I observed a man talking to his son. The man had a serious look on his face. “Tom,” he said, “don’t be a latecomer next time. Return the book early. If you don’t do this, you won’t get a good job or enter a good university. This is my experience as a business investor speaking.”

“You are a great business investor, dad!” replied the boy.

I overheard the duo. I got it. But I also didn't. It was better than skulking at saturated markets in rl. I was wearing a blue shirt on gray pants. I had room for improvement.

I was currently a player of 'Life of no legacy'. I thought it was good. When I taught someone else gaming strategies, I did not feel guilty for teaching that person something I felt was valuable, filled with qualia, theatrical representations and lots of fun metaphors to decipher the world with. When I played a trading card game (TCG), the ability to repeat the winning process, like a chimera, was what kept me going – it was the possibility of practice and improvisation.

That same process drove me to play well in football, to practice table tennis and to learn basketball from senior students, in high school. Part of the latter was inspiration from the anime ‘Kuroko No Basket’. I felt proud. My medals eventually were my certificates.

This process was the so-called ‘specialization’. It evoked competence.

Trading card games were all about streamlining one’s winning process versus the opponent’s winning process; Computer toolsets, like the Microsoft Office suite, were about getting to the streamlining part fast, with similar winning or success conditions. This was an obvious statement, which applied to some complex TCG mechanisms as to complex computer toolsets. One TCG example was Yu Gi Oh Master Duels. It was prediction-based, like unexplored territory. Since neither party knew what exactly to expect, the game was a plague for some. In such a game, whatever happened, a military guy would likely own up.

To horizontal-leveling strategists of life, everything was not important. In a TCG, you established your horizontal leveling strategy, due to the deck size limit. Each card illustration presented culture and transfiguration, like each memory and process in a game or in real-life. While you lived, you assembled these illustrations and processes, like they were puzzle pieces. The deck was your ‘life’.

Like a book, games were maps; games were simulated maps. Games helped incorporate habits and strategies. They each had their goals, environments and, optionally, survival mechanisms. If you described a game where each step counted, it was usually Dark Souls. Games were on the level of personal enjoyment of the story/culture, personal training and hangouts. It was not to say that games were not social. It was that any game at all had its specialization process. Once you played soccer enough times, you could claim to be more of an expert for soccer than the average person. By the same token, you could claim to be a soccer game-setter.

On one hand, you were a player or game setter to have fun. On another hand, you were there to make a living, or to specialize or otherwise cut across domains. You could have fun in a self-centered way, or make a living in a self-centered way, and tick the other boxes in a self-centered way, that concerned liking what you did as a person. That was nice. Your choice and results reflected the tyranny and the sainthood. The aspired-for position was to be a professional gamer at life.

That put the players and the game-setters in two categories – social actors or competitive actors. This was one main insight of the game theory – cooperative and non-cooperative player strategies. Then you would have to question the motives of people with a poetic soul. These people could claim animism, as guise for being socially engaged with something, some animal, or someone. That left out one category of people – scientists. Who was the game-setter of scientists? Was it the same omnipresent game-setter that was purported to govern the game for both social and competitive actors? In the 21st century, this inflection might be seen as a joke.

Scientists were as much players as game-setters were. It depended on personality and that was that. This notion of being a player as optional was what most people called ‘naivety’. For myself, who was as yet on the hunt for opportunities, who required understanding better ways to be useful, it would sound naive to stake any innocent claims. Even so, that claim was a requirement for each person. It was the so-called raison-d’être.

There was no benchmark for a raison-d’être, much like there was no time limit, usually, for an online game. Instead, there were roadmaps, from folly to calculated moves.

“By the way, Ashen, do you know why, speaking in terms of productivity, the Sect of Dragons is an important sect?” I looked at Eloise’s straight, furrowed brows.

“Yeah, I do. The Sect of Dragons harbors the Commerce guild. In terms of sourcing, it makes sense. The Sect of Dragon-Hunters harbors the court of laws. In practice, one makes up with creativity what the other makes up with rigidity. It is your typical setting of stoics and rebels.”

“You have done your homework, it seems,” Eloise said, walking over to me. “I’m done here. Let’s find a suitable place to continue. You can run your narrative of what you will learn in your free time.”

“Lead the way. I will check the results of my dedication later,” I said in turn.

“This does not sound like the most motivated statement I’ve ever heard,” Eloise said. “Mic test. I won’t feed you.

“Lack of focus makes the mind dull,” I said. 'I'm grateful but that is enough.' “Don’t feed me. I’ll do it myself. Nice dress, by the way.” Eloise wore a gray, plaited dress.

“Thank you for complimenting me,” Eloise said. “I retract my assertion. No one, but this covenant counts you as a member. You should know that.”

“I've been to high school, like you. Hmm. Eloise, you said magic-coding will make me wiser. What is it used for?”

“Magic-coding is about a broad set of skills, including interface-editing. Interface-editing allows you to modify your main menu and your sub-menus, like character menu and inventory. While the inventory and your stats menu cannot be deleted, you can create sorting menus and delete other menus like [Quests] and [Other Utilities]. Sub-menus of deleted menus will be available under the Uncategorized menu, if these contain essential information that has not been duplicated in other menus.

You can modify your skills by distributing available points to the skills’ parameters – if you have created an interactive menu for that specific skill. It is up to you to test for skill properties to consider any of them as valid parameters. You will need to do some independent testing on this front. You may also create analytical charts and process maps to optimize your skills. You can specify what any diagram does through magic-coding.”

“Sounds like plain coding to me,” I said.

“Precisely. The word ‘magic’ is added to make it sound game-like. Cool, right?”

“I have no opinion or experience in the matter, than hearsay, so far,” I said.

“Well, that’s fine,” Eloise said. She crossed her arms. “It would seem you require some phenomenology.”

I crossed my arms in turn and took a step back. “That’s true. You probably mean emotional investment, among other things. I need to work on that. Phenomenology is to sentient beings what gravity is to the stars. You might not want to have too much of it or too little of it.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“So much for saying phenomenology is the root of suffering.”

“That’s because I discounted agency,” I scratched the back of my head. “You experience the phenomenology of suffering because it is possible to experience it, and because you took the steps to experience it. Inaction still counts towards the chain of what you do and what you don’t do. The steps involved allow you to balance between fiction and reality, and folly and calculated moves. In other words, it is the one foot in chaos and the other foot in order analogy. If put this way, agency is the cause of suffering and phenomenology is the root of suffering.”

“Yeah, sure. Agency is the cause of suffering. Let’s get back on topic. Do you have any other questions regarding magic-coding?” Eloise asked.

“No. Feel free to go ahead and teach me,” I motioned with my right hand forward, arms still crossed.

Eloise let her arms fall to her side. She looked at the table in front of her. There were two chairs on each end of the table. “My pleasure.”

“Well, I’ll go ahead and have a seat.” I sat on the chair. I rested my hands on my thighs.

Eloise sat down. “Right. I’ll get the books out of my inventory.”

I took some time to learn.

***

POV: Ashen Spines

Just like an experiment needs an observer or such assessor to ensure compliance with experimental conditions, a story requires witnesses. As far as that concerns me, I am my own witness.

It is thirty minutes since Eloise has started teaching me. “Alright, let’s take a short break” Eloise stretches herself.

The place is huge. It is called the [Library of the Great City].

I have free time for now. Speaking as a free individual, I am free to do what I want. Even free and mindful, you sometimes notice resentment. You notice other emotions and objective processes. You think of changing them. For example, ‘How can I get a leaf to become fertilizer?’. Each individual thinks he can change perceptions and perceptual beliefs. I am a ‘Being’. I am flesh and blood, tethered by the psychology of God. Every individual is a messiah. Every individual is a tyrant. It is the creed and court of lobsters.

As to resentment, it means the following question – ‘why is someone doing something good or bad?’ Speaking in terms of a master-disciple relationship, the master may ask these four questions to the disciple:

Why did you master the skills I taught you? Why did you not put them to good use? Why did I teach you? Why did you appear in front of me?

Resentment is linked to curiosity. Curiosity might be because of power dynamics, the problem-solving mindset and phenomenology, that drives the motivation to be curious. As to relationship culture, where productivity overlaps in a reasonably direct way, conflict occurs. I have seen a video by Ali Abdaal (Ali Abdaal, 2022) on that. Abdaal mentions separation of tasks, as per the book ‘The Courage to be disliked’, written by Adler, a psychologist. It is the ‘my task’ and ‘your task’ divider sort, that applies to parents and children too.

I understand it as the court of lobsters and freedom. This makes ‘relationship culture’ an incentive, of least, and an accountability system.

“What’s wrong? You seem to lack focus,” Eloise says. On an screen, there is a display of “Hello World” in the Java language. [System.out.println(“Hello World.”)]

“This is not a date. You can rest assured of my attention,” I reply. “In fact, now that I think about I’m having a coding class, not a philosophy class. I should be thinking of you right now.”

“I’m sorry. Are you lying to me? Do you want a date?”

“No. I am not lying to you. I do not seek a date. I am thinking out loud and I apologize for that.”

Eloise closes the book in front of her. “Okay, sure. I’m not interested either. Now that we have a thread on the topic, I should ask you. Do you like Elizabeth Darwin?” Eloise crosses her legs, under the table.

“No. I merely idealize what she means to me.”

“Child talk. Why not just like her?”

“You have a point.” I am done with self-hypnosis. “Let's not talk about child talk then. I'm old-new school. Just a follower of Shiva. If you are interested in my life, we can agree upon that." Eloise keeps to herself. I stay put. "User Command: Indicator." I'm interested in most Fe-types. I am not that conceited either. I have had crushes, including fictional ones, like with Yuigahama. 'Half of the time, I am not helpful to myself. I am not financially independent.' Each new year brings change to me. I like being invested. I touch the table with one hand. I look at said table.

I read out Eloise's details. 'I wonder how people go on watching unrealistic characters,' I think. “Never mind,” I say. I feel curious, about Babel, about that red alien when I came about, about Nina. ‘This is just music,’ I think, upon remembering the title of Friedrich Nietzsche’s first book. It is called 'The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music'. Even Babel is part of the game’s fantasy.

I remember the wondrous sunset I have witnessed, rising up in my room. The sunset is great.

Not every day is a sunny day. I appreciate it, all the same.

The light from the library ceiling is distinct and bright. On my way here, I found a book about Drakensang Online. Drakensang Online is a top-down MMORPG game. It is a game that I played with a friend.

***

In Drakensang Online, there was a boss called ‘Khalys’. Khalys was a high priestess and a liar. Players would first get to fight Khalys after getting through the Liar’s Lair dungeon. Liar’s Lair’s monster levels were in the range of 24 to 26. The latest level cap, as per Ashen Spines, was a 100. Liar’s Lair was filled with skeleton warriors, swamp monsters, and zombie-like necromancers. These necromancers would send white orbs in your direction to attack you. Common necromancers wore purple garbs. Stronger necromancers wore orange garbs. Given time, the necromancers would revive fallen skeleton warriors.

There was an important question to ask for Khalys. It was relevant to the happenings at the protest. That question was ‘why was Khalys a liar? Why was Khalys, as a liar, surrounded by skeletons, necromancers and death?

The answer was that in-game Khalys was a power-monger.

***

“Look at that guy! He has got lame cloth,” says a man looking at the crowd.

“He certainly has some bad tastes,” chuckles another man. They are in a group of three. “Besides that-”

“Haha! Look at that person! His eyes look like shit. That’s funny. He must have no friends!” says the third person.

The second man laughs. "That's true. People like him exist, don't they?" The scene is theatrical in nature. Smoke covers some areas.

An old woman comes along to the first speaker. “What’s going on here?”

The man puts his hands in his pockets, hugging himself. This indicates his intention to be uncooperative. He motions his hand to open up his jacket and answers, “I think there is a protest going on.”

The area us relatively calm. One particular man is wreaking mayhem. He has brown hair. A second man stands close to him, whispering in the ears of a woman. The woman in question seems horror-struck. The second man has fidgety eyes. He has a clean look to himself. The other man continues his ruckus. He looks unkempt, and occasionally screams.

“Don’t listen to him!” says the unkempt man to the horror-struck woman. The unkempt man looks unsure about what to do. Men and women with clean and unkempt looks equally follow his movements.

“What are we gonna do, Roger?” asks Lena

“He’s just a liar. Ignore him,” replies Roger, with his Russian accent. Firecrackers go off again. Roger frowns with displeasure.

“Sounds like the fireworks are bothering you,” Lena observes.

“Yeah, I dislike that.” Roger replies. He sees a man wearing a red t-shirt throw a punch at a guard of the Covenant of the warrior. The latter wears a brown blazer. The symbol of the Covenant of the warrior is that of a silver, armored knight, holding his sword at the ground with both hands. Another guard looks at the attacker with anger. Roger’s eyes flames up for one second. “Let’s get moving, Lena.”

“I’m right behind you,” replies the latter. Lena glances at Roger’s back and looks ahead.