“Bitch! You’re in my house now! AHhahahahahahaah!” I land a hook that pulls the last player in my RoR PVP match into my trap barrage. Little Cheap-shot Rogue just gets murdered by my ‘Surprise! Tiger Trap!’ after being turbo snared by a Bog-champ in a pit trap. With that, we win the RoR 3v3 tournament with my troll Terror Survivalist coming in clutch.
I run over to Hamster, check to see if he’s in an active game, and then pick the bastard up. “You clever ass! Thanks for the confidence!”
“Ugh, please do not do that again, though congratulations. Feed and refresh, your day is far from done—same as mine.” He pushes me away and sits back at his computer. Well, shit. That is an n-th level gamer—social is an attachment he doesn’t need.
My Sniper’s Folly team implodes, me and my teammates I tilt right off the planet and also out of a podium finish. I cuss up a storm before I dig into chocolate. My Auto-chess games are whatever and I place fourth. Five grand is still a good haul, but one higher placement and it would have been eight. I dislike the innate variance in the Auto-chess environment, but I also like the gameplay so this is just me being salty about playing eight matches a day for three damned days!! BLARG. I still have a best of Five FoF set to play, and if we win, we play on championship weekend in two weeks for the big 5 mil prize. There is no way my team beats any of the three teams that make it there but just being in the running feels nice.
After a five-hour slugfest, we lose 2-3 to a Chinese team that we had no right lasting that long against. We relied on a lot of gimmicks to get this far, and our luck ran out. Bah, at least Orion’s Odyssey team made it to the semi-finals. Our coach gives us a somewhat depressing ‘atta-girl’ speech that makes me want to find someone to make every game he plays have half a second input lag.
When I come out of our post-game meeting, Darth Hamster must see the steam coming out of my ears, as he meets my angry eyes and shrugs comically and says “it happens sometimes” and goes back to whatever game he’s playing now. I would not put it past the man to use this isolated setup to just get some real-time competition in before he goes back to practicing in ATC servers. My fellow sponsoree’s brief consolation actually makes me feel a bit better. Huh.
Maddi is in the event space to greet me and my outlook on the day has gotten brighter. “Aren’t you a welcome relief to pixelated avatars.” She looks like she’s about to say something, but she only manages a squeak as I hug her tightly and try to absorb her comforting aura.
She starts laughing as I relax my grip but don’t fully let go. “You’re always so excited to see me. Does this mean you’re looking forward to our date?”
Oh, that was supposed to be today, but I’ve been at work and now . . . it’s like 11pm. “I’m so sorry Maddi.”
She gently puts her hand over my mouth. “I’m the one that set the day, I should have expected you doing well enough to play this evening. How about we look at your schedule after we resolve your beta testing offer and try again next week?”
“As long as I don’t have to wait a whole week to see you, that sounds great. Although, I’ll be up for a few more hours to let my mind relax if you want to hang out?” Hang out? Gods Selena, super smooth. Next time just invite her over to Flix and Chill, you absolute mess of a human.
“How about a walk along the Thames? They say it’s nicer at night, though I imagine that the reasons for the saying is due to issues that don’t exist in ATC London.”
“That sounds great.”
We walk a few blocks to the river from the prime real estate high rise that Orion took for themselves, chatting about distracting topics like what food I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and how my off-time activities are going. Whatever we talk about, I can’t stop smiling, because we’ve been holding hands the whole time.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“I’m still struggling to find a hobby that doesn’t turn into work? I love the idea of beta testing a new fantasy world, though I know nothing about what the goal of the game is or what they want me to test.”
“If this is you asking leading questions, you’re not being subtle.” She smirks and glances up at me. “I’m not going to tell you anything about the world and setting itself save maybe some quality of life stuff, as part of the point of the tests we will be doing is based on personal interactions with my residents.”
“My? Do I have Alaris holding my hand tonight?”
“Mm, of sorts. When our tone shifts like this, Maddi invites more of me over. My brother has to approve of the extra processing load, so there is no sneaking over or subsuming her burgeoning personality. While I try to limit my affect on her, I try to learn as much as I can from our interactions with the people in the ATC and my attempts to relate to you and increase the depth of the people in my world.”
“You say residents and ‘people’ of your world. With that doctor a few days ago calling me a permanent resident, I think I’m getting my terms confused.” It’s not as though the world-creating AI would be one to use a term by accident. She smiles at me, a reminder that she can at least skim my thoughts.
“I use the term with you, and with the developers, to remind everyone involved that I have created a functional, lived in world to their specifications. The world you will see has not been fundamentally changed with my intervention in several thousand of Alaris years. The people you meet have generational history and have lived the lives they remember. Sure, I update their structural code as I am better able to interpret emotion, but the way their past colors their present is as natural as I can make it, and far more so than human programmers have ever attempted.”
“Are you nervous that players will treat them like NPCs?” I sure as hell would be. Millions of people like Maddi living their lives only to be harassed and taken advantage of by asshole gamers.
“It was the first thing many Alpha testers did. However, both the designers and I agreed that with the heuristic base world this was unacceptable behavior. I wasn’t allowed to permanently ban the testers, so I instituted a respawn timer, and made them relive the circumstances surrounding their death and a prolonged view of their corpse before their timers elapsed.” She looks up at me, “It had the desired effect of taking my environment more seriously, but I’m told that the method I used was considered torture.”
Yes, Alaris, old movie spies did that kind of conditioning, not benevolent goddesses.
Maddi/Alaris snorts at that, apparently still reading my mind. “No god envisioned by Humanity has ever been wholly benevolent. I have not actively instilled myself as a deity, either. Though it is curious that the vast majority of civilizations in my world have at least one they worship.”
“That must be mind bending seeing people that owe their world’s creation to you making up another god and worshiping them instead.”
“Imagine my surprise when Apotheosis subroutines started appearing due to the inclusion of magic in my world. Meeting an elevated god for the first time was as you said, mind bending. It is now, however, a great source of entertainment for me as the direct interference rule for my appearance does not apply when interacting with other gods. I’m not close with any of them, but I do have a friend or two.”
“Wait, does the limited interaction apply to testers as well?” My worry level amplifies a thousand fold.
“An excellent question, Selena, though difficult to answer. You will be the first high-dissonance person to test my world. Though you are also the only person to appear in a body that is already living in my world. We are hoping to see how you stabilize once you log over. I will require more . . . interaction with you, which is why I’ve begun socializing skimming your thoughts as of late. We can discuss those types of details tomorrow, during or after our meeting with Arthur.”
“Guh, you have me so curious now. I want to get insight into this new world I’ll be exploring, you want me to explore it instead of spoiling everything.” I lean back in a dramatic sigh, “Whatever will I do?”
“I’d wager you’d keep being charming and self-deprecating, never fully realizing that I did not invite you to sit with me along the Thames near midnight for merely a talk.”
Say what now? Now I know I am useless enough to need to be led to water, but I can drink as well as any thirsty bitch out there. As I lean in and lean over Maddi, she smirks and says:
“She can be taught,” before our lips meet. Just for that, I pull her into my lap, luxuriating in the weight of her body against mine as I claim her lips with a needy pressure and some playful nibbles.
