It was a wonderful day in the neighbourhood, and Warren was having a terrible time. He’d promised his father he would act more like a manager, and use The Age as a learning tool. The problem was, he had zero clue how to approach either. His only lead was old Knife Ears The Annoying. They had stepped into the control room at the entrance of the dungeon while the rest of his team used it as a base to launch probing attacks down the trap filled hallways. Occasionally these probes ended in screaming and a splashing sound from the barracks room, so Warren closed the door in order to talk uninterrupted.
“So, uh, can you tell me again how this works?” Warren asked. “Please?” The last word was practically dragged out of him.
Pham side-eyed him, as though unsure if he was being pranked. “Are you telling me you’ve never looked at your skills?”
“Sure, occasionally. But they never really meant much to me.” Warren shrugged. “It’s just a bunch of numbers.”
“Woz, can I call you Woz? Everything is numbers. Especially in a game built by humans,” Pham waved his hands around them. “Your position in this map is numbers. The strength of the walls is numbers. The colour of the light is numbers. It’s all numbers and they all interact according to math. Which is also numbers.”
“Fine, but how does that help us?” Warren crossed his arms across his chest in the way of gym-bros everywhere protecting themselves from an original thought. “And don’t call me Woz. I am Warren McGregor to you. Warchief McGregor, or just Chief if you must.”
“Ok, well, as I woz saying,” Pham opened his inventory and pulled out a schematic. It was smudged and oil stained and clearly hand written. “This here is a piece of paper. Hold it.”
Warren accepted the sheet with a grimace. “And?”
“Can you feel the weight?”
“Of course.” Warren flapped it up and down. “It’s not heavy but I feel it.”
“Well, someone programmed that. They took a sheet of paper in the real, stuck it on a scale and figured out the mass. Then, they put those numbers into the game so that you can feel the paper. You know that paper is light and steel is heavy, but in order to make this feel real, someone had to figure out how to put specific values to those characteristics, then translate them to sensations that your brain would understand. That means more numbers.”
“Ooohhhh khaaaay?” Warren drew the word out. “I sorta get that. Physical things have physical properties. What’s that got to do with skills?”
Pham flexed like Arnie winning gold at the olympics. “I know you’ve been to the gym. That much woz obvious from the start.”
“Stop that,” Warren warned.
“Sure, Pham grinned. “So, you know that the more you lift, the more you CAN lift, right?”
“There’s more to it than that,” Warren started, but Pham waved off the rest of his protestation.”
“I know, but I woz keeping it simple. The skill system just puts numbers to that process. You lift the heavy thing, and put it down. Your Lifting Heavy Things skill goes up a little bit, and once it ticks over another point you can lift a slightly heavier thing.”
Light dawned in Warren’s eyes. “So if I go out and lift a weight hundreds of times, I can lift a house eventually?”
“Short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but.” Pham looked away into the distance, trying to look philosophical. “You’ll run into diminishing returns, just lifting the same weight every time. You have to challenge yourself with greater - in this case weights - every time your skill goes up. Look at it like this,” Pham pointed at Warren’s katana. “You can lift that easily, right?”
“Duh.”
“Then do you think you’d get stronger by lifting this?” He indicated the paper still in Warren’s hand.
“Oh. No, I guess you wouldn’t.” Warren looked crestfallen. “So what do I do?”
“Well, I can’t see your stats, but I’m willing to bet you’re heavily invested in physical attributes.” When Warren nodded he continued. “So you’ve got an uphill battle. You need to challenge your mind every day.”
“Please tell me you’re not talking about doing crosswords and sudoku, they’re so boring!” Warren walked a short distance away and started pacing.
“You’re safe,” Pham watched Warren moving back and forth like a caged tiger. “That’s a bit beyond your level anyway.”
Warren stopped and whirled to face Pham. “What?”
Pham held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Sorry, I woz only saying that sudoku is not going to help you. If I understand what your dad woz saying, you need to get your head around people management, and fiscal responsibility. So far you’ve been brute-forcing the team’s finances by pillaging everything you get your hands on to stay ahead of the bill collectors.”
Warren went back to pacing, but side-eyed Pham the way Pham had earlier. “You keep saying was weird, you’re not trying to be funny, are you?”
“I AM funny,” Pham shrugged. “Don’t change the subject though. You’re keeping ahead of the disaster curve by winning every fight so far. What happens when you lose? Like we are now? Death and respawns take a toll on your gear, morale and supplies. You have to be running low on potions, your team could do with a respite in a town and you’re haemorrhaging members.”
Warren grumbled, face like a storm cloud. “I am not.”
A deadpan stare was Pham's only response.
“Fine!” Warren punched the wall. “Mister Smarty Pants, what would you do?”
“None of it,” Pham swished his dreads back over his shoulder. “I’m not a roided up footy player with daddy issues.” He saw a vein throbbing in Warren’s temple and after a moment’s marvelling at the realism of the game changed tack. “Ok. Ok. Before we came out here, I woz using the game to test concepts we learned in robotics class. It costs me nothing but time here and I can blow myself up and respawn if things go absolutely wrong. My skills scores represent the resources I’ve sunk into that. I’ll bet your skills are Punch Things 100%, Headbutt Things 75% and Pout 98%.”
“-” Warren began, raising a fist.
“So, to solve your problems,” Pham hurried along, “you need to treat your team like a company. Set up a booth in the town square over…” he waved in the general direction of the cliffside city, “you know, and sell off the loot you’ve been hoarding. Keep track of the roster of who is working the stall, make it a punishment detail if you want, keep a ledger of spending and profits. It looks like we’re going to be hammering away at this dungeon for a bit, so we do it even slower. Take everything not nailed down. I’m sure it’ll respawn.
Warren huffed, but had no rational response. He went back to pacing again, up and back, up and back as he thought. He turned with a raised finger, “-”
“Take the time to learn a crafting skill too,” Pham continued over him. “Or even better, raise your mercantile skills.”
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“-”
“And your interpersonal skills. Never underestimate how important is it to speak eloquently.”
“Goddammit let me speak then!”
“Say it, don’t spray it,” Pham pantomimed wiping his face.
Warren glared and Pham returned the look with a face that was the picture of innocence.
“Well -”
“Not a good start,” Pham interrupted again. “I know your range begins at rah rah teamwork and ends at for glory! You could inspire the hell out of a Klingon, but good luck convincing a Ferengi to sell you a bottle of water for a mountain of latinum.”
Warren’s budding rage ran smack bang into the wall of confusion and his train of thought went to pieces so fast his mind took shrapnel hits. “Don’t you mean platinum?”
“I do not.”
Gathering what wits had not been shredded irrevocably, Warren took a deep, centering breath, and kicked the chair so hard it bounced off the wall opposite and fell over. He stomped over to it and brought his booted foot down on the beleaguered piece of furniture again and again until it was little more than splinters.
“Feel better?”
“Actually, yes,” Warren panted, out of breath. “Now, would you like to go over what you were saying again, this time with less geekery and sass?” He glanced pointedly at what used to be a chair.
“You do know this is a game, right?” Pham crossed his arms over his chest. His face took on a weird cast as he looked at Warren from under his eyebrows. “Even with the agony of death, I play it to escape a greater threat in the real world. The fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make, you cannot kill me in any way that matters.”
THAT brought Warren up short. A feeling he’d never experienced before rose up in him, far beyond empathy, a deep sense of sonder - though he didn’t know that is what it was called. “I… What? Are… Are you ok? Do I need to call the cops?”
Like a switch flipped, Pham was suddenly all smiles again. “Do I need a dangerous sociopath with a Napoleon complex and a firearm to rock up to my house? Hmmm, I’mma say no thanks. How about you? Need to break another chair?”
The feeling ebbed away, leaving Warren feeling drained and kneeling on the floor while Pham leaned back on the control panel, popped open a pouch and pulled out a snack. He did not offer to share.
“Look, Woz, I know what it’s like. You’re a rich kid who has rarely, if ever, been told ‘no’ - except when it comes to daddy’s love. If you can’t get what you want, your only recourse is to bruteforce a way to get it anyway. And it works, doesn’t it?” He popped another morsel in his mouth. “Throw money, or people, or both, at a problem until it isn’t a problem anymore. Now you’ve finally hit that one stumbling block where it won’t - can’t - work. Because the problem is you, and you already have all the money you need.”
The realisation that everything Pham had said was right rocked Warren’s world. He wanted to do… something… but there was nothing to do. He felt as helpless as he did in the real world. For all the freedom The Age granted him, he was still trapped in the most confining prison in the word: his own mind. There was a burning in his chest that had nothing to do with his earlier exertions. “Help me. Please?” The words were barely audible.
Pham dropped the remainder of the snacks back into the pouch and clipped it closed. He chewed contemplatively for a minute before answering. “If you promise never to try threatening me again, we have an accord.”
It was an entirely new experience to Warren, an existential crisis entirely unsupported emotionally, on the dirty floor in an underground control room. He had to actually feel his feelings, acknowledge them and let them pass over and through him. It took a long time for him to find the strength to stand up and longer to pull himself together mentally. The whole time, Pham waited patiently with an inscrutable expression. Eventually, Warren extended a shaky hand.
“Done and done,” Pham shook firmly with two solid pumps. It was a handshake that wouldn’t have been out of place in a boardroom, which only heightened Warren’s sense of dysphoria.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, as at that very moment the door burst open and sweaty bodies piled in.
“We’re done!”
“I quit!”
“Nae king, nae quin!”
“Shaddap, ijit. He’s outta line, but he’s right. We can’t take any more of this,” the last one was the skald in a rare break from character. “Dying hurts like a bastard and that’s all we’re doing every time we get to those doors. Your geek can get them open, but the next hall is just as full of traps. Rock and a hard place, you know?”
Warren raised his hands, both in surrender and to quiet the mob. Grumbling still echoed in from the throng in the hall but they eventually lowered to a gentle hubub. “I get it. I have just finished talking to Pham and we’ve come up with a plan. One that doesn’t involve any more deaths!”
A cheer resounded up and down the hallway.
“BUT!” Warren’s voice sounded out over the top of the celebration.
“Boo!” The cheers became jeers just as quickly.
“Cut it out, it’s nothing bad,” it took all of Warren’s sports field voice projection skills to make himself heard, but the raucous noise dimmed in anticipation of what he had to say - with a promise of resurgence if they didn’t like it. “We’re going to plunder everything in reach and sell it off for better equipment and healing pots. I’m talking brass tacks, team. Take everything not nailed down and then take the nails too.”
“That sounds good, boss,” came a voice from outside the room, “but how does that help us get deeper in? We still got a sparkly quest to complete.”
“We’re setting up a rota,” Warren explained, remembering Pham’s suggestions. “The auction house is fine if you want to offload stuff fast, but we’re looking for both respite and profits so we’re going to be setting up a stall in the capital. I know it’s a few days hike, so I’ll be investing in a wagon first. Yes, I know we have inventories, it’s to carry people.” He added the last to forestall questions, but one came anyway.
“What’s respite mean?” The sound of a palm bouncing off the back of a head was heard over the residual murmuring. “Ow!”
Pham rolled his eyes and whispered “meatheads” under his breath. “It means rest and recuperate,” he said, louder so that even the thinking impaired could hear.
“Exactly,” enthused Warren, getting back into the feel of it. “We’re still going to keep working at the quest. But carefully. We’re going to have lines of retreat open, so that we can train against the globlins without casualties. Once we can beat them easily we can move deeper in. It’ll be a grind, but this is an MMO, a grind is expected. Who’s with me?”
The resultant “huzzah!” almost, but not quite, drowned out Pham’s “Globlins? Really?”