He shoved the tin back in his pocket. Two pitiful sticks left. Running out of resin would mean a trip to the hospital, but he tried not to think about that. He pulled Olly on toward the hotel that served as the game’s Immigration Office.
The Roosevelt Hotel, a brick column slowly darkening in the rain, looked ordinary enough when Reef wasn’t wearing his goggles. He peered up at a dozen rows of windows and wondered how many of the guests inside knew the place served as host to Alt’s holographic Immigration Office.
Several huddled forms detached themselves from the building to ask for food, coins, cigarettes. “Don’t give up your food ticket,” Olly warned Reef. But Reef already had it out of his pocket and was passing it into a pair of wind-chilled hands.
“He lent me one last week,” Reef explained to Olly.
“Is he going to lend you one tonight when you’ve got no dinner?”
Reef shrugged and pushed his goggles back into place. The hotel was transformed into the coppery Immigration Office, supposedly a mock-up of the one found in the actual alternate universe. For a moment, Reef could pretend he was in the Other Place, a new arrival looking for housing and a job. But the sound of car tires cutting through rainwater, and of transients squabbling over food tickets, anchored him in ordinary Seattle.
“Now we just need to get inside,” Olly said.
The “Immigration Office” wasn’t as easy to get into as it had once been. The managers of the hotel that housed it were sick of gamers invading their lobby and carrying out imaginary swordfights in the hallways. You couldn’t get through the doors anymore until a hotel guest went in or out, and even then you had to be quick.
Reef peered through the glass, trying to gauge whether any of the hotel guests was thinking of leaving. He watched a father in a long raincoat tie his little son’s shoes. The rich always had sons: They paid for gender selection prior to conception instead of losing sleep worrying about the weak vorpals daughters usually inherited. The only places Reef ever saw wealthy men with daughters were in government propaganda posters like the ones plastered over the interior walls of the hotel. They showed a man toting a smiling young girl on his shoulder with the caption Daughters Bring Joy. Reef could hardly take his eyes from the smiling faces, the crown of sunlight behind the girl’s head.
“Never seen a girl before?” Olly joked.
Reef looked away from the posters. Actually, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a girl walking the streets of Seattle. Even the prostitutes kept to their container homes and let work find them.
Olly was studying one of the posters now, peering in through the hotel’s glass door. “If the government’s so keen on getting people to cross over into the Other Place, they should let the rich have their sons and stop worrying about it.”
“Sure, it’s not like we need girls for anything,” Reef said dryly.
“Think about all the money the president makes from taxing everyone who comes back from the Other Place with pockets full of alien money,” Olly said. He glared at the copper globe hanging over the door. The two continents of Mega America shone silver; the span of Great China, gunmetal gray. “Wish I had the president’s vorpal. Smug bastard. Why didn’t someone mess with my genes?”
Reef shoved his hands deep into his pockets while he waited for the father and son to leave the hotel. Even with his electronic gloves on, Reef was cold. The wind went right through his threadbare clothes. But at least with fall settling in he wouldn’t have to worry about water shortages. He’d already set up the rain trap on his container home.
He adjusted his goggles and looked up at the Immigration Office’s glittering fa?ade overlaid on the tall column of the hotel. It awakened unexpected feelings in Reef. Envy for those who could escape the sprawl and live in a better world. A vague sense of dread he couldn’t quite place.
“Do you think it’s weird that the aliens don’t seem to mind all those people coming into their world and funneling out their money?” Olly said, pinpointing the source of Reef’s uneasiness. “What if they get tired of us?”
“We’re giving them some of our solar energy,” Reef said. “It’s fair enough.” But deep down, he wondered how long that deal would last. It seemed to him that the solar channels between the two worlds had already opened wide, and the aliens had no need to keep people crossing into their universe.
A holographic character with a bright yellow exclamation mark hovering over his head watched them from the corner of the building. He rocked on his heels expectantly, red sleeves fluttering under a battle-scarred leather vest.
“What quest is he offering?” Olly asked.
“Don’t—” Reef started to say, but Olly was already flexing his electronic gloves.
“Have you heard tell of the Fated Blade?” the man said in response.
Olly groaned. “Not this crap again.”
“I could have told you,” Reef said.
“We continue to look for the Fated Blade.” The man clasped his hands together in distress.
“But where is it?” Olly said. “How are we supposed to find it?”