Chapter Fifteen – The Bad Kind of Interesting

Chapter Fifteen – The Bad Kind of Interesting

“The last game was stupid-hard, but the water level on this one? It’s just not playable. It’s streamer-hard, not casual hard.”

–Most Eldest Ring Forums, 2037

***

With the front of the Museum of Natural History being itself part of history, it wasn’t exactly hard to find a way in. Though there was a lot of glass laying around and I wasn’t sure if the building’s structural integrity had taken a hit or not.

“You know, you could have tested that on another building,” I said.

“This is the one the hive’s in,” Manic shot back.

“Yeah, but we could have snuck over to the hive. Now, unless they’re all deaf in there, they’ll see us coming.”

Manic shrugged. “So they’ll come out to where I can shoot them better. That’s not sounding like much of a problem to me.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eye. She wouldn’t be able to see it anyway. “Let’s head in. They’ll probably be on the lower floors if anything.”

My boots crunched on loose glass and I stepped over a chunk of masonry before ducking into the museum. Manic followed, her gun refolding itself into a smaller configuration. I hoped that it had multiple settings and didn’t just have a ‘blow everything up’ mode, especially if we were going to be fighting indoors.

I paused once past the threshold and craned my neck back to take in the museum’s layout. It seemed as if the main lobby area was a big open space, reaching all the way to the top of the building and with balconies that let people entering peek into the second and third floors.

A huge whale skeleton hung from the ceiling by a set of metal wires. Some of the bones had been blasted off, but it was still obvious that it was a whale. A plaque hung next to it. Martha, the Last Whale on Earth! Now on Loan from the Ocean and Seas Museum of America!

“You broke the whale skeleton,” I said to Manic as she stepped up after me while making noticeably more noise.

“Huh. Well, my bad.”

“At least you own up to your mistakes,” I said with a nod. She flashed me a glare, but I turned around and headed deeper in before she could get a word in edgewise. The second floor looked like more of a reception place than a museum, and the first floor had a playspace for kids, with tactile displays and cartoonish animals explaining things in simpler terms.

I imagined that the areas above were more adult-oriented.

A holographic sandwich board, probably battery-powered since it was one of the only things in the museum that was lit up, sat by a staircase leading up. “Fourteenth annual gathering for the benefit of the Burlington Music Society,” I read aloud. “That something you’re part of?”

She scoffed. “Please. This kind of stuck-up shit? They’re all about the old-old stuff. We’re talking fifties rock and classical bands.”

“You’re not a fan of the classics?” I asked.

“Oh, I love the real classics,” Manic said. “Pre-diaspora Justin Beiber, Imagine Dragons before they went all cyborg. The real music from back in the day, before AIs took all the soul out of it.”

“Yeah, I’m not super into music. Never really developed a taste for it. I like some songs, don’t like others. It’s all just beeps and boops, you know?” I raised my Laser Pointer to my shoulder and started to scan the area. Fortunately, there was a handy map on one wall that I scanned for a moment. The maintenance access was a little deeper in. I figured that would be the best way to go down.

“How old are you, anyway?” Manic asked.

“Eighteen-ish,” I said.

“Ish?”

“Orphaned as a kid, didn’t exactly keep good track of things,” I said. “Never really did birthdays much either.”

“Huh,” she said. “Well, I guess you still have time to acquire some taste before it’s too late.”