Have you lost your mind? The World AI asked me.
“That’s a bit rude, don’t you think?” I asked, washing down gooey caramel and chocolate with a swig of diet cola. “You asked for a one-liner and I gave you one that was a darn sight better than the crap your co-star AIs were churning out.”
Viewers - 3
You are now a thief! The World AI was ranting, but I wasn’t worried. Chocolate was a lovely insulator from the stress of the situation.
“If you think about it, that isn’t an odd career choice given the circumstances,” I reasoned, capping my soda bottle to keep the rain out of it. “There’s precedent. Go look it up. You’ll see. There’s White Collar, Leverage, and even Alladin. There are all sorts of plotlines that feature thieves, and it would have been an option for class in any dungeon setting, right? Granted I’m no Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, but who knows. I could get good enough for something like that if you cut me some slack. Imagine what I could do with the right equipment or partners?”
Go through the red door so we can talk about this in private, the World AI demanded, and the red door appeared in the woods off to the right of the little hiking trail I’d found.
“Now wait!” I reasoned, pausing near the door as if I intended to follow directions. “You said I had another twenty hours. It’s going to take some time to see if the click bait did anything, right? At least we’re not losing viewers anymore, though I can’t imagine that this conversation is helping with their immersion.”
The door disappeared and I got a few minutes of blessed silence. I didn’t think it would last. It couldn’t, right? Whatever. I slipped down another little slide of muddy trail and got my answer from the World AI. Was that? It was a picnic table area, and it was covered. I stood there blinking at the first oasis I’d seen since being eaten by spiders.
I’d stumbled into a rest stop. The highway offramp was camouflaged by some trees, but I could hear the hum of cars rushing by over the rain that was starting to edge back from showerhead on full cold to the drizzle of a bent hose. What got my attention, though, was the covered picnic tables and public restrooms, something I had been secretly hoping for since I’d finished my first diet cola. I skip-ran across the blacktop parking area, a surge of desperate hope lighting my eyes for the tiny moment that the beast allowed my inner self to poke her head out. There were more tables here than in the grumpy woman’s diner, but there were fewer people. In fact, there were no people and that suited me just fine.
I plopped my wet butt down at one of the dry, stone benches and felt the water seep out of my pants and into the grooves on the seat of the table and then down onto the ground. I didn’t have any hope of getting dry anytime soon, but at least I wasn’t getting wetter anymore. I shrugged off my backpack and kept it close as I took off my jackets and shook them out to get off most of the water. I laid the jackets out near me to possibly dry out a little.
Feeling shaky from the sugar rush of two candy bars, I popped the top of a can of chips and hunched there watching for what came next. It was coming. I could feel it. I sat with my back toward the large stone women’s restroom, keeping one eye on the highway ramps and another on those woods. It felt like that moment between thinking that this time will be different right before the furry limbs of a giant spider grabbed you. That was why I also darted my attention back over my shoulder in case that thing was sneaking over the restroom at my back. All I could think was, “Your move, asshole,” not that I said it out loud. I didn’t have to wait long.
A car sputtered down the offramp toward me and I watched it come, even as I cast furtive glances at the rest of the panorama. I’m not a car buff, so I couldn’t tell if it was an Impala, but that would have been a reason to run right back into the woods. It was old and beat up, the door barely closed on it and the engine on it could sure use Gomer. It might have made its way into the rest stop, but the way the engine glumped to a choking stall three feet before it rolled to a stop in a parking space made me think it wasn’t going to make its way back out.
There was a guy behind the wheel. He reminded me of that guy from Little House on the Prairie, but when he was playing an angel instead of a farmer. It’s okay if you don’t get that one. It’s not my fault. Netflix, the only streaming service I could afford, liked to run the old shows the minute they hit public domain, so I knew a lot of really old stuff. He was kind of scruffy in a pair of Levi’s, work boots that belonged on a steel mill worker, and a plaid shirt that made him look harmless. The scruffy beard and crinkly eyes that beamed kindly? Those were missing. Instead, this guy swung back a foot and kicked his car with a roaring stream of curse words that about knocked me back on my heels.
“What the hell?” I muttered to myself.
You need a costar, the World AI replied smugly, not that its voice appeared on any screen anywhere. A sidekick or something that will allow for dialogue. You can’t very well always talk to yourself.
“Not that!” I said into my hand around a sour cream and onion potato chip, as that not-angel guy stormed off to the restroom, glaring at his phone and then cursing into it. I felt a little like a secret agent, talking into a headpiece and trying to be subtle about it.
Fine, but you will choose someone, the World AI sounded miffed, but not quite mad, so I stopped looking over my shoulder. That and I didn’t want the not-angel guy to think I was trying to make eye contact. My research has analyzed the types of shows you suggested and aside from the Pink Panther, there are very few successful thieves’ characters that are loners. Leverage had a whole team. This guy might be your hitter if you change your mind.
Elliot from leverage had been a very, um, yummy hitter. This guy wasn’t that. A hitter was the guy who punched people if it all went terribly wrong. It was from a series called Leverage that had a hitter, a cat burglar, a con artist, a hacker, and a mastermind. On top of the fact that Elliot, the hitter from Leverage, was eye candy unlike the swearing not-angel guy, I was pretty sure that I didn’t, and couldn’t, fill any of the other roles. The closest I was going to get, with my antisocial behavior patterns, was the hacker and without a computer, I wasn’t even going to be able to fake that.
Luckily, I didn’t have to think too hard about it, because the next car came sliding down the offramp. Before the modern electric car came to a complete stop, the door was opening and a blonde bombshell tumbled out of the passenger-side, shaking her fist at the driver and swearing harder than the guy with the busted-up car. She brushed off her too-short skirt and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of somewhere. I watched her bring a cigarette to fire-engine-red lips that looked too big for Botox and light up and all I could think was being stuck in a car with her chain smoking choking me half to death. No, thank you. Next, I thought, shaking my head and chomping on another chip.
Quest: Find a Partner in Crime
You can’t do it all on your own and now that you’re a criminal in this area, you’re going to need to find a ride to another town sooner rather than later.
Rewards: 100xp/cohort and probably transportation.
Automatically Accepted.
What came next was a veritable parade of AI co-stars that I could pick from. The blond bombshell walked over to one of the vending machines behind the women’s restroom and bought a coke and some mentos, then settled into a table near enough to me that I put away my chips, the smoke from her cigarette making my chips taste bad. When it was clear that she wasn’t going to get the part, the blond took a cell phone out of her miniscule purse and called someone named Charlie to come pick her up. As she carried on a loud conversation, my next potential partner puttered into the rest stop in a SUV. Four kids, ages ranging from eleven to seventeen-ish loudly poured out of the vehicle like what comes out of a barfly after a night of getting lucky. The soccer-mom in charge was hollering at them to go in pairs and I was wondering what the heck the World AI was thinking with this one. She also pulled out a phone and had a conversation with a deadbeat ex-husband who was supposed to pick up the kids and was late. The two conversations blended in a way that made neither intelligible.
Meanwhile, another car was pulled off the highway, and my mind was glaring at that quest. A hundred points per cohort? I hadn’t been able to complete any quests and was still looking at a pathetic xp of less than 50. I looked around and my eyes must have had xp signs popping out of them as each of these people, permanent or not, represented a gold mine of xp. The beast stirred greedily and that sparked a conversation as the blond yelled, “Fine!” into her phone and shoved it back in her purse with an eye-popping pout.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Men, right?” I offered a conversation starter, and she blinked at me like I was an oasis in the storm.
“I know!” she threw up her hands, as yet another car threw out the next pitch.
“Tell me about it,” the soccer-mom joined into the conversation uninvited, but that was okay. “I was five minutes late and he says he was here but went off to get lunch since I was late.”
“He wasn’t here,” I told her. “I’ve been here for a while, and nobody was here before that clunker pulled up and died about five minutes ago.”
“Men,” the blond tossed her agreement in there.
“He just wants to stick me here trying to keep them occupied while he gets a quicky in with his girlfriend this morning,” Soccer-mom scowled. “I can’t believe he lied to me.”
“You get used to it sweetheart,” Bombshell waved her cigarette around.
“Ask that guy,” I waved at the Not-angel coming out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans with another scowl at his phone. “He’s been here almost as long as me and there wasn’t anybody here.”
“Hey!” Soccer-mom called out to the scruffy not-angel like that was something she’d do every day. “Did you see anyone else here about five-ten minutes ago?”
“I’ve been here fifteen minutes and nobody here but this chick,” the guy called back, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket on his shirt and a lighter out of his jeans.
I got it then. Product placement. Ever since Infract had invented a cigarette that supposedly didn’t cause cancer, smoking had made a comeback. The vapes that had taken over the smoking market had turned out to be worse than cigarettes with all the additives the Food and Drug Administration made manufacturers add to be fair to the failing tobacco industry. We weren’t socialists, but big business had been forced to become more fair and less cutthroat by the AIs that oversaw world improvement back in the early 2020s. It was yet another sub-clause in the contract that saw one-percenters bailing out of the US and into more small-world countries. They hadn’t thought that through all the way though, because half of those countries were run by dictators who didn’t like the very people who’d been using them for their sweatshops. The resulting financial crisis was aborted by those same one-percenters being forced to bail out thousands of small businesses in order to be allowed back into their respectable countries. The whole thing resulted in what the AIs euphemistically call the Levelling Era, but that’s all old history. Anyway, cigarettes were back and semi-healthy with additives that actually helped your lungs fight cancer as it manifested.
“Can I bum a cig?” Soccer-mom parroted the tobacco industry tag line, and I nearly rolled my eyes out loud.
“Sure,” Not-angel gave a friendly grin as he tapped out a cigarette for Soccer-mom. Everyone was all for sharing cigarettes because that was the sociable thing to do. I just thought the things stunk, so I never picked it up. He offered me one too, but I declined with what I hoped was a friendly smile back.
The new car wasn’t a car but rather it was a beat-up truck instead. It belonged on the back roads of some ranch or farm somewhere, but here it was in our little neck of the woods. The man who climbed out filled the stereo-type of the truck and matched my idea of eye candy a little better than Not-angel.
“My ex said he was here not five minutes ago, but left because I was late,” Soccer-mom was complaining to Not-angel. “She said you’ve been here that long, at least.”
“That dog,” Not-angel popped off another string of curses. “I’m not normally so foul but my husband said he fixed the car before my big trip, and he didn’t. I’m no stranger to dog-boys.”
Way to hit a dozen demographics all at once, World AI, I thought to myself watching the eye candy as he ambled over to the vending machines. I could happily watch that guy walk around the set. He moved like liquid cat and I nearly moaned out loud. Then the beast smacked me upside the head and brought my attention back to our little group. I pulled a pack of powdered donuts out of my backpack and tried to duck beneath the circling smoke over my head, where all the rest of the people were talking.
“Y’all having a picnic?” Eye-candy strolled up to the table and gave a smile that would definitely make me the cohort and not him.
“Want a donut?” I offered up the pack like the others had offered up cigs, only I had half a mouth full of donut and a mouth covered in powdered sugar.
“Sure,” and he gave me the smile that melts mental capacity. How did he look sexy with a smear of powdered sugar across his lips that made me want to do a slow-motion wipe away with my bare fingers. “Thanks.”
“Ya,” I swallowed quickly and smeared even more of the powdered sugar across my own jeans that were too wet to dust off.
“I’m on a diet,” Soccer-mom refused my offer like I’d been offering my treasures to anyone other than Eye-candy.
“I’ll take one,” and Not-angel dipped dingy fingers into the pack with a nasty wrinkle of plastic.
“Here,” I just handed him the rest of it, treasure becoming trash as soon as not-hand-washing Not-angel stuck his fingers in there.
“Thanks,” he said. “I haven’t eaten a thing all morning because I was so rushed to get on the road and now I’ve got to wait for a tow. It’s all a disaster. I’ll never get to my reunion in time so I might as well tuck into some calories.”
“Where’s the reunion?” Soccer-mom asked, keeping one eye on the restroom where her brood of children had disappeared. Had they all been the same sex? Not that it mattered nowadays. The signs proclaiming men’s and women’s restrooms were a mere suggestion for old folks who bothered to read them anymore. If they wanted a younger generation than 80 or older, they’d need to put up emojis for that shit. Literally shit. LOL.
“Two hours south on the highway,” Not-angel answered.
“I could probably swing you by there after my useless ex gets here to pick up the kids,” she offered. “This is our halfway spot and I have to drive back that way anyway. My ex might be faster than a tow truck.”
“Could I get in on that ride?” Bombshell popped into the conversation. “My boyfriend just dumped me here. If I don’t get a ride, I’ll have to hitch back to town. It’s not like I can walk in these things.” She pointed out the high heeled black boots she wore that were barely held together with a safety pin and black marker.
“Men,” Soccer-mom ground out angrily, then cast an apologetic look toward Not-angel. “Not you.”
“What about me?” Eye-candy objected, but his eyes danced distractingly with good-natured mirth.
OMG, I thought with a sudden douse of cold shower on my crush. Eye-candy was the romance angle. Soccer-mom was another demographic. Hooker with a heart of gold was such an old trope, and dusty gay guy was the new demographic angle for disrupting gay stereotypes. This was sick. My heart shriveled as I abruptly pulled my stupid hormones out of the game and the beast was allowed to take back over. I took a mental step back.
Everybody laughed like Eye-candy had made a great joke, bringing my attention to the four hundred xp surrounding me. I’d started the conversation, but now it was running away from me. I laughed a little late for comfort, but they all laughed again, trying to gloss over my bad timing like it was a natural flub. I was going to have one hell of a blooper reel.
“Hey, where’d you come from boy?” Not-angel was saying, and I looked up to find him feeding my last donut to a waist-high golden retriever with lively eyes.
“Is he limping?” Bombshell asked, cooing at the dog like it was a baby.
“Poor thing,” Soccer-mom put in her line of dialogue.
If we were in the real world, this dog would be AI-assisted, like all our pets had become. We didn’t have strays anymore, but some people liked to harken back to the good old days when dogs and cats littered the streets as little vagabonds of a society that didn’t take care of our fellow mammals. Even gerbils were equipped with AI-assist so that they were perfectly harmless to children, no matter how awful they were to them.
“It doesn’t have a collar,” Eye-candy knelt down next to the dog and put his face right into the shame-faced dog. “I’ll take him with me. We’ll find your owner, won’t we boy?”
I had a line here. I was pretty sure the pregnant pause was because I was supposed to speak up.
“Uh, I’ll go with you,” I offered. “Maybe we should all go?”
And then they had to put up resistance. Why? Because drama has conflict.
“I would, but my kids…” Soccer-mom started. “If they see a cute dog, I’m done for.”
“Better yet, we can get the kids in love and then sic the dog on their dad when he finally shows up,” I suggested, not thinking too fast.
Another pregnant pause as the AIs struggled to come up with something to say to that. Then Eye-candy laughed, and the dog barked like it was laughing too and the tension broke. Yeah, it was a joke. That’s it.
“Could you imagine his face?” Soccer-mom stubbed out her cigarette and stomped on the butt of it. The cigarette butt disintegrated into harmless sawdust at the action, another thing that made me think that the tobacco industry hadn’t really changed its ways.
“We could just sit back and wait until he shows up and then we could do a road trip in the van together,” I suggested, causing a scramble for answering dialogue.
“I’m afraid that makes me odd man out,” Eye-candy said, and I averted my eyes from his casually sexual shrug. “I can’t leave my car. I can take the dog to the authorities though. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
“Nonsense,” Soccer-mom waved his concerns away with a flirtatious wink. “I’ve got to be back here on Monday to pick the kids up anyway. Come have an adventure with us. I’ll have you back here in a few days.”
“Where would I stay?” Eye-candy smiled at Soccer-mom. It seemed that if I wasn’t going to take the eye-candy bait, the World AI would work in a romantic angle somewhere.
“I’ve got room,” Soccer-mom blushed. Ugh.
“What about my tow truck?” Not-angel asked.
“You mean that one?” Bombshell pointed to the offramp that I really should have been keeping an eye on, because if my eyesight was to be trusted, that was Gomer with the tow-truck coming into sight.
“That’s my cue,” I muttered and grabbed up my stuff in a big handful to head toward the women's bathroom. I pulled my cap low over my face even as I realized it was his hat. Would he notice?
You have picked up five co-stars! Congratulations! You receive 500 xp. Keep this up and you might even level.