World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (24 page)

Jennifer Woosley turns
away from his desk without comment.
Why
does Luke hate me
, she wonders silently as the intern
tries to put some distance away from Luke’s desk, while desperately
holding back her tears. She’s been spending the entire semester
trying to get this cute looking guy to open up, but Luke has been
downright frosty. Even though he’s a bit on the short side, at
around five foot two inches tall, Luke is young and handsome looking
with a robust bronze colored, smooth looking skin, thick dark brown
hair, and matching eyes. He’s easily the hottest guy in the office,
by far! When he looks at her, he seems to burn with an intensity that
simply makes her swoon!

Jennifer finally makes
it to the rest room, and quickly turns on the faucet to splash some
cold water on her face, even though it ruins her mascara. How could
she flirt with Luke if he absolutely refuses to socialize with
Jennifer? Even worse, she has a feeling that Luke will give her poor
grades in his evaluation of her work once the internship ends.
Jennifer pulls her head up to look in the mirror, and sees Ellen
Mateo, the office manager!

The middle-aged woman
is dressed conservatively, in a dark brown lady’s jacket and
matching pants, comfortable red colored ballerina flats, with a
creamy colored blouse with the top button unbuttoned. Her long sandy
hair is bundled and neatly pinned to the back of her head. “What’s
the matter, Jennifer?” Ellen asks while giving the college intern a
reassuring hug.

The twenty year old
shakes her head, while wiping her tears.

“It’s Lucious,
right?” the manager asks. She knows Jennifer has a crush on him;
it’s obvious to everyone in the office. While it IS against office
policy for co-workers to date, Ellen wishes that Lucious would
lighten up a little and treat the impressionable, young intern nicer.
“I’ll have a talk with him, don’t worry,” she says with warm
reassurance to the young woman.

“No!” Jennifer
quickly replies while pulling her head up to stare at the office
manager. “I just need to learn to be more professional at work,
like him,” she explains
. I
don’t want to get Luke in trouble,
she thinks.

Ellen smiles warmly,
understanding exactly what the intern is thinking. “Look, I’m
just an office manager. I’m not Lucious’ boss. He doesn’t
report to me. I’m just going to tell him to lighten up a little,”
she says. Ellen sees the intern open her mouth to defend him, and
quickly raises a hand in front of the intern's face to stop the
younger woman from speaking out. “I’m not the only one in the
office who thinks he needs to lighten up. He’s a cold fish to
everyone, and no one really knows what he does after work. He’s
really aloft and keeps to himself. Lucious is not fitting in well
with this office, even though he's been here two years already. I’m
going to use
you
as an excuse to talk about his attitude.
That’s all,” the office manager explains.

Jennifer sighs. “I
can’t talk you out of it?” the college intern asks with
resignation as she slowly sways her head from side to side.

“Nope,” Ellen grins
as she washes her hands.

“Fine,” the intern
sighs, and starts reapplying her makeup around her eyes.

The office manager
grabs some paper towels to dry her hands. As she pulls on the door
handle, she says without looking back, “Don’t take too long.”
Ellen leaves the rest room without waiting for a reply from Jennifer.
The door closes gently behind her.

Ellen walks briskly,
making a beeline straight for Lucious’ desk. “Hey there, got a
moment? We need to talk,” she says.

Lucious looks up and
peers at Ellen through his designer glasses.
What
is it now
, he groans silently. Unfortunately, he can’t
simply blow off the office manager. While Lucious reports to Derek
Mills, his immediate supervisor, Ellen is a twenty year employee in
the company who has personal ties with upper management, including
his boss. She started out as a personal secretary, and moved up the
ranks in the support staff. If Lucious makes Ellen unhappy, his boss
will hear about it. Lucious pulls off his glasses. “What can I do
for you?” he asks calmly.

“I bumped into
Jennifer in the ladies room, and she was crying. Do you know anything
about that?” Ellen asks bluntly.

Lucious’ eyebrows
shoot straight up. “Um, no. Should I?” he asks in befuddlement
while his mind races to his last encounter with the intern when she
dropped the stack of research papers on his desk.

Ellen crosses her arms
and looks at him sternly. “You are aware that she likes you,
right?”

Lucious adjusts his
collar uncomfortably without answering the question.

“I’ll take that as
a ‘yes’ then,” the middle-aged woman replies tartly at his
non-answer. “While I’m not suggesting that you should go out with
her or anything, you could act a little nicer to Jennifer. She
is
a girl, you know,” the office manager reminds him.

Lucious raises his
hands in the air with his palms facing the ceiling, and shrugs
helplessly.
What am I, an ogre?
He resists the temptation to retort with a sarcastic remark to the
older woman. “I’m sort of seeing someone right now, and I just
didn’t want to lead Jennifer on,” he tries to explain his
predicament with exasperation.

Ellen smiles at the
revelation. It’s actually the first time the guy has talked about
his personal life. The office manager savors her little victory for a
quick moment, and turns her game face back on. “I understand that
you’re uncomfortable with being somebody’s crush. But at the same
time, you need to be more professional in how you handle these
interpersonal issues. You’re not a robot, right?” she smiles.

“Of course not,” he
bristles at the comment.

“Good,” Ellen nods.
“Try to be nicer to the interns. That’s all I’m asking from
you. Jennifer and the other kids will be gone before you know it,”
she adds, reminding him that the college internship program will end
in a few weeks.

“Yes, ma’am,” he
salutes. Lucious puts his thin, silver framed glasses back on, and
turns his head back to the computer screen; he starts to work on his
report again.

Thusly dismissed, Ellen
quietly walks away from the financial analyst’s desk.

"Hey honey,"
the long, luscious raven haired woman flashes her dazzling smile in
the computer screen.

"Hi Diana,"
Lucious replies while staring back at the screen. A small webcam is
strategically placed above his computer monitor, allowing the two to
continue their long distance relationship through nightly chats over
the internet.

Diana Lombardi picks up
on her boyfriend's glum mood right away, even though they are
thousands of miles apart, with her in Seattle, Washington and him in
New York City. "What's wrong, honey?" she asks gently,
hoping that he won't get too annoyed with her prying.

The handsome man frowns
slightly. "Is it that obvious?" he asks quietly, deftly
avoiding giving an answer to her question.

The psychology doctoral
student folds her arms and leans back on her chair, while maintaining
her stare straight into her webcam. "Hey buster, you're not
getting off that easily," she quips.

He stares back at her.

After a few seconds,
Diana shrugs her shoulders. "Well mister, if we're just going to
stare at each other, I'd much rather work on my doctoral thesis
instead," she says. The woman starts to reach for the mouse on
her desk to close off the chat program, when Lucious interrupts.
"Wait!"

Keeping a straight
face, she coyly looks back at the screen, and waits for an answer.

The young man grinds
his teeth for a moment, and finally spits out an answer, "Work."

"What about your
job?" she presses him, not at all satisfied with his succinct
answer.

"Supposedly I made
an intern cry today," he admits.

Diana's eyes widen and
blink several times as she processes the answer in her mind.
I
thought he got chewed out by his boss
, she thinks to
herself. Quickly regaining her composure, she tries to imagine the
scene. "What did you do to her?" she asks, suspecting that
the college intern is female.

"Nothing!"
Lucious quickly throws up his hands to proclaim his innocence. "I
was typing out a report for my boss when the intern dropped a heavy
stack of reports on my desk. I forgot what I said to her then, and
she just ran off."

Her suspicion of the
intern's gender confirmed, Diana moves her face closer to her webcam.
"The girl has a crush on you!" the psychology student
exclaimed loudly as she gives him an evil eye. Diana could easily
understand what happened: Lucious didn't pay the love struck kid any
attention, and the intern misinterpreted his cold attitude as total
dislike towards the girl. In reality, his mind was still stuck on the
computer screen, and he could not register the college intern's
physical presence in a meaningful way, at least not enough to
interact with her as a normal human being. Thus, the misunderstanding
led to the poor girl crying. "Did you apologize to her?"
Diana asks while her face is still close to the webcam.

"For what?"
Lucious stares blankly.

"Men!" she
swears. Rolling her eyes, Diana slowly leans back into her chair and
shakes her head. For all his intelligence, her boyfriend can be
incredibly dense and socially inept at times. Thankfully, her
background in psychology, along with the hundreds of hours that she
had spent with him in-game in World of Eternia, has helped Diana
understand Lucious just about as well as anyone on the planet.
Avoiding the temptation to slap herself on the forehead, Diana
exhales slowly to calm herself down. With an even tone of voice, she
says, "Lucious, I want you to take the intern out to lunch
tomorrow."

"Huh?" he
replies with another blank stare.

"Just do it!"
she replies forcefully. "And during lunch, please explain that
you were too engrossed with your report to appreciate her presence
mentally."

Lucious looks back at
Diana, and lowers his eyes. He quietly nods his head.

"Good," she
nods back, trying to avoid gloating at her little victory over the
stubborn man.

Her boyfriend looks up
at Diana. "Do you have time to hang out online tonight?" he
asks, hoping the two spell casters and WoE veteran players could do a
little dungeon crawling even though both players have already hit the
current level sixty player cap in World of Eternia.

Diana shakes her head
sadly. "Sorry, honey. I need to work on my thesis. You could go
in by yourself if you want," she adds quickly, knowing that he
hates to go in solo.

Lucious makes a face at
the suggestion. "Nah, I'd rather not deal with the weird
groupies in Starter Town by myself. I've dragged the reputation of
The Strangers down a few notches already due to my social ineptitude
in handling all the join party requests from other players," he
shrugs.

Lucious makes a face
when he recalls the mini flame war that erupted on the forums when
someone made a post about his rudeness in rejecting the join party
requests, and other players started posting similar experiences. His
girlfriend had to devote a lot of time and energy putting out the
fires. Eventually, this led to some heated debate over the proper
etiquette in offering and declining join party request.

"Well in that
case, I think I'll read an ebook tonight and enjoy a quiet evening
instead," Lucious decides firmly. He is keenly aware that
members of The Strangers are now on the radars of every other player
in the game, especially after EDE created a newsletter glorifying
their deed and sent the newsletter to every player's account mailbox.
Lucious in particular has a big red bull’s eye on his back, with
rumors of a huge bounty for a successful assassination of his
character by a player killer. Hence there is no point for him to go
in by himself, unless he wants to start a new character from scratch
and pretend to be a newbie to the game. Of course, he has no interest
in doing that, not after committing thousands of hours building up
his Elementalist mage character.

Diana smiles warmly at
the suggestion, because she just dodged a potential headache of her
boyfriend logging into WoE by himself. "Sounds like a plan. Have
fun!" she teases him.

"Love you,"
Lucious says.

"Love you back,"
she replies and logs off the internet chat program.

Knock-knock!

Diana swivels her head
to the door, and sees a young woman with remarkably similar features
as the occupant of the room. However, the woman at the door has
shoulder length, platinum blonde hair. Diana used to have the same
hair color, but decided to change her looks just to differentiate
herself from her sister.

"What is it,
Priscilla?" Diana groans silently to herself, wondering just how
much of the conversation has been overheard.
I
need to remember to close the door and lock it
, Diana
reminds herself.

The twin sister smiles
mischievously. "Having a lover's quarrel?"

Diana shoots daggers at
her twin while wincing at the explicit confirmation that Priscilla
had overheard much of the conversation between Diana and her
boyfriend! "How long were you eavesdropping outside my room?"
she growls menacingly.

"Oh not long at
all," Priscilla replies innocently, purposely making the remark
vague while knowing that it would only add fuel to the flame. "I
came to remind you to go to the supermarket tomorrow to grab some
groceries; I made a list of stuff to buy and posted it on the fridge
downstairs. Even though tomorrow is Saturday, I have to go into the
office," Priscilla tries to make a face to elicit sympathy from
her twin sister.