Critical Hit
It's just past midnight, and eight year old Jordan should definitely, absolutely, certainly be in bed. Or studying, maybe, but not writing. In fact, if his dad catches him like this, with his head under the covers and his pen scribbling away on the notepad, he's going to be grounded for at least a week for not sleeping when he should. But he can't sleep, not with the hero still running away from the big bad guy, the scene still unfinished, the town still being held captive.
The glowing numbers of the alarm clock slowly count the minutes - and then hours - away, unnoticed. It's not until two in the morning that Jordan, exhausted, a touch loopy, triumphantly throws his fists up under the covers and yells 'Yes!' to himself, as he pens the last line, where his hero, Jordanian Smith, defeats the evil monster Cyclopious, a very properly named one-eyed monster that's been threatening the town with homework and other horrors beyond imagining.
And then Jordan jumps as he hears the sound of footsteps - he must have woken his father! He scrambles to turn off his flashlight and push the paper over the side of the bed and pretend to be sleeping and don't-forget-the-covers, right, pull them over his shoulder just as the door opens and a column of light from the hallway illuminates his bed.
Jordan's quiet and still. Very still, just like one of his heroes in one of his adventure books, sneaking through the tombs of the great Egyptian kings. The boy freezes as his hero did when the light of Ra was looking for the intruder that had broken into the tomb, and neither of them are seen. The light recedes after a bit, the door closes, and the little boy smiles a secret smile that he carries into the world of dreams, where he takes on the mummies and the zombies and the vampires, and stands triumphantly above it all.
-
It's just past midnight again, ten years later, and Jordan's still caught between school and something his parents would disapprove of. This time, though, it's not a novel, though his mouse hovers over his work-in-progress-but-stalled-now-for-ages briefly before he double-clicks on the icon next to it, a voice-chat program.
He's gotten to know some friends on over the last couple of years of playing a game that has been somewhat detrimental to his schoolwork - and, honestly, his novel as well - and he logs on now, idly, just looking for a distraction on a boring Wednesday night. As he joins the server, though, a cacophony of voices hit him - "Move left, get out of the fire!" - "Pop your cooldowns!" - "I need more AOE" - "The tank's down, res him, res him!" - and he realizes that they're busy raiding, doing one of the late game scenarios that requires, at a minimum, ten people, acting in some coordinated fashion.
Well, semi-coordinated, at least, but just by the panic he hears in the others' voices, he knows that it's not going well. And as if on cue, someone speaks up, cutting through the other voices: Tessa, the leader of their group.
"All right, guys, wipe it. We'll try again, with better positioning going into phase two. We need to pick up those adds faster," she says, and Jordan hears the voices of everyone else assenting.
"Oh, Tessa - I can't keep going, the baby just woke up and it's my turn," he hears someone else say. Kevin, probably, who was still trying to keep raiding with a newborn, which Jordan was pretty awed by.
"No problem, Kev - go take care of it. We'll find someone else," Tessa responds, and before Jordan knows it: "Hey, Jordan. Aren't you supposed to be working on a novel or something? It's supposed to be done before New Years, isn't it?"
"Yeah," he responds, and then shrugs. "But it's not going well. A bit too cliché, honestly, what with the fantasy wizards and warlords and pretty much nothing's coming out but a regurgitation of the raid, almost."
"Well, would you mind joining in? Might as well regurgitate it after a victory, no?" Tessa says, a teasing note in her voice.
He stares glumly at the 'unfinished novel.doc' file that he has on his screen for another few seconds, and then shakes his head and double-clicks on the icon next to it, starting the game up.
"Alright, ladies and gents, let's get this show on the road."
-
Another ten years pass, and he spends more midnights raiding, but also some of them writing. He finishes a novel about the exploits of a group of heroes (no longer named Jordanian, thankfully) and their trials and travails, triumphs and tribulations, and how they save the world. It's standard fantasy stuff, mostly, but it's also compelling enough that a small publisher called Conceptual Publishing picks it up, and puts it out for the world to read.
Jordan finds himself at a local bookstore in San Francisco, giving a reading. It's a small one, one that hasn't seen its best fortunes lately. He doesn't rate to be invited to the Barnes and Noble, or even the more prominent indie shops like City Lights - or more likely, for his genre, Borderlands Books. But he doesn't mind, really. He likes the smaller crowds anyway, and this afternoon there are only six or seven people there. Five of them have read his work, and two have just stopped in, but his reading - about defeating an necromancer and fallen king from the North with a group of friends that have come from very separate backgrounds - has kept them there, and he's glad to see that maybe he'll make a fan or two more.
Really glad, truth be told, because his book hasn't sold that well - nowhere near R.A. Salvatore, but really, nowhere even close to the second-string Forgotten Realms writers. But he's not complaining - he's been able to finish the book, found someone to publish it, and in a lot of ways, it's good enough for him.
As he finishes the reading, though, he thanks them all for coming, and after a bit of applause, his audience heads their separate ways. Two people stay behind, though - one, a small boy about eight or nine years old, and a woman that looks to be his mother, a few years older than him.
"My son," the woman starts, "really loves your work."
Jordan pauses for a second - her voice is strangely familiar, though he can't place her face for the life of him. But there are more pressing concerns, first.
"Well, I'm honored! I'm always glad to meet a fan," he says, and bends down to shake the boy's hand, who is clearly awestruck.
"I like the part about the heroes, and about their journey, and about how they're beaten back but they can recover and how they eventually end up defeating the ice dragon and and I really want to be a writer, one day! And your books are like some of the games that my mom used to play and-"
His mom comes forward, patting him on the shoulder, and the little boy calms down without being told to. "Okay, mom! Your turn!"
"I like your work, too," she says, and he smiles offers his hand, as well, but she shakes his head. "But it feels like some parts of it are drawn a bit strongly from a game that used to be popular about ten years ago. Maybe something about raiding, and guilds, and having a raid leader named Tessa, perhaps?"
He blinks, squinting for a second. How could she - and suddenly it hits him. "Tessa?" he says, slack-jawed in wonder.
She laughs, and the sound brings back all the memories - nights and weekends and conversations way past midnight, a 'let's keep in touch' that they held to, long after they had stopped playing.
They reach out simultaneously, to hug each other, laughing and both trying to get the words out, but he manages to get there first, and pulls back to ask her a question.
"Would you like to get dinner?" he asks, and her smile makes it all worthwhile.