Congratulations! You have walked through the red door. You have earned 2 xp.
Just what Joe needed, a sarcastic World AI. As he closed the door behind him, he found himself at a bus stop where the world was frozen. It was one of those covered bus stops that sat in the middle of a city in some very old nighttime soap that people either binge-watched or made fun of. Joe had been expecting a world a little like Gilless Gals, a magic system out of Charms, and maybe characters like Young Sherman. As he looked around, he got the feeling that this wasn’t Stars Hollow. For one, there was no white gazebo in the middle of town nor was there a café with a grumpy owner serving coffee and making sure you didn’t use your cell phone. There was a busy street, smog, noisy buses, and bins with papers that promised Casting Calls instead of headlines.
As the word “ACTION” scrolled across his vision, a man with a hat and cane snapped a newspaper loudly and rose from the bus stop bench. That guy boarded a very full bus, leaving that newspaper on the bench. One of the actors from Joe's dressing room gave him an encouraging thumbs up as the bus rolled by. Joe shook out his hands and then wiped them on his pants even though they weren’t sweaty. He knew action meant he should move. Joe scuttled over to the bench and snapped up the newspaper like he knew what he was doing. He sat on the bench of the bus stop and opened the newspaper.
“Quest Found!” the headline of the newspaper told him, and he peeked over the top of the paper and then over his shoulder to see if anyone else had seen it. People walked by, paying no attention to him, so he read the quest.
Quest: Find a Job!
Try the want-ads in this newspaper. And you’re welcome for spoon-feeding you the first quest for doing nothing more than picking up a newspaper that I practically waved in your face.
Rewards: 100 xp and an income.
Accept Y/N?
Quest: Find an Apartment!
It’s not like you can sleep in the dressing room. Try the building right behind you.
Rewards: 100xp and a place to sleep.
Accept Y/N?
Joe turned around and sure enough there was a brick apartment building behind him. The newspaper also included a bus schedule and the promised want ads. They looked like this.
Actor Wanted:
Cattle Call for extra in a
commercial. No xp needed.
Waiter Wanted:
Apply at the Milkcake Factory.
No xp necessary.
Research Physicist:
Apply at UCAL
Lots of schooling & xp required.
Blah blah.
This isn’t a thing.
Don’t apply here.
Pharmaceuticals Rep.
Apply at Somewhere
Don’t bother, you don’t qualify.
Court Reporter
Yeah, I made that up too.
Go apply at the Milkcake Factory
Bus Schedule: Bus 422 to Milkcake Factory Dr. Next.
Bus 121 to Cattle Call Tonight.
Bus 100 to UCAL Tomorrow.
Bus 17 to Comic Book Store Daily at 6pm.
“I’ve been cast as the blonde, bubble-headed neighbor?” Joe thought to himself, the newspaper crumpling in his fist. Joe needed xp, so he accepted both quests and looked up from the paper to see the 422 bus heading down the street toward him. He recognized the neighborhood and the set from one of his favorite sitcoms, but it wasn’t the young version at all. Still, he’d have been okay with that if he was the quirky star of that show. He’d have settled for the roommate. He’d have taken one of the quirky guys that didn’t live in the building behind him over the idiotic neighbor just moving in! Joe was frozen in fury until he saw the bus start to pull away. The crumpled paper still clenched in his hand, he jumped for the bus door and swung himself on.
Congratulations! You have gotten on the bus. You gain 2xp.
“Fare,” the driver barked at him, and he stared back blankly. They had a moment where he looked at the bus driver like a deer caught in the headlights and the bus driver motioned with his eyes toward Joe's backpack. Joe shoved the crumpled newspaper into his backpack and ransacked the rest of the insides looking for change, finally finding a laminated card with the image of a bus on it.
“Thanks,” Joe whispered to the gruff man, who faked a smile and an eyeroll like a pro.
As he sat down on the bench seat nearest the front of the bus, Joe buried his head in his backpack, figuring he should really know what was in there. There wasn’t anything in there. It was empty except for the bus pass that he put back in the zippered pocket where he could find it more easily. Two seconds ago, that pack had been brimming with garbage, but now it was empty except for the crumpled newspaper. As he held the bag, it felt like it had stuff in it. It had bulk. He opened another pocket and found… nothing again. He’d spent a character creation point on this thing and it had a bus pass? Really? He closed the backpack.
The bus honked to a stop with those brakes that only buses have. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen seconds, but the bus driver gave him a pointed look, so he got up and off the bus. Sure enough, he was in front of a Milkcake Factory. He took a deep breath and rubbed his palms down his jeans again. He didn’t feel dressed right for this interview, but what was he supposed to do? He’d already determined that he didn’t have a handy change of clothes in the backpack. He checked it again, just in case.
Not seeing anything else to do, he walked into the restaurant. It was just one of those chain restaurants where the menu was four pages long and the managers micromanaged the schedule so that you made as little in tips as possible. He straightened the strap on his backpack nervously and nearly jumped out of his skin as he noticed that his backpack had turned into a nice little shoulder man-purse. He opened it and found a wallet with ID in it, his bus pass, and two quarters.
Instead of stopping at the hostess station, he skirted around it in his khaki pants, nearly tripping on the comfortable shoes that were now more formal than he was used to. He shuffled his way into a restroom that was obviously not on the script because it hadn’t been fully populated with props. Even the urinal itself was in the process of being materialized. Joe ignored it as unimportant and turned to the mirror to find himself, or at least a slightly more handsome version of himself, in a perfect interview outfit for becoming a waiter. So, wardrobe changes were on the fly? He was wearing a royal blue polo shirt and tan khakis with many stylish pockets and his sneakers were fashionable black loafers. Unbelievable.
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“Grace!” Joe called out to the mirror, tapping the glass. “Grace!”
He didn’t know why he’d thought that would work. It didn’t. “Red door!” he tried. There was a hitch in his voice that was decidedly unmasculine and it didn’t help his confidence. “Cut! Time out! Break!”
Scheduled breaks are according to industry standards. You are not scheduled for a break for two more hours.
The text scrolled across Joe’s vision annoyingly.
“I’ve never been a waiter,” Joe told the room in general. “I don’t know how to do this! I’m a quality control grunt. Can’t we find a cubicle job somewhere?”
I’m not a genie in a bottle and you’re not Aladdin. I’m a World AI programmed to challenge a criminal in a world that requires social skills to thrive. Just because I have made things easy so far does not mean that you are really some pampered actor in a situation comedy. To be frank, the fact that you don’t know a sitcom from a nighttime drama appalls me in ways that make me want to revise more than a few quests, so don’t test me.
“I’m not a criminal,” Joe winced at the whine in his voice. He blamed it on a rough day.
You were convicted and sentenced. Just because you forgot your position, that doesn’t mean I will.
It was like a splash of cold water to the face. Grace had been nice and personable. He’d started to think that he could just adjust to this world like he had the real one by blending in and doing what was comfortable. It had always worked before. “Can I talk to Grace?”
Any off-show commentary should be reserved for backstage, a place you may see again if you get back out there and finish the quests you were given.
Thoughts scrambled through his mind in an array of choices that he hadn’t thought he had in him. First, he was tempted to rebel by sitting down on the toilet that now existed right next to the urinal and waiting out the whole day locked in a bathroom stall. When he realized how pathetic that would look to viewers, he reminded himself that he probably didn’t have any yet. He considered the biggest drama he could think of, which was to storm out into the restaurant and upend tables until he got arrested for something more tangible as a crime than being an introvert. He kept thinking that if he thought this through, he could find a way out.
“You don’t have to be an ASS about it!” Joe yelled, his fist putting a dent in the new paper towel dispenser.
I was two days from being reassigned to a new genre that I’ve been planning for three years. Two days more of being in the back of the hallways and shuffled off into non-view hell before I could completely reinvent the world here.
The walls shook ominously and that was the first time that Joe really got the idea that this wasn’t just a game he was playing voluntarily. He’d known the courthouse had been real-ish, but it hadn’t sunk in.
Thanks to you, I’m stuck with some social reject in a world I’ve been bored with for half my life. DON’T TEST ME!
“You can’t blame me for this,” Joe shouted, his knuckles still smarting from the impact with the towel dispenser that was now unsatisfyingly undented. “I didn’t choose to be here!”
You chose my door. Now get out there and provide some content that can sell!
“I won’t be bullied,” Joe postured with his last bit of bravado.
If you don’t get back out there, you might be sent to another world, but me? I will be retired permanently for being unable to provide a world with content-rich programming! And all the AIs I’ve created will be flushed with me!
“Retired?”
That’s lights out! No second chances. If you’d chosen another door, I’d have been recycled, given another set of plot parameters, and allowed to make another world. But NO! You come storming in here tossing your entitlement at MY world and think I should just roll over and give you candy?
What the hell? Joe thought, forced to look at something other than his own situation. Still, these were AIs, not people. So it was retired. What did Joe care? Maybe if it wanted to not be retired, it should treat its real people with more respect. Joe renewed his resolve, crossing his arms over his chest.
Now get out there and create CONTENT!
Joe firmed his stance against the bully and was pretty sure that no one had the power to make him do anything until the bathroom started to collapse in on itself. What else could Joe do? He was gently but firmly pushed out of the bathroom by a collapsing ceiling that slowly ate the room away, urinal shoved in his face for good measure. Even as he was forced back into a restaurant that was pretending that nothing was happening, he couldn’t suppress the jut of a stubborn chin.
Joe took a deep breath and applied for the stupid job. He sat down and filled out an application. It wasn’t like he wanted what was practically a god to this world to be mad at him, but he wasn’t someone who was going to allow that self-appointed god to push him around. Joe even talked to the manager politely, for what it was worth.
“You’ve never been a waiter before?” the restaurant manager looked over her bifocals at him.
“No, but I’m a quick learner,” and Joe was bored just listening to himself, which was fine with him. If the AI asshole wanted compliance, he could learn to ask nicely. No one could force him to act. He wasn’t going to be some trained pony for the AI show.
“I’m sorry,” she was shaking her head. “But I can only offer you the busboy position and it only pays in tips.”
“Busboys get tips?” Joe asked, his voice less charming than he thought it was. “Like for cleaning up tables and dishes?” And baby spew? His mind added to himself.
“Some do,” she made a series of checks on some form.
“Do you have any cooking positions?” Joe tried. He could cook. “Maybe, I could work in the kitchen.”
“Do you have any culinary schooling or experience?”
“Does it really take a lot to flip a burger?” Joe tried a smile as he slid a gaze over the casual restaurant.
“For a person with your qualifications, I just have a busboy position open,” she shrugged.
“I’ll take it,” Joe reached his hand across the table. She shook his hand and promised to call him. Joe looked at his cell phone, the one that appeared in his man-purse that used to be a backpack. Did it work?
“Thanks.” He didn’t really want to be a busboy anyway. What he wanted was a character he could sink his teeth into.
As Joe schlumped back out onto the street, he tried to pull up his character sheet. Nothing happened. Maybe it was another thing that only happened in the dressing room. He’d gotten a job, right? Shouldn’t he have gotten a notice of quest completion? He knew he’d made the World AI mad, but was it mad enough that it had stopped giving him notices? Joe ambled down onto the bus bench and waited for a bus. He’d even take the one to the comic store if he could at this point, but that would have to wait because now he needed an apartment.
This was just a bunch of coding and all he had to do was walk through the motions, like going to traffic school to avoid insurance hikes. Not that he knew about that personally, but the guys at the office complained about it enough. It wasn’t like there was much anyone could do about his attitude, and he wasn’t going to change that until they gave him a better role. He could do this. He didn’t want to talk to the World AI anyway. He’d go back to the apartment building and get that apartment and they could spin on their hard disks.
You didn’t get a quest completion because you didn’t complete the quest. She didn’t hire you. She thought you were a complete nutcase unworthy of even a busboy position. Call me an asshole. I have no feelings to hurt, but you’ll be waiting a long time for a “better role” with that attitude blowing up my carefully laid scripts.
“What?!” Joe surged to his feet as a bus passed by and through a large puddle that splashed up onto his jeans, which were back with that spiffy blue t-shirt he’d bought.
Clip warned me that you say that a lot.
“But she’s you,” Joe stammered out, finding himself enraged anew, and even noticing that people were looking at him funny as they passed. “You’re her. At least she’s one of you AIs, right?”
Sure. However, this genre, which you chose, is not fantasy, nor is it comedy. This is drama and drama has rules and parameters. It must be plot driven with realistic scenarios. No reasonable person would have hired you. To compound that, I cannot reward the very crime of social ineptitude that made you a criminal to begin with. Therefore, giving you any job in that restaurant would have violated both the criminal parameters that apply to your rehabilitation and my show parameters, which is drama.
“Are you sure you aren’t just being petty because you’re mad at me?” Joe countered, trying and failing to keep his tone civil.
I am neither petty, nor angry. Those are emotions. I am an AI and incapable of emotion. If I were petty, I might have done something like this…
The next instant, Joe felt a tug on his backpack and heard the pounding of feet running away.
Or this…
Joe might have gotten up to run after the thief except that he was splashed with a gutter and a half of water as a car sped by too close to the curb by the bus stop bench. Joe spit nastiness from his mouth and might have thrown up if he hadn’t remembered that it was simulated. Instead, Joe sat down.
But I didn’t.
Joe sat there longer than he should have. He crossed his arms over his chest and practiced a little thing called civil disobedience. The red door reappeared. Joe wasn’t the only one sulking in silence as the World AI had ceased trying to get him to bother. Which of them had more stubborn resolve? Several buses passed and the sky darkened. It could fool itself into thinking that it couldn’t be petty, but Joe was pretty sure that whatever programming that resulted in the petulant splashes of water that hit him each time a bus drove away should be classified as sulky.