The rest of the night passes and Todd is running out of time. He waves goodbye to Nayira and scrambles to search out Abby Fletcher. He only stops to tell her to burn the trash heap before he moves on to find Soup Nina.

  Joe waves him down.

  “It’s all covered, Drew is coming with us and Teo is covering Randall,” the young man informs Todd.

  “Nice,” Todd utters.

  Joe towers over Todd unintentionally. “Where are you headed?”

  “I’m worried too many people are going to take hard mode,” Todd entrusts. “I was thinking we make an announcement. Maybe get Nina to help us out.”

  “And do what? Convince them to take an easier mode?” Joe shakes his head.

  “We’re losing too many people already, this pill is just going to make it worse,” Todd implores.

  “I feel you. But we can’t control what other people do. There’s only so much they’ll listen,” Joe says. “And besides, maybe it’s a good thing. Martin’s team is tough. They’ll probably do great.”

  Todd squeezes a fist. “It’s all the people who think they can earn the pill and sit the quest out that I’m worried for.”

  “You’re worried they’ll get a monster dropped on them?” Joe asks.

  Todd’s voice drops. “I don’t know. It’s just that there’s gotta be some kind of catch. They wouldn’t just hand these things out for free.”

  Joe runs a hand through his hair. “Alright. We can at least warn them. Let me go get Candra and Officer Bernice.”

  Todd thanks him and splits off. It takes him twenty minutes to find Soup Nina. She’s cultivating in the outsize circles. Gently disrupting her concentration, Todd tells her his intentions and asks for help organizing a mass announcement. She agrees and proposes an arrangement.

  Todd takes the time and finally eats his dinner. He cashes in a fine food token and luxuriates in the tender meat and fresh veggies that blink in. He eats ravenously with his short little knife, and when he’s done he wraps the leftovers up and stashes them in his damaged harvesting bag. A nearby cultivator offers to buy a fine food token off of Todd, but he declines.

  Two and a half hours later it’s morning. The last cultivators are coming out of their rooms, woken by the automatic alarms.

  With help from several recruited individuals, Nina sweeps through the plaza. They all loudly declare that the cultivators should rearrange themselves and organize in terms of assigned difficulties. Easy groups to the far side of the plaza, through to the hard groups at the fore. Everyone is to sit directly with their own group, except for a representative who is to assemble by the shop crystal.

  It takes some time. People are reluctant to move. They are slow to elect a delegate.

  The congress is still a huge gathering of over sixty people; they clamor and complain.

  The small woman claps to get their attention. Fireman Ian, Joe, Officer Bernice, Walter, and Mustache Eric stand behind Soup Nina.

  Todd watches and listens from a distance away. He wasn’t selected to be their representative, so he sits with Candra. A moment later, Ranger Drew stalks over and squats down next to them with a grunt.

  Soup Nina begins by calling them to session. She calls on the group representatives to declare any specific needs their group has. Whether they need more food or water, or a change in members, or anything else. She takes note of each group that makes a request for resolution later. Then she steps back and introduces Walter.

  The older man steps forward and hooks a thumb in the front of his gi. “Listen all y’all. Whether we like it or not, the pixies have all but told us right out that there’s another expedition comin’. We figure they’re coming any minute to tell us so. Now, a lot of good people are gone. Couldn’t hack it. Made mistakes. We expect you lot to be better prepared. Part of bein’ prepared is picking the difficulty which is right for you; bein’ overconfident can cost you. I know folks are getting tempted by the rewards, but there are risks as well. Here to say a little more is young Joseph F.”

  Joe takes his place in the middle of the circle and projects his voice. “Hello everyone. My teammates and I have concerns about the quest for this time. We’re convinced that there’s going to be something that you’re going to be pushed to do, something that you’ll be punished if you don’t complete. It happened to us when we took extreme, and you all know how that ended up. Oh. You don’t? The system got mad and sent a giant monster at us. Harder than anything we’ve fought. One of our friends was hurt bad. We’re thinking something similar will happen to you. We don’t know more than that. We don’t have any confirmation. Like I said, it’s just what we think. It’s just a suspicion, but we want to make sure you guys are making an informed choice.”

  There are immediately questions. Some about extreme mode, but Joe shuts those down. He insists that no one should be trying that difficulty. He’s honest about hard mode. He warns about the unusual conditions that a group might be forced to operate under, and that their success was to a large extent a matter of luck.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The council covers other topics, mostly about grievances that have arisen between groups. It seems that there have been some arguments and some falling outs, and a number of cultivators will have to be rearranged.

  Meanwhile, Todd and Candra make overtures to their newest member.

  “Should I call you Andrew, or is Drew okay?” Candra asks.

  “Either’s fine,” the bearded man growls. He draws his sword from its sheath and lays it across his knees. Taking out a smooth, oblong whetstone, he runs it along the sword’s edge.

  “Where are you from?” Candra tries. “I’m from Chattanooga, and then I was going to U Memphis.”

  “I’m from Clarksville,” Todd adds. “I go to U Memphis too.”

  Ranger Drew grinds the edge of his blade. He scowls. “The only thing I care about is: ‘can you fight.’”

  “Sure,” Candra says, “we just figured we’d get to know each other a bit before-”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Ranger Drew interrupts her, “just make sure you have my back, and I’ll take out everything that comes at us.”

  Candra folds her arms and huffs. “Whatever. Fine, yea. We hear you loud and clear.”

  Todd has a different question. “Why are you sharpening your sword? Doesn’t it have a repair function? Won’t it undo any changes you make to it?”

  Ranger Drew blinks. He looks down at his sword and up at Todd. “What?”

  “A repair function. My spear’s got one. It heals itself over time after it’s damaged,” Todd explains.

  “How does it do that?” Ranger Drew turns his sword over and inspects it dubiously.

  “Magic,” Todd responds.

  Ranger Drew slams his sword back into its sheath. He sits and drums his fingers on his knees. The stormy expression on his face leaves him unapproachable.

  “What’s there to do in Clarksville?” Candra asks after a moment.

  Todd looks over as he realizes she’s talking to him. “Nothing, really. There’s Austin Peay, they have sports. But I’m not always into that. There’s the river, and Dunbar Cave. A couple of little things. I dunno. It got pretty boring.”

  “Hm,” Candra hums.

  “How was Chattanooga?”

  Candra sighs. “It was great. There were lots of places to run. We had the aquarium, we had museums. I had a fake ID and we went to nightclubs. We tore it up.”

  Feeling a little intimidated, Todd makes a noise of approval.

  Candra reaches up and finds her hair missing. She misses a beat before continuing. “You did something though, right? What did you do for fun?”

  Todd cringes internally. What can he say? That he played a lot of video games? That he did volunteer work? That he was on the honor society?

  “Most of my energy went into school,” Todd grinds out. “I wanted to get into a good university.”

  Candra tilts her head. “Then how’d you end up at U Memphis?”

  “I couldn’t afford going somewhere better,” Todd admits, “the scholarships just didn’t come through. Maybe I could have taken on a lot of debt, but I couldn’t justify that to myself.”

  Candra pauses. “What do you even do with an Electrical Engineering degree?” she asks.

  “Honestly?” Todd scratches his head, “I was planning on going into law and being a patent attorney.”

  Candra laughs. “Damn. You would have made bank.”

  “That was the idea, anyways,” Todd smiles. “What are you going to do with a Biology major?”

  “Honestly, I have no fucking clue,” Candra exhales. “I like it. I like the labs. But I just don’t know what I want to do. I don’t want to do pre-med. I don’t think I want to be a vet. Conservation is a shit job, for shit pay.”

  “I guess I would have thought you had everything planned out,” Todd says.

  “I do! Marry someone rich!” Candra shoots back. “Sit back and do nothing but work out and look good.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Todd disputes, “you’re more ambitious than that.”

  Candra shrugs. “Fuck. I don’t know. I guess maybe I could work for pharma. They get to travel, it pays well-”

  Ranger Drew loses his patience. “None of that is gonna matter. We’re going to come back with power. We’ll be able to do whatever we want.”

  Todd protests. “If the pixies are telling the truth, there’s hundreds of millions of other people in the tutorials. Other people are going to come back strong too. It’s not going to change things all that much.”

  Ranger Drew chuffs. He goes back to drumming his fingers.

  Todd and Candra are much subdued. They only exchange a few words with each other. That changes when the big circle breaks up and Joe returns to the group.

  Joe cheerfully extends his hand for Ranger Drew to shake. Grudgingly, the other man takes it.

  “We should talk strategy,” Joe suggests.

  A glint appears in Ranger Drew’s eye. Suddenly he has a great deal to say.

  Todd’s brain is stuffed full of hand signs and code words. Ranger Drew quizzes them relentlessly until he is satisfied.

  The five hundred odd cultivators of section four wait in trepidation for the pixies to return. There’s some speculation that the expedition won’t be happening, but overall the expectation is that something is coming.

  The tension grows palpable until finally the three tutorial administrators sparkle as dots in the sky. They spiral and drop at breakneck speed, slowing and stopping over the assembled crowds.

  Aefore booms. “Good morn! It is good that you are prepared, children of Earth! We are proud of your fortitude and your grit. We have come to you with grave news. The redburr crab infestation has returned. The beasts have burrowed deep into the internals of this tutorial platform, and are making their way to key hubs within its systems.”

  Befor’s voice carries. “Lucky you’re already in teams,” she says, “because we’ve gotta send you out to stop those pesky crabs.”

  Ciffore adjusts her glasses and speaks. “Each hub is a defensible position deep inside this station. Each is situated with a node crystal which you must protect from the redburr at all costs.”

  Befor bounces and spreads her hands generously. “But you don’t have to do it by your lonesome! Each hub is connected to the automagic build system of the tutorial!”

  Aefore nods. Her hair ripples upwards. “You will be able to construct shields and turrets using a resource called ‘build points.’ These static emplacements will combat the enemy on your behalf and reduce the pressure on your team.”

  Befor wags a finger. “Don’t rely on them though. You’ll have to get your hands dirty to win.”

  Ciforre floats forwards. “Maximum group size is ten. Teleportation will begin in twenty minutes. Make your last purchases now. We will make ourselves available for questions.”

  The fuzz of the mental fog fades and Todd faces his teammates in uncertainty. He considers what the pixies have described. What is this, a tower defense game?

  This is going to change their plans, their formation, and maybe their loadout. He turns to Joe expectantly. They only have twenty minutes, they’d better talk quick.