Side Story: Whatever Works
~ Troubles Start With Tea ~
[Edward Dabbler]
The weekly executive meeting at Whatever’s was reaching its end and an even female voice was echoing slightly in the dark council chamber.
“…reducing the budget of the sixth programming team by a fourth, at least until they can demonstrate their usefulness, which I personally think they won’t be able to, given their recent lack of achievement. Incidentally, I have already drafted a plan for the reallocation of personnel after their failure. Just in case. That issue aside–”
Arrogant bitch!
Edward Dabbler, Ed to his friends, Sir to lesser men, and Teddy to the ladies – among other more colourful nicknames including but not limited to Bear, Hunk, Sexy Devil, Stallion, Lover, Master, Big Daddy and… Snookums – stopped pretending not to listen to Alice Duchesne, alias The Frigid Bitch, and interrupted her in his most suave voice, thick with his well-practised fake British accent.
“Sorry, I beg your pardon? You drafted a reallocation plan? Alice, sweetie, I know you think you’re the one running this company, but last time I checked, moving personnel was still one of my attributions. Or were you appointed HRM Director while I was on my coffee break this afternoon?”
He punctuated his ironic question with a conniving glance at the other three executives present at the meeting. Only the CEO returned it. The old man in charge of the Legal Department frowned at Dabbler with disgust… but then that expression seemed carved into his wrinkly face, except when he looked at the Bitch – peas in a pod – or the CEO. As for the trashy teen girl dressed as if she wanted to get raped, she didn’t even lift her eyes from her book.
“I’m not your ‘sweetie’, Dabbler,” The Bitch retorted. True to herself, she sounded as warm as a winter in North Siberia.
Edward nonchalantly reported his eyes on her, enduring her cold glare without as much as a twitch of his perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“And planning,” she added, “with efficiency in mind, is plenty within my attributions as Head of Accounting. I’m sure you’ll be glad to read my proposal. I forwarded it to your secretary, Miss… Rachel, I think? Or is it Crystal? Paris? Diamond? Candy? Mindi-With-An-I? Bambi? Double D? …Sorry, you switch them so often, I can’t seem to remember.”
That woman had elevated passive aggressive aggressiveness to an art form. She delivered her barb with as much emotion as if she were still reading her report on weekly budgetary adjustment.
No, he amended, probably even less emotion than that. Edward was convinced the Ciphers Queen got off thinking about “Lump-Sum Distribution” and “Post-Closing Trial Balance” while fingering her abacus in the confine of her office, orgasming at the mere thought of lecturing everyone on how they were supposed to spend their money.
The Bitch marked a pause and replaced a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear, trying to appear casual but only coming off as fucking smug, before continuing.
“Of course, HR is your domain, Dabbler. You are free to do as you see fit, but I believe my idea should save a decent amount of the company’s funds and even more of your… O so precious time. You wouldn’t want to overcharge your schedule and cut time off your beloved ‘coffee breaks’, now would you? I know how much you value ‘bonding’ with your interns around the coffee maker.”
She illustrated her last comment with air quotations and flashed him a small smile that might have looked charming, if her eyes hadn’t conveyed an emotion usually reserved for something unpleasant stuck on the underside of your shoe. Edward’s grip tightened around the Rubik’s cube he’d been fiddling with.
You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you? You think you’re so above everyone else. Women like you need a man to fuck some sense into them. Get rid of that fancy suit, smack that stuck up bitchy face and pull the huge stick out of your ass. Nice ass though, I’ll give you that.
Despite his hateful thoughts, Edward returned her a humorous half-smirk of his own, effortlessly keeping all negative feelings out of his expression.
After all he was not only Head of Human Resources. Public Relationship also fell under his jurisdiction, and he excelled at it. He used to be a reporter, before being offered a job here at Whatever Incorporated. For years, he’d been making a living out of appealing to others. He was quite confident in his acting abilities.
It helped too that the icy accountant wasn’t hard on the eyes. A bit taller than Edward liked his women, also a little too “small” for his taste, but he couldn’t deny her attractiveness.
Alice Duchesne had a slim athletic body, hugged like a second skin by one of those ridiculous white pantsuits she was so fond of. Her straight ash blond hair fell slightly below her shoulders, framing a face that erred closer to beauty than prettiness, and intense pale grey eyes that burnt cold like petrified hellfire. She looked a bit like a ghost. The pissed and vengeful kind. The one that made frost creep on your windows.
But even that haughty attitude of hers turned Edward on a little. He always did love a challenge. It made victory all the more satisfying. Like a dog trainer proud to finally put a leash on a rabid bitch.
So, indeed, smiling at her wasn’t difficult at all. He just needed to imagine the prudish vixen sprawled naked on his desk, dripping with lust from her smug cunt and begging for a private lesson on his “macro-economics”.
As one might guess, if there was something too small in Edward Dabbler, it certainly wasn’t his ego. At forty-four, he was handsome and built to please the fair sex. And he damn well knew it. He relished in it. In his superiority over them. In his power to have women dance in the palm of his hand, competing for his affection.
In his mind, women were of three kinds. There was the ones who wanted to be fucked by him. Those who refused to admit they wanted it. …And then there was his daughter, who belonged to a category all to herself. The “try to even look at my baby girl and I’ll wipe the pavement with your bloody face” category.
His Cornelia was nearing her eighteenth birthday, and God forbad he let one single lecherous dick put his dirty paws on her. He knew how men thought. They were wolves. The whole lot of them. Horny fucking wolves.
Not that he’d ever admit to being a hypocrite.
While Edward was lost in his considerations, the blonde accountant was finishing her report.
“…the exceeding funds generated by this cut will be redirected to the ninth programming team for the financing of the project Julius Roots submitted last week concerning the development of new monsters in the Far North of Pandore. …Also, since Hatter is late as usual, I will forward him my report later… again, as usual. I already sent your copy to Mary, your Majesty. And I think…” A glance at the touch-screen before her. “Yes. That’s all for this week’s report.”
His “Majesty”, Michael Kurotora replied with a dignified nod, still nonchalantly sitting on his massive throne and looking regal in his masterfully tailored, military-ish black suit. A tight fit on his lean but elegantly muscular body.
Edward himself preferred to wear his suits a little looser. It matched his artfully tousled raven black hair and overall well-practiced relaxed demeanour, and made him look more approachable. In a “look I’m just a regular guy with a stressful job” kind of way, which was counterbalanced by his obviously expensive clothes.
Rich but affable. Above the masses yet unpretentious. That was how the world would perceive Edward Dabbler… because Edward Dabbler would see that it did. It felt like a personal victory every time he caught some employee commenting how “Mr Dabbler is such a nice man” or “Why can’t all the higher-ups be like Mr Dabbler.” Doubly so when they complained about the Frigid Bitch on top of their praise to him. Like icing on the fucking cake. No cherry. Not anymore.
It made putting up with those idiotic peons so worth the headache.
In a sense, Edward and the younger CEO were like polar opposites, one acting the part of the friendly everyday man, if a little superior, and the other embodying unreachable charisma, made even worse by his sheer eccentricity.
However, Edward truly admired the man known as Michael Kurotora.
As much as he thought his Boss a silly sot for dressing up every day like a child on Halloween and for his weird obsession with goats, Edward respected the mind behind the silliness. A mind that many would simply dismiss as whimsical and inconstant because Kurotora’s business decisions could appear so devoid of logic.
But Edward had born witness, several times, in the early days of the company, when seemingly unrelated projects had suddenly combined into near miraculous results that no one could have predicted. No one except their peculiar CEO.
For Edward, there was no doubt Michael Kurotora was a business genius. His apparent foolishness was only a symptom of his unique view of the world. And Edward would ride on that genius’ coattails, cape, or whatever he felt like wearing… all the way to unspeakable fame and fortune.
Currently, that genius was wrapping things up with the Frigid Bitch, finally concluding this god-awful meeting. If there was one thing both the Heads of Accounting and that of HR-PR agreed on, it was that those weekly councils were criminally dull. But the CEO insisted on maintaining them, so there was little that the two could do but silently weep inside.
Ignoring the last pleasantries still being exchanged around the round table, Edward gathered his things, mumbled a farewell, and was about to take his leave when – *BAM* – the double doors to the “Council Chamber” abruptly slammed open. Bright artificial white light from the corridor brutally flooded the room, singeing everyone’s eyes and making them temporarily blind.
As Dabbler furiously blinked in the returned darkness to get rid of the bright rectangle imprinted in his eyes, an overexcited melodious voice reached his ears.
“Michael! This is a catastrophe! What am I saying? This is a disaster! A calamitation! Well maybe not. In any case an emergency! Would you believe it?! Someone actually– Oh. Alice. Didn’t see you there, Sugar. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Ah? …Oh. Gladly, Mr. Hatter.”
“Who’s that ‘Mr. Hatter’? I already told you, Cupcake, call me Kevin.”
Brandishing a fuming porcelain teapot with kitten motifs and a half-a-dozen mismatched cups on a tray, a short noisy character had just made irruption in the Council Chamber, shoeless and wearing a colourful redingote seemingly composed of only pockets, a plaid shirt underneath, a huge azure bow tie and an impressive green top hat covered in red dots. Edward knew him to be in his early thirties, but the long messy white hairs covering most of his face made it difficult to confirm.
The HR Director let out a low groan and dropped back onto his throne-like seat, already anticipating a headache in the next half-hour. Edward wouldn’t say he hated Kevin Hatter, Head of Programming and Whatever’s second certified genius, but he most certainly disliked the man. If the Kurotora could be called simply eccentric, Hatter on the other hand was downright insane. He didn’t have a few loose screws, he’d lost the whole fucking box of the bloody damn things!
Edward begrudgingly respected Hatter’s skills. They were impossible to deny, considering he was the mastermind behind all the base algorithms supporting the unbelievable virtual world of Untold Tales. That said, Edward would do his best to interact as little as possible with the madman, who didn’t seem to have any notion of privacy or personal space. Or common sense for that matter.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Eddy, tea?”
“No thanks, Kevin. I’m good.” Despite his act as a British gentleman, Edward was more of a coffee person. He also disliked being called Eddy. It reminded him of his mother, a woman he didn’t have any fond memories of.
Hatter gaped at him.
“...No tea?!”
You don’t need to look so shocked.
Hatter’s stunned expression quickly switched to depressed. He walked to his designated throne with slumped shoulders and set the tray on the table before climbing onto his seat, on which he crouched like some exotic bird instead of sitting like a normal person. He removed his huge top hat and laid it down next to the tray of cups… and his fake white hair came along with the headwear, revealing short blond fuzz.
Leaning gloomily on his left elbow, he set to filling up three cups, one for himself, another for the bitch and the last one for Stern, who accepted it without a word. Then Hatter turned to the CEO.
“And you, Michael Mikey Myking. Tea?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The madman brightened considerably, returning to his former hysteric appearance.
“Sugar? Of course sugar. Two as usual, right?”
The crazy programmer filled yet another cup, then grabbed two handfuls of white cubes from two of his innumerable pockets. He haphazardly dropped them in the fuming beverage, before pushing it towards the Boss. Kurotora calmly started to drink, not at all minding the pile of sugar that clearly out-massed the tea.
Resisting the urge to face-palm and choosing to massage the brink of his nose instead, Edward closed his eyes for an instant to remind himself of the innumerable benefits of working in this asylum. Slim overachiever sexy interns and fat pay checks were waring for top place on that list.
“So, Kevin, my friend, you were speaking of an emergency,” Kurotora said, casually flipping a sugar from his cup to his pet goat. The animal caught it in mid-air and managed to look snobbish about it.
Everyone in the room had their gazed focused on the mad Hatter crouched weirdly on his throne. The target of the general attention however, looked lost in thoughts – and tea – and didn’t seem to notice at all. After a few seconds of awkwardness, Kurotora extended a hand, and snapped two fingers in front of his distracted friend, bringing him back from wherever his mind had wandered to.
“Ha! Yes? More tea?”
“No, my friend. We wanted to know about what is this emergency you were talking about. Is it about ‘that’?”
“That? …Ah! ‘That’!? Yes. Yes it is!”
“Oh, so ‘that’ really happened.”
“Yes, your Majesty, ‘that’.”
“Mmmmh… ‘That’… Now We understand… How troublesome.”
“Hahaha. Your Kingship is quite mischievous, even though you make a troubled face, you seem to be enjoying ‘that’…”
“Enjoying’ might be too strong a term, but such resourcefulness is indeed entertaining. Even after all the steps we took to avoid ‘that’.”
“Yes… ‘that’.”
“Indeed, ‘tha–”
““WHAT THE HELL IS ‘THAT’!!!””
For once, Edward and Alice were united in their annoyance and yelled simultaneously at the two insane geniuses engrossed in their comedy routine. Noticing their own coordinated intervention, booth glared hatefully at each other but tacitly decided ‘that’ was more important than going at each other’s throat right now.
“Haha. Such impatience, Lady Duchesne, Sir Dabbler. Right, Hatter. Tell them about ‘that’. Try to be concise for once.”
“Well, I was born on the fifteenth of April in the ye–”
“A bit more concise, if you please.”
“Right. Well, in the end, everyone dies.”
“…Kevin.”
“What?”
“Try to focus for five seconds.”
“Alright, alright. But first! …a cup of tea.”
Edward and Alice gritted their teeth while the demented programmer carefully filled himself a second cup with… well… mostly sugar. Even the usually composed and self-assertive Stern was nervously tapping the table with his fingers. The Boss only chuckled. Only the last occupant of the room, who had yet to say anything, looked like she didn’t care, casually turning a page.
Finally putting down his teapot, Hatter looked up again. He took a long sip of the fuming drink, marked a satisfied pause, enjoying the taste, and then looked around with a dazed smile.
“…Yes? Is something the matter?”
““““HATTER!!!!””” four voices shouted in unison.
Everyone briefly glanced in surprise at Stern, who had also yelled and was standing up before his throne, a fist on the table. The old lawyer fidgeted, embarrassed, cleared his throat, then sat back down. The gazes focused back on the mind-blowingly irritating tea-addict.
“Ah! Right. Ahem… where to start?” He took a sip, then looked around the room, looking oddly put-together for once. “What do you two know about how the game was made, originally?”
“Isn’t it you who programmed it?” Alice advanced testily. Edward didn’t say a thing, but nodded in his mind. He actually had a few interrogations about the very core of the game’s program, but his reluctance to interact with Hatter and the lack of real need for him to know had resulted in him never asking.
“What? Oh! Right. Oh, yes, I did. Indeed… I did… Ah. But think! I’m flattered you think I’m good enough to create something as amazing all by myself, Sugarspoon, but think! Or just stay quiet. How could a single man, or any number of men really, come up with something as huge, complex, and just so much as a whooooole world?!” he said, making a wide gesture with both his arms, miraculously avoiding to spill any tea, though two white cubes rolled off the pile filling his cup and onto the table.
“Because it really is a whole world. It is,” Hatter added, nodding to himself and drinking some more. “And I’m not God. I’m not even myself most of the time. Both are equally troublesome.”
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Edward mumbled. He only noticed he had spoken out loud when all eyes – except Zwei’s – fell on him. He shrugged coolly. “I mean, obviously the game world is too complete and vast. There’s no way humans could program it entirely. But I just assumed Hatter was abnormal. Though from what you said, I guess there’s more to it?”
“Indeed, Sir Dabbler,” Kurotora interjected. “The truth is… we didn’t make the game.”
“We… didn’t?”
What is he saying?
“No, as a matter of fact, we did not.”
“Who did then?” Edward was increasingly confused. So much that he didn’t draw any pleasure from the fact the Accounting Bitch looked as lost as he felt.
The CEO glanced alternatively at each of them, hands joined before his chin and elbows resting on the table top. His blue eyes were sharp and the atmosphere around him heavy with seriousness.
“This is one of the most guarded secrets of this kingdom. You two must swear never shall what you are about to hear leave this chamber. Do you take that oath?”
Edward gulped, then nodded. From the corner of his eyes, he noted Alice doing the same. His Majesty Michael Kurotora seemed satisfied with the non-verbal promise.
“Alright…” He reclined in his throne. “The truth is, Untold Tales was in fact created by… beings from outer space.”
““…””
“…”
“…space?”
“…Like, aliens?”
“Indeed, Sir Dabbler. Aliens. Small green people with a strong Jamaican accent for some unfathomable reason.”
““…””
What… the… actual… fuck?!
“Pfff… Pft-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!”
Under the flabbergasted stares of the executives, Whatever’s ever-dignified CEO toppled over in laughter, bent in two on his throne and holding his sides.
“HAHAHAHAHA… HA… Ha… Ooooh. You should have seen your faces! That was priceless! Oooh. Hahaha… Haaa.” He coughed and took a sip of his sugary hot water and reclined in his seat. “Sorry ‘bout that. You looked so tensed I just couldn’t resist.”
He chuckled again some more, then inhaled deeply and under still-wide eyes, his kingly demeanour set back in, as if the young prankster they’d just got a glimpse at never existed. Edward really wanted to say something, but he’d been rendered speechless.
“Ahem. All frivolous jests aside, it is true that we cannot honestly be fully credited for the creation of the World within Untold Tales. And We would appreciate if you could exercise caution and keep this information for the ears of the people in this room only, with the addition of Sir Hendriksen and the sisters.”
“So… What’s this all about exactly, Kurotora?” The question came from the old Mr Stern. “If other people exterior to the company took part in the development of the game, I would have appreciated to be informed to prepare a suitable defence in case they attack us in Justice, or…”
“There will be no such thing, do not worry,” the CEO interrupted and waved the lawyer’s concerns away. “The matter is not of whom helped us design the game, but what.”
“What?”
“Yes. Kevin, please continue.”
“Ah. Yes… Right… Where was I?”
“The game’s creation,” Kurotora helpfully provided.
“Ah. Yes. You see, when we came to the realisation what we were trying to do overstepped the boundaries of humanity, we kind of just gave up doing it ourselves. Like I said, we’re not gods, are we?”
“But the game exists though.”
“I’m getting to it, Eddy. So be a good boy and listen.”
Edward gritted his teeth, but said nothing, only returning the Bitch’s covered snigger with a silent glare.
“So, if we couldn’t create a world because we weren’t gods, the solution was simple. We had to make gods!”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Edward snapped.
“Does it have to?”
The HR Director groaned in frustration.
That crazy oaf!
Meanwhile the blonde accountant was muttering pensively.
“It actually does make sense. Programming a whole world with the level of detail present in Untold Tales would be a titan’s work, but a handful of AI would require comparatively less work, even taking into consideration the relative higher complexity.”
“Precisely. Lady Duchesne gets it.”
“That’s my Alice.”
“With all due respect, Kevin. I’m not ‘your’ Alice. But thank you for the compliment.”
Edward was just about to grind his Rubik’s Cube to dust.
“So I guess you created the pantheon first?” the Bitch continued smugly.
“No. Only the two Primordial Gods, Order and Chaos. Or as I like to call them… Bob and Toby.”
“Bob… and Toby?”
“Indeed. The other gods are purely NPCs created later to lower the workload of those two. One was in charge of… well… in layman’s terms… creating stuff and keep the world turning round. While the other’s job, Bob’s job, was to throw in some randomness to make it more lifelike. Just pure order is basically sterile immobility after all… You can’t have life without a little bit of madness. Not to mention it’d be insanely… boring! Hahaha!”
“I still don’t get what this has to do with the so-called emergency you were shouting about,” Edward chimed in irritably.
“It’s simple really. After programming the two entities – beeeeautiful creatures – we set up the basis for the world. About as much as you’d expect from any run-of-the-mill fantasy MMORPG. Nothing fancy. Global map. Robot like NPCs. Magic systems… Simple stuff.
“Then we gave the gods pair some guidelines. We didn’t just leave everything to them, you know? We devised an historical plotline, major events which needed to happen, how technology would evolve, basic moral standards… those kind of things. Much more fun.
“I kind of deplore that we couldn’t let everything to purely randomized evolution, but it was still supposed to be a game after all. If for example, the players were dropped into a perfectly peaceful universe under the rule of one single superpower and everybody living a utopia, it’d be insufferably boring!”
“Not to mention unmarketable,” Kurotora muttered on the side.
“Well, that too,” Hatter shrugged and refilled his cup of tea. “So… after instructing Bob and Toby on what we expected, we isolated the servers containing the base world from any outside influence, then had the game run with the time differential boosted at its maximum. It’s about one century in the virtual world per day in the real one…”
“We have locked that feature, by the way,” the Boss added on the side. “It would be most troublesome if some bug caused the time distention to malfunction and players got to experience several years in a matter of hours…”
A tensed silence settled in the room for an instant, but Hatter waved his teaspoon dismissively.
“Bah! Don’t worry. I’ve typed that code myself! The chances of it malfunctioning are less than for an obese flamingo to rob Fort Knox with an army of baboons and a marshmallow Gatling.”
“Which is still not zero.”
“Mmmh… zero-ish? Anyway… Point is, we were able to create a world with an unfathomable level of complexity, a world with a deep running history, where every NPCs from the greatest king to the most insignificant peasant has a whole life of memory to shape him into a unique individual! How awesome is that?!” Hatter was visibly getting exited talking about this.
“Why was I never informed of this?” Alice asked with a frown.
“Because it wasn’t really pertinent.”
The blonde accountant didn’t comment any further, but her annoyance was clear to see. Edward wanted to take a jab at her, but he refrained from it. Not out of the goodness of his heart though. Simply, he hadn’t known about this either, and any quip he might come up with could easily backfire. Especially since he’d already been in the company when all of this happened, and she hadn’t.
He was now mentally kicking himself for not taking more interest into the programming process back in the days.
“Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but is there a point in this whole explanation? Not that this isn’t very interesting, but wasn’t there some kind of catastrophic emergency you came to warn us about?”
Hatter cackled, looking down into his teacup and distractedly toying with the top hat resting on the table. However there was something like embarrassment mixed with his giddiness.
“Well, you see, with how the game came to be, there was the problem of the difficulty level. Reality isn’t so kind as to present people with gradual increase in hardship. And since we’d made this virtual world was as close to reality as possible, we had to tweak it a little to prevent players from accessing quests which might upset the power balance to an extent the general player base couldn’t manage.”
“A difficulty cap, so?”
“Yes. But there’s actually a limit to what we can do. The world is so complex. New quests are constantly generated by the system itself according to the players’ actions. It’s almost impossible to predict the ramifications of every single quest.
“To thwart that issue, we added fail-safes in the directives to Bob and Toby, and copied them in the other members of the Pantheons and minors deities. Typically, when a quest shows signs of steering in a dangerous direction, the lesser gods will instinctively act to subtly redirect events in a safer direction. If it doesn’t suffice, Chaos or Order may take more direct actions.”
“That doesn’t sound very efficient.” Edward wasn’t convinced.
“It is though…” Hatter sulkily rotated his finger inside his teacup, pushing a half-melted cube of sugar around.
“It’s not perfect… but… Well, there was this one time when the access to the Infernal Realm became opened way ahead of schedule… It was really funny how we totally didn’t see that coming. Then that strange thing that happened with the elves’ Sacred Tree… And the special civil war event in the mermaid kingdom that went *splash*…” He illustrated his words by dropping another sugar-cube in his cup.
“And you don’t know who or what caused it?”
“Well, that’s the thing… Those weren’t the result of quests. They just sort of… happened? So we don’t have any information on the culprits either. We have suspicions, but no real proofs. It’s kind of the loophole… It’s really fascinating how unpredictable things become when you throw the human factor into the mix.”
Beside Hatter, Kurotora was nodding in agreement, a faint smile on his lips.
“But this time! This time, the new preventive warning system I implemented with the last patch for when the even divine intervention might not suffice worked as expected! Which is why I’m here! Coming to inform everyone as soon as it came in, at the drop of a hat!”
With dramatic gesticulations, he flipped his hat over and reached deep inside, fishing out a single sheet of paper.
“Behold! The warning! I’d even say the forewarning!”
“So what does it says?” Kurotora urged his friend.
“Oh. Nothing much in fact.”
“““““…”””””
“Hahahaha. I think I overreacted a bit…”
“““““……”””””
“Someone might just have jumpstarted the Armageddon.”
“““““………”””””
“What?”
““““HATTER!!!!””””
* * * * *