Real-World Questing

I wake up in darkness after a heavy, dreamless sleep, and my body is still stiff from last night. The house is empty, and the quietude inside is only disturbed by the faint beats of a reggaeton song coming from somewhere in the barrio. The humidity in the air is thick and heavy; a silent warning that it's going to rain.

María's bedroom is undisturbed, which means she hasn't returned since this morning, and it's game night for Ma, so she's out playing canasta or whatever card games she plays with her friends. I cringe thinking of how much she spends on the taxi ride back and forth to the nicer parts of town, but I can't blame her for wanting to hold on to some semblance of normalcy. Everyone does what they can to stay sane and deal with the unintended consequences of their choices.

Ma chose to live unaware of how money was earned until she no longer had the stream of income provided by our share in the family's company when it went bankrupt. She was consciously oblivious to my father's misgivings for too long. When he died, all he left were unpaid debts and problems for her to solve.

I, in turn, had never even considered that the only financial asset our family owned was our big house on the shores of the Paraguay River. If there's something our displacement has taught me, and that I hope she has learned as well, is that you can't completely ignore reality. It will catch up to you if you're not ready to face it.

And well, here we are.

After taking a shower, I gobble down the sandwiches Ma left for me in the fridge and I go back to the computer. The game has updated itself during the day while I slept. A notification in the corner of the screen announces that the tournament will start a week from today, and I close it promptly. Sighing, I skim through the patch notes and log into Amoria, but as the loading screen progresses, it stops and a new screen comes up.

PLEASE UPDATE YOUR HARDWARE TO CONTINUE PLAYING

I go to the game's forums, searching for the patch notes. At the bottom, clearly spelled out, is what I had been dreading but chose to ignore for the last few months.

"After the final migration to the AI server, players will be required to use the Neural X Virtual Reality headset or newer models to continue playing. Support will be discontinued for the following hardware…" I don't have to finish reading the list to know that my ancient computer is no longer compatible with the game. I should have known that, but I'd been so busy with Lobison that I didn't pay attention. So much for ignoring reality until it stares at you in the face.

There's just enough money in my bank account to purchase the Neural X from a downtown store. That is, if I manage to get there by bus before they close. It's cheaper if you order it online, but it will take at least two weeks to get here and I don't really have a home address anymore. What would I write? Brown shack in the San Juan barrio in the outskirts of Asunción, Paraguay. Third corridor down, no number, no street name?

I saved that money for contingencies, in case an appliance breaks down because of the power outages or if any of them happen to reach their planned obsolescence, like my computer. I used to have the best gaming computer available in the market around five years ago. I remember the pleasure of assembling it, carefully adding the shiny new video graphics card with four fans into the motherboard, and then playing Amoria in the highest quality. That was back then when I hadn't dropped out of college yet and I played for fun, wandering the continent doing quests for in-game pets and cosmetic gear.

In a few years, the Neural X displaced computers as the king in gaming hardware. I had tried it out once, in store. The game they were promoting was an underwater adventure where you wrestled marine creatures. I could feel the cool water surrounding me, even though I was sitting at a chair in the mall. I got so dizzy the second I entered the water that I took the helmet off and vowed to never switch to VR unless I had to, like now. I can't imagine what the new hardware is like if it's more sophisticated than the Neural X.

And I'll need one if I want to keep playing. One night, hell, every hour I'm away from the game means a loss in profit. Some of the flowers I use to dye the gear I craft will start rotting if I don't pick them as soon as they're in bloom. With this new update and the tournament coming up, an influx of new players must already be wandering the auction halls in the cities, looking for new gear that will help them level up. That's my cash cow, really: the low level gear that no one bothers with.

People like me, who delve into the profession of fashion, if I want to make it sound fancy, get to design and craft new things that wouldn't have existed without us. Thanks to Amo's malleability, I've even invented alloys with rare metals and special weaves with magical threads, using them to craft unique armors, robes, and shields. Weapons require other skills I haven't leveled.

Right now, I have two orders for shields that I need to work on. After spending so much time hunting Lobison, I can't afford to dawdle. Tournament or no, life in Amoria goes on. There is gear to craft and orders to fulfill. Hopefully, no more elite monsters to hunt for a while.

The rumble of thunder makes the walls vibrate, and the music from afar goes silent. I step outside, and fat, thick drops fall from the sky onto my head and arms. If I leave now, I risk staying trapped in the mall or on the street once the downpour begins and the roads turn into streams of dirty water. The trip downtown to get the overpriced Neural X doesn't seem like a good idea, so I decide to do some real-world questing. Somewhere deep in the barrio, towards the gas station near the highway, there's an aisle of stores that sell things of dubious origins. Car parts, audio systems, television sets, even drugs, or so they say. There's a chance they could have a Neural X.

I change my clothes, grab my debit card and Ma's umbrella and head out into the night. If I were to circle around the barrio, it'd take me more than half an hour to get there, so the only way to go is through the corridors. I'm somewhat safe for the next few blocks of houses; I'm acquainted with a few other families who've settled here. Past the blue house where Don Gustavo the carpenter lives with his three children, a soccer field divides this area from the older shacks that were already here before the government moved more refugees in.

There, the maze-like corridors are narrower and darker, and the stories about the place aren't ones of friendly neighbors helping each other out. I can't call out lightning or water to help me out here if I run into bad company. The original inhabitants of the barrio weren't too keen on ceding space to us newcomers, the latest refugees from the floods.

This land used to be a park, their park, and now it's filled with government prefabricated homes like mine. At least they got to keep the soccer field, which serves as the unofficial border between them and us. If we had occupied their field, they would've burned our homes down the first week after we arrived.

Thankfully, the rain keeps most of the barrio's inhabitants inside. When I reach Don Gustavo's house, he's closing a window, and he waves at me, looking puzzled as to what I'm doing there. I wave back and hurry before he can come out to talk to me.

I heard Ma speaking to him once when he came by to fix a chair whose leg had broken off during the move. He told Ma she should sell the mahogany table and chairs and get ones that looked more in accordance with the barrio. Pretty things attract unwanted attention, he said.

Ma thanked him politely and let him out, only to curse at him after he was gone for being a metiche who dared to tell her what to do. I know he meant well, but Ma clings to the last few fancy possessions we could fit into the shack, no matter how moldy or worn down they are as if she'd be giving up a limb by selling them.

She then hired him again when she realized it'd be in everyone's best interest to separate the shack's two small bedrooms into three, even smaller ones. Five square meters may be tiny, but it's better than ten square meters shared with María. It was just a matter of moving one plywood wall and adding another, so the job was completed quickly. I don't think Don Gustavo even charged us for it.

I cross the soccer field, avoiding the muddy puddles forming in the patches where the grass has been trampled by cleats and bare feet. As soon as I enter the older section of the barrio, I regret my decision to come.