Fernando's Adventure, Part 4

While Fernando was trapped in the horrible panel which had been advertised to discuss women in geekdom, his brother Alfonso arrived at the hotel. He had been unable to join Ronaldo and Fernando earlier because his employer proved to be a right epic prick and forbade him from having the day off (notwithstanding his coworkers hare off pretty much whenever they feel like it). The pair of them wandered far and wide over the surface of the world, seeking Fernando, but they were unable to locate him. Once the panel ended and Fernando, filled with ire, stumped out, he saw the two of them standing in the hotel's lobby enjoying some cold sodey pops they had snagged from the consuite, a room which already exuded nefarious tendrils of nerd stank and hot dogs.

“Where the hell were you?” asked Alfonso.

“I was at a panel,” replied Fernando.

Ronaldo looks around. “So you were in the ceiling.”

“Would've been better off, actually.”

The three of them retired to their rented bedchamber for a while to discuss important matters like procuring food. Along the way, they passed by the stairwell in which rested the Plate Full O' Shrimp. The plate, silverware, and napkins were all still there, exactly as they were some hours before.

The shrimp, however, had vanished. Such mysteries in this life.

Once they got back and the door latched shut behind them, they cracked open one of Fernando's ginger ales to celebrate Alfonso's safe arrival and merriment was had, for much praise was heaped upon the carbonated concoction. They decided to order a pizza from Rocky Ricardo or Rambling Rococo or something, which purported to have a deal with the hotel, and Fernando was left in the bedroom to await the pizzaman's call while Alfonso went to have a cancer stick. Ronaldo joined him so that he would have a means of ingress into the building afterwards.

Fernando spent the time idly browsing his new Deities and Demigods and watching Giada at Home on the Food Network as she prepared a delectable tuna filet with hummus. The phone rang and the man from Robust Rollerblade informed Fernando that the pizza had arrived and awaited him in the lobby. A 16 inch pie (sort of, as it was a rectangle 16 inches on the one side and 12 on the other and therefore contained roughly 5% less pizza compared to the round variety) with one topping set Fernando back $21, not counting the tip. This with free delivery, mind.

There, people. Proof that Bills aren't that expensive. Although Fernando also received 9 plastic forks and 5 plastic knives and 3 napkins with his pizza, so perhaps that accounted for the price increase.

Fernando got a head start on stuffing his face as his sibling and comrade had not yet returned from wherever they'd run off to. The pizza actually tasted alright. Hot sauce would have improved it significantly. Alfonso and Ronaldo returned at some point and the feast began! The pizza was consumed, the ginger ale was downed, and that show on HBO with Ricky Gervais was on TV and no one had any idea whatsoever what was going on, least of all Fernando, who now experienced food coma atop like 40 hours of wakefulness.

Come 8 PM it was time for the opening ceremonies at the far end of the hotel. A rather cheesy albeit endearing play was put on by the convention organizers. Cthulhu was at one point invoked and so Fernando and one other cultist in the audience gave the Great Old One appropriate veneration, which was met with a chorus of disapproving moos from other audience members.

Yeah.

Anyhow, after the opening ceremonies ended and the audience dispersed, the power trio wandered the halls and Fernando came across what had distracted Alfonso and Ronaldo before. It seems they met an upstanding gentleman by the name of Andrés, of similar age with Alfonso, and they swapped cigarettes and D&D war stories. Though the man played primarily 3.5E, he had experience with all editions of the game and so was not a stranger to Fernando's favored 2E. They shared a disdain for 4E and for elves, and gnomes had a special place in both of their hearts. They fetched some wine from the nearby art show without actually attending the nearby art show and sipped at it as they spoke. A couple of hours later, Andrés' girlfriend came to collect him and he would exit from this story until the following day.

At this point Fernando, Ronaldo, and Alfonso entered the games room, where a pair of chessboards were set up. Ronaldo challenged Alfonso to a game and Fernando said, “Since when do you play chess?”

“Since always.”

“No shit.” Fernando stood nearby and watched.

As the match unfolded a child aged perhaps 11 or 12 bounded in. “I play winner!” he declared. Alfonso and Ronaldo shared a look. Chess Kid had just entered their lives, and he would remain a lingering curse for the remainder of the convention. As far as they could tell, Chess Kid had no family here, no genesis. He was there at any and all hours of the day. He just played chess alongside two older gentlemen, Silent McGee and Chess Dude, who, as Fernando and Co. would later find out, was the alter-ego to a new breed of superhuman warrior.

It was at this juncture that Fernando sat down at a chessboard for the first time in at least five years. He was not particularly good and failed to win a single game that wasn't Siamese chess, in which his partner did most of the winning, but all these losses would be offset by his glorious victory come the morrow.

Finally, at around 1 AM, Ronaldo and Alfonso told Fernando that they were turning in. Fernando figured this would be a good time for him as well. He'd been on the go for 42 hours by this point, even though he was past the point of tiredness by now. Much like in the Days of Yore, before Fernando had crippling amounts of personal responsibility so he and Alfonso and Yago and Catarina and Javier could engage in D&D marathons, Fernando was feeling fine and ready for more.

As the three of them exited the games room and left Chess Kid, Silent McGee, and Chess Dude to their competitions, a lady who had been at Fernando's Females in Geekdom panel approached him. She was a kindly older lady, Cristina, and she trapped Fernando in a conversation about her youthful exploits at conventions long past, sharing her personal experiences with male nerd ineptitude. Other con-goers passed by and she roped them in as well, calling them by their first names and serving as an introduction broker between them and Fernando. One of them was a middle-aged man wearing a kilt and bearing a shillelagh. He was no druid, no, but instead the finest bard Fernando had ever had the pleasure of meeting. Questions were asked of Fernando, the mysterious outsider: where he came from, what he had done with his life, what he was doing with his life.

Fernando answered them all, and some of his responses were met with scorn from his listeners. Upon revealing he had chosen to pursue study in sociology and philosophy in college, Cristina and Kiltman launched into the tirade Fernando has heard far too many times by now about how useless such academic endeavors were, and how Fernando would have been better-served studying something “practical” like business. Because, after all, this is America, and in America critical thinking is for suckers.

“Why would I have studied something I despise?” Fernando asked.

“Didn't you say you own your own business?”

“Right. I never originally planned on owning my own business. I had hopes and dreams once upon a time before reality kind of squashed them.”

“You have to admit, it would be better for you now if you had.”

“Frankly, if I could have predicted with certainty where I would be ten years down the road ten years ago, I would have just said 'fuck it' and bought a couple of lottery tickets. If I cared enough, had the time, and had the money I could probably get some lame MBA bullshit degree, but I don't, I don't, and I don't. Well, I do, but I have other things I'd rather spend it on.”

Thankfully, at this point Kiltman changed the subject to his previous life adventures and spun long, entertaining tales that were about 80% bullshit for everyone who had gathered. Among other things, he had worked as a chemical and nuclear waste disposal technician (“Though I would refer to myself as a janitor when people asked what I did, so as to invite their disdain and then turn it on them. Some of the projects I oversaw I cannot speak about to this day, as they are so sensitive as to remain classified.”), a sailor (“We had been docked in Chile during the Pinochet regime, and, let me tell you, you have not seen death until you have seen someone be cut in half by a water cannon.”), and a corrections officer (“I would say to him, 'I will give you one carton of cigarettes a week, no questions asked, if you make this man your bitch.' Mind you, there is nothing illegal about that.”)

Fernando finally extricated himself from there at around 3 in the morning. He stumbled down the great long length of hallway leading back to his hotel room only to find Alfonso and Ronaldo still awake, watching Big Stan on TV.

“That movie is horrible,” said Fernando. “And why are you still up?”

“We were waiting for you,” Ronaldo answered. “Where were you?”

“I got hung up by people. You would not believe this guy.” Fernando gave them the short version of the Life Stories of Kiltman. They disbelieved the veracity of his tale, but they would experience the truth soon enough.

Fernando set his alarm for bright and early, 8:30 AM, and clambered into bed at this point. His forty-four hours of being awake ceased, and sleep was finally his prize.