Gamelit Novel, 16 (Patreon)

Crafting in a game was not more satisfying than crafting in the real world, but this was only minorly reassuring to Amanda because the materials she had to work with were so literally otherworldly that she wouldn’t be able to reproduce the experience outside the game. She remembered beading and improvising jewelry in her early twenties when she’d been in one of her hobbymaxing moods, so the motions were familiar, but how could anything she made in the real world evoke the same sense of accomplishment and humor as the necklace she made in the centaur camp from a handful of harrier cat claws and woven tufts of fur? She could order faux claws, but they would be just that: fakes. They wouldn’t be trophies torn off a creature she bashed to death in a forest.

Granted, she didn’t want to go around casually bashing attacking predators to death in forests. But the necklace represented something that a similar one made in the real world never could.

Then again, she hadn’t actually killed a real animal.

Lord, but all this was confusing. She didn’t know what to feel about it, other than that she was happy to be spending time with Nick. And not trying to entertain him, either… she was sitting around the centaur campfire, tying little knots in the cord her hosts had given her, while Nick took lessons on playing a mandolin from a centaur troubadour. Since Nick would have dropped dead before allowing either of his parents see him do anything he wasn’t already perfect at, and would have dug his own grave to cover himself with before performing in front of him, the fact that he was murmuring little snatches of songs while struggling over the instrument delighted her… especially since now and then he’d look up and brightly ask how her necklace was coming.

This was the best Nick, the Nick she and Felix hoped to see and rarely did. She’d had to go into a game to meet him, but she had, and she couldn’t help being grateful to Omen Galaxica for it while regretting that it had taken a game to show him to her.

…but that was before the smell of dinner summoned them both to the kitchen, and the version of Nick that bounced down the stairs was the version of him Amanda had been seeing all day. His eyes were bright and his gaze direct, and he snatched the stacked plates from the kitchen counter and started setting the table, talking all the while. “…you should have seen Mom today, Dad, she made her first ever kill! Like a boss!”

Playing her part, Amanda said, “Like a pathetic, noodle-armed pony centaur boss!”

“She did in a lynx with a spoon!”

Felix started laughing. “All right, I have got to hear this story. Here, love, take the bowl, we’re having coconut curry chicken tonight.”

Over the meal, Nick recounted Amanda’s battle, making it both more epic and more hilarious than it had already been, and watching him banter with his father made her heart crack.

“And then she made a trophy necklace,” Nick concluded. “Is it done, Mom?”

“Almost… I want to add a few more red beads to it.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “You know, to symbolize all the blood I shed in my heroic first encounter with the dangers of Omen Galaxica.”

“You married a barbarian!” Nick said to Felix, grinning.

“Every woman is a barbarian if you scratch the surface,” Felix said sagely. “Especially once they have kids.” He rolled his eyes to the sky, as if thinking deeply. “It’s as if they have an enrage talent. Inborn.”

Nick crowed. “Mom the boss. With phases!”

Amanda had no idea what they were talking about, but she didn’t care, because they did and they were talking the same language.

After dinner, Nick did the quickest clean-up job ever and vanished upstairs, probably to resume playing. Literally, maybe, given the musical instrument lessons. She heard his door shut and drifted after Felix until they were cuddled on the couch in a very satisfying way. Her husband’s chest made a far better pillow than the couch cushions.

“The goblin emerged,” he said to her, amused.

“I know!”

“I can’t remember the last time he was that engaged with us over dinner. You’re doing a good thing with him. Are you enjoying it?”

“How can I not enjoy it, when he does so much?” Amanda asked. She listened to the steady pulse of Felix’s heart. “I could wish the thing we were doing was real, but even if the activity isn’t real, the time we’re spending together is.”

“You sound like you have some misgivings still.”

“I’m mostly confused,” she admitted. “We need recreation as human beings, so playing games isn’t a bad thing. It’s the ‘this game feels more real than the real world, and makes you want to be productive in it, instead of the real world’ part that I’m not sure about. If I had more energy, would I be diving for the wireset so I could—”

“Slaughter every harrier cat in the Greenweald until you could make yourself a spiky suit of armor from their pelts and claws? And earn a title as The Harrier Terror?”

She burst out laughing. “Okay, maybe not. But there will probably be things in the game that I would get addicted to doing.”

Amanda had known her husband so long she knew he was pursing his lips. “Like, saying, becoming a crafter of fine harrier cat teeth jewelry? And earning a title as The Harrier Beader?”

“I am too drowsy to pummel you the way you deserve…”

“Why do you think I chose this moment to tease you?”

She grinned and shook her head against his chest. “I only wish you could participate. You know game lingo so much better than I do. If it’s this good for me and Nick, imagine all three of us!”

“I’ll take what we can get,” Felix said. “Listening to the two of you is rewarding enough. To come home after a long and boring day, to a family that is excited and wants to talk to me about interesting things? What’s not to love?”

“Even if you have to make the food?”

“Even if I have to make the food.” A pause. “Of course, if you suggested to Nick that he learn cooking from you in the game….”

She laughed. “I’ll try to figure out a way.”

***

Nick glanced at the group chat as he grabbed the wireset off his bed, just to make sure nothing interesting was going on, and nothing was, or there was he didn’t care enough to page backwards through the history to check. They were probably planning another fun-run, but why would he run Omen’s old dungeons when he could play the beta? His friends would get it. A few moments later, he zoned in to the Greenweald, and even that was an experience: the wireset made it feel like he was waking up, with the murmur of conversation and the fire popping reaching his ears first, and then, blurrily, the camp. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and checked—his music tutor was chatting with friends, and anyway, he wanted to go look for more herbs, see if he could push his gathering skills.

Leaving camp for the forest, Nick was again awed by what it felt like. The temperature change—cooler—the smells of damp earth and some piquant blend of new leaves and sap. There was grass, which was novel… where he lived, old leaves didn’t fall off trees until new ones were growing, and then they fell all at once and smothered the ground, killing the grass off. Dad complained about that a lot. He spent a lot of time blowing leaves off the lawn.

Was this what northern forests were like? Or was it some fantasy? He glanced up to see if the AI was awake—dumb question—and the little green light flared.

“We have updated the design library with information gleaned from external sources.”

“Was the forest not based on… you know… reality?”

A pause. “We cannot guess at the thoughts of the original design team. Initial notes indicated they aimed for a ‘high fantasy concept’ for the Greenweald. Robin Hood was cited as an influence on the themes and visuals.”

“So basically… no, they didn’t think about reality. They did the opposite.” Nick ran a hand over the sharp verticals in the bark of one of the trees he liked to climb and, on a whim, started shinnying up it until he found a likely branch. Perched there, he was high enough for the breeze to pull at the flaps of his tunic and tousle his hair. He turned his face into it and inhaled, relaxing. “So,” he said after a moment, “are you going to edit things so that they’re more realistic?”

The green glow bobbed more slowly. “Your question poses a conundrum we had not considered.”

What part of the game handled his deer ears swiveling forward because he was interested? Nick felt one of their velvety backs and said, “Oh?”

“Our research indicates that users of this game are not seeking realistic gameplay. Reference to the real world may impair the carefully-designed feel of the game. But the wireset technology makes it necessary to simulate more environmental and sensory data than the original technology, which must be derived from existing human experience to be processed accurately by the user’s nervous system.” Another pause. “There is no guidance from my creator on weighting the wireset’s data needs against the stated desires of the initial design team.”

Nick leaned back, staring up through the canopy at what he could see of the two moons. The pink one, which the Cervinaethi called the Fawn Moon, was just behind the silvery Mother. Come to think of it—“Is that why the bigger moon is silver now? It used to have a more goldish tint. You think we won’t perceive it as nighttime if you model the light of the moon so that it looks yellow instead of white?”

“You are correct.” The light sailed around him as if looking at him more closely. “We did not anticipate anyone noticing this change. Do you believe it will impair user enjoyment if vital game environment cues change?”

“Not that minor,” Nick said. “Besides, if it does bother anyone, you can just start a legend among some of the races. Like the Cervinaethi can suddenly mention that there’s a golden Mother moon and a silver one, and they trade places every hundred years, signaling… uh… I don’t know. A shift in fortunes. Maybe a mysterious prophecy even! And maybe the other races have different, conflict opinions, or maybe some might not notice it at all, because they haven’t been around on the world long enough. Or they live underground.”

“Your ideas have merit and will be taken into consideration, with your permission.”

Hard not to be flattered when a super-smart AI wanted to use your ideas. “Sure. I mean… didn’t I just sign a contract that says I was letting you evolve the game based on my behavior? Or are we breaking something because I'm talking to you directly?" He shook his head. "Nah, that would be dumb. You are literally part of the game.”

“We are part of the game in the way the source code is part of the game,” the AI said.

“But aren’t you creating new quests and dialogue for the NPCs? How is that not you talking?”

“We are creating new NPC behaviors, but to expose our presence directly would break immersion. Our goal is complete immersion.”

“Well, you’re doing great there.” He took one more whiff of the wind and slid down the tree to resume hunting for herbs, and the little green light went with him. For who knows how long, he wandered, crouching to peek under shrugs to see if he could find some of the rarer molds and creeping vines. He dug into bramblebushes to hunt for berries, only to be delighted by the fact that they weren’t available yet because it wasn’t the right season: “Seasonal herb hunting? Really? I love that! Except I bet it will irritate some people.” He thought about it, shrugged. “I don’t care. I like the bits of realism.”

“We will gather data on responses to the changes.”

“Make sure mine counts more than other people’s,” Nick said with a grin.

When he later found himself humming the tune the centaur had been teaching him, he thought to ask, “Did you make that up? That song I’m learning?”

“ ‘The Vow of the Rosewood’ was composed by Daniel Wo for the second expansion, but the quest line for which it was planned was removed before launch. It can still be heard on the soundtrack. Wo also wrote several unfinished melodies for use in centaur inns.”

Nick cocked his head. “Centaurs don’t have—oh, right. So they were never used. Huh. Was Wo the same guy who wrote the cool background music in the Cervinaethi starting zone? The floaty stuff with the voices?”

“He did, working on the handful of Cervinaethi language phrases created for the race’s NPCs.”

“I love that stuff,” Nick confessed. “And the music’s so great. Are there any Cervinaethi songs? Singable ones, like The Vow of the Rosewood?”

“No such songs were composed for the Cervinaethi.” The light sparkled. “Perhaps we could create one for you?”

“Oooh, you can do that?” A duh moment, because AI generation of music had caused an enormous internet ragefest when it had first became common. “Of course you can. Please?”

The little green light started singing, like some kind of will-o’-the-wisp, and it was a haunting song of mostly nonsense words, with some of the Cervinaethi phrases sprinkled in it. After two verses and a chorus, the AI stopped. “Is this style and sample suitable?”

“Well…”

“We require critique in order to better serve our function in the game. Please tell us how to improve if you have ideas.”

Since it had asked… Nick resumed searching for night-blooming flowers, using the walk to help him think. “There’s this guy on youtube who talks about music theory and he says that good songs should be surprising. There’s nothing surprising about your song. I can predict the chord changes and stuff before they happen. There’s no dissonance in it, and no key changes, and it’s not even in an interesting mode. Like, uh… like Lydian. Or Dorian, that might be good tone. And augmented stuff.” He paused in a place where he expected Fairy’s Bells, but there weren’t any. “I know a ballad should probably be a little predictable, because that’s how a lot of them work. But having the melody line go someplace unexpected would make it sound more mystical. You know, like the Cervinaethi are portrayed.”

The AI’s light had dimmed during his critique, and for a minute he thought he’d offended it. But it said, “The Fairy Bells will not spawn for another six hours, according to their timer.”

“Oh! Thanks. I should have thought about the spawn timers. You just made everything seem so real that I thought they should be there because… a real plant would. Unless something had eaten it.” He grinned. “Maybe that can be the in-game rationale behind spawn timers. Animals nomming.”

But the AI had moved on. “You are learning mandolin.”

“In game, at least…?”

“You also appear to be learning music theory from the internet. Do you play a musical instrument outside the game?”

“No.”

“May we ask why?”

Nick forged on from the glade, trying not to be depressed by the question. “Because if I did, it would become a thing. I would have to do it after school. Take it seriously. There would be competitions. My parents would drag me to lessons, and then more lessons, and then school would ask me what my professional aspirations were, and how serious I was about pursuing it. They’d suck all the fun out of it.” No, the AI was trying to learn, so he should be honest. Especially about something this important. “No, all the joy out of it. It wouldn’t be about me and my relationship with music anymore. It would be… contaminated. By all this worldly crap, and business crap, and social media and money and pretty soon I’d hate music. So no. I don’t do music in the real world.”

Maybe someone had built pauses into the AI’s responses so that conversations would sound natural? Because he was beginning to interpret these hesitations as exactly that. “Would your parents be likely to create this situation?”

“I don’t know.” He gathered a stick and flung it. “All right, that’s not fair. I don’t think they’d want to. But there would be so much pressure on them from everyone else… other parents, the school, the stuff they see in the news… how could they avoid it?” He shook his head. “I don’t want to risk it.”

“We see.” As he stooped to gather another stick, it said, “Perhaps we could design a Cervinaethi song together? You could help me evolve my first attempt.”

“A way for me to enjoy music without having to perform for the whole world?” He paused, laughed. “And me streaming! People would hear me humming, I guess?” He tossed the second stick. “Heck, why not. It’s not like anyone’s watching. My channel’s tiny and not likely to get bigger.” He dusted off his hands and nodded. “Let’s do it.”