Year 2 – Shift 3 – Cody
“Dude.” Glandalf tapped away on his tablet, his eyes narrowed behind his thick plastic frames. “Look at this.”
Cody leaned entirely sideways out of his booth to see the screen. “That’s odd. Was that island there before?”
“No.” Thiccolus grunted as he set a massive, steaming basket on Cody’s table. It was piled high with Yeasty Flaps—extremely soft, heavily folded, pull-apart dinner rolls drowned in an actively unhealthy amount of garlic butter. He wiped his hands on his apron and peered at the tablet. “I know it wasn’t. I did some work around there while I was looking for one of the portal anchors.”
“How big is it?” Cody ignored the tablet for a second and picked up the pillowy basket of bread. He pressed his face deep into the steaming mound of Yeasty Flaps and inhaled like it was pure oxygen. “Xenu damn, these things smell good.”
“About the size of Wangs,” Glandalf said without looking away from the screen. “But according to the map, it’s been growing.”
“Hey, Gary!” Cody yelled across the crowded tavern, grease already shining on his chin.
A few seconds later, Gary—the absolutely, remarkably average human dishwasher—shuffled out from the back of the house. “What’s up?”
“Can we borrow your pontoon boat for the weekend?” Cody asked as he ripped a Yeasty Flap in half.
“Sure.” Gary pulled a damp rag from his shoulder and dried his hands as he walked over to the booth. He reached into his pocket and handed Cody a heavy set of keys. “Keep it under 120. It gets a little shaky going much higher.”
Cody took the keys without questioning why a dishwasher’s pontoon boat could casually break highway speed limits. “Thanks! How’s Flartoogle?”
“He’s great, man.” Gary awkwardly shuffled his feet and looked down at the floorboards.
“Sweetie.” Thiccolus put a meaty hand on his own ample dumper and bored a hole into the dishwasher with his gaze.
“Well…” Gary rubbed the back of his neck. “His mom is coming into town, and he expects us to perform the Thri-kreen mating ritual for her, and…”
“Whoa!” Cody gasped, a heavy glob of garlic butter dripping from his chin and hitting the table. “You have to fuck his mom?”
“In front of his mom,” Glandalf corrected without looking up from the tablet.
“No.” Gary’s eyes visibly welled with tears. “He wants me to eat his head while he’s fucking me.”
Absolute silence and complete incredulity washed over the booth.
Cody cocked his head, his brain trying to buffer the image. “Like a praying mantis?”
“What’s that?” Thiccolus asked.
“Oh.” Cody shook his head, remembering where he was. “They’re bugs that look suspiciously like Thri-kreen, and they do exactly that.”
“Damn, Gare-bear.” Thiccolus’s voice softened. “Have you decided what you’re gonna do?”
“Well, I’m human.” Gary kept one hand practically glued to the back of his neck. “I don’t possess the necessary mandibles to break through his exoskeleton, so, um…he wants me to…you know.”
He pulled nervously at the collar of his shirt.
“Oh my god.” Thiccolus slid heavily into the booth and leaned over the table. “Are you gonna do it?”
“I don’t think so.” Gary swallowed hard like a man staring directly into the abyss. “His culture says that in this case, he gets to choose the method of death, and he wants to choke on my cock. I think that’s kind of inappropriate for a ritual that’s supposed to be recorded for posterity by a notary public and an Earl Scout Troop.”
“Girl Scout Troop?” Cody delicately licked a greasy fold of Yeasty Flap.
“No.” Gary’s voice wavered at the edge of a breakdown. “Thirty-six percent of Thri-kreen are named Earl, so they form troops as juveniles for community. And to sell Earl Scout Brookies.”
Cody slurped down the rest of his Yeasty Flap, burped loudly, and reached into his pouch. He pulled out a solid platinum coin and slid it across the table, leaving a thick streak of hot garlic butter in its wake. “Give me as many Earl Scout Brookies as physically possible.”
Gary looked down at the coin and released a deeply hollow sigh. He picked it up and wiped away the butter with his apron. “Sure thing. His brother and thirty-two of his sisters are named Earl, so I’ll place an order.”
“Have them delivered to Rubble Hall by Dick Trench,” Cody commanded, already digging his fingers into the next roll.
“Okay.” Gary turned and walked away like a man heading to the gallows. “Remember, under 120!”
The three of them watched him disappear into the kitchen. A long, heavy silence passed over the table as they let the sheer anatomical horror of what they had heard settle into the room.
Thiccolus was the first to shake it off. “So. Getting there is going to be hard, and getting the boat there is going to be harder.”
“Map!” Cody demanded, eager to change the subject.
He leaned over the tablet and examined the dark areas covered by the customary splooge of war. “I don’t even have an ocean on my map yet. Where is it?”
“Extreme northeast,” Glandalf replied.
Cody scrolled upward. The entire northeastern boundary beyond Sunnydale was heavily splooged over. “What’s up there? Anyone got the map?”
“No.” Thiccolus shook his head grimly. “That’s The Most Dangerous Place in the Fucking World.”
The tavern lights flickered dramatically as a booming lightning strike cracked somewhere nearby and rattled the windows.
Cody paused, his face completely blank, a Yeasty Flap dripping aromatic sauce into the basket below. “Bruh.”
Glandalf watched Cody’s reaction with measured interest until realization struck him. His eyes widened. “Wait…no. This too?”
Thiccolus let himself fall forward, deliberately smashing his forehead against the wooden table with a dull thud. He stayed there as he groaned into the wood. “This is that whole thing like the bridge, right?”
“Goddammit!” Glandalf tossed his tablet onto the table and fell into his signature backward lean, planting one foot against the wall and crossing his arms aggressively. “You mean to tell me my existence—no. I’m not doing this again. Things are changing. I’m effecting change! People like me. I’m rad! I’m tubular!”
“What’s that?” Thiccolus lifted his head and pointed a thick finger at the discarded tablet.
They leaned over the table and stared down at the screen.
The hazy boundary of the northeastern map was moving. Lines of pale light flickered beneath the splooge, tracing coastlines that had not existed moments before. The new island pulsed once, then expanded farther into the dark water surrounding it.
The tavern door banged open.
Sara, Lacuna, and Chadwick entered. With every step Sara took toward the table, the island’s outline brightened. New contours crawled across its surface as mountains, forests, and rivers slowly filled the empty shape.
Sara stopped beside the booth while everyone remained focused on the screen. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Cody finally raised his head.
“Brogrom here?” Sara asked, looking around the tavern.
“Not today.” Thiccolus lifted his forehead from the table. “He opens tomorrow. But Sara, dear, you are lighting us up.”
“Just tell him I own Wangs now.” Sara casually looked down at the tablet. “You’re all getting paid living wages starting now. What am I looking at?”
Glandalf snapped his head up. “Wait, what?”
Sara tapped her clipboard against her leg. “The island, Glandalf.”
Silence held the table while the crew processed the sudden weight of their new financial freedom. Glandalf eventually pointed toward the northeastern corner of the map.
Sara studied it. “What is it?”
Glandalf retrieved his tablet and moved through several layers of the map. “It’s tied into the portal lattice, but it isn’t connected to any anchor I recognize.”
Thiccolus and Cody pulled out their own tablets and synchronized the view.
“What the actual fuck?” Cody scratched his greasy chin. “That wasn’t there when we arrived.”
“No, hon.” Thiccolus pointed to the glowing contours spreading across his screen. “And it’s still changing.”
“Look.” Glandalf traced a pulsing line that stretched away from the island. “Something is feeding into it, but I can’t see where it begins.”
“There.” Sara pointed over Cody’s shoulder at the end of the glowing line hanging in the air beside her. “Is that it?”
They looked at the empty space.
Then, slowly, all three turned toward Sara.
“You,” Cody said, his voice dropping. “It started changing when you became the DM.”
Glandalf lowered the tablet as the pieces clicked into place. “That part of the world was empty. Now it’s answering to you.”
Sara stared at the island as another line carved its way across the screen.
Glandalf looked between her and the map. “The rest of this world came from Mark’s chaotic bullshit. Whatever that place is…”
He pointed at the island.
“It’s yours.”
Sara stared at the glowing shape for another moment before turning to Chadwick. “You good?”
Chadwick adjusted his gear and nodded. “Go. I’ve got this.”
Sara looked between Cody and Lacuna. “Let’s go check it out.”
Cody shoved the last Yeasty Flap into his mouth, grabbed Gary’s keys, and climbed out of the booth.