14 - Boon

They were a good twenty paces from the haphazard queue—more of a cluster, really—of trailer park residents waiting to speak to Eduardo, but a couple of kids noticed what Andy had done and wandered over. “Lucy, see if you can do anything with this thing.”

She reached out tentatively as if she feared the orb of silvery, metallic liquid might bite her or burn her hand. Andy couldn’t blame her after the stuff they’d seen go down. When she touched it, though, nothing obvious happened, but her eyes widened. A few seconds later, she pulled her hand back and scribbled in her notebook: I became a citizen of the trailer park, and I can see those two quests now.

“Cool. Just a sec…” Andy called up the Settlement Management menu again and looked at the section with citizens and boons:

Citizens: 2

Boons:

System Node

Boon Points: 1

Boons Available:

Freshwater Spring

Natural Bulwark

Forager’s Bounty

Hearthflame Ember

Veil of Stillness

“Ah, I think it’s already counting me as a citizen. Guess it makes sense, considering I’m the leader.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow but didn’t seem to have anything to say. Andy looked back at the menu, focusing on the boons, one by one, to read their descriptions:

Freshwater Spring: Your settlement is blessed with a spring that flows year-round, providing fresh water for drinking and even irrigation.

Natural Bulwark: The environment around your settlement makes an assault on the perimeter difficult, effectively funneling hostiles toward your gates.

Forager’s Bounty: Many edible plants grow in and around your settlement.

Hearthflame Ember: Your settlement has been blessed with a flame that is impossible to extinguish. It can be used for light, warmth, and even to enhance a smithy’s forge.

Veil of Stillness: Sounds and smells struggle to escape the confines of your settlement, making it less likely that wandering people and creatures will notice it.

He got so caught up reading the letters floating before his eyes that he didn’t realize more than half the people in the park had begun to crowd around, taking turns touching the floating ball of liquid metal. When he looked up, Eduardo approached him with his notebook. “I just need yours and this lady’s,” he said, nodding to Lucy.

Andy handed him the slip Lucy had written and then read him off his numbers. When Eduardo asked him about his improvement points, something made Andy hesitate. As far as he knew, he’d already spent more than anyone else had earned—and he had six more besides. He felt a little guilty, but something in his gut told him to hold back, especially with twenty or more people hanging on his words. “I’ve got four points.”

Eduardo nodded and looked at Lucy. Again, she held up three fingers. Andy wondered if she was counting the ones she’d spent or just those she had available. Considering his little deception, he also wondered if other residents had held back information. Eduardo interrupted his thoughts. “I’m gonna do a little math, then I’ll share what I’ve got.”

Andy nodded, then cleared his throat and held up a hand. “Hey, everyone! I need to talk to you about the settlement!” He waited for some of the noise to die down, then continued, “If you haven’t touched this little globe—it’s called a ‘System node’—to become a citizen, you should do so. Also, I can select a boon for the community. I’m willing to listen to opinions on what would be best.”

“A boon?” James asked, stepping closer, nudging his way through to stand beside Bernice.

“As far as I can tell, a boon is like a, uh, benefit for the settlement. Listen, and I’ll describe what we can choose from.” Andy read through the descriptions again, this time aloud, and then he looked around. “Any opinions?”

Bernice answered immediately. “We’re in the desert. Do the spring.” A bunch of people muttered their agreement.

Eduardo looked up from his notebook and said, “I don’t know—the weather is different. It’s too cool for Arizona right now.”

“Nah, that ain’t for sure,” James countered. “We just had a hell of a storm. It might get hot again tomorrow.”

“True, I suppose.” Eduardo shrugged.

Someone behind Andy said, “If the power is out everywhere, clean water will become very scarce and valuable, especially in a desert.”

Andy turned to the speaker, realizing it was the woman who had been helping Eduardo with the giant spider corpse. Was she his wife? “What’s your name again?” he asked.

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“Violet.” She nodded at Eduardo. “He’s my husband, and I’m a veterinarian. I really think you should select the spring.”

“We can earn more boons, right?” the guy with the long hair and the aluminum bat asked.

Andy looked at him and nodded. “I think so. What was your name?”

“Tucker.”

Andy wanted to move on with things, so he raised his voice and said, “I think the spring is a good idea. Does anyone object?” It wasn’t that he wanted the decision to be unanimous; he really didn’t care. It was just that if anyone had an argument against it, he wanted to hear it. Nobody spoke up, though. In fact, it grew so quiet that Andy could hear the wind blowing through the big mesquite near the trailer park’s entrance.

“Where will you put it?” Bernice asked.

“Good question,” Andy muttered, looking around.

“Will a lot of water flow out of it?” Tucker asked.

Eduardo replied for Andy, “It said it would provide enough water for irrigation. We'd better put it somewhere we can divert the flow so we don’t flood the park.”

James pointed toward the south edge of the trailer park. “Just put it there by the palo verde tree. It’s by the fence, and on the other side, the ground slopes toward the wash.”

“Good idea,” Eduardo agreed.

Andy shrugged and started walking that way. When he passed the last trailer and stepped onto the gravel-strewn berm beside the fence, he asked, “Here?”

“Closer to the tree in the corner,” someone called.

Andy walked that way and stopped when he stood beneath the broad canopy of the big old palo verde’s branches. Nobody said anything, so he figured it was all right. He called up the menu and focused on the Freshwater Spring boon. A few seconds later, a message appeared:

***You are about to place a Freshwater Spring in your settlement. Be certain you are in the location where you want the spring. Place the spring here? Yes/No.***

“Yes,” Andy said. The ground shifted under his feet with a rumble, and Andy hastily backpedaled. Everyone did. Some people screamed and ran, perhaps more familiar with the dangers of an earthquake, but most were like Andy and just backed up a few steps. As they watched, the gravel was displaced by huge stones that pushed their way out of the soil in a loosely circular jumble. After just a dozen seconds or so, a regular rock formation was there, pressed up against the fence, bowing the chain links outward.

At the center of the stones, in a natural-looking basin, water began to bubble up, rapidly filling the rocky depression and flowing down, over the gravel and onto the blacktop lane where most of them stood. James said, “We just need to dig a trench to guide that water toward the fence.”

“Or dig a reservoir,” someone yelled. “There’s a bunch of empty lots right across the lane.”

“Guys,” Tucker said, reaching up to grasp his head, his eyes wide and horrified. “What the hell is going on? We just wished a spring into existence! I’m losing it, man!” Before anyone could answer, he pushed through the crowd and staggered down the lane.

Bernice laughed. “He’s dramatic. Don’t worry about him; he’s gonna go smoke a bowl.”

“This a big joke to you, Bernice?” a middle-aged guy Andy didn’t know asked. He pushed his way past Eduardo to get into Bernice’s face, scowling. “My wife’s out there! Some of us have kids missing. There are dead bodies all over this damn park!”

One of Monique’s children started to cry, and she grabbed her, lifting her onto her hip. “I’m taking my kids home. I think we should all try to sleep.”

Bernice, meanwhile, had folded her arms over her chest. She was scowling, but to Andy’s surprise, she spoke calmly, “I’m sorry, Brian. You’re right; I’ve been on my own so long that I forget what it’s like to have people to worry about. I’m sure we can come up with a plan to go and find our missing people tomorrow.” She looked at Andy. “Right?”

Andy hated that he’d somehow earned a position of authority in the little community, but he wasn’t going to try to shy away from it, not when he knew he had a good chance of helping out. “Yeah. I guess this is a good time to tell you all that the System is kind of hiding the trailer park from…bad guys, I guess. The message says it’ll do so for seventy hours, so we need to do everything we can to prepare for when that little benefit goes away.”

A woman behind Monique moaned, “I can’t believe this is real. I can’t believe—”

James interrupted her, “Hush, now, Tanya. We all feel that way. Let’s see how things look in the light of day.” Like Bernice, he looked at Andy and asked, “Right, Andy?”

Andy couldn’t argue with the sentiment. “Yeah. Shit, I guess so. I don’t know what time it is, but—”

“It’s about ten PM, according to the moon’s position,” Eduardo chimed in.

“Great.” Andy smiled and nodded at him. “So we’ve got some time to sleep. Let’s meet in the dog park when the sun comes up.”

As the crowd began to disperse, Eduardo walked up to Andy with his notebook. “I’ve got some averages for you.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll share with everyone, but here—have the first look.” He held the page open for Andy to see and then went over his findings. “The kids all had low strength ratings, so I didn’t put them into the average for that attribute. Without them, the average strength in the park is five. The average perception is four. Will is five, vitality is six, and speed is five. Our sample size is small, but I’d wager that the System is basing these scores on an average rating of five.”

“That’s helpful. I guess, if anyone has an attribute lower than five, they might want to raise it.”

“Maybe. It’s worth noting that I don’t think the correlation between ability and attribute rating is linear. For example, James has a strength rating of three, and Brian has a six. I don’t think Brian is twice as strong as James, though I could be wrong, I suppose; he definitely works out. Maybe I can talk some people into doing some tests tomorrow.”

Andy nodded. “Did many people have more than three or four improvement points, I mean, like, including the ones they spent?”

“Most had one. A few had none. Only you and a few others had more than two.”

“All right. Thanks for doing all that, Eduardo.”

“You can call me ‘Ed,’ and don’t sweat it; I love this kind of thing.” He thumped Andy on the shoulder. “See you in the morning.”

“Later, Ed.” Andy smiled and then started toward his trailer. As he walked, he scanned the park, his eyes lingering on Lucy’s slender, hooded figure walking away. He hated the idea that she was about to go home to her trailer, where her brother’s corpse was lying. Some guilty voice in the back of his mind said he ought to help her bury him. Another voice, a little harsher, said they ought to gather all the corpses in the park and burn them—especially Tina’s.

He wasn’t tired in the least, and he decided that after he figured out what to do with his improvement points, he’d find a shovel and at least help Lucy with Steve’s body. “The others can wait until morning.”