They gathered by the fire to settle after the disturbance of the fight and the ensuing murder. It was strange to drink tea with a freshly buried body only yards away. It got stranger when Norris ambled over to join them, sitting, sobbing morosely, still clutching his brother’s severed head to his chest. While he most graciously did accept the offered tea, he also very much killed the buzz of what had already been a pretty lame party.

  After Pod had settled his nerves by irishing up his tea, then abandoning the pretence of tea by simply slugging directly from a skin of some kind of intoxicating beverage, the two humans moved away to speak in private. As they walked over to the farm plots, Tiller assessed the damage with dismay. He would need to do proper accounting, but to his eyes he’d lost more than half of what he’d planted. Crops were crushed, shredded, torn out.

  Seeing the other man’s dismay, Cutter said, “Could have been worse, man. You could be under the mound now.”

  Tiller said, “He wasn’t going to leave a body. He was going to eat me.”

  Cutter shuddered. “Still, it’s just plants, man. You can plant more.”

  Tiller said, “This is how I’m supposed to get home, you know, pay the shopkeeper’s price.”

  Cutter laughed, “You’re going to make ten mil with gardening?”

  “Hey! I’ve got a plan! How are you going to do it?”

  Cutter shrugged. “Look. I’ve been on the level with you. Obviously none of this is real. It’s impossible. There’s no way I’ve actually travelled to another place of existence that’s populated by smurfs and kobolds and talking stone robots. I thought about it for half a minute, but I’m completely certain this place isn’t real. And that means you’re not real. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “So I am going to go ahead with the quest, but more ’cause it’s something to do. There are hot ass babes in that tavern and brother, the things they’ll do for a gold coin, I could tell you. You need to check that shit out.”

  “I’ve got a wife.”

  “Hah! So do I! It’s a dream, dummy! Don’t be stupid, go get some while you’re here! Even stupider if you don’t do it ’cause, you know, you’re not real anyway. So, you know… your wife’s not real… see where I’m going?”

  Tiller said, “I think you should probably reconsider this whole dream idea.”

  “Oh, should I? I should consider the possibility that minotaurs pull travelling shops around a world that’s as blank and white as a planet-sized dinner plate? Get real.”

  “It costs you more to decide it’s a dream. If it’s a dream and you don’t die, and get the money, and don’t cheat on your wife, then you just lose the chance to have some dream sex. But if it’s real, and you don’t take it seriously…”

  Cutter shrugged. “Whatever. Look, I’mma pretend like this shit is real. I did come looking for you when Spinner told me there was another human around. And I like Lita. I’ll miss the little bastard when I eventually wake up. So let’s play the game and pretend we’re really in Scape and you’re not a figment of my imagination.”

  Tiller eyed the bigger man, curious and thoughtful. Then he said, “So how are you going to do it?”

  “What?”

  “Get home. Make the money?”

  Cutter reared back, looking at him incredulously. “Seriously? By fighting! Look at me! I’m Conan the fucking barbarian. No offense, but if I’m going to get transported into a fantasy life I’d way prefer to be Elder Scrolls than Stardew Valley!”

  Tiller gave him a look to suggest he was of exactly the opposite opinion and that he was more than a little crazy to have said that.

  Cutter cocked his chin upwards. “That’s fucking annoying.”

  Tiller said, “I just tune it out, mostly.”

  Cutter said, “Me too, a bit anyway, but sometimes it says something useful. I’ve taken some basic-ass hunt quests over the last few days, you know, go to the cellar and slay ten rats or clear the graveyard of zombies, that kind of thing, and sometimes it gives you a heads-up by mistake.”

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  Tiller shuddered, “I don’t like zombies. There are zombies?”

  Cutter waved the thought away. “They’re lame. Easier than kobolds.”

  Tiller faced his half-ruined farm and said, “So what do we do now? As far as I know we’re the only two humans in the world. We both came from Earth. I don’t know, kind of feels like we should stick together, you know?”

  Cutter said, “You wanna come dungeon crawling?”

  Tiller said, “Hell no! But I don’t know, maybe we could help each other out. Like I said, I have a plan to make the ten mil, but it’s the long game I’m playing. I need to keep growing and reinvesting, multiplying my money over and over. I’m going to need to hire people eventually, there’s no way I can grow at the kind of scale that’s needed to achieve that without labor. And if I’m succeeding then I’m going to need some muscle too. That’s why I hired the twins to knock off Bonk. He was running a protection racket and if I didn’t do something he was going to squeeze my farm for everything I was worth. So, you know, I could definitely use someone like you around…”

  Cutter snorted, “And what am I gonna do? Grow tomatoes? I’m a fighter, man. You gonna pay me ten million to hang around here so nobody takes your ten million?”

  “Well… I’m going to offer people shares in the farm to work on it, you know, keep wages down by offering them future assets. Once I get home I won’t need the farm and they can benefit from it…”

  “So what? You go home and then I stay here till I make my own ten million?”

  “Well, you said yourself you don’t think any of this is real…”

  Cutter boomed, amused more than upset, “Hey! You can’t play that both ways… but listen, there is something I need.”

  Tiller said, “And that is?”

  Cutter said, “Money.”

  “Adventurer game not paying out?”

  “Oh, it is. But I do see what you’re saying about your farming game. You can keep multiplying your money forever until you’ve got enough. I’m going to have to take contracts or dive dungeons. Lita told me that the stronger I get the better the dungeons I’ll be able to go into, but I need to get a lot stronger first. You know, classic shit, level up, gain skills, get better gear.”

  Tiller said, “Makes sense.”

  Cutter said, “Maybe that’s where we can help each other out. You see here, I got a cinder-sword sigil. That means I get a hell of a lot more dangerous once I get a sword. Problem is, none of the monsters I’ve found so far have a sword! They’re rarer than tits on a tree. You can buy them in town, but the cheapest one costs a grand.”

  Tiller said, “There’s a composter there that costs the same. I get the feeling it would be worth it though.”

  Cutter said, “Well, here’s what I was thinking. I do have some gold I’ve gotten from contracts, plus selling the loot and sigils I gather. But it’s going to take a hell of a long time to get that first K. You said you can basically multiply your money by five with farming in ten days? Yeah?”

  Tiller shrugged, “Not quite, but most of the way to that, yeah. It’s not really that simple, there’s a real economy here. I’m not sure what’s going to happen to prices when I saturate the market. I might have to branch out, diversify. I’ve been thinking about it, but there’s always so much to do in the moment.”

  Cutter said, “Well, maybe I could invest. You know, give you a couple hundred, let you farm it, then split the profits on the crops?”

  Tiller scratched his chin, thinking. The damage to his farm was about to cost him half or more of the gold he’d hoped to earn on harvest, which in turn would cost him half his reinvesting power. At the same time, Cutter was asking for fifty per cent on his investment without really understanding the time and energy that would go into-

  Tiller said, “Jesus, that’s so annoying. A guy can’t even have a thought.”

  Cutter roared laughing, “Isn’t it! Hey, we can work out the details on the split if you’re interested, I’m open to negotiating.”

  Tiller said, “I’ll think about it. It makes sense in theory, I just need the numbers to work.”

  Cutter said, “Cool.”

  Tiller kicked a dead plant with disgust. “What about the other way? The syntras?”

  Cutter said, “Fuck if I know. I’ve never heard that word since the Shopkeeper said it to me. I have the faintest clue what a syntra is, how hard it is to get, where it can be got.”

  Tiller grew despondent. He’d been so excited when Spinner indicated there was another human. When Cutter had admitted that he too had been transported here by some higher power, that excitement had only grown. Tiller was focused on his task, driven to return to his family. But for all that focus, the determination, the drive, the fact remained that he missed them so terribly. He ached to be with his children, his wife. He’d gone thirteen days away from them, let alone thirteen days in a strange alien world with no imminent prospect of seeing them again. He’d hoped the other human might be comfort, company. Even if they’d just shared his sadness, there’d have been comfort in that.

  Tiller’s face was aghast at the revelation being played out by the narration. Cutter’s bluster seemed to fade. “Oh, hey, buddy. Don’t get me wrong. I do know what it’s like. Dream, or, you know, not, it’s really hard not seeing them. You got kids too? Damn, I think about them every day. I can’t even let myself imagine what it would be like if this is real and they’ve found me missing. All that aside, assuming this is just my subconscious or whatever, I fucking miss them too.”

  Tiller couldn’t say why, but he was soothed by the admission.

  They stood in silence for a time, two men, connected by their loneliness if by nothing else.

  After a time, Tiller said, “Hey, Cutter.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think it’s just us?”

  “Just us what?”

  Tiller sighed. “Do you think we’re the only two humans who got pulled here? What are the odds that there’s anyone else out there?”