Flames erupted from the demon god’s snout as it raised a lash of fire high above its head. Lava pulsed through its veins and its horns glowed red. Maxi’s armor gleamed from the sun god’s boon and her sword shone with the light of a thousand suns. She was a Paladin from the Land of the Burning Sun and was about to defeat the demon that threatened all of existence...until the power went out on her computer.
Her mother stood in the threshold of her room, holding the power cord to her PC. “Mom!” Maxi yelled.
“By my calculations, you are out of free power for the month,” her mom, Tara, said. “Should you wish to continue using your computer, I will need you to contribute $23.03 to the power bill.”
“I’m in a top 5 Guild. They’ll kick me out if I don’t defeat the Tharkrendarg.”
“Then perhaps you should have thought of that when you decided to play computer games instead of looking for a job. It’s been six months since you graduated from college. Six months! Most places kick you out for not paying rent after only one month. All I ask is help with the power bill. I’m not even charging you rent,” her mom ranted as she collected all the power strips in the room, including the ones Maxi had hidden the last time this happened. Once finished, Tara pushed up her annoyingly oversized glasses, fixed her frumpy sweater that made her look like a librarian, and, as she left the room, added, “$23.03, and I’ll give them back.”
Maxi buried her head on her keyboard and screamed. She pulled her phone and chatted the guildmaster Teristaque03, “Mom took powerstrips. Will murder the demon god tonight.”
Teristaque03 chatted back, “Tick tick. 18 hours left or u out.”
Maxi cursed as she stripped out of her pajamas and went for the black pant suit her mom had bought her when she graduated. Maxi couldn’t even leave the apartment without getting flack from her mom if she didn’t at least pretend she was job hunting.
She tied her blonde hair back in a respectable ponytail and put on her appropriately sized glasses. Even though blonde wasn’t her natural color, and the dark roots were showing, she looked passable for an interview with the suit. While she got ready, she checked her bank account balance.
–$432.35. She had overdrawn only about $35 in total, but the rest was overdraft fees. Over the course of a weekend, two energy drinks, some fast food, a new pair of headphones, a couple of metro tickets, and a piece of fruit ended up costing her nearly four hundred in overdraft fees.
Maxi got some monthly income from her Spasm channel. It certainly wasn’t enough to cover the overdraft, but good enough to pay her portion of the power bill, and the stupid shit her mom made her do to “earn her keep”. Tara would on a whim make her pay for groceries. However, the balance was currently empty.
Maxi sent out a few chats to borrow the money, but the ones who did reply told her no. She wasn’t surprised. Maxi wasn’t very good at paying people back. Not that she intended to never pay people back, she was just biding her time, waiting for that Spasm channel to grow. The problem was that she never had enough followers to make serious money, and when she did try to get more, she seemed to lose as many followers as she’d gain.
She was forever on a treadmill, making enough money to give her a glimmer of hope that something big was on the horizon, but never enough to convince her mom that she already had a job.
In the meantime, Maxi had a work around. She’d temp for a while, pretend that it was her first big job outside of college, and then get “laid off” or some such nonsense a week later. It was enough to keep her mom off her back most of the time.
Hopefully the temp agency would have something for her. With even an eight-hour shift, she’d get enough to pay her mom, and enough time to clear the dungeon again, as no doubt the demon god was dancing on her charred corpse when she hadn't reconnected.
The only reason she had stuck with the agency so long was they did same day payments and didn’t seem to care when she’d walk out on a job. They were a warm body factory, and she was a warm body.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
After checking the agency's app, she sighed when she saw nothing. That only meant she would have to walk in. The recruiters who worked there were as averse as she was to anything that resembled work, and would dawdle on posting the jobs because some walk-in like her would always show up to take the job and save them the couple of clicks it would take to push it out to the app.
She sent a few more desperate pleas for some cash, stuffed her phone into her blazer pocket along with her wallet and keys, and left the apartment. Ten floors, hopping the metro gate, and several trains later, she was out of the Bronx and in Manhattan, standing in front of the lamp pole outside the temp agency. Rival agencies would sometimes post their job ads right outside, and the manager, who always seemed to have a scowl on her face, would tear them down.
The particular ad that caught her attention must have been fresh, as evidenced by the phone number strips that hadn't been torn off yet. The words that had caught her eye were “SAME DAY PAY” and “GAMIFIED EMPLOYMENT”. Then there was some bullshit about joining the revolution and finding a new way to work.
She was about to head into the agency when, on a whim, she scanned the QR code. It went to a black website, with a button that said, “Click here to change your life.” She couldn’t escape the feeling that the whole thing was sus and decided to call the number instead. An automated voice said, “Scan the QR code, minus one levels. Player5970125 is now negative one level. XP penalties apply. Adaptability -2.”
The automated voice clicked off and the line went dead.
“Whatever,” Maxi said out loud and went into the temp agency.
***
By the time she was out again with no work assignment, the stone-faced manager had torn down the job ad. She cursed and pulled up her browser on her phone. The tab with the ominous button was still open. Since there was nothing at her regular agency, and most new places took hours that she didn’t have for their assessments, this seemed like the best option. She clicked the button, and it asked for her camera permissions. She quickly pulled all the stray hairs back into her ponytail and gave it permission. But rather than a Zoom with an asshat named Mike, the camera view appeared on her phone and a green line overlaid the sidewalk.
She moved her phone from side to side and an arrow appeared to point her to the correct path when the green line went off screen. She followed the mysterious direction through the city and after several twists and turns that left her discombobulated as to her exact location, she came to a nondescript office building that was tall, but plain enough not to stand out in the skyline. She had probably seen it plenty of times across the water when she was gallivanting in Brooklyn, but it was just part of the background.
There were no markings or adornments of any kind to indicate that a “revolutionary gamified company” was lurking inside. It was probably three dudes who rented a table in one of those shared office space floors where half the companies were startups or podcasts, but she was running out of options. Her Spasm following didn’t respond to her requests for tips. Not that she had that big of a following, considering she could barely pay her part of the power bill.
She sighed and went inside. A single bored security guard sat at a desk in an enormous lobby that should have been bustling with people for a building so big. The guy didn’t even look up and said, “New employees take the 12th elevator. When you’re inside just say intake, and it will get you where you’re going.”
“New?” Maxi said. “I haven’t even applied.”
“Player5970125. Level -1. Take the 12th elevator before you get an annoying coworker XP penalty.”
The gamer in her cringed at the thought of another hit to her XP, and she complied with the man’s instructions. The same day pay better be true because she was already starting to dislike this place. The man turned his attention back to some monitors behind the desk, and Maxi walked toward a bank of twelve elevators with six on either side.
They were labeled one through twelve, saving her the trouble of going back to ask the guy if it was the set on the left or the right, which would no doubt result in another XP penalty. She hit the button and the door opened right away, which was odd. A building large enough for twelve shafts, and no one was in sight but her.
She couldn’t go up her apartment building’s lift without riding with another person, or passing them in the lobby or hall, and her building was small by the City’s standards. She lived in one of the largest cities in the world and the lack of people felt disconcerting to her.
She almost decided to cut loose and find another way. She had crap she could pawn for $20, but she’d never hear the end of it from her mother. It would be hard to concentrate on the dungeon with Tara lecturing her all night. Also, level negative one. No, she could stay at least until she was level two. The lack of people was probably because they all worked in shifts. Any moment, the lobby would be full of people going to their lunch break.
She stepped inside the elevator and saw that there was only one unmarked button. The door closed behind her, and she pushed it. Nothing happened. Then she said, hesitantly, “Intake?”
She could feel the lurch of one of those express elevators, and she must have shot up quite a few floors. It was hard to tell without any indicators, but in any case, she must have been high up in the building, because it took a while for the doors to open again. When they eventually did, she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.