Infinity Legends

Chapter 3: The Swimmer

5 years later.

…Law books, check.

Magma lamp, check.

Swimming medal box, check.

State’s Championship trophy, check.

As Luca Ford checked the last item of his packing list, all that was left for him to do was shut the cardboard boxes close and move out. Now, if he could only remember where the tape was… Well, tape went with office supplies…

Luca turned away from the boxes and back to the written packing list. Office supplies were the second item listed, and a very much checked item, meaning the tape was, by now, buried under a ton of winter clothes.

Luca sighed and shook his head, goldilocks waving behind his strong back. He wasn’t digging the damn tape out of the packages he spent hours assembling. No way.

A knock behind him made him turn fast. He was not expecting any visits on his last five minutes in campus dorm room 205. With an arched eyebrow, Luca crossed the minuscule living complex—comprised of a bunkbed, a small couch and two old study desks—and opened the door to the mysterious visitor.

To say he was taken aback by the sight beyond the door was putting it mildly.

Gabe was leaning by the door with the university’s entire swimming team behind him. Whatever they were there for, the attendance rate had beaten most Saturday training sessions. Easily. Some of the faces had barely shown up to practice for the last two weeks, and still there they were, for some reason, outside his dorm door.

“What the…” Luca frowned, but Gabe’s usual excited booming voice cut him short.

“We’re helping you move, bro!” Gabe said, barging uninvited into Luca’s apartment. Even if the unwilling host tried stopping his friend, it would have been hard. Despite being considerably taller than Gabe, and a much better athlete overall, Luca stood no chance against the shorter swimmer when it came to brute strength. Few did.

“You brought the whole team to help me move?” Luca chuckled as he silently greeted his surprise guests.

“Of course!” Gabe spread his arms and let himself drop on Luca’s couch. “Anything for our dear captain!”

“You know I’m moving to a room just across the street, right?”

“That’s far enough!” Gabe shrugged. “See, the cheerleaders are practicing on that little square just outside. Bet they’d enjoy seeing a few kindhearted athletes moving heavy furniture for their friend. Dibs on the desk!”

Behind Luca, the other swimmers were already discussing who would get the couch and who would take the bunkbed. The captain chuckled and shook his head.

“Sorry to ruin the party, guys, but the only furniture I own is a magma lamp,” Luca said.

“Is it heavy?” Gabe asked.

“It’s a lamp.”

“Well, is it a heavy lamp?”

Luca rolled his eyes.

As they realized there was nothing to show muscles for, the swimmers had started leaving on their own volition. Some were talking about going down to the little square to try and impress the cheerleaders in another way, others were planning to go and grab bowls of açai and banana smoothies downtown. Less than half a second later, only Luca and Gabe were left.

“Not going with them?” Luca asked, kicking his friend’s feet off the sofa.

“Cheerleaders will always be there,” Gabe said as he stood up and straightened his white tank top. “Right now, I’m gonna help my buddy move.”

Luca did not need words to call his friend out on his bullshit. A simple clever gaze would do.

“Okay, I just wanna pass by the cheerleader carrying a couple boxes. Come on, hand them over,” Gabe brushed past Luca and bent over to pick up one of the three cardboard boxes packed with personal affairs.

“No!” Luca hurried to the box Gabe was headed to and snatched it right out of Gabe’s grasp. “You take the others, I’ll take this one.”

“Hey hey hey!” Gabe let out an amused laugh and rubbed his hands, then moved towards Luca like a hungry predator. “Hiding something in there, Luky boy? Dirty magazines? Love letters? Scented candles?”

“It’s nothing,” Luca’s attempt at lying was miserable, and the hectic way with which he dodged Gabe’s approach did no favors in making him seem innocent.

“Come on, you can show…” Gabe struggled to reach the box, but eventually cornered his friend and reached into the mystery container. When he pulled his hand out, he had grabbed a large, metallic and very technological helmet, dragging a whole lot of intimate clothes and an old leather-covered notebook along with it and dropping most of the stuff on the ground. Too much for organized packing.

Gabe spun the helmet around, trying to make sense of the device he had just uncovered. Suddenly, after bouncing it up on his hands a couple times, he understood.

“Hey! This is one of those nerd video-game thingies!” Gabe said as he slid his orange haired head into the VR piece. “Don’t worry, I know a lot of guys who play this stuff and are still pretty badass. Even some guys in the team!”

Luca opened his mouth to say he was not at all worried about Gabe’s opinion on his pastimes, but stopped before any word left his lips. Gabe had assumed Luca’s concern had been aimed at the helmet, overlooking the actual subject Luca would rather keep concealed: the leather-covered notebook, now laying on the floor. The helmet had been an unplanned but very welcome distraction, and Luca planned to capitalize on it.

“So you don’t think I’m a nerd?” Luca asked, faking embarrassment.

“Hell no! Maybe if it was anyone else… but with those abs you’re always showing off and knowing you can kick my butt in three out of the four swimming styles…”

“Just three?” Luca teased.

“Shut up…” Gabe said dunking the helmet back into the box, then moving to mindlessly pick up the boxers and the leather journal from the floor and return them to the box. After that, he proceeded to grab the other two boxes, one under each arm. “Come on, now. We got cheerleaders to impress.”

***

Luca placed the box he was carrying on his new room’s study desk, then helped Gabe get rid of his own cargo. Much to Luca’s amazement, his companion and his courier act had managed to get the number of not one but two cheerleaders on the way to Luca’s new home in campus.

“Okay, so which one’s yours, which one’s mine?” Gabe asked. “Blonde? Brunette?”

“Did you even get their names?” Luca quipped as he took a long look around his new room. It looked much like the old one, except instead of a couch it was equipped with three beanbag chairs. That and the fact that the bunkbeds were on the opposite side, making the place feel like a bizarro version of his old dorm.

“I did get their names!” Gabe boasted, leaning against the desk. “Maria and Stella!”

“And which is Maria and which is Stella?” Luca asked.

Gabe froze in place for a moment, the cerebral blue screen visible behind his heavy brow. After a second of quiet contemplation and effortful recolection, the response came: “Screw you, Luca.”

“You’re the worst,” the swimming captain laughed, then turned to unbox his belongings. “Stick around to help a pal unpack?”

“You braindead?” Gabe asked. “I’m going back to talk to Maria. Or Stella. You should too.”

“There’s a lot to unpack,” Luca said, pulling out his trophies and medals, sliding them to the back of the one available desk. The other one was covered in books and studying material, meaning there was already a roommate on the picture. “Besides, I should probably be here when my new roomie arrives.”

“Oh! True stuff!” Gabe punched his friend’s shoulder. “Think it might be a hot chick?”

“Gabe… you know they don’t mix guys and girls, don’t you?”

“They do in my dreams.”

“Well, we’re not in your dreams… Thank heavens.”

“So, no hot chick roomie?” Gabe asked with a long face, and Luca just shook his head in response. “Well, then, captain, my captain, nothing keeping me here. Catch you later?”

“You know it,” Luca said as he unpacked a stack of law books. “And tell Maria I said hi.”

“Or Stella.”

Luca chuckled. Before he bothered with a response, Gabe had slammed the door behind him. That guy really had to learn to control his strength. And his manners. And probably a whole lot more things. But, deep down, Luca knew Gabe to be a good guy in his own way.

Having unloaded the first box onto the desk, Luca decided to move the unpacking to the bed, but as soon as he turned to the bunks he stopped on his tracks, a puzzled look taking him over as he ran his eyes over the two mattresses.

He was being moved to someone else’s room. That was the whole point of moving. The university did not accept people to remain on their own on a dorm, so a week after Luca’s old roommate had dropped out he had received word he would be moving in with an engineering student in dorm 251. The presence of said individual was reinforced by the material on the other desk, but judging by the beds one could assume Luca to have been the first to ever set foot in that room.

The sheets were perfectly folded and tucked in, without a wrinkle to be seen, the pillows meticulously positioned as if handled by a five-star room-service. There were no clothes over the bed, not a hair on the pillowcases or stain on the sheets, and that left Luca clueless as to which bed to get for himself. Which one was claimed? Which one was free? Did this fabled roommate even sleep?

The questions made him turn to the occupied desk. At first, he had simply observed there were books over it, but a more insightful inspection revealed much more than that. The books were all perfectly positioned in right angles matching the corners of the desk, and a multitude of colorful markers were equally distributed in either perfect vertical or horizontal positions, equally spaced and microscopically aligned. Not only that, but the markers were also ordered by their colors, going from colder tones to warmer ones.

Luca cursed as he realized he had just been doomed to share a room with an organization freak. Whoever this guy was, there was some serious OCD going on with him.

Just the more reason to make a good impression.

And a good impression meant not accidentally claiming the guy’s bed, so Luca decided to postpone that until he could talk to the man and discover whether to settle on the top or bottom bunk. He would probably also do well to properly align his trophies and magma lamp over his own desk.

Checking his watch, Luca hummed a tune and waited. As the minutes ticked by without a sign of his new roommate, Luca simply moved to dig up his Fantasy Stars gaming rig.

The gaming rig, and the leather notebook.

If he was going to wait, he might as well do it in a fantastic other world.

Settling down on the green beanbag chair, as opposed to the blue and red ones disposed across from it, Luca flipped the pages on his notebook until he found a series of notes and scribbles titled Bluehorn. Most of the scribbles on the yellow paper were scratched, and Luca ran his finger past them, stopping at a line that read:

[37] Zig-zag, deploy mines, shoot poles.

Nodding to himself, Luca strapped into his virtual reality headset and was consumed by the ever miraculous generation of a digital galaxy.

In a second, there was no Luca Ford, only Takol Scaleback, and he was ready to kill a Bluehorn!