The problem with huddling in bathrooms was that you were at the mercy of the bathroom conversation of Soccer-mom’s brood of kids. There were two boys and two girls. I could only think that if you shoved the dog in on that equation with a few picket fences you’d have my greatest nightmare. I was assured of that as I listened in to the boys bickering. Soccer-mom and Eye-candy had moved to the door of the bathroom either to keep an eye on me, or to keep an ear out for the kids, while Soccer-mom kept her real eye on Eye-candy. I pretended to use a stall, even as I no longer had those urges since coming to the VR.
Quest: Escape Gomer and the Rest Stop
Can you outrun your past or will your new friends find out who you really are?
Rewards: 200 xp (Bonus 100xp for keeping your criminal nature hidden from new cohorts.)
Automatically Accepted.
Quest: Road Trip!
Find a way to get everyone on the Road Trip together.
Rewards: 100 xp/sidekick.
Accept Y/N?
The World AI was obviously courting me to try some plot lines that it could work with. I looked around at my available cohorts and the yummy 100 xp per sidekick and considered it. Then I thought about spending hours in a car with them all and quickly picked No.
Hidden Quest: Give Me Click Bait or I’ll Give You Death!
You heard me! It’s time for more one-liners and I’ll pay you xp for doling them out.
Rewards: 100 xp/one-liner picked up by a spider.
Automatically Accepted.
So much for courting me. Once I’d chosen No once, it wasn’t about to give me a choice on that one. Fine. I was just as interested in making one-liners as the World AI was to make me do them. I wanted out of here and back to… I refused to think about how much my old life wasn’t much better. I focused on the lack of sneaky giant tarantulas and let that be the reason I would desperately work for the maniacal World AI. Yeah, that was it.
“It’s only an apocalypse if the water doesn’t turn on,” one boy was saying, as they washed their hands and the girls, younger than the boys, made faces at each other in the mirror.
“But there are no lights,” the other argued, his sister rolling her eyes at her sister.
“Lights can just be a power outage, dummy,” the older of the two boys said, shaking the water from his hands at all his siblings, and me as it turned out, since I was trying to edge toward a sink to wash my own hands and maybe some mud off of me.
“Don’t call your brother names,” Soccer-mom said automatically as if she wasn’t in just as inane of a conversation with Eye-candy. My head popped up in automatic response to the mom-tone. “They do this all the time. Just ignore it.”
“I’m not saying that the lights went out,” the younger boy was saying over the top of the mother they ignored. “I’m saying that there aren’t any lights in here.”
“Of course there are lights,” the older boy scoffed, giving one of the sisters’ braids a tug as they whisper/giggled with the other. “The place would have to be open at night. How would anyone see without lights?”
“But there isn’t a switch is what I’m saying,” the younger boy protested, as the tugged-sister turned to swipe a foot at the older brother’s shin. “And I wasn’t saying it was an apocalypse. I’m saying that the bathroom was ready for the apocalypse. Why you gotta twist it all up like I’m dumb?”
“No kicking your brother,” Soccer-mom put in automatically as I watched, wide-eyed.
It can’t be only me who feels some odd TERROR at the idea that these kinds of people exist. These are the people who actually go to the polls and vote for AI presidents. These are the people who make me absolutely sure that my vote doesn’t count. There are herds of these people. They show up in droves when you try to go to the grocery store or out to eat and they all want to do that exactly when everyone else does it. Not that I got to go out to eat, because people like this have the jobs that make it so that they can buy cartloads of food that were in all of last week’s ads, and not in the coupon section like my cart.
Viewers - 5
I took my time, washing up and trying to beat the worst of the mud from my clothes. At least the mud was drying. It was a ruse. I didn’t care about the mud. I just didn’t want Soccer-mom to use her eagle eyes on me while I was dodging Gomer. The kids had a little water fight even as Mom warned them to stop, and I pretended to be unmoved by the whole thing.
“I’m counting,” Soccer-mom said, and my insides clenched. “One!” They obviously knew something I didn’t know because the kids paid her no mind at all. “Two!” And she said it without even looking. Maybe they knew she was all bark. “Three!”
I was caught innocently shaking out my hands as they had all stopped like it was a red light in Squid Games. Soccer-mom raised a brow at me and shuffled her kids out under wings of superiority that just cemented everything I’d thought of her before. It wasn’t my fault that there weren’t any drying machines that worked. Eye-candy shot me a conspiratorial wink that made my stomach flip despite my intellectual lack of interest. What? He was pretty. So pretty. But he was the kind of guy that was fun at the bar, but you didn’t really want to take home.
Quest: Steal a Boyfriend from your Girlfriend!
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Which one of you will get the guy?
Rewards: 200 xp and a boyfriend with a car.
Automatically Accepted.
Now that they’d left, and I no longer had to fake cleaning up, I put my back to the wall near the doorway to listen for what was going on. With the metal covering over the rest stop picnic tables and the cement-brick walls of the restrooms that, I had to admit, had been built to withstand the apocalypse, there was an echo that told me everything that I needed to know. My co-stars were covering for me by continuing their inane banter, not that I thought they were doing it on purpose. Those kids though, they were the perfect cover for anything. I’d almost put up with Soccer-mom if I could have those kids for distraction purposes. I’d be able to steal the crown jewels with them around.
At the roar of an engine, I peeked out, but it wasn’t Gomer’s truck yet. It was a hover version of a Harley, complete with vintage sidecar. They had figured out how to make silent hovercraft, but Harley enthusiasts had insisted that it wasn’t the same, so the roar was actually a sound effect. This guy, who was pulling off his helmet and chucking it into the sidecar, must have modified the soundbox because it was way louder than road regulations allowed. The man spat on the ground, a big wad of… nevermind. No need to be that graphic.
I had to shake my head to remind myself that I was in a simulation. It wasn’t like I’d never dated. I wasn’t a saint. I’d had my share of bad boys, and that share was ONE. He’d been a pretender, which is why it had lasted as long as it had, which was half a night. He’d had a bike like that. It had broken down. That was when I’d realized he’d rented it to try to get chicks. The AAA guy who had come out to take care of it had been more fun that night, and that relationship had lasted until he figured out that he was too good for me and moved on to a girl that only loved him for the bikes he fixed up. I couldn’t blame her. That’s why I’d loved him.
On his way to the men’s restroom, Biker-bozo parted the sea of cohorts like Moses. I shot a look at the bike, and another at Gomer, who was underneath Not-angel’s car fastening stuff. The boys were edging over to where they could dissect the wad of glop Biker-bozo had donated to the sidewalk. The girls were whispering behind their hands to each other. Bombshell was watching Biker-bozo walk away. Eye-candy was distracting Soccer-mom. And here I was, with a quick escape if I dared.
I stared at the mirror, thinking only of having to ride in that SUC (not a typo) with this banal band of cohorts, and called to Grace or the World AI or God if He was listening. “I need Biker-bozo to have left his keys in the motorcycle.”
You’re kidding…
“Nope,” I took a few bracing breaths. “Either you put the keys in the Harley or have Biker-bozo be my next tarantula.”
That’s…
“Good ratings,” I promised like an old clock from the Beauty and the Beast movie. Then I stole a meme and went for it. “Someone once told me you start off with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience. I’m just hoping I don’t run out of luck before I get enough experience to get me out of this place.” It wasn’t a one-liner. It didn’t count. It never aired. Ever.
But the co-stars!!! I gave you xp for those costars!!
It was no use. I was halfway to the Hog of my dreams, backpack clutched to my chest and sneakers adeptly dodging the glop-studying boys, when the World AI decided to throw in with me instead of against me, for once. I slung my backpack toward the sidecar and pumped my arms, my butt clenched, my braided hair flying behind me, mud flaking off my jeans, and a look of pure terror on my face.
Fine, if I can’t beat you into submission, maybe a carrot will do…
Quest: Steal a Hoverhog!
If you’re going to trade a bunch of perfectly good costars for a hovercycle, then you’re going to have to talk to it or something. I’m not awarding quest rewards until you talk to the bike.
Rewards: 300 xp and a ride.
Automatically Accepted.
That was the picture that the spiders picked up to run with my previous one-liner, “Golllleee, it looks like you needed more than a bell, Gomer,”
Viewers – 7
Exp +100 (Click-bait pick-up!)
“Come on Baby, show Mama some love,” I said, as I reached beneath the bike and pretended to fiddle with the wires. What? I was trying to make it look good for the cameras. With my other hand, hidden by my chest, if the Camera AIs were doing their jobs right. I turned the key and the hog roared to life to the stunned faces of every person gathered at the cattle call. I’m a little ashamed of the one-liner vomit that came next, but 100 xp was 100 xp and I was looking to finally level.
“Nobody sits Baby in the corner,” I said and caught the sight of Soccer-mom scolding her boys (who perfectly bracketed her face) but looked up at the roar of the bike with a moue of shock while the boys gaped in awe.
“Let’s blow this gin joint, Baby,” I quipped awkwardly as Bombshell looked like I’d challenged death to a duel, and she was my second.
“I think I’m going to call you Stella,” I decided out loud. Eye-candy started out with a look of shock that morphed quickly into a teeth-sparkling grin, complete with thumbs up.
“We want magic, don’t we Stella,” I tried and failed to quote Streetcar, the girls pulling off mirrored versions of Home Alone. “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning.”
In response to my desperate grasp for one-liners and the Writer AIs desperate grasp for viewers, the name “Stella, Baby” engraved itself in gold onto the black gas tank of the Hoverhog. Great, they’d named my co-star.
“Really?” I muttered under my breath, but moved my arm out of the way so the camera could pan over the name. At this same moment Not-angel and Gomer who were head-to-head as Gomer poked his head out from under the broken-down car. At first Gomer looked confused, but then there was a bloom of anger that was punctuated with a bell sound.
Viewers – 11
We got a banner. The banner scrolled through the shocked faces to the sound of the hog purring and ended on Gomer as a bell went off and my voiced-over one-liner rang out with it. Those who tuned in fast enough were treated to a slow-motion replay of the camera panning from my panicked face, through the shock of the cohorts, and finally settling on Biker-bozo’s fury as I didn’t bother backing up, but rather bounced up over the sidewalk and nearly unseated myself barely missing the kids and Soccer-mom. Somehow, the Hoverhog managed to climb the brick bathroom walls, skated inanely up over the metal sun-cover for the picnic tables and then sailed impossibly through the air in a beeline for the onramp to the highway. It faded out to a view of Biker-bozo’s tight ass chasing me on foot as I sailed over his head, his bulging-muscled arm shaking over his head and fire coming out of his mouth.
“Stellllllllaaaaaa!” And I was suddenly upstaged by a walk-on! I wouldn’t get any credit for it, but we got another Click bait ad of Biker-bozo’s face as he reached toward me and Stella as we hit the road. None of my other one-liners made the cut. They even blurred out my backward flip-off, but the blurred-out photo was what made the ads.
Viewers - 23
Exp +300 (Steal a Hoverhog Quest Complete!)
Exp +200 (Escape Gomer and the Rest Stop Quest Complete!)
Quest: Get 100 Viewers!
This is a viewer-hidden quest.
Rewards: 1000 xp and a break.
Automatically Accepted.
Viewers -39
Quest: Get a Co-star that is Alive!
You can’t just talk to a motorcycle and we need dialogue, you loon!
Rewards: 200 xp
Automatically Accepted.
Viewers -45
Way to strong-arm my compliance the moment I manage to do something right, I thought at the World AI. I kept my eyes on the road even as the notifications scrolled by. I’d levelled! I wanted to stop and look and plan, but I was on this Hoverhog in the middle of the highway and places were speeding past like everything had gone to fast-forward.