Another Day Is Going By

Day 3

Rivalry

Neither of us really wanted to talk about what happened the other day. Two people erased before our eyes. We’d been caught up in the moment with the Noise and the Reapers breathing down our necks, but now it began to dawn on us. Mark and Evan were dead. That guy on the first day, he was dead, and whoever someone had no doubt been left without a partner, left for the Noise or Reapers to pick off. This “Game” was anything but, and we all wanted out.

I’d upset Sara with my comment the other day, about other Players possibly being our competition. You could see it in her face, that hope that all of us would just be able to plow through together and come back to life. Knowing who our enemies were though, it would never be that simple. It might not be possible for any of us to even win it. We were here for their fuel. Players fueled the Reapers, who was to say this was anything else?

“So,” Sara said as she walked towards me.

I looked at my phone. “Day three.”

She nodded.

Silence.

“I’m sorry about what I said yesterday,” I said. “That probably wasn’t the best thing to say.”

Sara shrugged. “You were probably right, it had to be said. When we do these missions, we should be the ones to try and complete them first.”

I was glad she could see my side, but I hated the effect it had on her. Sara sat on the ground, pulling her knees into her chest and just sitting there. It made me antsy, just sitting here, but we had yet to receive any mail. I couldn’t let her stay like this, it was hard to see her in such a slump. I felt as though I had killed the new Sara that I was seeing, but not even the old Sara was here to take this place. This was just a depressed, defeated girl that had no interest in playing this game. I could understand that feeling, but we had no choice. It was win or die.

“You alright?” I said as I sat beside her.

She shrugged. “Do you ever wonder what your entrance fee was?”

She had to bring up this topic.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “I don’t even know what they took from me.”

“Me either,” she said. “I keep racking my brain, thinking what it possibly was… isn’t it scary to think that your most prized possession is gone? Almost as scary as finding out what your most prized possession is. What if it’s something shallow? What does that say about me, do I even deserve a second chance?”

Our phones beeped.

“Mission time,” I said.

I flipped open the mail. “Dominate the Gateway with Aeropostale. You have 90 minutes. Fail and face erasure—The Reapers.”

We were at the Gateway, what did it mean by dominating it with Aeropostale? We were invisible to human eyes, above their plane, what did they honestly expect us to do?

Pain distracted me as the timer appeared on our hands, but then the sound of or phones ringing again distracted us. I flipped it open to see a single word message reading “Aeropostale.”

“The word is saved to our phones?” I asked.

Sara stared at it. “So what, are we supposed to make everyone go buy Aeropostale? How is that even possible when they can’t see us?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, but they didn’t give us a lot of time to figure it out. We have to do something, sitting around isn’t going to get this mission done.”

“I guess we should go to their outlet,” Sara said. “That might give us a clue.”

I nodded and followed her as she showed me around the Gateway. She knew the path directly, but she could also see the walls in our way. Her idea must have been right, why put up a wall when you didn’t need to? The question was, how did we get past it?

“Where’s the Reaper?” I asked as we came to a halt.

“Other side,” Sara pointed to the other side of the barrier. “Lovely.”

And so we were forced to race around the other side of the mall and up the other set of the stairs towards the outlet. The Reaper was gone. That fact alone nearly caused us to curse our lungs out, until we discovered that the barrier was gone.

The wall had been lifted by someone else, but I couldn’t see any other Players around.

“Come on, let’s go into the store,” Sara said.

“What’s that going to accomplish?” I asked.

“We won’t know until we try.”

And so we walked into the store, only to be met by another surprise.

“Hello,” one of the workers said. “Can I help you two with anything?”

We stared at each other, and then at the woman. She could see us. We almost didn’t know how to react, but Sara stepped forward first and said that we were both looking around. Which we did, though we weren’t certain what it was we were trying to find.

“How can she see us?” I asked, pretending to browse through some pants.

“Because you’re back in the RG.”

We both turned to see Jessica standing behind us. I almost didn’t recognize her at first, no wings, but her smile couldn’t be mistaken. It seemed we had found favor within a certain Reaper’s eyes, or else she was stalking us and waiting to erase us. There was almost something attractive about that killer instinct in a woman. Almost. The fact that she was terrifying overruled that factor.

“The RG?” I asked.

“RealGround,” Jessica replied. “The Game takes place in the UG, the UnderGround. Certain stores have our mark on them for the Players to enter, do some shopping.”

“Why let us shop?” Sara asked.

Jessica smiled. “Let’s take this outside, so we can’t be overheard.”

We followed her outside. It must have looked strange to the people inside the store. I’m certain we vanished the moment we left, three people vanishing into thin air. The moment we were out of the store, her wings reappeared. Once again she was our greatest threat, just a normal person otherwise. How could she do it, erase people? Could these people really feel no guilt about killing other people?

“As you know, there are a series of different planes,” Jessica said. “The UG is the plane above the RG, and why you can still interact with the RG but the RG cannot interact with you. Now, as for why we allow you to shop, let’s just say the game would get boring if all of the missions included you erasing Noise.”

“Does today’s mission require us to shop?”

Jessica smiled. “That’s enough answers for the day.”

She turned and walked away without another word. I didn’t understand why she was being so helpful, but I wasn’t about to question it either. She had given us this information for a reason.

“Let’s go back in and get some clothes,” I said.

“You think that’s the mission, to buy some clothes?” Sara asked.

“She said that we can interact with RG didn’t she?” I said. “Maybe just wearing the clothes will have an effect on people, make them want to buy them. I know it sounds crazy, but what other ideas do we have?”

None, and Sara agreed. We entered the store and used my card to buy all of the clothes we needed. It was strange. My card was near the end of its balance and we bought everything fine. I guess it wouldn’t have been fair to us if we didn’t have the money before the game to purchase items necessary for the mission. So, we had all of our clothes, and then we went outside…

“Where do we change?” I asked.

We stared around. Then Sara pulled her top shirt off.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, turning away.

“No one can see us anyways,” she said. “So you look that way, I look this way, and we’ll both get along fine.”

I sighed as I kept facing the other way, pulling my shirt off and swapping it out for the new one. Once we were both fully adorned in Aeropostale, we turned back to each other.

“Nice,” I said.

She smiled. “You’re not too bad on the eyes.”

“Now,” I looked around. “How does this work?”

“Um, this was your idea.”

“Yeah, I was sort of hoping that the moment we put the clothes on they would all go rushing to the store,” I said. “It doesn’t look like we changed anything at all.”

“Thirty minutes down, we only have an hour left,” she stared at her hand. “Alright, these people can’t see or hear us because we’re on a plane above them. We can hear and see them just fine though, but we can’t touch them or move them, so we can’t really interact with them, can we?”

“Not that I know of.”

Sara sighed, then her eyes lit up. “There’s another way we interact with them,” she pulled out the Player Pin.

“Listening to their thoughts?” I asked.

“Why can’t we hear people’s thoughts in the RG?”

“Um, because we don’t have magical pins giving us the power to do so,” I rolled my eyes.

“Just hear me out. Say that our thoughts existed on a higher plane,” she said. “And the only reason we can even hear them with our pin is because they naturally belong with this plane. Since we’re on this plane, wouldn’t it be fair to say that we could interact with people’s thoughts?”

I nodded.

“Let’s just try it,” she said, pulling out her phone as she squeezed the Player Pin with one hand.

I stared at her for a moment, and then I walked around behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, I could see she was staring at the “Aeropostale” text that had been left on our phones. The screen began to blink, and she fiddled with the phone and selected the message, hitting the send button. At first I wondered what she was doing, but it soon became obvious.

“I so just had the urge to go to Aeropostale!” said a girl to her group of friends that had been standing nearby. “Let’s head over there.”

I turned to Sara, who beamed.

“Did you do that?” I asked.

“I think I did,” she smiled.

I smiled too. “That was brilliant. Show me how you did that.”

She did, and so we began our work. Clutch the Player Pin, focus in on people and send the message to their heads to imprint upon them. It was exhilarating to see that we were able to alter people’s thoughts, though, that wasn’t to say all of them. Some people would say “Aeropostale” aloud but immediately discard the thought, it had to be to the right people, or at the right moment. And so, our fun began to turn to despair as after another half hour we had only managed to get about fifteen people to go to the store.

“We’re supposed to do this to all of Gateway?” I asked. “That’s not even possible.”

“Maybe there’s some way to mass imprint?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I already tried to focus in on two people at once, it made my head feel like it was going to explode.”

“Then there has to be a better way than… oh look! It’s Jim and Rachel!” Sara exclaimed.

I turned to see them a short distance behind us. Rachel stopped and waved to us, running towards us, but not Jim. He walked over slowly, glaring at me the entire time. No doubt we were sharing the same thoughts. These weren’t fellow Players, these were our rivals.

“How are you guys making out on the mission?” Rachel asked.

“Not so good,” Sara replied. “We’ve only managed to imprint on over a dozen people. At this rate, we’ll never convert the entire mall to the gospel of Aeropostale… which I would never do willingly anyways. Who picked that brand? The Game Master must be a fan.”

“I agree,” Rachel said. “But you’re still imprinting?”

Jim laughed. “You guys are so slow! You ain’t never gonna spread the message just by imprinting on everyone.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Sara asked.

Rachel opened her mouth, but Jim stopped her.

“No way,” Jim glared at me. “We ain’t helpin’ him over there. He’s the one that said we shouldn’t be helpin’ each other.”

“Sure, keep that competitive spirit and we’ll all end up erased,” Rachel rolled her eyes. “We’re down to twenty minutes, we don’t have enough time to do this on our own.”

Jim growled, but nodded.

“Here’s what you do,” Rachel said. “You have Aeropostale clothes on right? Well, fight Noise. Something happens when you erase Noise, like they release good vibes when they vanish. As you fight Noise, the clothes you’re wearing start to catch on, like you can alter the trends. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it’s much faster than imprinting on individuals, especially when a different brand might have a stronger hold on people right now.”

“It works?” Sara asked.

“Yeah, we managed to convert an entire area to Aero,” Rachel said. “That’s about a third of the mall, but we lost too much time just figuring out that erasing Noise works faster. In order to get the rest of the mall, we’ll need to split up. You two should go to the fountain and just fight Noise until the entire area begins to catch the vibe, we’ll stay in this area and do the same.”

We both nodded.

“Good luck!” Rachel called to us as we ran away.

“Don’t you dare screw this up for us!” Jim yelled.

Obviously directed at me.

We ran to the fountain and immediately went to work. There was no time to waste after all. Dressed in our new threads, we used our Player Pins to attract the attention of the Noise floating around our heads. Aggravating them, the Noise descended and emerged from their two dimensional symbols into the ferocious creatures that we knew all too well. They were, without doubt, a diverse group, each time we fought there was always a different type of Noise to be found. Frogs, bats, ravens, wolves, bears, and now there were even spiders tossed into the mix. Much larger than your usual spider, mind you, but the two dimensional prospects of the spiders took their frightening edge away. At least in my mind, I could still feel Sara’s discomfort whenever one emerged from a Noise symbol to attack us.

And so we fought. Endlessly, we never stopped to rest for a moment. We didn’t even bother to keep track of the timers on our hands. Erasing Noise was supposed to affect the trends, though we weren’t entirely sure how to track such a thing, we knew we’d succeed if we just kept on fighting. Soon enough, we were forced to quit, our minds unable to handle the strain of fighting Noise any longer. My pins had drained me of all mental and physical stamina, and so I found myself falling to my knees after the umpteenth Noise I had erased. There was Sara, looking pale and ready to pass out at any moment. We both sat on our hands and knees, panting.

“Well,” I said, after a few minutes. “It looks like it worked.”

The timer was gone, and more importantly, everyone seemed to be crowding in around the Aeropostale outlet. Again I felt sheer exhilaration. Here I was, toying with the trends and thoughts of other people. I wouldn’t dare say it out loud, but the Game wasn’t all bad. There were some perks to being a Player, and it definitely made life more interesting. Four more days and the Game would be over, was I ready for that to happen?

I stood up, and then I turned to Sara and offered to help her to her feet.

“I’m still going to need a minute,” she said.

I shrugged, then I walked over to the nearest fountain and waited for it to shoot water. Once it did, I splashed a bit of it at Sara. She smiled and sighed in relief, enjoying the cool touch after having strained herself. I too was exhausted, and the water called to me. So, simply, I walked over one of the fountains as it shot up and let it drench me.

Sara laughed. “You just soaked your new clothes.”

“I haven’t bathed in three days,” I replied. “My clothes will thank me.”

She smiled. “I guess we have been doing a lot of sweating lately, we probably stink. I wouldn’t notice. Running cross country and track, you just get used to the smell of sweat.”

“Yeah, I know, I run too,” I said as I dropped onto the ground, letting the sun dry me.

“Really?” she turned to me enthusiastically. “Which school do you run for?”

Not thinking it through, I replied. “Murray High School.”

“That’s the school I run for,” she said, the enthusiasm in her voice gone. “So, did you already graduate?”

I bit my lip, realizing I’d already said too much. I had freaked out when I had deduced that her entry fee was her memory of me, what would she say? I could lie to her, but I decided against it. Causing dissension between partners was probably not a good thing. We were more successful against the Noise when we were in synch. Being open was the best way to maintain that.

“I haven’t, I’m just barely a senior,” I admitted.

There was silence.

“We’re on the same team, aren’t we?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You remember me, but I don’t remember you,” Sara thought aloud. Then, the thought struck her, but she seemed too afraid to say it. “Were we ever… I don’t know, friends?”

“We knew each other from the team,” I said. “We didn’t see or say much to each other outside of that setting.”

“So we were never like a thing, right?”

I shook my head.

She sighed. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, I believe you, but I can’t believe what this means. My memories of you, was that my entrance fee?”

“It could have been,” I mused.

“Oh gosh, that’s embarrassing,” she said as she turned away. “It explains why you were surprised that first day though. I just, I don’t understand. It has to be my entry fee because it’s the only thing I’m missing. But, if we were never… if we hardly even talked outside…”

I sat up and put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, who cares why? It just is what it is. We can start caring about why they took that as your entry fee after you get it back. Who knows? Maybe a few more memories will come back with those of me and you’ll understand.”

“I guess so,” she said.

I smiled. “Sara, it doesn’t matter what was, just what is. Right now, we’re a team, and we’re going to make it through this week together. No folding in on yourself now okay, we have to keep a good synch.”

She smiled. “I guess there are more pressing matters to worry about right now, isn’t there?”

She couldn’t have known how right she was, for at that moment I saw the male Reaper from the day earlier appear right in front of us. It seemed as though these guys always had a few Noise to chuck at us after the mission was complete. The problem: we were exhausted. If he had another tough Noise like the one from yesterday it could be our last.

“If it isn’t my favorite Players,” he laughed as he walked towards us.

Sara and I were on our feet in moments.

“What do you want?” I snapped.

“Same as any Reaper, to score a few points, make a few Players squirm,” he said as he called down a Noise symbol. “Best part is, this one Noise will do both at once.”

And so it emerged… in a way. The symbol fell flat across the ground and then vanished. In its place, a two dimensional shark fin popped out of the ground and began to move towards us. Even just the fin caused enough pain to make me double over as I was sucked onto one of the Noise planes. Then, we got to see its more three dimensional parts.

Such as its mouth.

The shark emerged from beneath the ground, the ground completely passable to it, and opened its jaws as it came at me. I dodged again as it dove back into the ground. At least I had my mobility, but how was I supposed to fight this thing? I was tired, and it was faster than the wolves. Locking onto it with lightning was even too much for my strained mind. All I could do was race around. I could feel on the other plane, that’s all Sara was managing as well.

It hit me then. I had to attack when it popped out to bite. That was an incredibly risky move. If I got caught within those jaws… if its fin could hurt that much on contact, could its bite erase me completely? We weren’t getting out of this either way, I had to try something.

The something, however, was interrupted by a pair of frog Noise joining the fight.

“Crap!” I yelled as one leapt onto me, stinging me with its feet.

The other belched a load of bubbles, each stinging as they popped against my skin. I tumbled backwards, and it was at that moment that the shark emerged from the ground to take a bite at me. I was finished, there was no way I could move and…

“Like hell you are!”

Jim leapt out of nowhere and smashed the shark in the face with his fist. Yes, his fist. The shark was dispatched immediately. I stared up at Jim in awe, he had some real power to him. He turned to me and offered me a hand, which I gladly took.

“What was that for?” I asked. “Mission was over."

He grunted. “Yeah… I don’t like you man. Gotta admit, what you said about us havin’ to compete, really yanked my chain. But you’re right ya know, this Game ain’t gonna be that cut and dry, like all of us can come back or something. Still, as much as I wanna win this and get back to my life, I can’t leave another Player out to dry. So whatcha say? Leave the competin’ for the missions, when it comes to Reapers I’m all over their ass. Ya with me?”

I smiled. “With you.”

“’Sides,” he said. “I bet I can erase a helluva lot more Noise than you can.”

“Bring it on.”

He did, and I brought it to. As the Reaper called more Noise to attack us, we each competed with each other to see who could erase the most. I lost track somewhere along the way, but I felt better. The four of us working together, yes, that was the way to go. So we’d compete on missions, but we’d all see it through to the end of the week. Besides, maybe I was wrong, maybe we could all come back.

Soon the Noise were gone and the Reaper vanished with them. All four of us stood in the middle of the fountain, dripping with sweat and panting hard.

“Well, we did it,” Rachel said.

“Thanks to you two,” Sara said. “We were toast.”

“Eh,” Jim looked pained by the compliment he was about to give. “You two beat yourselves silly takin’ on those Noise, ya didn’t have to erase that many ya know. If you’d been at full strength that shark would’ve been sea food.”

Sara stood up and walked over to me, helping me up to my feet. “I’m convinced, and I hope you are too. The best way for us to survive this Game is if we all work together. What do you say?”

I looked at Jim and Rachel for a moment, then turned back to Sara.

“I think the Reapers want us competing so we won’t help each other,” I said. “Helping each other will piss them off, I’m all for it.”

“Heh, you can’t admit you need our help can ya?” Jim smirked as he walked over to me, slapping me on the back. “Rach figured out fightin’ the Noise to help spread the trend, and we knew about the fountains yesterday. You two is kinda lost without us huh?”

“Right, my hero,” I rolled my eyes.

The two girls laughed, and then Jim and I joined in the laughter. Three days down, four to go. We could do it, I knew we could.