I was staring at my character sheet as I walked out of the red door and back into my motel room. Of course, it disappeared as I stepped over the threshold. It was pretty much burned into my head anyway. I held the door open for my little cohorts half-listening as their verbal banter that turned into animal chittering as they also changed going across the threshold. I popped a lovely sugar-dusted donut into my mouth even as I broke open a bag of pet treats and tossed it on their nest.
Actor Character Sheet
Name: Janet Mosely Level: 5 Exp: 304/1000
CB – 17
DQ – 1
TA – 1
SS – 4
ER – 2
Skills: Acting (2), Misbehaving (3), Stealing (3), Hiding (2), Misdirection (3)
image [https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53636641794_cb93f55b4d_n.jpg]
I wondered what skills I’d bought for them. It wasn’t like they could tell me now. They looked the same. I popped the top of a plastic bottle of soda as I watched them. The most noticeable effect seemed to be that they liked me more now. I’d increased their talent and skills. For that matter, I’d increased mine too, thanks to Grace’s training. My acting skill had gone from 1 to 2. How could that manifest? I’d read the explanations, but they were so generic.
In looking at the explanations, I’d found out that each AI had their own character sheets. They levelled just like I did. By buying the talent upgrade, I’d made it so that they would get an extra two free points per level. I had figured that one would have the most benefit for everyone and it wasn’t retroactive, so I’d bought it first to get the most out of it.
By upgrading their skills, I’d opened their possible skill attainment to the next level. There was a master list of skills that every AI could get from performing actions. That list was broken down into 10 levels where the most amazing skills were at level 10 and the most basic were at level 1. I’d opened the list up so that their skills could manifest from both the first and second levels of it.
The upgrade I was looking forward to the most was the special effects studio. I’d bought it in this first round because of how it would level up with the rest of us. At level one, it was almost useless, but I was guaranteed at least two special effects per “episode” whatever that meant. I mean, I knew that they were making hour-long episodes out of the “best” of what happened. I’d experienced what the production crew could do, which was mostly slow mo and fast forward. Special effects was supposed to be more like explosions, onscreen magical effects, and specialized make-up. It wasn’t good for much at level one, but it got xp for every effect and earned skills for impressive stuff.
I had just popped the last donut from the pack into my mouth when the on-air light popped on, and no sooner had it done so than I heard pounding on my door. I nearly jumped two feet off my bed, fumbling the wrapper so that it ended up in a messy heap on the floor. I was torn between picking up the wrapper so I wouldn’t look like a slob and lunging for the door. When the door pounded again, hard enough to rattle dust down from the popcorn ceiling of my room, I chose the door, only pausing long enough to kick the donut wrapper under the bed. Sorry, housekeeping.
“What?!” I swung the door open to see Jean’s impatient hands on hips and Tami’s hopeful expression.
“We got a job and I thought that you would be able to tag along?” Tami was saying over Jean’s scowl.
“What kind of job?” I asked, and my eyes panned the scene in front of me. Two gals, living on plastic that was probably fake, in an old-fashioned black car, who rush off to jobs. “Wait! Are you two sisters?”
“Step,” Jean put in, gruffly and a picture was forming a knot in my stomach.
“Not that we bother with the step part of the sisters,” Tami rushed on. “I don’t want to cut this short, but we’re on the clock and have to be on the job site in less time than it normally takes even Jean to skirt through morning traffic.”
And I realized I’d fallen for a gender change and brand swap. Seriously? I’d just spent running xp on these gals. They were going to level up. Did I want to fight a wendigo? Did we have a special effects budget for that? I blinked. When had I started thinking like that?
“What’s the job?” I asked, and then could have smacked myself.
“We need to be at the Opera Hotel in fifteen minutes,” Jean growled out.
“It’d just be nice to have a little extra help on the prep line,” Tami was saying over Jean’s scowling. “I’ll show you the ropes and you’ll catch up in no time. How are you with knives?”
“I know where to point the wrong end of a knife,” I found myself saying and I nearly swallowed my own tongue as it did.
“Fine,” Jean was saying as she swung past me to sweep my stash of stuff into my bags. “You take those guys and we’re on the road in thirty seconds.”
“You never told me their names,” Tami asked, picking them up very gently.
“The cat is Hex,” I told her with an ease that had to come from increased stats. “The darker ferret is Kodo and the other is Podo. You got them okay?”
“Absolutely!” and Tami beamed like I’d given her diamonds. “Into the sidecar?” Hex darted up Tami’s arm and onto her shoulder like she’d been trained to do it. The ferret brothers wound into her arms like she was their second-best friend.
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging into my leather jacket over my jeans one and stuffing my feet into my sneakers without even untying and tying the shoelaces. I already knew my hair was in place since Tami had done it up in a half-braid this morning in the dressing room while I’d been upping my acting skill.
“I got your bags,” Jean said, tossing her keycard at me. “You check us out.”
“Yep,” I quipped, miraculously catching the keycard and heading to the door like we did this every day.
It was two minutes when we were on the road again, me with a full tank of electric on my hog following the Remmington sisters to our first job together. Hex was curled up asleep on the oversized purse and Podo and Kodo were peeking up over the front dash of the sidecar, protected from the wind by its windshield. All I had was a switchblade and a large wrench for a weapon, but I had a back pocket of one-liners to say for the day. That would have to get me through.
When we pulled up to the posh Hotel thirteen harrowing minutes of fast forward later, I pulled into the employee parking lot next to Jean even as Tami was already out of her seat and popping the trunk. The hotel was over ten stories high and had the feel of the old south meets Vegas. Even in the back, near the dumpsters and handicapped parking, there were majestic white columns that clashed with the Vegas-like tinted windows that reflected the half-up sun. Led lights that were supposed to look like neon wrapped the windows with the glitz that belied the old southern brick façade and Opera, spelled backward from this side of the hotel, in a flowing scrip that gave me a foreboding chill for some reason I couldn’t name yet.
I lifted the still sleeping Hex into my hair and let the ferrets into the backpack. The day was warming and I figured that if we were working inside the hotel, it would be too warm for my leather jacket. I left it and the oversized purse in the trunk of my sidecar, but I tucked the wrench into a back pocket of my jeans and slid my jeans jacket over it. My pack had very little in it except for a package of treats and Podo and Kodo.
“Here,” Tami pushed a rolled-up packet of leather with canvas ties into my hands. “If anyone asks, you’re with me.”
“Just go with whatever Tami says, and you’ll do just fine,” Jean advised, slamming the trunk with a glare at Tami, who just rolled her eyes back. I had only gotten a glimpse of some very suspicious items in that trunk that had not been there the first time Jean had been unloading bags with me. Tarp and shovels didn’t bode well for my future, but I pretended like I hadn’t seen a thing.
“Relax,” Tami told Jean. “This way you’re free to go case the place so our night job goes easy as pie.”
“You’re too trusting,” Jean muttered, but in the next minute she was gone, striding toward a back entrance.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Quest: Establish a Cover
Work with Tam Remmington at her day job so you’re all ready for the night job.
Rewards: 400 xp
Accept Y/N?
Of course, I accepted and sure enough, there was my proof that the World AI was interested in that upgrade enough to ensure I had a quick chance to get it. This was me working toward mutually assured progression. Was I thinking in one-liners? Mutually assured progression? It was a word-play that sounded like it could stick in a person’s head. Was I seeing the product of my Clickbait going up so far so fast? The term was usually mutually assured destruction, but by changing it just slightly, it meant the opposite and it even played on the fact that the World AI had been enemies just the day before. Even the flow of the term was the same. Great. Now I just had to find a way to say it out loud.
“Come on,” Tami linked an arm through mine and steered me toward another back door past the dumpsters. She gave Hex a scritch and scrunched her nose at Kodo and Podo who chittered at her charmingly. “Now you three are going to have to stay hidden and keep your noses out of anything we don’t specifically give to you. Do you think you can do that?”
“They know how to behave, don’t you?” I pretended I was sure of that fact. I mean why not? My beast had been in full control since I’d figured out that I was going on a job with the Remmington sisters. Hex gave a purr before retreating into the thickness of my black tresses, her yellow eyes almost mystically disappearing in there. I was just counting on my plot armor at this point. Podo and Kodo ducked into their nest in my backpack. I gave a tiny sigh of relief.
“They are so talented,” Tami blinked blue eyes at me that crinkled with fun at the edges. Was that a reference to whatever talent they’d gotten? I didn’t think so because they had already shown signs of being able to follow directions before, but this did feel just a bit more trained than before so maybe. “Almost like they’re little familiars,” and Tami giggled. “You aren’t a witch, are you?”
“Maybe,” I deadpanned with only the hint of a smirk, “but I’m on your side so you’re safe.”
Tami giggled. Yeah, I’d put a lot of points in Clickbait and now I sounded like a commercial spokesperson. My smirk slipped as we slipped into a bustling kitchen and Tami’s demeanor changed from coy to pure authority, something I’d never imagined on the girl who’d been a sucker for my pets. The kitchen was populated with four young men who were lazily almost doing the jobs of dishwasher, vegetable cutter, saucier, and loafer. The glitter of stainless-steel counters, bins, and appliances vied with the white of uniforms and was broken up with the red tile of the floor with little black bits here and there with the burner covers and cast iron. The only other surface color was the tan of wooden cutting surfaces, and pale faces that jerked to attention at Tami’s voice snapping over the clammer like a drill sergeant.
“Chef in the kitchen,” Tami clipped out, making my knees feel a little weak. “What’s the meaning of this mess?”
“Who the hell are you?” drawled out the lazy one with one shoulder on the wall by the swinging door that I assumed led into a dining room.
“Your celebrity chef, and if you don’t have a mop in your hand in the next two seconds, I’m going to make Ramsey look like a pussy cat,” Tami barked out at the guy and if we’d had a level two special effects trailer, there would have been fire effects coming out of her eyes and mouth.
“I’m no janitor,” the guy pushed back indignantly. “I’m the assistant chef and I’m in charge here until Anton gets in, so you can just march your-“
“Not anymore, you’re not. Get out of my kitchen!” Tami snarled at him dangerously and my bowels nearly lost their firmness. “I’m Tam Remmington and your chef is out sick while I take over.”
“No way,” the guy was slow to let go of his bravado. There were some whispers on the line between the saucier and the vegetable cutter.
“One more word out of your mouth and I’ll make sure your name is mud in all the wrong circles, Mr. Tomlin,” Tami growled slowly, her eyes glued to his in arrogant challenge. Who was this woman?
“Mop, not mope,” my Clickbait-enhanced-self barked at the now-cowed man.
“This is my second,” Tami didn’t miss a beat, now ignoring the guy reaching for the mop with a surly lip that was, at least, closed. “Her name is Janet, and if she says something, you act like it came from me, got it?” She cast a stern glance at the rest of the room, handing me an apron off the wall and taking one for herself as she spoke in kinder tones to the workers who had decided to actually work. “Get those vegetable bins filled in the next ten minutes and I want a white sauce and chicken stock started in less than that time. I don’t know why there’s still a stack of dishes, but if you want to keep your job, it better be clear by the time I get out of the freezer with my menu and that’s not going to take me as long as Tomlin took just to waste my time.” Silence reigned for a second, but in the next second, there were pans clacking and knives thumping on wood.
“Let’s get it moving people,” I echoed her authority as Tami ducked into the freezer and pantries without a backward glance. I hung up my pack on the peg where my apron had come from, making sure that the ferrets could work their way out if they needed to do so. I tied my apron and was tucking my hair up in an odd mix of a hair net and chef’s hat that had been on a peg above the aprons.
“The Remmington?” the dishwasher dared to whisper to me as I passed him on my way to the pantry after Tami.
“Is there another?” I temporized, unrolling my leatherbound pack and finding the most beautiful set of high-end kitchen knives I’d ever seen, even on the shopping channel. They had jet-black blades that shimmered with a holographic image of Tami’s face and the words “Steel Chef” emblazoned on the handles in what looked like real gold.
“Lamb, duck, steak is a little low for my taste?” Tami was muttering to herself as I joined her in the meat locker which had one side as frozen and the other as refrigerated in a very unreal way. “There had better be a delivery of seafood on the way, or I’m going to skin that assistant chef.”
“What the hell do you want me to do?” I groped for words that found their way out of my mouth without my normal worry.
Quest: Find the Fish.
Tami needs seafood to perform to expectations for the dinner service tonight. Find it.
Rewards: 100 xp
Accept Y/N?
“I’ve got to have two chef’s specials, but I want three for a nice tasting plate,” Tami was saying more to herself than to me. “I’m going to need you to follow me around and make sure what I say needs to be done gets done and if anyone’s overwhelmed at their station, help them out. Nudge me if it’s too much for you to handle.” Her tone toward me was nothing like it had been outside and she was hyper-focused on an electronic notepad. “Can you find out if we have seafood coming in? I’m not seeing the order, but then again Anton wasn’t expecting to get sick today, so…”
“You got it,” I assured her and slipped back out to the kitchen just as the murmurs died down and Mop-moper took his elbow off the end of the mop to pretend he was actually using it.
“Seafood?” I said, clipping Mop-moper upside the back of the head.
“What about it?” He pretended to misunderstand me, and I knew he was going to be the ants at my picnic.
I took Mop-moper by the scruff of his white uniform and back of his pants and pushed him toward the back door, his heels kicking to try to reach the floor he wasn’t mopping.
“It’s late this morning,” he started babbling everything I needed to know. “The number’s on the chef’s desk. I can find it.”
“You’re more of a pest than a help and we can do just fine without you,” I gave him a shove. “Come back tomorrow to see if your chef will let you back in the kitchen after Remmington gives her report to him.”
“But,” he stammered, his heels skittering back onto the blacktop of the parking lot. “It’s not my fault!”
“If I see your face again today, I’ll call security,” and I brandished my fist under his nose to let him know what I considered security for the kitchen today. The words, “It’s not my fault” resonated uncomfortably in my head but I ignored it.
Mop-moper tore his apron off over his head and threw it to the ground in a fit of temper. “The union will hear about this! I have friends –”
That would have been a better threat if the seafood truck hadn’t pulled up and rolled over the apron and cut off the rant halfway through. I snickered with my arms over my chest. I knew about Steel Chef and if Tami had a set of knives from the show, it meant that she’d beaten one of the best chefs in the US in a televised competition. I was betting that her friends were higher than his friends in whatever agency he was going to complain to.
“Where do you want it?” the truck driver asked, his tone harried as he rolled up the back of his truck.
“Meet me inside with it and I’ll check it over,” I called out over the sound of a hand truck being loaded and a screaming ex-assistant chef stomping away.
I sauntered back into the kitchen to pick up Mop-moper’s mop and toss it back into the bucket it had come from. I stuck my head into the freezer to let Tami know that seafood had just showed up. I had a moment as the guy wheeled in the seafood to reflect on how I’d been able to get with the program more today than I’d felt the day before. Was my acting skill filling in the skillset I’d need to do this job? Could two lousy points in it make me better at acting in a way that let me move with the script rather than against it. I guess I’d find out when I needed to chop something.
Viewers – 1088
Crates thumped at my feet, and I tore off lids to examine the goods. Two crates of lobsters that were still moving dared me to move them so that I could get to the bottom crates. I’m not a trusting person. I used the edges of my apron to guard my hands as I quickly moved the crates and popped open the next one that was packed in ice and some lovely tuna on top and some less lovely salmon below it. It wasn’t sushi grade, but it was fine for cooking, so I let it go, especially with the way the truck driver was hustling to the door. It was the last crate of crab that had me glad I’d hurried.
“Hold it!” I called out to the driver who tried to pretend he didn’t hear me as the door closed behind him.
I picked up the crate of what was advertised on the side of that crate as live crab. The crabs inside the crate were too busy eating their two dead brethren to snap at my hands as I marched that crate right out where the truck was starting up, and the driver was trying to give me a sly wave. The sly slipped off his face as I planted myself in front of his truck. He had the nerve to put it in reverse and I flung the box at the windshield. I’d watched every episode of Ramsey. I knew what was expected of me, even if my poor quivering old-me ego was hiding her eyes behind her hands with a pathetic whimper.
Exp +100 (Quest: More Viewers!! Quest Complete!)
“What the hell!” the driver leaned out his window to swear at me around the cracked windshield complete with some scuttling crabs that looked a little dazed.
“What can I say?” I shrugged my shoulders with a glare that gave lie to my nonchalant tone. “Dead seafood in a fresh seafood crate makes a girl a little crabby!”
I knew I’d flubbed the one-liner. It was too complicated, too long. My talent let me know that I’d been just a tad off.
“You’re crazy!” The driver didn’t wait to give me the crab we’d ordered. He finished backing out leaving me standing next to two live, if dazed, crabs and a crumpled apron with tire tread on it where the driver had pealed out backwards.
Cut! Scene! I could hear in the back of my head. It was probably my imagination. My life had gotten weird.
Exp +75 (Find the Fish. Quest Partially Complete!)