“You can’t,” Karma threw up her hands and paced the tiny runway from the armchair to the kitchen.
“It’s not the engine’s doing,” Typewriter insisted. “Hughe was the one who contacted the guild three towns past the noob zone.”
“You can’t stack the deck against them,” Karma insisted right back, slapping her hands on her jeans in a way that made Bench slide back away from her. “Sorry Bench. I promise I won’t kick you like Fizz did. I’m just incensed! I’ve been gone for a single day to help Dom clean out the pirate uprising against his organization and you’ve brought in NPCs at a level so high that the dungeon can’t possibly survive!”
“Hughe stipulated a powerful guild when he complained to the Adventurer’s Guild,” Typewriter continued to support the engine’s decision. The constructs were not afraid of Karma, like they had been afraid of Fizzbarren. They respected her abilities and appreciated her for the fact that she’d freed them from Fizzbarren’s slavery of them, but they also knew that they could push back against her ideas if they felt strongly about it. “The engine simply found the nearest powerful guild to answer the call. The Penchance Guild was large enough to be powerful and yet still hungry enough to listen to a low level if it meant a chance at a baby dungeon. These are perfectly logical escalations of tension which are notoriously hard to find in dungeon creation plots.”
“You brought in NPCs almost ten times their level!” Karma glared at the sanctimonious box of self-serving bullshit only barely masked with literary justifications.
“7 or 8 at most,” Typewriter reasoned, undeterred by her anger.
“The dungeon was level 4 and you brought in adventurers that were level 26!” Karma shook her fist at the box, holding up four fingers and then pulling her palms wide apart to show the difference. “It has to be beatable!”
“There was a chance they could survive,” Typewriter persisted stubbornly, its keys still. “They had a hundred years of growth and the financial gain thereof to spend on upgrades. The engine could have created a dungeon to challenge the group. After all, there were only 3 of them.”
“And why was one of them a thief?” Karma raised her eyebrows at the box. “Meta much??! Why would they think they’d need someone who could disarm traps!? Most dungeons that you’ve made are full of monsters but not a lot of traps. What gave them the idea they needed a thief to disarm traps?”
“That was purely coincidence,” Typewriter didn’t even quiver at the lie. “The thief is a cousin of the leader of the guild, and he was sent mostly as a favor to help him level up his skills.”
“Why would anyone think a dungeon would have enough traps and locks to increase his skills so much?” Karma crossed her arms, wondering why she was arguing about the side issue. How did this machine always seem to switch the tone or subject so that it could be right? “You stacked the deck against the dungeon so they’d fail, and you did it because you don’t want a human taking over the job of dungeon construction!”
“The machine does not have such emotional idiosyncrasies,” Typewriter twitched its ribbon disdainfully.
“Rewind it,” Karma stated.
“No,” Typewriter balked.
“I said rewind it,” Karma planted her feet apart. “You are not being reasonable, and you know it. I’m not going to argue with you if you can’t even tell the truth.”
“No,” Typewriter clacked its keys in defiance.
“I call a vote,” Karma announced to the room.
“Cliff isn’t here,” Typewriter protested weakly. “He would be on my side if only for the sake of tension and realistic escalation due to player actions.”
“I doubt that,” Karma shook her head, “but it’s irrelevant. There are enough of us here to vote on the matter now, but I’ll call in Dom and Kat if you force me to.”
“Fine,” Typewriter knew that Dom and Kat always voted with Karma.
“I’m positing that we rewind this fiasco and give them at least another couple of days to prepare,” Karma moved her hands to her hips.
Her vote went to the room and the engine lost that fight. Karma went on to insist that if the still explosion happened that it would realistically be enough of a blast to collapse the whole level. That was also voted in, much to the engine’s consternation.
“Furthermore,” Karma started, but Typewriter cut her off.
“No more! I won’t consider more stipulations,” it insisted its ribbon twisted around one of its keys. “If you coddle them any more than this with your bleeding hearts, I’ll delete the scenario and restart the whole thing. I’m driving the plot, and you know it. Next thing you know, you’ll be giving them coffee and pastries.”
Karma curled her lip, then pointed a finger at Typewriter, “Fine, then I’ll make a wager with you.”
“The engine hates your wagers,” Typewriter growled with a snap of its carriage return.
“But we like them,” Mirror stated too brightly. “You’re not allowed to deny a vote anyway. You’re lucky Karma isn’t pressing the issue.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“True,” Footstool fluffed her tassels. “I’d vote with her just to teach you not to try to strong-arm us all to get your way. We’re all equal here since Karma freed us and she could have just made you do everything her way, but she doesn’t, so be a better sport about it.”
“And we don’t have to spit out god cards that allow her access to magic like rewinds and time manipulations either,” Typewriter tugged its ribbon, but it was stuck in a way that would take human intervention. “But we do it and all your players get time off for bad behavior! They get to go see their mommies or whatever every time they die! We think that Sinjin character is dying just so that he isn’t late for work somedays. You’d think they’d have a work ethic like that for us. We do pay them after all.”
“How about a bribe then?” Karma wheedled, not wanting to get into the player characters she’d gotten with this last batch. They really weren’t all that motivated. What Karma wouldn’t give to have a great player like her daughter in the engine, but Hughe was the best of them and he was a jerk. “I’ll trade you two hard drives if you open up cupcakes on the pedestal.”
“Cupcakes?!?!?” Typewriter goggled so hard that his ribbon untangled. “You must be kidding.”
“High speed ones, top of the line,” Karma dangled the fruit. It was an easy bribe since Cliff was already picking up some new drives. “You’d be surprised what a little chocolate can do for a girl’s motivation.”
“Cupcakes,” but the indignation had simmered down into a mutter.
“I’ll have to text him,” Karma pulled out her phone and waggled it at the engine in the box. “I sure hope he hasn’t left the store by the time I get to the end of the drive…”
“Fine but no frosting,” the engine tried to bargain, but she could tell that it wanted those drives. It ate four of the things for dinner every night. It was a good thing they had funds from Fizzbarren’s magic and gadget sales.
“Chocolate and frosting or it’s a no go,” Karma made to put away her phone.
“All right,” Typewriter vibrated like it wasn’t an old manual version. “But if you don’t get there in time, no cupcakes. I mean it.” Typewriter called out as Karma chuckled her way out the door. “I’m not doing cupcake unless I get those new drives tonight. And no cheap ones either!”
“If they sleep together, they get the password reset,” Karma bargained, tapping a butter knife against the measuring cup.
“That won’t happen,” Mirror shook a phantom head that floated in its frame, behind which was running an old Hallmark Christmas movie that Footstool was watching by pressing pillows against the glass to see around the hulking head.
“I think it could, or I wouldn’t suggest it,” Karma protested, dumping another cup of flour into the mixing bowl. The mixer ran on magic, as did the oven. While it was easier to bake in the game world, it was more satisfying to do it in the real world sometimes.
“No way,” Cliff chimed in from his spot on the armchair. He too was trying to watch the Hallmark movie, something that they couldn’t do in the game world. “They’re like you and me, not you and Dom. They won’t sleep together.”
“Not have sex kind of sleep together,” Karma argued, checking her supply of nutmeg with a discerning sniff. “Just sleep at the same time so that the time goes by.”
“No way, they’re paranoid about that after the 100 year thing,” Pestle ground out around cloves and cinnamon that Karma had dropped into the mortar. She was baking Christmas spice cookies and there was just something about freshly ground spices that she got Pestle to grind together.
“Then it shouldn’t be a problem,” Karma shrugged, applying some heat magic to the mortar so that the spices melted into the butter.
“It’s a wager,” Typewriter agreed, as Karma had known he would. Now all she had to do was get that druid to interrupt their sleep in a way that made them both exhausted at the same time.
“You can’t quit,” Karma yelled at the real-world version of Hughe. They stood at the end of the driveway, and he was mad enough to walk all the way back to civilization, not that Cliff would let him. If the guy wanted to leave, Cliff was happy to give him a ride to the bus station and buy him a ticket to anywhere in the states. Karma knew that just from his stance and crossed arms. That and the fact that he held the truck’s keyring over one finger, his middle finger to be exact.
“They tossed me around like a sack of potatoes!” Hughe was ranting, his voice a little higher than most men liked to display in public, especially in rural Kansas. “How’s that playing in your little story to have your hero tossed around by a pack of bullies? Is this your idea of a good plot because if so, you peaked at Nemesis Quest!”
She considered letting him walk after that remark. If he’d been actively walking away instead of standing there waiting to be convinced, she’d have replaced him with an NPC. Her mind was dreamily thinking about how to convince the machine to let her disguise herself as Hughe, but Cliff saved them both from that useless argument. There were always options.
“What made you think you were the hero?” Cliff asked, his voice calm and careless.
“I,” Hughe stuttered on his favorite word, “I. How am I not the hero?”
There were so many lovely options that didn’t include Hughe. Karma was pretty sure she didn’t want to convince this whiny snot to go back in the game. If he walked, the engine would have to be reasonable about a replacement or shut down the story altogether. Would it shut down the story? Ugh, she thought, it probably would, considering that it wanted badly for this concept to fail.
“You’re more of a villain of the dungeon,” Karma shrugged into Cliff’s storyline like a pro, not that she liked doing it. “It’s a dungeon builder story, not a player gets stuck in the game story.”
“It might have been a player one, but they’re awfully flooded right now,” Cliff nodded at her as if they were talking about the weather.
“A villain?” Hughe stroked his chin like he had a goatee. “I could get into that role.”
“Sure,” Cliff kept nodding at the guy. “Her hubby, Dom, is the villain more often than not. Not bad at it.”
“Pretty bad at it, if you look at it right,” Karma bantered like Hughe wasn’t even there.
“True,” Cliff was the bobble-headed, barrel-chested voice of reason. “Sorry you didn’t know, but we don’t always know how it’ll play out at first.”
“Then again, it could reverse again,” Karma shrugged, tucking her hands into her jeans pockets. “Most heroes do start off weak so that they have their own bullies to defeat later on. I mean you can’t have a hero journey without conflict, but what would I know?”
“Yeah, since you peaked in Nemesis Quest,” Cliff stopped nodding to give Hughe a stern look.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Hughe gave Karma an abashed look that probably only worked for his mom. He was so busy looking at his shuffling feet that he didn’t notice Karma roll her eyes. “I guess this writing stuff is harder than it looks.”
Cliff clipped her in the ribs before she could quip back, “You think?”
“Why don’t I take you into town where we can grab a couple of beers at the roadhouse before you head back in,” Cliff took Hughe by the shoulder and steered him toward the truck.
“Why did we talk him into going back in again?” Karma was asking herself, shaking her head as she headed back up the drive to the house.