Chương 158: CDM 3, Chapter 34: Local Stakeholders

Beth texted me as I got to my desk in the RAID room, my hair still wet from my shower at the garage.

"Did you see this?" The story she linked to was about a rash of hobgoblin attacks in New Eden. 32 settlers living near the border with the wilds were confirmed or presumed dead.

"I did not." I knew what she was going to say next, but I hoped, for her sake, that I was wrong and her mind wouldn't go there.

"Do you think mom and dad are okay?" So much for hope.

"I don't know where they ended up."

"Should we figure that out? So we know if something happens?"

"Can we talk about this face-to-face?"

"Right. Yes. Sorry."

"No need to be sorry. I'm not annoyed. Just working." I had intended to work, at least. Now that I knew New Eden was seeing wild monster attacks, I was too curious not to investigate. Details were limited, but it looked like the hobs came out of the Andes Mountains near Lake Titicaca. That was yet another example of extreme terrain being an ideal place for monster nests. Survivors who managed to flee successfully said that the warband was at least 50 strong, but that wasn't confirmed.

The only facts that were certain were that an attack occurred and that Rick Young used the loss of life to justify asking the U. S. government for more financial assistance. I put down my phone and started to dig into my inbox and tasks for the day. The first item on my plate was to write my report for that morning's hunt. But my mind kept drifting back to a singular question: Would I want to know if my parents died?

From the moment I left home, I had wished that I could cut that part of my life out of my memories and separate from it completely. If I ever thought about the church or my family, it brought me nothing but pain, but despite my efforts, I never truly escaped it in the clean and total way I wanted. Like passing through a briar patch, I could think I was totally free only to feel the tug of a thorn hooked in my shirt, trying to pull me back. Enforcer de Saint pinging the group chat didn't help me get back on task.

"Anyone opposed to me adding drakes and salamanders to our scraper?" she asked.

"why those monsters?" Nathan replied.

"There are posts in r/Manitoba and r/Quebec about drake and salamander sightings. No attacks. Just some discussion about them seeming more active than they usually are in the spring." Typically, frost drakes and salamanders migrated north in the spring to nest where it was still somewhat cold. On top of that, they seemed to actively avoid places with dense populations of humans. That was also the theory for why other types of drakes and salamanders weren't more common in populated regions.

With May right around the corner, frost drakes and salamanders being spotted that close to a wild wall was very unusual. They should have been migrating.

"why are you in a bunch of canadian subreddits?"

"I like to be informed." Megan interrupted,"I'm good with expanding the scraper." Nathan and I liked her message to show we agreed. Drakes and salamanders in Canada. Hobgoblins in New Eden. Bugbears in West Virginia. Shadow hunters in D gates. Crawlers contracting lycanthropy and vampirism. Disputing the reality of Stage 2 was growing more difficult by the day.

The prepper community was already talking about what Stage 3 could look like, and I had to imagine that every recent church sermon referenced the coming Rapture in some way. For me, the tension of the rising danger was ever-present, but I couldn't tell if that was a real feeling or something that my fear of going to hell conjured up for me. I did my best to push all of those thoughts from my mind to focus on my RAID tasks.

I ended up working late to make up for coming in late that morning and to make up for my mind wandering off task again and again. My mind was so much clearer on a hunt. I missed that peace already. We met at High Bar to celebrate our first official hunt as the Cold Rollers. That included Giago and Hornby, and Beth and her boyfriend Kwame joined as well. At some point, Giago led the charge in organizing an impromptu pool tournament that was actually a not-so-subtle drinking game.

Beth and I were the only ones not to get sucked in. We ended up sitting at a high-top watching the show.

"I've had mom and dad on my mind all damn day," Beth complained.

"If you don't want to talk about it now, though, I get it."

"Any closer to deciding how you want to handle it?"

"Not a clue. What does big brother wisdom say we should do?" I laughed.

"'Wisdom' is too strong a word, and I don't know either, but it made me think of pap."

"Really? Why?"

"I was in a locker room after a workout when I found out he died. One of the people I knew at the gym came to me and said, 'So sorry for your loss.' I had no idea what he was talking about, but it turned out he saw the obituary somehow."

"I didn't know no one told you," Beth said.

"That sounds awful."

"Fucking awkward, more like. Who doesn't know their own grandfather died? I looked like such an asshole."

"What was it like after that moment in the gym?"

"I was angry that of all the bullshit texts and letters mom sent me, she couldn't be bothered to send that one. But I also would have been mad at her for trying to contact me in the first place, so no matter how it went down, I would have been pissed off."

"Knowing if they died would save you from another blindside like that," Beth pointed out.

"Lesser of two evils, maybe?" I shrugged.

"I'm not sure what to say here."

"I'm sorry, Dor. I don't mean to put all of this on you. For me, knowing when it happens sounds like less pain than finding out in some random shitty way."

"I think you're right."

"I can ask mom and dad where they are, if you want," Beth offered.

"I might be able to find out without talking to them. Unless you really want to talk to them."

"Fuck no." Nathan's shouting at the bartender interrupted our conversation.

"Hey, can we turn this up?" he asked, pointing at the television screen. The bartender raised the volume in time for The Wilds: Race Asia intro theme to play. When was the last time I actually watched television? I used to be fanatical about keeping up with all of the crawler news and drama. Losing track of a season premiere of this scale wasn't like me. I had been pretty busy, though, and we didn't have internet access for most of our time on the Pampas Plains.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. A faceless narrator explained that two teams would try to cross the continent the fastest and with the most points, which could be earned from killing wild monsters and from clearing wild gates. The teams wouldn't get intel on wild monsters, but they would get a daily update of what gates had been detected and where.

When this format was first announced, Nathan and I predicted two strategies: C gates were relatively common and worth a decent amount of points for the difficulty. A crawler like LootLootLouis could speedrun most C gates, so that seemed like the right balance of time invested versus reward. The other strategy we expected was for a team to run straight toward the nearest A gate to get the big dump of points and to cover ground more quickly.

"Did they mention locals?" Beth asked.

"I don't think so. Why?"

"You and Megan saw locals with levels, right? What if the crawlers run into people like that? Locals might even close a gate the contestants were targeting." Those were interesting points. The Wilds: Alaska went through an area that had never been all that populated, even pre-gates. Living in the far north was too difficult, so most people naturally gravitated toward the equator, where the weather was more forgiving. The lower strip of Asia, where this season would take place, was the opposite.

The race passed through several areas that were once incredibly populated. If we encountered locals on our hikes along the coast of China, it seemed reasonable to assume that similar people would be found along the race route.

"I don't know what the showrunners would do in that case," I admitted.

"The norm seems to be to just pretend no one lives in the wilds. When Megan found out that our footage of locals had been wiped, it made me pay a little more attention. People seem to go out of their way to avoid acknowledging that people could still be in these places."

"Why would that be?"

"If they don't count as normal people, then it's easier to ignore any obligation we feel to help or interact with them. I don't really have an answer, though." De Saint would have missed her seat entirely if I hadn't caught her.

"Out of the tournament?" I asked, helping her up. She nodded, her face red from booze and embarrassment.

"The drinking rules favor a certain kind of person. I'm not that kind of person." Beth and I laughed. De Saint twisted to see the television screen for a few moments before turning back.

"I don't know how you guys can watch shows like this. They get so trashy."

"That's what makes them fun," I countered.

"It's stupid-simple content. Makes for a good viewing binge."

"What do you think about people living in the wilds?" Beth asked.

"Dor and I were talking about how it seems like no one wants to talk about them."

"Anthropologists do."

"Talk about them?" De Saint nodded.

"Oh, yeah. Any of the communities we know about are super isolated, and getting to them is crazy dangerous. But they're also an untapped source of knowledge. We could observe, in real time, how humanity recovers from civilization being reduced to zero. Adapting a hunting and gathering lifestyle to survive in a world with gates? That question is so fascinating."

"That is fascinating," Beth said.

"And now those people are having to adapt to Stage 2," de Saint continued.

"They don't have news alerts like we do, so it's not like they have a warning like the rest of us. Their world just changes again, and they have to figure it out."

"I think they're better prepared than anyone else is, actually," I suggested. Beth and de Saint both gave me quizzical looks.

"They're already used to living among wild monsters, and every single run they do is blind. They don't have satellite access to know what gates are ranked, so other than making some guesses based on the look of a gate, they have no idea if they're walking into a D or a B, not until they encounter monsters."

"Oo," de Saint said, mulling my words.

"And they probably design their living spaces with monster attacks in mind. Where the rest of the world fought to keep the civilization we had, those people had to find a different way. You can't drop a town into the middle of the wilds. It would get chewed up so fast, but they've figured out how to make it work."

"Exactly."

"You and Osheski ran into locals in China?" I nodded.

"Twice. One was a man and a woman seeking shelter, and the other was an ambush at the end of a B gate. The couple seemed like normal, scared people. The ambush was definitely trying to kill us. That group had really good gear that our guides said came from killing crawlers."

"Which suggests they do indeed survive in the wilds. They would all have to be third or fourth generation by now, at least, right? So they're doing well enough to make babies." De Saint looked up at me, suddenly concerned.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I don't mean to make light of something traumatic. I was just-""You're fine."

"Certain?"

"Yeah. I think if we had fought them, then maybe I would feel something more about the whole thing, but we ran, and the gate closed." Beth wrinkled her face.

"Really? I think I would struggle with it. A lot. Even knowing that I didn't directly kill anyone." De Saint's knowing frown seemed to suggest she agreed with Beth.

"That would bother anyone," Beth added.

"I don't think it would," I countered.

"It's like Rainy was saying before: If you make them something less than people, like savage killers, hurting them is easier."

"I still think that would bother a normal person. Sorry, Dor. I'm not saying you're not normal. That's not how I meant it." I raised a hand.

"I know. You're fine. What I mean is more like this thought experiment I read about once. Imagine a button is put in front of you. Every time you press it, you get a million dollars, but a stranger dies. Would you press it?"

"No way," Beth answered immediately.

"But people push that kind of button all the time. Moving your factory from the United States to Mexico, where workers are cheap and labor protections suck, is a common business decision. That choice introduces all sorts of suffering. Or more directly analogous to the button, a health insurance executive who pushes a policy through to deny more claims and thus increase profits is choosing profit over people."

"I hate that I'm defending a hypothetical health insurance company," de Saint began, "but that sounds really reductive."

"Is it though? The causation is pretty damn direct, but all those people are reduced to numbers in a database and lines on a profit & loss statement. The board or the exec or whoever gets to say 'it's just business' and go home for a family dinner. Meanwhile, a mother somewhere can't get the procedure her doctor recommends because the insurance company can just say 'no.'" De Saint took a sip from her beer as she thought.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yes. All I'm saying is that I didn't know them. I didn't see them die. They're more of an abstract idea. I know if I had watched them die or seen their bodies after, I would be fucked up. Instead, I was outside, and then someone else pressed the button for me to take care of it."

"You seem angrier recently, and I'm not saying you aren't justified," de Saint said cautiously.

"Getting arrested twice for bullshit reasons would make anyone upset, but the anger feels like it's more than that. Don't misunderstand me: I think you're a good person, but good people can be angry too. Tell me to fuck off if this is none of my business. I don't mean to pry you open against your will." Beth got quiet and avoided making eye contact with me. She put her attention on the television screen instead.

"I am angry," I admitted.

"Have been for a long time."

"About people suffering?"

"Yes, that bothers me, but the root of it is more about things not working how they're supposed to."

"What do you mean?" de Saint asked.

"That family that gets their claim denied: They did everything they were supposed to do. They were told if you want medical treatment, you have to have health insurance, so they got the coverage, paid all the monthly bills, and when they actually needed a surgery or whatever, insurance still said 'no.'

"Cops are supposed to protect people, but there are whole communities who won't call the police because they're afraid of getting hurt by them again. Businesses are supposed to follow pollution regulations, but we see over and over that they just don't. The fine is cheaper than doing it the right way, so fuck all the normal people that can't drink their own water or breathe their own air. If humanity actually followed all the bullshit they spew about rules and laws and ethics, far fewer people would suffer.

So yeah, it pisses me the fuck off that we have this imaginary world on paper that we pretend exists but absolutely doesn't."

"I want to argue that you're wrong, but I can't," de Saint admitted.

"It is bullshit. Maybe talking to someone would help with that anger? That has to be hard to carry all of the time."

"Everyone says that, but why would that help? I'm supposed to be angry about unfairness and injustice. I'm supposed to care about the poor and the sick. It doesn't make any sense that the answer for my anger is for me to figure out how to live with it. I don't know how to exist as both a person who cares and a person who isn't angry about people getting shit on." De Saint glanced at Beth. My sister still hadn't looked away from the television screen over the bar. I knew this tactic.

Focusing intently on something else, like a dumb reality show, was the adult equivalent of closing your eyes and covering your ears. We had both gotten a lot of practice doing that.

"I'm sorry," de Saint said.

"I didn't mean to take this conversation to a dark place. This is supposed to be a celebration, something happy."

"What it's 'supposed to be' doesn't matter, remember? You know, I've got some work to do. I'm going to head back to the guild house."

"Dorion, wait."

"I'm not mad at you, Rainy. Friends are supposed to try to make their friends feel better when they're upset, and I know that's what you were doing. Thank you for being my friend. I just can't sit here anymore. Goodnight." I gave Beth a hug and slipped out without saying goodbye to anyone else.