Chương 83: [The Part The UI Can't Fix]

Luka set his mug down.

"Want to hear something funny? Torren reckons if I show up at the Ironwood and show what I can do, and they find out it's been less than a week, the women are going to be climbing over each other to rip my clothes off." Phil looked at him.

"Mate, if they're anything like Torren's height, then I'm sorry to say this Frodo, you're fucked."

"Yeah, that's kind of the point, dickhead." The group laughed. When they stopped Parmo was still chuckling to himself.

"What are you laughing at? It wasn't that funny," Leo said, with a grin.

"Just imagining Luka chained to a wall," Parmo said. The others looked at him.

"I sentence you to death... by Snu-Snu," Parmo said, laughing even louder. The laughter started again.

"Man, I could totally see that happening as well," Phil said.

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised."

"I actually said something similar to Torren, mentioned the episode, said I'd show him it if we get the chance," Luka said. The others looked at him.

"What?" Luka said.

"Have you learned nothing," Sam said.

"It's funny."

"It's funny until Rika finds out what Snu-Snu is and then it's fifty shades all over again except this time it's your fault," Phil said.

"Torren won't say anything."

"You think that's enough? Rika should be part bloodhound not bird. You know what she's like. One sniff of something interesting and she'll know about it not long after."

"Torren said something reasonable about fifty shades and Rika looked at him like he'd confessed to a crime," Leo said.

"You're on your own with this one." Luka shrugged, unbothered.

"I think it'd be hilarious."

"You would," Parmo said. Sam laughed.

"So he was actually serious about it though?"

"Dead serious," Luka said.

"Straight face, the whole thing. That's what made it weird."

"I wonder if the rest of us need to worry," Parmo said.

"I can see you getting your hopes up, I wouldn't," Phil said.

"Rika isn't going to let you get anywhere near that. You more or less belong to her at this point, dude."

"What are you on about?"

"Come on man, Mike said it when you were out, he said it looked like you were on a date. Agnes has probably passed that about already. Don't pretend you don't notice the way she is around you."

"Nah man, she's like a younger sister or something."

"Yeah, I don't know if she'd agree with that or not. I'm just saying I'd be careful looking at other women," Phil said, grinning. Parmo rolled his eyes.

"Right," Parmo said.

"Since we're all sharing. Leo, when are you going to make a move on Shai?" Leo looked at him.

"Nah, don't try to deflect this to me."

"Too late. Spill." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The others watched him, interest clear on their faces. Leo sighed and looked at his mug.

"Well, okay fine. I like her, so what?"

"Well, yeah. Obviously," Sam said.

"We already knew that."

"Yeah, you've got the subtlety of a brick," Phil added.

"So what's the problem?" Parmo asked. Leo was quiet for a moment.

"It's been a long time since I've even thought about this sort of thing. Back home, I was happy just being alone, making sure the kids were happy. I would have loved to have met someone but it didn't feel worth risking all of that happening again. So I don't really know what I'm doing anymore. I—""Yeah, I know where you're going with that and you can stop," Sam said.

"None of that was your fault. What happened with her. I know you know that but I'm saying it anyway. She fucked with your head for years and that's on her, not you. You got unlucky and ended up with someone like that and it did a number on you. That wasn't on you. You're not weak, useless or a bad person." Leo nodded but didn't say anything for a second.

"I want to try," he said.

"I do. But I feel stuck. I know I've come a long way since we got here. I can see that myself. I'm doing stuff that would make the boys proud. Things I wouldn't have dreamed of doing back on Earth. I know that. But that feeling doesn't just go away. It's weird, the UI sorts everything else out, the fitness, the combat, killing goblins didn't leave any kind of mark. But the anxiety from back then just sits there. It's frustrating." Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Maybe talk to her about it," Luka said.

"Not all of it, just, let her in a bit. She's your friend and she pays more attention to you than the rest of us. That's not me imagining things."

"I don't see it," Leo said. The other four looked at each other.

"We're serious dude, if Parmo is Rika's favourite, you are definitely Shai's," Phil said.

"One hundred percent," Parmo agreed.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"It might feel risky but she definitely looks at you different to the rest of us. I bet if she learned what you thought of yourself she'd be shocked."

"I'll think about it," Leo said. After a moment, "anyway, what do you reckon everyone back home is doing right now? The messages must have been surreal." The others glanced at each other for just a second. Nobody commented on the change of subject. Leo had said what he needed to say and they all knew pushing further wasn't going to get him there any faster. It was still better than watching him wallow in it the way he had back home.

"Imagine being on the other end of that though," Phil said.

"Someone you thought might be dead, their voice just appears in your head out of nowhere. That's pretty scary really."

"It'll be fine if they listened to the message, if they freaked out and missed half of it though..." Luka said.

"Yeah, I'd have thought I was losing it," Parmo agreed.

"As long as Tony did what we asked it should have sorted itself out," Sam said.

"Once they're all talking in the chat, having other people with different messages should be enough to convince them."

"My mum's going to be harder to convince than the boys," Leo said.

"She'll have heard it and spent the next three days telling herself she imagined it."

"Mine's the same," Sam said.

"She's one of those that'll have needed the group chat before she trusted what she heard." Luka laughed quietly.

"My family's going to be a nightmare. There's about forty of them and I can only send so many at a time. So right now some of them know and some don't, which means the ones who got a message are trying to convince the ones who didn't and the ones who didn't are probably thinking it's some kind of horrible joke. I just hope they managed to convince them to wait before they go spouting off to anyone else, I told them I'd message everyone eventually."

"My mum," Phil said, "will have heard it, thought well at least he's not dead, and then got on with her day." The others laughed.

"That's not even a joke is it," Parmo said.

"Not even slightly."

"I sent some messages to my girls," Parmo said, with a grin. He paused mid-sentence, something shifting in his expression.

"They're both scarily similar to Rika." He stopped. Whatever thought had just arrived wasn't one he wanted to follow to its conclusion. He shuddered once and moved on.

"Little balls of energy the pair of them. They probably went from devastated to fully excited within about an hour." The others smiled at him.

"They'll be fine with my brother," he said. The conversation settled for a moment.

"It's going to get out eventually," Sam said.

"We did everything we could, told Mike, he's spoken to the whole town, everyone knows to point their families to the group chat before they say anything publicly. But three thousand people sending messages home, it only takes one. Someone posts something, talks to the wrong person, and then it's the news, the government, all of it. They'll have been running stories on this in the news for the past month with no explanation as to why it happened.

The moment families start saying they heard voices it's going to look like a grief cult or someone making a sick joke out of a tragedy." Nobody looked happy about that.

"We had to do it though," Leo said.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"I'd do it again too. Everyone knowing we're ok is the most important thing. It's just, we opened Pandora's box with this. Just have to hope when it comes out it's not too bad for them."

"Well, we've done what we can on our end. I think between them they should be fine, they'll stick together." said Leo.

"We've come a long way since that first message. The one that said we could get home if we kept moving forward. Felt impossible at the time."

"Yeah, the comms tab unlocking felt like the first real sign we're on the right track," Sam said. The others nodded at that.

"Just have to keep doing what we're doing," Luka said.

"The UI will show us something else when we're ready for it."