation.  “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Would you have it any other way?’

“No.”

“But yeah, anyway, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool too.”

“Thanks.  I appreciate it.  It’s not that I don’t want to.  It’s just…”  Lacuna breaks off her approximation of eye contact as the sentence fades halfway through.

Eris waits in silence for her friend to find the words.  She’s learned the hard way that interjecting here to prompt Lacuna  would only be more frustrating.  Concern’s starting to creep in though.  For all her trying to keep things upbeat, it’s been a good while since the last time she saw Lacuna let something eat at her like this.  Not since that time she called her up in the middle of the night asking for a ride to Doc’s.

“Here you go ladies.”

Eris and Lacuna look up in unison to see the waiter’s returned.

“Tonight’s special for you,” he slides a plate of something fried, unidentified, and between two buns in front of Eris.  “And your usual,” he finishes as he places a pile of fries, cheese, and gravy in front of Lacuna.

Eris notices the waiter shiver as he walks away.  Poor guy must be new.  Implanted memories are always a trip.  She makes a mental note to leave an extra tip later.

“Is it just me,”  Lacuna finally speaks up, “or does this place listen in on people’s conversations and time the food to it?”

“Oh, it definitely does.”

“Creepy.”

“Eh, I kinda like it.”

“You would.”

“It’d be worse if it was a person, but it's a building, you know?”

“A psychic, debatably sentient, ideological construct of an archetype.”

“Someone’s been doing her research.”

“Enough to know it's creepy.”

“But you still come here.”

“The food’s good enough to outweigh the creep factor.”  Lacuna shoves a forkful of gravy-covered-cheese curd in her mouth for emphasis.

“And again I ask: How do you keep ordering that?  I don’t even see it on the menu most of the times we come here.”

“Uns un ostalja,” Lacuna says around another mouthful of food.  She swallows and tries again.  “I’m pretty sure this place runs on nostalgia and tailors the menus.”

“Nostalgia?  You’re not even Canadian.”

“Family trip as a kid.  Visited my aunt up in Vermont then drove across the border to Quebec with her.  Good times.”

“That the trans aunt you mentioned a while back?”

Lacuna nods.  “Somehow didn’t realize it until after I came out to my folks.  Turns out my mom having been through it all with her sister as teenagers makes the process a lot easier.  Also, I’m like sixty percent certain that she’s a witch of some kind.  Just not sure how to bring it up yet without risking a Masquerade breach.”

“That’s all cool, but how’s my getting something different every time fit in with your nostalgia theory?”

Lacuna shrugs.  “You were a trucker for a while, right?  First job after leaving home?  Maybe it’s got something to do with that.”

Eris eyes her sandwich, searching for hints of familiarity.  “Maybe…”

The rest of the meal continues in relative silence.  Mouths too full for talking.  Eris’s mind begins to wander as she tries to recall if she’s ever had a wild boar sandwich before.  Or maybe she just saw it on a menu somewhere and meant to get it during a next time that never happened.  That train of thought comes to a halt when she hears Lacuna’s fork clink down on the plate, finished.  She swallows her current mouthful and takes a sip of her drink.

“What was it that you told them?”  Lacuna finally breaks the silence.  Not so much looking at Eris as past her.  “Road I mean.  About me.”

Not where Eris thought that conversation was going to go when it inevitably came back around.  She rubs the back of her neck as she takes a moment to think.

“After he gave me the pitch for this team he’s putting together,” she begins, “we got to talking about who else was going to be on board, and he said he was still looking for a ‘tech guy’ - finger quotes and all - and asked if I knew anyone.  I remembered you were in the market again, so I told him how the company you were working for on some sort of advanced AI thing got bought out by some big corp and you chose to walk instead of working for them.  Said you were the best programmer I know.”

“Eris, I’m the only programmer you know.”

“And while I’ve got no idea what you’re saying half the time you go on about it, I can tell that you do, and that you really care about what you’re working on.”

“What I was working on.”

“Sorry.  Sore spot?”

“Just a bit.  Also, ‘he’?”

“Road’s fluid about that.  And they were he at the time so, eh.” Eris shrugs.  “I try to handle that on an individual basis, and Road said something along the lines of ‘whatever fits in the moment’ when I asked them about it.

“Anyway, when I told them-slash-him about you he said that he remembered you.  They said some stuff about you having natural talent and being the kind of person to run towards problems to solve them instead of away to safety.”

“More like having dumb luck and being sleep deprived enough for my self-preservation tendencies to be shot.”

“You’re selling yourself short again.  Whatever it was you did, you made enough of an impression that I didn’t even have to say all that much before Road jumped all over the idea and said that he’d call you first chance he got.  Which was apparently before I even got home that night.”

The conversation hangs.

“Why do you ask?” Eris asks.

“Well...  I...  You know...  Haven’t actually accepted Road’s offer yet.”

“Oh?”  That one syllable is all Eris can think of as she wonders to herself if she should have seen this coming.

“Some of the stuff they were saying…  They were throwing out words like ‘hacker’ and ‘artificer’ and ‘magi-tech’.  Like they’d gotten the idea into their head that I was some kind of action movie cyberpunk net wizard and I’m just.  So.  Very.  Not.”

“And you told them that?”

“Tried to anyway.  Said that I don’t ‘hack’ things.  Just because I’m a programmer, that doesn’t mean I do cybersecurity.  You wouldn’t call a plumber to change the locks on your house.  You know?”

“The apartment maintenance guy does both.”

“Okay, bad analogy.  Also, Jim’s awesome enough to probably be an outlier.  But you get my point, right?”

“Sure.”

“But I’m not sure Road does.  Even after I tried to explain, they toned it down a bit but were still talking me up enough that I couldn’t help but feel they’re overestimating me.”  Lacuna lets out the longest sigh of the night.  “It would be wrong of me to jump into this unqualified.  Especially when…  well, I’ve seen how you wind up on nights I need to help you back to your apartment.  Or to Doc.”

“Well, I doubt you’d actually be in the field, and if you did end up there somehow, there’s no way Road or I would let anything happen to you.”

“But what if I let something happen to you?!”

Lacuna cringes at the volume of her own outburst and looks over her shoulder in embarrassment.  Thankfully, ’s Diner looks to have inserted a dozen or so empty booths between the two of them and the next party over at some point in the conversation.

Well, damn.  Eris has known her friend since Lacuna first came Backstage, and this is the first time she’s ever heard the slender woman raise her voice.

“Lacuna, look at me,” Eris says after recovering from her surprise enough to keep her voice low and even.  “That’s not going to happen.”

“You can’t know tha-”

“Trust me,” Eris cuts her off, “that’s not going to happen.  I know Road can be… like that… when they’re trying to psych people up, but I wouldn’t have recommended you if I thought they were going to ask anything of you that you weren’t capable of.  And even if you two have different ideas right now of where your strengths lie, I trust that you’ll find a way to help that you can do.  And yeah, sometimes we’ll get hurt, that’s part of the job, but it won’t be your fault.”

“I still don’t know if I should.”

“But you want to.”

Lacuna slumps back into the booth and sighs.  She doesn’t look up from her hands as she says, “Yes.  I wouldn’t be so torn up about it if I didn’t.  When… back when Road first brought me Backstage I told myself that this was going to be a new start.  That I was going to start doing something good and meaningful with my life.  And until our project got bought out, I really thought I was.  And then Road comes back into my life with this offer and it’s not at all the same thing, but it’s still something that could help people and make a difference.”

“Then do it.”

“But -”

“Do it.  Stop underestimating yourself and go out and take what you want and don’t look back.  Whatever comes of it is going to be better than spending your life looking back and asking ‘what if?’  That’s how I do things and just look and how I turned out.”  Eris flings her arms wide for emphasis.  When Lacuna looks up, she flexes and pulls an exaggerated grin.  Lacuna smiles faintly in return.

“Heh.  Fine.  I’ll believe in the you that believes in me.”

Eris laughs.  “That’s right you absolute nerd.  Show me that fighting spirit.”

“Oh, I’m the nerd, am I?  Says the woman who replied to the reference with a reference.”

“You started it.  Besides, you’re the one who made me watch that show in the first place.”

“Made you?  We watched the first two episodes together and then you called me up the next day telling me how you’d binged the whole thing after I left.”

“Fun times.”  Eris shrugs.  “Oh hey, the waiter’s coming back.  You want me to ask for the check?”

“Actually, I think I will get that pie.”

 

*******

 

As the two of them exit ’s Diner, Eris is pleased to see her friend in a better mood than when they arrived.  The walk back to their exit bridge is uneventful save for a brief stop to watch a one-man-band on a street corner.  The one man’s band in this case being five separate instruments floating in the air and seemingly playing themselves while the street mage conducts.  Eris shakes her head, bemused while Lacuna stares at the performance in delight.  One would think she’d be used to this sort of thing by now.  Then again, it’s not like she ever goes anywhere without Eris dragging her along except the shortest possible path between their apartment complex, the office she’d been working at, and the corner grocer closest to their usual bridge.

The rest of the walk back is spent in casual back and forth banter that quickly morphs into Lacuna rambling on about the book series she’s currently reading.  That suits Eris just fine; easier to keep an eye out for threats along the way.  Not that she actually expects any - it’s a safe part of town, just like anywhere else in Crossherd she ever brings Lacuna along with her to - but habits from a decade of monster hunting die hard.  And perhaps one or two alleyways they cut down aren’t ones she’d want her friend traversing alone.  Lacuna might have a couple inches of height on her, but Eris has literally seen her knocked over by a stiff breeze.  Meanwhile, a sharp glare from the woman who wrestles werewolves into submission as a hobby has proven a sufficient deterrent in the past to send any curious bottom-feeders scuttling back down the nearest storm drain.  Not that Lacuna’s ever noticed, bless her oblivious heart.

Like most bridges in and out of Crossherd, their exit point’s a subtle one, just as easy to miss as it is to head down on accident.  The only sign of its special status is a small stenciled image of a bridge graffitied onto the wall next to a fenced-in empty lot.  As the two of them pass through the open gate of the fence they drop their conversation, keep their eyes fixed on the ground, and let their minds drift until the late-night bustle of the city fades out.  When they look back up they’re standing in an empty lot behind a Huddle House, back in the mundane world a block from their apartment complex.

It’s Lacuna who breaks the silence of the last stretch of their return home, asking “By the way, what’s up with that guy who contacted us after Road’s offer asking for ‘equipment requests for this new business venture’?”

“Oh, Sullivan?”

“I think that’s what the email said, yeah.”

“I’ll admit, I’m not entirely sure what his deal is.  I only briefly met him the once on a job Road was helping me with.  Apparently the two of them go way back.  Got the impression he does a lot of info gathering for Road.  Like, he’s the reason they’ve got such an uncanny knack for showing up just when they're needed.”

“Huh… guess he’s probably one of the other people Road mentioned being on this team.”

“Either that or just bankrolling the whole operation.  From what I hear, he’s absolutely loaded.  Old money shit.”

“That would explain the blank check for a budget, I guess.”

The conversation pauses momentarily as they reach the apartment complex gate and enter the code to open it.

“Although,” Eris picks back up as they cross the lamplit parking lot to their building, “I have heard some weird rumors about him when I tried asking around.”

“What kind of weird?” Lacuna asks after a moment’s hesitation.

“The big one’s that he used to be some kind of hitman.  And that he married some bigwig sorceress to steal her secrets and no one’s heard from her since.”  Eris shrugs.  “Can’t say I put much stock in either of them.  Just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy Road would roll with, you know?”

“Yeah… I mean, you know Road better than I do, but… okay, it’s sort of embarrassing to say, but when they saved me and when they were showing me around Crossherd for the first time, they had this aura about them.  Like they were some hero who’d just stepped out of a story.”

Eris leans against the railing of the stairwell they’ve stopped in.  They’re on Lacuna’s floor now.

“You’re actually not the first to say that.  More than a few guys I know in the monster hunting gig were originally brought Backstage by Road, and they all came away with the same impression.  At least two of them have admitted to getting into the biz to try to copy them.”

“Really?  I wouldn’t have guessed,” Lacuna says.  She’s looking down at the floor again.  

“Yeah.  And I’ll admit I’ve gotten a similar vibe myself the few times I’ve with them.  Strict no killing rule.  Encouraging speeches.  Putting saving people above catching the monster.  All the classic hero stuff.”  Hard not to feel like a punch-happy brute in comparison, Eris refrains from adding.

“I see…” Lacuna says without looking up.  “Urgh, it’s late.  I should head to bed.  Thanks for taking me out tonight.  Had a good time.”  The last few sentences come out all in one breath before Lacuna takes her leave of the stairwell.

“No prob.  Sleep well.”  Eris gives a short wave before adding “And sis?”

Lacuna lingers in the door dividing stairwell and hall, looking back over her shoulder.

“Whatever you decide,” Eris says, “we’re still cool.”