Play 2 Wage: Linked

“Now give it the gas!” Kazzad called out above the rhythmic hammering of machinery, hissing tanks, and vibrating pipelines.

I quickly cranked a valve open, my eyes glued to the dwarven woman as she called out instructions from the top of a lifeguard-like high chair. Yet another pipe filled with high pressure gas, this time fluorine.

“Too slow! Turn up the arc-grid by 3 percent and close gate 6!”

A chorus of observing dwarven workers laughed and jeered as I scrambled under the low hanging pipes, over the electrical conduit and vents that spiderwebbed the floor, and bashed my forehead on the handle of a long lever attached to a dump-valve that thankfully did not trigger.

I rubbed my forehead with one hand, dialed the intimidatingly high-voltage electric “Arc-grid” even higher on one of the small screens on the side of a huge quivering machine, then turned and rushed a few steps down the narrow passage to slam my hand down on the 6th gate button of one of the tall skinny tanks half buried in the floor.

As soon as I hit the button, one of the machines made a loud whump noise and shook hard enough that I felt the floor tremble. I glanced down at the wrist-sized bolts that held it to the floor, wondering how high the machine would have jumped if it was not so securely bolted down.

“Okay, what now?!” I called back, my heart hammering in my chest and adrenaline coursing through my veins at the prospect of failing now that I had finally managed to layer an armor plate thickly enough to be molded into something useful.

Kazzad ignored me for a moment, instead focusing on a screen that swung up to her side on a boom-arm attached to the chair. After poking a few buttons and much beard stroking, She answered.

“Close ‘em down n’ lock it in, it’s sloppy but serviceable! Just enough for an arm guard, or maybe a pauldron!” She called out while grinning at the gallery of apprentices and journeymen that watched from a catwalk. “I think ya might’a finally hit above the 99 mark, a few more like this one and we’ll let ya use the auto-valves!”

The onlookers once again laughed, and Kazzad flashed her eyes in their direction, seeming to enjoy their attention and playing up my training like some kind of show.

I darted around to the other side of a bank of controls and flipped a half-dozen levers, dialed a gauge down to zero and poked a big yellow button labeled “Finalize”, then braced my hands on my knees and struggled to catch my breath.

Manufacturing the plates felt more like an obstacle course than any manufacturing process I’d ever been a part of. I looked back up to Kazzad for her approval, a big grin on my face at my success despite the strangeness of the situation.

The various noises on the floor started to quiet down as the system flushed itself from the plethora of reagents and catalysts I’d spent the last hour pumping into the central growth chamber. I’d been training with the dwarves for 18 days, and this was my fourth attempt to grow an armor plate.

Kazzad once again spent some time with the screen, poking and swiping through whatever information it gave her access to. She nodded and hummed to herself while everyone watched with hushed anticipation, until she finally called out over the dull hum that permeated the underground factory floor.

“99.15! As I said, sloppy, yet within tolerance! Congrats Kaninak, you have your first workable plate!” She shouted, and the group of previously jeering dwarves let out a short celebratory cheer.

She did something with the tablet that caused the growth chamber to flash a red light, and start to open with a hiss, releasing the last dregs of non-toxic stabilizer gas in a puff of wispy fog that rolled out and washed over my feet. Then she slid down the ladder from her high chair and joined me next to the machine.

“Ya might still wanna use the gripper, even with them fancy mits o’ yours. The plate’ll be cold as shite and yer lil mittens only go so far.” She gestured to a long-handled grabber that was hanging on a hook next to the chamber.

“Alright, boss.” I replied as I followed her final instruction. Using the pincher on the end of the long handle, I reached into the foggy depths of the vat and pulled out an ever so slightly bowed piece of plating around the size of my hand with splayed out fingers.

I brought the raw material closer to examine it, and could feel the chill rolling off of it. It was maybe a centimeter thick, a mottled mix of brownish colors, and had a shiny polished sheen to its perfectly flat surface. It looked like a polished piece of glazed pottery.

“So, what’s next now that I finally have something workable?”

She smiled at me and clapped me on the shoulder, which Max handily highlighted and warned against. “Now ya can finally practice working with it!” She said, her voice still raised and her eyes occasionally darting to the crowded catwalk.

I looked over at the watchers with a much different look on my face, which was now partially hidden under a two week old beard. I sighed in response.

She lowered her voice but kept her grin, and turned to face me square on, “I know ya have a short deadline, but I think ye will be fine. Yer tougher n’ most o’ your kind and pickin’ things up easy.” She put her heavy gloved hand on my shoulder and continued. “Ye got this. Now, what will ye make from yer first piece?”

I smiled back at her, grateful for the encouragement.

“Oh come on, do you have to let it touch you? Guewwaaeeeewww”

As Max broke into my thought process and made the strangled and alarmed noise that can only be described as “When you can suddenly feel a large insect crawling on your skin”, I felt the tingling sensation of tiny sharp legs crawling up my spine and shivered slightly, but managed to clamp my reaction down. I knew it was just Max messing with me.

“Look, seriously. I’ve been trying to stay out of the way and let you learn all this BS, but really. I think you need to see this.”

My vision dimmed, and all of a sudden I was no longer standing in a brightly lit industrial workshop. Gone was the crowd of onlooking dwarves and their catwalk. The hissing machines, the hanging pipes, and tall gas tanks, all gone. Kazzad with her heavy glove on my shoulder, gone as well.

Instead, I was down in a dark pit, lit with open bubbling vats of chemicals and a number of volcanic vents that spewed a dim smog into the fast flowing air. Large dark and rounded forms huddled along the floor around me in the shadows cast by hanging clumps of bioluminescent mushrooms, and the floor was spiderwebbed with a tangle of crisscrossing stony root-like structures that varied in thickness from fine wires to the diameter of a basketball.

All of that was just the backdrop of what now stood in front of me. In the dim glow, a beetle the size of a rowboat squatted only a few feet away. Long and low, its jaws were at the height of my belt line, and it held itself above the messy floor on meter long legs as thick as my waist. It’s carapace was decorated and partially polished, adorned with extra armor plating inlaid with precious gold and platinum. Sprouting from the back of its head were a bunch of frilly or feathery looking tentacle things that swayed gently in place. One of the long feathery appendages was arching forward and gently resting on my shoulder.

I couldn’t contain my reaction, I jerked away from its glistening multi-mandibled jaws in absolute terror and tripped backwards over the messy floor, feeling something crunch underneath me as I hit and brought my hands up to defend myself. The plate and grabber fell to the side, temporarily forgotten in the face of the biggest jump scare of my life.

My eyes closed for an instant as I hit the ground, and Kazzad and the factory floor were back when I opened them again. I stared up at her with a look of horror on my face.

“Don’t be scared now boy’o, the prospectors up on the catwalk won't give ya a hard time much longer.” She replied, mistaking my horror for some worry about retaliation from the other dwarves.

I closed my eyes and shook my head before opening them again. Cursing Max internally, I stood back up from the thin walled pipe I had landed on and crushed. Kazzad casually reached over and turned a valve to shut off it’s flow without looking.

“It’s just yer first piece o’ armor. What’ll it be?”

I looked back at her with wide eyes, still reeling from the alternate reality that Max had subjected me to. What had he shown me? Is that what the Zk’Aek saw on their end of the game? The dwarves were a little strange, sure, but they seemed civilized enough. I couldn’t quite reconcile the massive difference between what I was seeing now and what Max had given me a brief glimpse of.

Kazzad kept looking at me, her eyes slowly turning from an amused twinkle to confusion as I hesitated to answer.

Eventually, I managed to form some words together. “Ah, yeah, armor. I think…” I hesitated again. I’d hoped to make a helmet first of all after the amount of times I had knocked my forehead against my raised shield.

“Do you think there would be enough material for a helmet?” I answered while I bent down to pick the now frosted-over plate up from where I had thrown it as I tripped.

Kazzad looked at me appraisingly, “A cap, maybe. Ye can only mold the shape, it can be bent but not stretched.”

I looked at the plate in my hand, knowing she was right yet still flustered. I vowed to actually seek out some way to get Max back for this prank in particular. I’d known the dwarves were actually huge bugs, yet seeing it up close, with one of them so close and touching me had left a mark.

I struggled to stay on track and push the shock from my mind so I could focus on the task at hand. “Yes, I… I knew that. So, a vambrace then?”

Kazzad grinned and slapped me on the shoulder again, causing me to unconsciously cringe away. “A fine choice. You’ll be glad of it during your sparring sessions. C’mon we can finally move on to the fabrication floor.”

She turned and started towards the stairway that led up to the catwalk, and I followed in her wake as we led the crowd of onlookers to the next floor up. The growth chambers were at the bottom of the armory, with progressively more complex and finer manufactorums as we ascended towards Relik’s final finishing shop at the “ground” floor.

We climbed up two flights of stairs, ignoring the heavy freight elevator that was reserved for the larger pieces of plating and machinery.

This new floor was filled with a whole new series of tall machines and bustled with deafening activity. Dwarves operated power hammers, rollers, press brakes, and dies as they worked to bend and form their signature material into whatever shape they needed it to be.

Of course, since I was a “wee bab” still in training, Kazzad led me over to a small section dominated by a line of three rather plain looking anvils of various sizes. Stopping at the largest of them, she gestured to the wall filled with various rough looking hand-tools.

“Alright, now how much have ye learned of forging?”

I shrugged and tilted my head to the side, still coming to terms with her brief unmasking. “One of the skill books talked a bit about it.” I dredged up the still perfectly clear memory of the book and recited one of the passages about the process. “With the correct application of flux, electrical current, and magnetic field manipulation; the Layered Ion Lattice plates are briefly rendered malleable enough to work into whatever shape is needed.”

She grinned, “Good, glad ta hear the dusted skillbook is holding up. Ye will have ta get a feel for it though. Book learnin’ is one thing, practical application is a whole different slag pile. Get yer hammer out and hook that negative lead up to the plate like this…”

Hand forging the plates was even worse than the high-shield drills. For days I hammered on the dangerously electrified plates, each blow changing the shape by less than a millimeter. I put in extra effort, wanting to get as much armor completed as I could before the upcoming trials. The rest of my row was far ahead of me on the construction of their own sets of armor, even the members who were less than interested in that particular craft.

Sallis, Kazek, Bomilik, and Kikkelin all only had minimal coverage of a helmet, arm guards, and greaves to go along with their shields. None of them were particularly skilled or motivated for plate-work, and they focused more on either stonework or gem cutting in Kazek’s case.

The angry looking redhead Lokralda and the purple eyed Lurbolg were the only two who invested the time to craft full sets for themselves. Lurbolg’s work was angular and chunky, with thick plates and somewhat stiff looking joints. While Lokralda’s, who turned out to be rather shy and standoffish, was constructed of small articulated sections that smoothly glided over each other as she moved.

My hopes of having as much coverage for the trails was dashed with only a few more days to go until the trial. I’d completed my right arms vambrace, rerebrace, and an ugly but serviceable couter. The large raw plate for the pauldron was laid out on the anvil as I struggled to correct its shape under the guidance of Kazzad.

“Take it back ta the template, it looks to me like ye muddled the interior geometry when ya flared the edge. Ye gotta watch yer placement on ta anvils horn.”

“Remind me, why can’t I use the dies for this?” I pointed at a wall on the other side of the shop where a huge section of shelving was overflowing with molds, dies, templates, and diagrams. The apprentices and journeymen who worked at the shop came and went, grabbing and leaving whatever tools or plans they needed for the hundreds of projects that cycled through the workshop each day.

“Because, ya have to learn it yerself! Ye’ won’t be allowed any of yer equipment for the trials anyways, so any crutch ye’ pickup won’t do ya’ much good yet anyways.”

“Wait, what? We can’t use our armor?”

Kazzad laughed, and elicited a chuckle from the small yet ever present flock of onlookers vying for her attention. “Na, that’d defeat the whole idea. All ye’ youngins won’t learn a thing if we let ye’ bring in anything. Yer allowed naught but yer strapping when the trials begin. Fighting together like that helps prod the youngins to pair off to eventually make more youngins, but no one expects ye to join in on that hahaha.”

That drew knowing laughter, conspiratorial rib-elbowing, and much eyebrow and beard waggling from the crowd of onlookers. All I could do was stare back at her until Max decided to butt in.

“Just a reminder, the translator had her say ‘Together like that’, while she really said ‘With all that exposed carapace’. I don’t care what your gorilla of a bodyguard says about ‘alien poon’, if I pick up any lurid thoughts I’ll be forced to take drastic measures.”

I dismissed Max’s threat as a non issue. After he had ripped Kaz’s mask off a few days previously, I had struggled to think of the dwarves as anything but huge gnarly mandibled beetles. I’d managed to keep my cool about it so far by focusing on my study and work, but the added stress of feigned indifference was starting to wear me down.

I just grunted and nodded in reply as I gauged the angle of the plate, feeling a mix of relief and frustration. I’d only been working so hard on my armor for the last week because I’d wanted to go into the trials as well prepared as I could. Learning that I couldn’t bring anything in with me felt like a dangled carrot had been revealed as painted cardboard all along, yet it also meant that I would be on equal ground.

I shrugged off the bawdy laughter of Kazzad and her pack of suitors and focused on finishing the final piece of my weapon-arm’s armor.

“Excuse me, Kaninak. I believe you dropped this.”

I turned around from my place in line at the Hub-side Link building and looked to the man who had addressed me. I was dead tired and on my way home after yet another three hour target shooting session with Tevin.

I glanced at the suited man's outstretched hand and the credit-chit he held out to me, a small True Item you could load with Link credits to import into reality. He was clean cut, had smooth tanned skin, with neatly styled dark-blonde hair, and his suit looked just as expensive as the Katie supplied formal wear I was slowly getting used to wearing.

“I didn’t drop anything, I think you have the wrong person.” I deflected, turning away from him.

“Really? I could have sworn you left this on the table.” We both stepped forward as the line moved, and he examined the chit. “It has five figures loaded onto it, are you sure it's not yours, Nick?”

I looked at him over my shoulder and returned his smile with a glare. “Look, suit, I don’t want whatever you’re selling.”

“Hey, I’m no salesman. I’m simply returning something that should have been yours all along. I’ve seen your district's budget, I’m sure the shot-callers over at Nubran are stringing you along with vouchers and gifts, just enough to keep you going. I can guarantee you high five figures of cold hard credits per cycle if you’re willing to jump to a bigger ship.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes at him as we took another step towards the booths at the end of the line. When I didn’t reply, he continued on with his pitch.

“You’re on the council's radar, you’ve made more diplomatic progress than the entirety of the Unity Guilds Initiative, and for some reason you're still slumming it in Nubranagin? You need to move with the movers and shakers, and it’s all happening at Heustings. I could get you into meetings with three councilors, we could quadruple your staff and move you into a fully comped penthouse apartment. You like having one attendant at your command, how about six, or sixty? Anything you need, man, you’re wasting your potential out there.”

I upgraded to a scowl and kept my eyes on the front of the line, now only a few places ahead of me. He crowded close behind me and kept up his badgering.

“What is it about that backwater anyways? I’ve seen the requisition slips, Katie and Howard have something on you, don’t they? Why else would you stick around for the peanuts they’re feeding you? Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You’re nobility, Nick, it’s time to start acting like it! You have to take what you want, and there's no better place to climb the rungs of power than at the seat of the council itself!”

I took another step forward and hissed at him over my shoulder without looking.

“Fuck off, ass-hat. My friends are here, I’m staying.”

He only grinned and tried to push around in front of me as I reached the front of the line and got the greenlight to take an available out-bound booth.

“Don’t be like that! C’mon, you could be making some serious money and carve out a piece of the power pie for yourself. You can bring your friends too! Don’t just settle for Howards scraps, seize the opportunity!”

I pushed past him towards the booth, resisting the urge to slam my fist into his very punchable face because I knew it would be a harmless and futile gesture anyways. He tried to follow me as I crossed the lane into the available booth but the systems “etiquette lines” on the floor sprung up as physical barriers and blocked his path.

“Alright, alright. You’re scared, I get it!” He called after me, raising his voice and drawing the attention of the waiting crowd. “When you change your mind, just send me a message. Rob Barding, at the CCB!”

I ignored him and closed the door to the booth behind me. The privacy screen snapped into existence, blurring the outside world. I realized I had never bothered to upgrade it and I could still sort of make out the general outline of the annoying man, so I opened up the store page and scrolled down the huge list of options.

After scrolling past a sale on sunset and sky cosmetic options, I found the privacy screen gallery and chose the, also on sale, 300 Cr. ‘Night Sky’ option and set it to default. The barrier shifted from a mostly translucent curtain that distorted yet did not hide much, to an opaque inky black and bespeckled starcape that reminded me of the void Max had pulled me into once upon a time.

Turning away from the curtain, I selected my True gear as imports in the Impex and linked-out for the day.