Nigel scooped the soil with his shovel and put two tomato plants into the hole. He pushed the soil back in around the plants and patted it down gently. He had planted fifty pairs today in his plot today and would plant twenty more tomorrow if it didn’t rain. His garden plot was grouped with sixteen others outside of Bent Spoon.

  Each plot was fenced in and spaced away from the neighboring plots. The monsters that infrequently attacked the town wouldn’t break down the fences if there was a way to go around them. The game expert in the town assured them this would hold and they would have better growth rates this first year of the game.

  It didn’t help that Nigel’s profession was administrator and that digging in the dirt netted him exactly no experience at all. Each plot was assigned to a Bent Spoon citizen, most of whom were laborers or even actual farmers. Most of them had reached the second level in their profession by now and they were much better with farm tools than him. Animals responded to their instructions to plow their plots and when they hit a stone it popped out of the soil.

  Nigel had spent three days doing what the others had done in one. And then he had to tend to his employer’s plot too.

  Mr. Fulton, Nigel had been working for him for a decade in real life and never learned his first name, refused to dig in the soil. His job was Designer and his class was Clerk, digging in the dirt was beneath him. Especially since they were evacuated after the super quake, Mr Fulton labeled a lot of things that were beneath him.

  Sharing quarters on the Titan Station.

  Cleaning in general, cleaning the toilet specifically.

  Wearing clothes twice.

  Bedsheets that weren’t nanosilk.

  Eating without a fork.

  Sleeping without his custom music playlist.

  Waking up before 9:14 British Summer Time.

  The list made Nigel’s eye twitch if he ever thought of the whole thing. Mr. Fulton had been a gifted AI programer and had inherited his parents’ significant shares in Earth Co. at the tender age of fourteen. It had clearly colored his perspective of things.

  Which is why Nigel felt so important. He was there to see to whatever Mr. Fulton needed to allow him to do his work. And Mr. Fulton’s work was very important. His AI’s were used in the cloning process, medical procedures, piloting construction drones, and virtual reality immersive therapy. Filling in for the blind spots in Mr. Fulton’s meant Nigel was helping save lives with cloned organs, drone driven surgeries, and overcoming personal trauma. The construction drones may have been employed in digging the thirty-five mile shaft that may or may not have been involved in the Australian super volcano.

  The lawyers arguing that matter were all dead so that was a matter Mr. Fulton considered closed.

  Nigel worked until dark to plant all the potato pieces Mr. Fulton had bought. The whole plot had been tilled by a helpful farmer, but putting the plants in the ground was his job now. The actual farmers were busy clearing open fields for wheat and only spent a little time in these garden plots now.

  Tired and gritty, Nigel left the garden plots and went through the city’s gates. Tall stone buildings with fresh stucco coating and exposed, carved beams. Bent Spoon was beautiful in the moonlight. The NPC traders had all gone to their homes for the night, but citizens still walked the streets. There were too many citizens for the trainers in town, so they trained citizens all hours of the day.

  Some NPC guards nodded to Nigel as he passed and they went on their way to push back the night dangers. The silhouettes of big things flew across the moon and Nigel was glad as he was every night that Bent Spoon was safe. Some of the citizen merchants who came through said some towns didn’t have walls or even NPC’s.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The keys clicked and jangled as Nigel unlocked the door to Mr. Fulton’s house and let himself in. It was a small, side door that Mr. Fulton had taken to calling the servant’s entrance. Nigel’s dirty boots went under a small table and Nigel washed his hands in a basin on the table.

  “Nigel, are you finally back?” Mr. Fulton’s shout traveled down the narrow hallway and made Nigel hurry away from the basin while drying his hands on his pants.

  “Yes sir. The potato plot has been planted completely and the tomato plot is nearly complete. It will be done tomorrow.” Nigel reported as he came into the second story sitting room.

  “And that will stop me from receiving this irritating bureaucrat's reminders that we are not providing enough food. Apparently we have to feed the real humans, the NPC’s, and any fool who wanders by. Can you believe this nonsense?” Mr. Fulton held out the folded piece of parchment.

  “I cannot believe it sir.” Nigel gave the safe answer.

  “I know plants are growing at a prodigious rate, but this bureaucrat is absurd in his demands.” Mr. Fulton flung the letter away and Nigel deftly caught it. “They have noted you are working too slowly on my plots. They have the nerve to order me to work another pair of plots to provide food.”

  “That is quite out of the question.” Nigel muttered and placed the letter with the other on the mantle.

  “But the plots should be planted by now. They are right, we are short on several necessities.” Mr. Fulton continued from his armchair.

  “I have worked as fast as I can, sir. I am still level one, the farmers and laborers are all working on level three or better by now. At least in their professions that is.” Nigel crouched and got ready to kneel. His experience showed, if Mr. Fulton began to yell then he must kneel immediately.

  “And this work is not really conducive to a … what is your profession?” Mr. Fulton turned in his chair to face Nigel.

  “I’m an Assistant.” Nigel replied. It was the first direct question Mr. Fulton had directed to him in months.

  “That’s fitting, but not what we need. Let’s change that to something a little more appropriate.” Mr. Fulton stood and tied his robe shut against the night’s chill. Nigel didn’t think professions and classes could be changed once the game started. There had been a few spirited discussions in the tavern about it and no one seemed to be able to do it.

  “Can we do that?” Nigel asked and immediately feared he’d mistaken.

  “We? No. I. I can do whatever I want here.” Mr. Fulton smiled and put an arm around Nigel to guide him into a side room. It was his workroom where Mr. Fulton bound books and worked towards his goal of being a wizard.

  Mr. Fulton slid a long, walnut box to the front of his desk and lifted the lid to reveal a felt lined interior. The door to the room closed itself behind Nigel and startled him with the slam.

  “Nevermind that, this is my security case. The program no longer recognizes the door as a door when this case is open.” Mr. Fulton said when he saw the flinch. “You know I am a gifted programmer and I could never fully immerse myself in someone else’s excuse for a program. Not without means to correct their clearly flawed product.”

  The box held several slender wands of different colors. They didn’t look like wood or metal, but plastic wasn’t supposed to exist in the game.

  “What will you do?” Nigel’s thoughts flew back to Mr. Fulton’s father, who had actually used a cane on him on several occasions.

  “I’m going to rewrite a few things about your avatar. It is very simple, superficial coding without chance of error. You will go to sleep for just a moment and wake up with a more appropriate profession.” Mr. Fulton spoke reassuringly, but the wands looked like oversized knitting needles. “These just allow me to act as an administrator in some regards. A little modification to my neural implants. I promise I will only alter your profession. Do you agree to this rewrite?”

  “What will you change it to?” Nigel flinched again as a chair slid across the floor and bumped into his knees from behind.

  “I have something in mind, but I don’t know all the professions available. You have to trust me.” Mr. Fulton gently pushed Nigel into the chair.

  “I trust you. I agree to this rewrite.” Nigel had a decade of practice reading Mr. Fulton’s body language. He repeated Mr. Fulton’s words as he had done countless times on many occasions before.

  “Good. Close your eyes.” Mr. Fulton touched one knitting needle to Nigel’s neck and one to his collar bone on the opposite side of his chest. The scene disappeared from before Nigel and he was asleep in a startlingly quick span of time.

  He woke hours later in his bed and blinked a few times in the dark. He was in bed fully dressed and with his socks on which was unusual for him. He stopped in the middle of changing into his pajamas when he noticed the title of his profession at the corner of his vision.

  Slave