This got a snort from the Sheriff. “Is that sarcasm, Mister Erickson?”
SYSTEM MESSAGE: Indirect Suggestion active. Beings who can hear and understand you will be much more receptive to what you say. 50MP used (one minute.) 110/260 MP.
I chuckled. “No, Sheriff. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but I see why you ask. You’re right, we could just do it and I doubt you could stop us. But we won’t do that.”
“Why?” he said, leaning forward and watching my eyes carefully.
“First, we’re more powerful today, but we might not be tomorrow. Making you mad would be stupid unless we meant to kill you and we don’t want to do that. We fought to save those people. We didn’t come here to start murdering police.”
“And?” he said.
“I’ll be honest,” I said, and he tensed. “The messages said that attacking people in the Exclusion Zone would be punished. I think the System wants us to use the Trade Centers, but I’m not going to risk pissing it off by attacking people with legal authority.”
He let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “Assuming it recognizes our authority.” He leaned back in his chair again, looking less tense. With a glance at the City Manager, he said, “I’m about half convinced, to be honest. What do you think, Cynthia?”
SYSTEM MESSAGE: Indirect Suggestion active. Beings who can hear and understand you will be much more receptive to what you say. 50MP used (one minute.) 68/260 MP.
I couldn’t risk my MP going to nearly zero and making me woozy, so I canceled the Skill.
“I think we should let him go,” she said after a long pause. “The messages said things could start coming out of that box at what, noon?”
“One o’clock,” he said. “My old watch still works.” He looked at his wrist, where a beat-up mechanical watch sat. “I set it to the time it said this morning. So we’ve got a little more than four hours.”
I took the opportunity to demonstrate the System timekeeping feature, which impressed them all over again.
“Mister Erickson, do you have any idea what’s in that box?” said the City Manager.
“No, but I have a guess,” I said. “I think it’s something like a shop or a trader in a video game. All adventure-type video games have someplace you can buy gear and supplies and sell loot.” At the look on the Sheriff’s face I quickly added, “’Loot’ is just what we call things you find while you’re adventuring. You kill a bad guy, he might have some gold in his pocket, or a sword that you don’t want, or something. You can sell it and use the money to buy things you do want. I think that’s what it does. But the fact that immigrants will come through them makes me hope they will do more than that.”
“Like what?” asked the woman behind the desk. Now it was her who was leaning forward and looking at me.
“All kinds of things,” I said. “Could be a post office function where you can send messages or even packages to people. Could be some kind of long-distance communication feature, like a pay phone or something. Could teach new skills, repair gear. You’d be amazed at all the things video game designers come up with, and I don’t think whoever is running the System is any less clever.”
Her expression was very interested. “Do these traders ever do anything dangerous?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, in some games they’ll swindle you like a real dishonest shopkeeper might, but that’s about it. They’re meant to help the player.”
“Don’t trade my town for a box of glass beads,” she said, without a hint of humor on her face.
“No, ma’am,” I said, trying not to smile.
She turned to Gravelle. “Let them go in, Marc. We have to know.” Facing me again, she said, “You be careful. We’ll need people like you.” To Danielle, she said, “You too. Keep him out of trouble.”
“I will,” she said, smiling. “It’s my new job.”
This got an honest grin out of all three of the others.
“When are you going to do this?” asked the City Manager.
I stood up. “No time like the present.”
Danielle and the Sheriff stood too. After a second, so did the City Manager. She held out her hand.
“Good luck, Mister Erickson, Ms. Braid,” she said, shaking our hands in turn. We thanked her and walked back outside, where the Trade Center waited in the morning sun. To my surprise, after a second Ms. Adams came walking out behind us.
“I might as well see this with my own eyes,” she said when the Sheriff looked at her. “He’s right, either this is harmless or it isn’t, and there’s nothing we can do.”
The Sheriff, clearly not happy, just shrugged and went to tell the deputies what was gong to happen. In the meantime, I updated our friends through Party Chat. There was a chorus of ‘Be careful’-s.
Gravelle came back up to the front of the building. “Okay, you’re all set. Take care. If it feels weird, run.”
“Will do,” I said. “Ready, Danielle?”
“Of course,” she said. She looked a lot less nervous than I felt.
We walked up to the Trade Center slowly, hand in hand. It didn’t respond to our approach.
I reached out and touched a door handle gingerly. Still no response. Tugging it, I could feel a very smooth latch mechanism working. Nothing else happened.
With a deep breath, I pulled on the handle and the door swung open silently. It felt like it was on a slow-motion hinge so it wouldn’t open any faster than a certain speed. The space the door had covered was a completely black rectangle. It looked like a hole. A hole in everything.
“That’s interesting,” Danielle said, and I jumped. She giggled and I couldn’t help but smile.
I reached down and plucked a blade of grass, then gently poked the black rectangle with it. There was no resistance. When I pulled my hand back, the grass was unharmed.
“Okay, if it goes in it can come out,” I said. “Shall we?”
“Let’s,” she said with a smile. We stepped through the door at exactly the same time.
I gasped. So did she.
We were standing in a large, well-lit room, much larger inside than the entire Trade Center box was on the outside.
“It’s bigger on the inside,” breathed Danielle, and I almost choked holding in a laugh.
“Ow!” I said a second later. “What was that for?” I rubbed my shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding hers.
“Don’t be a smarty-pants,” she said, not even looking at me.
To be fair, I was staring around the room in wonder myself.
It was very tasteful, at least in my opinion. It had a high ceiling with silvery panels embossed with a decorative geometric pattern. The walls looked like wood, the kind of wood they call ‘bird’s eye,’ but darker. The floor was covered with patterned tiles of some kind, and was a shade or three lighter than the walls.
In front of us was a desk with a chair behind it, and a large screen on top facing us. There were two more chairs in front of it, facing the desk. I couldn’t tell where the light was coming from but it was soft while creating absolutely no shadows. I turned around, and there was a door exactly like the one we’d come through on the wall. It was trimmed in another wood-looking kind of stuff, though it didn’t match the walls. Over it was a likewise-identical light, which was green.