After a touching reunion between husband and wife, I invited them in the main building to continue negotiations over a brunch.
I prepared a cut of venison and a mixed berry pie on the table in the clubhouse kitchen and gradually managed to alleviate Klofi’s and Solovey’s fears and suspicions.
Regarding punishment for Leopold, I decided to take a classic Japanese route: while we ate and drink, Leopold had to sit in seiza in the corner and watch. Skewer stood next to him as a guard.
”Healers weren’t a priority in my younger days of running wild, but as you get older, taking care of your body becomes more important than living fast and taking dangerous shortcuts. You understand what I’m saying, right?”
“Eh?” (Klofi)
“...Yes.” (Solovey)
“We had a rough start, but let’s leave misunderstandings in the past and look into the future together. Don’t ask what the Revolution Movement can do for you, ask what you can do for the Revolution Movement. Join the light side. Solovey, I already said this to your very talented wife before, but we are always looking for experienced personnel, and we offer competitive salary and great job benefits–”
To make a long negotiation short: I was able to convince them to work with Revolution Movement as distant co-conspirators. A large bag of krúricks helped to seal the deal.
Klofi’s curiosity was apparent when I described some futuristic medical tools and techniques like first aid kits and alcohol-based hand sanitizers. I also gave her the same warning I gave to Kimono long ago: don't use poisonous lead cosmetics to whiten your face. I’m sure she will leap ahead in medical knowledge in no time after I pass down my amateurish memories from first aid training course, medical dramas and reality shows.
On top of that, I promised to send an octagon-barreled Caliphate army revolver for Solovey. He got hit in the head and kicked, but he gained an imperial knight level eight-shooter from this mess, so it wasn’t that bad, right? If you’re a former war veteran and sandrider from the erg trenches who got labeled as a traitor after deserting the Caliphate army and then inexplicably got married to a High Hat lady-in-waiting hiding in exile, you’ll certainly appreciate the gesture.
Lastly, I promised to send the married couple back to their home village ASAP. They'll travel as extra passengers in a mining vehicle heading west on an unrelated mission.
----------------------------------------
When Dancing Bow guided the happy couple to the second floor to rest, I was left downstairs with T-Sub, Leopold and Skewer.
Most of the hangaround members headed out during our brunch, for one reason or another.
“Welp, that’s two new blue blocks in the Visarion sector. And now, you two...”
Leopold was afraid of further humiliation and kept his mouth shut, but Skewer opened his mouth.
“...Seer Speedrun, why?” (Skewer)
“Why what? Why I was nice to them? We need a pro-level healer and she’s a healer. But we don’t force people to work for us. You made a mistake and I had to make it right. So I'm sending them back. That’s why. Did you guys really expect I would praise you for doing this?”
“But they... they’re just inbred southern darkskin trash...” (Skewer)
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, dude! That’s incredibly racist! Incredibly racist!”
I moved away from Skewer like I suddenly smelled something foul. Skewer panicked and looked at T-Sub, fully expecting a kick in the groin.
“Apologies, Seer! I went too far! It was Leopold who said it, not me!” (Skewer)
“I did not say that!” (Leopold)
“He said it before, I just said it because he said it!” (Skewer)
“Seiza, now! Sit down next to Leopold!”
Skewer hesitated, so T-Sub took a menacing step forward behind me. Skewer immediately went on his knees and stopped making excuses.
“What the hell is wrong with you two stooges? Is this some bigoted comedy routine? I get one corner flattened and another one starts winding up. Not cool, Skewer, not cool. You’ll get deplatformed harder than a neo-nazi reciting ancient alphabet words, if you slide down this toxic path any further. Do you want to get send to the towers and be used as a drop test dummy?”
“Eeh?!” (Skewer)
“Do I really have to start from the most basic concepts again? Here in Revolution Movement, we accept all types of people, do you understand that? We have siblings from south Ur, we have two Fireland tribesmen, we half-deviant women, we have albino kids. Ethnic discrimination and racism does not fly in this movement. If this kind of hate speech continues, I will personally kick you out of the gang.”
“B-but deviants are just...!” (Skewer)
“Are what?”
“They’re just... animals...” (Skewer)
This is what I have to deal with. And these are supposed to be the good guys. I should order T-Sub to kick this idiot in the ocean.
...Calm down, Qwerty, just calm down. Remember where you are.
They may be canonically loyal followers, but they are also ignorant teenagers from rural zones of a crapsack dark fantasy world. I can’t expect uneducated post-apocalyptic rednecks to jump from 18th century xenophobia straight to 22nd century neopronouns.
And it’s not just lack of education. Their basic cognitive abilities may not be up to par in the first place because they were born in wastelands ruined by Strangers’ mining operations. They grew up in places where soil lacks nutrients and is contaminated by toxins. A person with simultanagnosia is unable to see more than one item or one viewpoint, no matter how much you try to make them see multiple items or multiple viewpoints.
I need to remember that I’m a privileged person from a privileged world, and they are people of the land, common clay of the West.
They live in a primitive world where slavery is a cultural norm, deviants sprout dark scales due to Strangers drugs and pass these mutations to their descendants; High Hats powder their skin because smooth white skin means you’re not a diseased user; bride kidnappings and food forgeries are common traditions; sexual assault counts as a crime only if the victim is a noble lady; Fireland tribes are seen as inherently animalistic and violent warrior "races" because protecting their homes from invaders is obviously how they respond when Caliphate or Sultanate tries to colonize their ancestral lands.
As a professional streamer, I try to be extra careful about my language and stay away from words that might trigger channel ban. This offline world doesn’t have libel laws and banhammers, or even basic concepts like human rights. But whenever I can, I’m going to call these droogs out if they try to spread hate and disinformation.
I have to do it. Because it’s a job only I can do. Because I’m a future boy.
Despite the vast inferential distance, I keep trying.
I don’t know enough about materials science or mechanical engineering to start a technological revolution or anything in this world. But as a modern person educated in arts and humanities, the least I can do is take a stab at cultural and social revolution.
That is truly the least any civilized person can do in a situation like this: stay woke.
Stay woke and rainbow-knight for JEDI: Justice, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion.
“Guys, listen up. Great freedom of speech comes with great responsibility of speech. If you try to exploit that freedom to assault innocent people with slurs and claim free speech as your defense, it immediately reveals that you are an uneducated noob. Like a petulant child throwing a tantrum when they can’t scream obscenities collected from imageboards in a public library. You need to remember this simple fact: it is not the deviants own fault. Their condition is out of their own control. It’s the Strangers drugs that turned their ancestors insane and violent. That insanity was passed down the bloodline like fetal alcohol syndrome. They were forced to take drugs against their own will. They were born simple-minded and grew up in undeveloped environment, so they don’t even understand what drugs are and do. Their mothers used drugs, so the babies were born as addicts. Deviant drugs turned their skin scaly and new scaleskin mothers gave birth to scaleskin babies. Generation after generation, this vicious cycle continued and turned them to something that’s like a different species. They are not inherently bad guys because of their scales or skin color. The deviants living today simply didn’t have any choice in the matter. Their ancestors placed this horrible curse on them. Like the hoarder culture that was born from the insane agricultural policies of an ancient emperor named Mao, because only the ruthless and selfish individuals of that generation survived the famine, and their selfish grabbing attitude became the norm... Don’t judge a book by its covers or a building by its inhabitants, or contrariwise. You get that?”
“Yes, Seer!” (Leopold)
“...Yes, Seer!” (Skewer)
“Do you really get it? In principle, we should aim for a future where we can find ways to heal their madness instead of killing them. Even when we kill them in self-defense today, they still deserve our compassion instead of hate. Crime is a disease, and forced quarantine or elimination are the sad preventative safety measures we use today to protect the general public because we don’t have the pharma or tech to cure their madness yet. We don’t kill them for sport, you know. The fact that people with problems with their frontal lobes have to be quarantined in prisons or given death penalties is nothing but a failure of medical science and therapeutic technologies. If those who are born with antisocial tendencies could be healed, and if society would be humane enough to arrange housing and food for everyone, good people wouldn’t have to resort to stealing as a desperate backup strat. The fact that deviants are pushed outside, uninstalled from society, treated like malware… It’s just sad. It’s a sad necessity. Because current society is too primitive. Too primitive to debug and reinstall them as productive members of the system. Do any of my words make sense to you guys? Do you get the general idea at least?”
“...Yes, Seer, I understand everything now!” (Leopold)
“Yes, Seer!” (Skewer)
They clearly do not understand. They just say what they thinks I want to hear.
“I don’t want to run an organization that discriminates people based on their melanin levels or some other trivial detail of physical appearance. You need to understand this concept, guys: the only people we don’t accept are the people who don’t accept. This so-called paradox of tolerance is not a paradox, it’s a practical rule of thumb of tolerance.”
Maybe I’m trying to convince myself as much I’m trying to convince them. I’m ashamed to say that my baseline of tolerance has already drifted pretty far from what is was before. For example, these two sexist xenophobes would’ve never been on my contact list in the origin world; my non-answer to their slurs in the chat would’ve been automatic RBI: Report, Block, Ignore.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Hard times create weird partners.
Leopold at least pretended to think and reflect. I guess it’s a start.
”Seer, may I, uh, ask a question?” (Leopold)
“Yes, a question from the audience. Go ahead.”
“Uh, well... what should we have done differently with the woman? She refused to talk, so we had to use her husband to make her talk. She refused to leave with us, so we had to take her. If we, uh, hadn’t taken her immediately, she would have left the village and disappeared to the mountains. And we, uh, needed to bring the husband to keep her quiet on the road, but the man didn’t surrender, so we had to use force to keep him down. If... if we find another person you want to find, what should we do?” (Leopold)
”Okay. First, take notice of your own confusion right now. Meditate on it and find a better way. Ask yourself: what would Speedrun do in this situation?”
“...Uh, run away?” (Skewer)
”Okay, sure. Boom, roasted. Nice one, Leo. Ask yourself this instead: what would you do if you were a healer, and then your wounded enemy tried to force you to give them a dose of medicine with a revolver pointed to your head?”’
”Uh… I would kill him?” (Leopold)
”That’s right. You’d inject poison into that bastard instead of medicine. See what I'm saying? You need to think about the bigger picture, the wider audience, future consequences of being cruel to people. How you look, and how your actions make Revolution Movement look. When you are out on a mission, you’re an emissary of the Revolution Movement and you have to act like it. Because of your actions, the whole movement might end up in danger, for example, if Klofi decides to poison us instead of healing us as a revenge. Think about the rep level of the whole Revolution Movement and the potential loss of support among common people. Be nice to your dentist even if you hate the feeling of sharp instruments in your mouth. And... Haa, I'm repeating myself. That’s all I’m going to say about this debacle for now, my throat is getting tired. Get up, both of you. There won’t be any further punishment or anything, this long lecture was your punishment. Leo and Skewer, you are still newbies in this emerging field of cultural revolutions, so allocate more experience points on your tolerance and compassion stats. Like I always say, we’re all co-workers here and we all make mistakes sometimes. The one who doesn’t regret their mistakes doesn’t learn from their mistakes.”
”Yes, Seer Speedrun.” (Leopold)
“...Like and subscribe?” (Skewer)
“Yeah, share.”
I try my best to teach these younglings common sense of the modern world, but I can see that half of my educational efforts just flies over their heads. Maybe it’s because I only allow the least independent thinkers aka the most loyal supporters to enter the inner circle? Letting in more high-int and low-cred characters would be asking for trouble.
I expected Leopold to leave the lobby quickly like Skewer, but he stood still. Maybe he really was thinking what I said.
“Seer Speedrun, may I, uh, ask another question?” (Leopold)
“Ask away.”
“I’ve been thinking, uh… Revolution Movement is a rich and powerful organization, yet we, uh, live in these common villages, and sleep in forest camps. Um, why aren’t we building castles and fortifications to protect ourselves like other High Hats?” (Leopold)
“Good question. Because we are not High Hats, that’s the simple answer. If you want more details, the castle-building age is already over with all the cannons and gunpowder on the scene, High Hats just don’t know it yet. The only reason the biggest castle walls are still standing is because they were built with Strangers tech; any normal castle built by humans falls pretty quickly with gunpowder and airship. Don’t fall for the FOMO of gaudy, pompous palaces of the robber barons, Leo, we operate on a larger scale. Even if we were to build new fortifications instead of taking over old ones, they wouldn’t look anything like High Hat forts. They’d be more like star forts with low earthen walls, like flatter and smaller versions of Snowflake Fortress at Pier City. In general, Revolution Movement doesn’t waste resources on palaces or statues, or golden toilets or golden AK’s. That’s the kind of tasteless crap mediocre banana republic dictators spend their money on.”
Leopold is not part of the inner circle, so I’m not going to mention Starfish Mansion – our invisible magical star fort with nigh-indestructible walls.
“My, uh, old man always said that only getting rich matters...” (Leopold)
“Let me tell you an old cliché on that one, but its also real and true: money can’t buy happiness. I know this sounds crazy, but the details of this cliché are important: when you get rich, you feel happy about it for a while, but then that happiness wanes and rebounds back to your personal base level. That’s not a philosophical thing, that’s a fact of human brain chemistry: baseline contentment level is a fixed stat. When that chemical reset-to-default inevitably happens, you feel dissatisfied and want to get even richer to feel that same shot of happiness again. But when you get richer and richer, your tolerance goes up, so you need larger and larger injections of riches to get the same short burst of happiness and that feeling of winning. Don’t get addicted to money shots and achievement meta-goals, Leo. Money will take hold on you and you learn to resent its absence. You turn into a grumpy dragon fuming on a pile of gold; a senile billionaire crying when they fumble a coin in a busker’s hat... But if you do happen to get rich in the future, you should think ahead and learn how to spend money properly. Don’t build walls to protect your wealth, build bigger dining tables to share your wealth. A prosperous village that wants to protect your house is a nicer place to raise your family in than a poor village where people hate your luxurious walled palace. Don’t invest your wealth on shiny loot crates and rare event skins, they’re just going to disappear when the next update hits.”
“Well, uh… High castles usually have guards against rebellious villagers, so...” (Leopold)
“Where do those guards come from? From the villages. Do these guards have families and relatives? In some villages, obviously. How big is that village? Bigger than neighboring village?”
“Uh, I don’t know…” (Leopold)
“Leo, we are those rebellious villagers demanding equality, not the High Hats. We are not the spoiled progeny of landlords who have forgotten that they live under a sword hanging from a strand of hair. Point being: good relationships are better for your health and happiness than being a lonely tyrant living in constant fear of getting backstabbed.”
I’m not teaching anything deep or new here. It’s just that the most basic concepts of modern egalitarian society are like an alien language to uneducated street gangsters.
They think they have game, but they’ve never studied game theory.
I keep having conversations like this all the time when I visit the orphanage school so I’ve gotten lot of practice. It’s like back in my early streaming days when I had to introduce myself and my channel to new followers every time and educate newbies about the basic philosophy of speedrunning, repeatedly answering silly questions like “how can you even enjoy playing like this?”
T-Sub was still writing in his notebook. I wonder how much behind he is. His writing speed isn’t on the level of a shorthand reporter, but he tries his best.
Speaking of reporting, what’s the time? I opened my utility belt pouch and took out the Time Card.
Dinner time coming up. We should head back to Starfish Mansion.
”Leopold, return to your work. T-Sub, when you’re done writing, were heading back to hub. I need to talk with Crys about what’s going on.”
Somehow today feels like I’m in the game again, and the system keeps generating new sidequest options just for me:
1) Investigate wind blasts
2) Hunt Thiefmaster
3) Kill lokhagi Kailaritai
4) Clear Kenorland area
5) Collect even more herbs
And I just keep clicking cancel on every quest option. Cancel and delegate.
Ain’t nobody got time for this noise when we have Project Reignland in production pipeline.
----------------------------------------
When we returned to the Hathicar, there was a group of teenage boys and girls hanging around the car or sitting on top of it: Candle Snuffer aka Candles and his Color Lock Gang. I sent this rowdy youth group on a mission to a small port town called Qiy at northwestern Mu few weeks ago.
“Seer Speedrun, master Subject! Like and subscribe!” (Candles)
They greeted me with a “hand sword”: raising their right arm vertically in front of their face and making a sweeping motion horizontally to the right. This gesture was the in-game screen capture accessibility shortcut from Mu-Ur Quincunx. I sometimes did this gesture unconsciously when I met unknown characters for the first time, or admired new landscapes, or saw some interesting tags on brick walls.
I didn’t even notice I was doing it until young hangaround members started imitating my "hand sword" as a joke.
Now this sweep had became so popular that it was basically a local gang salute. I’m okay with them using it, but if they switch to Bellamy salute out of nowhere, I’ll ban all salutes.
“Share. Welcome back, are you guarding our ride?”
“Yeah, we did the mission! I farted in my wallet, here’s the gas money!” (Candles)
No. Please stop with that stupid joke. Why did I ever teach them that?
You tell one lame joke as an example of a lame joke and they kept repeating it every time they see me...
“Guys, give me a break...”
They just laughed. I want to order them to stop, but if I do that, they’ll reactance and repeat it even more.
It’s almost nostalgic in a way. You say something incredibly lame during a stream and chat keeps repeating it for months, beating a dead horse’s skeleton into dust.
I hope they find a new joke before next season starts.
The leader of the forest gang, Candles, hopped down from the car and presented a small shoulder bag to me.
T-Sub grabbed the bag first to check the contents. The bag was full of krúricks and gemstones; some low-level aristocrat’s piggybank from Qiy.
“Thanks for the donos, wenches!” (Candles)
“I suppose your mission at Qiy port went well?”
“Yeah! Percent run, new world record!” (Candles)
“Uhm, okay... You left the autopalanquine that was lent to you in the barn hideout, right?”
“Yeah, it’s in the fuck barn! I mean, in the barn. I mean, we followed your instructions, but...” (Candles)
“Did something go wrong?”
“No, like but like, that fire thing! We were wondering that how you could foretell that that whore of a guard would open the side door and come out when we light that bitch campfire in the forest?” (Candles)
“I foresaw it with my special skill of future sight, obviously. That’s the routine pull of daytime guards in Qiy. If it had been any other NPC on duty, they wouldn’t have the campfire trigger.”
“Enpicis!” (Candles)
“Arrangee!” (random gang member)
They repeated words they didn’t really understand, like cheering for a foreign idol in foreign language.
Please stop with these excessive reactions. I’ve seen enough preteen meme-mimicry back in my non-age-restricted stream chats.
Let’s try reverse psychology to break their recycled NPC dialogue loops.
“Yeah, we are picis and they are enpicis. We are the runners and the streamers. They are the subs, follows and donos. That’s the senpai tax of the old west, fellow low rizz edgelords. Hashtag skibidi drip fire fist emoji.”
Try to grab those old words and turn them into some new content, I double dare you.
“This one will remember your wise words, Seer!” (T-Sub)
“Don’t you get excited too, Test-man. I’m just repeating old cringe slang for personal entertainment, you don’t need to remember. None of you guys need to remember.”
“I will remember, master.” (T-Sub)
“Your brain will turn into a mush of trivial nonsense like mine... Anyway, Qiy area. Destroying Qiy’s port and turning it into Revolution Movement’s seaport are mutually exclusive missions, so we’re probably set on destruction route after this. You guys should take a few days off and wait for further instructions... And try to come up with some original content, don’t turn into streambots that can only repeat canned memes.”
“Yeah, Seer! Like and subscribe!” (Candles)
“...Share.”
In the anime, the coolest teenage fads in the orphanage were face paints and do-it-yourself face masks. Those same fads were happening here in this timeline as well, but now there was the additional fad of imitating my random memespeak. When someone greeted you with “like and subscribe”, you had to answer “share”. That silly rallying cry identified you as part of the in-group of the Movement.
It’s old and cringe, but nostalgic and heartwarming at the same time.
Reminds me of that one awkward summer in my dark past when I tried get more subs and made a series of reaction streams to old meme compilation videos. Ugh, those were so bad…
I miss my stream chat.
“Do you nerds want a ride in the Hathicar?”
“Yeah, we go back to the Black Forest!” (Candles)
“Can we come to the secret dungeon at moorlands with you?” (random gang member)
“Hush-hush. You know that place is only for grown-ups. Don’t talk about it aloud. We can take you near the Black Forest, but you have to hop off before the moorlands. And don't even think about sneaking after us, the eye-eating monsters will get you.”
“Eeeh…” (random gang member)
“Can we sing the road song again?” (random gang member)
“Sure.”
Rainbow Road, let’s a go, it’s a me, Mario...