Project Frontier

Chapter 4

1

Scott pushes through the saloon's broken batwing doors and back into the heat that feels like being slowly pressed between two iron plates.

The kind of heat that makes his eyeballs feel dry just from existing.

The main street stretches before, but he's seen enough of its particular grand of graphical

schizophrenia. Instead, he turns left what might generously be called an alley, though it's more

like a space someone forgot to fill with actual content. Narrow, uneven, with dirt that shifts between hyper-realistic dust particles and flat-brown

texture that looks painted on. The path slopes downward at an angle that makes his inner ear

argue with his eyes about which way is actually up. Buildings press in on either side,

their facades a study and incomplete thoughts.

The general store's front is lovingly detailed, down to individual nailheads and authentic

period advertisements for Dr. Huster's celebrated stomach bitters. But when Scott glances at the

side wall, it's just a flat gray panel with building underscore side

underscore 01 repeated in a grid pattern that nobody bothered to hide. His boots kick up dust

that behave wrong. Some particles float realistically, catching a light that comes from nowhere

specific, while others freeze in mid-air like someone paused their physics simulation,

hanging there until he walks through them and they suddenly remember gravity exists.

The dust coats his throat with each breath.

Tastes like copper, makes him want to spit, but his mouth is too dry to produce anything

worth expelling.

A wooden sign creaks overhead on hinges that sound like

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