The weather was just beginning to turn foul when Larelle burst into the hatchery.

  There’s no time, she said without speaking. The people are pushing past. Some of them are getting to the boats and trying to climb up the stilts inside the perimeter. We have to evacuate.

  She scooped up several backpacks, and I noted she already had mine in hand.

  “Are they getting violent?” I asked.

  No, but they are convinced we are going to hurt all their children. Come, we must flee this pce and—

  “I have the cure finished,” I blurted. She froze.

  Fletcher… she tried a resigned tone that told me she was ready to abandon the eggs. The revetion that the cure had been finished didn’t change that; she was still ready to cut and run. And, being the Guardian captain of this expedition, she had a veto power when it came to keeping us all safe. If our safety was compromised, she was within her rights to take command of the whole thing until we were all out of harm’s way. We can attempt this another time, she told me.

  “Look,” I told her, and pointed down to the where the cauldron was singing cheerfully, with warm spring sunshine bzing up out of it. “It’s pure positivity. It succeeded, and all we have to do is apply it—“

  There was a shout from outside, and a thump, followed by a chorus of dismay.

  “If we leave these here, the people are going to kill them. They won’t mean to, but they’re going to bring their negativity in here. All the fear, the horror, the anger, it’s going to rapidly accelerate their condition. Meaning this is our only shot at this.”

  We will move the eggs to Trent’s redoubt, she said.

  “No. The sick parts are spongy and sticky. The shells are weakened there, so just picking them up could break most of them.”

  We will save those that can be moved.

  “Larelle,” I told her. “I’m not moving from this hatchery. You can take the others and retreat if you want, but I’m staying here.”

  The captain goes down with his ship… or in this case, the doctor goes down with his sinking clinic.

  For a brief instant I saw her consider just taking me. She could scoop me up in her big muscle mommy arms and stomp past all the dismayed natives, maybe stiff arming a few of them if they pushed in too close.

  That internal discussion went my way in the end. She stomped back out, clearly not best pleased with how things were going.

  A loud cry came from outside, where the Marshins now had the building more or less surrounded. With only a single entrance to the hatchery, the natives only had to gather near the door. The Guardians had kept them focused that way, so us non-guards could get away towards Trent’s evacuation ptform. Thankfully, none of them had considered going in through the windows… yet.

  “The babies!” came the horrified cry from outside. “Our babies!” Dozens of voices picked up this call, which visibly dimmed the light and the chorus coming out of the cauldron.

  “Fletcher!” Cinzy said from the doorway. She was wild-eyed, terrified now.

  “Cinzy, get in here and help me. The cure is cooling down. Once that’s done—“

  “We have to go, Fletcher!” She said, and a pulse of mana came bursting out of her. It was a Bard special ability and I didn’t care for it one bit.

  Likability check! You do not have the associated skill for this check. This check is Very Difficult. You do not currently have enough Tokens to pass this check. Would you like to reduce the difficulty by 3?

  Total Tokens: 0 Likability and 6 Free Tokens.

  I desperately wanted to know why this check didn’t fall under the auspices of Hard at Work, and turn my 6 Free Tokens into 12 tokens. Just as I was gritting my teeth to spend the Tokens and push my luck, another UI pop up appeared.

  You have been forced forced to make a contested social check. Stalwart gives you the Persuasion skill for this check at rank 7. Would you like to reduce the difficulty by 3?

  Total Tokens: 0 Likability and 6 Free Tokens.

  “Yes,” I hissed. The first thing that happened was all six of my Free Tokens c-clinged! up into the air in rapid fire order, rotating as they went. These now all had the Likability embossing of a cheerful grinning face, fnked by two thumbs up.

  Cinzy saw them too, and stared in wonder that I had so many.

  I then watched as the difficulty rating fell from 6 to 3, and I crushed it with my 5 Likability and 7 Persuasion, scoring 5 successes. Cinzy’s expression went to pure dumbfounded amazement as the readout came up for her, and her lip trembled.

  “I just spent all my Free Tokens on that check,” I hissed at her. “If that costs me the chance to administer this cure, I’m going to have you off this team before the sun goes down. You’ll be hiking back to HQ in the buff.”

  “I… Fletcher, I—”

  “Don’t. Get in here and help me. This needs to cool faster.”

  I poured the sunshiny concoction into a cool mixing bowl, and started scooping out cupfuls into mugs.

  “I have to tell Larelle—“

  “Shut it and help. Or go.”

  She scurried to obey, and I wasn’t sure if I’d just initiated a contested social check or not, since I was willing notifications out of the way. I needed to concentrate on what I was doing.

  “This has to be misted over the eggs,” I told her, scooping up and pouring out another dle into another mug. “The droplets have to be very fine. We have to figure out a mechanism to mist it out.”

  Tears were slipping down her cheeks, but she nodded and followed along.

  “Check the cups. Once they’re cool we can start administering.”

  “Okay.” Her voice was shaky, and I caught her wiping the tears away several times.

  In the meantime, I was suddenly low on Tokens, and I had a feeling this was going to be Likability again. Administer Cure was at rank 7, and I saw as I pulled up the information on my character sheet that I was only a sliver of experience away from leveling it to 8 naturally. Putting a skill point in there now was almost counterproductive, but I really wanted all the natural successes I could get.

  “Do you have any Tokens left?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I used them up in the big talk earlier, and then getting Trent and Isabelle back on their feet.”

  “Free Tokens?”

  “I only have one.”

  Huh. I wondered… scrolling back up through my logs, it appeared that I’d gotten the first 5 Free Tokens from my Near Death Experience Achievement, from touching the Goddess of the Meadows. I guess people didn’t run around poking things that could kill them on the regur.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “You’re going to be using Likability and a skill you don’t have for this check, but your Likability is really high, right?”

  She nodded, looking shell-shocked. “Twelve.”

  “It’s about what I’ll be doing with my maxed out skill.”

  It had to work. These eggs were due to hatch any day. They weren’t going to survive the zombie Marshin apocalypse. This was literally our only chance to do this.

  “Um… how do we mist them?” She asked. “There’s no spritzer bottle.”

  Inspiration! Would you like to spend 1 Token for inspiration?

  I considered it for a second, but then repyed Cinzy’s words. She hadn’t said spray bottle, but spritzer bottle. Spritzer bottle sounded an awful lot like spitzer. A game my folks pyed at family reunions, but that didn’t matter. I waved that way. Spitzer sounded an awful lot like spit.

  “We get a mouthful and just spit it out all over the eggs,” I said, and blew a raspberry.

  The UI notification disappeared, and I mentally pumped my fist. I could inspiration without Tokens, thank you very much.

  “Are you… you’re serious?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  ***

  The spitting was, and I’m being perfectly serious here, glorious.

  Honestly, I thought it would be stupid and stop the cure from working. Neither of us had leftover Tokens to use to make this easier, but I was hoping good old fashioned ingenuity (not the game derived kind) would trump system shenanigans. And so, getting a mouthful of the cure, I puffed out my cheeks, pursed my lips, and sprayed it out as misty as I could.

  Now here’s the thing about magically infused cures: they have magic in them. I know that sounds stupid and obvious, but you forget once you’ve created your first or second magically infused cure. It’s just liquid, after all, with the chorus of singing being drowned out by the freaking out of the natives not ten feet away, and with the glow being normalized by your five minutes of seeing it.

  Humans can make even the most astonishing of miracles seem tame and banal by the end of the day, honestly. You know that story about the wifi on the airpne that had never existed before, and went out after a few minutes? Nobody shot up out of their chairs and went ‘holy shiftballs, this is life-changing technology!’ They did, however, grumble and grump about losing it after just a few minutes of being able to talk to people from 35,000 feet. Was it absolutely amazing? Yes. Is modern technology like magic? Sure. Do we take it for granted once we’ve got it? Yes, and after about ten goldarn seconds.

  Example: You can drive your car faster than any animal on the pnet can run. Amazing? No. You hate driving. It’s because the other people are in your way, or don’t use their fshers. Example: You carry around a device in your pocket (perhaps the device on which you’re reading or listening to this written account of mine) and that device shoots information up into friggin space, then receives information back.

  We’ve taken photos of bck holes. We’ve left footprints on the moon. We recreated the likenesses of people who’ve been dead for millions of years using their skulls. We’ve printed materials out of pstic, and concrete, and living cells. We made identical clones of animals.

  And once we’d done it, or once it had been around for five minutes, we waved a dismissive hand at it and called it boring.

  So the liquid I was about to spit out seemed like a liquid that I could just drink. I have no idea what would’ve happened if I had, but I think it probably would’ve been as spectacur as what actually happened.

  What happened was I had my mood lifted.

  As soon as the liquid got in my mouth I felt better. I mean, the heavenly chorus of angels was directly in my ears, as loud as a dentist’s drill when he’s going to town on your mor. The light was in my mouth, making my cheeks look orange and highlighting the blood vessels. I know this happened because Cinzia did it and that’s what happened to her.

  (She also told me ter on this had happened.)

  And I felt the best I ever had. Better than I had all day, even better than I had when having sex with Regina just a few hours ago. Yes, I immediately got an erection. It was immediately, and strong: the hardest I’ve ever been.

  I spit this substance, glowing and warm and bright and wonderful and calling down from the heavens, onto the nearest eggs, ughing the whole time. Tiny droplets of good-feeling juice went everywhere. It definitely reminded me of the thousands of videos from the dark depths of the COVID era, where the androgynous, computer-generated, hairless, nude person would sneeze and release a cloud of droplets too small to see into the air. Infectious and potentially deadly. Then they’d put masks on those people and, depending on whether this video was pro or anti-mask, the droplets would be sneezed directly out the mask holes, or be contained inside.

  I could not have been more thankful at that moment for a number of reasons. One, to be in a situation where news was based on direct observation or the direct observation of friends. Two, to be in a situation where my mood was send to the heights of giddy excitement by a cure I’d just created, which banished all the bad vibes that might have arisen from the thoughts I’d just connected with what I was doing.

  Seriously, I thought about just having some of this stuff around in order to make me feel better whenever I thought about how my mom probably wasn’t doing too well, or my sister and father were having a tense conversation while my nephew watched from nearby. I could just have a swig of feel-better juice and boom, none of it mattered so much. Hell, based on how it was going so far, I wouldn’t even have to drink it; all I’d need to do was open up the bottle and get a whiff of the scent, a listen to the chorus, and a look at the glowing goodness.

  It wouldn’t work like that, but a man could wish.

  Nearby, Cinzy had her cheeks bulging with the cure and was also spraying it up and out away from her with absolutely wild eyes. High as I was off my own supply, I could really appreciate her right now. She might very well be a patchwork of different colored flesh like a monster made by Doc Frankenstein, and her hair might be a bunch of different colors, but she was so beautiful. With her mouth full like that and her cheeks glowing from within, she was simultaneously hirious and gorgeous. I wanted to swat that muscur, jiggling butt right this moment. I wanted to tweak both her nipples, and pnt a big fat kiss on her perfect lips.

  But instead, mouthful after mouthful, I sprayed out the glowing and singing cure until the UI message popped up.

  Ingenuity check: This check can be reasonably covered by the Administer Cure skill. This check is Difficult. Would you like to spend 2* Tokens for an Automatic success?

  Total Tokens: 5 Ingenuity Tokens

  *Hard At Work: Your Tokens are worth double given you are engaged in your css duties.

  Grinning, in the mood I was in, I knew I could handle this check without needing to spend Tokens. Of course I could! I could do anything in this state! Figure out quantum entanglement or string theory or rocket surgery? Sure. Calcute the favorability rating of a brand of chips after a string of Super Bowl ads, or do brain science? No problem!

  In retrospect, I honestly wish I’d been able to call up the check before, ahem, partaking of the good stuff.

  I skipped around the room, blowing out little clouds of the cure everywhere and anywhere. I felt so good I just tossed my head from side to side and got as much of it on me as I got on the eggs.

  Cinzia and I pranced around the room, roaring ughter at one another, spitting and spitting, our bodies now glistening and beginning to glow.

  Somewhere distant, possibly as far away from the cure as ten or fifteen feet, pounding could be heard. A few distressed voices that didn’t matter at all were raised in arm. They were familiar, but a lot of them weren’t. Crashing followed. The natives were breaking through the windows and climbing inside. It seriously didn’t matter.

  When the Marshins got close enough, I simply sprayed them with the cure, spitting it all over them. The way they fell back, I could tell they understood right away what I was up to. They got it. Of course they did; how could they not?

  Cinzy and I joined hands in the center of the room and were skipping, literally skipping in a circle, getting mouthful after mouthful and going pffffffffbbbtbttbtt! over and over. Just raspberry after raspberry.

  In retrospect, it was sheer insanity. I don’t know how we continued to do it as long as we did. Or rather, I do know how did it. I don’t know why none of the parties involved didn’t stop us with ranged attacks to put us out of their misery.

  This is Christopher, gd they didn’t.