“Who’s place is this anyway?” Ken had to raise his voice a little over the music but not much.

The kitchen was packed with people, everyone knows the kitchens where the real party is anyway, he wasn’t some living room loser glued to their comfy seat all night, god he wanted to sit down, and since quitting smoking he didn’t need to go stand in the cold and avoid being the communal lighter either. Although after a few beers he was seriously asking himself, realistically, what would be the harm in one lovely relaxing cigarette? Ken and Suze were standing at the end of the kitchen island in the way of a small wine fridge that mostly contained tall cans of middle of the road beer. Ken squatted down and reached in for his 3rd of the night. The music was good, the place wasn’t too far from home and all his friends seemed to be here. Everything was good, oddly good for a home body like Ken, he was feeling great, he did wonder who’s place this was though despite the fact that it didn’t seem to bother anyone else.

“I’ve no idea, Katie invited us, I can see Andy over there and there’s Daz, a pretty eclectic group, are you sure it’s not our place?” Suze let out one belt of a laugh, pleased at her clever observation which only deepened Ken’s confusion.

Those 2 people were linked by Ken but didn’t really run in the same crowds. Andy was a shy former work mate who overlapped with Ken’s interests in a handful of important areas that, generally speaking, were hard to find in a person. Specifically a proper understanding of Star Wars and an appreciation for grim dark strategy games. Gregarious Daz on the other hand was less of a conscious choice of friend and more a product of geography and upbringing they absolutely shared interests but Daz was no Andy and Andy was no Daz. Because of that Ken had never facilitated the two meeting each other but despite having crippling anxiety and a young family respectively both were out tonight, in this house, which was owned by no one in particular, having a laugh and chatting up a storm.

When Katie had invited Suze it was a friend of a friend type deal and the claim was that this soiree was less a rager and more of a gathering, a low key affair that Ken and Suze could easily extricate themselves from should it get too dull or be one of those keys in a bowl situations. But, it wasn’t dull, next to no one had driven and despite being in a kitchen there wasn’t so much as a cereal bowl in sight. 

Ken shelved his confusion about how the party came to be and regarded Suze. He leaned his head down to her ear, her hair and cheek warmed his face a little. Her smell was intoxicating, he wasn’t one for big flowery proclamations of affection but he loved her deeply he modulated his voice to a gentle faux whisper. Loud enough to be heard above the chatter and the music but in a tone hushed enough to pretend that it was need to know information, for her ears only. “I’m going for a piss”.

“K babe”. 

They split off from each other, Ken in search of a bathroom, Suze in search of someone to catch up with. Many of Ken’s friends were also hers and vice versa so he imagined that it wouldn’t be too hard for her to find someone to chat to and perhaps, if she found the right friend, she might shortly be heading to the toilet herself. Ken skirted around some people making a few nods here and there while he headed for the hall. He picked out a likely door for a bathroom and tested it, opening it slowly in case there was anyone in there. “Helloooo”, nothing. He put his head around the door, no light, just darkness, he realised the music had stopped, there was a a distant sound that could have been chatter, the air was cold and stale and the edges of the doorway appeared to move away into his peripheral vision, as if the doorway itself was silently widening. 

The music returned, a stairway to a dimly lit conventional looking basement instantly took form where the void had once been and Ken dismissed the last second or so of his perception as an odd blip. He was relaxed or as relaxed as one can be out of his home he would think. He was surrounded by friends, had Suze and was feeling a comfortable buzz, everything was fine, he didn’t seem to mind that he’d possibly just blacked out. All that said he’d seen plenty of horror films so had to acknowledge that blundering into a strangers basement, even if you felt safe, was probably a silly idea. Plus his back teeth were floating, he was desperate to pee and so committed himself mentally to the upstairs loo. Before he turned away he was startled a little by a figure rounded the corner and walked up the stairs, it was Steve. “What you doing?” Steve asked, in an accusatory tone he probably thought was funny in its exaggeration. “Need a piss” Ken replied, “Aye, it’s down there, on the left, past the pool table, this guy has a pool table”. 

“Who is he, do you know him?” Ken asked. “I don’t know, don’t know its a he to be fair, Matt invited me, I didn’t even know you were coming, thanks for the invite dickhead”. Ken rolled his eyes and pushed onto the stairs before Steve had quite exited them, brushing past him a little as his desire to urinate overpowered both his interest in the owner of the house and any meagre desire he had to talk to Steve. He still didn’t want to go into the basement but if that cunt hole Steve had been down there then how bad could it be.

Ken heard the door up the stairs behind him close but the basement remained, the air comfortable with the conventional sounds of the boiler and the thrum of the music from above to assure him that he had not stepped into some kind of umbral plane between dimensions on a trip to the john.

Ken closed the toilet door behind him and hurriedly treated himself to a sit down wee. He took in his surroundings, a small sparse bathroom, probably to accommodate some aspiration of a man cave which so far had only manifested in a cheap pool/foosball table if Ken had noticed correctly. Done, he could think again now, the overpowering need to pee had passed and he could set back to the mystery of the house owner. As he headed back towards the stairs he noticed the pool balls on the table were in an odd configuration. Not in a state of disarray you might expect after a break, nor in their orderly triangle but arranged with the white dead centre with just 5 other balls at varying distances from the white, 2 red furthest from the white and 3 yellow closer in. The orange foosball ball sat nestled in the divot of the chalk which rested on the top edge of the table. It looked like the Trescal system. What the hell was the Trescal system? Ken thought. Then with a little surprise he noticed that he had picked up the foosball and was moving it towards the arrangement of pool balls.

As his hand passed the two red balls at the edge he caught himself, shook off the mild fugue, bounced the foosball once to reassure himself and then flicked it towards the table without very much intent on where it would land. He resumed heading back up the stairs. He strained not to turn back at the table but when he arrived at the top of the stairs he allowed himself a glance. From where he was he couldn’t see the full table just the bottom edge and the area where he’d have imaged the foosball would have landed. No foosball, it must have rolled somewhere else… “Hey Keeeennny, do you have a minute to chat?” Becky slurred out from the doorway back to the hall. “Hey, sure, you ok?”, “Yeah, fine, come out for a cig.”

Ken walked back through the hall into the kitchen following Becky to the patio doors which lead to the back garden and more than likely a long and heart breaking story about her latest partner. He caught his loves eye as he marched through and went a bit slopey shouldered which Suze seemed to find hilarious, she knew what he was in for. She looked away from Ken nodding to a girl with a bounty of wavy brown hair, they both headed into the hall turning away from the direction of the basement and towards the stairs. Looks like she’d found the right friend and was about to have a whale of a time. Ken groped around with his eyes, looking for someone else to ensnare into his torture – a problem shared is a problem halved – everyone else was fixed in conversation. He was going in and he was going alone.

He entered the cool night air and was literally led down the garden path towards a patio area with a few, thankfully, unoccupied seats. He plopped down into the comfortable looking chair lined with a water proof cushion, relieved to take a load off and rest his legs. The relief lasted only a few moments though as he realised to his horror that he’d left a perfectly serviceable, mostly undrunk, lovely beer down in the basement toilet. While any desire to go back into the basement was easily overridden by the irrational fear that something might be amiss he was still about to enter into whatever drama Becky had ready for him with only the option of getting more sober in front of him. That was the real horror. But it was too late, Becky was already asking her opening salvo of questions. Questions designed to make this seem like a conversation and not a therapy session with a mute psychiatrist. 

It seemed from her story that she had recently taken up with a gentleman who had had some measure of trouble with the law for possessing things he shouldn’t have. That’s all the detail he’d given so she, in her middle class way, had assumed that it was drugs, probably weed, a basically victimless crime. She had recently discovered however that the possessions were digital and it was not in fact a victimless crime. Sadly Becky so desperately wanted a partner and seemed to be attracted to all the ‘wrong’ attributes so what should have been a simple case of not dating a nonce was a more complicated question in her mind which she expanded on animatedly and at great length.

Ken zoned out.

“Delete some more of the map then to make room… the draw distance is pretty low where he is… no we can’t keep him there, especially not with that one, he’s clearly on the cusp of going to get another beer I can see it in his eyes, if he goes back in the kitchen its going to crash. We need to get him near another picture of the system and trigger him to show…”

What was that?

He came back to himself, he could hear Becky talking but couldn’t concentrate, what had he just heard? He understood it but it wasn’t English, it sounded like Syndicate Standard. What was Syndicate standard?

‘WAAAAAAAAAAAY!” Ken could hear smashing glass in the kitchen, the jubilance of the initial ‘Waaay’ gave way to a scramble to get out of the room. A tall figure appeared to be grappling with a much shorter one. Lex and Little Dan were having a fight. Who could I hear talking just then and how could they know I wanted another beer? Ken couldn’t worry about that now, Suze might be back in the kitchen again and at risk of getting caught in the crossfire of Twatzilla vs Chong. 

Ken stood up and stomped down the garden towards the door. With no small amount of exasperation he yanked the door open ready to interdict and, nothing, everything was fine, amiability across the board in fact there seemed to be a lot less people in there, where was the kitchen island? Lex was in one corner chatting with a middle class woman with a bombastic laugh and her bald husband sporting a pop culture T shirt. Dan was nowhere to be seen. “What the fuck?” Ken uttered out loud to no one in particular. “What?” Steve said from near the sink “There was a fight right?”, “Where?” Steve replied. “In here, there, Lex and Dan were fighting”. “Why would Dan fight anyone? He’s the nicest guy in the world and he’s probably out of his gourd anyway”, “I heard glass smashing” Ken said in retort, not ready to dismiss his recent memories and accept the most current evidence of his eyes, he definitely remembered seeing a fight. He also definitely remembered some very out of place conversation that didn’t appear to happen in any particular place around him, that triggered him to look back at the garden. Widening darkness. He blinked. Then back to the garden, where was the furniture, where was Becky?.

What the hell was going on.

Steve placed a hand on Ken’s shoulder. “Hey man, you seen these fridge magnets?”. 5 coloured circles, arranged around a single white one 3 yellows closest to the white, 2 reds further out and an orange circular magnet at the top of the fridge. “What? No, I need to go home. I don’t think I’m feeling too hot, where’s Suze?’. It was at that moment Ken realised he had the orange magnet in his hand and was motioning to place it next to one of the yellow ones closest to the centre. He stopped, catching himself and noticed in his peripheral vision that there was nothing but black and in the centre of his vision nothing but a fridge and a pensive looking Steve staring at Ken expectantly as if trying not to hurry him.

Ken dropped the magnet, he stared Steve dead in the eyes “What’s going on?”

Steve looked visibly furious as he looked up at the ceiling. “Alright, kill it, he’s not biting he keeps trying to find problems, I knew this one was too complicated and we’re running out of memory. Any longer and his brain will be cooked anyway”.

The Hunter’s head screamed in pain and he began to choke on what he quickly realised was an intubation tube stuck down his throat. He felt probes being removed from his spine and the back of his skull which dulled his migraine somewhat. He winced at the pain of injections being indelicately shoved into his neck below his chin. He’d been in a Sim. How long had they had him in there? His life came back to him, whoever Ken was/is was forgotten, there were headings in his mind ‘I was someone else’ ‘I was in a place’ but who and where was already gone. Effervescing away like the details of a dream.

Evets walked up to him and slugged him straight in the gut. “Tell us where the ship is freelancer” he hit him again and repeated his question “TELL US WHERE IT IS”. Evets was clearly exhausted The Hunters guess was that they had run the simulation a number of times trying to get him to give away where Suz’s ship was moored, hiding in the littoral radiation of one of the inner planets of the Trescal system. The Hunter had played this game before, you had to be clever when trying to trick someone into giving you specific information using a simulated reality. You had to let them, almost absent mindedly, give it away. As soon as you reminded someone of their situation too much they would know they were in a simulation which would create complications, over stress the whole thing and all the rendering time and prompt credits will have been wasted.

‘Alright, what was he saying, let’s look back’ Evets said out loud to the room which looked like a cheap storage container converted into a surgical bay. He spoke as if The Hunter wasn’t there clearly addressing someone else, he couldn’t respond through his intubation tube anyway making Evets’s previous attempt at conversation more an expression of his anger than any serious attempt at interrogation, they clearly didn’t have the information they wanted. One of a handful of technicians brought up that The Hunter had talked about who the house belonged to and had a tendency to piss a lot, meaning that they had to keep rendering in different rooms which was taxing the system. “Ok, adjust the prompt so the setting is somewhere that the Ken character already knows and think of a scenario that’s not a party where he’s less likely to drink and less likely to move around as much” Evets declared to the room.

He leaned down nose to nose with The Hunter who sat on his knees straightjacketed and chained up in plastic tubing. He stared with a red eyed intensity reserved for those you truly deeply hated “I’ll find that little ginger bitch and you’re going to tell me where she is.” He was usually more reserved, he was getting desperate, running out of ideas and probably time. He knew that The Hunter would never knowingly give Suz away, his only chance was to trick it out of him but given the state of his face it looked like they’d been at it for days with no luck which, despite his dire situation, gave The Hunter a little pang of pride.

Evets crew started moving around behind The Hunter, he suppressed the impulse to run, he was well restrained and didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of him confirming his fear. Blinding pain took The Hunter then a high screeching followed by nothing at all. Then, slowly, a room formed, simple colours at first, then more depth, more complexity. A screen in front of him, a chair, office noise, his name on a blue background stuck to a grey divider behind his monitor. The Hunter melted away.

Across from Ken Steve popped his head up over the divider “Want to go for a wander?”. “Yeah sure Ken said”. They crossed the office and got to the area with the lifts and stairs. Steve quickly pressed the lift button signalling that he had no interest in taking the stairs. Fine, Ken thought, he’d done his cardio for the day. They stood in the lift in a slightly awkward silence, Steve seemed wound up about something, which wasn’t surprising, he was always wound up at something.

“Whats up with you then?” Ken asked. Steve went to open his mouth but as he did the lift chugged and stopped, the service light illuminated on the control panel. “Fucks sake” Ken said, hitting a few of the buttons to no avail. Steve looked pensive, like his mind was somewhere else. The lift emergency call button did nothing.

“Hey, Steve said, “erm, if you were going to hide a ship would you do it in orbit around Mercury, Venus or Earth?”

---

If you’ve got this far, seriously, thanks for reading, thats incredible of you.

This story started as a Writing Prompt on Reddit but quickly veered away from the majority of the prompt and became a fan fiction for a book that isn’t currently out yet.

[WP] a party discovered a dungeon but when they tried to enter and a message said only those who were married could go in. As the rest discussed what to do to get entry they noticed their wizard was missing. That was until he walked out a few minutes holding a sack of loot and a ring on his hand.

My first thought was to play with the idea of a Party. Instead of a DND style party which I originally imagined, I thought, what about an actual Party? But we can still find a dungeon, maybe in the basement? then by the Wizard I was starting to veer more into writing specifically about my friends and while I did try to fit things into the other prompt I decided I had a better idea.

My friend, Ken, has written and will shortly release his first novel and I decided I would use at least the start of my interpretation of the prompt as my jumping off point into writing him a little bit of fan fic. I have to say, I had a great deal of fun and only partially apologise to all the real people in the story.

Its also worth mentioning that I’ve been reading a lot about writing and thinking a lot about writing and doing a tiny amount of writing myself. This is actually the longest story I’ve written this year and was made a lot easier by doing the opposite of what I thought I should do. I pants’d it. I wrote by the seat of my pants, I just wrote and didn’t stop, I made it up as I went along. I thought, as Brandon Sanderson says, that I’d be a planner, but it turns out in this case at least, I enjoyed pantsing it. That isn’t to say the save the cat structure isn’t the way to go or a hybrid of the two but for this one evening, for this one story, I pants’d it and had a lovely time.

So this is for Ken and anyone else who might find it amusing, thanks for the prompt JollyTeaching1446 and thanks for the story Ken.