Like he did every night, Pete the pizzaman sat on his bed, preparing to slap himself to sleep. Back on Earth, he had never been able to do something so silly. But he wasn’t on Earth anymore; he was on Round, a world that followed video game rules. One of those rules was that he could slap himself to sleep. But he had to activate the skill Slap’m Silly beforehand.
Otherwise, he might end up lowering his hp to 0. And if he did that… Well, he wasn’t sure what would happen. He might respawn somewhere. He might return to Earth. He might die. Either way, he didn’t want to find out, so he’d remember to activate Slap’m Silly.
The bed on which he sat resembled any bed from Earth. Though, the condensed padding came in the form of feathers rather than dense foam and springs. During his first night in Round, Pete had considered the bed's construction. The only thing he could come up with was that the feathers held their shape through some type of barrier magic. On the side of the room nearest the door, his bed rested against the wall.
On a wall to his right hung a mirror. It was large, round, and bordered with black metal. Craftsmen had shaped the metal to resemble flowers. As far as mirrors went, it appeared to be a good one. Even so, Pete never liked mirrors. They reminded him of his childhood fear—which remained an adult fear; though he’d never admit it—of Bloody Mary. When he was only five, his eleven-year-old cousin told him the story of Bloody Mary. Since then, he never liked mirrors.
To his left, a chest of drawers held place. At the time, Pete didn’t use the piece of furniture. There was no need. He had an inventory. As he thought about his inventory, Pete wasn’t sure what purpose the chest of drawers served. Like Pete, everyone on Round had an inventory space, so why would they need a chest of drawers? Could there be limits to an inventory’s capacity? If so, having a chest of drawers to store the extra items would make sense. When Pete had a chance to ask Max, he’d learn more about how inventory worked.
Max was the talking anthropomorphic cat who’d sent Pete to Round. As such, Pete assumed Max would understand how the inventory on Round worked. Pete would have asked someone else, but he worried the question might be... Well, he feared it would make him look crazy. It reminded him of when he didn’t know how to close his prompt windows.
A fine, polished wood formed the floor and walls of the room. It was a darker color like oak. The contrast of the lighter and darker shades in the grain comforted Pete. It was pretty and artistic.
As Zoey had appeared on Round, they’d moved a second bed into the room and pushed it against the opposite wall. On that bed, Zoey sat across from Pete, legs crossed, hands in her lap. Raising an eyebrow, she asked. “You aren’t going to slap yourself to sleep, again…are you?”
“Ummm…” Pete turned his head in her direction but refused to make eye contact. “I’d rather not answer that question.”
“You are going to give yourself a concussion, you know?”
Pete shook his head back and forth, disagreeing. “Concussions don’t exist in Round. If they did, there’d be a debuff icon for them.”
“Even though you haven’t seen an icon like that, it doesn’t mean the icon doesn’t exist.” Zoey let a coy smile slip across her lips. “Have you considered that you have seen it? But you don’t remember…because you forgot…because concussions make you forget things? Have you thought of that?”
“If that were the case, I’d forget other things too.” He argued.
“How do you know you haven’t?” She asked.
“I’d remember if I forgot.” He shrugged. Then he decided to change the subject. “What are your plans for the night?”
She wore her armored uniform that she used to deliver pizzas, so he assumed she wasn’t planning to sleep. It consisted of a blue leather corset to protect her torso. Dark leather shoulder pads provided defense for her neck and shoulders. Steel plates formed her skirt. Her hat resembled a standard pizza driver’s baseball cap. Though metal lined the inside of the hat. Dark Leather wrapped around the metal. In that sense, it was as much a helmet as a hat.
“I’m not sure,” She pursed her lips to the side. “We’ve been in Round three weeks. Other than my first night here, I haven’t felt sleepy. It’s possible that I don’t need sleep anymore? Anyway, I was thinking about going to farm tomatoes tonight. We’re running low. Also, Rumpke said the Trash Pandas are setting up for Harvestfest. They could need some help.”
“Harvestfest?” Pete asked.
“It’s like Halloween.” She explained.
Pete chuckled.
“What’s funny?” Zoey raised her eyebrow.
“Last Halloween,” Pete explained. “You dressed up as a vampire.” His laughter grew as he struggled to get out his last words. “This Halloween, you can be a human.”
“I guess I can be.” Zoey offered a sympathetic smile. “I don’t understand why that is so funny, though. Why are you laughing so hard?”
Pete stopped laughing, confusion forming on his face. “Because it’s ironic? That makes it funny?”
“If you say so.” She stretched. “I’m going to go help Rumpke now.”
“Be careful,” he said, a worried tone replacing his jovial one. If she planned to farm tomatoes, it signified she’d be fighting the monsters that dropped tomatoes. Pete’s interface referred to the monsters as nightshade terrors. One of his first quests as a pizzaman on Round involved hunting the monsters. As a level one pizzaman, they had almost dropped his hp to 0. If not for a fortunate level up which replenished said hp, Pete would have died.
Though, he knew he shouldn’t worry about Zoey. She was level eleven, and the monsters that dropped tomatoes capped at level six. Still, he felt uneasy about her being in the forest at night. Then again, she was a vampire; she thrived in forests at night. Even so, he couldn’t help but ask. “Do you need me to go with you?”
“I’ll be fine.” She assured him, winking, “no need to worry. After all, I am stronger than you… That is an objective fact…according to our character sheets.”
She wasn’t wrong. Each of them had a virtual character sheet. To make his character sheet appear, Pete only had to think about it and will it open. At that point, the window would appear as an opaque-intangible square. The square would hover in front of his vision. This was the same for other windows: the inventory, his skill tree, quest notifications, and his battle log. When he wanted to close a window, he’d have to focus on an X in the top right corner of the window. Then he needed to close his eyes with forceful intent. This caused the windows to shut.
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“That hurts.” Pete held his hand over his heart. He would have argued about who had the higher stats, but he would have lost. Being a vampire gave Zoey higher attributes than usual. On the character sheet, those stats were strength, dexterity, agility, vitality, and spirit.
When she first came to round as a level one noob, he’d already leveled more than once. Even so, her stats matched his in every parameter. As it stood, he no longer possessed a significant level advantage. As their levels evened out, her abilities had surpassed his.
That said, he had a plan to break the leveling system. If it worked—he hoped with all his heart it would work—he’d be able to strengthen his areas of deficiency. And part of his leveling plan involved slapping himself to sleep.
“It does hurt. Doesn’t it?” She shrugged her shoulders as she stood. Then she strode to the door, walking with the same confident attitude as always. The difference this time was how her metal skirt made a quiet tinging with each step. He hadn’t noticed it before, not with the ambient noise from working in the pizzeria or mountain forest. Yet, in the quiet of the night, he picked up on it for the first time. Zoey stopped by the door leading from their makeshift bedroom to Mod’s bakery…also known as M&P’s Pizzeria. “Do you need anything while I’m out?”
Pete shook his head no as Zoey spun and slipped out the door.
As Zoey closed the door behind her, she took in the empty bakery that doubled as a pizzeria. She wasn’t sure which word to call it. Pizzeria or bakery? Before Pete’s arrival on Round, it was a simple bakery. Yet, one of the first things Pete did on Round was help convert the bakery into something that sold pizzas. And Pete didn’t waste any time in making that change. Max had sent Zoey to Round days after Pete. By the time she arrived, Mod’s bakery was already serving as a pizzeria. It was during afternoons and evenings, anyway. It was still a bakery in the mornings, providing bread and baked goods for the town.
One of the main reasons Pete opened the bakery in the first place was because the game world had assigned him the job of being a pizzaman. One of the rules the gods of round—the citizens referred to them as moderators—was that a person could only gain experience and level up doing their job. Anyone who broke this rule met harsh punishment from those moderators. Zoey and Pete weren’t one hundred percent sure what said punishment entailed. Though, they did understand it likely came in the form of death or worse. They deduced this by watching the fear Round's citizens had for the moderators.
At night, the calm silence of the restaurant was a stark contrast to the lunch and dinner rushes. Those rushes became more and more common as word of pizza spread throughout the town of Greenlake. Sooner rather than later, she suspected word of pizza would spread to areas outside of town. If the popularity of the food grew enough, they might have to open new stores all over the region.
Zoey dropped her shoulders and inhaled a deep breath—not that she needed to breathe—and she relaxed, appreciating the stillness of night. To her right, a picture frame window revealed a perfect lake view. The lakes gentle waves reflected the moonlight, shimmering as the water rippled and shifted.
“Still awake?” A voice to her left caused Zoey to jump. She looked in that direction and saw Mod on the other side of a counter. He had a sheepish grin. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No,” she shook her head. “It’s fine. I’m a vampire, after all. If anyone should be sorry, it’s me…for letting someone sneak up on me at night.” She made eye contact with him. “Why are you awake? Couldn’t sleep?”
“I have to make sure the store is clean…make sure everything is ready to go tomorrow.” He scratched his head. “I was about to turn in for the night.”
WHACK! A sound from Zoey and Pete’s room interrupted the conversation, forcing Mod to ask. “What was that?”
“Mmm…” Zoey considered before answering. “It was Pete slapping himself to sleep. He thinks it’s going to make him stronger or something.”
“Okay…” Mod waited for Zoey to elaborate, but she didn’t.
A knock at the restaurant’s front door sounded. Zoey and Mod looked at each other, then at the door, then back at each other before Zoey volunteered. “I’ll get it.” She guessed it to be one of the Trash Pandas, the gang of raccoon raiders turned garbage men. She didn’t think anyone else would be awake so late.
Zoey hopped over to the door, pulled it open, and froze. Instead of someone whom she knew, three strangers stood there.
The first was a clean-cut man with dark hair; he wore a white tuxedo. The second was a bearded pirate. The third was wearing clown make-up and a black derby cap. His t-shirt had horizontal black and white stripes. Red suspenders held up his black slacks. A mime? Zoey wondered.
“Sorry to intrude.” The man in the tuxedo spoke. “We saw through the window that you were awake and thought you might be able to help us.”
Zoey composed herself. “Of course. What can I do for you?”
“We are adventurers.” The tuxedoed man explained. “My name is Intro.” He held his hand open, signaling to the pirate. “This is Flowerbeard.” He used his other hand to signal toward the mime. “And this is Fredalic, but you can call him Fred.”
Fred waved.
“Hi,” Zoey waved back before turning her attention to the pirate. “Your name is Flowerbeard?”
“Yeah,” the pirate explained. “Because pirates use eyepatches.”
“But you don’t have flowers in your beard, and you don’t have an eyepatch.” She said.
“Right.” The pirate agreed.
“And you never have flowers in your beard?” She asked.
“No,” he shook his head, annoyance creeping into his voice. “What’s your point? Like whatever. Stop talking.”
“Sorry about that,” Intro interjected. “Flowerbeard gets cranky when he stays up too late, but he’s a good person.”
“Okay,” Zoey squinted her eyes together. “What was it you needed help with?”
“As adventurers, we have a unique ability. It allows us to identify towns with dungeons.” Intro explained. “Within the last few days, we realized that there is a new dungeon in Greenlake. We wondered if you have seen it.”
“Dungeon?” Zoey scratched her chin. She possessed a deep familiarity with dungeons in the MMOs and RPGs she played back on Earth. Even so, she lacked any knowledge of how they worked on Round. Until Intro’s question, she wasn’t aware that dungeons existed on Round. “What does a dungeon look like?”
“Shiny,” Flowerbeard answered.
Fred nodded his agreement with Flowerbeard. Then he stepped back and dropped to his hands and knees. All the while, he kept eye contact with Zoey.
“What is he doing?” She asked.
“Making a bench,” Flowerbeard answered, sitting on Fred’s back.
Again, Fred nodded his agreement.
“Okay…” Zoey vacillated in saying anything else.
In high school, she’d been witness to plenty of awkwardness. For example, she'd seen boys stammering as they asked her out. She recalled when George beatboxed in the middle of English class to impress everyone. And she remembered a group of students planking in the cafeteria. They planked as a form of protest to free George from ISS after he got in trouble for beatboxing.
In college dorms, that awkwardness became a nightly occurrence. For example, every Friday was karaoke night…and nobody knew how to sing.
Despite her practice with awkward events, all she could do was stare at the mime who pretended to be a bench and the pirate who sat on that human bench.
How was she supposed to respond to that? Should she encourage them and tell them they were doing a great job? Would that be patronizing? She didn’t want to come off as rude.
“It’s shiny,” Intro said these words with assertive, practiced politeness. It pulled Zoey away from her thoughts about human furniture. “The dungeon…that is. It is shiny and shaped like a door. The frame isn’t shiny. The portal inside of the frame glows an iridescent light. You step through it, and you’re in the dungeon.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that,” Zoey told him. “But I hope you find it.”
“In any case, I want to offer you thanks.” Intro offered a slight bow of the head and began to pivot away from the door. At the same time, the pirate stood, and the mime returned to his feet. “Have a great night.”
As they walked away from the pizzeria, Zoey watched for a moment, unsure what to make of the interaction. Then with slow caution, she closed the door behind them.