“You want to talk about Earth?” I asked Esbee, putting the plans for the tavern’s renovations to the side for the moment while staring at her across the tavern’s table. Despite the fact it was getting on in the day, I was sure I had time. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about that stuff?”

“I mean… I’m not gonna give you my life story or anything,” Esbee said, leaning her chin against her stone hand with a light click. “Least, not more than you need. But… I’ve had time to talk to people, seen what you’re doing. And I figured that since you’ve been taking care of the people here, then yeah… we should talk.”

“I guess we should start simple. I’m assuming you’re from America, based on your accent, though not sure where.”

“Yep, western Americas. Moved about a bunch, actually. Military brat. Dad served in the second civil war as a… well, was always kinda surprised when he made it home,” Esbee said, giving me a little mock salute. “Not as surprised as when we actually moved to the Isle of Cali after they cracked the Rift wide open, but it was good times.”

“I… uh…” I blinked several times as I tried to process what she’d said. “Uh… what year did you die?”

“Rude much?” Esbee shot back, flicking me a middle finger, though she was smiling as she did so. “Got hit by a freaking truck when I was doing some tricks in the park. 2221, just before New Years. Total rip off. When’d you bite it?”

“Uh… earlier than that. Like… early 2020,” I replied, leaning back. “That bike we found, was it yours?”

“Yeah. Took me years to get my friend to build that thing for me,” Esbee said, wrapping her knuckles on the table while frowning. “Can’t do jack with it with this body. Just sitting on it’d be enough to squash…” She trailed off as she squinted at me. “Hold on. Did you say, 2020? Like, not two-two-two-oh, but just… twenty-twenty?”

“Yeah. Sounds like we’re from pretty different times,” I said, leaning back. “That… well, guess it’s a good thing I didn’t want to go back.”

“That means… wow. You weren’t there when we started figuring all this crazy stuff out,” Esbee said, waving her hand around. “Though you would’ve been there in the early days, just before they pierced the veil.”

“Uh… this stuff? You mean magic?”

“Yeah, though it wasn’t called that yet. Not by the big nerds. Reality realignment something or other. Wait, if you’re from the 2020’s, that means that conspiracy theory about the soul-capture experiments Matty was always going on about were actually true! Girl would’ve loved to get confirmation on that,” Esbee said, leaning back with a soft chuckle.

“Soul-capture experiments?” I asked reflexively, still trying to sort out what she’d already alluded to.

“Oh yeah. It was this whole conspiracy schtick about this company out in the old midwest who’d been messing around with area soul capture stuff, back before the area turned into a nuclear wasteland,” Esbee said making a boom sound while bringing her hands together before exploding them out to the sides.

Like an explosion.

“Rags and oil,” I muttered, staring at her. If what she was saying was true, then…

“Oh. Right. Guess that might not’ve happened yet for you. Uh, yay?” Esbee asked, giving me a weak smile and a pair of thumbs ups.

“No. That didn’t… how do you not know that?”

“Eh, was never a big fan of history,” Esbee said, waving the question off. Then she leaned forward. “At least, not from books. And it was way too expensive to get accurate historical vids. But you actually lived it. What was it like? Did you actually have to use tablets for your interface?”

“My… interface?”

“You know, for watching movies or reading and stuff,” Esbee said, waving in front of her face. “That must’ve been so much better, being able to put it down and actually be separate from your interface. Bet you didn’t have to install like three different apps to lock yourselves out.”

“I… had a customer who did exactly that, actually,” I said, chuckling at the strangely normal comparison. “He said he was perpetually online otherwise. Usually left my own phone in my office so I didn’t smash it.”

“Wait, you called your tablets phones? Weird,” Esbee said, shaking her head. “Were you a citizen or just on basic?”

“I was a citizen, though don’t think we had whatever basic is.”

“You know, basic. Like, someone who didn’t enlist,” Esbee said, rolling her hand. “Gets basic rights and provisions, but no voting.”

“That… was citizenship based on military service?”

“You’re saying it… wait, are you from the Eastern Americas?” she asked, pushing several of the building plans further to the side as she leaned forward over the table, squinting at me.

“No. I’m from the old American midwest,” I replied, pulling out enough raw pulp to make a few blank sheets. I’d once drawn a rough map of North America when I’d been working on my book for Nexxa, and had looked up the map several times back then. I used Second Quill to print off one of those maps, though it was only a rough match to how I remembered North America. Once I spread it out, I tapped the rough location of my old hometown.

“Oh wow. That’s old…” Esbee said, looking at it. “Like, it doesn’t even have the Bay of Screams.”

“The… what?” I asked, my stomach dropping for some reason.

She grabbed a pencil from the stack of drawings for her inn and started drawing a rough outline of… a bay that stretched down from where the great lakes had been halfway to Texas, and just as far west. “Borders are totally whack, but it stretched over to here.” She tapped the very western edge where North and South Dakota were clearly labeled. “That part I remember cause Matty was always going on about how corporations had to find a lot of new loop holes after North Dakota got sank. Or was it South Dakota? One of the two, anyway. The Dakota coast is actually one of the nicer parts of the bay, or so Dad said.”

“Wow. That’s… why’s it called the bay of Screams?”

“Apparently a lot of the local wildlife kinda went crazy when it showed up. No matter where you went, everything would scream at you. Livestock, bugs, people. Dad visited as part of his resistance training. Said everything was always screaming, like they were being tortured. Name kinda stuck,” Esbee said, shrugging her stone shoulders.

“And I thought things were messed up when I was alive,” I said, staring at the revised map. Then I looked towards the bar behind her. This was… a lot.

“Yeah, Dad said it got crazy for a while there, when old America went over the edge. Said the second civil war was… well, civil by comparison. Mostly just droids getting reduced to scrap. Not that… anyway, yeah, guess I do know my history a bit,” Esbee said, chuckling as she leaned back. “The basic stuff, anyway.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“There is… I really wish you were a mage.”

“Ouch. Low blow,” Esbee said, leaning back and tapping her stone arm rather pointedly.

“Right. Sorry. Was just thinking how much knowledge you must have tucked away. With a couple of spells, you could…” I shrugged, gesturing at the map I’d produced from memory.

Esbee nodded, though her earlier enthusiasm was clearly dampened.

“So… you said you had some questions for me?”

“I mean… I figured you were from a period after I got my soul insurance,” Esbee said with a shrug. “Weren’t too many people signed up for soul-capture in my day. Limited to military or their brats.”

“Wasn’t even aware it existed. Definitely never signed up for it,” I said, leaning back as I rubbed my forehead. “So, what? I got my soul sucked up by some corporation, then it… sat there for a couple centuries until whatever happened with yours?”

“Guess so. Hey, since we ended up in the same place, we must’ve been stored together. Soul buddies,” Esbee said, holding her fist towards me in a fist bump.

Chuckling, I leaned over the table, meeting her knuckles.

She made a boom motion as we met, and I copied her.

“So… any chance you can tell me more about this soul capture procedure?”

“Uh… not much. My friend Matty could’ve talked your ear off about it, that was totally her thing. Talked mine off more than once,” Esbee said, letting out a long sigh. “She would’ve done so much better with the whole second life thing. Bet she wouldn’t have accidentally sold herself into slavery.”

“I… uh… how do you even…”

“On accident,” Esbee replied with a grin, though it crumbled after a second. “I… don’t really want to talk about it. Let’s just say that when I woke up in my new body having recently eaten the soul of the witch who summoned me, I didn’t handle it well.”

“Ah. Yeah, it was… very different, waking up here,” I said, though I’d obviously had a much easier transition.

“Was kinda cool for a little bit, once I figured out how to do spells,” Esbee said, grinning as she waved her hands in the air in front of her for a moment. Then her grin fell off as she wrapped a hand against her chest. “Which went away when the dingus locked me in this. Which, honestly, I do prefer.”

“You didn’t like having magic?” I asked, pushing to my feet. Now that it felt like most of the bombshells had dropped, I decided I might as well start on the renovations as we talked.

“Great power and responsibility and all that,” Esbee said with a shrug as I took the plans, looking them over again. “Lot harder to accidentally set someone’s house on fire and I’m basically immortal.”

“Positive way to look at it,” I said, nodding towards the back. “You wanna keep talking while I work?”

“Sure,” Esbee replied, following behind me. “So, what was it like, to be alive during the golden culture era?”

“The… what?” I asked, not even getting a chance to start before turning to look at her.

“You know, back when there was always something new being created, instead of everything being locked behind corporate paywalls. I bet it was great, always having new stuff to watch or read,” Esbee said, her gaze distant.

“Couldn’t you just… you know, write something anyway?”

“Sure, but… like, how does that make new movies?” Esbee had kinda lost her focus as she answered, her gaze going distant. “Always wanted to make a movie.”

There was something about the wistfulness in her voice that made her feel a lot younger than I’d originally thought. As I started using Sculpt Stone to carve out the rough outline of the first expansion, I asked, “Uh… Esbee, just out of curiosity, how old were you when you died?”

“Rude,” Esbee said again, though this time I only caught a glimpse of her middle finger as I worked. “Hmm. Died in 2221, so… like 35 and a half, roughly?”

“Wow…” I said, shaking my head even as I carved grooves into the stone so we could remove slabs of it to reposition later. “You were older than I was. Was only twenty-eight when I crashed.”

“Oh, that’s right, you never told me how you died,” Esbee said, leaning against the wall just to the side of where I was cutting, on what would be on of the support columns once I was done.

“Was driving back to the shop after running out to the scrapyard for a part. Fuel pump for an old Dodge,” I said, glancing down at the plans before removing another section, working around the column. “It was on this old highway, one where they let the trees grow almost right up against the road. I was… well, I was going too fast. Was in a hurry to get back to the shop, get the pump installed and get the truck I was fixing back on the road. The woman who owned it relied on that truck for everything and my little two-door loaner wasn’t exactly equipped for hauling water or packing around four kids and a dog.” I paused then, my hand hovering over the stone as I thought about the woman before shaking my head. “Hope Beth got through everything okay.”

“You crashed cause you were going too fast?” Esbee asked, getting me back on track both mentally and with the work. “Knew you didn’t have gel cabs, but didn’t you have like giant balloons that protected you?”

“Airbags, yeah. Not every car had them. Especially if you installed a custom chrome plated steering wheel. Installed it shortly after I got the shop, and kept telling myself I’d swap back at some point. Never did,” I said with a wry chuckle as I hovered the stone panels to the side close to where she wanted dividers between booths. “Anyway, there was no way I could’ve braked in time not to hit the kid who ran out. I’d forgot there were hidden driveways along that section. Pretty sure there used to be signs, but they were all overgrown.”

I knew that for a certainty, cause I’d gone back to replay the memory, just to make sure the kid was okay. He’d been fine even before I hit the trees, having turned around and darted out of the road.

“That makes no sense. Oh, can we make this a little wider?” Esbee requested, gesturing at the arch where I was carving out the shape for the new front door. I nodded as she continued, “Didn’t you have laws that made it illegal for private land to lead directly onto major roads?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” I replied. “Couldn’t slip to the other side of the road or I’d have hit the semi-truck.”

“And… I’m guessing trucks didn’t have danger scoops yet,” Esbee said, frowning as she inspected the arch, asking for a couple minor touch-ups.

“How would that even… danger scoops?” I asked, reaching my hands forward to smooth out or crinkle the stone as requested.

“That’d be a no,” Esbee said, chuckling. “So, you had to choose between a big truck, a kid and a forest. Obviously you didn’t choose the kid.”

“No. I went straight for the trees. Didn’t even have to think about it.” I kneeled down to work out the rough edges of the new door where it met the floor before pushing to my feet. “Spent a night barely conscious. Died in the car, I think, though the details aren’t exactly clear.”

“Huh. Guess you really didn’t have even basic R-squared,” Esbee said, nodding at the door as I moved onto the new windows. “Much as some things sucked in western America, long as you lived long enough for the Meddies to arrive, dying was kinda off the table. Part of why Dad signed us all up for soul capture. Wasn’t much chance it’d trigger, unless you were an idiot like me. Heard things weren’t as great out east, though Matty always said that was propoganda.”

“Magic on Earth… that’s almost harder to believe than waking up on a whole new world,” I said, shaking my head.

“Like I said, wasn’t called magic. R-squared or Reality Realignment,” Esbee replied, holding up a pattern of wood she’d had waiting off to the side. “Can you match the edges to this? Figured it’d be easier to work off of than some drawings.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” I agreed, getting her to hold it in place. We continued like that for a while longer, working on the renovations while talking about the similarities and differences of the Earth’s we’d known. Surprisingly, a solid two-thirds of the songs she knew I’d at least heard of. A lot of movies and books too.

I shuddered at the idea. Culture was supposed to be a living breathing thing.

Due to the stranglehold on new ideas, it turned out we had a lot more in common than I would’ve expected, considering we were born two centuries apart. In fact, it sounded like the only new media was propaganda from either the megacorps or the government. Doubted all of Earth had been like that, but it did sound bad where she’d been.

While we talked, I completed the renovations, at least the first stage. The rest of the first floor was easy. It was mostly just taking the time to rework the existing room, making it bigger and adding a couple sets of stairs to the next level. The second floor was a little trickier, since she wanted a bunch of rooms that would be converted later. That wasn't terribly hard, but there was a lot of extra stone, which no one had accounted for.

So, I ended up shifting the stone out front while Esbee told me all about her friend Matty’s obsession with the faster than light gateways that were secretly being tested. Kinda reminded me of the Waygates, though Esbee assured me that the testing had been for structures nearly the size of Earth. According to Matty, of course. With the stone out front, I decided to create a multi-level patio fronting her tavern which Esbee was rather excited about.

The third floor, I ran into some pressurized steam. Esbee made a joke about me needing to let off a little of my own steam, which delayed my efforts more than the actual leak, due to me hiding the blush that sprang up on my cheeks.

Which only got her to laugh harder.

When I left, I had even more reason to want to further my research on golems and mana-bodies. There was so much Esbee could recover from her memories if she could just cast Memory Palace and Second Quill. Yet all of that was a long term project.

The next morning, when I emerged into the central chamber of my mountainside home, Calbern was standing there, picture perfect posture on full display as he waited.

Time to set our brains on fire.