Moving Parts

     Neopian Adventurers Must Adapt to Changing Times or Be Buried With History

     by Corey Copperbottom, Neopian Times correspondent

     NEOPIA CENTRAL — A long, long time ago, an especially unusual Neopian Times article was penned by an especially unusual predecessor of mine, one Tanya Deanyn. Justifiably regarded as something of a sensationalist in her day, Deanyn had made it her mission to scout the next big adventure hero (bear in mind, this was before the discovery of several now well-trodden locales such as Geraptiku and Moltara, and certainly before the well-publicized budget cuts earlier this year forced the Defenders of Neopia to shutter its doors) and subsequently use the platform afforded to her by the Neopian Times to skyrocket her champion (and presumably herself as well) to fame and glory. Why she picked a scrawny, ghost-hunting teenage Shoyru—barely out of high school and with all the charisma of an Almost Gummy Rat (Grape)—remains a mystery to this day. And as it’s now been several years since anyone at NT Headquarters last heard a peep from Ms. Deanyn, it seems doubtful anyone will be solving that particular mystery soon, if ever.

     But the mystery was an inescapable part of life back then. Deanyn’s “Ghostchaser” stories—pulpy tales precipitated from the chemical reaction between a quirky ghost-hunting youth and a mediocre writer with ambition so inexhaustible and gloriously out of proportion with the scope of her work that it frequently approached megalomania—passed for journalism because they were exactly what the average Neopian wanted to read with their morning cup of joe. In that changing world, where the unexpected lurked around every corner, people wanted to know that there was someone out there keeping them safe. Tanya Deanyn’s work was moderately popular. For a while, Kiyoshi Paco, Deanyn’s eponymous “Ghostchaser”, became a household name.

     Then the market crashed.

     Almost overnight, the jobs dried up. Danger and mystery are expensive, and citizens learned to be safe, rather than sorry. Suspected pirate hideouts were demolished, city walls got taller. Royal mages were called in to cast anti-ghost charms around settlements prone to haunting. Adventurers like Paco, who had until that point put food on their tables largely through charitable donations and the goodwill of those ordinary Neopians they ostensibly served to protect, found themselves in the difficult position of needing neopoints to survive but being incapable of earning them. Before young Paco fell off the map, records show he was making minimum wage as a clerk at the Guild of Explorers headquarters here in Neopia Central. What became of him after his scant five months of employment there came to an abrupt end is unknown, because he never again achieved anything worth reporting.

     And he’s certainly not the only would-be hero to suffer this ignoble decline in relevancy. Around the globe, that old image of the classic adventurer—his grin roguish and his collar popped as he fearlessly charts a course through the unknown—has faded from the minds of modern Neopians. The current generation is more likely to know Jake the Explorer from a cereal box than they are to recall the legendary jungle adventures that made him the early face of the Guild of Explorers in the first place. For what is there left unknown that’s even worth knowing? Does the discovery of the tomb of some long-dead king in the Lost Desert help me run my tax-filing business in Shenkuu? Will the temporary banishment of a ghost from a house in Neovia lower my rent in Neopia Central?

     As a society we have well and truly moved beyond the childish need for adventurers to come and save us, and it’s high time we admit that—lest we fall victim all over again to some opportunistic new “reporter” who’s just a couple coconuts shy of a coconut shy.

     After all, everyone has to grow up someday—even ghost hunters.

      One of the last holdouts of adventure was, of course, the Guild of Explorers, whose venerable headquarters stood near Neopia Central’s old town centre on emerald green lawns that were just a touch overgrown, its huge double doors flanked by marble columns whose numerous nicks and scuffs were only noticeable on close inspection. It was within the hallowed halls of this prestigious institution that a split Aisha named Tyra Magena was spending a pleasant summer evening enjoying a small adventure of her own.

      “This will be the end of exploration as we know it!”

      The Aisha responded to the heated declaration with practised nonchalance, letting her hands slide down along the burnished wooden edges of her lectern until her arms were fully extended, framing the roughly brick-shaped metal gadget on display. Her expression was perfectly calibrated to convey a sort of dignified indulgence as she peered over the top of the device at the belligerent Tuskaninny in the first row. He was on his feet (so to speak), his angrily puffed red cheeks making him look very much like some variety of freshly boiled seafood.

      “Mr. Blom, as we have discussed at many other points in this series,” said Tyra, “Exploration will live on as long as we explorers live on to do it. My invention will keep all of us alive longer, so we can spend more time doing just that.”

      Scoffs and retorts broke out across the packed lecture hall.

      “This conversation is going nowhere! I can’t believe the Guild is still humouring this ludicrous proposal!” Mr. Blom the Tuskaninny whipped his head around, appealing to the blue Kougra seated at the moderator’s desk next to Tyra. “Jake old boy, I beg of you. Put an end to this sham and send this deceitful technophile back to her evil lab.”

      “The Guild reminds all members that personal attacks are not tolerated in the course of an academic debate,” Jake intoned, spinning a pen between his fingers absently. “Your concerns have been noted, Mr. Blom, but as this is an open forum, you must remember that not everyone here shares them. A portable communicator like one being presented by Ms. Magena would make many of your fellow explorers feel safer in the field.”

      “That’s right! Some of us aren’t as young as we used to be!” shouted a grey-bearded Ogrin near the back of the hall. “If I fall into a pit trap and can’t get up again, I should jolly well like to be able to call for a lift!”

      “Have we really gotten so soft?” A grizzled Skeith a few rows away had twisted around on the bench so she could shake her walking stick menacingly in the Ogrin’s direction. “Back in my day, we’d fall into three pit traps before breakfast on most adventures! And we’d like it.”

      “Maybe that’s why your joints sound like Scarblade’s hull every time you move!”

      “The Guild reminds all memb—“

      “Peril builds character!”

      A clear but pleasant voice spoke up. “I think we’re all being a little selfish.”

      At once, the bickering died out, and a sheepish silence fell over the hall as all eyes turned to a young Spotted Lupe at the end of the first row. With her wildly curled orange hair and bright, earnest expression, she made a striking impression that seemed to effortlessly command the respect of the other guild members. She closed the notebook she had been writing in, wholly unbothered by the sudden attention on her as she continued, “The whole point of a guild is to connect as many different people as possible under a common goal, isn’t it? We’re all very different people, it’s just silly to assume we’re all going to agree on something like this. We all have our preferred tools and techniques for exploring, and Tyra’s comm would just be one more option. No one’s forcing you to use one.”

      “Well said, Aley,” said Jake after a moment’s silence. “As usual. We’d all do well to remember that the point of this series is to generate conversation about the applications of technology for the modern adventurer, not to debate the validity of the technology itself.”

      “How do we even know it will work?” demanded Mr. Blom. The colour of his face had become marginally less alarming, but he still stood, now pointing accusingly at the silvery brick on Tyra’s lectern. “If we pin all our hopes on some little box that runs out of batteries right when we need it, we’ll be worse off than if we never had it at all!”

      “Tyra wouldn’t do that,” Aley said. “If she says it’s gonna work, it’s gonna work.”

      Jake sighed. “Once again, Mr. Blom, our speaker’s credentials are not up for debate. Ms. Magena’s expertise speaks for itself. Many people in attendance tonight, including Aley and myself, have used her inventions before and can attest to the reliability of her workmanship.” He removed his fedora, running his hands through his hair. “Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, so long as this technology takes a support role to the people actually doing the exploring, I’m all for it. Adventure should be about challenging yourself, I agree—using all your senses to experience everything the world has to offer. But you can only do that if you’re not spending all your time worrying about getting lost, or hurt, or worse. Let’s face it. Guild enrollment is down, and it gets lower every year. Anything that gets more people out there is a good thing in my books.”

      Tyra nodded, speaking up. “And remember, the specific device being presented here is just a prototype. It’s perfectly functional already, but it’s only one example of the kind of utility technology could bring to our discipline.”

      “Not to keep kicking a dead Whinny about it,” drawled a rugged-looking Island Shoyru with his boots propped up on the back of the row in front of him. “But there shouldn’t be a buffer between an explorer and the unknown. Call me old-fashioned if you want. But adventure with convenience is just tourism.” Murmured noises of agreement followed his remark, but Jake cut them off.

      “I can see we’ve reached the end of any productive discourse for tonight, so let’s leave it there,” the Kougra said, putting on his hat as he rose. “As a reminder, this series continues tomorrow night at 6, when we’ll all have the distinct honour of going through this all over again. Thank you for your time once more, Ms. Magena.” He strode across to her and shook her hand to scattered applause, although an equally audible rumble of frustrated muttering filled their ears as the attendees began to shuffle back through the tiered seating towards the exits.

      “Sick of us yet?” Jake asked her under the commotion.

      “Are you kidding?” Tyra flashed him a grin as she stacked her papers and grabbed her prototype comm from the lectern. “I live for this.”

      On her way out through the darkened foyer, she was unsurprised and a little smug to see Mr. Blom lurking near the open front doors, looking agitated. At the first sight of her, he pounced.

      “How many lectures has it been now, Magena? How many more until you’re satisfied?” A string of spittle swung from his moustache, glittering in the moonlight. “Are you trying to punish us for something?”

      “Mr. Blom,” Tyra said with a dramatic sigh. “It’s 10:30. This lecture was supposed to wrap up over an hour ago. Go home.”

      The Tuskaninny moved to block her path. “I think you want us to fall apart. You’re trying to make us fail like you and your little Ghostchasers gang failed all those years ago. Oh yes, there’s no point in denying it. We know all about it. Don’t you read the Neopian Times?”

      “Yes, and there’s very little I enjoy doing less,” Tyra said, sidestepping Mr. Blom while he continued to bluster and froth.

      “Don’t walk away from the truth, Magena!” he yelled after her, even as she started down the steps outside. “You haven’t heard the last from me!”

      “I’m counting on it,” she called back over her shoulder. It’s what’s paying my rent.

      Kiyoshi was just getting to Thyme when he heard keys at the door.

      “Hey,” Tyra’s greeting sounded especially tired tonight. She stepped into the apartment and slung her briefcase down on the chair by the door, then looked around and blinked. “Wow,” she said. “Did you clean up in here again?”

      “Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess,” the Shoyru replied absentmindedly. He fished out the jar that he’d just spotted hiding behind the nearly full spice rack and scanned its label, which proudly declared its contents to be Cinnamon!. Suddenly overwhelmed by the cruel machinations of destiny, he groaned, sinking into the bar stool and surrendering his head to the oblivion offered by his arms.

      Through the depths of his despair, he was vaguely aware of Tyra coming closer, then stopping when she was in front of the kitchen island he’d spent the last hour labouring away at.

      “Kiyoshi,” came Tyra’s voice after a couple of seconds. “Are you alphabetizing my spice rack?”

      “It didn’t work,” he said wretchedly, lifting his head just enough to cast a withering glare upon the jar clutched in his fist. He used it to gesture at the top row of the spice rack, where the neatly organized little jars had indeed failed to preserve even the slimmest space in their lineup that might now accommodate their fallen brethren Cinnamon!. “It’s okay. I’ll start over.” And with that, he grimly began the process of removing the jars from the rack.

      “I don’t even cook,” Tyra said. “You know that.”

      “I didn’t have anything else to do. I finished the bookshelf earlier today.”

      “The… which one?” Tyra said, dumbfounded.

      “Oh. The last one. All of them.”

      It’s going to take me years to figure out where anything is, Tyra thought, but managed to calm her voice before she spoke again. “Kiyoshi, you really don’t have to do any of this.”

      “I‘m not doing anything else,” he mumbled, focussing on his domain of spices.

      Tyra slid onto the stool next to him. “Did you ever meet up with that girl with the haunted swimming pool?”

      “Yeah,” Kiyoshi said without looking at her. “False alarm. It was a setup for her podcast.”

      “Another podcast?”

      “She said she’d pay me in exposure. Like I need any more of that.”

      Tyra struggled to think of something to say. “There’s gotta be a legitimate haunting somewhere in Neopia Central. One of these days someone will really need you.”

      “The one time there was actually a ghost, the ghost was in on it too.”

      “Kiyoshi—“

      “Those paint brushes should be illegal.”

      “Kiyoshi, it’s not your fault that people aren’t being honest with you.”

      “But it is my fault for not being honest with myself.” The jar of Cinnamon! rolled off the counter and clattered to the floor. “If people don’t need a professional ghost hunter anymore, that’s fine. That’s good, actually. But I need to be able to move on with the rest of the world. I thought if I could keep that job at the Guild of Explorers, at least that’s kind of related to something I’m almost good at, but…” He shrugged his shoulders heavily, slumping onto the countertop again.

      “They didn’t deserve you,” Tyra said automatically, but Kiyoshi’s wings curled around him further and she immediately knew it had been the wrong thing to say. By all the light of Fyora, she was bad at this.

      “I just feel bad staying here for free,” Kiyoshi mumbled.

      “You paid the whole rent for like the first three months after you sold your Neohome,” Tyra said firmly.

      “And then never again.”

      “Yeah, but you can’t help it if the Neohome market is abysmal. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My parents are still paying half my rent, even after all the times I’ve asked them to stop.” She shrugged. “I’m probably making more than them at this point, with all the honorariums I’m getting from the GOE. Seriously. Don’t worry about the rent. Besides, I’m happy you’re here. You’re a good roommate and a good friend.”

      He looked up. “I am glad you’re doing well, at least.” He gave her a small smile. “One of the three of us had to be successful.”

      “I think Jeri qualifies as successful,” Tyra said, remembering how the final member of their old ghostchasing party baulked at the prospect of a steady job with the Guild of Explorers and ran away to Krawk Island with his old treasure-hunting partner Aidne, “if getting as far away from a desk job as possible counts as his measure of success, which I think it does.”

      She hopped off her stool to pick up the Cinnamon!. “I know this is going to sound ungrateful,” she said. “But for what it’s worth, I still don’t really feel successful. There’s so much more I could be doing with this tech. I hate feeling like I’m not allowed to take it as far as I know I can.”

      Kiyoshi sat up a little, studying her. “NaKaranth?”

      Tyra sighed. “Yeah.”

      Tyra’s first communicator—the clunky original that she had taken on countless excursions over the years, that had gotten their old team out of countless scrapes—had been a collaboration between herself and an unusually sociable Alien Aisha named NaKaranth. He had scavenged the components for her comm from space junk he found floating around the Virtupets station. Without his help, she would never have been able to build anything like it, and NaKaranth knew it. His people had rules about the dispersal of advanced technology to Neopians, rules that she had consistently persuaded him to bend in her favour. But her plans to mass-produce and distribute a smaller version of her own comm had definitely crossed a line. Even though (as she had attempted to explain to him) the inner workings of her prototypes were ‘paraphrased’ and not ‘transcribed’ from the original comm, the situation had stressed the Alien out enough that he had jumped planet and returned to the Homeworld. He once mentioned that some of the snoopier Homeworlders had started asking questions about her, but at the time she had stupidly internalized it as a compliment.

      So now here she was: tiptoeing along on an annoyingly short leash that she couldn’t bring herself to break. She hadn’t talked to NaKaranth in over a year but she still found that she was unable to fully dive in and explore the comm to its fullest potential—somehow knowing that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself, and the already strained threads of their friendship would be torn beyond any hope of repair.

      Tyra realized that Kiyoshi was still watching her. To stop herself from feeling self-conscious, she said suddenly, “Do you ever feel like your whole life has just been packed for a trip you haven’t taken yet?”

      Kiyoshi swivelled his stool back and forth, laughing a little. “I’ve often felt the train could hurry up a little, yeah.”

      “Very inconsiderate of it to leave us waiting at the station all these years.”

      “It’s like. If this is the real world everyone told us we needed to be a part of, why is it so hard to find anywhere we fit?”

      Tyra sighed. She placed the Cinnamon! randomly on the third shelf of the spice rack, which made Kiyoshi frown. She propped her elbows on the counter and leaned back languidly. “We’ll get there eventually. We both will. Me? I just need to have a stroke of genius and find the perfect battery for my comm, and then it’ll be smooth sailing.” She made a half-hearted pantomime of a boat sailing by with her hand.

      Kiyoshi seemed unconvinced, but interested. “What, um. What do you need for the battery?”

      Tyra rolled her shoulders. “The original comm has this big crystal wired into it that feeds into every system in the machine. NaKaranth called it Zigzagium and I still don’t know if he was lying. But I can’t get more of it anyway, so I have to find a substitute. The placeholder battery I’ve got in the prototype is…” Tyra considered her words. “Bad. Like, really bad. It needs to be plugged in every few hours to recharge. Ask me how well I think that would go over with the Guild if they found out.”

      “Could you use magic somehow? Is that weird?” Kiyoshi said abruptly.

      Tyra laughed, but Kiyoshi pressed on, even as his cheeks flushed. “I mean. I know I don’t know anything about magic, but you’ve been studying it on the side, haven’t you? I don’t think Alien Aishas can do magic, so maybe it’s something only you could think of? Can you even combine magic and technology, or is there like. Some cosmic rule against it?”

      “No, it’s a good idea,” Tyra said. “I’ve been thinking about it. But it’s tricky. The more complicated the solution, the less likely it is that it’ll work. The new comms are so small, that there’s no space for any extraneous parts. Every single one of them needs to be the perfect match for the job it’s meant to do. And if I’m going to try working magic into it, I barely even know where to begin. I’ve got this whole list of materials and reagents I’d like to try experimenting with somewhere along the line, but I haven’t really had a chance to go out and buy any of them yet.” She yawned. “These stupid lectures are eating up all my time. Prepping the lectures, delivering the lectures, staying to give witness reports after the lectures…”

      “Can I see it?”

      She looked at him blearily. “The witness reports?”

      “The list,” said Kiyoshi. He was sitting up straight now, eyes brighter than Tyra had seen them in a long time. “Can I borrow it?”

      Tyra blinked at him, then rummaged around in an inner pocket of her lurid green overcoat until she found a crumpled piece of note paper. “I guess you can,” she said hesitantly, “but listen, Kiyoshi, don’t worry about it. I can get this stuff myself. It’s my problem anyway. I just need to stop losing track of time in my workshop, and be better about sticking to my schedule, and maybe start waking up a little earlier…”

      She didn’t remember closing her eyes, but the next time she opened them with a start that nearly had her slipping off her stool, Kiyoshi was standing in front of her, already holding the tattered list in his hand.

      “Tyra,” he pleaded. “For the love of Fyora please let me do this for you.”

      The first few items on the list were easy enough, but by noon the next day, Kiyoshi started running into problems.

      “Angelpi doesn’t lay eggs, and even if they did, I wouldn’t give you one!” snapped the green Usul at the Petpet Shop, clambering onto a stepstool to toss a handful of seeds into the cage of squawking Pawkeets that hung over the checkout counter.

      “They don’t?” Kiyoshi said uncertainly, but only the excited screeches of the Pawkeets answered him. The Angelpuss on the counter tottered over and rubbed against his hand. He scratched it under its chin and it purred contentedly. “Then where do baby Angelpi come from?”

      The Usul hopped down from the stepstool and snatched up the Angelpuss, which yowled indignantly. “They come from the Petpet Shop,” she said acidly. “Which, I’ll remind you, is the name of the business, my business, that you decided to wander into and monopolize with your weird questions. If you’re not here to buy a Petpet, then scram. Your sloppy clothes and bad vibes are upsetting the Petpets.” She pointed sharply at the Pawkeets.

      Kiyoshi wondered if the vibes that could do anything but upset the Pawkeets had even been discovered by modern science. He glanced at the list and decided to try again. “Do you sell Puppyblew tails?”

      “OUT.”

      Back out on the bustling, sun-warmed streets of Neopia Central, Kiyoshi grumbled to himself. “Why is everything to do with magic so inherently suspicious…”

      He glanced down at the list. Still, a good few things to check for, and there were plenty of Neopoints left in his belt pouch from what Tyra had given him. So next on the list was…

      “Egg hot dog,” Kiyoshi said to himself, shoving the note back in his coat pocket. A couple of shoppers casually gave him an extra wide berth as they hurried past. “Okay.”

      Just outside of Neopian Fresh Foods, a clamour from inside the store stopped Kiyoshi in his tracks. More yelling, followed by a crash. He had just taken a hesitant step towards the sun-faded flyers plastered all over the front of the cheeseburger-shaped building when the front doors swung open and a greenish-blue figure came flying out at him. The Shoyru gave a choked gasp and stumbled backwards as that someone collided directly with him, then went straight through, instantly freezing the air in his lungs. For Kiyoshi, the sensation of the ghost passing through his body was as familiar as the reflex that had his hand reaching for his slingshot before he remembered with a pang that he had left it back at Tyra’s place.

      While the Shoyru wheeled, catching his breath, an enormous jar of purple baby food came soaring out the front doors, falling short of the streaking tail of the ghost and exploding on the sidewalk near Kiyoshi’s feet. As the ghost vanished through the wall of a nearby shop, the Chia shopkeeper came stomping out of the food store, nearly knocking Kiyoshi into the crash site of broken glass and purple goop as he did so.

      “And STAY OUT!” the Chia hollered after the ghost, shaking the handle of a broom in the air, although not a trace of the figure remained. The Chia glared at the wall the ghost had passed through, then jammed his chef’s hat back onto his head and marched back into his shop.

      Speechless, Kiyoshi glanced around at the other Neopians on the street and was again taken aback to see most of them already recovering, murmuring to each other in unconcerned tones and shrugging their shoulders before they continued on to their destinations. Kiyoshi glanced one more time at the wall where the ghost had vanished, then spun on his heel and caught the door of the food shop before it could close.

      “Wait!” he said, staggering into the store and almost slipping on some of the baby food that had apparently gotten under his shoe. He caught himself on a rack of bread products, struggling to catch the loaves before they tumbled to the floor. “Wait, what was that?”

      The Chia turned around, his expression falling into a disapproving scowl as he glanced from the loaves bouncing out of Kiyoshi’s hands to the streaks of purple across the floor behind him. “That’s my own personal poltergeist, that’s what that is,” said the Chia shortly.

      Kiyoshi’s shoes squeaked as he took a step forward. “That was a ghost, wasn’t it? A real, actual ghost?”

      “Boy, you city kids sure don’t catch on quick, do ya?”

      “You were chasing it away.”

      “Well, obviously!”

      “So it wasn’t a customer? Wasn’t just someone painted ghost for… for personal reasons?”

      The Chia laughed incredulously, retreating behind his cash register and replacing his broom against the wall. “A customer? He doesn’t have any money! Not that it stops him from coming in every day and trying to buy the same blasted container of Flotsam Flakes over and over again!”

      Kiyoshi’s mind whirred. “Every day?”

      “Every day, same time, same jar of Flotsam Flakes! Been going on for months! I tell ya, I’m being pranked from beyond the grave! And he has the audacity to check his stupid see-through pockets every single time and act like he’s surprised he still doesn’t have the Neopoints. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he didn’t even know he was a ghost!”

      Kiyoshi slammed a handful of Neopoints onto the counter with so much force the Chia jumped. Glancing suspiciously between Kiyoshi and the pile of coins, the shopkeeper said, “What’s this for?”

      “Gimme a jar of Flotsam Flakes.”

To be continued…