Chapter 4

Getting my ass to work the next morning was a drag, as usual. A long, hot shower followed up by mom’s leftover pasta, and my last two fingers of scotch had set me up for the night. I didn’t have any illusions that I’d get a restful night of sleep, assuming I’d see death and murder then waking in a cold sweat every hour and having difficulty falling asleep again.

I slept like a baby, and I’m not sure why I was so worried. I’d hurt other boxers before, broken noses and blackened eyes in the ring. One time on the ice, I broke a guy’s knee (totally unintentional) and basically ruined his chances at making a career out of it (not to mention a really bad year of rehab). I didn’t feel any remorse then, and don’t feel it now.

Still, I was sore and bruised from my exertions last evening and my body wanted nothing more than to catch another hour or twelve of sleep. I wasn’t about to risk a 100k job for a few hours of sleep though. I didn’t skip breakfast today, knowing my body would need protein to repair itself. A three-egg omelet with some leftover ham and onion and a spoonful of medium salsa on top is just heaven in my mind. Last of mom’s pasta into my bag along with a few apples and off we go! Just another guy in his way through early morning traffic to work. Just another guy that killed six coyotes and one human in another world beyond a magic gate, then came home and slept like it never happened.

I wonder what that makes me? Had I never been in exactly that situation, I might never have discovered this about myself. I wonder how many other men have this capacity, but it just never had the chance to be expressed. I wonder if they’ve ever studied the conscripted men that returned from war?

During breaks in my day, I went online to research more about the mechanics of having a weapon, and entering the portals. I learned a lot of new things, many of which turned out to be wrong in time (or at least misleading). The major distraction of the day had to be the Statusscreen though. Saying the word aloud brought up a display similar to that of the Inventory. There was a lot in there, and it was only visible to me. What could be shared (apparently) was one’s ‘Titles’.

For me, the stuff I’d done inside the portal was put up there above my head in full glory for everyone to see, as long as they were a Weapon and had already gone a portal once. Good news for me since one of my titles was ‘Betrayer’ and another was ‘Killer of men’. Having the two of these floating above my head in bold black font would no doubt lead to questions. Thank the gods I hadn’t come across any other Weapons before I figured that one out. The white titles of ‘Coyote Killer” and “Trophy Hunter” would be ok for others to see, but there seemed to be no mechanism to only display some of the titles. They were either all on or all off.

Hopefully; not displaying my titles wouldn’t raise any alarms around other Weapons. (I now think that a lot of us Weapons have a few titles we’d rather that others didn’t see. It was rare to see anyone displaying titles in the years to come)

I could also call my weapons out, here in the real world. As fast as I could think it, there could be a really big knife in my hand, or an axe. I wondered what might happen just by reflex response if someone like me got startled?

Would it eventually become like the Wild West with a few assholes tracking down and starting shit with others just for fame? The portals themselves couldn’t be filmed, and nothing inside them could be filmed, but Weapons outside the portal could. There were already videos of Weapons sparring with each other, or displaying their weapons. One guy had already robbed a bank, his sword and helm popping into existence as he approached the teller recorded on the banks internal security cameras.

The implications of that were staggering. People like me could have a sword inside a bank, a concert, parliament, or a school. I wondered if our weapons were detectable by any means?

The book was another fascination for me, I had no idea how I could have ticked so many boxes in a single day. My only thoughts beyond being impressed with my speed of ticking those boxes, was my regret that I hadn’t stabbed the asshat from behind. Doing it that way might have ticked yet another box with his death. Ooooh ... that’s getting in way deep, way quick. My only regret is that I didn’t stab him in the heart from behind? Really?

Thinking of it reminded me, and I stole a yoghurt from someone’s lunch bag as my daily ‘penance’ to keep my pickpocket skill. I was starting small to see just how small I could go and still keep the skill. Notes at the bottom of the page indicated a 10-day dormant period if I missed a day. I wanted the skill, but I also wanted to stay out of prison.

The day finished off like many before it, tools away, shower, and turnover to the guy coming in for the night shift. I hadn’t had any booty calls today, but that wasn’t all that unusual for a day shift.

I was really debating going back. Passing on to those other people what I knew about the portal might save their lives, (even if they weren’t all Weapons) but my name would get out eventually, and my weapon. George’s idea of anonymity wouldn’t last. If I just ghosted them right now, it might for a while, but it was also an opportunity to present a public face, to show me in the best light possible ... the good guy.

‘Integrity is doing the right thing when you know nobody is watching.’

Dad said that one, though I doubt he wrote it. He sure as hell didn’t live it. Multiple wives (in succession, he was a lousy husband not a polygamist), a home-based business that made money in reality, but lost money on paper, a rocky relationship with both his kids and his stepchildren. He was a font of wisdom and quite a smart guy, but a total dick. His support of my sports had everything to do with his own ego, and the possibility of a huge payday if I went pro. As I aged, but didn’t get any bigger his support waned and I eventually needed to arrange my own transportation by begging rides with other players or their parents. I was a kind of team mascot in the end, tagging along and playing third line.

Things were changing now, I was something like a big fish in a small pool. Reports across the world had numbers like 1 in 50,000 or one in 25,000 people having a weapon. This means that in the GTA, there might have been somewhere between 100 and 200 ‘Weapons’ as we were being called.

Thinking about that, the odds that all 30 of the new students at George’s new class were all Weapons was pretty low. Some of those would be pretenders and some of them would be newspeople, while some of them would be the new version of ‘puck bunnies. That or the reported proportion of Weapons was really low.

Interesting, 20 or maybe as many as 50 of us for every million people. Half of those would end up avoiding portals (and the spotlight). Too frightened or too lazy to enter a portal. Maybe 10-20% of those who entered would die within a few months, bringing our numbers down quickly. With low numbers like that, it wasn’t unreasonable to think that we’d be at least ‘well known’ if not famous. Better keep my nose clean (in public). Nobody would care about my philandering, but assault or theft would land me in the crosshairs of the news and the police pretty fast. A drywall taper who gets a fight in a bar was ignored, a pro ball player doing the same thing would make the homepage newsfeed. I’d probably end up somewhere in between. (Later to be proven incorrect!)

I ate, dressed, and picked up a flat of waterbottles on my way to the ‘practice’. The path from the parking lot was all gravel, so I was humping the bag, plus twelve kilo’s of water a couple hundred meters before practice really began. George met me at the edge of the clearing.