At the southern end of Golden Ratio Park stood the International Assembly Tower, a large building situated dead-center on one equilateral side so that the open green-space seemed to be its front lawn. While its lower stories could have been a museum, complete with a sprawling classical facade and a towering half-dome, its higher levels thinned into a skyscraper that stretched for a hundred floors. Though it couldn’t be seen now, the top of the tower contained two rotating lights, each bright enough to cut through even the stormiest night. When lit, these watchful beams could be seen from any point in the shining Golden City.

Naturally, once you knew to look for it against the skyline, such a monument was visible from anywhere in the park. Robin started a beeline for it, her mind whirring with information to be collected and possibilities to explore, only for to be brought up short when her foot jammed awkwardly into the ground and sent her stumbling. She managed, after a few careening steps, to catch herself before she could face-plant, then stood on the grass and glared down at her own clumsy feet.

“What’s wrong?” asked Tisha, who was easily able to keep up with her longer legs. “You look mad at your shoes.”

“My character’s shorter than me. Or, the real-world me.” Robin rolled up onto the balls of her feet and bounced in place, trying to get a handle on her new center of gravity. “Feels weird.”

“So you’re on the tall side!” Tisha nodded with a confident grin, like she was a private eye unraveling a tricky case. “Only tall people choose to be short in games.”

That didn’t ring entirely true, but Robin wasn’t sure enough to say so. Instead, she let the subject drop and steered them towards the nearest sidewalk. Nice, flat concrete proved much easier to get her bearings on, and soon enough they reached the Assembly Tower Plaza, where a half-dozen sidewalks convened to form a meeting area full of benches and tables.

The Tower doors were wide open, as usual, and already swarmed with players accessing the Assembly databases and demanding answers from some frazzled NPCs. Others had split up into small groups and claimed tables or benches, using the central plaza as a meeting location.

Robin stopped at the plaza’s edge and peered around, searching for a familiar figure in the sea of masked faces. When she didn’t find him, she turned to Tisha. “When this was a game, you’d often see a man in a blue suit around here. He’d be on his hands and knees, searching the sidewalk. Can you see him?”

“Um, let’s see…oh! There he is, over there!”

She pointed. Robin followed the path of her finger to the quiet corner away from the building where she knew the man to appear, but saw nothing. She hummed thoughtfully, then pulled out her phone. “Party up with me.”

“Eh?”

“I can’t see him. I already did his quest, and he never appears to the same character twice. So I can only see him if we’re in the same party.”

“Oh, okay. But how?”

“Check your phone.”

Tisha patted down her outfit in search of pockets until she found a fanny pack hanging off her hip. When she reached inside, her hand went deeper than the bag looked, which confirmed in Robin’s mind that they were magic or some kind of tech that could hold a character’s entire inventory. The phone Tisha drew out was, like Robin’s, already locked in a case, though hers was a dark purple instead of red.

“This isn’t mine,” she muttered, frowning at the home screen.

“It is now. Check the apps. I think they’re here to replace the HUD menus.”

In a game, the “head-up display” or HUD menus would appear overlaid with what the players saw as their characters moved through the world. It provided information on their fellows players, the nearby NPCs, the locations they were traveling through and the quests that were available. It’d been the one-stop shop for a player’s friends list, quests, mini-maps, clocks and all the menus needed to find adventure and fight evil. But try as she might, Robin couldn’t make that familiar display appear outside her mind’s eye.

Instead, it seemed most of its functions had been reassigned to phone apps with names like Analyzer, Messages and Map. The most important-looking one was labeled IAH ID, with a golden icon featuring the Assembly’s lighthouse-shaped logo; but Tisha ignored that for now and instead opened the messenger. Robin did the same. As expected, she found an option under her friend’s list to add the nearby player Tisha Madison.

“Try adding me to your friend’s list.”

Tisha lit up. “You want to be my friend?”

Robin flushed and shrugged. “People should stick together.”

Tisha beamed, happily scrolling through menus to make her selection. A friend request popped up on Robin’s screen and was approved just as fast, followed by the options to form an official “mission team,” which was the in-universe term for a player party.

Once the invited was accepted, Robin glanced once more into the distant corner. Now, where there had be nothing before, she saw a broad-shouldered man on his hands and knees, searching the sidewalks with his splayed palms. He wore a blue pinstripe business suit witch matching old-fashioned fedora, and didn’t seem to notice his tie getting gradually ruined by contact with the dirt.

“So he really is here,” she muttered, half to herself. She caught Tisha’s curious glance, but opted instead to make a bee-line for the man in the suit. “Excuse me.”

He didn’t react. Didn’t even look up at her. He simply continued his pattern of searching.

Robin closed the distance between them and loudly cleared her throat. “Are you looking for something? I could help you.”

No answer.

“Sir?”

She touched his shoulder. The man paused for only a second, then shook off her hand and kept right on searching.

Robin backed off until she felt Tisha’s presence return to her side. “What’s wrong with him?” the girl in purple asked, sounding concerned.

“Nothing. At least, I don’t think so. He’s not a full NPC. More like an easter egg.”

Still, Robin didn’t take her eyes off the quest-giver. Had the news broadcast and Beacon’s announcement been a scripted event, too? Or was there more to the people in this world than just lines of code?

She gestured Tisha forward. “You try. He’s waiting for you.”

Tisha hesitated, uncertain, but only for a moment. Then she approached the searching man with bouncy steps and another of those blinding grins.

“Ahem. Excuse me, sir. Can I help you?”

At that, the man stopped his searching and turned a small, relieved smile Tisha’s way. “Kind of you to stop. I’m afraid I’ve lost my glasses. They must be somewhere around here. Could you help me look?”

“Yes!” said Tisha, too loud and too eager. Her posture stiffened and her eyes darted around as she scrambled to cover up her gaffe. “Sure, I mean, of course I will. I’d be happy to—”

Her phone pinged. Over her shoulder, Robin caught a glimpse of the push notification from an app called Help Wanted, announcing that she had accepted the quest called Blind Without ‘Em.

For his part, the searching man didn’t react at all to Tisha’s awkwardness. His next lines were right on cue. “They fell off when I slipped. They can’t have gone far.”

He went back to searching. Tisha’s eyes darted from him to her phone and back before settling on Robin with a confused shrug. “So, I just find his glasses?”

“Yup. Though it’s not going to be that simple.” In spite of herself, Robin smirked. She pointed to a clump of nearby trees. “Look over there.”

In the shade of the tiny copse, a dozen bright-eyed and bushy-tailed squirrels darted about, tossing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses back and forth like a game. The spectacles barely had time to hit the grass before another of the furry beasts snatching them in their sharp teeth and darted in leaping bounds, only to get tired or caught by a playmate and toss them away to be picked up by the next player.

“You’re joking.”

“Nope.” Robin backed off, waving Tisha towards the animals in question. “Have fun.”