“Uh, uhm, sir? Y- you wanted to see me?”
“Yes, please come in Miss S.”
S walks into her boss’s office nervously, her anxiety of course having to choose this exact moment to start acting up. Dealing with her boss is always so stressful.
“Take a seat.”
“Ah, oh yes. Thank you…”
Pulling the chair back, S somehow manages to sit down without tripping or spontaneously exploding, so she marks that up as a small win for herself.
Her boss, Mr. R, clasps both hands in front of him as he sits comfortably behind his desk.
“Miss S, do you know why it is that I called you here today?”
Oh, that is the worst possible question he could have asked! What did I do this time? I filed all my work on time, right? Did I miss a meeting again? I didn’t receive any Emails about a meeting though? Or did I!? Did I mess up on my part of that program I submitted, for the server-side environmental damage and resistances modifier calculation checks? I could have sworn that I worked out all the bugs with that one though. Oh my Tree! What if I accidentally submitted an old version of the program!? Oh no, oh no, oh no!!!
As S is working herself up towards a panic attack, her boss interrupts her racing thoughts.
Picking up his mana tablet, a little image of a golden apple etched on the back of the device, Mr. R swipes across the holographic display until he finds the tab he is looking for.
“Miss S, I called you here because I have received notice that one of the Dungeons you supervise has, for some reason, activated one of their Cleaners without permission or even going through the proper procedures. I am looking at a list of violations here, one of which includes allowing four humans to escape after witnessing a Cleaner, and even worse, the destruction of a Cleaner. Do you mind telling me what is going on here?”
S immediately deflates with relief. Out of everything it could have been, it was just this.
“Oh, you have nothing to worry about sir! I took care of it.” She says happily.
“You took care of it?”
“Ah, yes. You see, Dungeon Manager 117 has been going against protocol and is unjustly targeting one of their System Users. I have formally reprimanded them for their behavior and given them a write-up.” S says with a bit of pride, believing that she has done a good job. Maybe she will even get praised!
Unfortunately, Mr. R doesn’t look to be in the praising kind of mood…
“And prey do tell, Miss S… Why, is it that one of our Dungeon Managers, under your supervision, is targeting a User? And further, why have I not been informed of this until now?”
“Ehh, ahh…”
S’s eyes start to wander over her boss’s desk as she tries to find the words she needs to not get in trouble again. #1 Dad mug with half drank black coffee, a picture of Mr. R and his family at a picnic, a bunch of company accolades lined up neatly, some #2 pencils and a bunch of pens in a cup. Ooh, a loose rubber band on the floor! Maybe if she can grab it with her toes without being noticed? She could add it to her rubber band ball! Wait, no, that’s not important right now, uhmm….
“Well, uhm… sir, I meant to send you an Email about it, but… I’ve just been so busy helping with the…”
He raises a hand to stop her, massages the bridge of his nose behind his glasses with his other hand as he lets out an exasperated breath.
“Miss S, please no excuses. We are all busy here, I understand that. But we have a duty to ensure that issues like this are being properly resolved and addressed with due diligence.”
“Ah, but I did resolve it…”
“Without, informing me, your superior. Miss S, the activation of a Cleaner, even a low level one, is a serious matter. Now please, what in the Twins’ Names could possibly be enough of an issue for a Dungeon Manager to have to subvert fourteen levels of protocol and risk an information leak?”
“Ok, well… Uhm, there was a sliiight glitch in the Dungeon’s restock procedure the other day. Just a little rounding error is all, nothing big… A little bit too much mana got sent to the first floor and… well…”
“Yes, Miss S? Go on.”
She swallows, nervous about telling him about her little pet project.
“Well, uhm… the excess mana was put into a developing Gremlin pod, and instead of terminating it, like it should of normally, the pod for some reason accelerated the gestation process and…” She wets her lips and finally just says it. “Well, a Gremlin was spawned with excess Stat Points…”
Mr. R raises and eyebrow at this, his long ears twitching slighting in surprise.
“What?”
“Yes… well you see. The System isn’t set to display for the Gremlins, they were never intended to have access after all… But, with unspent Stat Points, the Systems notification function activated and started flashing…”
“Let me guess, the Gremlin spent the points, which caused a stat adjustment to happen?”
“Yes, and that can only work properly with full User access, so the automatic download started on its own… without approval on our end…”
Mr. R just leans forward and massages his face, his glasses resting on the end of his nose as he works out the stress in his forehead. “Uhhhr, all of these glitches and bugs are going to be the death of me… fix ten and another hundred pop up…”
S watches her boss nervously, not wanting to say anything while he is clearly stressed.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
He eventually asks, “You put in a ticket for it, right?”
“Ah! Yes sir, as soon as I noticed it!”
“Good, at least you did that right…”
S can’t help but to cringe at that, but also can’t really refute it. She does have a bit of a record after all. Hell, she is pretty sure that her coworkers are keeping a betting pool on how long it will take until Mr. R gets tired of her and finally fires her…
Maybe I could try seducing him? Ah, no. Who am I kidding? I couldn’t even seduce a raccoon if I was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
Pushing his glasses back up his nose, Mr. R reaches across the table, palm up, startling S for a second as she looks at his hand.
“The Gremlin’s file, show it to me.”
“Oh! Ah, yes sir. One second please.”
Quickly pulling out her mana tablet, S quickly displays Bug’s file. It’s one of her favorites, so she keeps it where she can quickly access it. Handing it over, Mr. R gives it a look.
“Well, everything is looking to be in order for System integration, she is a certified User, most of her permissions are there. She hasn’t requested Back Stage access yet? Or… no, she is locked out of that now. How in the world has she already gotten a KOS put on her!? Oh, the Dungeon Manager did it… She left her designated floor without filling out the necessary forms. Well, that’s a mistake that can be resolved easily enough, have you sent her the forms yet?”
“Uhm, well, no sir.”
“No, why not? Even if it was through a glitch, by all accounts, she is a System User now. It is part of our job to ensure that our Beta testers are actually able to do their jobs by-“
S interrupts, her anxiety shooting through the roof from doing so. “Well sir, she uhm… just read the rest of the file, please?”
He just gives her a look, but then decides that it would probably just be quicker to read the thing than to ask her more questions.
…
“Bug 1413, what kind of name is that?”
“It was auto filled by the System…”
“Mhh…”
…
...
“S… am I reading this right?”
“Sir?”
“Because if am, then not only has this Gremlin… how!? She hasn’t even been alive for two weeks and she is! This can’t be right? Fought both the second boss and a Cleaner at the same time!? Wait… S, I’m pulling up Dungeon 117’s file on your tablet.”
“Yes sir…”
Oh shit, I am definitely getting in trouble now… Is this it? Is today the day that I finally get fired? Oh, my parents are going to be sooo pissed. And I was finally getting close to maybe being able to move out of their basement… uuuh…
Mr. R is leaning forward in his seat now, flipping through reports and floor assessments as he quickly reads through everything.
“What the hell is this!? The first layer is filled to the brim with Undead and Death Fungous and is already spilling out into the surface! The Cleaner is an Undead now! What is it… Oh, by the Twins, she has it rampaging through the second Layer. Undead numbers are rapidly increasing, and she has already entered floor eleven. Why is she going deeper!? What does she want? Is she glitched or something, why is she doing this? S, do you know?”
“Oh, uh, well, sir… Bug, she has sworn revenge against the Dungeon… She plans to destroy it.”
“What?” He asks as he looks at S like she just told him aliens are attacking or something. Which admittedly does sometimes happen, but it's a rare enough occurrence to still be considered surprising non the less.
“That’s what she is doing sir… She’s trying to destroy-“
“I heard you the first time. No, this… This isn’t possible, she should have been preprogramed with undying loyalty to the Dungeon, not the desire to kill it! How did this happen?”
“I looked into it, and… well, the problem is with the Gremlin program…”
“What do you mean?”
“Uhm… Gremlins aren’t programmed with Dungeon loyalty… they aren’t programmed with much of anything, actually. They just have the bare basics necessary for them to live for a day or two and how to attack things. They don’t even have any systems in place to keep them from killing each other or even just, wandering off from their designated zone… When I checked the foot notes, they said they left them out to save on system load and that it wouldn’t matter anyways because the Gremlins never last more than a day…”
“Why am I not even surprised?”
“Sorry sir.”
He waves away S’s apology and then slides her tablet back over to her, thinking as he looks up at the ceiling tiles of his office. S just sits quietly and waits, ready for him to tell her to clean out her cubicle...
When he finally does speak, S is tensed, her anxiety making her heart pump like a drum in her chest. She can feel it practically slamming against her ribcage like it wants to break out and run away from this place. Oh, if only her heart would bring her with it, because she definitely doesn’t want to be here either! Has her suit always been this hot? She just had to wear a tie today! It’s just so tight around her neck! Oh, joy… and now she has a wedgie, great, just great!
Ah, just hurry up and fire me already! I just want to go home and bake something with way too much sugar! Just get it over with!
Still looking up at the ceiling, Mr. R asks, “S, have we ever had anything like this happen before? Ever?”
“Eh, Uhhh… No? I don’t think so sir, nothing that I can recall. Sir?”
“Mhm, because we never intended for our testers to do so. They are just supposed to be there to so we can see how sapient species handle having the System, test out new features as we roll them out… This Bug of ours could be a useful source of data…”
“Sir?”
He finally sits forward and returns his gaze to S.
“Your little Bug here could make for an interesting case study. I mean, how better of a way to find bugs in the System, than by letting a bug draw out more. And not to mention that, eventually, the System is going to be implemented worldwide, and in a way, she is doing exactly what some people are bound to do as well. Try to conquer a Dungeon through the power of the System. And if a weak little Gremlin can do it, they what does that say of… the Dwarfs, humans, hell even the Goblins! Think of the advertising!”
He moves his hands like he is reading a billboard, “A Gremlin could do it, and so could you. With the System!”
He smacks the table, startling the shit of S as she is very much confused right now.
“S!” He points at her.
“Yes!?!?”
“As of right now, forget all of your other duties. Your job is to monitor this case, you got it?”
“Uh!? Yes, yes sir! I will!”
“Good, record everything. I want data, numbers, footage, everything! Same for the Dungeon. I want to see where the Dungeon’s systems fail when dealing with a threat like this.”
“Yes sir! But, uhm…”
“What is it?”
“What if the Dungeon Manager tries to do something like using a Cleaner again?”
“Hmm… right, that could skew the data… I’ll shut down 117’s Cleaner access entirely from my end. I want to see how the Dungeon manages to deal with this problem, without having to resort to outside resources.”
“Should I contact the Dungeon Manager and inform them about what we’re doing?”
“… No. We will get better data if they don’t think that this is a test or something. I want them to put their best effort towards fixing it on their end. Only provide the bare minimum of assistance necessary to keep the experiment going, and that applies to Bug 1413 as well.”
S panics a bit. “What about cookies!? Am I still allowed to send her those? I sort of already promised…”
“Mmm? Sure, I don’t care. Go ahead and give your pet rat her treats.” He says with an uncaring wave of his hand.
“Thank your sir! She really loves them. I love watching her eat, she is just so cute when her fluffy ears wiggle with happiness.”
He waves away S’s joy like it is something hanging in the air. “Yes, yes. You have your assignment now, good work, S.”
She stands, genuinely feeling excited for work again, for the first time in eighty years. Practically skipping out of his office, a thought hits her, and she just has to ask.
“Sir!”
“Yes?”
“Does this count as… well, might I be getting a promotion, a raise maybe?”
He looks off to the side and thinks for a second before letting out a breath and saying, “Get me good data, and I’ll bring it up with HR.”
S lights up with a smile, her excitement filling her up so much that she can almost forget about the wedgie that is currently riding up her back side right now.
“Thank you, sir!”
S quickly makes her escape before she can say anything that might potentially mess this up. Moving as fast as she can in her heels, she makes a b-line for the lady’s room.
Oh, my parents are going to be so happy! Maybe if I get that raise, I can finally move out and get that cute little apartment I’ve been looking at? Oh, I am SO baking Bug a cake when I get home! Thank you, Bug!
End of Book I