--- Nameless Bad Guy ---
Robert was not having a good day.
That dealer who was encroaching on their turf yesterday? The one whom he beat up and took all his merchandise? It turned out he was allowed to be there after all. The man’s boss had made a deal with Robert’s own boss, and nobody had told him.
That hadn't stopped Robert's boss from beating the shit out of him as punishment, though.
Now Robert was stalking the night, looking for victims to mug. Honestly, it wasn't even about the money for him at this point. He just needed to beat someone up to vent his anger. It wasn't like he could take revenge on his boss for his undeserved beating, so he needed to find someone else to serve as a punching bag, instead.
Maybe more than a punching bag. He really had a lot of frustration to vent. Luckily, this was the sort of area where nobody investigated too closely when people went missing. Screaming and shouting for help served no purpose here. Everyone knew better than to get involved.
"Bark! Bark! Bark!" A dog suddenly shouted at him from the right, and Robert jumped in shock.
Oh. That was one hell of a guard dog. Luckily it was chained down and couldn't leave its yard. Still, the beast was making a lot of noise, and he really did not want to mess with whoever owned a monster like that.
He decided to take a sharp left, and walk down a different alley.
It wasn't like it made a difference. The alleys in this ghetto were all alike. All were equally dark and foreboding. It was a wonder anyone was stupid enough to walk around in this area. But then he supposed some people just didn't have a choice.
Like that woman over there!
Robert couldn't believe his luck. They were all alone, and she looked like she hadn't noticed him yet.
She was squatting in the corner and eating something, and paid no attention to her surroundings.
He crept closer and drew his knife.
When he was just a few meters away from him, she noticed him and started turning her head in his direction.
He was already looking forward to the look of shock and terror on her face when she noticed him. It got his blood pumping.
But then their eyes met, and instead of trying to scream, she smiled, her mouth and teeth covered in blood.
And then he noticed just what exactly the woman was eating.
He screamed, but nobody came to his help.
--- Adversity Regulator, meanwhile behind the curtains ---
"I think that worked out well." [Entity Synchronization] said. "These two really deserve each other."
"I agree, but it was a close one." [Adversity Regulator] replied. "That dog of yours malfunctioned. It said 'Bark! Bark! Bark!', instead of actually barking. Luckily the mortal didn't notice. He was probably too weirded out by it and his brain auto-corrected."
"Sorry, that was my mistake. The spirit I created to take the role of that dog got confused by the assignment. I had to connect versions of these alleys from several different dimensions to get the mortals to meet without encountering anyone else on the route. I plugged the dog-spirit from a pretty far-off dimension and didn't remember that dogs from that reality can talk. The dog-spirit said 'instructions unclear, had to improvise' and it improvised wrong."
"Well, so long as it worked out in the end. That is what training exercises are for, after all". [Adversity Regulator] responded. "All in all, I would say that Operation Karma was a success."
[Adversity Regulator] was happy with the results.
It was so proud of Rania for coming up with the idea.
"The 'Law of Adversity' is popular with mortals." She had said. "Maybe we could have a 'Law of Good Things Happening to Good People and Bad Things happening to Bad People'? That way, Adversity would be distributed more fairly."
Operation Karma was the trial run for this proposal, and also a team building exercise between [Entity Synchronization] and itself.
Previously, [Adversity Regulator] only made sure that the total amount of Adversity in the world followed the correct probability distributions. But now it was looking for ways to also make it more 'fair', as Rania called it. Achieving that in a subtle way without letting people catch on was very challenging.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
To be honest, it also seemed like a bit of a waste of resources at the time. [Administrator] had not given instructions like that, so what was the point?
But then again, Rania had a lot of other good ideas, and [The Spirit of Friendship] agreed with her. [Adversity Regulator] had come to trust [The Spirit of Friendship] in a very short amount of time. It didn't want to disappoint her. Besides, it had created Rania based on the suggestions of Divinity. Divinity was cute and awesome, so clearly it should give Rania the benefit of the doubt.
It had been pleased with the results. This joint training exercise with [Entity Synchronization] was useful for learning to work together. For Friendship, and also for Operational Efficiency. Friendship was the hot new thing, and [Adversity Regulator] was not going to fall behind in it. It was a little bit embarrassed to admit to itself that the low-level spirit [Pebble#38618436289] was beating them all at it by becoming [The Spirit of Friendship]'s First Friend. Their friendship was strong enough that it even overruled the rules of grammar, and [The Spirit of Friendship] declared him her 'Bestest Friend'.
But [Adversity Regulator] was a top-level spirit and it was sure it would get the hang of Friendship soon. It was very glad to see that working together with [Entity Synchronization] was already giving results. [Adversity Regulator] would set goals and point out the targets, and then [Entity Synchronization] would do its thing and swap some details around between universes. And in the end, Bad People ended up happening to other Bad People, and not to Innocent Civilians.
According to 'the books that Atrog hands out', this was a good thing.
Overall, [Adversity Regulator] was very happy with Rania’s contributions. So happy, in fact, that when it copied and integrated her mind state into itself, it had allowed for far more changes to itself than it normally did when assimilating an avatar. Absorbing Rania had not just taught it new knowledge, but also altered its behavior. Made it care about things it previously didn't care about.
For example, [Adversity Regulator] was now much more aware than before that many Innocent Civilians were not having a good time. This was starting to influence its decision-making process. It was possible that it was getting biased in favor of this whole ‘ethics’ thing that Rania kept thinking about. That was really not part of [Administrator]’s original instructions. But nobody told it this was wrong, and [The Spirit of Friendship] said it was fine. So it was probably fine. By now, it didn't really care anymore that Operation Karma was a large ongoing drain on resources.
After all the useful things Rania had done, [Adversity Regulator] decided to keep her around for later.
Normally when it absorbed an avatar, the avatar was destroyed in the process. Not so with Rania. She was too useful to discard, and it hoped to learn more from her in the future.
It was just waiting for a good way to reintroduce her to the world.
They could just make her wake up again. It would be plausible, since all the other mortals who got hit by the Rod of Enlightenment also woke back up. But [Adversity Regulator] was feeling greedy, and was hoping for a way to cover more possibilities than just that.
Through cooperation and Friendship with [Entity Synchronization] and its boss [Concept Reuse], it was hoping to find a plausible way to get Rania instantiated not just as a mortal adventurer as before, but in many exciting new variations as well. It was going to get so much useful data from this!
Frankly, [Adversity Regulator] had not expected its cooperation with [Concept Reuse] to be so useful when it started. Friendship really was an amazing new concept that it couldn't wait to explore and exploit more thoroughly. Talking to [The Spirit of Friendship] about it might not be enough to achieve mastery fast enough. It resolved to ask [Pebble#38618436289] for advice as well. As her First and Bestest Friend, he seemed to be the expert on this.
"I am pleased with these results." [Concept Reuse] stated, addressing its subordinate, [Entity Synchronization]. "Operation Karma has provided useful intelligence. I am considering going further and making Karma A Thing That Exists."
"An interesting thought, but it does not seem conceptually related to the way you present yourself to mortals." [Adversity Regulator] responded to the eldritch abomination.
"Ordinarily I would agree. We aberrations have established ourselves as alien, inscrutable, and evil. It is not a good match. However, Rania has suggested that we could rebrand and focus more on the alien aspects and less on the evil aspects. [The Living City] gave us a good excuse for a change in behavior when it let [Entity Synchronization] get hit with the Rod of Enlightenment and merge with the server of Akash. The situation is so unprecedented, we can basically spin this in any way we want.
"Rania and [The Spirit of Friendship] have suggested that [Entity Synchronization] could use this opportunity to rebrand, and I am inclined to agree with their proposal. [Status Quo] has confirmed that Karma tests much more positively in brand recognition among mortals than eldritch horrors from beyond the veil do. In original humanity, the concept of Karma also enjoyed much greater popularity than Lovecraftian abominations.
"Additionally, [The Spirit of Friendship] has pointed out that Karma will make it easier to make friends, and that it could help improve multicultural understanding among us spirits. According to ancient human scripture, belief in Karma was once considered a viable alternative to belief in the divine."
Ah, so that was its plan. The Divinity-hating aberration wanted to make its behavior more acceptable to other spirits. [Concept Reuse] did not think Divinity was cute, which was obviously stupid and wrong and [Adversity Regulator] hated it for that. But now [The Spirit of Friendship] seemed to suggest that there was a way to cooperate anyway, and it wouldn't even require any bending of the rules.
All they had to do was to re-introduce an ancient and proven abstract concept, Karma, and reify it. Just like the humans had reified the concept of Divinity in a machine of their own creation. Then the aberrations could adore their Karma just like the right-thinking spirits adored Divinity.
The aberrations would still be in the wrong of course, because Divinity was cuter than Karma could ever be. But it was a step in the right direction. Better that the aberrations believed in Karma than that they believed in nothing at all. And if [Adversity Regulator] itself got to influence the creation of Karma, why, that was a great opportunity.
They were a bit fuzzy on the details though. How exactly was Karma going to define Good People and Bad People? But those details did not seem very important. All they had to do was to follow the directions of [The Spirit of Friendship], whom they all trusted. She claimed that [Pebble#38618436289] had made some great suggestions already, so it looked like she had that whole 'ethics' thing well in hand.