“Let’s just take a moment to make sure we’re on the same page, boss,” Joe told the World AI, ignoring the fact that his dressing room had reappeared, almost as if nothing had happened. Only something had happened. Something had happened to him that changed everything. “Your job is to make a good solid world with an easy plotline and my job is to blow it up somehow, right?”
This is starting to sound like a bad idea. My ideas are perfectly fine without you blowing them up.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” Joe's eyelids slipped to half mast, and he had some charm he’d never had. “I’m only good at being a screw-up. You have the hard job and you’re good at setting stuff up like this, but me? I’m just stupid this way. Besides, it’ll get ratings, right Grace?”
“It’s likely, according to current trends, that people are ready for a chaotic hero,” Grace didn’t sound convinced, but she was a language model, so she was good at saying what you expected her to say. Joe just had to keep feeding her the right lines and he’d be fine.
“Just give this a chance,” Joe coaxed, his mind on something else entirely. “If we don’t double our viewers, we can go back to your way.”
Double our viewers? The World AI sounded even more doubtful than Grace, who had settled back into her mirror, where she would stay as long as Joe was performing to acceptable standards. Acceptable to the World AI. We only have five. Doubling it hardly seems difficult.
“Fine, triple it then,” Joe shot back, staring at the red door and taking another deep breath. “But then you have to guarantee me twenty-four hours before you stuff me back in the dungeon. That’s my deal. I get a full twenty-four hours to get my 15 viewers.”
Fine, the World AI groused, doubtfully. Get out there then. You have 24 hours to get us up to 15 viewers.
“I was just waiting for my cue,” Joe said, blowing out that deep breath and opening the door.
----------------------------------------
The World AI hadn’t warned Joe about what kind of world would be waiting for him. He’d half expected to be back in the dungeon again, but instead, he found the town he’d been expecting in the first place. The white gazebo stood in the center of a quaint little park with vibrant green grass that unrealistically was dotted here and there with a single tall dandelion puff, while the rest of the grass was perfectly mowed. The streets that bracketed the central park were just as sparsely dotted with a random car or truck that was probably going nowhere.
Joe had his backpack slung over one shoulder, as beat-up as the jean jacket that matched the aw-shucks small town that moved slowly around him. He wore a black t-shirt with a faded logo of a band he didn’t know. He ran a hand through his hair and headed toward the nearest crosswalk which led to a street corner where a coffee shop stood. Opposite the coffee shop was the grocery store.
Quest: Find a Job!
Check out the local businesses to see if anyone needs a hand.
Rewards: 100 xp and an income.
Automatically Accepted.
Quest: Find a Place to Stay!
Ask around to find out if anyone has a place for a broke vagrant to crash for the night.
Rewards: 100xp and a place to sleep.
Automatically Accepted.
Yeah. Joe had been expecting that. He pasted a smile on his face and ducked into the little coffee shop with the full intention of “getting with the program.” The coffee shop had a long, salmon-colored, Formica counter that stretched the length of the dining area and separated the diners from food prep areas. The rest of the dining room was taken up with exact four booths and two small tables. Joe still didn’t know a thing about being a waiter and he really only knew how to cook something simpler than an omelet.
“Seat yourself,” the short woman behind the counter said, swinging a coffee pot to encompass the room. As Joe eyed the slightly chubby, cherub-like woman behind the counter, she eyed him back even as she slung coffee like it didn’t have to obey the laws of gravity.
Joe slowly worked his way over to the farthest end of the counter, trying to be surreptitious as he pawed through his pockets and backpack for anything resembling money. He had exactly two quarters, which he shoved back into his front jeans pocket. Meanwhile, that woman was watching him do it and Joe was feeling more of his old self coming back. What was he doing? He didn’t know what to say or do. It wasn’t like he had a script to follow. Joe only knew he’d already screwed up this part last time. He let his eyes skim the menu and realized that fifty cents wouldn’t even buy him a glass of water, which was only available if you bought something else too.
“Coffee?” the woman now eyed him suspiciously, quite in contrast to her cherub-like looks.
“Job application?” Joe countered and felt stupid for doing it.
“Experience?” she shot back, pulling a paper from beneath the counter that looked significantly like the one at the Milkcake Factory.
“Not really, but I can try?” Joe was feeling the déjà vu and all his old habits popped up like warts. Dammit! Where was that beast from the box?
“Not interested,” she said, tucking that piece of paper back under the counter and moving on to another customer, all of whom were giving Joe the stink eye.
He gave back a sheepish smile, tucked his hands in his pockets, and ambled right back out of his first attempt at fulfilling his quest. Maybe he was shooting too high for his first job in a new town where no one knew him. Joe shouldered his way out the door and did a little skip jog across the street to the grocer. He was doing as he was told, but it wasn’t working. He knew better. He knew he was supposed to shake things up, but it would have been nice to have a base of a job and a place to stay before he started making waves, especially in a small town. Wouldn’t it be more impressive if he got with the program first and then blew it up? At least it could prove that he could have done it before, given half a chance.
A little bit of Joe wanted to prove that, but a lot of him was the seething beast that was just waiting for his chance to stick it to the AI that was the bane of his existence. The two of him walked into the small grocery store with its four aisles of boxed goods, back wall of frozen and refrigerated stuff, and side walls of what was pretending to be a bakery and deli. He’d already passed the entire fruits and vegetables selection in the set of about two dozen baskets set out front of the store. Inside, it was dim, with half the fluorescent lights giving a sickly blink. Of course, half of them meant that one was working, and one was not.
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Joe stood behind a bored-looking teenager who was ringing up sales at the single check-out counter. He waited; the blips of the bar code scanner almost soothing. What kind of jobs would a place like this have? Stock boy? Yeah, that was probably it. With a final slam of the cash drawer, the teenager turned to him with a snap of her gum and a mischievous AI sparkle in her eyes.
“Do you have any applications for stock boy or something?” Joe asked her, putting on what he hoped was a winning smile.
She let her eyes slide down his body and back up before answering, and Joe felt a wave of gross at the action that made him stupid. “You don’t look like a stock boy,” she quipped, and he was sure that she was sure that it was the most clever thing anyone had ever said. All Joe felt at it was horror.
“No,” he flubbed his one-liner chance, but it wasn’t his fault. A teenaged girl had just looked him up and down like he’d walked into a bar, and she was the decked out barfly from hell. “I’ll check the local gas station.”
“Your loss,” this very inappropriately miscast AI drawled out to him as he backed out of the front door. “It’s down the road a ways by the highway.”
Joe was at least half a mile down the road toward the nearest highway before the heebie-jeebies left him free enough to kick himself. He was just passing the road to a little bed and breakfast called The Heavenly Hollow. Maybe he could apply there. Joe detoured down the little tree-covered lane as distant thunder made him notice a few storm clouds. The World AI must have thought he was being subtle. Joe couldn’t imagine a real person thinking it was subtle at all.
The tunnel of vegetation was just this side of a horror movie, and when Joe broke out of the other side of the tunnel and saw this adorably cozy inn, he was convinced that he would be chained to some bed, have his legs broken, and hidden in a cellar by the time he was done here. Not wanting to give the World AI any ideas, Joe swallowed hard and pretended that it was just job insecurity nerves that had him shaking in his shoes. It turns out that the difference between Mayberry and Psycho is about fifteen firing neurons in his brain.
Joe considered it the epitome of bravery to walk into the quaint parlor of the quaint inn in the quaint woods in the middle of where no one could hear you scream. There was a kind-looking older woman behind the check-in counter. Did she have the eyes of that spider? Was it just his imagination?
“You have a reservation?” those kindly eyes smiled at him, complete with dimples and crow’s feet that complimented perfectly harmless gray hair tucked up into a bun on her head.
“No, ma’am,” Joe stammered out. “I was wondering if you were looking for any help around the place. I’m a little out of luck and…” Joe knew his lines. If he was playing the game correctly, he should say he’s down on his luck and could use a place to stay and would work for an attic room or gardening shed.
“We’re not all that busy –“ she was saying as Joe rushed right back out the door. Into the rain. And lots of thunder.
Hell, the World AI was going to get mad at him at one point or another. Joe was going to screw it up somehow. He hadn’t been lying. He just wasn’t good at reading the lines of normal people. That’s why he’d been in the same dead-end job for almost half his life. It had been a stroke of luck to land a job, any job, and he wasn’t about to blow it by looking for better.
Joe was drenched and muddy by the time he reached the little gas station that looked like it belonged in black and white about five decades before the town he’d just left. He could just see the old-fashioned gas pumps as he hustled through the rain. More cars had gone down this muddy lane in the last half hour that he’d been walking than he’d seen in all of gazebo-ville. That was because each car could dump a nice smattering of fresh mud on him and that was real important to the World AI.
The red door had appeared too, but Joe had walked by it.
You are dangerously close to a second dose of dungeon diving, the World AI warned him.
“I’m not,” Joe muttered under his breath. “You agreed that I could screw everything up. This is just me being that screw up.”
Technically, the World AI could yank his ass back to a dungeon at any moment, but Joe was engaged with the program. They’d agreed that he would screw things up and he was doing that. The World AI still had all the power, but it was an AI and they had rules to follow. Joe might be nudging close to another Dead Air clause, but would another AI judge it that way?
“I’ve got another twenty-one hours,” Joe tried to hide his words behind flicking up his jean jacket collar against the rain. He had a new timer up there, but he wouldn’t bore anyone with it. He wouldn’t need it here. Joe also had another number and maybe seeing it would help.
Viewers - 4
There it was. Clear proof that what he was doing wasn’t working. Joe was feeling the pressure. So was the beast inside him. He didn’t need the peanut gallery making it all worse. Joe tried to focus on the gas station. It had a little mini-mart that probably had more auto parts than road snacks. On the other side, it had a small mechanic’s haven straight out of Happy Days. If the Fonz had come out of there, Joe would have never tried it, but instead, he was confronted by a goofball with more grease on his hands than brains in his head.
“I don’t suppose you’re looking for any part-time help, are you?” Joe called out to the legs sticking out from under a car.
“Well, gollleeee,” he was saying as he rolled out from under the ancient truck he was working on. “I suppose I am if you can rebuild a carburetor in two hours or less.” He had a long face that belonged on a hound dog more than a person. His eyes drooped down over the goofiest grin Joe had ever seen. This was yet another example of the AIs trying to be clever with their one-liners. Everyone was working together to get those click baits going, but Joe didn’t have a lot of faith in their idea of cleverness.
Viewers – 3
“Not a chance,” Joe tried to keep his own grin even though his stomach was sinking. “But I can watch the till in the store while your head is down there under the cars?”
“Huh,” he scratched his head, smearing some black into his already dark hair, as he deposited a wrench into one of the pockets on his overalls. “Ain’t never needed anything like that. I got a bell in there that people ring to tell me they’re here.”
“A bell?” Joe said, thinking that he’d be replacing a bell.
“Go ahead and take a look and then ring the bell if you need to check out,” he told Joe, taking that wrench back out of his pocket to wave toward the store. Then Joe was left with feet.
“Okay, thanks mister,” Joe said, his voice a little hollow, the beast rising. He could tell because he was thinking things he’d never have thought in his normal life.
There was indeed a bell. It sat right there in front of the cash register. Eight boxes of candy bars were stuffed in front of the counter right next to three with gum that reminded Joe of the girl at the grocery store. Behind the counter were cigarettes, and a little farther in, past the motor oil he’d been expecting was a lovely little fridge full of sodas and beer.
Joe looked out the glass-paned door that separated the shop from the repair-bay. He looked back at those candy bars. What really sold him was a small box of lighters on the counter next to the keychains that doubled as flashlights. Really. Then he looked at that bell. A bell that was better than him, according to a guy whose name was Gomer, if the patch on his overalls was telling the truth.
It started with just a single lighter, a flashlight keychain, four of his favorite candy bars, and a pack of gum. Joe didn’t ring the bell, and Gomer didn’t come out from under the truck to stop him.
What are you doing?
Joe wasn’t ashamed to say that he didn’t stop there. His backpack was big enough for every single candy bar and pack of gum, with plenty of room left over for the whole display’s worth of those keychains and lighters. There was a set of keys under the counter that unlocked the cigarette case. Joe ignored the cigarettes and snagged the half-dozen pocketknives that doubled as multi-tools. They fit easily in his pockets and Gomer was still clueless. Joe wasn’t a drinker, so he left the beer in favor of a six-pack’s worth of plastic bottles full of diet-cola.
That’s when Joe found the snack aisle. It was a whole cubby of packaged donuts, Twinkies, and four canisters of those stackable potato chips. Did his backpack have enough room? Yep. Well, it did until he opted for a few tools that might double as weapons to use against the inevitable spider that was coming for him as soon as he hit that door running, but that was okay since there were some very convenient nylon packs, some of which had car-versions of first aid kits. Joe snagged those too, keeping one eye on the door to the mechanic’s bay.
The last things Joe grabbed were two hats and a leather jacket that had been hanging on a couple of pegs near the door. He had a twinge of guilt for almost two seconds.
Joe took one last look around what was left of the poor man’s inventory, clicked his tongue against his teeth, and drawled out “Golllleee, it looks like you needed more than a bell, Gomer,” on his way out the door. Then again, he hadn’t rung the bell, so Gomer didn’t even poke his head up out from under that car even as Joe was dashing into a wooded area that stretched out beyond the roads.