OOCS
Chapter 20 : Breakthrough / Troubleshooting
A new day, a new story to write, more achievements to collect, more legs rushing into his room as Karl-Heinz hears a beckoning call from Laka as she notices him waking up.
The sheer crowd of his wifes and what feels like newly recruited “allies”, which most likely also want to ride the fun stick, but get whiped to do other tasks by Sarsa´s iron ruling fist into doing anything else aside from riding. Karl-Heinz was again in a rather sickly pessimistic mindset.
He also was dog piled by to many doting wifes to do much more than slightly struggle, still covered in the blanket, which is now hold down by the women sitting on the ends of said blanket. Needless to say they were all staring at him, most judging trying to crack the code of his mental illness, others to see what happens next out of morbid curiosity as his penis worked with or without Karl´s mind intact and the last few were clearly calculating the quality of there choice of joining the bunker gang, but the doubters most likely had not that many healthier options awaiting them elsewhere.
So the silence in the room and occasional shifting of a body, dragged on for a few whole minutes until Tris broke the spell out of boredom. “Did you overwork yourself back there or what ?”
“Noooo not really, I worked harder back home and grinded away happily. Then Back on my pc I would game away the remaining hours of the day or watch videos to remove the boredom.” Karl-Heinz defended himself out of sheer reflex.
Tris tried to call that a stupid argument, but Sarsa was faster and cut her off “So are you addicted and missing your drug? Do you need alcohol or other drugs? I know half of the camp we were in were addicts of some kind.” Sarsa said whilst slithering closer, looming her torso over him next to Tris.
Before Karl could again reflex defend himself, Laka blocked his mouth with one hand and answered while glaring at Sarsa. “He is no addict! He isn´t even shaking, addicts usually start trembling when they don´t get there kick and he is instead crying and mumbling in emotional pain! A silent scream! He has no axiom presence because he wants to hid his pain to not be a burden!”
Not knowing how to get back into this conversation, being effectively shielded by mama bear Laka dog wife, Karl remained quiet and his mind wanted to start wandering again, but all the attention focused on him with out a easy way out or clear expectations, made him stay focused. They all were so serious about this topic of why he cried that non even tried to sneak a grab or sniff of him, even though he again had a half hard morning wood under the blanket.
There was a part of the conversation that he missed out on as he had made his observations of the seriousness of the wifes in the room, so he was a bit startled by the question from Laka of “So hubby, can you tell me or any of us your problem and what do we need to do or get to fix it?”
Being fully aware that he needed to give an answer as fast as he can or be declared mentally immature and forth on be treated like he was a mental asylum patient, which he already was, but he never quite realized yet, He didn´t want that kind of treatment so he bought himself some time with “Wait a bit, this is hard to put into words.”
The room went dead silent and everyone watched him intently.
It took 4 whole minutes for Karl-Heinz to get his mind into the right spot to answer the question that should have been asked a long long while ago.
“When I go by what my doctors back home told me, I am sick with depression and a few other mental issues that are restricting my social skills. I tried to live a happy life and so far only ever managed happiness by being distracted.” Waving an arm around at everyone in the room he continues. “this game has been both the biggest and least distraction I had so far in my life. When I get bored I end up sad. When I fail or hurt others I need to right my wrong or feel guilty. When I tried to fix my depression in the past I failed and was right back to misery again as I never had the motivation to try to pull thru on fixing my depression.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
He started to cry as he continued to deadpan voice his answer. “I am a lonely miserable fat fucker that no one wants except for other miserable fuckers online or desperate losers who have less than me or game characters that are made to want the player.” He sniffed some snot back into his nose but failed at the sheer liquidity of it and instead smeared it together with some of his tears onto his arm.
Karl-Heinz then used the chance to use his cleaning cheat on everyone in the room as the many grimy spots he could see on most of the women, irked his need of perfection quite badly.
The rest of the room was stunned at what he had said, they didn´t understand many of his points, some understood non of the points, but cooler heads prevailed and they had understood enough to continue the conversation.
“You think this is all just a game? Why?” Tris asked with her usual lack of tact.
Being an easy straight forward question in Karl´s mind, he answered before Laka could play shield again “Well this is to much of a dream come true, bad easy to handle enemy's, sexy bimbo lovers eager to please me, miracle powers from but the most over powered of story's, cool technology to play with,” Karl was running out of points to make so he instead shifted his argument over to the finishing phase “ and many more grandiose things! Even the bad stuff plays into the good stuff to make me struggle just enough to feel gratitude for when I achieve something! I even get quests and statistics and other game functions in my vision.”
This again prompted worry withing the wife´s, thye all had no statistics or quest windows in there vision or lives. Laka tried but didn´t manage to look closely into Karl-Heinz eyes, instead Sarsa managed to get a deeper closer look into the eyes. “Do you see a quest or what ever now ?” Sarsa asked whilst holding her stare.
“Ehhh yes and no, I can see some info on the side of my vision, but no quest window, wait let me bring up my menu.” He brought up his menu, half embarrassing himself because of feeling like a weirdo for doing so.
Sarsa starring stopped and she recoiled in shock. “Gals ! He is seeing stuff! I can see the blue flash in his eyes when he has something in his vision.“ This prompted every other woman to also try to have a look, were only Laka and Tris succeeded by sheer force of muscle, pushing aside all the other heads in the way and then shielding the now stun shocked Karl. This was way to much attention from way to many people at once for him.
Lucky him, Laka cleared a room around herself of women and moved herself over Karl, whilst he fell onto the bed and now had Laka standing on all fours over him. Vaskra was busy shooing the small folk out of the room, Tris was shooing the medium sized people out of the room and Sarsa was leaving the room declaring a meeting in the mess-hall.
After a few short moments to catch his breath, Karl tried to get out of bed and was gently assisted by his, in his mind, personal maid Laka. Whilst Laka thought of him of even more need of protection.
No one having even the faintest good idea of ridding Karl-Heinz of the visions in his eyes or the illnesses in his head. The idea of just removing Karl-Heinz eyes was mentioned but shut down just as fast as similar good sounding but bad side effect ideas. They all ended up back at the start, they would first secure there current position and continue to expand the bunker and there survivability of this war zone. They would now look out for medical people and supply's with more urgency.
Karl-Heinz was in the background guarded by a now very trigger happy Laka, armed with a laser rifle, and an overeager Vaskra as she truly had points to make, favors to earn and wanted to continue her position in the inner circle of Karl-Heinz harem. Karl-Heinz mostly ignored the odd commotion going on, having managed to mentally slip out of his worry's and instead focused on eating. He was already noticing that he wasn´t eating enough and felt weaker.
In fact he was feeling extra hungry from all the stress his life was in the last few days but also was extra stressed for being constantly distracted from everything, including eating. Eating less of course just sprinkled in that bit of extra stress. His only saving grace was his numbness to many of his bodily woes when sufficient enough distracted with a task or work.
Lucky for him, now he had the chance to do some real stress eating and so he let disappear two meals worth of food and washed it down with enough water to last 3 people for a day.
The discussion of what should be done next was broken up and they all went back to do there work. Karl-Heinz for his part got left alone with his current body guards.
This fit his needs just fine, he had an idea to make an electric engine for the workshop. Once he managed to wiggle his way into the workshop, he went and used the biggest unfairness cheat skill in the history of crafting, and created an electric engine. He managed to insulate the wires with the clay that he turned into a ceramic housing, engine cooling and wire insulation. The rotor was just spinning away on ball bearings, with near to zero resistant, in a near air tight capsuled sections on the machine and the motor itself was then driving the lathe as if it were 1950 over a belt system.
The fancy high tech perfection was mixed with simplistic solutions, he only had so much inspiration in him so he currently couldn´t be asked to make a gearbox or such. He was just very happy that he managed to produce a laser magazine powered air cooled motor that could power other machines. Also he made a few of these engines and set them into the corner for when they were needed for other projects.
The onlookers were rather impressed as he brought the engines to life, not that they grasped what he could do with them, but that Karl-Heinz knew enough to create something so bizarre that could create a spin. A spin that when tested was strong enough to win in a tug of war against Laka, then Tris, then lose against both as the set up broke from the stress of the pulling.
Karl-Heinz was so in his zone of distraction and being unbothered that he then skipped a meal again and found himself hungry and very thirsty at the supper table again.
Everything seemed back to normal again, the wifes were idle chatting, he was enjoying filling himself, even though he despised the blandness of the food, and everyone seemed optimistic, at least to Karl-Heinz.
Still his wifes weren´t mindless npc´s, as such they did bring up his most least favored topic yet again.
Tris did the honors as they others were in her mind again to slow to do it. “What is a depression?”