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 where we’d been. I couldn’t keep pushing it out of my mind. Every time I looked at the Discord I saw the username DeepingShadows, and it left me w...
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 the way.
“Nah,” I muttered.
The thought of dragging myself those few blocks seemed overwhelming. And if I encountered another player? ...
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 Burger.
Then I realized who I was looking at.
I must have made some kind of sound, because NugsFan15 turned to meet my eyes.
Her...
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 juncture for my development, I’d been deprived of a vital genre’s worth of cliches.
Maybe the deficiency explained my deficiencies.
Wit...
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 allergies every season but winter, and I’d never contracted an addiction to jogging. I knew the stretch between the apartment, the downtown stores a...
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. Wrong fences, brick walls off siding houses, street signs to nowhere.
I grinded faster alone. Longer legs. Fewer distractions.
It was better...
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 smoke, but didn’t burn through. It filled her wide-open mouth, pushed inside.
I could touch it now and I did, clawing and scrabbling and shoutin...
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 through my lip to drag my face up from the phone screen.
I blinked first. “Is it locked up?”
“You should’ve saved up for a newer p...
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 waved my hand and the breeze became a gale, chasing my gloved fingers. I stirred it and it intensified, a cyclone in my grasp. It blew so hard even my am...
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 out I’d also done a skip in Bone Daimyo’s castle without realizing it. It left me tackling Cake Daimyo without one of the tools the game meant for m...
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.”
“I don’t think I’ve met those,” she said.
I chuckled.
“Think he’s NugsFan15?” she asked.
“Oh, God, don’...
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 considered it illustrative.
ShakeProtocol: I respect the devs’ time, but it takes none to establish the parameters for what we’...
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 a Ross Dress For Less that had spawned a second pane inside the first. The inner glass was thick, maybe plexiglass, like something from an aquarium.<...
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 fence remained --
Provided we looked at it through our phone cameras, and provided we left Third Eye turned on.
I’d exited the app, snapped ...
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 more stylish than mine, black and glossy with hot pink stripes down the arms, and in the kind of weather she’d normally consider walking to a store...
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 of a light source, it meant my brain had woken up too much to obey my body’s demand to go back to sleep.
I groaned and rolled out of bed. I kic...
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 period. :)
“That wasn’t in the Kickstarter,” Lena said. She must have pulled up the page on her computer to check, because she added, “Yeah...
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 meant rescuing Third Eye’s chat admin from my roommate.
Amazing what anger could do for her, and worry for me.
The server started me off in ...
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 grabbed between mindfucks. Now that she’d reminded me of it, I sagged. I saw the subreddit and the supposedly official Discord out of the corner of my...
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 spontaneous human combustion?
What actually happened?
The amulet hung down from her skinny neck, rested on her chest. The only thing burning on her...
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.
I picked up my phone and looked at her. The fleece hid the parts of her avatar it covered. Her flames danced along the edges. How did the app know ...
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 she’d seen a ghost.
I brushed my hands on my pants and ran my fingers through my hair. “I got something on me?”
Lena pulled the glass...
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 for a new Trowel Samurai.” She untangled her arms from my waist. “I figured the Third Eye thing would end up being a scam, anyway. It only really hi...
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 few bucks more than you paid for them in a yard sale, and you think --
What the hell.
By you, I mean me. So maybe I’m the one with the pro...
2023-09-12 19:47:03 +0000 UTC View PostGood evening, distinguished guests! I'll be your host, Joshua Cole, sometimes known around the internet as MoogleEmpMog. I'm an author and game designer, and right now I'm putting those two skills together by writing a progression fantasy novel, Eye Opener.
To support this project and others, I've decided to launch this Patreon. Please help me bring Eye Opener and other great content to l...
2023-09-12 19:43:29 +0000 UTC View Post