I saw her in MindsEye. I saw her in minds, aye. I saw her in minds, why?
I don’t know, but in MindsEye, I can’t stop seeing her.
“Could have been worse,” Robin Hood says to me, hours after I saw her, “At least she wasn’t naked, on the toilet, or naked on the toilet.”
I’m not listening. I’ve still not forgiven the prince of thieves for the great vanishing. I am not a merry man in the company of this would-be yeoman. His dangly earrings, stylish dungarees, and ability to hack anything that moves with his OP computer skillz have not seduced me. I’m still thinking about her.
You’re probably wondering who she is. The truth is that I don’t know. However, I’ll tell you everything I do know.
It happened a few hours into my gazing through the MindsEye. I’d been watching a movie interrupted at some points by a somewhat glitchy video game that got in the way of the lavishly-rendered cutscening. I’d found it very meh, though was still open to seeing where its tale of brain chips, not quite Elon Musks, and robots causing a mild ruckus might go.
That’s when the boss lady told me about Mr Hood. “For sothe,” I proclaimed, whipping out one of my many vaguely funny facial animations, “a man from the tyme of his magestee Richard the Leonenthe, Kyng of Engelond and comandour of the thridde crusade, heere in nat-right soone Las Vegas?” The boss lady was not amused, and would not answer my inquiries as to whether anyone had ventured to Sherwood Forest to inform Maid Marian and Friar Tuck of this momentous revelation.
Within a metal carriage powered by foul electrical sorcery, I valiantly set out to find Little John, whom I’d been informed was hiding out in a park of trailers. On arrival, I used my agility and cunning to gently walk up to the trailer reputed to house vertically-challenged Jonathan. It blew up in my face, a cutscene-inducing amount of boomage blasting me onto my bottom.
I was too late, Little John was dead and gone. I mourned him with some tearful cover shooting that felt a bit weightless and sent foes flopping to the floor once they’d been plinked too hard. Some of them pulled out of the park of trailers at vast speed aboard their own beefy electrical carriage, and I was compelled to give chase through a storm of sands. They attempted to puncture me with a rain of fin and headless arrows, as I shouted “Heepe, myrie lordes, yet may this day enden withouten moore chaleng!”
They did not listen. I pursued them around a corner, into a cutscene ambush. I’d have to fatally wound a bunch of them, all armed and firing on my battered carriage. Things felt hopeless, as my abilities with the ballistic bow had not proven to be the best thus far. So, in the words of Lord Daniel who hails from Vito, I started blasting.
Then, it happened. I saw her.
She emerged from nothingness as I put a cap in some poor fool’s posterior. Bedecked in a blue shirt, purple and black tye-dye patterned leggings, and the brown sandals of a seasoned urban gladiator. Her blonde locks obscured her visage as she charged in like a cavalry brigade ten thousand strong, bellowing her wrathful warcry: “I’ve had it with you assholes bringing down the neighbourhood, now someone’s gonna get it!”
She had no fear, this neighbourly saviour whom I didn’t know from Adam, and her shotgun unleashed hails of righteous fury upon our shared enemies. In that moment, awestruck by this display of vicious valor, I had visions from past lives of her doing the same thing, but falling dead before she could claim victory over these street invaders. At once, I rushed to her aid.
Together, we claimed this kingdom de sac as ours and ours alone. As the last baddie fell, I turned, hoping to gain my first glimpse of her face, and to embrace her in thanks.
She had other plans, immediately turning her fire on me. Crestfallen by the sudden betrayal, I nevertheless regained my composure and with great pain added her to the ranks of corpses lining the kerbs. As she lay there, motionless and arms outstretched in a dignified near T-pose, I agonised over what I’d done. Was there really no other way it could have played out? Had I done something in the melee to unknowingly earn her ire?
There were no answers, all I could do was act. Running at her body in order to try and roll it up to the house where the Sheriff of Nottingham’s greatest foe was believed to be hiding out. Don’t judge me, those who chronicle this terrible tale, my hands were good for nought but gripping a gun, and my only thought was to get her the attention of a physician, if I could.
“Robin Hood, I begge, kan ye calle a doctour,” I called out as I neared the door. Then, poof. As I was swept up once more in the cutscene winds, her body vanished in front of my eyes, returning her to the nothingness whence she had come. Robin Hood began waving a weapon in my face, and I had to talk him down, I tried to convey what had happened to her by raising my hand a bit. This impromptu attempt at a Jedi mind trick didn’t work, and soon we were speeding away from the scene, in yet another semi-decent chase.
She was gone.
I would never see her again. I would never learn the arcane truths behind the equally heroic and tragic life she lived in a matter of explosive yards. The action went on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her infinite mysteries. Robin Hood was too busy insisting on a £32,000 salary to notice or understand my pain.
None of the folks who surrounded me in the MindsEye did. Overcome with sorrow, there was only one thing I could do. The not-Elon asked me to fly him in a big drone/helicopter to a party. On the way, we flew past this not Las Vegas’ version of the great Vegas sphere, an imponderable orb of advertisement alchemy.
I landed the craft atop it, much to the chagrin of my passenger, who shared his peers’ loud disdain for any activity that doesn’t immediately further the current mission goal.
Trapped inside and unable to get out to make my voice heard, I nevertheless yelled “Shotgun lady, where be ye? Delyuere me fro þis foule helle!” It did nothing.
It was as though I had seen her in mind, sigh.
