Monroe

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Nine. Making connections.

Bob took a quick look around the park, watching as twilight faded to darkness. He'd looked for cameras but hadn't seen any. Stepping off the sidewalk and walking around a boulder, he opened a portal and fell into his inventory.

Monroe slammed against his legs, nearly knocking him over as almost fifty pounds of kitty expressed his pleasure at being reunited with his human.

Bob had tried to explain to Monroe that he couldn't wander around in his massive form, but as Monroe was a cat, he didn't understand.

So, Bob had shrunk him down to normal kitty size, which Monroe had objected to. After several hours of trial and error, Monroe had realized that the new rule was, if he was outside of his human-servant's space, he would be smaller. As Monroe liked being bigger, he chose instead to stay in the inventory space, well pleased with its recent expansion.

Bob had intended to set up his new pc, but the lure of playtime with Monroe was irresistible. His buddy had been stuck in there all day, after all.

Checking his mana, Bob created his laser pointer, and the games began as Monroe chased the elusive red dot, frantically batting at his prey.

Back and forth, over the bed, onto the desk, across the stove, which was fortunately not on at the moment, and into the shower. Monroe leaped and dashed, showcasing the agility and speed that had only been enhanced by his larger, more powerful form.

Half an hour later, Monroe was done playing and had curled up on the bed, where he was working to clean himself.

Bob unboxed the laptop and was hoping the damn thing was charged when he heard a ripping sound.

Looking down, he saw that Monroe had managed to wedge his head and shoulders into the laptop box, and he now lay partially in the box, tail swishing.

"I should pick up some extra-large boxes for you," Bob muttered as the laptop powered up, showing a fifty-percent charge.

He counted himself fortunate that Microsoft hadn't released a new operating system yet as he went through the familiar process of setting up Windows 10, right up until the point where he needed to connect to the internet.

Bob checked his new phone.

No signal. Also, it was down to seventy percent battery life, likely because it had been searching for a signal for the past two hours.

With a sigh, Bob closed the lid of the laptop, picked it up, and opened another Portal to his Arcane Depths.

He needed a few minutes in the Dungeon to regain his mana.

The first floor of his Arcane Depths had a mana density that produced level thirty monsters and was therefore effectively useless to him. As a result, he'd set up the entire floor to only grow plants. He wasn't certain yet if they would be plant monsters, although he had his suspicions.

He was hoping to bring some seeds in and plant them. Oranges, lemons, limes, peaches, apples, and pears all played a role in his imagined orchard.

But for now, Bob simply sat at the entrance, waiting patiently for a minute or so while his mana recovered.

He expected that this would become a familiar process, as while he had two hundred and twenty mana, he could burn through it very quickly.

His mana full again, he portaled out of his Arcane Depths, emerging behind the boulder. He walked back around to the path and walked down to a bench he'd noticed earlier. Sitting down, he pulled out his phone, and confirmed that he had a full signal bar, navigated to the settings menu, and turned on the hotspot feature before opening the laptop again. He connected to the phone and completed the setup.

He fired up Microsoft Edge, and immediately downloaded Google Chrome, installed it, and signed into his Gmail, noting with pleasure that the account was still open.

He chuckled grimly at the biweekly newsletter from Fermilab. They'd thought they'd killed him, but they hadn't taken him off the mailing list.

He started to compose a new email.

Dave,

I know it's been years, but I was wondering if you still played D&D? I'm finally in a place where I have time to actually spend playing, and if anything, my interest in the game has only grown, especially in recent years. Shoot me an email, or text me.

Best,

Bob

He hadn't known quite where to start, but he had known Dave and the rest of the group, at least for a little while. Bob had decided to start with them before looking for a random gaming group to induct.

Bob fired up a fresh tab and started searching for local gaming shops. If he didn't hear back from Dave, he'd have a fallback at least.

His next search was for the local VFW. He'd considered the VA, but he'd need to explain his presence there to people with computers who would want to log his visit. The detective had been non-specific as to how long it would take for him to be officially returned to life, and that was the sort of attention he didn't need.

The local VFW, though, he could probably get into without too much fuss. Maybe. At the very least, they weren't going to be logging his presence.

Bob yawned and noted the time, seeing that it was nearly eleven at night. Closing the laptop and pocketing his phone, he headed back down the path and around the boulder, where he dropped back into his inventory, stripped down, and slid into bed, navigating his lower body carefully around a napping Monroe.

One of the things he'd found initially irritating but later relaxing about Thayland was that while they had clocks, they didn't live by them.

Bob was awoken the next morning by a rather insistent paw batting at his nose.

He tried to roll over, but Monroe unleashed a plaintive cry of despair, the likes of which could only be the result of a tragically empty food bowl.

Bob sat up and looked at Monroe, who was sitting next to the bed, fluffy tail swishing slowly.

"Breakfast time, eh?" Bob asked as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

Monroe didn't respond but instead padded over to where his food bowl and ever-flowing water dish were located, right next to the stove.

"I know," Bob muttered as he stood and stretched, "you're starving," he walked over to his stasis box and opened it, pulling a bowl of diced fish out, "practically wasting away," he finished as he slid the fresh fish into Monroe's bowl.

The big Maine-Coone started to purr as he settled into his meal while Bob sat down beside him, taking the opportunity to deliver a thorough petting.

After a few minutes, Bob stood back up and attended to his own breakfast before showering and shaving.

His morning ablutions complete, he equipped his armor, picked up his staff, and hoisted Monroe onto his shoulders, the plus-sized kitty clicking into place on the Makres.

Bob pushed mana into the pattern for a portal, dropping through the twist of blue-black magic, and into the third floor of his Arcane Depths.

Looking around, he was pleased to see that the Dungeon had grown a number of small bushes and trees, separated into copses with swathes of tall grass between them.

He headed over to the nearest mana pool, casting a barraged summoned UtahRaptor spell, bringing into being a pack of raptors. Settling down at the edge of the pool, he pulled out his chair and started putting together the persistent effects that would ensure his less often used skills still advanced to his level.josei

Despite the thousands of mana crystals he still had leftover from building the Dungeon and Adventurers Guild in Glacier Valley, he knew that he'd need to either push to level thirty-six or, alternatively, he'd need to make a lateral move to become another species.

Either way, he'd need crystals, and spending an hour every morning was hardly an inconvenience, especially given how powerful his UtahRaptor had become.

Summon: UtahRaptor(Jake) Tier: 5 Size: 5 Level: 62 Weapon Hardness: 166.32 Hide hardness: 155.52 Strength: 419 Mana: 298 Armor: 2602 Coordination: 419 Stamina: 905 Claw Damage: 9481 Endurance: 280 Health: 41306 Bite Damage: 9213 Intelligence: 138 Movement: 1840 Wisdom: 138 Dodge 2077 Fleetness 2 Beauty: 144 Summoning Mastery 2.16 Caster Value / 2 363 Arcane Familiar Bonus 0.16 Natural Attack 2 Fire Affinity Abjuration Affinity Dimensional Affinity Natural Armor 2 Fire Strike Reinforce Armor Disruptive Strike Dodge 2 Fire Aura Eldritch Shield Flight Toughness 1.1 Teleport Melee 2

Jake was an absolute unit. Seeing the numbers made Bob appreciate just how devastating a tier seven monster really was. Bob had done the math, and despite having leveled up his dodge skill, and his armor skill, and his armor type skill, and his increased health from dumping his extra attribute points into Endurance, he would still die in one hit from Jake.

The good news was that he was more than capable of defending himself from monsters equal to his level.

Bob pulled Monroe down into his lap and started brushing him as his pack of UtahRaptors chewed through the bunnidillos, which had a quick respawn and were fairly consistent on the coalescence rate of mana crystals, running steadily at five percent.

After an hour of kitty devotion and monster murder, Bob slid Monroe back into place and tucked away his chair before heading back to the entrance to the Dungeon floor. His raptor pack had handled two pools at once, averaging one monster killed every three seconds, or twenty monsters a minute, for a total of twelve hundred monsters an hour. He'd gathered sixty mana crystals for his troubles.

Bob dropped his persistent effects, regained his mana, stored his armor and cat back in his inventory space, equipped his clothing, and then portaled out behind the boulder.

It had turned out that when Bob was actually in his inventory space, he couldn't equip items automatically.

Fishing out his wallet, Bob pulled Detective Hanson's card out, then dialed the number on the card. The phone rang four times before Hanson picked up.

"Hanson," the gruff detective answered.

"Good morning, Detective," Bob said, "this is Robert Whitman; I wanted to call and provide you with my cellular number, in case you needed to reach me."

He heard the detective shuffling paperwork as the man responded, repeating Bob's new cell phone number back to him, "Is that the right number? Can't always trust caller id," Hanson muttered.

"Yes, that's correct, detective," Bob replied, "if any issues arise regarding my... legal resurrection, please let me know."

"Will do," Hanson said, "I appreciate you giving me a way to contact you; I'll reach out if anything comes up."

"Thank you," Bob responded, "I hope you have a nice, quiet morning, goodbye."

Looking down at his phone, Bob decided to open up his Gmail and see if Dave had responded.

He was assuming that the man still checked his .edu email from his UCLA days. It was always possible that he only checked that account periodically, as Bob had tended to.

Seeing a new message brought a smile to his face. He really hadn't been looking forward to having to recruit his first batch of volunteers cold turkey.

Bob,

Have to admit I'm a little surprised to hear from you after all these years. Yeah, we still play; it's one of the things that has kept us together for so long. We normally play on Sunday evenings; how about you meet up with us at that old Denny's on Friday night at seven, and we can catch up.

Dave

Well, it wasn't exactly an invitation to join their gaming group, but then again, Bob wasn't really looking to play. It was hard to get excited about D&D when your job was quite literally killing magical monsters. With magic.

There was the minor issue that he was in Illinois, and Dave had suggested meeting up in California. Nothing that couldn't be solved by Amtrak and a hundred and fifty dollars, however.

Bob checked his phone to confirm that it was, in fact, Thursday morning. Nodding, he headed towards the bus stop, his head down as he navigated to the Amtrak website to buy a ticket. It took about twenty hours to go from Chicago to LA, and he'd need to make a couple of bus transfers to get to the station.

As he waited at the bus stop, he logged into the Bank of America app to check his balance. He had a little over twelve hundred dollars left after his seven hundred dollar spending spree at Best Buy the day before.

Sitting down at the bus stop, he tucked his phone away and considered just how easy it was to fall back into the habits of his old life on Earth. Walking around with his head down, his shoulders hunched, one eye on his phone while he tried to stay aware of likely threats. It was exhausting in a way that even fourteen-hour days in the Dungeon, fighting for his life, couldn't compare to.

He was going to save as many people as he could, but coming back to Earth had firmly cemented the fact that he didn't belong here anymore.

Bob was shocked when his phone rang.

Taking it out of his pocket, he saw BCPD on the caller id and answered the call.

"Robert Whitman here," Bob said uncertainly.

"Mr. Whitman," Detective Hanson's voice came through clearly, "I wanted to give you a heads up - I just received a call from the attorney who represented your mother in her suit against Fermilab, the guy's name is Lieberman, and he's looking to contact you."

Bob sighed and was surprised to find out that the microphone in his new phone was much better than his old one, as Hanson chuckled.

"Lawyers," the Detective scoffed, "anyway, I didn't give him your number, so if he finds it, that isn't on me, but I'll text you his if you want."

"Thanks, Detective," Bob replied, "I'd appreciate that, although I can't promise that I'll call him soon; I just got in contact from some old friends from UCLA, and I'm taking the train to go visit them, so I'll be out of town for a bit, but I'll stay reachable."

"At least you're not disappearing to parts unknown for a year and a half," Hanson grunted.

"I can leave town, right?" Bob asked, "you have my records, so you know this is the first time I've really interacted with the police beyond getting mugged a couple of times."

"Yeah, you can leave town," Hanson replied, "just keep your cellphone around."

"Thanks again," Bob said, "Hopefully, no more work pops up from my case."

"Your lips to God's ears," Hanson muttered, "Have a safe trip," he finished and ended the call.

Bob fiddled with the phone as he waited for the bus, grinning when he found the kindle app and downloaded it. His old phone had been so very old that the app wouldn't run on it.

The bus pulled up, and Bob paid his fare before sitting down, knowing he was in for an hour and change ride to the central hub, which was both the beginning and end of the line for the route.

Logging into his Amazon account, he paid for his Kindle Unlimited membership, as it had expired during his extended absence. Picking a likely-looking detective novel, he started reading.

Bob managed to catch the three pm train. He sat down across from an elderly woman who was, completely keeping within stereotypes, knitting.

As he sank into his seat, his fellow passenger smiled over at him.

"Good afternoon," she said, "I'm Isabelle; it looks like we'll be riding the rails together for a while."

"Bob," he replied, returning the smile with an awkward smile of his own.

"What has you heading to California?" Isabelle asked, her knitting needles steadily working despite her gaze not leaving Bob.

"Meeting some old friends from my college days," Bob replied, "it's been a few years."

"That's nice," she continued to smile, "it's important to keep in contact with the people who knew you when you were young," she continued, "they help to remind you that you aren't really old yet, despite the gray hairs."

Bob nodded, unsure as to the sudden and hitherto unexpected occurrence of strangers talking to him.

Detective Hanson, Kelly from Best Buy, and now Isabelle. That was three people showing more interest and courtesy towards him in one day than he'd normally experienced in a year, at least here on Earth.

Bob settled back into his seat, watching the city flash by as the train rushed down the tracks.