The Laptop - Ch.50 - No Going Home (Patreon)

"I hate this," I sighed, before taking another gulp of my cherry vodka drink.

None of us were bothering with the glasses anymore, all three of us were just drinking straight out of the bottles. I'd also lost count of how many I'd had. Three maybe?

My girlfriends and I were all cuddling together on our bed, Chelsea was in the middle with me on her right and Gwyneth on the left. And the three of us were alone in our room, Frank and Annie left a few minutes after my girlfriends and I realized it was up to us to try and save the world.

The mysterious bard had a lot more to say, and I had plenty more questions too. None of us were in the mood to hear more of her mind-breaking or depressing history lessons though, and I wasn't sure I even wanted to know the answers to the rest of my questions. It was all too big, too much, too overwhelming. Even my normally-carefree former boss looked subdued and quiet after hearing everything his girlfriend had to say.

After another sip of my cooler I frowned, "It's too big, too much. How are we supposed to save the world, or fix all its problems? And I mean how do we do that without screwing with everyone's minds or rewriting everyone's characters? Because as far as I'm concerned that's still off the table."

"It's bullshit," Chels agreed. Her ears were folded back as she scowled, "And I have no idea yet how to do this either. I get the feeling Annie might have some suggestions, but I already know you're not going to like them."

Gwen nodded sadly, "I have a feeling none of us are going to like them. She's right though, our world has a lot of problems. My parents are a perfect example of that."

"Like how do we fix that?" the elf girl added after a gulp of her cooler. "How do we cure bigotry, or ignorance, or hatred? It's like trying to deal with my parents, except times a billion."

We were all quiet again at that point. None of us had any easy answers. For the next five or ten minutes the only sounds were the sloshing of liquid in our bottles as we drank, or the crunching of chips as we munched on the snacks Annie left with us.

Eventually Chelsea broke the silence again as she commented sadly, "You know we can never go home again, right? Not after this."

"That's not true," I argued. "It might not be safe just yet, but Annie said the security thing would settle down eventually. It might take a month or two, but sooner or later it'll be safe again."

After another gulp of my drink I added, "For that matter I think we pretty much have to go back there, if we're going to fix the place. I don't think we can do that from here, most of the tools on the laptop only work on the realm you're currently in."

Chels shook her head, "That's not what I meant. Even if we're able to fix it or save it or whatever, it won't be home anymore. Not for us. We've already seen and learned too much. We're not the same people we were three weeks ago, and the deeper we get into this stuff the more and faster we're going to change."

"Annie knows what I'm talking about. I'm sure of it," she added in a quiet grumpy voice. "I mean, she gave the laptop to you right? So if she's retired, why didn't she go back home to wherever she came from? Because she can't. Same as us."

I sighed as I stared down at the bottle in my hand for a few seconds. Then I shrugged, "We'll see. I think it's too early to know anything for sure right now. Things might be different for us when we go back, we might be different when we get back, but that doesn't mean we can't live there anymore. Even if it doesn't feel the same, I'm sure we could make it home if we really wanted to."

Gwen pointed out, "Annie said she had that job for a hundred years. And according to Frank, she was always on the move, doing her 'troubleshooting' stuff. It might be the same for you. Or for all three of us, since we're sticking together."

"Now I wonder if Annie even has a home," the elf girl sighed quietly. "Or maybe she's spent the last century as a digital nomad, living in hotel rooms or couch surfing from world to world?"

I slowly shook my head, "I don't know. You can always ask her tomorrow if you want? But for now I think I'd like to try and forget about all this, and maybe get some rest."

"Ok Lisa," Chels responded. "I'm going to have another drink, then I think I'll be ready to join you."

Gwyneth nodded as both she and Chelsea started moving off the bed, "Same. I think there's two left?"

While they both went to get the last two coolers I finally finished the one I had with me. I set the empty bottle down on the floor next to the bed, then I lay back and closed my eyes. Meanwhile my girlfriends ended up sitting at the table, munching on some pretzels while they sipped the last two vodka drinks.

• • • • •

"Ugh," Chelsea grumbled softly. "That last cooler was a mistake."

Gwen groaned softly under the covers, "The last two coolers were a mistake."

"Agreed," I added quietly.

We'd all slept in again, and now bright sunlight was trying to sneak into our room around the closed shutters. And all three of us were suffering the effects of overdoing it with the cherry vodka drinks last night.

"I guess I've finally found the one and only drawback to being a tiny catgirl," Chels commented after another minute or so. "Smaller body means alcohol hits me a little harder than it did in my original shape."

Gwyneth frowned, "I'm not much smaller than I used to be."

I reminded her, "Frank said something last night about elfs being more sensitive I think? And I'm not sure it's even safe for cats to have booze Chelsea, but I don't know what that means for catgirls."

"Anyways I'm hungry," I added with a sigh. "And thirsty. And I have no idea what time it is, but we should probably get up."

Chels grumped, "I can hear people out in the market, I think the merchants are all opening up shop again. Feels way too early to me though."

I rolled my eyes as I finally pulled myself out of bed. My girlfriends reluctantly followed my lead, and all three of us pulled on some clothes.

"Weak or not I don't think I can stand having beer with breakfast today," Gwen commented.

Chelsea's ears folded back and her tail ended up between her legs as she made a face, "Heck no. What I need is coffee. We haven't had any since we got to town, and it sucks. Actually forget instant coffee, right now I'd literally kill for a decent latte."

I glanced around at the empty cooler bottles and beer cans from last night, then nodded to myself. I pulled the laptop out of my backpack as I said, "You know what, you're right. After last night I think we deserve a treat or two. And if Annie doesn't have problems with conjuring up otherworldly beverages and stuff then I don't see why I should worry about it either."

A minute later three extra-large cafe style lattes appeared in the middle of the table, and a few seconds after that a trio of greasy take-out breakfasts joined them.

"Oh my gods yes!" Chelsea exclaimed as she all but pounced on one of the tall paper cups. Her ears and tail all stood up tall as she opened the lid and took a deep sniff of the hot foamy contents. "It's perfect! Extra creamy, with a shot of vanilla! I'm in love!"

"Thanks Lisa," Gwen added as she pulled out a chair and sat herself down.

I shut off the laptop then joined them both, and over the next half hour or so all three of us gradually recovered from our excesses of the prior evening. By the time we were all done eating my girlfriends were both ready for another latte so I used the laptop to summon three more of the hot beverages. Then while they were enjoying the drinks I took a moment to go around the room and pick up all the empty bottles and cans and half-empty bags of stale snacks.

"I feel bad about having all this trash," I commented. "It's kind of an eye-opener, you know? Back home we don't think twice about it, and if we were in a hotel room there'd be a waste basket or two in the room. They don't seem to have that issue here though, it feels like they just don't do 'disposable' stuff."

Chelsea pointed out, "Back home we'd put the bottles and cans into recycling. But I get what you're saying. And I can't help wondering what the innkeepers are going to think, when they find all these alien bottles and otherworldly garbage in here."

Luckily that wouldn't be a problem. Thanks to the laptop I had a way to get rid of that stuff that didn't involve dumping it into the environment. It only took another minute or so, then I started deleting the empty bottles, cans, and even the glasses we'd used last night. Same with the stale snacks. And when we'd finished breakfast I got rid of the refuse from that too. In the end all that remained were the last three paper cups, since we were all still sipping our second round of lattes.

"Huh," Gwen commented quietly, as a thoughtful expression settled on her face. "You basically just bypassed two of the big problems our world's facing. You can conjure up food and other products without depleting any natural resources, and you can get rid of trash without burning it or dumping it or otherwise polluting the planet."

Chelsea's ears perked up at that, "Gwen makes a very good point. If all of creation is just a computer simulation, then we're really living in a post-scarcity society. Except nobody knows that, because of the stupid realm parameters."

I frowned, "We can't just tell everyone on Earth that reality is fake and they're living in a simulation. People won't believe us, and some folks will be mad at us for saying it. Even if we can prove it, that'll just make things worse. A lot of people will freak out, it'll cause pandemonium. And we'll definitely have people trying to silence us."

"Not to mention the killer software routines would be after us again too," I added. "Because telling people the truth will definitely break the fourth-wall or whatever you want to call it. Like you said, it'll violate the realm's parameters."

The little catgirl's ears angled forward and she shrugged, "So? You're a computer hacker, right? Figure out how to hack the system. Change the parameters, reprogram the killer security routines."

"If it was that easy I'm sure Annie would have done it already," I sighed. "She's had a hundred years to work on this stuff, right?"

Gwen smiled at me and stated, "Maybe she's just not as good at it as you are. Maybe that's why she recruited you? She said she needed you to help her, right?"

I wasn't so sure about that, but before I had a chance to reply there was a knock at our door. Chelsea went over to answer it, and we found the bard in question waiting by herself outside in the hall.

"Good morning," she greeted the three of us. "Mind if I come in? I was hoping we could continue our conversation from last night."

I waved Annie into the room, then as she moved past Chels I asked, "No Frank this morning?"

Chelsea locked the door once Annie was inside, and the two of them moved to join Gwen and I at the table.

"He sends his regards," the bard replied, "But Frank's a merchant and he didn't want to leave his shop closed while the rest of the market was busy."

Then she gestured at our take-out lattes and smiled, "I'm glad to see you're getting more comfortable using the laptop for minor things. It's not just for the big world-shaking issues you know? You should be confident about using it whenever the need arises."

I gave Annie a look as I responded, "I might be more comfortable using it like that if I didn't have to worry about the battery running down. Or about the possibility of someone stealing it. Or about it being broken if I needed to pull it out in a dangerous situation."

"Speaking of which," I continued as I stared at our guest, "I noticed the way you summoned the drinks and snacks last night. That wasn't magic, you were typing and interacting with some sort of computer interface that the rest of us couldn't see."

Gwen frowned, "Hey that's right! So does that mean Lisa's laptop is a hand-me-down, since you scored yourself something newer and better?"

That got Chelsea thinking too, and her ears folded back as she gave the bard a suspicious look. "Last night you said the name and the job and the title all went with the laptop. So if you've passed all that on to Lisa then how come you still have access to all those functions?"

"Or have you been lying to us about some of that stuff?" the little catgirl added while her tail flicked back and forth in irritation.

"Relax Chels," I responded in what I hoped was a calming voice. I wasn't sure how much I trusted Annie yet, but I definitely didn't want to make an enemy out of her. "I'm sure she hasn't been lying to us, so let's just hear her out."

Fortunately our guest didn't seem offended. She looked fairly chill as she explained, "I know Frank thought I was retiring, but it's actually the opposite. It took me a few decades, but I finally scored myself a promotion."

"You've got my old root-level SysAdmin access," she added as she leaned back in her chair, "And I've joined the dev team."