Before I arrived home, I found a fiction chute sitting at the end of the street. It was about the size of a refrigerator, its steel case littered with graffiti that obscured the logos of Metamatics, Intervid, Distro Premiere, Sugoi Soiree, Seoul Crystal Studios, and ten more Giants, all of which I had stolen fiction from at some point.
The most prominent text on the chute belonged to a sticker marred by the elements, beginning to peel off.
**DEPOSIT FICTION HERE!**
**ALWAYS ACCEPTING!**
It had to be a different chute from yesterday to avoid attention, but they all fed the same fiction-eating band of Giants.
A jeepney honked its bugle horn at me as I crossed the street toward the chute while getting a waft of sewage from a creek nearby. The stench clung to the humid air.
The hardcover felt heavier than a gold bar—wishful thinking, indeed. I had kept it in my backpack since last night, as I did not have time to deposit it after our Giant Killing run in Taal. It seemed I had little time for anything besides work and Giant Killing. Money was Manila’s endless churn. That, and gridlock traffic.
I opened the chute’s lid, placed the hardcover book I had looted from the drone inside, and closed it.
As soon as I did, messages appeared on the chute’s screen.
[Name: A Land of Mist and Misery]
“A Bowl of Mac and Cheese,” Papa would have said. It was his joke for any unoriginal title that followed the convention “NOUN of NOUN and NOUN.” I could recite a hundred examples.
[Genre: Romantasy]
[Originality: 9.91%]
These two messages didn’t surprise me. Romantasy was one of the Giants’ most popular genres, and stories in that space were hyper-accessible, containing rehashed versions of the same characters, plot lines, and settings. The originality score here confirmed it.
[Word Count: 65,323]
[Narrative Complexity: 65.53%]
[Character Depth: 21.60%]
[Plot Consistency: 99.95%]
[Market Appeal: 81.83%]
These stats confirmed most of what I knew already. The book’s Market Appeal of 81.83% only further drove home the point of how accessible this story was. The only shows more accessible than Romantasy were those Hollywood superhero trash films, bordering on 100%. That was also Papa’s term: “superhero trash.”
A Land of Mist and Misery was nothing new, and as I scrolled through more metrics, I was already beginning to dread the payout.
[Estimated production time: 179 hours]
This number was conventional. The higher the originality of a show, the more unique assets it had to create from scratch. Characters, dialogue, sets, the scripts themselves, there was an engine to make all these. Even with all of the AI automation and technology at the Giants’ disposal, they only had so many computers.
This metric and the others that came before it added to my already wavering surprise. It reached its lowest point when I saw the final total.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
[Appraising…]
[500 PHP]
I shook my head at the number, sighing. It was more than I could make in one day answering calls at TelePerformix, though. I had to give it that. But it was still paltry, considering four people had to drive to Taal, shoot down a drone, dismantle it, burn it, and flee.
I added the paperbacks I received that night to the chute and scrolled through the messages containing metrics. The final value barely changed.
[Appraising…]
[Appraising…]
[647 PHP]
Weeks before, the total could have been over 1,000 PHP, but as the Giants saturated the markets with hourly releases, they lowered the originality of everything else.
Overall, I was pissed and a little worried. How much lower would this total have been if I waited even another day to submit? How much could I earn salvaging from the Giants a few days from now? What about in a few months?
A red light on the chute began flashing.
[Automatic re-appraisal in 98 seconds.]
[Automatic re-appraisal in 97 seconds.]
[Submit? Y/N]
I thought about the pros and cons of delivering to a different chute. Sometimes, the values differed between chutes even at the same time. You could game the system if you knew what you were doing, earning 100 PHP or more by submitting elsewhere. But you did that with the risk of being discovered.
[Automatic re-appraisal in 61 seconds.]
[Automatic re-appraisal in 60 seconds.]
[Submit? Y/N]
Children I didn’t recognize filled a nearby basketball court, glued to their phones and lazing on trikes and mopeds that looked like they’d never leak carbon again. A few of them had noticed my indecision and began to leave the court and line up behind me, perhaps thinking I would leave the chute and my fiction inside it unattended.
[Automatic re-appraisal in 29 seconds.]
[Automatic re-appraisal in 28 seconds.]
[Submit? Y/N]
I shook my head, holding the heavy weight of defeat I usually did when leaving TelePerformix. I had almost forgotten I walked out on the job. At least I’d have more time to steal fiction from the Giants, though that was becoming less lucrative the more I did it.
There was a large green ‘Y’ button on the fiction chute next to an equally sized ‘N’ button. I resigned to life and its hardships and pressed the ‘Y’ button.
[Deposit Fee (1%): 7 PHP]
[Final Value: 640 PHP]
[Checkout? Y/N]
I had hoped and prayed that the chute was bugged and that it would recalculate the initial total, perhaps doubling or tripling it. I had already started imagining how I’d use the money—get Janice and Papa a real meal, maybe pay off a few bills. But I couldn’t stomach all the effort that went into earning this measly 640 PHP.
Damn leeches.
I pressed the ‘Y’ button again with only a bit more force.
The books bumped as they fell down the pipes underneath the chute, carried away on their mystical delivery network to the Giants. I opened the chute’s lid again to see if one of the books had been lodged at the top and if I could dupe the process.
But, as always, I was out of luck.
----------------------------------------
I rode a trike from southern Taguig into the city’s heart. Taguig was one of 16 cities in Metro Manila. I had called it my home all my life.
We barreled past stalls selling street foods like balut, the boiled duck embryo, kwek-kwek, deep-fried quail eggs, and isaw, grilled chicken or pig intestines. The aroma wafted through the open-air trike, tempting me to stop and buy something. I would have been happy to before, but now, I felt shafted out of my money. This city was one temptation after another, designed to drain every peso from your pocket.
More than ever, I couldn’t afford to be selfish with my money. People were depending on me, after all.
The tricycle dropped me off outside a basketball court, and there, I lingered, watching as university students played when they should have been studying for exams. The boys, drenched in sweat, competed with an intensity that belied the casual setting, while the girls, still in their pressed uniforms, observed from the sidelines, sizing up their suitors.
None of them knew that the world would chew them up soon enough. They played like the world wasn’t waiting to swallow them whole. But soon enough, they'd learn, like I had. The grind never let anyone rest for long.
A capture drone presided over the court, an all-seeing eye hovering above. In a few weeks, you might see these same young men starring in an all-star basketball series, their girlfriends cheering in the stands. Or you could find them stuffed into airships, their wives and children waving them off.
Meanwhile, the Giants raked in billions, and these boys and girls got nothing.
I walked on.