By David C. Daoust
Harper Blue was up early, brushing her teeth like a good little gamer.
After the night before’s crazy visitation from the rather cryptic glowing woman, the two sisters had called it a night. That is, once the woman had vanished and they sat perfectly still for a good fifteen minutes, they agreed just to go to bed.
Harper was sick of that Splicer grind anyway. Most of it, she had already done once already. One of the main motivators for her to make it through a grind like that, was that she only had to do it once. No matter how big the number, how little the increments, she could just, you know, grind. Once it was done, that was it, she’d always have access to those abilities once they were unlocked. That’s what she had told herself as she slogged through the repetition.
Now that Harper was cut off from her original account, she was forced to do it all over again. All on this private server, or local server, whatever. At least this time, she had the motivation of saving her sisters, their home, and everyone else aboard. At the very least getting them unstuck from the middle of the desert.
Harper spit some of the excess toothpaste into the sink before her. Went back to brushing, circular motions… at least two minutes.
On a live server, in a multi-player game, there were always older gamers that would make announcements, pretty much reminding everyone to go and brush their teeth. Mainly, because a lot of those older gamers, didn’t have teeth anymore. They blamed the games, or rather the time they spent, carelessly, within. The more time in virtual worlds, the less physical bodies get cared for; Everyone’s always surprised.
Harper took her personal hygiene pretty seriously though, whether it was because of the announcements or not– she could not say. She’d admit there were a couple times where she just dropped what she was doing and went and brushed as soon as she read it. Mainly because she could not remember if she did or not. Because look, if you game straight up until bedtime, often you’re too tired to do anything but faceplant into a pillow. And a lot of the times when you wake up– you just jump right back into what you were doing in-game. Then, end up eating something a bit later and it feels like a wash, ‘scept even if you find something else to do with your day, you end up back at it, then you end up playing ’til bedtime again, faceplant and repeat. Before you know it, there’s a solid week of not brushing, a solid wall of tartar pushing up your gums— and when you do -finally- remember to brush, there’s blood in your spit, on your toothbrush, in the sink…
This kind of thing was especially true when you find yourself in a mind-numbing grind.
Just a matter of time til the teeth start getting loose. Low and behold- the dreaded ‘gum disease’. And there is not a doctor’s cane, or a droid’s light, in all the worlds, that can reverse damage. The healing light of the chronogenesis technology can speed up natural processes; broken bones, cuts and scrapes, that would slowly heal on their own, can be sped up to be healed in a matter of moments, leaving the patient in a deep sleep until they recoup the energy. Diseases, however, count as a natural process, shining a chronogenesis light on a disease would only speed up the damage… Point here- there was no easy fix; no magical reversal.
Harper was definitely in the middle of a grind. The grind of her life.
The First Wave teen spit again, decided that was probably two minutes… Rinsed. She smiled her perfect, pearly whites at herself as she dropped her brush back into the small cup, dried her hands before opening the bathroom door.
Surprise, surprise, Harper was greeted by two extremely excited little girls running through the hall before vanishing into the next room.
Harper was suddenly glad that she had gone to bed when she did. Her sisters seemed like they were going to be a handful, especially when the third little girl appeared, stealthily, from another door and zoomed by, headed into a separate room entirely with a small fluffy bunny clutched in her arms..
Harper was in the middle of trying to figure out who the dark haired, brown eyed little girl could be, when the bunny suddenly declared, “Haha! They’ll never find us!”, which, of course, called all their attention to the pair… there was a bit of a ruckus in the other room, before the two little girls reappeared in the hallway.
Harper blocked their path.
“Did any of you even brush, yet?” Harper asked, putting an end to whatever early-morning game they were playing at.
Dicey and Grace both groaned. The new girl, however, seemed to like that idea.
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