PART THIRTEEN

MPD: 23

I burst into the dungeon like a one-man horde of invading goths. No, mongols. No, orcs. Just choose your favorite horde and imagine all the power and energy of said horde squashed up into one solitary American.

"386," I yelled. "Are you ready?"

"For what?"

"To ascend."

"Suppose."

"Kill Hoops. Kill Lair Hockey."

386 gasped. "Do you need medical assistance?"

"The guests are curious about the games from my world. They are pretty universal. We can use Hoops and Lair Hockey sometimes. I think it'd be good to make at least one change to the dungeon every day so that things never get stale."

"Okay..."

"But this is a world of action and adventure. Of attributes and skills. We need to lean into that. We've got these bakers or farmers or whatever that are coming here and yes, they love the gambling, but apart from that they really respond to beating the devil out of the spiders and orcs. Right?"

"It does seem to stir something."

"First new trap. Simple. It's called Test Your Strength." I described it to him. "Maybe attach the big mallet to a chain so people don't run off with it."

I ran outside the dungeon, then ran back in. The TYS machine was there. I picked up the hammer and slugged the lever - the puck shot up and rang the bell.

"Perfect," I said. "Can you change it so that it displays your strength? I suppose you need to calibrate the levers and stuff to measure force per square inch and all that."

"I might do that for fun," said 386. "But I know your strength. I can just display it. I know a lot about the trespassers."

"Oh," I said. "Handy. You should do experiments. Like if someone with strength 13 plays, say that they are strength 11. They'll get mad and do it again."

"Are you saying I’m allowed to mildly torture the intruders?" I could almost hear him salivating.

"The guests. Yes. Because his friends will laugh at him and he'll play again. We just doubled the time he spends at this game. Winner. Next. Something you can punch. I'm thinking of a punching ball - leather, not too hard - and you have to punch it the most times in 30 seconds. Or a version that tests your strength again. And maybe one that moves around so it's got a bit of a dexterity challenge."

"Hmm."

"Back home we've got a game called Coconut Shy. There are some coconuts on sticks and you throw balls at them and if you knock one off, you get a prize. We can change it to orc heads. And do you think you could make a sort of... sort of booth with a glass protector with just enough space to put your hand through? And have a crossbow on the other side?"

"A real crossbow?"

"If we can do it safely. Actually, thinking about it, you could embed the crossbow into the booth so that it can only fire in a narrow arc. That should be safe enough. Because if we can have a crossbow there's loads of game types. One where there’s vampires that pop up but also sexy women in nightdresses and you have to shoot the right targets. Duck Hunt - these ducks fly across and you shoot them. But not ducks. Are there dragons in this world?"

"No."

"Pterodactyls?"

"No."

"What's a flying enemy?"

"Humans don't seem to like wasps."

"I like wasps. I'm not here to encourage human-on-pollinator violence. Well, see if you can come up with a safe crossbow type thing and then we'll test flying spiders and flying skeletons and so on."

"Flying skeletons?"

"Lennie with wings on. Don't worry about it. You get the idea, though, right? Games that test and reward skills."

"I get it. It's clever."

"Ah! Clever! We need intelligence games."

"Like Chess? Lords of Chaos? Candy Crush?"

"I don't know the last ones. But not chess. Nothing two-player if we can avoid it. We learned that from Lair Hockey. I'm thinking puzzles. A ball in a 3D maze and you have to carefully roll the ball around so that it gets to the end without falling into the fiendishly placed holes."

"Sounds like more wood than I have left."

I pulled a face. Then I understood. "It's not a town-sized maze like one with an 8-foot tall minotaur inside. It's about this big." I showed him with my hands spread about a metre apart.

"Okay. That's easy. What about Charisma?"

"I have one idea. It depends how much glass you've got. Oh, and on that topic, I thought we had tons of wood. This is the first time you've mentioned running low."

"I don't need wood to exist so I would never think of my supply as low. But it could become a limiting factor very soon. Why don't we make an archery range? Put up some targets and let people come and shoot at flying spiders and wasps and things?"

"And keep the arrows?"

"If we give them coins for particularly good shots they might not notice that the arrows melt into the floor."

Stolen novel; please report.

"Hmm. You'd have to build the archery range and make the targets and it might be a while before anyone comes to try it. Sounds like it'd be a cost center for a while. It's a great idea, though. How else can we get people to bring wood into the dungeon?"

Getting Wood

The next few days I didn't have any new brainwaves. The prototypes of the new games weren't mega hits but the guests always wanted to try the new versions and 386 was giddy about iterating on the designs. The best part was that the guests seemed to recognise that the traps were changing based on their feedback. "It was better yesterday," they'd yell. Or, "the orc should beg for mercy when you punch him."

I checked in with 386 and gave Lennie some pets, then went out to talk to a carpenter. I found a fairly big company called Chuck's Wood - they had a groundhog as a mascot - and the owner was called... Did you guess Chuck? You go to the top of the class! You can't believe the mental discipline it took me NOT to ask him how much wood he could chuck.

"You seem to be busy," I said.

"Business is booming," he said. "Lots of new buildings, Rastwood is gone, and Zenith doesn't seem to be producing wood of its own. It's buying anything it can afford."

"Yes, I see," I said, lying through my teeth. I didn't understand two-thirds of what he said until after I read Nerves of Steel. "So... what problems are you facing as a business?"

He scoffed. "No-one has ever asked me that before. What a question! What's your angle?"

"I'm a consultant. That means I give advice to businesses."

"For a fee."

"Yes! But I already represent an interested party. I'm just chatting."

"Huh." Chuck scratched his beard. "Honestly, things are going well. I've got a good mix of high-level and low-level workers. Wage bill is under control. In a level or two, Elijah might get too expensive for me to keep and he'll have to set out on his own. That'll be a loss. But the next wave is promising."

I nodded. "Have you got enough storage?"

"Oh, yes."

"Is it free?"

"What? No. Of course not. We rent space in the big warehouse."

"And I suppose there's always a risk of fire."

"Well, yes, but not really. Not a serious risk."

"And squirrels."

"What?"

"Don't squirrels eat wood?"

"In a warehouse? I... no."

I shrugged. "Let's cut to the chase. I might be able to store your wood for free. In a fire-proof, woodpecker-proof environment."

"What's your game?"

"No game! Why don't you get a log or something and come with me?"

The Future of Log-istics

Chuck cursed and pulled out a cosh. Where had he been keeping that?

"Easy, dude!" I said. "Just let me finish my pitch!"

"This is a dungeon!" he snapped. "You’ve brought me to a killer dungeon."

"I've been inside about 400 times in the last few weeks and I can promise you it is not a killer dungeon. It might not be the answer to your storage needs but it isn't going to kill you. Watch, I'll walk inside." I went into the entrance, turned left, went out of his sight. Crossed back and vanished to the right. I came out again. "Now if this goes wrong, don't go wagging your stick at me. I'll pay you for the wood."

"If it goes wrong... What do you want?"

"I want you to help me bring this log inside."

"I'm not going in there. I have no combat Skills."

"Don't be such a baby. I've been on loads of raids. I'll keep you safe. All right, just help me to the threshold. That'll be best for the demonstration anyway. Have it where you can see it."

Chuck agonised for a moment, but nodded. We carried the log to the dungeon entrance. Chuck dropped his end and retreated like me running away from my real-life responsibilities.

"Thanks, Chuck. Now, behold!" I left the dungeon and we watched the log. After a few seconds, it disappeared.

"What!" said Chuck.

"Relax," I said. "Everything's going to plan. Now we'll bring the log back." It came back. "See? We can store it for you."

"We?"

"Me and the peaceful, respectably British, pro-business entity who ah... operates this location and has infinite dimensional storage capacity."

Chuck narrowed his eyes. He was about to say 'you mean the dungeon' but something made him stop. The sound of all the money he was about to save. "Take it away again. Huh. And put it back. Huh." He licked his lips. "But there's a catch. What's the catch?"

"Nothing really," I said. "We would like to use the wood while it's in storage."

"Use it?"

"Would you please come inside for a minute? I promise it's quite safe."

"Quite safe like 'sometimes safe'?"

"Quite safe like very safe. Safer than your workshop."

"I don't know..."

I went inside and after a few seconds, Chuck followed, cautiously. "Chuck, what we're doing here is making a fun space for people to come and unwind after work or to let off some steam. Have a laugh with their pals. Here." I handed him the mallet from the very first Spider Smash game, and made him put his foot on the trigger plate. He half-heartedly tapped the things that popped up.

"And the rest?"

"It's all like this. Come on." I gave him a quick tour. He was still sceptical but less suspicious.

"I don't get your angle."

"You don't have to, do you? It's nothing nefarious."

I saw his eyes roll around as he accessed his in-game dictionary. It was weird the way the AIs had an artificially limited vocabulary. Probably to make them more realistic. Chuck would almost certainly only use the word nefarious when I was around, if he ever used it at all. "What about monsters?"

"There's only one. Lennie. He's harmless. Do you want to meet him?"

"No. I think I'm ready to go back outside."

"You got it."

We went back out. He folded his arms and bit his nails. "I don't get it."

I sighed. "Right. With your permission I'd like to try something with the wood."

"Hmm."

"I'll take that as consent. Okay, take away the log. Chuck, the wood's in storage now, right? But I think we can use it, and give it back to you in its log form when you need it. So let's try that." To 386 I said, "Turn that log into something. A 3D maze or whatevs." After a little delay, a little maze-ball table came into being, along with three small souvenir skeletons. "Chuck, that's your log."

"That's my log?"

"Yes. Now we'll take this stuff away and try to give you your log back."

"Oh."

The stuff went away and the log reappeared. I beamed. "Yes! He said it would work and I didn't doubt him exactly but it's a bit of a weird one to wrap your head around. Okay, Chuck. You've seen the offer. You leave some wood here. You pay less at the warehouse. We get to use the wood to make our play things. When you need it, you come and get it. No problems."

"I can imagine a lot of problems," he said. "But..." I let him think about it. "Do you need a minimum commitment? Restrictions on the time it stays here?"

"Nope and nope."

He nodded a few times. He wanted to be convinced. But he just couldn't get past the strangeness of it all. "I just -"

"Chuck," I said, sidling up next to him and putting my arm on his shoulder like a used car salesman. Something I'd never do in real life. "Chuck, me and my partner... we're... it's like we've been given a quest."

"Oh," he said, brightening. "A quest."

"Like a quest, yes. To spread joy and happiness, far and wide. Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes. Unless it's nefarious."

"We get more XP the longer someone stays inside. So we're trying to make it more fun. The more fun it is, the more XP we get. More wood means more games means more fun."

"Oh!" he said. I'd finally spoken in a language he could understand. "Well, if I come to get my wood while someone is inside, um... playing on the game... how long will I have to wait for my log?"

"Good question. Actually we can't give you the log while someone is playing. Maybe we do need to set up some limits. Not limits, exactly. More like approved drop-off and pickup times."

"Huh."

"We can iron out those kinks. But if you come at 5 or 6 pm and say you need X many logs back, they'll be ready for you at 4 am. Is that too early? Like I said, we can work the specifics out."

I thought Chuck might be put off by this unexpected wrinkle, but it seemed to put him even more at ease. Later I realised that by offering a deal too good to be true, he rightly couldn't believe it was true. Ever since that day, I've included arbitrary nuisances and restrictions in all my dealings with pretty much everyone. They love it. Humans and AIs and girlfriends alike.

And that's why the next chapter will only be available via 80 sequential text messages sent to readers who use a NOKIA 3310. Local rates apply.

Not really, but I wish I could do things like that. That'd be hilarious.

I tried to give Chuck his log back, but he said to keep it overnight and he'd come and get it at 6am.

"Before you go," I said, already annoyed at myself but unable to stop it from happening. "Can I ask how likely you are to go along with all this? What I'm trying to say is... Would Chuck chuck Chuck's Wood's wood onto our Chuck's Wood wood pile?"

"Chuck would," he said. But I didn't have subtitles turned on. So it's possible he said, "Chuck wood."

But anyway.

Chuck did.