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Chapter Seven: Some Explanations

  Dane Coleman had found himself at the center of a bar brawl, only to have it come to a shocking end as a man yelled over the noise for it to stop; once it did, this man noticed Dane and surprised him by bellowing “Coleman! What the Hell are you doing here?”

  Dane had only seen the speaker once before and had never heard his voice. He was an older man who had been in attendance at Dane’s execution back in his old life. “Senator Demmings?” He asked in shock.

  “MAYOR Demmings,” the man replied, looking around nervously. “I think we’d best go back to my office and discuss this further “

  Chatter around the bar began wild specution -

  “Was the mayor running for a Senate position?”

  “Had the mayor been a Senator, perhaps in the Confederate or United States before coming to the Republic of Texas a decade ago?”

  “Who was this drifter who knew the mayor?”

  “Maybe the drifter took too many hits to the head and mistook the mayor for a senator?”

  Over by the bar, the blonde bar maid turned to the bartender and said “are you calling dibs on the drifter?”

  “He’s cute but mostly I just wanted to rile up Jacob. Maybe I did it too well,” was the reply.

  The blonde nodded and asked: “Is that his food?”

  The bartender answered: “Pretty sure the stew is for Joshua, as they came in together.”

  “I can take that to him then wait outside the Mayor’s door to give the drifter this when he comes out “

  The bartender smiled. “Let me know what you hear through the door, Dierdre, and good luck nding him. I suspect he’s a handful.”

  Dierdre fshed a scivious smile and said, “Oh I hope he is,” and then took the tray from her, carried Johaua’s stew and beer over to him, then took up a position just outside the mayor's door. She was mildly disappointed to not be able to hear any of what was being said inside, and it probably would have made no sense to her if she had anyway.

  ***

  Dane followed Mayor Demmings into his office, a room clearly cut out from a storeroom. There were only two chairs, one behind a small desk, the other between it and the door.

  “I came in to check the books; I have a much nicer office at the city hall,” the Mayor informed his guest, apologetically. “Now, the st time I saw you, it was when you were being executed for murdering my son. Now you turn up here. How is that possible?”

  “Honestly, I am not even sure of where I am, let alone how I got here.”

  Mayor Avery Demmings shook his head, sat back in his chair, took a lighter and a box of cigars out of his drawer and offered one to Dane, who just shook his head.

  “If you’re worried about cancer, that doesn’t exist here,” the mayor informed him.

  Dane pursed his lips, shrugged, and accepted the proffered cigar. The Mayor lit his own and then Dane’s.

  “Fifteen years ago, I invested in a virtual reality company, partly at Jordan’s suggestion. We thought maybe a fake world would be a good pce for him to act out the urges that kept getting him in trouble in the real world.”

  Dane nodded for him to go on.

  “As you know too well, that didn’t work; he met two of the other three guys you killed, the other being a childhood friend, through that program. At the time they had a high-tech setting, which was where Jordan and his friends hung out and caused trouble, and a medieval fantasy one that neither of us had any use for. When I noticed there was a huge section of their servers not in use, I asked one of the programmers if they could create something based on the Western movies and serials I had loved growing up, and the Tumbleweeds Project was born.“

  Dane’s eyes widened a bit as this expined a lot yet created nearly as many questions as it answered.

  Avery continued: “At first, I had an avatar, well we call them ‘Travelers,’ that was kind of a Clint Eastwood/John Wayne mashup, but when that one accidentally backed into a mayor position, I found it both more challenging and rewarding than, well, than my Senate seat in the real world, to be honest. I had the coders build a new Traveler for me closer to my real self and modified the town of Murray’s Fall to be my pyground.”

  Dane had a sudden thought: “Were you, well, Traveling when you were at my execution?”

  “Yes. Had to be there for appearances and to make sure you died but didn’t want to actually watch the death, just to make sure it happened.”

  Dane nodded, and continued thinking out loud: “There seemed to be some kind of electrical storm that night?”

  The Mayor looked thoughtful at this: “Yes, there was. It even struck the building but didn’t cause any trouble that we could tell.”

  “I don’t know how, or even if, this is possible but maybe the fact that you were connected to the game during the storm somehow caused me to be, I guess, sucked into it?”

  “Hmm. An intriguing possibility,” Avery mused. “I’ll have to discuss it with the coders next time I log out. Anyway, I don’t have any sons for you to murder here, as I never even took a wife. If you can avoid breaking up my bar or getting into worse trouble, I guess I don’t have any problems with you here - but if you step out of line, I’ll enjoy seeing you executed again, probably forever this time.”

  Dane ughed bitterly. “I already had to shoot two men so I'm not sure how well this is going to go.”

  “Killed two men?” The mayor repeated, shaking his head. “How did that happen?”

  “I took a job at the Sievert ranch and,” Dane began, but the mayor interrupted him:

  “Ah, are you the drifter who paid off the widow’s tab?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I never meant for her husband to die but wanted the nd and hired the wrong guys to send him a message,” the Mayor replied, real sorrow in his voice. “And then the railroads started making a py for that nd too, and with more money than even I can manage, and made things harder.”

  “So you’re responsible for her husband’s death?” Dane asked, surprised.

  “Yes. Realizing that the characters here really die instead of respawning like most Travelers do made me rethink a lot of my strategies and be far more careful of who I hire,”

  “Respawn? Does that mean I’ll just, I don’t know, start over if I die”

  “I don’t know. You’re a special case. Do you even have a VICC?” the Mayor asked.

  Misunderstanding Dane’s surprise at the question for confusion, Avery added “Virtual Interface Command Console”

  “Oh, yes, I have one of those,” Dane replied.

  “You might want to check it. If that was your first bar fight you hit at least one Milestone and may have opened a few Lifepaths,” then, after a short pause, added, “it might also know if you will respawn or just, well, be ejected.”

  Dane tapped his hand twice. [Hello Dane. I had entered sleep mode. You have attained the ‘Survived first bar fight ‘ milestone and the ‘Meeting with the Mayor’ milestone. Politician and Gambler LifePaths avaible. One point awarded that may be applied to Strength, Agility or Dexterity or banked to increase Endurance at the next skill bonus.]

  “Banked?” Dane asked before VICC could continue.

  [Correct. Once a score exceeds twenty points, the number of points needed to improve goes up by one for every ten. To continue you also have one skill point and, due to two successful unskilled attempts, have gained Observation Novice One.]

  “Successful unskilled attempts?’

  [Correct. You noticed both the modified section of fence and sensed the motives behind the bartender’s attention, as well as the concealed weapon on her calf.]

  Dane realized he had seen something on her leg; he hadn’t seen it clearly enough to tell if it was some sort of decoration, a small knife or a tiny derringer pistol, but had seen something.

  “I think I should put that one point into Games as I have heard something called ‘Faro’ mentioned a few times and have no clue what that is.”

  As VICC informed him that he now had that skill, he also realized that he knew what Faro was, and that he had walked past a table pying it in the bar; it was a card game that was more popur though less famous than the poker he was familiar with. He logged this information away, along with the game rules, for future use. “One more thing VICC; if I die here, will I be reborn like other Travelers or will I, ah,” he found himself unable to finish the thought.

  [Unknown - and with luck, it will be some time before we do know.]

  Dane sighed and tapped his hand again.

  “Ah, you have it in your hand? Mine’s in my temple. I just cim to have occasional headaches when I need it. Not sure if anyone here has ever heard of a migraine,” the Mayor informed him.

  Dane let out a low chuckle at that. “I should probably go check on Joshua but one more question, if I may?’

  “Sure. It’s nice having someone I can talk to about this stuff, even if it is the man who murdered my boy. Oh, along those lines, before you ask - any clue who the men you killed were?”

  “The coroner recognized one as a ‘Damian Cooper,’ but said the other got a bit too trampled by a horse to identify.”

  “Cooper? He was one of the guys in the group that made the widow a widow. Have not done business with those five since, and I hear they’re working for the railroad now. So, what’s your question?”

  Dane nodded, logging that away, and then asked: “Why Murray’s Fall? I mean the name; kind of suspect it has some geographical importance for rail traffic and possibly gold or oil prospecting”

  “Your suspicions are correct; there are a few gold veins here as well as a small uranium deposit if they followed the geology when they coded it. But it’s also very well positioned to link three major rail lines. As to the name, we kind of left it ambiguous; coded five different story outlines to expin it and let the natives add details. The ‘most official’ version is that twin brothers Mitch and Murray Ames grew up on a ranch nearby and were competitive over everything. It eventually reached a head when each gained possession of extremely good racing horses and decided on a race from their ranch to the river that now forms the town’s eastern edge the ten months of the year that it’s not dry. They pushed their horses to their limits and, as Murray reached the river two lengths ahead of his brother, his horse stumbled, throwing him off, then colpsed dead. Murray succumbed to his injuries shortly after and Mitch decided to build a town to honor his memory, a town he started at the pce of Murray’s Fall.”

  “But there’s another, true story?” Dane asked, picking at something in the words Mayor Dennison used to reach that conclusion.

  “Yes,” the Mayor said with a rueful ugh, “Dale Murray was one of the lead programmers and a stickler for realism. So much so that he even coded diseases into the System. When his test Traveler contracted syphilis from one of the saloon girls and died, we jokingly called the saloon Murray’s Fall, and he decided that name was better for the community than any of the four or five he’d been considering at the time.

  Dane let out a low chuckle at that. “Thanks for your time, sir,” he replied as he stood up, about to leave.

  “Mister Coleman, I have enjoyed this brief moment. I don’t believe there is any way we could ever be friends, given our shared history, but also see no reason why we must be enemies.”

  Dane considered this for a moment. “It feels kind of strange to say this, Mayor Demmings, but I agree on both points. Have a good day, sir.”

  The mayor just waved him off and turned to one of the ledgers on his desk.

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