I looked up to make sure the light rail hadn’t reached Englewood Downtown yet. Nope. Another station to go. I sighed. I wanted to get home, to my keyboard, to Lena.
We needed to sort shit out. Not just about where we were going, but about ...
2023-09-22 12:19:42 +0000 UTC View PostI left Erin to her vegan burger and she left me to my worries.
The nearest light rail station was just a few residential blocks away. Picked clean by the DU area’s Third Eye players, probably, but I might still scare up a few Materials on ...
2023-09-22 12:02:38 +0000 UTC View PostLight flooded my eyes, so much purer and more intense than the gray sky overhead, a miasma of white gold. When my vision adjusted, though, I realized what I was looking at:
Another Third Eye player, about to open the door to Next Level Burge...
2023-09-19 13:18:27 +0000 UTC View PostThey didn’t make many romantic comedies during my formative years. I remembered them from theaters when I was a little kid, and Netflix had picked up the slack in the last few years. During my teens and early twenties, though, the most crucial j...
2023-09-19 13:17:08 +0000 UTC View PostWater!
My pulse quickened. My fingers tightened around my phone.
I took in the neighborhood around me. I didn’t recognize it.
No surprise. I hadn’t had a dog to walk since I moved out of my parents’ house, I battled pollen ...
2023-09-19 13:15:20 +0000 UTC View PostBlocks rolled past; Wood and Stone rolled in. Commercial districts should have had more Augmented Reality activity, but maybe they’d been picked over, because I found more Materials as I stalked through these mostly-residential neighborhoods. Wr...
2023-09-19 13:13:58 +0000 UTC View PostMy mind went blank. I shot forward.
Wind tried to tear the Plastic away from Lena as I neared, but it caught on her body and her wings and only wrapped itself tighter over her face. Her flames singed it, discolored it, kicked up clouds of sm...
2023-09-19 13:12:34 +0000 UTC View PostLena and I leaned closer to the screen, eyes wide, breaths held. Maybe it should have occurred to me that this was almost exactly the dramatic lean-in I’d wanted for a kiss a moment ago. But in that instant, you’d have had to stick a fishhook ...
2023-09-19 13:11:26 +0000 UTC View PostThird Eye chimed on my phone but I didn’t need to switch tabs to know something incredible had happened.
The breeze swirled around me and billowed the cape at my back, the tunic belted at my waist, the peaked, parted hair on my head. I wav...
2023-09-19 13:10:13 +0000 UTC View PostI beat Trowel Samurai 2 that night.
I had to check Lena’s guide to beat Cake Daimyo. I’d missed the audiovisual cue for his second phase and that was completely on me. A full stomach helped me pay attention to the fight, but it turned ou...
2023-09-18 21:07:00 +0000 UTC View Post“So,” Lena asked, “which of your asshole relatives made you terrified of statheads?”
“I don’t think you’ve met him,” I said. “Hey! I’m not terrified, I’m justifiably concerned. And some of my relatives aren’t assholes...
2023-09-18 20:57:44 +0000 UTC View Post“Lena,” I said, “why don’t you look at the Discord.”
She rolled her eyes. “What for?”
I turned back to my phone. She could find out for herself.
The exchange between NugsFan15 and ShakeProtocol had continued. I cons...
2023-09-18 20:49:18 +0000 UTC View Post“Glass,” Lena said.
I followed the angle of her camera and focused where she had. Outside of Third Eye, we were paying special attention to the side window of a Ross Dress For Less. Inside, we were paying special attention to a window of...
2023-09-18 20:39:22 +0000 UTC View Post“This,” Lena said, “sure is not what I expected to see through a third eye.”
We stood on the sidewalk near the base of the tree. The downy woodpecker had vacated, either climbing into the leaves overhead or flying off.
The fenc...
2023-09-12 20:53:52 +0000 UTC View PostMy parka was the most expensive thing I owned, after my PC. As Lena and I trudged down the sidewalk in the freezing shadows of Swedish Medical Center, I hugged the coat close and thanked past Cam for his foresight.
Lena’s coat looked a lot...
2023-09-12 20:52:32 +0000 UTC View PostAgainst my better judgment, I opened my eyes.
Good news: the only light came from the Hello Kitty night light over Lena’s bed, filtered through the paper panels of our unfurled room divider.
Bad news: if I recognized the provenance o...
2023-09-12 20:50:57 +0000 UTC View Post“PVP,” I said, and ‘PVP?’ I posted.
“What, in Third Eye?” Lena asked.
AlephLambda: Yes, you’ll have many exciting opportunities to engage with other players as we roll out new features during the beta per...
2023-09-12 20:47:59 +0000 UTC View PostI followed Lena to the (supposedly) Official Third Eye server on Discord.
Ten minutes ago I couldn’t stand the thought of touching it, but that was when it meant an attempt to wrap my brain around Third Eye’s mysteries.
Now it mean...
2023-09-12 20:43:33 +0000 UTC View PostLena flopped back into her chair. “I don’t know what we’re trying to figure out anymore, or what we’d do about it if we did. Break for the night?”
I’d run this long on adrenaline, incredulity, and the two slices of pizza I’d gr...
2023-09-12 20:38:41 +0000 UTC View PostWhat did I expect to happen?
Burning wings to erupt from Lena’s back? A dress of fire, ringlets of flame for hair? Her avatar enfleshed, imperious, awesome, beautiful beyond sanity?
Or for her to catch fire for real, suffer spontaneo...
2023-09-12 20:35:15 +0000 UTC View PostLena backed away and sank onto her unmade bed. She scooped up a fleece decorated with video game mascot creatures that definitely hadn’t been licensed to whatever Etsy shop she bought the blanket from. She squeezed the critters to her chest.
... 2023-09-12 19:56:40 +0000 UTC View PostI turned to Lena and swallowed a snort. She had her honest-to-God, look-like-a-douchebag smart glasses on. I guessed she’d fetched them from the bedroom while I got the pizza in.
She stared at me through the smart glasses and looked like s...
2023-09-12 19:53:52 +0000 UTC View Post“And you call me the worst,” Lena said. Nonetheless, she hugged my waist.
I let her for a while. When it started to get weird, I mumbled, “You did a hell of a job playing it cool this afternoon.”
“I mean, I was legit hyped fo...
2023-09-12 19:51:24 +0000 UTC View PostSometimes, you see a crowdfunding campaign that over-promises and under-clarifies and you just know the project is going nowhere. You look at the campaign and you look at your PayPal balance after your last round of selling action figures for a fe...
2023-09-12 19:47:03 +0000 UTC View Post