Stories from the Maya

Treasure Quest

We start off on the moon.

It's just me, Gray and our guide, Molly Mars. Teams of three. Two participants and a quest guide.

We're all dressed in these big bulky space suits as we phase onto the lunar surface. It's really pretty — the stars are out and the sky looks like the galaxy threw up all over it. It's a stylized vista, not a heavyspace one. Beautiful, a glitter painting, stars of purple and blue and white and yellow all slathered across the dark of oblivion. There's the looming, cloud-marbled orb of the neighboring planet — looks like a big version of earth except the oceans are a lovely lavender color instead of blue. The lunar surface looks and feels like a cold desert made of ashes.

Molly Mars is young and attractive, like all women in the Maya. She insists on being called by both names. She's a brunette, talks a lot in this high-pitched, clipped voice. She sounds like she knows everything. Gray and I don't mind. She's helpful and not too stuck up. We met her in the Home Room.

"We won't see any of our opponents," she's telling us. "This is first player quest only, so if the game gets won before we get there then we just respawn auto back to the Home Room and turn our tokens in and leave."

We're walking across the lunar surface and the rocks and dust are crunching under my boots and I'm trying to jump like the astronauts did in the moon landing videos but there's not nearly as much bounce as I thought there would be. 

"The booby traps won't kill you," says Molly Mars, who really likes hearing herself talk. She tried to be an Anodyne once and couldn't get Coronated, but then she found out she was really good at these Treasure Quests, so they let her be a guide. "They're designed to maximize pain. The usual. They'll make you want to kill yourself, but they won't actually do the respawn. You have to. So theoretically, if you have a high pain tolerance, you can get hit as many times as possible and still make it to the end."

All of this was already explained to us, but Gray and I let her talk. We can see she enjoys this.

"That won't be me," says Gray, referring to the pain tolerance.

"Me neither," I tell her. "Just here for the kicks."

I try to jump again and only get about four inches of air.

Molly turns around.

"Never seen that happen, though," she tells us. "Someone actually make it through to the end without respawning themselves."

"That sounds dramatic," says Gray. "I'm sure if they did they'd get some attention."

We can see the hyperjump pods up ahead — they look like snowglobe spaceships arranged under the swirling Van Gogh firmament, right next to this dark rocky outcropping of Dr. Seussian proportions. There's no phasing in this treasure quest. We have to get from vista to vista the old fashioned way.

I feel it's time for something interesting to happen, and sure enough there's this subterranean groan from underneath us and the ground swells.

Molly's walking along when this thing comes from beneath her and snatches her by the snatch. This little mechanical elephant trunk tentacle thing with three fingers just jumps out of the dirt like a psycho flower and closes right on Molly's crotch and yanks down.

It's a vacuum devil. It's got all sorts of vacuum arm tentacles — you know, those accordion-looking plastic tubes — and it's really loud and it grabs onto Molly and she's screaming and it tears into her suit and sucks the fluid out of her in a few seconds.

She was too busy talking to notice that we'd started the game.

It's not long and she looks like a mummy with dried banana peels for skin. Gross. She's kicking and screaming and writhing on the ground and the thing is sucking between her legs.