I kept working on the “damned fill-in-the-blank book,” as I usually called books that were this much of a pain to edit. What other colorful language would I call it this time? I still didn’t understand most of what was going on in it. I did understand a little more. I wasn’t totally ignorant of math, including advanced math...just not at this level.

  A college algebra class was the last math class I took. Or wanted to take. Math just wasn’t my thing. But if you read or edit enough math books, some of it sticks around.

  At least it stuck around long enough to get a few more pages edited before Blaze called me to dinner.

  I took one look at what was on my plate and decided, “It looks good. What is it?” My puzzled face was real.

  “Old family recipe,” she told me.

  “Uh huh, I believe you. Let me guess. Them that asks no questions, doesn’t get told no lies?”

  She laughed. I joined her as I sat down.

  “Pretty much,” she told me.

  I tried it, and while it had more garlic in it than I’d put in two meals, it was good. The smell of roasted spices and butter lingered in the warm kitchen air, mixing with the faint scent of coffee from earlier.

  Over dinner, we talked about our days. She agreed that most physical things could be described by math, but she understood less about what was in “da book,” as I was now calling it, than I did. That wasn’t saying much.

  I let her know the doctors wanted to do another brain scan on me in a month. First, to see if there was anything they missed, and second, to see if my higher level at that point made a difference. A few people were taking the idea that game stats made a real-world difference seriously. Not just the spells we could cast or the abilities people now had.

  She agreed that I should have my head examined. Again. And again, and again. We both got a good laugh from that suggestion.

  The surprise of the evening was Blaze asking me if I’d heard any rumors about some group planning a take-over of a nearby town by a neo-Nazi group. I let her know that PokerRun had said some people he knew were talking about it, but nothing confirmed. That was going on about two weeks ago.

  She told me she got a message from her boss in the state office asking about it. People higher up were asking him what he knew, and he knew nothing about it. So, he asked her to find out and report back.

  “Ask PokerRun. But don’t name him. What do you call them? A confidential informant?” I asked.

  “That’s one of the terms. I’ll pass on that someone I’ve talked to said they heard about it but thought it wasn’t going anywhere. It was just talk. What do you think the chances are of someone local doing it? Or trying it?”

  I leaned my chair back a bit and put on my good-old-boy voice. “There’s guys who talk the talk ‘bout such things. Doin’ it’s a whole nuther matter. They talk big, ‘specially ifin’ they gots a few beers in ‘em. But sober they know better. The ones that don’t end up in jail sooner than later. Sherif Harper kin likely give ya a list of ‘em.”

  When I dropped my chair back on all four legs, Blaze laughed.

  “You’re right, that he likely knows who they are or could be. He said he grew up here so he may have gone to school with some of them. I remember talking to him out at the commune about what they were growing out there. He said they’ve been doing it for years, but they don’t sell or trade to school kids. And don’t sell for resale.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard too. When you get away from the bigger cities, the culture changes a bit. A college town like Eddington has both groups. Not being local makes a difference.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Don’t you consider yourself a local by now?” she asked me, smiling.

  “I suppose I must be. I know people, but for some people, especially in this part of the world, unless your grandparents knew their grandparents, you really aren’t a part of it. I think that’s true in lots of rural America, and other countries.”

  We let things drop at that point. I knew she’d do her job.

  I went back to my office to do more editing. She typed her reports on her laptop behind me. The quiet tapping of typing, occasional muttering, and the sounds of coffee cups being slurped and set down again brought back old memories of my wife and me both working on our own things in the evenings. Our son had a computer in his bedroom by the time he was in high school, and we each did our own things after supper. Sometimes we’d get together to watch a move or something special on TV.

  About an hour and a half later, I hit a good finishing point for the night. Leaning back, I stretched and told Blaze I was done. She said she’d finished as well and was just scrolling her Facebook feed. It had dropped off from nothing except Game posts to about half about it. The rest was the same old stuff it had before. Endless pet pictures.

  For some reason, it was showing her lots of pet rabbit pictures. They were cute, but she was happy with them being other people’s pets. She didn’t want one. I agreed.

  The next morning, we were up barely in time to catch the first spawn of the day. The cool early air still smelled faintly of dew and damp earth leftover from the thunderstorm as we stepped outside.

  I was surprised to see Silent Samson as one of the fighters. He wore a Goblin’s leather poncho over what looked like his work clothes minus the suit jacket. I noticed a dark blue tie peeking out from under it that showed at the neck hole.

  He VANISHed after the first area effect spells from the Mages took away most of the spawns’ Hit Points and BACKSTABBED one from behind. Then VANISHing again only to hit another one. He finished off two of them before the rest were dead.

  We talked with them for a few minutes, as Samson swapped armor and weapons for clothes and headed off to City Hall to start his day. It didn’t look like he’d worked up a sweat during the fight. He was now Level 5.

  Going back in, I told Blaze I was happy to see some of the other old Irregulars fighting here. The guild now had two spawn sites it was totally responsible for, and between various groups, we handled six or seven more around town and in the county every day. When you have a bit over sixty members, that’s not as hard as it sounds. Things were looking up overall for the guild.

  She went to work and so did I.

  My body went on automatic. Go to my office with a fresh cup of coffee. Open my current project. Position my keyboard and mouse in their optimum spots. Same with my chair. Move my butt into the permanent dents in the seat cushion. Open the files I’d be working with. Stuff the earbuds into my ears and start my work background music where the playlist had left off yesterday. Everything ready to work.

  And I sat there thinking about MANA and how it seemed to flow like electricity. And if solid game items were collected and stabilized MANA frozen into position to appear as a solid, just like regular matter, what did that all mean?

  Now? Later? Being able to mentally manipulate MANA not just in position, but in every other facet of regular matter and beyond?

  “Enchanting!” Yes! Directly manipulating matter with MANA. Game-created fire could set regular Earth matter on fire and cause it to burn. Although that could just be a result of temperature change, exciting atoms into moving faster, causing heat to the point of burning. MANA-created ice did the same thing in reverse.

  Things started to drop into place in nice, logical order and into various logic boxes as well.

  I pulled up a blank page and started typing down these ideas and notes for how things could be operating. It didn’t matter if I was the first person to think of this or not. If it got smarter people than me thinking about it and being able to test it, at least we’d understand how the Game did things, just like it understood how people, matter, and energy worked and interacted as we knew it.

  Twenty minutes plus a few later, I had four Word pages of notes, thoughts, insights, and bullshit that sounded good on my computer. And no work done on the book. Plus, I only had a half hour left before I needed to pick up people to fight the morning spawns.

  Turning on my printer, I printed copies of it. One for MathMamm, one for GRA, and one for me. Then I printed another two just in case.

  In case of what? “I don’t know, but it didn’t hurt anything to do it.”

  That gave me copies for MathMamm, Blaze, GRA, and the Ryans next door as backup copies. Plus, other people to be decided later. I put them in individual envelopes and added names to them. And two blank ones for whomever I thought should get it.

  Now, it was time to get ready in the short time I had left.

  15 Chapters Ahead.