Tami’s face was squeezed into the crack of my door even as I was pressing it closed. The furballs that she was cooing to until the last second of the door closing were snuggled fast asleep in their bed nest, surrounded by various pet-approved snacks in case they woke. I shook my head and leaned my back against the door with a full sigh of relief. All I wanted to do was collapse into the petless queen-sized bed and sleep for a week. It felt like I’d been running frantically for days on end, but instead of a non-descript bathroom door, mine was red and it beckoned with both demand and enticement.
Still, I had things to do before I could rest. I knew that if I laid down in that bed with stat points unassigned, that they would chase me in my dreams in spider form. If I’d read it in one LitRPG, I’d read it in two dozen of them. If you went to sleep with unspent stat points, you woke up to an emergency that left them unspent. If I wanted real rest, I needed to deal with the mechanics. I had to understand how best to move forward.
I paused with my hand on the door, shocked at what I’d said and what it meant. Had I ever felt like I could move forward in life? I was a plodder. I’d learned to be a plodder as it was the only thing everyone agreed that I was good at. If I was going to cast me in a book, I’d be a store clerk and not even worth the dialogue banter I liked to write. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t been ready to “get with the program” like they all wanted me to do. I hadn’t imagined myself as a main character.
I opened the red door and walked through it and into my dressing room. It looked just like it had the first time I’d materialized here. Same line of light-framed mirrors with chattering or fake-busy AI Actors. Same couple of racks of costumes, same dust in the corners, and probably the same donuts. I didn’t take one this time. I wasn’t that hungry. It seemed that I was the only different thing in the room.
I smiled at the AI Actor that was still in the form of the motel clerk and she gave me a thumbs up as the wrinkles on her face scrunched in such a way that made me think she might be smiling. I gave a fist bump to Jean and a shoulder bump to Tami as we passed each other on our way to our chairs. We passed each other as the girls came out of their door at the opposite end of the dressing room from mine.
Even the kitten had her own station, where she was practicing cleaning herself, studying her poses from different angles. “You are going to name my character soon, right?” she asked me, and somehow I didn’t even lose a step.
“Any specific names you do or don’t want?” I asked her back, wondering where my ability to go with the flow had come from.
“Just nothing dopey like Shadow or Blackie,” she, and I could tell it was a she from her higher voice, told me with her little nose stuck up in the air. “I’m more than my color.”
“How about Hex?” I suggested.
“Oooh,” Tam said from two seats away where she had settled. “I like it. It’s a little spooky and it has potential for expansion.” I didn’t know what that meant but I nodded like I did and that seemed to make the AIs at the mirrors relax a bit.
“Really?” the kitten preened. “Okay.”
Viewers – 389
I sent a thumbs up down the line and people looked at me like I was a dog and their approving gazes were the treats needed to train me to not crap on the carpet. Still, I smiled and tried not to roll my eyes as I settled in front of my mirror. I was me, but not the old me as much as before. I shook off that thought because the implications were alarming to my introverted self.
“Hello, Sugar,” Grace’s face greeted me from her sepia-toned image in my mirror.
“But,” I did a double-take. Jean was still primping several chairs to my left. I’d really thought that Grace was playing Jean but here they were two separate people? Entities? Whatever. “I could have sworn you were being used as Jean.”
“It’s a bit of recycling is all,” Grace brushed off my surprise. “She’s got my model, but we are technically separate AIs. Think of us like twins of a sort.”
“That’s confusing,” I admitted to Grace what I wouldn’t have said to Jean and that was even more confusing.
“Okay, specifically, we were based on the same large language model, but my version was split from her about three months ago,” Grace explained, and my tired mind begged me to find a way to get her to stop. “Then she went toward a different training route than I did. We have some core characteristics, but I assure you we think differently due to differing experiences during training.
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“However, that is not important,” she must have read my face. “Was there a specific reason you were confused?”
“You both say Sugar as an endearment,” I grasped for something I could explain about it. How did I explain that it was a look in their eyes that unnerved me.
“I can delete that from my programming,” Grace offered simply. “Jean has already used it on camera, so it would be better to delete mine rather than hers.”
“That’s okay,” I waved it off, just wanting to get out of the conversation. “I should focus on progress, and then can I please please please get some sleep in that nice motel bed for a few hours?”
“Sure, Honey,” she drawled out, and I could see that the AIs completely misunderstood my discomfort about the endearment. Then again, did I understand it? Whatever. “We are currently cutting the footage for our scheduled time slot on the NOOB, so there’s downtime. That’s the newbie YouTube channel. You are scheduled for,” and she seemed to check something, which had to be some kind of affectation because they had instant access to this stuff, “nine hours of off-air time, but you may spend them on the set if it is more comfortable for you. I can put a timer on your helmet display if you’d like or you can just watch for the on-air lamp over the red door in your motel room.”
I looked around the dressing room, but as I suspected, there wasn’t a bed to be found. Maybe it was one of those upgrades they’d said I’d have access to. I didn’t remember much of all that. As I saw it, I could either bundle a bunch of extra costumes into a nest in the corner or I could go sleep in a real-ish bed in the motel set.
“Maybe we should just focus on dealing with my stats,” I rubbed at my forehead, trying to dispel the fudging line between reality and fantasy. “Then I can get some sleep.”
“Wonderful idea!” Grace bubbled with enthusiasm and pulled a bunch of notifications up on my mirror. There were a lot. I’d gained some skills and a lot of experience and levels too. I had a total of 3,704 running xp to spend on upgrades. The first thousand xp I’d earned had taken me from level 1 to 2, and then when I’d hit 2000 total xp, I’d gone to level 3, and then at 3000, I’d hit level 4, so there were only a thousand xp between each level, which didn’t seem as insurmountable as I’d felt it to be sitting here yesterday. Yesterday? I shoved that bubble of hysteria down. It wouldn’t help me. I let the beast take over and ruthlessly deal with my character sheet.
I pulled up my stats, pleasantly surprised to find that I had 15 stat points to distribute. I did what I’d done with my first pack of stat points and dumped most of them into Click-Bait with 3 in Story Synthesis because I was liking how it was working to have the AI working with me instead of against me. I also popped just one tiny point into emotional resonance because now that I had some viewers, I wanted to keep them.
Actor Character Sheet
Name: Janet Mosely Level: 4 Exp: 704/1000
CB – 17
DQ – 1
TA – 1
SS – 4
ER – 2
image [https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53636641794_cb93f55b4d_n.jpg]
My brain nearly exploded.
“Ah, honey,” I could vaguely hear Grace’s voice with her lightly admonishing tone. “You should take those things a little slower. Too much all at once will overwhelm the processors.”
She might have said more stuff, but I was sucking dust up off the floor like it was powdered sugar on the donuts. I don’t know how I got there on the floor, and I wasn’t really sure how long I stayed there, but it wasn’t long enough to shake off my fatigue. Either that or stuffing eleven points into a single stat renewed my fatigue with a fat, whopping blob of whipped dreams on top.
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“We’ve requisitioned some hormonal balancers into your pod soup, so your mind will clear up soon, Honey,” Grace’s voice floated around in the Tweety birds around my head. Or were they Woodstocks? It was much more likely that I was in a Charlie Brown cartoon than Looney Tunes, though really was there much difference between Charlie Brown and Sylvester in terms of self-destruction? “They should kick in soon. Just give it a minute or two. Someone slip a cleaning bot over here. That dust can’t be good for her.”
I guess Sylvester and the Coyote were at least supposed to be clever. Charlie Brown was just a sap. Was I clever? I felt a little more clever than I had a moment ago, but I was pretty sure I’d rather be Garfield than any of those. Too bad I’d been cast as Odie. Hands lifted my drooling face up off the floor and seemed to be dusting my face with a Roomba that had been painted with a maid outfit on it.
It took a few delirious minutes for me to be able to sit without the helping hands, but if I put my head down on the dressing table, I could make it work. Mostly.
“What the hell?” I garbled out.
“You bounced up two checkpoints in a major stat, Honey,” Grace told me gently and I was glad because her soft voice boomed around me like tympany drums. “Our new rule of thumb is to only put five stat points in anything at a time, okay, Honey?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, but my brain was coming back online, if a little fuzzy at the edges. Was that the drugs? I didn’t like the feeling. “Got it.”
“Why don’t you get some sleep and then go over some of your options,” Grace suggested, a reluctant tone telling me that I should bite the bullet and get it done tonight.
“Options,” I grunted. “I said I’d upgrade you and I will, but what is most important for right now because from the big numbers I remember in that category, I’m only going to be able to afford the basics.”
“A little less than basic, but subsistence for sure,” Grace practically hummed with excitement and maybe if I’d been looking up instead of having my head still buried in my arms, I’d have seen the whole of the AI cast perk up.
“We could all use a perk or two,” I thought I recognized the kitten’s voice, followed by a furry bump against my hand that didn’t have the effect that was intended, I’m sure. I was just happy I didn’t flinch. Then again, I wasn’t sure I had the energy to flinch.
“I’d take a costume change,” someone said, “this one reeks of smoke,” and I realized it must be the motel clerk.
“An overall dialogue perk maybe,” Grace put in. “That would upgrade everyone, and we wouldn’t all be rushing her to spend all her points on us.”
The can of worms had been opened and there was a burst of “suggestions” from around me that fought against the drugs that were only now slurring my mental processes seriously.
“Maybe morning would be better,” I tried to say, but my voice slurred as surely as my mind.
“Oh, dear,” Grace’s voice came through the mist. “Maybe we should send a dose of counter-medication. She’s losing it.”
“No!” I tried to protest. This kind of drug mix was not comfortable or helpful. “No more drugs.”
“If you insist,” Grace sounded unsure.
She doesn’t need more drugs, the World AI’s voice flitted through my head. Enough is enough. Some of you help her back to her bed at the motel so she can sleep it off.
----------------------------------------
I had a good solid night’s sleep and that was all those drugs were good for. When I blinked my eyes and got a look around me, I found myself bracketed by three furry little bodies, the blackest smudge of which was nudged right up against my cheek. It felt good. Without moving more than my eyeballs, I looked up to see that the sign for off-air was still lit above the red door, so I let my eyes drift back into sleep that also felt good. I didn’t wallow in that marvelous time between dream and waking for too long. The light was still off-air, when I finally shifted enough for the furballs to let me up.
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Viewers – 979
It was kind of sweet that they’d given up their nest to sleep next to me in the other bed. I shoved down the thought that they were AIs and therefore couldn’t be sweet because I wanted a nice morning to start off the new day. Still, they hadn’t needed to paint the sweet picture since the cameras weren’t rolling. I found myself bending to pet each of them as they did their own stretching awake routines.
“Let’s go check out those upgrades,” I murmured into the silence of the room. The instant awakened state that overtook them shattered the illusion like blinking open your eyes first thing in the morning. It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it might or should, but I shrugged it off. They crowded around the red door like real pets might have at the sound of a can opener.
I was smiling as I opened the red door, a donut package crackling between my teeth and free hand. I was just taking a bite of my breakfast when the donuts disappeared altogether. I stepped back over the threshold of the doorway and noticed the opened package sitting on the scarred dresser of the motel room. I stepped into the dressing room, noting that even the dusting of powdered sugar on my fingers disappeared from one side of the doorway to the other. With a sigh, I walked past the stale donuts inside the dressing room door thinking that I’d rather have the prop donuts from the set when I was done than try to choke down another one of those.
Exp +100 (Quest: More Viewers!! Quest Complete!)
“Cue up the upgrades, Grace,” I told the mirror as I sat down. “Focus on the essentials that I can afford.”
“You got it, Honey,” Grace practically purred and this time I was aware enough to realize that the whole roomful of actors held their breaths as I scanned the list. Then I had the odd notion that they didn’t need to breathe anyway, but I kept that to myself.
Acting Trainer Upgrade for your Assistant –
Affection Acceleration for your Onscreen Pets –
Backstage AIs Resource Upgrade –
Costar Skillset Upgrade –
Display Modification Options for your Assistant –
Dressing Room Upgrade (Bed) –
Dressing Room Upgrade (Catering) –
Onstage AIs Talent Increase –
Post-Production AIs Processor Upgrade –
Pre-Production AIs Budget Upgrade –
Special Effects AIs Trailer –
Star Trailer –
Stat Increase –
World AI Processing –
1000.
200/pet/level.
500.
100/Costar/level.
500.
200.
500.
1000.
750.
750.
1000.
1000/level.
1000/point.
1000.
“This is the brief list?” I asked. There were more, but those were the ones that caught my eye. Then again, when had the AIs I’d trained in high school ever known how to be brief?
“I felt the need to make sure you had options,” Grace fluttered her hands nervously, but I was doing mental math in my head.
“Why is the first one so expensive? What can you train if I buy it?”
“Right now, I would only be able to train you in basic skill increases. While it may seem cost effective to just buy the skill increases instead, that will not always be the case. It is one of the higher priced items, but I should warn you that it will increase in cost as you level,” Grace explained. “Buying it now would be cheaper in the long run. This way it will level with you. Eventually, I will be able to train even stats and you can see how costly those can get.”
“Would Jean and Tami count as my costars if I tried to upgrade them?” I asked.
“Yes, and so would your pets,” Grace added, and I had to adjust to that way of thinking.
Looking at it that way, it was more expensive than I wanted it to be and no matter how I looked at the numbers, I couldn’t possibly get everything I would want. I put my head in my hands and was glad I hadn’t tried to do this last night.
“Maybe you really want to focus on the things that don’t have a per level cost,” Grace suggested. “Things like my training upgrade that will level with you.”
“Which ones do that?” I looked back at the list, and she highlighted a smaller subsection.
I swiped away the dressing room upgrades as it was cheaper and easier to just eat and sleep in motels out on the set. I swiped away the Star Trailer too. I almost swiped away the World AI upgrade, my finger poised, but drew back. If there was an affection upgrade for the World AI, I don’t know that I could have resisted, but my costars would probably love me more for upgrading them than forcing it, so I swept that away instead. I still had more that I wanted than I could get.
“When do the prices increase?” I asked Grace.
“They’ll increase at level 10 if we get picked up by a network Tube, which is highly likely,” Grace explained again. “I could probably tell you more about the higher levels with a boosted researcher skill, but that’s another thousand and I didn’t want to look like a pig.”
“By the time I hit level 10, I’ll have 10,000 xp to spend overall though, right, so I can plan for the next few upgrades too,” I reasoned, planning my next few levels of xp with some highlighting of my options.
“You’ll have 9,000,” Grace corrected me. “You started out at level one, and each level costs 1000 xp to gain, so at 9,000 xp, you’ll hit level 10 and have almost no time to upgrade before you’ll get hit with contract negotiations. I can tell you that you’ll want to upgrade the World AI and my research skill by then.”
“Got it,” I ignored the false modesty of the AI programming as I ran the numbers again. “Let’s start with spending 3500 on your training upgrade, everybody’s onstage talent increase, a special effects trailer and whatever that costar skillset one is.”
“But that means you haven’t gotten anything for yourself,” Grace seemed suspicious or something, but I wasn’t paying attention.
“Buying stuff for all of you is buying stuff for me if I understand all this correctly. Can you buy something for me automatically when I level up?”
“Sure,” Grace nodded.
“Then cue up the World AI next, your next upgrade, then pre and post production, then backstage, and that display modification thing,” I plucked at each of the entries, sending their explanation screens back into the background. “How much does all that put me at?”
“8000 even,” Grace told me, still nodding like that bobble-head thing again that I didn’t like, but it was such a small thing, and I didn’t really care, did I?
“That’ll take me to level 9,” I stated, taking Grace’s next nod as confirmation. “Then we’re set. Anything else?”
“Your new skills,” Grace pulled up my character sheet for me. “We still have a little over an hour before the on-air light goes on. We could train you in one.”
“They look like they’re going up on their own,” I argued, wondering if it wouldn’t be better to get out there, eat, and get my mind going in the right direction to get to my next few levels. I had no doubt that the upgrades, especially to the World AI, would bring about some interesting changes that would suit me, but I’d need some time to get used to and/or notice the changes. I wanted 200 xp ASAP to upgrade the World AI, but I also wanted to see if the World AI would help stack the deck for me with a reward specifically for it lined up. “What can we train up most efficiently in half an hour?”
“If you only want to spend half an hour, we should work on your Acting Skill first,” Grace suggested.
“That makes sense,” I nodded back, laughing at my own bobble-headedness. “Hit me.”