The man blushed, but he did as Hugh asked. Taking the opportunity to see him up close, he was surprised to find the runner was at least a few decades older than a typical professional gamer. His hair was dusted with gray and he had thick crow's feet around his eyes. Hugh might have thought of him as an old man if he hadn't been so physically fit. As it was, Hugh estimated he couldn't be more than forty-five or fifty.
"Feel better?" Hugh asked once he'd dressed and gobbled down half the loaf.
The man blushed again and set down the bread to wipe his hands on the towel and belatedly offer his hand in greeting. "Call me Frankie. You're a real life-saver. I haven't had anything except water since I logged in."
"Where's your Navigator?" Hugh asked. "And why didn't you take any of the food from your starting camp?"
"I thought I'd move faster if I went alone, so I left my Navigator behind," he replied. "I didn't know the journey would be so far or the countryside would be so barren. I think the people in town took pity on me, because they didn't argue when I told them I needed to get to Nexus. They took me right to the Gate and one of them told me the ritual to open it."
"Wow. Are you playing with the base package?"
"No, I have the Guild package. Why?"
Hugh grimaced. "There's a treasure chest in your starting camp with clothes in it. How in the world did you manage to get your Book, but miss your clothes? They were right on top."
The man's face reddened with deeper embarrassment. "Starter gear is always crap in other games. I thought I'd be better off getting food and clothes off loot drops, but I never encountered anything. I would have left my Book behind, too, if my Navigator hadn't demanded I take it with me."
"Wow," Hugh said in awe. "You must have been really motivated to get here so fast on foot. I went by bicycle the entire way and I just got here myself."
"Bicycle?" he repeated, his face draining of color. "That was an option?"
Hugh shook his head and chuckled as he sat back down at the table. "Okay, I'm going to give you a quick tutorial on your Book so you can do what you came here to do, but when you finish you have to promise to go back and get your Navigator."
Frankie's eyes filled with suspicion tempered with consideration. "And you'd do this out of the goodness of your heart?"
"Yeah, one of my main stats is Empathy. Go figure. Now, since you were trying to buy a building here in the Food Court—"
"Food Court?" Frankie interrupted. "You mean only restaurants can build down here?"
"Exactly. Wait. Does that mean you aren't the runner for a fast food corporation?"
Frankie reared back in surprise. "Hell no. I'm a doctor. My medical group was approached by Tryton Corp about a month ago and we were told what was being planned. Most of the Board were skeptical of the proposal and no one wanted to shell out the money to sponsor a runner like we were told others were doing, but they were willing to pay for the special privileges if one of us volunteered to come in person to open the clinic and get it set up in advance of everyone else. I was a gamer in my youth. Tournament money paid for medical school, because back in the day colleges ran on credit cards. Anyway, I volunteered to come first and set everything up. In exchange, I'm to receive an immediate promotion to clinic Director, a raise, a hefty stipend to cover clinic costs, and full support from our main hospital in the real world. I... You wouldn't be interested in being hired as a consultant. Would you?"
"Um, I don't know." Hugh hated to say no outright, but acting as a consultant wasn't really part of his immediate plans. "You're asking kind of sudden. I guess it depends on what you're offering? Is free medical advice part of the benefits package?"
Frankie's face filled with a feral grin. "I can offer better than that. In exchange for spending today and some of tomorrow helping me get set up, I'll buy your house here in Nexus. If you escort me back to my Navigator, I'll throw in ten thousand Zettabits to furnish the place. And that's not all. Part of being a doctor is staying up to date with the latest medical advances and, no matter how realistic this game is, it's still a game. So if you agree to focus some of your gameplay on seeking out medical advances unavailable in the real world and bring them to me, I'll pay all your gaming expenses for the next year. That means samples of plants with healing properties, surgeries, and even magic spells if this game has those. The clinic I open has to be on the cutting edge or else there's no way we'll be able to stay open."
Hugh considered his words for a long time, then hesitantly asked, "Can I see if I have this right? You'll buy me a house, furnish it, and then pay for me to travel and explore the game which I intended to do anyway?" At Frankie's eager nod, Hugh had to ask, "Are you nuts?"
Frankie laughed. "Most of my medical group would say so. Why else would I want to be a doctor in a game that probably has medpacks and instant healing elixirs? But this is the future of mankind. How can any of us be sane in times like these?"
"One last question before I agree. What kind of doctor are you? You never said."
"Oh, I'm a cosmetic surgeon."