Devious Origins

CHAPTER 17

The bus was halfway to the Intergalactic when reality seemed to snap back into place. My strange disconnected feeling dissipated. Suddenly the sounds around me seemed to gain volume and clarity, as if I had previously been listening through a closed door that was now open.

What the hell just happened?

I mentally played back the events in the parking lot and tried to make sense of them. A panic attack... that might explain my disconnected feeling. And I just happened to encounter a guy on the edge of an emotional break down. And the strange thing I had said was... I have no idea where that came from.

I tried to remember what the guy had been saying at the time, what I was thinking, but it came up blank. Its not that I couldn't remember. I think my mind was literally blank during that weird fugue state, just soaking up impressions and not trying to actively process them. At least that's how I seem to remember it. I wondered if Zen meditation feels like that.

I kept thinking about it, trying to recall details, trying to make sense of it all, but getting nowhere. We finally pulled up to the stop near the Intergalactic, so I mentally shelved the topic and got off the bus. Walking into the café, I looked for Dee and eventually found her at a long table in the back. She was sitting with Katie, Sebastian, and a young man of Asian ancestry... probably Japanese if I had to guess.

"Barry. Perfect timing," she greeted as I approached, "we were just trying to pick a game." A pile of board games and card decks was arrayed in front of them.

"Cool. What do you have?" I set down the bag of pretzels and began looking over the games. A couple of D&D style dungeon crawlers, several card games including classic Magic and a couple of different Munchkin decks, some sort of tile game about a sinking island, and a Firefly themed Monopoly game.

"You know Kate and Sab already, but I don't think you've met Pocky." Dee nodded toward the young Japanese guy.

"Hi, nice to meet you," he said as we shook hands, "It's actually Tatsuya, but I'm cool with Pocky. We've all agreed we should start with something short with a simple rule system. Forbidden Island would be perfect, but it maxes out at four players."

"Munchkin can have up to six," I suggested, "more if we combine decks."

"We might have two more joining us, so that's probably the way to go," Katie agreed.

After a bit of debate, we combined the Star Munchkin and Munchkin Fu decks for a sci-fi / kung fu mash-up of the hilarious card game. We ended up using some of my pretzels for scoring tokens, which worked fine until Sebastian absentmindedly ate half his tokens. It was decided by overwhelming vote that he could not replace those lost points, which immediately plunged him from first to last place. I was then briefly in the lead until Dee won a hand with a well timed Mook card. The artwork was so reminiscent of the muscle bound minion that had accosted me at school, I couldn't help but start laughing. My reaction might have seemed incongruous if all of us weren't already laughing so much. Munchkin is just like that.

Before we finished the game, two more people joined us, a young man and woman. Dee jumped up and introduced them.

"Barry, meet DualCore, the best hacking duo this side of, well... anywhere."

"Hi Barry," the young woman responded, "I'm Elizabeth... Elizabeth Claremont. This is my brother Brian."

"Really, Liz?" Dee exclaimed, "you're just going to open with your secret identities?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes but smiled as she replied. "Dee, I had honestly forgotten about your silly name for us."

"Don't believe her," Brian insisted, "I caught her using that handle on a DarkNet forum just last week." Liz jabbed her brother with an elbow but did not deny the allegation.