In The Loop, Chapter 1

Day 1

Being treated like a king is pretty bad, by modern standards.

That’s the main thing which jumps out at me. No matter how magical or fantastic this new world I’ve found myself in is, it’s got nothing on Earth for sheer luxury. The rooms are warm and luminous, but no gaslamp is as convenient as a light switch. The beds are soft and sizable, but it doesn’t get better than an electric blanket and a purring cat for naptime comfort. The food is spiced and plentiful, but there’s… no beating Dad’s cooking.

I think Dad would’ve told me off for being spoiled, and he’d be right. Things could be a lot worse than having a warm bed, a full belly, and a room to myself. There’s just something a little sad about these people’s sincere best efforts to make me feel at home being wasted on me—and something sobering in how overawed and grateful all the other miners were. 

But honestly, I’m a little glad this place isn’t too comfortable. I could easily see myself getting wrapped up in the impossible wonders of this brand new reality. Losing myself. Dad always said I was the type. It was also Dad’s idea to keep a journal, to remember who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing. Although keeping a glorified calendar for college is a very different matter than chronicling my adventures in another universe, I think it can’t hurt to try.

So I guess I should start from the top.

It was remarkably subtle, being ripped from my home and hurled into a fantasy. I was crossing the street when the world unremarkably, impossibly transformed into a leafless, snowy forest. Without fanfare or warning, I was standing on the edge of a gaggle of about sixty men and women, all excitedly following a woman on a horse, four soldiers of some sort in leather armor bracketing each side of the formation.

As I stepped in the trod-on snow, I yelped with surprise. I was dressed for a California summer day; the cold bit into me with a vicious stab. A few members of the group, wrapped in rather smelly furs, turned back to give me surprised looks.

“What the—where’d you come from, kid?” One of the fur-clad travelers asked, eyeing me with visible alarm. That was, incidentally, just about the only part of them visible; the thick furs swaddled every part of them save a thin strip around their eyes.

For a moment, I hesitated, shocked by the sudden cold. Then my instincts kicked in, and I managed to stammer out, “I’m sorry, I’m lost.”

The fur-clad started to say something, but the figure on the horse shouted, “Hey! What’s the holdup?”

The fur-clads looked between the horse and me, then the one I’d been talking to beckoned. “Keep up, okay? The [Overseer]’s a nice sort, and you’ll freeze to death wearing that.” They gave my snow-dusted T-shirt and shorts a strange glance before walking away.

I was shocked and confused, but after a bit of hesitation, I followed. Sure, I knew little about them, but I knew a lot about dying of hypothermia. I’d take uncertain life over certain death any day.

“Here.” Someone tapped on my shoulder, and I tried my best not to flinch, turning to meet the eyes of another fur-clad person. “You look half frozen—go up to the [Overseer] and ask if you can join us. She’ll give you some warmer clothes, okay?” The corners of the fur-clad’s eyes crinkled, and I got the feeling they were smiling reassuringly under all those wrappings.

Maybe following the directions of a stranger in a dark forest wasn’t the best idea, but at that point, I would’ve eaten a lava lamp if it warmed me up. I trundled up to the woman on the horse—the [Overseer], apparently—and politely tapped her on the shoulder.

She looked down at my summer-day clothing and raised an eyebrow. “What are you, some sort of stripper?”

I glared at her. Maybe not the best way to approach the woman I was trying to mooch free stuff off of, but that comment was way out of line. “I’m sixteen, you creep.” At least being angry injected a little confidence back into me. I knew how to be angry.

She shrugged. “Relax, kid, it’s a joke. You ain’t got nothing on a professional, anyway. Who are you and what do you want?”

Questions which I had answers to. That was a first. “I’m Alex,” I said, “and… could I please have some of those furs? I’m freezing to death out here.”

The [Overseer] tilted her head—I got the feeling it was her equivalent of a frown—and said, “We’re hours away from anything resembling civilization, ‘cept the Loop, and I know you didn’t ‘scape from there. How, by Jsthol’s jiggling jugs, did you get here without freezing to death?”

I swallowed, feeling the absurd impossibility of my situation weighing down on me. “I… got teleported here.”

The woman met my eyes with a stark, flat gaze. “You can [Teleport], but you can’t find yourself some decent clothes?”

“Uh, about that…” I rubbed my arms, where meltwater was already soaking my sleeves. “I’d be happy to tell you anything I can, but please, can you get me something warmer to wear?”

The woman sighed in an entirely unnecessary show of drama, throwing her head to the sky and splaying her arms out in either direction. “Ugh. Fine. Do you agree to be a worker for the Loop?”

“What?”

“Can’t give you the furs unless you agree.”

Honestly, that should’ve set off more alarms than it did, but at the time, I was still firmly of the belief that no harm could come from simply verbally agreeing with someone. “Uh. Yes, if it’ll keep me from freezing to—”

“[Worker’s Kit: Winter Miner.]” The woman casually pointed at me, and with a puff of displaced air, thick, pungent furs materialized around my body.

I stumbled back and promptly landed in the snow—which was nothing more than a nuisance with the heavy clothes I now wore. “What—how did you do that?”

“It’s a Skill, kid. And a high-Level one, although all the [Overseers] at the Loop have something similar.”

“High-Level? What…”

“You asking what Level I am? Kinda rude.” She considered it for a second; I stood up and dusted myself off, noting as I did so that a sturdy metal pickaxe had been slung across my back. “Then again, so am I, so I don’t mind telling you. I’m Level 23, highest Level [Overseer] at the Loop, and I’ll eat the yellow snow if you’re above Level 10.”

“I…” I cleared my throat, trying to regain some semblance of poise. Silly, I know, but a lifetime’s upbringing is hard to shake. “I don’t know what Level I am. How can I check?”

She gave me that flat look which I was very rapidly becoming familiar with. “It’s sort of hard to miss. The little voice in your sleep? Tells you if—ugh, you’re just messing with me, aren’t you? Nobody’s this stupid.”

“So…” I strode forward, trying to wrap my head around the implications. “You can just make clothes appear. Whenever you want.”

“Hardly.” She snorted, “they only exist while a worker is using them, and they disappear within the hour if you choose to stop working under me—which means they’ll vanish if you stop working for the Loop. And I can’t make more than a hundred of them at a time. So don’t get any ideas; you can’t sell them, you can’t stockpile them, and you can’t duplicate them. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

I started pacing in circles—although since I had to keep moving forwards, they ended up closer to a series of elongated ovals. “What other Skills do you have?” I asked, “And how do you get Skills? How is this even possible? Can you—”

“Whoa, whoa, kiddo, put the questions on ice. I ain’t your mother. Speaking of which, yours ought to have taught you a thing or two about respect for privacy. Seriously, cool it on the personal grilling.”

I froze mid-step. My mother. I was still who-knows-where, who-knows-how, and my mom and dad were expecting me home in time for dinner. “Oh, God. Mom. I need to call her and tell her what happened to me. Where are we?” I tugged out my phone—apparently, whatever intelligence had placed the clothes on me had seen fit to put them over my backpack, which made extracting anything from it a heck of a hassle—and fumbled it on with numb fingertips.

“Middle of nowhere, kiddo. The closest towns are Vryntl and the Loop. Whatcha got there, kid?”

I frowned. No service, no Wi-Fi networks anywhere nearby. I tucked my phone away, realization thrumming through me. “…Vryntl? What… what country is that in?”

“The Ytrine Confederate.”

“…what continent?”

“Terandria.”

I swallowed. “…what planet?”

The woman frowned. “What’s a planet?”

“…that was just about the worst answer to that question.” I felt a sudden tightness around my chest. “Where… no, no, no, I can’t—I—” My vision began to swim, and my throat began to burn, and the world began to tilt—

“You gonna keep walking?” The woman’s harsh voice snapped me out of the grip of my panic, slapped me back into freezing cold reality. “Because I’m not waiting for you, and I’ll gladly leave you here to freeze to death.”

I shivered and shook my head. “No. I’m sorry. I’ll keep moving. Keep moving.” I raised my head and hunched my shoulders, struggling to beat on through the storm. I swear it was lighter just a moment ago.

Several hours later, my school backpack weighed approximately as much as a car, I smelled like I’d marinated my pants in wet dog, and I was pretty sure a pair of chopsticks could’ve kept me upright better than my legs did. The only upside of being drop-dead exhausted was that I didn’t have any energy left over to panic about being lost forever in an alternate universe.

I was just about to flop onto the ground and accept my impending death when the hazy outline of a massive, irregular lump appeared in the distance, wavering through the endless snow. Shading my eyes against the glaring sun, I squinted at the hazy shapes, trying to make sense of them.

Then I got it.

It was a glacier. A city in a freaking glacier.

Way back when I could still pass as a little girl, I owned an ant farm. I remember returning each day to look through its plastic exterior, tracing the intricate tunnels with one wondrous finger. I marveled at how quickly its internal development proceeded, and wished I could see beneath its surface without destroying it.

The glacier was that wish came true.

Crazy, branching, ant farm-tunnels scribbled madly through the glacier-city, terminating in uncountable hundreds of stone-walled buildings. The vague, flickering blurs of people trundled in and out of myriad houses. Smoke and steam rose off the top of the glacier, cheerfully advertising its presence to everyone for miles around.

“It—that—I—” I stared at the impossible iceberg. “How? Why? What?!”

Amused, the [Overseer] said, “To answer your question fragments, Skills, money, and our destination, in that order. We made it to the Loop.”

“But—you can’t just give me a one-word explanation for that!” I pointed at the Loop, flabbergasted, “I—hold on. Mom and Dad are never going to believe this. I have to take a picture.”

The [Overseer] had subtly and not-so-subtly asked what my phone was, so I made a point of waiting for her to stop looking before snapping a photo of the Loop. Zooming in, I could even trace the individual tunnels through the remarkably transparent ice. “Wow,” I murmured, ogling the Loop once more before tucking away and turning off my phone.

It took an hour more to get to the Loop, which mostly consisted of me excitedly running around, asking questions, and generally forgetting the fact that in the past couple hours, I’d walked further than I normally did in a week. As we arrived, the clear, almost glassy ice towered above us. That couldn’t possibly have been natural—I could see straight through the entire city longways if I got in the right position. 

We walked up—sprinted up, in my case—to the back of the city, where a massive pair of wooden gates stood open, flanked by two occupied guardhouses. A trickle of people entered and exited, although it didn’t seem like there was much reason to leave the city; to the left was some sort of massive, sloping chasm, while everything else was nothing but empty tundra.

At our approach, someone in one of the gatehouses leaned out and waved. “Oh, good. You’re finally here, Yule.”

Belatedly, I realized I’d never so much as asked the [Overseer] for her name—although that problem seemed to have corrected itself. Yule scowled ferociously. “‘Finally?’ Oh, don’t tell me.”

“You’re the last group back today! Seventh place!” The gatekeeper cheerfully called, oblivious to Yule’s deepening scowl. 

“I go for quality over quantity. Sure, I only got sixty people, but they’re hand-picked.”

“So’s this booger.” Zane idly flicked something I didn’t want to think about too closely to one side. 

Yule gave him a faintly disgusted look. “Whatever. Stop grinning, Zane. My Class isn’t even really meant for recruitment work. Worst Svranth can do to me is take me off the recruitment roster.”

“Oh, that’s not the worst Svranth can do by far! I assume, by that batch of fresh, piping-hot recruits you’ve got back there, that you’re looking to bring them into the city?”

“With a wit like that, you could be a [Detective.]”

“No can do, my fair lady! I’d be obligated to turn myself in. And where would you be left without my dashing company?” The gatekeeper—Zane, I assumed—grinned so widely I could see it through the layers of scarves they had wrapped around their head. That felt wrong for a whole host of reasons, but I wasn’t inclined to dwell on any of them.

Yule scoffed, ignoring that last comment. “Come on, you lot!” She shouted at the rest of our little band, “You’ll want to get off your feet as soon as possible, I’d assume.”

As we approached the gate and the second gatehouse shifted into view, I couldn’t help but stare at its occupant.

“Um.” I pointed. Social instincts drilled into me screamed in protest, but I persisted anyway. “That person is blue. And has tentacles coming from their mouth.”

YES. YES, THEY DO. I flinched as the blue-tentacle-person turned to stare at me, projecting a thunderous voice into my skull. IS THERE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?

Um. No? I tentatively thought. After a moment passed with nothing but the two of us staring at each other, I cleared my throat and said, “Um. No?”

GOOD. LINE UP, I CAN’T CHECK MORE THAN ONE OF YOU AT A TIME. The blue-tentacle-person’s tentacles shivered, and everyone’s backs straightened at once as a simple set of instructions popped into our mind, giving us an order to line up in. I couldn’t help but notice that I was last.

“Hey. Uh, Zane, was it?” I whispered to the other gatekeeper as I passed him. “What’s the deal with the blue human?”

Zane turned to look where I was pointing. “Oh, Wlosh? She’s part Illithid. Eighth, I think. She talks to people with her mind. Spooooky.” He wiggled his fingers sardonically.

“Ah,” I said, as if that explained everything. “She, uh… I think I made her mad.”

“Eh.” Zane waved a hand. “Women. You can never tell what’s going on in their heads when they’re not telepathic freaks, I’m not even going to try to—ow!” Zane clapped both hands to his head as Wlosh turned a cool stare on him. “Alright, alright! Get out of my damn head already!” Zane shot Wlosh a glare, and she staggered back, eyes wide. “Heh. Never fails. Sent her a mental image of the last time I had sex. Boy, that was a wild ride.”

I grimaced. “I… did not need to know that.”

“Neither did she!” Zane slapped me on the back. Oh, and it was with the hand he’d picked his nose with. Lovely. “You like that, huh? Yeah, didn’t think so! Teach you to go rummaging around in other people’s heads!” He shouted at Wlosh.

“You started it. Forcing what amounts to psychic porn into her head was definitely way beyond the line,” I said.

Zane perked up. “Porn? What’s porn?”

“…No. No, I am not having this conversation.” I turned away, scowling. Dad would’ve been able to talk Zane down, and Mom wouldn’t have stopped until he was; apparently, I got stuck with just enough of both traits to feel bad about failing.

YOUR PARENTS SOUND LIKE GOOD PEOPLE, I heard a voice grudgingly say.

“Glah!” I instinctively swatted at my head; the voice sounded like it was coming from inside my skull. “You can read my mind?!” I exclaimed.

…SORRY. I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS DISTURBS MOST HUMANS. IF IT IS ANY REASSURANCE, I HAVE LITTLE CONTROL OVER WHOSE THOUGHTS STAND OUT AMONGST ALL THE RANDOM NOISE, AND CAN ONLY DELIBERATELY READ MINDS AT A SHORT RANGE.

“That… wasn’t reassuring at all, but okay.” The line moved fast; it was a matter of minutes before I arrived in front of Wlosh. 

[SENSE IRE.] Wlosh broadcasted into my mind.

“Whoa!” I frowned. “Hey, how’d you do that?”

DO WHAT? THE SKILL? IT COMES FROM MY [PSION] CLASS.

“No, no, no. Say that again. ‘It comes from my [Psion] class.’ That exact sentence.”

Wlosh gave me an annoyed look. I HAVE NO MOUTH. I CANNOT SPEAK.

“Oh. Sorry. Um… think that at me again?”

‘BROADCAST’ OR ‘TELL YOU’ WORKS FINE AS WELL. She paused. I SUPPOSE I SEE NO REASON NOT TO HUMOR YOU. ‘IT COMES FROM MY [PSION] CLASS’? She repeated.

“There!” I fastened on what had caught my attention. “How are you doing that? The brackets!”

THE WHAT?

“The little square…” I tried to describe them and came up blank. “Here, can you read my mind?”

YOU FLIPPED FROM BEING TERRIFIED OF MY POWERS TO REQUESTING I USE THEM ON YOU.

“Oh, come on. It’s better than the other way around. Come on, just do it.”

AS YOU WISH. I AM NOW SCANNING YOUR SURFACE THOUGHTS.

I concentrated. []. Those things. Brackets.

OH. Wlosh mulled it over for a bit. BRACKETS. I DID NOT KNOW THEY HAD A NAME. SCHOLARS COMMONLY USE THEM TO MARK A SKILL OR A CLASS. I SUPPOSE I PICKED UP THE HABIT FROM OTHER ILLITHIDS; IT IS NOT AS IF HUMANS CAN SAY BRACKETS ALOUD. IN ANY CASE, I SENSE NO ILL WILL TOWARDS THE LOOP FROM YOU. YOU… MAY ENTER.

“Thanks, Wlosh!” I waved cheerfully at her, then walked through the doors into a long corridor which went straight through the iceberg, stone stairs rising through the city at regular intervals.

She watched me until I left.

As I was, of course, the last in the line, our little group set off ascending the iceberg immediately. Small carved grooves, like the outline of a door, marked periodic lengths of the corridor we strolled through. As we walked, Yule dismounted from her horse, turned around, and started talking as she walked backwards. “I assume that most of you already know what to expect from the Loop, but for those of you who haven’t, or for those of you who apparently teleported in from nowhere, I’ll lay out the basics. The Loop thrives on its fast-paced mining, and you lucky little chum-buckets are the latest grist to feed that mill. Work cycles are two days long; you get odd days off, but are expected to put in your all on work days as recompense.”

“Um. Weeks are two days long here?” I asked.

Yule rolled her eyes. “No. Weeks are seven days long. I have no idea why the Loop decided to make work cycles two days long instead of conforming to everyone else’s schedule and I don’t plan on asking. In any case, you’ll be staying at a hotel in the city on your off days. It’s fit for a [King]; you get free food, warm beds, a room to yourself, free laundry, storage for your belongings—we’ve got it all. On work days, you’ll be mining in the Slant—that big ol’ chasm you saw on the way here. Don’t worry if you don’t have a [Miner] class yet; we accept literally anyone, and besides, having five [Overseers] pooling their Skills can turn even a baby into a Level 30 [Miner].” She paused. “Not really. We have a couple of those; they’re freaking terrifying. Don’t worry about your mining gear; with the exception of like four guys who actually know what they’re doing, you just get the default gear the [Overseers’] Skills can make. It’s simple, really; mine a day, get a day off. Do this for the rest of your life and you’re set. You’ll gain Levels pretty quickly here; it’s arduous work, but it’s worth it. Since this is such an unambiguously clear explanation, I just know one of you chuckleheads will have a—oh, the teleporting kid. Why am I not surprised. Yes?”

“So… you’re the highest-Level [Overseer] at the Loop, right?”

“You’re looking at her.”

“And… you can create at most a hundred of those [Worker’s Kits], right?”

“Give or take. It increases with my Level, and I haven’t had cause to push the limits since the last time I dinged.”

“And Zane said you and six other recruiters get workers every week—and that you’re the worst of them, getting only… about sixty people or so.”

Her gaze turned flat. “You’re on thin ice, kid.”

“So—” I froze. So if almost everyone gets a [Worker’s Kit], which you don’t have more than five hundred of, but you get more than four hundred new workers each week, and you’ve never ran out of kits…

…Where are all the extra workers?

“Well? I’m waiting.”

I backed off and shook my head. 

I had a very bad feeling about what happened to people who asked where missing workers went.

I tried to recover. “…uh, why me? Why pick up some random kid you’ve never met—who clearly has no mining experience—and try to turn them into a [Miner]?”

Yule considered me with a piercing gaze. “You ask more questions than you have hairs on your body, you know that? Do I need a reason for everything I do?” Without waiting for an answer, she abruptly turned around and started walking up a staircase. “Alright, for those of you who have the good sense to keep your mouths shut, come along. Welcome to the job of a lifetime.”

I hadn’t realized it, but I was pretty hungry by the time I got up to the hotel we were staying in. I was somewhat surprised that hotels even existed here—it didn’t seem like there was enough of a market for one, given that most of the traffic I’d seen going in and out of the city was us. 

At that point, I seriously considered leaving. Maybe I was overreacting, but… numbers which didn’t add up, which pointed to a massive number of missing people? Being one of only people to notice this? Living in a city of mind-readers? It wasn’t worth the clothes, and food, and shelter, and warm, warm fireplace, no matter how screwed I was if I tried to survive here alone… 

…ugh, but it was so damned cold outside! That, at least, I thought the hotel had covered; the chairs were cushioned with fur, the food was hot, and there was a nice, even heat coming from the fire. Certainly, it was better treatment than any of the other [Miners] ever had received, especially given that we hadn’t even done any actual work yet. Sure, the food was re-heated from being frozen in ice for who knows how long, the room was stained with wood smoke, and the furs smelled like they were attached to something still alive, and the beds were cold and foreign, and—

“Hey.” A voice jolted me out of my thoughts. I was in the common room—a long, airy hall with a grand table laden with grilled fish and tankards of mead. I’d checked out my bedroom before eating, and settled down in a quiet little corner by a fireplace to savor my meal of breaded fish and sweet berries. A festively drunk group of miners had just left the area for their rooms, and I’d assumed I’d get some peace and quiet for a few moments.

But to no avail. I looked to my left, where the voice had come from, and found nobody. Frowning, I turned to my right, and jerked back, falling out of my chair in the process. Zane’s wildly grinning face was half an inch from mine.

I got to my feet and rubbed my back. Ow. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked.

“Mm. Good question. The answer may surprise you!” Zane grinned.

I decided not to go down that rabbit hole. “You’re allowed in here?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Nope!” Zane winked. “Svranth doesn’t want anyone messing with their precious potential profits.”

“Their?” I asked.

Zane waved away the question with a lazy hand, tilting his chair back to a dangerous degree. “You’ll find out tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after the day after tomorrow, and…”

I sighed, rubbing at my eyes. “Could you go bother someone else?”

And to my surprise, he did. With a sudden pop, he vanished.

I blinked, looking around. He was well and truly gone. Well, I wasn’t going to look the gift horse in the mouth. I left the dining hall for my bedroom.

I tried to change my clothes, but the entire [Worker’s Kit] disappeared when I took off the furs, so I supposed I’d have to get another one from Yule the next day. If I was staying.

I suppose that brings us to the present, then. I didn’t want to sleep—I was too excited, terrified, weary, and wired up, all at the same time. So I heeded some advice my dad gave me a long, long time ago. I dug through the schoolbooks I’d inexplicably carried with me, found a mostly-empty binder and a pencil, and started writing.

It was… surprisingly therapeutic. I’m not panicking, I’m not being crushed by despair, and I’m getting some useful perspective on what the hell happened today.

I think I’m going to keep this up.

Wait wait wait wait wait. One last thing. I went to sleep and then… well…

[Scribe Class Obtained!]

[Scribe Level 1!]

[Skill – Journal: Live Biography obtained!]

A.N.

So I’m trying something new. This story is set in the world of the web serial The Wandering Inn (check it out), but it neither requires having read TWI to understand nor contains spoilers for it. This story has eight chapters, and I’ve written them all out already, so there is a unique opportunity: subscribe now, and get next week’s chapter today! This is only going to work while In the Loop is running, since it’s the only story I have multiple parts written out for. (If you’re already subscribed, you may need to unsubscribe and re-subscribe. Sorry about that!)

Edit: I’ve gotten some contacts informing me that the password is not properly being sent out. For now, just email me at rileyriles001@gmail.com if you want the password while I figure out why this is happening.