Aaron did not particularly enjoy chaos anymore. There was a time when he was in the navy that chaos seemed an oasis of peace and calm. Since his discharge, and uncounted hours of therapy, Aaron recognized that to be grasping for some control when he felt he had none. Now, chaos frustrated and disoriented him once again. Trying to figure out how to access a stat screen or something easily useful, Aaron reminded himself of something the Dealer had said, “Think like a video game.” His voice trailed off while he thought to himself for a moment. He finally just shrugged and said, “Status screen.” and a window appeared, just not the one he was looking for.
Status
Name
Aaron
Class
Rancher
Location
Rams Head Ranch
Aaron dismissed the screen with an exhausted wave of his hand, “Well, that was less than helpful. Let’s try this, Class Menu.” With the last two words, a new screen appeared.
Rancher
The rancher provides a valuable link in the food supply chain post matrix. They raise livestock for protein and other animal products. You have taken the first of many steps along the path to success as a rancher! Maybe you should check your inventory for the next step?
Aaron groaned and closed that window too, “Why is this interface surprisingly unhelpful? And is that sarcasm? Maybe, my inventory will be more useful.” As he spoke the word inventory a new screen popped into existence.
Inventory
Companion Stone X 1
“That’s it?” Aaron’s incredulous cry at obviously being swindled by the Dealer rang out into the paddock. Even his remaining soul coins had vanished. “Well, this better be just incredible.” he muttered and willed the companion stone out of his inventory. Aaron heard a popping sound and saw a flash of bright, not quite neon, green confetti like sparks. As the lights faded Aaron saw a person, almost. The person in question was tiny, about seven inches tall. It was also hovering, not by flapping its wings as a hummingbird might, but instead, the pair of butterfly wings sprouting from the person’s back remained still. A trail of powder seemed to slowly flow from the wings to the ground below. Aaron could see the figure was female now that his eyes had adjusted to looking in miniature. Long, of course its neon red, hair framed fierce green eyes and flowed over her right shoulder as if a display piece. She did not look pleased either.
“It is about damn time you opened that stupid rock! I had to create a manual control on the spot for your interface after you started trying to play with it instead of releasing me!”
How did such a tiny person make such loud noises?
“I might forgive you for this in, oh, seven years or so.” With a final harumph, the diminutive woman rotated in place so that the shoulder with all that hair on it pointed accusatorily at Aaron’s chin.
Aaron took a second to process what the hell had just happened, and spoke, “That fucking Dealer did not force me to buy a magical telephone for a silver coin. I know he didn’t.” After the woman let the silence hang in the air for a few heartbeats rather than reply, Aaron tried again, “Look, I don’t know who you are, but I’ve had a long day and I’m pretty sure I just got screwed over by the alien equivalent of a groupie with a grudge. So, if you could help me out here and make my day just a little easier, I would really appreciate it.” Aaron sighed into the now familiar silence that answered him. “I’m sorry I took so long to let you out. I didn’t know there was a miniature person, inside a magic rock, inside a pocket, I can’t even touch. My name is Aaron, what’s yours?”
Aaron heard a small squeak from the woman, and she floated, first up to eye level with Aaron, and then slowly rotated to apparently make her best attempt at piercing Aaron’s soul with her stare, “My name, is Freyda.” Her voice tinkled like a small bell as she spoke. Other than that, she just kind of sounded British for some reason. “I am your new class companion.”
Aaron smiled with relief at his success, “Would it be rude to ask what you are? You’re the first non-human I’ve met, well, other than the Dealer but that doesn’t seem to count right now.”
The tiny woman’s reply no longer tinkled, just British, still. “I,” she paused and placed her hand on her chest, “am a pixie. And yes, it would be rude, but I’ll forgive you, eventually.”
He couldn’t help it, Aaron laughed. Magical telephone or not, this Freyda had been so proud of her little explanation, “So, what does a class companion do?” Aaron gestured to the world around them as he spoke.
“We guide and assist our client by providing an interface and reference point. Kind of like a help window you can’t turn off.”
Aaron’s eyebrows rose slowly, “That seems both helpful and annoying, sounds about right for the Dealer then. He did after all, sell me a bunch of what I assume is decent quality livestock, wool color aside.”
Freyda’s already large green eyes bugged, quite the comical look for the otherwise proportional seven-inch tall pixie, “You assume? Why would you ever assume anything with that prick? Tell me precisely what you asked him for and what he promised you. Accuracy matters more than you may believe.”
And so, Aaron sat in the field and walked his new companion through the conversations he had with the Dealer. She listened intently and never interrupted him once. Aaron had an unsettling realization about his new companion while they spoke, Freyda didn’t blink. Her eyes weren’t really any bigger than they should be, but they never blinked. Her gaze settled upon him like a weighted blanket and never even twitched.
“You asked for 30 adult ewes and enough rams to service them?” Her voice was incredulous. Aaron noticed a vein on the left side of her neck he couldn’t see until about halfway through his retelling.
Aaron said, “What? That’s what I needed.”
Freyda let out a laugh that she didn’t seem capable of producing at first glance. “No, what you needed was to name a specific breed, specify age, reproductive capability, general health status, and then, the gender you blithering idiot. You have no clue what kind of stock he just sold you. Do you think Earth is the only planet with sheep? Be honest with me, is this the first time you have bought livestock, or I don’t know, a car?” With that Freyda crossed her arms, floating in the air in front of Aaron’s nose, and tilted her head to the right so that it ruffled the red mess of hair resting there.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“How was I supposed to know all of that? Until just now I was an engineering student at a middling college doing my best to disappoint my parents. Now, I’m standing in field of honestly weird grass with neon colored sheep all around me arguing with a seven-inch tall pixie.” Aaron’s exasperated sigh sat heavily into the silence that stretched between them. Before Aaron could give in to his stubborn companion, Freyda spoke, her voice surprising patient, “Most people were terrified in their own interactions with a Dealer. Very few managed a full conversation with essentially was a god to them. You were never meant to do more than accept your assigned soul coins and learn that advancement structures exist.” She paused long enough to make eye contact with Aaron and continued, “You should have needed to access the standardized series of screens to select your own class and then used your companion to interact with the matrix. I don’t actually know why the Dealer allowed you to negotiate your assigned soul coins, I’ve never heard of that before.”
Aaron shrugged, “Like I said, they were acting too much like a groupie for that to have been a normal thing. If I wasn’t meant to have a full conversation with them then am I supposed to be able to go back to see the Dealer whenever I want?”
Freyda nodded, “It’s not quite whenever you want, but it might as well be. Do you have another deal you wish to make?”
Aaron chuckled bitterly, “I forgot to ask about magic. A brand-new fantasy world and the life-long nerd forgot about magic.” With that he dropped his head into his hands. Freyda just hovered watching him sit cross legged on the ground surrounded by shoulder high field grass, head in hand with shame.
Aaron heard a strange sound like wind chimes starting to ring out and then being grabbed by a gloved fist suddenly. He realized he was listening to a pixie choke down laughter and raised his head, a pleasant smile on his face. “Now that your done trying to act like I’m special, is there magic now?”
The pixie scoffed, “Of course there’s magic now. Why would the go through all of the trouble to—” A strange noise cut through the air. It almost sounded like a child screaming, but the noise wasn’t quite right. Freyda’s face froze on hearing the sound a second time, then a third. “We still haven’t actually inspected the sheep, and I have a sneaking suspicion I know what that sound is.”
With that she flew up into the air and buzzed past Aaron, cuffing his ear as she went over his shoulder and looked back to shout, “Well don’t wait too long, I’ll get bored.” before shooting out across the landscape.
Aaron shook his head and stood up to follow, only, once he stood and could see over the top of the field grass, he recognized the source of the noises, and called out to Freyda, “But that doesn’t even make sense!” The pixie’s progress across the field from one group of stock to the next.
Her reply came dripping with sarcastic excitement, “Babies! We have cute little baby lambs!” She gestured to the tottering lambs all over his pasture. His, shockingly well grazed pasture. The field had been more abundant with forage than Aaron had any right to hope for, but it was not anymore. The grass was knocked down all over the pasture from where the sheep had grazed. That would be normal if the sheep grazed at the same rate that Aaron had expected them to. Instead, it looked like the sheep had spent a week on this rectangular, one-acre paddock, not a single day.
Aaron stood staring, mouth open as if to speak, as a lamb with bright neon purple wool chased his finger like a teat. When he did speak, it was only to say, “I just bought sheep, and now I have lambs. My ewes were never pregnant. Freyda, I didn’t miss the whole first six-months, did I?”
“Maybe, you should try using your inspection skill on one of your delightful new sheep.”
Throwing his arms out to the side, Aaron said, “I didn’t even know I had an inspection skill. I would love to use my inspection skill, but I have no damn clue how.””
“It is frankly shocking how exhausting it is every time I have to shepherd along some noob. You do it the same way you do anything using the matrix, just try, and you will.” With that, she pointed to the lamb nibbling on his finger.
Mutely, Aaron traced the pointing finger to the correct conclusion. He looked at the lamb and thought, inspect, with little hope. To his surprise, a screen appeared with a soft pop.
Lamb 051 Age Newborn Gender Ram (M) Breed Rapid Cycle Ruminant Variety 4255a
Aaron gentle pressed his hand against the window, and it let him move it without closing it so he could look at both Freyda, and the screen, “Is this supposed to mean something important to me? For that matter, can you see this?” He pushed the screen with his hand again so that it faced her.
Her voice was slightly deflated from its previous bravado, “No, I only have interface level access to the matrix. That means I can’t see or use anything to interact with it directly. I just know a lot about it. Think of me as a mobile processor station for the reality matrix. You can assign me tasks or queries, and, through me, the matrix will return the answer or solution.”
“So, the matrix is basically a magic super-computer?”
“That’s not a bad way of looking at things for now. We can refine your understanding as we go, but for now, what breed does it say this lamb is?”
After reading her the answer from the screen, Freyda looked shocked. When she finally got around to replying she said, “That’s both fantastic and terrible. We need to sell these lambs now before they mature tomorrow.”
“Before they mature tomorrow? That doesn’t make any sense. How will this newborn be mature in twenty-four hours?”
“This is a sheep modified with alien DNA by one of the largest interstellar corporations to perform a drastically accelerated rate if certain conditions are met. Unfortunately, the Dealer seemed to assume you would separate your flock out when you arrived. The rams shouldn’t be with the ewes yet.”
“Okay, I can see how this is potentially pretty awesome, but how is this bad?”
“You what? Never mind, don’t answer that. Do you at least know how many lambs a typical ewe will produce in a lambing?”
“Twins are the norm, but singles happen to a lot of first-time moms and trips are rare but they happen.”
Nodding, Freyda said, “That would be true of most sheep in your old world. This breed is engineered to produce trips at every lambing. However, the lambing takes place over three days, with one lamb born per day. My guess is the Dealer put the sheep here before your conversation ended. Time passes strangely with his kind, and the flock was likely here for a full two days by the time we got here. That would allow for them to spend one day being bred, one day for gestation, and then they started their lambing cycle today. After the end of their lambing cycle, they will live for one final day to raise their last lambs to maturity. Then they will all die the next day.” Freyda looked pleased with the horrified face plastered onto Aaron.
Aaron said, “Holy shit that sounds like it could get out of hand really quickly. That kind of rapid life cycle requires careful management, or you’ll end up in an overpopulation situation. How do I identify the males so I can separate them out?”
“There is going to be more to it than this but that’s a good place to start anyway. The ewes will be polled but the rams will have horns like a bighorn sheep. If you touch them, you should be able to issue a follow command and can just collect them from within the flock. Then just walk over to another paddock and drop them off.”
Aaron looked confused, and said, “Then why doesn’t this little guy have horns? I mean I get that they would be nubs, but he doesn’t have anything at all.”
She patiently replied, “Video game type garbage. When they reach sexual maturity, the horns will grow in over the course of an hour or so. You’ll have twenty-four hours to find that ram and remove it or you’ll breed all your ewe lambs if any have reached maturity.”
“Okay, that is properly terrifying, but it sounds like something I can manage without too much trouble.” Aaron rose to his feet and started looking for the rams. Freyda followed along, her wings remained still but the dusting trail seems to act like an exhaust trail. Aaron said, “How many ewes can a single ram handle?”
Freyda replied, “About a hundred or so on average. The second ram likely has different genetics and you’ll be able to choose which line to work with. You can also run both lines and interbreed them as you see fit.”
Having spotted the first ram, Aaron patted its head lightly and said, “Follow me bud.” The ram lightly butted his head against Aaron’s leg, making him stumble backwards a step, then followed him obediently.
Freyda said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and this is probably one gold coin worth of sheep, not a hundred couple steel.”
“That’s weird, are you sure your numbers are right?”
She turned a withering glare on Aaron, and said, “I am an interface. My numbers are never wrong.”
Aaron chuckled sheepishly, and said, “My bad, that doesn’t make sense then. I wonder why—” Aaron blinked, and the smell of his flock was just, gone. Did he smell cherries?