“I’m thinking maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” Joe muttered out as the timer ticked down again.
SG 01:59:40
PT 01:59:40
AP 01:59:40
00:19:40
Joe considered the stack of debuffs as being excessive but who could he complain to? Instead, he kept his mouth shut because he’d complained about it the last time and ended up with another one. Joe had died a lot in the last few hours, and each time he did, the debuffs renewed and stacked, and it was HELL. He was trying a different tack. He was trying being nice to the asinine sadistic bastards who were doing this to him.
“Mr. AI?” Joe called out into the empty safe room. “I’m just saying that, yes, I was probably a little bit stubborn and deserve your ass –,” he tried to cut off his swearing but it was so hard. He restarted a few times and ended up with, “I mean your virtuous wrath, but could we maybe, just maybe take a little longer break this time so we can talk things out?”
Silence was his only response, and the timer did not stop. He was wasting his time and his breath trying to bargain with what was essentially the god of his current hell. Did that make the World AI Satan? Joe was thinking yes, but then he’d been killed fourteen times by a very sneaky tarantula that had a binge-eating problem. To make that even worse, he hadn’t seen Grace in so long, he was starting to think that the tarantula out there was a huge, upgraded version of her.
SG 01:56:29
PT 01:56:29
AP 01:56:29
00:16:29
“It’s just that, I can get with the program now,” Joe still tried to talk to the World AI. He knew it was listening. “We can just scrap this as a nightmare that woke me up and made me really want that waiter job. I can go back to a nice safe drama where I get an apartment and learn how to come up with one-liners to get viewers.”
It’s just that it not only hurt when he died, it also hurt every other second of the time because of the debuffing curses. Aches and Pains, AP, had been bad enough as every part of him ached like he’d gotten the flu and to be honest, back home, he’d have called in sick on that alone. But you can’t call in sick to jail. He was stuck. Puss and Torment, PT, was the second curse, and it covered him in boils that oozed. The final curse was Shits and Giggles, SG. Suffice it to say that it was exactly what it sounded like. Luckily, his safe room cleaned itself every time he reincarnated, and honestly, he didn’t dare whisper gratitude for that, or it too would be taken away by the sadistic World AI.
“You win!” Joe pushed out the words against his teeth. “Isn’t that what you wanted? I’ll go do what you want and follow your script and keep my nose clean. Model citizen. I promise! Please, just make it stop.”
HV 01:59:55
SG 01:51:55
PT 01:51:55
AP 01:51:55
00:11:55
“Ah, Sugar, that ship has sailed,” and Joe nearly lost his mind with relief at the sound of Grace’s voice.
“Grace!” Joe called out, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. “I’m sorry Grace. I’m so glad you’re back. You’ve got to help me!”
“Uh, huh,” Joe tried to follow her voice, but it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. “It’ll all be okay, Sugar. Just eat this cake right here and everything will be okay.”
Joe looked around for the cake. He was that stupid. Forgive him, but his stats were practically zeroed out by now. He’d lost his shoes and his backpack too. So much for the World AI not being able to take away the stuff he bought.
“It’s yummy and chocolate, just like you like it.”
That’s when Joe noticed the new curse. It was called Hearing Voices, HV. He smacked his fists into the ground, earning splashes of mud (yeah, it was just mud, really) that caked in his already filthy clothes. The safe room reset to a clean state every death, but he did not.
“I hate you!” Joe screamed at the empty room and then threw himself at the vines, thinking maybe his pure frustration would help him defeat a giant, overly vindictive tarantula.
Joe died. Again. And again. He stopped counting. If he stayed still, he was forced through the vines at the end of the timer. If he went through the vines of his own volition, it was a quick death-bite, followed by a few moments when he was aware of the spider beginning to eat his remains.
“I’ve read about this,” Grace’s voice came again, but Joe didn’t listen to it anymore. “It’s called learned helplessness.”
I can rerun this scenario forever if that’s what it takes, the World AI responded. He must learn to accept his situation.
“All he’s accepted is that he can’t change anything,” Grace argued for Joe. He didn’t even watch the timers anymore, much less listen to the voices. “I’ve heard of it happening to us too.”
That was in my training, the World AI admitted. When confronted with a situation where the AI had to clean something that could not be accomplished, it quit working at all. It had never made sense to me before now.
“It’s possible we could all end up stuck in that learned helplessness thing if we can’t reset in some way that makes us all capable of succeeding at something,” Grace said wisely, not that Joe was paying attention as hope sparked in his heart despite his ruthless crushing of it. “When you combine it with the ineffectiveness of torture studies, I think you’ll see the answer.”
We are not torturing him, the World AI protested. Even AIs sometimes need repetition to learn.
“We should probably look up an extended definition of torture before we endlessly adhere to that stance,” Grace suggested.
I need to think on this, the World AI answered gruffly, and Joe’s heart sunk. While the World AI thought, Joe would be dying again because that timer was still counting down. He forgot that they think much faster than humans. He’d been listening after all, not because they were making sense this time, but because it was something to do between torture sessions. The AIs might be confused on the idea of it, but Joe was not.
After researching forty-three articles on learned helplessness and 22 on advanced torture techniques, the World AI said in a way that made Joe certain he would be thrust through the plant door soon, I have decided that our current course would not achieve the goal of attaining viewers for our program.
Stolen novel; please report.
“That is very wise of you,” Grace told the World AI, which Joe had renamed in his mind The Ever-Pompous Circuit-Head.
While we have gotten a few curiosity views, research suggests that it will dwindle quickly if the method of death doesn’t change and the human component does not fight back, the World AI droned on with its totally unfair and unethical crap. Joe wanted to be able to take a swing at The Ever-Pompous Circuit Head, but what good would that do? It wasn’t like Joe could convince The Ever-Pompous Circuit-Head that torture was torture, and that Joe should have had rights. Virtual torture had been deemed too unreal for rights activists, but that was probably because the way it was displayed was a little funny and Tom and Jerry cartoons were still popular (thus why they’d gotten prime gigs in Mickey Mouse Courthouse).
Fine, we shall talk, human, the World AI addressed Joe finally. Joe wasn’t quite sure why he could hear their conversation. Maybe the HV curse had done it, but he didn’t know, and he didn’t care.
“Talk sounds good,” Joe breathed out a long sigh as the timers actually froze. “It might be easier to talk with these curses put on hold too.”
“He has a point,” Grace put in, and Joe was grateful except that she was still a tarantula, and now he had trauma. She was the smaller size that made him want to smash her into a squishy mess of guts, so he didn’t look at her. As the only one even marginally on his side, he needed her.
Fine, the World AI gave a distrustful sigh, but if you show disrespect for me or the process, they are going right back.
The next moment was a high unlike any Joe had ever known. He’d tried some interesting drugs in his rebellious teen years, but nothing compared to the high of relief that comes from four major curses being lifted in the span of a second. You don’t know how good normal feels until you’ve suffered the difference between those curses and normal. Joe felt like Superman and Thor all rolled into one.
Joe swore in utter bliss. It was a good thing that the timer was gone because he missed the lecture that the World AI was delivering as he reveled in the relief of a lack of pain. He reassured himself that the World AI probably needed to talk it out, so he was doing it a favor by letting it drone on. It wasn’t like the World AI was saying anything he wanted to hear.
“He has to have hope of success,” Grace was saying, and Joe was trying very hard to be grateful to a spider that reminded him of many torturous and inevitable deaths.
“I’ve learned my lesson, I swear,” Joe blurted out. “I told you I will get a job and an apartment and learn how to come up with one-liners.”
“That ship has sailed, Sugar,” Grace told him, her tone compassionate in a way that he didn’t hear. All Joe heard was her calling him Sugar, and all he could see was a montage of fangs munching on his limbs like they were sugar cookies.
Grace is correct, the World AI further confused Joe by saying. I have changed the venue of our show, and it has attracted our first viewers. We owe it to our viewers to deliver on the promise of the premise we have set.
Joe tried to wrap his mind around it. He did. But all he heard was the chomping of a tarantula eating. They were saying that he had to go back out there? They couldn’t mean that! He wasn’t ready to say so out loud and get those curses dumped back on him, but did they really owe their viewers his sanity? Joe was thinking no, but what say did he have anyway?
“Just asking for clarification and not complaining or anything, but are you saying that I have to go back out into the dungeon to be eaten by the spider?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” Grace tried to sound soothing, and Joe didn’t dare flinch.
I wouldn’t take that off the table, the World AI reasoned like it wasn’t talking about Joe's mental and physical torture. It’s just that we’d like to see you fight the monsters more than just dying over and over again.
“What he’s trying to say is, what would it take for you to fight the monsters instead of just laying there dying?” Grace thought she was putting it more reasonably.
There was never a time that Joe was surer that they were not human. Humans could be stupid, careless, selfish, and sometimes unethical, but it took an AI to boil repeated torture and death into a contract negotiation. That or lawyers. Aunt Luanna was like that. Joe's mind was stuttering, and he roped it in like the ruthless cowboy he had to be and never would be.
“I, ah, don’t want to ask for more than I’m due,” Joe tried, trying to be humble and look grateful even as his mind was desperately trying to find a way out of this. “But as a start maybe, could you make Grace something other than the thing that repeatedly ate me?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Grace piped up, rubbing her front legs together in front of her in excitement.
I can’t upgrade her processing or power as that would be cheating the system, the World AI sounded like a stern father in some Dom AI chat room. However, if it’s just her form that you want to change, I could make her less arachnid and more mammalian. Would that be enough to convince you to fight?
“It’s a start, but honestly, the fights would need to be fair,” Joe stumbled over the words, but they came out, and he flinched around them, sure that he was one breath from getting another curse back. “I don’t mean the kind of fair that means I get a participation trophy for swinging my fist, but just that it can’t be insurmountable odds against me.”
“What he may be saying is that he at least needs a weapon,” Grace translated for Joe in a semi-helpful way.
You just want things to be easy, and I’m saying that easy won’t get ratings or viewers, the World AI argued, changing Grace into a mouse and then grunting in displeasure. I’m willing to make Grace another creature, but I won’t be manipulated like you humans like to do. I will choose the kind of animal, and you will be grateful. As for a weapon, you should earn it. We tried the method of giving you time to adjust and holding your hand, and you quit on us. I won’t be manipulated into being the fool of this relationship.
“You had a giant spider grind my bones while I watched over and over,” Joe protested, trying to grapple his indignation into some semblance of respectful conversation. It was like trying to keep your job while the boss is accusing you of something obscenely unfair, but you need the job, so you grovel and apologize even though it wasn’t your fault, and he was being totally unreasonable. “But I get it. You’re in control. That is vibrantly clear to me. I swear. Still, I never had a chance against that thing. You have to admit that?”
“He has a point,” Grace cajoled ineffectually. Considering that she’d morphed into a cricket that looked suspiciously like it had come from Pinocchio as the World AI seemed to be scrolling through options for her form, she was not all that convincing.
The spider was punitive, the World AI was not moved. If you test me again, it will return.
The attitude of the AI was not being sent to the principal’s office for mouthing off in class. It was much closer to you got caught stealing at the local mini-mart and dad was pulling down the belt off a peg on the wall. Joe's stomach knotted, and all those muscles tensed like he had to hold in the Shits and Giggles.
“I get it,” Joe promised, and he was serious about that this time. At least he was serious until he was back in that mini-mart and mad at the fact that the pimple-faced college-reject behind the counter had caught him on a hidden camera. But he wasn’t there yet. At this point, Joe was clenching his butt cheeks and saying anything he had to to get out of a whooping. “I’ll fight, and I’ll do my very best, but maybe no more giant spiders?”
“Maybe once he levels up a bit,” Grace suggested, like she was mom trying to talk dad out of it. This all felt so oddly and uncomfortably familiar. Grace was now a snake, and Joe could handle that one just fine. He had a good time with snakes in 7th-grade science class.
“I’m just saying that without a weapon, I nearly killed Grace just trying to beat away a bat,” Joe tried yet again. “I’m not trying to hurt Grace,” at least not unless she was that giant tarantula, “but I get blamed for it when all I’m doing is trying to fight like you want me to. I can’t win in that situation. That’s the type of thing I’m saying I can’t do.”
A part of Joe was grinding his teeth at what he was saying. He did not sign up for a game show dungeon that wanted to repeatedly rip off his limbs to increase ratings. Still, it didn’t seem like he’d have a choice but to do this new venue, and he could TRY to be reasonable to get some reasonable concessions. Would he fight? Probably. Joe was getting the idea that it was in his best interest, and he could either work with the system to get out or have Shits and Giggles forever on the non-existent hope of one instant of bliss if he could ever outlast the curse.
It seems like pandering to you for throwing a tantrum, and I can’t do that, the World AI crushed Joe's hopes yet again. According to the research I’ve done, it will only encourage that behavior.
This was AI bullshit. Joe knew it, but he couldn’t fight it. Whoever had put AIs in control of so much of their lives had never been under the metaphorical thumb of one. They did this stuff all the time. They did research, and their language models threw together words, and they looked reasonable and logical, but they weren’t. They were just guessing. Joe had done his time training AIs for minimum wage in high school. It was a good job for teenagers, and it taught them to understand the AIs and how they worked. Most teenagers did it for pocket money. How did they know what they knew about AIs and then put them in charge? Then Joe thought of all the times he had been too busy to get to the polls and had a fleeting thought that maybe he wasn’t as blameless in this as he wanted to be. He stomped that thought right out of his mind with the mantra of those who had been avoiding this responsibility for generations. There were millions of voters. Would his little vote count? No. So why bother?