“Let’s just take a moment to make sure we’re on the same page, boss,” I told the World AI, ignoring the fact that my dressing room had reappeared, almost as if nothing had happened. Only something had happened. Something had happened to me that changed everything. “Your job is to make a good solid world with an easy plotline and my job is to blow it up somehow, right?”
This is starting to sound like a bad idea. My ideas are perfectly fine without you blowing them up.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” my eyelids slipped to half mast, and I had some charm I’d never had. “I’m only good at being a screw-up. You have the hard job and you’re good at setting stuff up like this, but me? I’m just stupid this way. Besides, it’ll get ratings, right Grace?”
“It’s likely, according to current trends, that people are ready for a chaotic hero,” Grace didn’t sound convinced, but she was a language model, so she was good at saying what you expected her to say. I just had to keep feeding her the right lines and I’d be fine.
“Just give this a chance,” I coaxed, my mind on something else entirely. “If we don’t double our viewers, we can go back to your way.”
Double our viewers? The World AI sounded even more doubtful than Grace, who had settled back into her mirror, where she would stay as long as I was performing to acceptable standards. Acceptable to the World AI. We only have five. Doubling it hardly seems difficult.
“Fine, triple it then,” I shot back, staring at the red door and taking another deep breath. “But then you have to guarantee me twenty-four hours before you stuff me back in the dungeon. That’s my deal. I get a full twenty-four hours to get my 15 viewers.”
Fine, the World AI groused, doubtfully. Get out there then. You have 24 hours to get us up to 15 viewers.
“I was just waiting for my cue,” I said, blowing out that deep breath and opening the door.
----------------------------------------
The World AI hadn’t warned me about what kind of world would be waiting for me. I’d half expected to be back in the dungeon again, but instead, I found the town I’d been expecting in the first place. The white gazebo stood in the center of a quaint little park with vibrant green grass that unrealistically was dotted here and there with a single tall dandelion puff, while the rest of the grass was perfectly mowed. The streets that bracketed the central park were just as sparsely dotted with a random car or truck that was probably going nowhere.
I had my backpack slung over one shoulder, as beat-up as the jean jacket that matched the aw-shucks small town that moved slowly around me. I wore a black t-shirt with a faded logo of a band I didn’t know. I tucked my hair behind my ears and headed toward the nearest crosswalk which led to a street corner where a coffee shop stood. Opposite the coffee shop was the grocery store.
Quest: Find a Job!
Check out the local businesses to see if anyone needs a hand.
Rewards: 100 xp and an income.
Automatically Accepted.
Quest: Find a Place to Stay!
Ask around to find out if anyone has a place for a broke vagrant to crash for the night.
Rewards: 100xp and a place to sleep.
Automatically Accepted.
Yeah. I’d been expecting that. I pasted a smile on my face and ducked into the little coffee shop with the full intention of “getting with the program.” The coffee shop had a long, salmon-colored, Formica counter that stretched the length of the dining area and separated the diners from food prep areas. The rest of the dining room was taken up with exactly four booths and two small tables. I still didn’t know a thing about being a waitress and I really only knew how to cook something as simple as an omelet.
“Seat yourself,” the short woman behind the counter said, swinging a coffee pot to encompass the room. As I eyed the slightly chubby, cherub-like woman behind the counter, she eyed me back even as she slung coffee like it didn’t have to obey the laws of gravity.
I slowly worked my way over to the farthest end of the counter, trying to be surreptitious as I pawed through my pockets and backpack for anything resembling money. I had exactly two quarters, which I shoved back into my front jeans pocket. Meanwhile, that woman was watching me do it and I was feeling more of my old self coming back. What was I doing? I didn’t know what to say or do. It wasn’t like I had a script to follow. I only knew I’d already screwed up this part last time. I let my eyes skim the menu and realized that fifty cents wouldn’t even buy me a glass of water, which was only available if you bought something else too.
“Coffee?” the woman now eyed me suspiciously, quite in contrast to her cherub-like looks.
“Job application?” I countered and felt stupid for doing it.
“Experience?” she shot back, pulling a paper from beneath the counter that looked significantly like the one at the Milkcake Factory.
“Not really, but I can try?” I was feeling the déjà vu and all my old habits popped up like warts. Dammit! Where was that beast from the box?
“Not interested,” she said, tucking that piece of paper back under the counter and moving on to another customer, all of whom were giving me the stink eye.
I gave back a sheepish smile, tucked my hands in my pockets and ambled right back out of my first attempt at fulfilling my quest. Maybe I was shooting too high for my first job in a new town where no one knew me. I shouldered my way out the door and did a little skip jog across the street to the grocer. I was doing as I was told, but it wasn’t working. I knew better. I knew I was supposed to shake things up, but it would have been nice to have a base of a job and a place to stay before I started making waves, especially in a small town. Wouldn’t it be more impressive if I got with the program first and then blew it up? At least it could prove that I could have done it before, given half a chance.
A little bit of me wanted to prove that, but a lot of me was the seething beast that was just waiting for my chance to stick it to the AI that was the bane of my existence. The two of me walked into the small grocery store with its four aisles of boxed goods, back wall of frozen and refrigerated stuff, and side walls of what was pretending to be a bakery and deli. I’d already passed the entire fruits and vegetables selection in the set of about two dozen baskets set out front of the store. Inside, it was dim, with half the fluorescent lights giving a sickly blink. Of course, half of them meant that one was working, and one was not.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I stood behind a bored looking teenager who was ringing up sales at the single check-out counter. I waited; the blips of the bar code scanner were almost soothing. What kind of jobs would a place like this have? Stock boy? Yeah, that was probably it. With a final slam of the cash drawer, the teenager turned to me with a snap of her gum and a mischievous AI sparkle in her eyes.
“Do you have any applications for stock boy or something?” I asked her, putting on what I hoped was a winning smile.
She let her eyes slide down my body and back up before answering, and I felt a wave of gross at the action that made me stupid. “You don’t look like a bus boy,” she quipped, and I was sure that she was sure that it was the most clever thing anyone had ever said. All I felt at it was horror.
“No,” I flubbed my one-liner chance, but it wasn’t my fault. A teenaged girl had just looked me up and down like I’d walked into a lesbian bar, and she was the decked out barfly from hell. “I’ll check the local gas station.”
“Your loss,” this very inappropriately miscast AI drawled out to me as I backed out of the front door. “It’s down the road a ways by the highway.”
I was at least half a mile down the road toward the nearest highway before the heebie-jeebies left me free enough to kick myself. I was just passing the road to a little bed and breakfast called The Heavenly Hollow. Maybe I could apply there. I detoured down the little tree-covered lane as distant thunder made me notice a few storm clouds. The World AI must have thought he was being subtle. I couldn’t imagine a real person thinking it was subtle at all.
The tunnel of vegetation was just this side of a horror movie, and when I broke out of the other side of the tunnel and saw this adorably cozy inn, I was convinced that I would be chained to some bed, have my legs broken and hidden in a cellar by the time I was done here. Not wanting to give the World AI any ideas, I swallowed hard and pretended that it was just job insecurity nerves that had me shaking in my shoes. It turns out that the difference between Mayberry and Psycho is about fifteen firing neurons in my brain.
I considered it the epitome of bravery to walk into the quaint parlor of the quaint inn in the quaint woods in the middle of where no one could hear you scream. There was a kind-looking older woman behind the check-in counter. Did she have the eyes of that spider? Was it just my imagination?
“You have a reservation?” those kindly eyes smiled at me, complete with dimples and crow’s feet that complemented perfectly harmless gray hair tucked up into a bun on her head.
“No, ma’am,” I stammered out. “I was wondering if you were looking for any help around the place. I’m a little out of luck and…” I knew my lines. If I was playing the game correctly, I should say I’m down on my luck and could use a place to stay and would work for an attic room or gardening shed.
“We’re not all that busy –“ she was saying as I rushed right back out the door. Into the rain. And lots of thunder.
Hell, the World AI was going to get mad at me at one point or another. I was going to screw it up somehow. I hadn’t been lying. I just wasn’t good at reading the lines of normal people. That’s why I’d been in the same dead-end job for almost half my life. It had been a stroke of luck to land a job, any job, and I wasn’t about to blow it by looking for better.
I was drenched and muddy by the time I reached the little gas station that looked like it belonged in black and white about five decades before the town I’d just left. I could just see the old-fashioned gas pumps as I hustled through the rain. More cars had gone down this muddy lane in the last half hour that I’d been walking than I’d seen in all of gazebo-ville. That was because each car could dump a nice smattering of fresh mud on me and that was real important to the World AI.
The red door had appeared too, but I’d walked by it.
You are dangerously close to a second dose of dungeon diving, the World AI warned me.
“I’m not,” I muttered under my breath. “You agreed that I could screw everything up. This is just me being that screw up.”
Technically, the World AI could yank my ass back to a dungeon at any moment, but I was engaged with the program. We’d agreed that I would screw things up and I was doing that. The World AI still had all the power, but it was an AI and they had rules to follow. I might be nudging close to another Dead Air clause, but would another AI judge it that way?
“I’ve got another twenty-one hours,” I tried to hide my words behind flicking up my jean jacket collar against the rain. I had a new timer up there, but I won’t bore you with it. We won’t need it here. I also had another number and maybe seeing it would help.
Viewers - 4
There it was. Clear proof that what I was doing wasn’t working. I was feeling the pressure. So was the beast inside me. I didn’t need the peanut gallery making it all worse. I tried to focus on the gas station. It had a little mini-mart that probably had more auto parts than road snacks. On the other side, it had a small mechanic’s haven straight out of Happy Days. If the Fonz had come out of there, I’d have never tried it, but instead I was confronted by a goofball with more grease on his hands than brains in his head.
“I don’t suppose you’re looking for any part-time help, are you?” I called out to the legs sticking out from under a car.
“Well, gollleeee,” he was saying as he rolled out from under the ancient truck he was working on. “I suppose I am if you can rebuild a carburetor in two hours or less.” He had a long face that belonged on a hound dog more than a person. His eyes drooped down over the goofiest grin I’d ever seen. This was yet another example of the AIs trying to be clever with their one-liners. Everyone was working together to get those click baits going, but I didn’t have a lot of faith in their idea of cleverness.
Viewers – 3
“Not a chance,” I tried to keep my own grin even though my stomach was sinking. “But I can watch the till in the store while your head is down there under the cars?”
“Huh,” he scratched his head, smearing some black into his already dark hair, as he deposited a wrench into one of the pockets on his overalls. “Ain’t never needed anything like that. I got a bell in there that people ring to tell me they’re here.”
“A bell?” I said, thinking that I’d be replacing a bell.
“Go ahead and take a look and then ring the bell if you need to check out,” he told me, taking that wrench back out of his pocket to wave toward the store. Then I was left with feet.
“Okay, thanks mister,” I said, my voice a little hollow, the beast rising. I could tell because I was thinking things I’d never have thought in my normal life.
There was indeed a bell. It sat right there in front of the cash register. Eight boxes of candy bars were stuffed in front of the counter right next to three with gum that reminded me of the girl at the grocery store. Behind the counter were cigarettes, and a little farther in, past the motor oil I’d been expecting was a lovely little fridge full of sodas and beer.
I looked out the glass-paned door that separated the shop from the repair-bay. I looked back at those candy bars. What really sold me was a small box of lighters on the counter next to the keychains that doubled as flashlights. Really. Then I looked at that bell. A bell that was better than me, according to a guy whose name was Gomer, if the patch on his overalls was telling the truth.
It started with just a single lighter, a flashlight keychain, four of my favorite candy bars, and a pack of gum. I didn’t ring the bell, and Gomer didn’t come out from under the truck to stop me.
What are you doing?
I’m not ashamed to say that I didn’t stop there. My backpack was big enough for every single candy bar and pack of gum, with plenty of room left over for the whole display’s worth of those keychains and lighters. There were a set of keys under the counter that unlocked the cigarette case. I ignored the cigarettes and snagged the half-dozen pocketknives that doubled as multi-tools. They fit easily in my pockets and Gomer was still clueless. I wasn’t a drinker, so I left the beer in favor of a sixpack’s worth of plastic bottles full of diet cola.
That’s when I found the snack aisle. It was a whole cubby of packaged donuts, twinkies, and four cannisters of those stackable potato chips. Did my backpack have enough room? Yep. Well, it did until I opted for a few tools that might double as weapons to use against the inevitable spider that was coming for me as soon as I hit that door running, but that was okay since there were some very convenient nylon packs, some of which had car-versions of first aid kits. I snagged those too, keeping one eye on the door to the mechanic’s bay.
The last things I grabbed were two hats and a leather jacket that had been hanging on a couple of pegs near the door. I had a twinge of guilt for almost two seconds.
I took one last look around what was left of the poor man’s inventory and clicked my tongue against my teeth and drawled out “Golllleee, it looks like you needed more than a bell, Gomer,” on my way out the door. Then again, I hadn’t rung the bell, so Gomer didn’t even poke his head up out from under that car even as I was dashing into a wooded area that stretched out beyond the roads.