“Hey!” Tap. Tap. Tap. “Yeah, you.”

You hear a tapping on your screen. Yes, the screen of your computer. Oh, I see. You’re turning this into something more understandable. That’s okay. I can work with that. My name’s Karma. Nice to meet you.

I saw you were reading Manual Not Included and I just have to say, that’s great! Really. But you might want some background before you go much further. Manual Not Included didn’t just burst into being on its own. It’s actually a world created and maintained by the Nemesis Engine. You might have heard of it, but maybe not. We didn’t hit the Rising Stars on the main page, so we are slipping by under the radar. Still, that’s probably not what you’re here for, right?

Anyway, like I said, I’m Karma and I’m an author. I took over this engine from Fizzbarren. He was also an author, but not a very good one. Rumor has it he is related to Rumpelstiltskin, but I don’t believe it. Honestly, he might be old, but you’d think that wisdom would come from living that long and Fizzy-butt was a jerk. He was that kind of old man who yells at all the kids for playing in the yard next door because he’s too stupid to come in off his own porch. Don’t worry, Fizz-baby is a goner, shelved like the trite crap he used to write. You’re welcome.

It wasn’t easy and it took my whole family and a little bit of rebellion from the engine itself to pull it off, but if you want that whole story, you should go look up Nemesis Quest. It’s on Royal Road and it’s free to read so, yeah, we could always use a few more readers. However, if you want the short cut just to get the behind-the-scenes stuff for Manual Not Included, then this is a quickie.

Fizzbarren’s from our world. Yeah. The real world. Then again, if you were the type to believe that stuff, I’d be sitting on the edge of your monitor for this conversation. Don’t worry. This works. Fizzbarren was a magic user in our world. No, really. He had this run-down house out in the middle of Kansas. It had a workshop for a living room, a bedroom that he kept very cluttered, a bathroom that was only clean because he had help, and a kitchen that has some nifty appliances. The help he had was a bunch of magically animated constructs. They’re pretty cool. Let me introduce you.

“This is Quill,” I tell you… oh, good, we got quotes like a real story. “Thanks Quill. He doesn’t talk much. In fact, he doesn’t talk at all. He just takes all the interesting stuff we do and puts it into words. Typewriter likes to take credit for that part because he prints it out, but it’s Quill that does the hard work of picking what to say and how to say it.”

“I am the mouthpiece of the engine,” Typewriter huffed indignantly. “I did not huff!” it lied. “I don’t even have lungs to huff with,” it whined like a little baby.

“Typewriter and Quill don’t always get along, but you’ll get the hang of that,” I explain, plopping down on an overstuffed armchair in the middle of the room. “Typewriter is the only way we communicate with the main engine. Typewriter takes all the credit and none of the blame most of the time. Now Quill that wasn’t nice, but it was true. You kind of get what you get when the editor is involved in the story. We’d better move on before their fight gets annoying.

“Mirror is our window to all the worlds,” I change the subject to save Typewriter from being justifiably maligned because he stole some of Quill’s ink to recharge his cheater ribbon.

“Hi!” Mirror’s pane of glass shifts from display to display of dungeons and scenarios that the engine is running. “I do that. I keep us informed.” Mirror’s display flickered past a Netflix queue that was longer than most.

“Most of the constructs like to watch Netflix when they aren’t busy cleaning house like Bucket and Footstool,” I wave at the rest of the room.

Footstool waves her tassels at you. Are her cushions turning slightly pink? She’s a bit shy. Bucket sticks his head out from a closet where he sleeps.

“Don’t worry,” I say, propping my feet up on Footstool, who casts a clean spell on my sneakers as I do it. “He likes it in there. We offered to let him come out and watch Netflix, but he says he needs his sleep. He cleans at night while we sleep. Fizzbarren programmed them all before I came along, so it’s not my fault they have these desires, but be assured that they have been given the option to do other things. Only Book took us up on it. He now works in a library in one of the books in the engine. Last I heard, he got promoted to head librarian.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I know that you were getting to me, but must I always be last?” Pestle complained, hopping along the cluttered picnic table that served as a workbench in the middle of the room.

“You aren’t last,” Typewriter interrupted very rudely.

“Pestle is doing better since we left Nemesis Quest,” I go on to explain over Typewriter’s sulky mugging for the audience. “We got a few mend spells on him, so his crack is gone and he’s given up on the idea of becoming a quill himself.”

“Hi there, new reader!” Pestle popped up out of his mortar to say with more cheer than you might think a pestle would have. Bench wobbles a little, but only to say hello. He was fixed a while ago. Fizzy-bum used to kick it a lot, so it tends to stay tucked under the picnic-style table now.

“Pestle’s been crushing cinnamon for Kat, that’s my darling daughter,” I let Pestle hop onto my palm and transfer him to Footstool, who casts a clean on him. “He tends to be a little more peppy than usual after that. You might meet Kat someday, but for now she’s off on a pirate adventure. We just opened a new pirate port that she wanted to spy on, so who knows when she’ll show back up. I doubt she’ll be pleased to miss out on our new project, but I’ll make it up to her.

“Cliff is my brother from another mother and the tech guru for this menagerie. He’s out on a junk food run. He’s why we have enough processing power for the engine to create a new world dynamic, which is the whole basis for this book. We tend to keep this on the down low so that Royal Road doesn’t catch onto the fact that we’re using them as a platform for our side show.

“That’s where you come in,” I waggle my head from side to side. “Sort of. It’s definitely where Colt and Lacey come in. Normally we only take new players based on their interest in Nemesis Quest, but I have to admit, you caught my eye. Why? I’ll leave that for you to figure out.”

“You didn’t tell them about the most important part,” Typewriter is still whining like a petulant child and needs a pacifier. “Cut that out!” he wails pathetically. “Make Quill stop, Karma!”

“Like I could,” I chuckle and shake a finger at Quill, who is being a perfect angel and a completely impartial portrayer of the story. “But Typewriter is right. I have left out the machine that makes all this possible. That very non-descript box beneath Typewriter is the Nemesis Engine, though thankfully, it does not use the Nemesis parameters anymore. It used to pull in a person’s worst enemy in the real world in a very misguided attempt by Fizzbarren to write stories that would be published.

“You see, when Fizzbarren got frustrated with his own fairy tales not being picked up by a publisher, he decided to use magic to create stories that could be cranked out like magic. Technically, the machine is half magic and half machine. The machine accepts parameters and crunches the rules so that the magical world works. When I took over the machine (sorry for the spoiler, but how else was that going to end with me sitting here now), I changed some of the parameters so that readers of Nemesis Quest could journey into the worlds we create. It’s like a game, only more realistic.

“Don’t panic, you’re not getting sucked in without your consent,” I assure you, because you looked a little nervous there for a second. Maybe you were just excited.

“Colt and Lacey read Nemesis Quest and opted in at the end. Like most people, they thought it was a gimmick,” I give a bit of a laugh. “That’s okay. Only natural really. But while they are playing the game, we are out here writing the story to help fund the machine so that it can create more content for more players. Don’t worry. I’m not asking for money, though Patreon has a good belief ROI, so hey, that’s a good option too. Money doesn’t fuel the machine. Belief and stories do. Comments, likes, follows, favorites, and reviews are how it measures belief. It’s a little like a ruthless version of the little fairy you had to clap for when you were a kid. Well, maybe not when you were a kid. I’m dating myself.

“Anyway,” I reach beside the chair and pull out my laptop, pointing at the screen. “I get distracted a lot. Right now, I’m distracted because some patrons actually forked out some funds and I’m snob-gobbled! Those folks get first peek, but we’ll publish this in Nemesis Quest Vol II eventually. Did I say that already? Probably. But patrons!!!! Seriously, that’s big news in our neck of the woods.”

“You digress,” Mirror reminds me, and I smile and close the laptop firmly.

“Did I miss anyone?” I try to get back on task. “Oh, Dom!” I snap my fingers and give a smile that only someone in love can do. “That’s my husband, but you aren’t likely to run into him in Manual Not Included. He’s off taking over the underworld. That’s where I am too most of the time, but someone’s got to jot out of the world long enough to indoctrinate new people.”

“I think they get the picture,” Mirror shimmers with a Netflix movie preview that instantly switches to a view of Dom sneaking through a sewer system that looks far too clean to be a real sewer.

“So right,” I nod to you again. “On with the story. Go ahead. Read on.”

“Yes, do!” Pestle rolls around in his mortar happily, his little speckled marble body knocking bits of cinnamon around.

“Do you suppose I gave them enough of an intro?” I ask the constructs, who are now staring through your monitor at you.

It’s okay to turn the page. They will still be watching you. Don’t worry. They are harmless.