The Stars Have Eyes - Chapter 20

Agent Johanson was bored.

One would think that accidentally assaulting a police officer early in the morning was a telltale sign that she was in for ‘one of those days.’ However, absolutely nothing had happened since. Well, aside from being told that the Class-3 apparently went to take a power nap just before lunch. That was weird and unexpected for sure, but nothing that required her attention or involvement. In fact, she’d been asked to keep her nose out of it altogether, and she had every intention of doing just that. This led to her getting the afternoon free since Magh’rathlak wasn’t around to give her any more inane tasks.

Therein lay the problem. AJ had absolutely no idea what to do with her free time. If she was with her squad they could arrange for a friendly card game or some light sparring to pass the time, maybe queue up a dumb movie. Unfortunately, her teammates were not permitted on the premises of the Observer’s household unless it was an emergency. As such, watching some brainless motion picture was her only recourse, but she rapidly found that wasn’t anywhere near as fun without company.

With all of her usual options depleted, the woman sought other ways to entertain herself. She considered doing some more physical and mental training, but quickly dropped the idea. She had an intense session that morning already, and overworking her body and mind would do more harm than good. She then tried catching up on some paperwork and compiling reports on her activities and observations over the past week. That lasted for all of fifteen minutes. Johanson was rather diligent when it came to those responsibilities and had already taken care of most of them in a timely manner.

That was the long and short of how the agent ended up spacing out in the living room with a cup of tea. She was so listless that one would think she had just lost her purpose in life, though that may have been the case. Johanson would never admit it, but she was something of a workaholic. Carrying out her duties gave her purpose and a sense of fulfillment that nothing else could evoke. Therein lay the problem. Her current assignment was to do whatever the Class-3 told her, yet the Class-3 hadn’t given her a new task after she turned in that ridiculous poetry. Her doing nothing was technically part of her job, which was why she was unable to relax. Well, that and she considered this bloody apartment to be no different from enemy territory.

“Maybe Joe is right,” she grumbled to herself. “Maybe I am too high strung.”

The guy had mentioned quite a few times that she should loosen up and take things easier. So far she had brushed him off as a naive busybody, but she suddenly felt as if he might have had a point. Her constantly being on edge around the Class-3 just because it was a Class-3 wasn’t helping anyone. Was it really that big a deal if she learned to relax a bit? It was remarkably well-behaved for a cosmic entity beyond her comprehension, and all of her superiors seemed confident it would remain that way. Even Lieutenant Baker seemed strangely okay with the surgical brain-blast he’d received for firing against orders, as that could’ve ended much, much worse. He had even gotten a medical discharge and an early pension instead of getting court-martialed for insubordination, which the psionic assumed was the Major’s doing.

Agent Johanson had her reservations at first, but after living with the Class-3 for a week she was starting to come around. It ate, it laughed, it chatted, it worked, it played around – all things a regular well-adjusted adult would partake in. It even did things like going to sleep, for Queenie’s sake. Actually, she wasn’t sure about that last one. Joe had mentioned the Class-3 had gone to bed, but had it really? Feeling a bit adventurous and excessively bored, Agent Johanson decided to risk taking a peek for herself. She got off the sofa and quietly made her way over to the master bedroom. She gently opened the door and peered through the tiny gap. She immediately confirmed the Class-3 was most assuredly asleep, though the sight of it caught her off-guard.

For what may have been the first time ever, AJ saw a person instead of a Class-3 cosmic threat when she looked at Maggie. She found it quite difficult to think of that perfectly normal, completely peaceful, and utterly vulnerable figure as anything other than a regular girl. It made the agent feel slightly ashamed of herself. Even though she’d spent so long monitoring almost every move Maggie had made since her arrival, it only now occurred to Johanson that she was invading another’s privacy. Deciding she needed some time to process this bizarre influx of emotions, she quietly closed the door and went for a thoughtful walk around the eerily silent apartment.

Eventually she decided to accept the Class-3’s actions as a genuine effort to gain some semblance of humanity. That said, she wasn’t about to suddenly become friends with the girl. Cosmic origins aside, Maggie was still a smug, know-it-all, and bossy person that had yet to earn AJ’s respect. Not to mention that those ‘experiments’ of hers were little more than bullying with extra steps. It genuinely felt like her de-facto owner was trying to get a rise out of her on purpose, and it was working. However, AJ did her best to keep her grievances to herself and kept her reactions as muted as possible. It was important to avoid feeding the troll, as it were.

Having settled that inner dispute for the moment, it didn’t take long for Johanson to go back to being so bored that she contemplated smashing her skull open against the living room wall.

“Jeeves!” she called out. “Get in here!”

The hovering automaton appeared in a manner of seconds.

“Do you require anything, Agent Johanson?”

“Tell me a joke.”

She must’ve been getting desperate if she was resorting to asking a household appliance for entertainment, but at the very least the machine seemed capable of obliging.

“What did one goldfish say to the other goldfish in its tank?”

“I dunno, what?”

“Do you know how to drive this thing?”

“Ugh,” she scoffed. “Try something more… elaborate.”

Jeeves stood quiet for a few seconds, presumably as it pulled something from its databanks.

“A brit, an american, and an italian are on an interstellar cruise together. After their ship makes a wormhole jump, the british person declares, ‘We’re now in Imperial space!’ The others look at him and ask, ‘How can you tell?’ He smiles and responds, ‘I can see the light of Bigger Ben!’ Some time passes and their ship makes another jump. This time the american pipes up, “We in MURICA now, brother!’ The others question him how he knows this and the man points to the stars and says, ‘That’s the Stars-and-Stripes Nebula!’ A third wormhole jump happens. Predictably, the italian smiles and proclaims, ‘We are currently passing through the Sicillian Expanse!’ The others, again, ask, ‘How can you tell?’ The italian answers by proudly lifting his hand and proclaiming, ‘Because someone just stole my wristwatch!’”

“Pft! Hahahaha!” Johanson couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, that is terrible! Ahahah!”

“I apologize that my comedy subroutine is not to your liking.”

“Ahhh… Well, that killed it,” her mood deflated. “Good job, buckethead.”

Being told that its joke was both ‘terrible’ yet a ‘good job’ got Jeeves stuck in another logic loop. Thankfully AJ was used to rebooting the thing so she did so immediately. That momentary distraction wasn’t enough, though. It was still the middle of the afternoon, which meant she had at least a few more hours before anything of note had a chance of happening. Unless she dared disturb Maggie’s sleep, but AJ felt that wasn’t a good idea. All else aside, she really didn’t want to have more of that girl in her life. She then briefly contemplated getting Joe out of his pod, which had its own fair share of problems. She really didn’t want to touch that shoggoth-possessed machine unless she absolutely had to.

Agent Johanson then had a thought. The games room had several perfectly normal VR pods next to the monstrous one. Surely she could just use those to keep herself busy somehow. However, aside from running various combat simulations alongside her team, it had been many years since she last dabbled in virtual reality. She had a feeling that if she just hopped in now on a whim, she’d be so lost in that ocean of media that she’d simply end up up being bored at four times the speed. The woman figured she could just approach Joe in the digital world and have him show her something that even a newbie like her could find fun. Hey, if he could do that for a Class-3, then surely he wouldn’t mind helping AJ out.

Her mind made up, the woman climbed into her pod and logged into V-Life for the first time in a decade. Her avatar reflected the passage of time, as it was a much younger version of herself. She never cared much for these virtual toys so she hadn’t really done much to make her appearance stand out. That was still very much true, except she figured that appearing a decade younger was awkward and would send the wrong message if Joe thought it was intentional. A few surprisingly intuitive mental clicks later, AJ had told the avatar customization system to simply make her virtual appearance match her real self.

With that done, she just had to reach out to Joe. It was a simple enough matter since she already knew his unique virtual handle was ‘JoeMulligan356,’ which implied he was the 356th Joe Mulligan on the planet who decided to just use his real name. The psi-op’s own was slightly more embarrassing since her younger self had decided it would be Sarah-The-Big-Brain-Princess-Of-Power. She could have it changed, but that would require a fifty poundington service fee that she didn’t really feel was worth it for half an afternoon. At the very least it was more presentable than Maggie’s virtual ID, which was a sequence of forty two seemingly random letters and numbers. It probably held some deep meaning that only she could decipher, but to AJ it just looked as if she had repeatedly thrown a keyboard down the stairs.

“Hey, Joe. It’s AJ,” she messaged him. “Mind if I hang with you for a bit?”

It took an almost worrisome fifteen minutes before she got a reply.

“Hey! Sorry, I’m terrible at responding to personal messages. Sure, you can spectate my game and we can chat. Sound good?”

A bit of back-and-forth later, AJ found herself hovering in orbit around an unknown planet with a huge mass of girders, panels, and machinery next to her. She was only a visitor who didn’t own the Astral Engineers title, so her appearance defaulted to a ghostly astronaut incapable of interacting with the game world. Joe looked fairly similar, but far more tangible.

“Yo,” he greeted her with a wave. “I’m kinda surprised you dropped by. I thought VR wasn’t your thing.”

“It isn’t, but I got so bored that I figured I might as well give it a try.”

“Ah. Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I’m kind of in the groove here and I really don’t wanna waste it. Otherwise I’d show you something more interesting.”

“No, no, that’s fine. I just need someone to talk to, I guess. I even tried asking Jeeves to tell me a joke.”

“Wait, he can tell jokes?”

“Yeah? Most speaking appliances can, but they usually fall flat. At least Jeeves pulled his from some online library.”

“Any good ones?”

“Just the one.”

She then repeated the anecdote with the interstellar cruise. Her comedic timing wasn’t as fine tuned as the robot’s and Joe had heard that one before, but he still had a laugh.

“That’s a good one. Reminds me of this story I heard about a british lord and a sheikh from the Emirates.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

AJ was genuinely curious what sort of tale would involve two planetary governors from opposite ends of the Milky Way.

“So, a lord and a sheikh meet each other in this stupidly fancy hotel on some resort planet, and they discover they have a lot in common, right? Mostly way too much money and an appreciation for skilled servants. They become fast friends and at some point decide to have a friendly contest with a small wager of half a million credits.”

“As they do,” AJ rolled her eyes, smirking.

Joe then went into a long-winded story that painted the british governor as relentlessly punctual and polite while the foreigner was shown to be ridiculously disorganized. The silly bit took the piss out of both parties, though the foreigner ended up being the ultimate butt of the joke. The woman giggled quietly almost the entire time and then laughed herself to the point of tears at the punchline. She had to admit, Joe had a talent for this sort of thing. It was also somewhat impressive that he was able to keep working on his little project all the same.

“Blimey,” she exclaimed once she’d calmed down. “That’s way too good. I’ll have to tell Sparks that one sometime.”

“Sorry, Sparks?”

“Just a colleague of mine.”

“What’s he like?”

“Oh, he’s an absolute geek, but in a good way. He once improvised a flashlight by hooking up a lightbulb to a potato.”

“… You can do that?”

“Apparently,” she shrugged.

“Where’d you guys even get a potato?”

“We got trapped in this farmer’s shed during a night op. Long story.”

“I have time,” Joe casually urged her to share.

“I… really shouldn’t say anything more. Secret missions and whatnot.”

“Oh. That’s alright, I understand.”

AJ was somewhat glad she wasn’t allowed to speak of that assignment. Aside from that potato incident, it was actually a depressing and gruesome affair that really wasn’t worth reminiscing about. The same was true of most of her past missions, actually. It was no wonder that, much like Major Archer, she had come to expect the worst when dealing with cosmic entities. That was also the main reason why she couldn’t let her guard down around Maggie. Not to mention that, as Sparks himself liked to point out, a healthy dose of paranoia was necessary in their line of work. Yet even he seemed oddly accepting of this Class-3.

Having thoroughly killed the jovial mood, AJ decided she might as well ask something that had been on her mind for a while.

“So… What made you join that cult?”

“Hm? What cult?”

The way he casually answered without looking away from the holographic 3D blueprint in front of him implied his ignorance wasn’t feigned.

“You know. The Cult of the Gazing Star? Those guys that tried to sacrifice you?”

“Oh, that? Right, I keep forgetting they were an actual cult.”

“Seriously? It’s only been like, a month and a half since then.”

“First of all, it’s actually closer to half a year from my perspective.”

“… Huh?”

“Virtual reality runs four times faster than the outside, remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Secondly, I’m not the kind of guy that dwells on the negative. Plus, I got to meet Maggie, which kind of trumps everything else that went on that day.”

“Fair enough, but that doesn’t answer my question. Why’d you join?”

“That’s… kind of embarrassing, actually. I thought I was signing up for some elaborate matchmaking thing and the cult aspect really didn’t dawn on me until Maggie pointed it out.”

AJ already knew about that impressive feat of ignorance, but what she was actually curious about was the underlying reason.

“That’s just it, though. You handed over a few months’ allowance to some shady guy you barely knew, stripped naked, and allowed yourself to be lashed to a stone altar just because you were promised to meet someone. That’s not… normal.”

“I mean, it’s a bit extreme when you put it like that, but lots of blokes do dumb things just to get a girl. Especially at my age. I think anyone would go through what I did if it meant they’d end up with someone as fantastic as Maggie.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re all way too desperate. You know what I think? It’s because you allow this VR tech to rot your brains into slush.”

“Now you’re just being silly. Surely the government wouldn’t institutionalize it if it made people’s brains leak out their ears.”

“Figuratively, Joe. Like, you have your every need catered to, so it makes you long even more for the things you don’t have. To a ridiculous degree. In your case it was a relationship, but others want power or money or influence. This disproportionate desire warps their sense of reality and makes them vulnerable to manipulation, so they get sucked into these cults, just like- Are you even listening to me?!”

The way Joe was fiddling with the settings on an automatic assembler machine implied his attention was elsewhere.

“I’m listening!” he claimed otherwise.

His self-appointed tasks required very little of his limited brain power. Astral Engineers was more of a game than a simulation, so all he had to do was conjure bits and pieces of equipment out of thin air and place them where they belonged. Furthermore, he’d already designed the industrial orbital installation he wanted to make and was just following along his blueprint. He was, in a way, just going through the motions and the majority of his attention was indeed on AJ, but she didn’t know that and assumed he was treating her like background noise.

“It’s just that, I’m trying to configure this thing to make plastic out of biofuel instead of crude oil, but I can’t remember how to do it.”

Unfortunately, his explanation did little to convince her otherwise.

“Ugh, forget it. Why do I even bother?”

“Probably because you care,” he suggested while poking at another console. “Seriously, it’s not like I don’t get what you mean. You’re saying VR breeds lazy losers and that it’s a psychological and societal problem. I’ve seen that argument on the net more times than I can count, but I don’t buy it. It’s so bloody backwards. I mean, if virtual reality really is so damaging, then why are you in it right now?”

AJ was a bit upset at feeling ignored and then having her viewpoint dumbed down like that, but not so much that she refused to continue the conversation.

“… Because I was bored.”

“That’s exactly why I spend so much time here. Let’s face it, if not for Maggie, I’d just be another faceless goon in the crowd. Not even a cog in the machine, just a rat in a box. I hang around in V-Life all day because I have literally nothing better to do, not the other way around. Without the platform to keep me busy I’d probably start doing weird rituals within the month just to spice things up.”

“But you’ll never accomplish anything if you just keep yourself distracted your whole life!”

“I mean, yeah, I won’t be some badass soldier like you or an unrivaled genius like Maggie, but guess what? I can brighten up people’s day with a joke every now and then, and that’s enough for me, to be honest. Let the super-talented people who know what they’re doing worry about the important stuff, I say.”

“You’re only saying that because the government caters to your needs, so you lack a sense of agency. You’ve never had to fear for your life, worry about your next meal, or suffer with any sort of adversity more severe than cocking up a pointless game tournament on a technicality.”

“And… that’s a bad thing?”

“Yes!”

“I dunno, AJ. I’d say living in a box beats getting shot at on the regular.”

“… Okay, no, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you did. That’s fine, though. I think I get it now. You’re the type of person that thinks anyone can do what you can if they put in enough effort, right?”

“Well, I guess I am, actually.”

Though Agent Johanson had been drafted by the military, any citizen of the Empire could volunteer to join Her Immortal Majesty’s armed forces. The sophisticated physical and mental training regime would then whip them up into shape no matter what, so long as they stuck with it. To her mind, it was an incredibly simple thing to do. The only exception was that no amount of effort would allow a human to develop psionic abilities if they weren’t born with the aptitude for them, but that was besides the point.

“That’s not how people work, though,” Joe pointed out. “I mean, look at me. I graduated from school with such terrible scores across all aptitude tests that there’s now a big fat ‘Unemployable’ on my record. It wasn’t because I didn’t try. Believe you me, I absolutely did. Turns out, I just wasn’t cut out to do anything even remotely important or impactful. And guess what? I’m fine with it. I wasn’t born strong or fast or smart or, anything, really. Yet I got to live a life free of worry and stress. From where I’m standing, that’s a pretty good deal. VR offering me an easy way to interact with people and have fun is just icing on the cake.”

“Okay. Wow,” AJ was severely taken aback. “I don’t know how you managed it, but that’s both the best and worst argument I’ve ever heard. I genuinely don’t know how to respond to that.”

It wasn’t just what Joe had said, but also the way he said it. His voice didn’t have any hostility or derision, but a sense of bemused wonderment. She could practically hear the dumb smile he had under the opaque visor of his virtual spacesuit. It was as if he couldn’t believe he had to explain something that should’ve been obvious to someone much smarter than him. It was a tone he often took with Maggie, and being on the receiving end of it made AJ somewhat understand why the Class-3 kept this guy around. It was hard to explain, but his incredibly humble and relaxed attitude had a way of putting others at ease.

“Hey, I’ll take it,” he shrugged. “All I’m saying is, don’t knock mediocrity before you try it.”

“I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you. By the way, is that fuel line supposed to be leaking?”

“… Oh, beans!”

AJ looked on in mild bemusement as Joe hurriedly patched up his virtual contraption. With that serious topic over, they kept on talking about mostly inconsequential things while the guy worked on his space station. The topics they covered ranged from local restaurants to foreign movies to intergalactic sporting events. They didn’t really share much in common and had plenty of smaller arguments, but AJ had a good time just hanging out and talking to Joe. He also pointed her towards a few entry-level shooter games and she had an absolute blast slaughtering legions of aliens, demons, robots, and alien demon-robots. The man himself didn’t join her since he was focused on his own thing, but they kept talking over voice chat. Hearing AJ’s excited reactions from her first real plunge into the virtual gaming realm was fairly entertaining in its own right.

By the time Jeeves called both of them out of their pods for dinner, the soldier’s views on Joe’s lifestyle had changed significantly. She no longer thought of it as somehow lesser than her own circumstances, just different. She still personally disapproved of it and preferred to seek stimulus in the real world rather than the digital, but she would no longer think less of those that didn’t have that opportunity. With that subconscious hang-up done away with, she was able to converse with Joe a lot more freely and openly as they dug into the beef, carrots, and mash Jeeves had prepared.

The conversation abruptly ended when the lady of the house entered the dining room and slammed the door behind her a bit more forcefully than usual.

“Oh! Hey, Maggie,” Joe immediately greeted her. “How’d your first sleep go.”

“It was immensely revitalizing, but also somewhat disconcerting.”

“Really? Was there a problem or something?”

“Possibly. I am almost certain I had a dream, yet I cannot remember anything other than a vague sensation that it involved something akin to an enormous noodle,” she sounded rather concerned.

“Oh, that’s normal. Lots of people immediately forget their dreams when they wake up.”

“I do not forget, Joe.”

She may not have had the entirety of her vast knowledge at the forefront of her consciousness, but could flawlessly recall anything she’d ever seen, heard, or learned.

“Your kind also doesn’t normally sleep,” AJ pointed out. “Whatever dream you had was most likely a product of your human brain, and therefore subjected to its neurochemical quirks. I doubt it’s anything worth stressing over.”

“There you have it, Maggie,” the guy shrugged. “Must be the case if the Big Brain Princess of Power says so.”

“Oy! I told you not to tell anyone about that!”

“You did, but I chose not to listen. It’s way more fun this way.”

“I swear, if you start spreading that around I will pop your head off like a bottle cap!”

“I wouldn’t if I were you. You’ll make my girlfriend angry, and we both know how scary she is when angry.”

“Don’t hide behind the Class-3, you coward!”

“I like my head where it is, so I will absolutely do that.”

“Ugh. I’m starting to understand why no woman in this reality can stand you. I should update your file from ‘Unemployable’ to ‘Insufferable wanker.’”

“Can… Can you do that? Is that a thing?”

“If it isn’t, it should be.”

As Maggie watched the two bicker back and forth, she was mildly surprised and somewhat annoyed at Agent Johanson. This reaction had nothing to do with the woman’s lax demeanor and inappropriately informal conduct. Her current behavior was a significant deviation from the curt and tense attitude she normally displayed in Maggie’s presence, but that was hardly unexpected. Much like Joe had reassured his girlfriend, their roommate was bound to loosen up eventually. The fact that it happened while the girl was snoozing was of little consequence. What bothered her was something else entirely.

Just when and how did Joe and Agent Johanson start getting along so much?