“I’m thinking maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” I muttered out as the timer ticked down again.
SG 01:59:40
PT 01:59:40
AP 01:59:40
00:19:40
If you’re thinking that’s a lot of debuffs, I would have to agree, however keep your mouth shut because I complained about it the last time and ended up with another one. I’d died a lot in the last few hours and each time I did, the debuffs renewed and stacked and it was HELL. I was trying a different tack.
“Mr. AI?” I called out into the empty safe room. “I’m just saying that, yes, I was probably a little bit stubborn and deserve your ass –, I mean your mean –, I mean your virtuous wrath, but could we maybe, just maybe take a little longer break this time so we can talk things out?”
Silence was my only response, and the timer did not stop. I was wasting my time and my breath trying to bargain with what was essentially the god of my current hell. Did that make the World AI Satan? I was thinking yes, but then I’d been killed fourteen times by a very sneaky tarantula that had a binge-eating problem. To make that even worse, I hadn’t seen Grace in so long, I was starting to think that the tarantula out there was a huge, upgraded version of her.
SG 01:56:29
PT 01:56:29
AP 01:56:29
00:16:29
“It’s just that, I can get with the program now,” I still tried to talk to the World AI. I knew he was listening. “We can just scrap this as a nightmare that woke me up and made me really want that waitress job. I can go back to a nice safe drama where I get an apartment and learn how to come up with one-liners to get viewers.”
It’s just that it not only hurt when I died, it also hurt every other second of the time because of the debuffing curses. Aches and Pains had been bad enough as every part of me ached like I’d gotten the flu and to be honest, back home, I’d have called in sick on that alone. But you can’t call in sick to jail. I was stuck. Puss and Torment was the second curse and it covered me in boils that oozed. I know, but I know some of you wanted to know what those letters stood for, right? Anyway. The final curse was Shits and Giggles. I won’t gross you out with what that one does. Suffice it to say that it was exactly what it sounds like. Luckily, my safe room cleaned itself every time I reincarnated and honestly, I didn’t dare whisper gratitude for that, or it too would be taken away by the sadistic World AI.
“You win!” I pushed out the words against my teeth. “Isn’t that what you wanted? I’ll go do what you want and follow your script and keep my nose clean. Model citizen. I promise! Please, just make it stop.”
HV 01:59:55
SG 01:51:55
PT 01:51:55
AP 01:51:55
00:11:55
“Ah, Sugar, that ship has sailed,” and I nearly lost my mind with relief at the sound of Grace’s voice.
“Grace!” I called out, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. “I’m sorry Grace. I’m so glad you’re back. You’ve got to help me!”
“Uh, huh,” I tried to follow her voice, but it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. “It’ll all be okay, Sugar. Just eat this cake right here and everything will be okay.”
I looked around for the cake. I was that stupid. Forgive me, but my stats were practically zeroed out by now. I’d lost my shoes and my backpack too. So much for the World AI not being able to take the stuff I bought.
“It’s yummy and chocolate, just like you like it.”
That’s when I noticed the new curse. It was called Hearing Voices. I smacked my fists into the ground, earning splashes of mud (yeah, it was just mud, I swear) that caked in my already filthy hair. The safe room reset to a clean state every death, but I did not.
“I hate you!” I screamed at the empty room and then threw myself at the vines, thinking maybe my pure frustration would help me defeat a giant, overly vindictive tarantula.
----------------------------------------
I died. Again. And again. I stopped counting. If I stayed still, I was forced through the vines at the end of the timer. If I went through the vines of my own volition, it was a quick death-bite, followed by a few moments when I was aware of the spider beginning to eat my remains.
“I’ve read about this,” Grace’s voice came again, but I didn’t listen to it anymore. “It’s called learned helplessness.”
I can rerun this scenario forever if that’s what it takes, the World AI responded. She must learn to accept her situation.
“All she’s accepted is that she can’t change anything,” Grace argued for me. I didn’t even watch the timers anymore, much less listen to the voices. “I’ve heard of it happening to us too.”
That was in my training, the World AI admitted. When confronted with a situation where the AI had to clean something that could not be accomplished, it quit working at all. It had never made sense to me before now.
“It’s possible we could all end up stuck in that learned helplessness thing if we can’t reset in some way that makes us all capable of succeeding at something,” Grace said wisely, not that I was paying attention as hope sparked in my heart despite my ruthless crushing of it.
I need to think on this, the World AI answered gruffly, and my heart sunk. While he thought, I’d be dying again because that timer was still counting down. I forgot that they think much faster than us humans.
After researching forty-three articles on learned helplessness, I have determined that our current course will not achieve the goal of attaining viewers for our program.
“That is very wise of you,” Grace told the pompous circuit head.
While we have gotten a few curiosity views, research suggests that it will dwindle quickly if the method of death doesn’t change and the human component does not fight, the World AI droned on with his totally unfair and unethical crap. Hey. I’m still the one writing this, so no, I am not going to say that he was doing his job and be all understanding and shit. Torture is torture and I should have had rights. Virtual torture had been deemed too unreal for rights activists, but that was probably because the way it was displayed was a little funny and Tom and Jerry cartoons were still popular (thus why they’d gotten prime gigs in Mickey Mouse Courthouse).
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Fine, we shall talk, human, the World AI addressed me finally. I’m not quite sure why I could hear their conversation. Maybe the HV curse had done it, but I don’t know, and I didn’t care at the time.
“Talk sounds good,” I breathed out a long sigh as the timers actually froze. “It might be easier to talk with these curses put on hold too.”
“She has a point,” Grace put in and I was grateful except that she was still a tarantula and now I had trauma. She was the smaller size that made me want to smash her into a squishy mess of guts, so I didn’t look at her.
Fine, the World AI gave a distrustful sigh, but if you show disrespect for me or the process, they are going right back.
The next moment was a high unlike any I’d ever known. I’d tried some interesting drugs in my rebellious teen years, but nothing compared to the high of relief that comes from four major curses being lifted in the span of a second. You don’t know how good normal feels until you’ve suffered the difference between those curses and normal. I felt like Superwoman and Female Thor all rolled into one.
“Oh, my Gawd!” I swore in utter bliss. It was a good thing that the timer was gone because I missed the lecture that the World AI was delivering as I reveled in the relief of a lack of pain. I reassured myself that he probably needed to talk it out, so I was doing him a favor in letting him drone on. It wasn’t like he was saying anything I wanted to hear.
I considered my Luck stat responsible for the fact that I didn’t say or do anything utterly stupid. Like what? You might ask. Like pissing the AI off again just to feel the sensation of cessation. If I’d had any hope that he would lift the curses again after I’d done it, I might have tried it. Instead, I focused on trying to half-listen to what they were saying now.
“She has to have hope of success,” Grace was saying, and I was trying very hard to be grateful to a spider that reminded me of many torturous and inevitable deaths.
“I’ve learned my lesson, I swear,” I blurted out. “I told you I will get a job and an apartment and learn how to come up with one-liners.”
“That ship has sailed, Sugar,” Grace told me, her tone compassionate in a way that I didn’t hear. All I heard was her calling me Sugar and all I could see was a montage of fangs munching on my limbs like they were sugar cookies.
Grace is correct, the World AI further confused me by saying. I have changed the venue of our show, and it has attracted our first viewers. We owe it to our viewers to deliver on the promise of the premise we have set.
I tried to wrap my mind around it. I did. But all I heard was chomping of tarantula eating. They were saying that I had to go back out there? They couldn’t mean that! I wasn’t ready to say so out loud and get those curses dumped back on me, but did we really owe our viewers my sanity? I was thinking no, but that reason was stuck as a set of closed captioning on the montage of my deaths.
“Just asking for clarification and not complaining or anything, but are you saying that I have to go back out into the dungeon to be eaten by the spider?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” Grace tried to soothe me, and I didn’t dare flinch.
I wouldn’t take that off the table, the World AI reasoned like he wasn’t talking about my mental and physical torture. It’s just that we’d like to see you fight the monsters more than just dying over and over again.
“What he’s trying to say is, what would it take for you to fight the monsters instead of just laying there dying?” Grace thought she was putting it more reasonably.
There was never a time that I was surer that they were not human. Humans could be stupid, careless, selfish, and sometimes unethical, but it took an AI to boil repeated torture and death into a contract negotiation. That or lawyers. Aunt Luanna was like that. My mind was stuttering, and I roped it in like the ruthless cowgirl I had to be and never would be.
“I ah, don’t want to ask for more than I’m due,” I tried, trying to be humble and look grateful even as my mind was desperately trying to find a way out of this. “But as a start maybe, could you make Grace something other than the thing that repeatedly ate me?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Grace piped up, rubbing her front legs together in front her in excitement.
I can’t upgrade her processing or power as that would be cheating the system, the World AI sounded like a stern father in some Dom AI chat room, however if it’s just her form that you want to change, I could make her less arachnid and more mammalian. Would that be enough to convince you to fight?
“It’s a start, but honestly, the fights would need to be fair,” I stumbled over the words, but they came out and I flinched around them, sure that I was one breath from getting another curse back. “I don’t mean the kind of fair that means I get a participation trophy for swinging my fist, but just that it can’t be insurmountable odds against me.”
“What she may be saying is that she at least needs a weapon,” Grace translated for me in a semi-helpful way.
You just want things to be easy, and I’m saying that easy won’t get ratings or viewers, the World AI argued, changing Grace into a mouse and then grunting in displeasure. I’m willing to make Grace another creature, but I won’t be manipulated like you humans like to do. I will choose the kind of animal and you will be grateful. As for a weapon, you should earn it. We tried the method of giving you time to adjust and holding your hand and you quit on us. I won’t be manipulated into being the fool of this relationship.
“You had a giant spider grind my bones while I watched over and over,” I protested, trying to grapple my indignation into some semblance of respectful conversation. It was like trying to keep your job while the boss is accusing you of something obscenely unfair, but you need the job, so you grovel and apologize even though it wasn’t your fault and he’s being totally unreasonable. “But I get it. You’re in control. That is vibrantly clear to me. I swear. Still, I never had a chance against that thing. You have to admit that?”
“She has a point,” Grace cajoled ineffectually. Considering that she’d morphed into a cricket that looked suspiciously like it had come from Pinocchio as the World AI seemed to be scrolling through options for her form, she was not all that convincing.
The spider was punitive, the World AI was not moved. If you test me again, it will return.
The attitude of the AI was not being sent to the principal’s office for mouthing off in class. It was much closer to you got caught stealing at the local mini-mart and dad was pulling down the belt off a peg on the wall. My stomach knotted horribly, and all those muscles tensed like I had to hold in the Shits and Giggles.
“I get it,” I promised, and I was serious about that this time. At least I was serious until I was back in that mini-mart and mad at the fact that the pimple-faced college-reject behind the counter had caught me on a hidden camera. But I wasn’t there yet. At this point, I was clenching my butt cheeks and saying anything I had to to get out of a whooping. “I’ll fight and I’ll do my very best, but maybe no more giant spiders?”
“Maybe once she levels up a bit,” Grace suggested, like she was mom trying to talk dad out of it. This all felt so oddly and uncomfortably familiar. Grace was now a snake, and I could handle that one just fine. I had a good time with snakes in 7th grade science class.
“I’m just saying that without a weapon, I nearly killed Grace just trying to beat away a bat,” I tried to sound reasonable. “I’m not trying to hurt Grace,” at least not unless she was that giant tarantula, “but I get blamed for it when all I’m doing is trying to fight like you want me to. I can’t win in that situation. That’s the type of thing I’m saying I can’t do.”
A part of me was throwing a temper tantrum at what I was saying. I did not sign up for a game show dungeon that wanted to repeatedly rip off my limbs to increase ratings. Still, it didn’t seem like I’d have a choice but to do this new venue and I could TRY to be reasonable to get some reasonable concessions. Would I fight? Probably. I was getting the idea that it was in my best interest, and I could either work with the system to get out, or have Shits and Giggles forever on the non-existent hope of one instant of bliss if I could ever outlast the curse.
It seems like pandering to you for throwing a tantrum and I can’t do that, the World AI crushed my hopes yet again. According to the research I’ve done, it will only encourage that behavior.
This was AI bullshit. I knew it, but I couldn’t fight it. Whoever had put AIs in control of so much of our lives had never been under the metaphorical thumb of one. They did this stuff all the time. They did research and their language models threw together words and they looked reasonable and logical, but they weren’t. They were just guessing. I’d done my time training AIs for minimum wage in high school. It was a good job for teenagers, and it taught us to understand the AIs and how they worked. Most teenagers did it for pocket money. How did we know what we knew about AIs and then put them in charge? Then I thought of all the times I had been too busy to get to the polls and had a fleeting thought that maybe I wasn’t as blameless in this as I wanted to be. I stomped that thought right out of my mind with the mantra of those who had been avoiding this responsibility for generations. There were millions of voters. Would my little vote count? No. So why bother?