Chapter 43: Chapter 40: Side Quests

“Hey, do you ever still feel… connected?” 

 

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked as he put his book down. After having exhausted the best -- and some of the worst -- detective serials had to offer, he’d discovered that detectives were just as possible in written fiction, even though at first he had some trouble with the vernacular and prose, which was old-fashioned by the standards of this world and simply outlandish by his own. 

 

“Well,” Lisa began, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Do you ever feel like, to some extent, we’re still connected to the old world? That some part of us still lingers there? That it can be upset?” She paused for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. “It is like I’m being pulled in a direction that isn’t… within this space.”

 

Daniel raised his eyebrows. He had, come to think of it, but he hadn’t given it much thought. His experiences in this body had been strange to say the least, and the last time he’d felt a pull like that, he’d felt a much more powerful pull towards Lisa. He nodded. 

 

“Sometimes. The feeling that important events are taking place, out of our control,” he said.

 

“Yes! Exactly that! I just had a feeling like that. I hope everything is going well on the other side.”

 

“I did too. I felt a great disturbance…”

 

“Daniel…”

 

“In the force…”

 

“I am begging you.”

 

“As if millions of voices suddenly cried out...”

 

“I am never letting you choose a movie ever again.”

 

“And were suddenly silenced.”

 

“You gorgeous idiot,” Lisa said as she approached him with a playful grin, ready to punish him there and then for being an absolute donut.

 

---

 

Lisa twirled her chair in a circle as she thought. She’d been doing more writing. Lots more of it. Her initial story had been received reasonably well, though people had… criticisms. It was her treatment of characters. Beloved heroes and their love interests were only given attention once every six or seven chapters, while the focus was on the villainess, portrayed as the true protagonist of the story. She embellished and changed things left and right, told the story of Eliza The Demon Dragon Queen several different ways. For her, a lot of it was playful experimentation. She wondered what her life would have been like, if it had gone one way or the other, if things had been different, and the body of work she’d started to accrue for herself had amassed a sizable fan following. After a suggestion from one such fan, she’d dubbed them the Elseworlds and kept on writing. 

 

Daniel caught her on the next rotation, and it took her eyes a moment to focus. The chair stopped spinning. Her head didn’t, not immediately. 

 

“Hey you,” she said, her vision still swimming a little, and smiled.

 

“Hey,” Daniel said, and handed her a cup of tea. “How is the writing going?” He leaned against the desk as she burned her tongue.

 

“It’s going. I’m having trouble with this one chapter, but I think I’m going to get through it if I just sit down and write, you know?” she said, and she turned back to the computer to run her fingers over the keyboard, as if she was hoping for the keys to press themselves into a story. 

 

He nodded, although he didn’t really understand. Daniel was better at talking and face to face conversations than he was at the written word. Engaging, rousing speeches, not carefully crafted manifestos. But he loved the fact that Lisa seemed to be so damn good at it.

 

“Is this still your… stories about us?” he asked with a playful smile. “You know, the ones where you defeat me in battle and then drag me to--”

 

“That was one time!” she laughed, and shook her head. “No, these are original characters. Still back home, of course. It’s what I know. But I’m trying to write new stories.”

 

“That’s cool,” Daniel said softly, staring ahead absentmindedly. He sipped his tea.

 

Lisa put down her cup and swiveled to him. “What’s the matter?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Something is bothering you, Daniel. I’m not blind.”

 

He sighed and put his cup down. 

 

“How many people are reading your stories now, Lisa?” he asked. She had no idea where he was going with this, but she wasn’t sure she liked it. If he was jealous, he’d never expressed it before. She looked to the screen and tabbed to the website.

 

“A little over four thousand,” she said. “Why? It feels like at least half of them read it just to tell me how much they hate it, and the other half are doing it just to live in a different world for a couple of chapters.”

 

He looked out the window. “I don’t…” he paused and looked at her. “I’m so glad you’re getting recognized, love. I don’t envy your praise. I never… I never did it for praise.”

 

Lisa wiggled the chair left and right a little uncertainly. “Did what?”

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“I used to be the Hero, Lisa.”

 

Oh. Lisa realized what this was about. She’d done what she could to leave her old life behind. When they first got here, that had been the hardest thing for her, realizing who she used to be wasn’t who she had to be, and the complete lack of purpose that came with a shift like that. By comparison, Daniel had thrived at first, as he probably always did in the face of adversity. But now that things had calmed down and they’d sort of stabilized into a soft domesticity, it made sense that Daniel was starting to get a little listless. 

 

“What… what does that mean... to you?” she asked.

 

Daniel chewed on his tongue as he thought. “It’s not… it wasn’t about the praise. But… back then… I could pick up a sword and save the world, you know?”

 

Lisa nodded. He’d once picked up a sword to save the world from her, after all, and she tried not to smile as she thought about that. The distance between who she was now and the person she was then grew every day. 

 

“I can’t even… I have maybe… a hundred clients? Maybe? And I’m helping most of them with their glutes. I’m not… I don’t see how I could ever make a difference, here.” He bit his lip. “This world is so big, Lisa. Back then… I felt like… if I didn’t do something, yes, terrible things would happen. But if I did do something, I could save lives.”

 

Lisa got up and walked over and took his hands in hers. “You can still save lives, Daniel.”

 

He leaned his head against her chest. “Your stories, just by writing, you’re touching more lives now in just… weeks, than I have since we’ve arrived here. I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

 

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. She felt him breathe shakily against him. “Are you okay?”

 

“Just some trouble breathing.”

 

“How long have you been wearing it?”

 

He didn’t answer.

 

“Daniel…”

 

“I know. It’s just…”

 

“It’s a lot. I know. But your health comes first,” Lisa said. “Go take a shower. Then we can talk about how you can save the world.”

 

He smiled and kissed her softly. “I will. Thank you.”

 

Daniel went off to the bathroom and Lisa looked at him wistfully. He was going to be okay, she hoped. But he needed something. A purpose beyond just training people. Sure, at first it had been rewarding work, and it had reminded him of things back home. But as time went on, he found that he had no real impact anymore. He wasn’t changing anything. 

 

And they’d both found that, as much as they loved this new world, it needed changing. They found that certain things were true across realities. That those in power often were the least fit to wear the crown. That crowns were inherited, one way or the other. That the weak, without a champion, were kept down by the institutions that claimed to be there to help them. But one man with a sword couldn’t stop that, not anymore. Invigorating speeches didn’t change the world, not anymore. Demagogues seemed to rule the world, and everyone else was just trying to make the best of it. 

 

As Lisa heard the shower running, she sat down behind her computer and started doing research, trying to figure out how Daniel might help people anyway. Make a difference. 

 

She looked up and started printing several things, job applications and information pamphlets, anything she thought that might help him. She was so busy that she didn’t notice that a little icon had popped up in the corner of her browser, informing her of the fact that she’d gotten a message. 

 

---

 

Daniel was out taking a walk, enjoying the autumn sun. It wasn’t warm, not really, just like it wasn’t really cold. The cool air was as refreshing as the sunlight was invigorating. There was a small park not far from where they lived, and Lisa had suggested he take a walk, to clear his head. As he sat down on a bench, thoughts bounced around in his head. Daniel had never been someone to spend much time overthinking things. There was always something that needed doing, and he set about the best way to do them. But now he was directionless. The world needed changing, but there wasn’t much he could do. There was no path from here to there, not one he could see. 

 

Short-term, Lisa had suggested that he look into a different career, a way for him to help people. 

 

A medical career would take years. Lisa’d had no doubt he’d excel at it, but it was a serious time investment. 

 

He’d taken one look at the police force and declined. The laws were the problem, enforcing them was deliberately engaging and propagating them, and he didn’t believe you could take apart a system while building it up from the bottom. He felt he’d either lose the job or his soul. He hoped that there were people on the force who genuinely wanted to do good, but considering the news, it was hard to believe that. It was only a matter of time before they became complicit, or the system chewed them up and spat them out. It seemed that older police officers were either corrupt or willfully ignorant, and the young ones were soon-to-be-cynical idealists or belligerent and power hungry. Police procedurals were one thing, where the law was just and the good guy got his man. Those were just stories, Daniel feared. 

 

That had left him with the option of becoming a firefighter. He certainly had the physique for it. He’d burned the last of his fat, and with the help of regular Testosterone injections, he was gaining noticeable muscle definition. He was already stronger than Lisa, for sure. They’d found that one out the fun way. He could be a firefighter. Saving lives was good. He wouldn’t be changing the whole world, but saving a life saved the world for that person and their loved ones. It was a start, but he did want to think bigger. He wanted to… not necessarily leave a mark, nothing so vain as that, but at least try to change what was broken, what the powerful had convinced the powerless didn’t need fixing. 

 

There was a meeting nearby soon, a small gathering of people who felt the same as he did. Lisa had found them online, and Daniel considered going. It might be good to see how people who had grown up here coped with the feeling of insignificance in the face of casual, systemic evil. How they fought against it. Most people, he’d noticed, did feel like something was off. Taxes were raised each year but infrastructure crumbled everywhere, and people could tell, but for most of them, fighting back wasn’t an option. He didn’t fault them for that. It’s hard to fight against a system that has swallowed you whole and held your livelihood to ransom. But Daniel could fight. It was something he was good at. 

 

He considered his future, his options, when he heard a voice, a woman shouting. He turned to the source of the commotion, and saw her running towards him, a woman in her late forties. She had detached herself from a small family, all of whom were also beginning to approach him. 

 

“Oh my god!” the woman yelled. Daniel tensed up. “My baby!” 

 

Oh dear. He had hoped this wouldn’t happen. He hadn’t had the time to prepare the really, really difficult conversation that was about to take place. 

 

“Sally! We’ve missed you so much!”

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