Gamelit Novel, 13 (Patreon)

Nick sent them an entire line of random emojis and tossed the phone aside. Another muffin, a shower, and a drink later, he set the wireset in place and sank onto the bed. The forest emerged first as an impression of sunlight on leaves, and then warm brown shadows and the rustle of wind, tossing the highest boughs. He sat up and inhaled, filling his lungs with the complex scent of multiple kinds of plants and soil and probably other things. If he paid attention, would he learn what mushrooms smelled like? And water? He’d always read that animals could smell water.

A pinprick of green light flared into view like the end of a sparkler. Startled, he scrambled back until it spoke, pulsing in time to the syllables. “In view of your concerns with telepathy, we have chosen to manifest when you are alone. Do you find this more acceptable than our previous form of communication?”

Nick relaxed. “Um, I guess.” He smiled ruefully. “I’ll feel a little less like I’m going crazy. Except, is this going out on stream?”

“Viewers are seeing your actions, but no dialogue is being transmitted. Direct contact with the AI is considered detrimental to immersion.”

“So I’m just staring at a green light? That must be weird.”

“Do you wish to evaluate the outgoing stream?”

“I think I’d better.”

A floating window opened over the landscape, showing him sitting on the duff. There was no wisp and he wasn’t talking. Just looking. “And if I say something?” he said, and his avatar’s mouth didn’t move. But when he stood up, he saw himself doing it. “This is a corporate thing, I guess. Probably in the contract.”

“We can cease to communicate with you if you wish.”

“No,” Nick said, because it was cool to be able to talk with the AI. A little uncomfortable sometimes, but definitely more interesting than not. He wondered how many other players were having similar feelings about their conversations with the AI, but the AI didn’t read his thoughts and volunteer that data. He could hope his interactions were more interesting than other players’… maybe? It would be nice to be special, for once. “You can close that window. Thanks for showing me, though.”

“Your partner is not online,” the wisp said, bobbing after him as he started for the creek. “If you cannot advance on your quest, why did you login?”

‘It’s summer and there’s nothing better to do’ was not something he wanted to admit. Besides, it was sort of not true. He could have gone to the arcade, hung out with his friends, listened to them twit him about his choices. He admitted the real reason. “I wanted to experience this more.”

“Are you able to articulate why?” At his pause, the wisp brightened. “This data will help us to further understand user behavior and desires. We have scanned five years of game logs and often observed players logging in and exhibiting aimless behavior. Some of these users go on to play for several hours. Others log off not long after. We have been unable to find a method to predict which of these two outcomes will happen.”

The brook in the center of the forest ran directly under a break in the canopy, next to some downed trees that suggested a long-ago storm. The sun off the water almost didn’t look like it was moving. He’d read that sometimes happened in the real world, but never seen it. Nick crouched alongside the bank and ran his fingers through it: cold enough to make his fingers throb. How did that work? What was the wireset doing? It was magic.

But the AI had asked him a question. “I don’t know. I guess sometimes we just don’t know what to do with ourselves, so we go somewhere we associate with having fun or accomplishing things, figuring… that might happen again. Even if we don’t have a plan.” That sounded right. “Sometimes you have to throw yourself into a situation and see what happens.”

“Then you are relying on serendipity.”

The idea of a computer talking about luck amused him. “So are you going to create luck for people? The way you did by improvising a caravan of centaurs who want us to travel with them, just because my mom’s a ponytaur and likes cooking quests?”

“The game becoming capable of evolving in response to user prompts is the express purpose for my creation.”

Nick swished the water and frowned. “So that we’re never bored.”

“Correct.”

“My dad says boredom is useful.”

Was it just him, or did the AI sound interested? “Is your father a registered user of Omen Galaxica?”

Nick chuckled. “He only wishes he could be. But he’s too busy. He hates his job, but that’s how it goes, I guess, when you get out of school and start having to pay bills.” He paused. “Uh, I really hope this stuff isn’t going out on the channel.”

“User interactions with the AI are not surfaceable through any means.”

He exhaled gustily. “Good. That wasn’t my secret to share with the world. You know? I’m not used to this streaming stuff. Fish says I need to do something more interesting, that the stream is boring.”

“Is it important to you that the stream be entertaining?”

“Well, yeah.” He dropped onto his haunches and rummaged in his pack for his fishing equipment. Previously he’d swapped his fishing rod into his main hand with a command and it had appeared, no explanations offered. Now that he could feel things and hold them, the game decided his fishing rod was extensible, and that it could tuck nicely into his backpack. “Sweet,” he murmured. Then, to the wisp, “Um… well, I guess. I don’t know if I want to be famous, to be honest. Sometimes it sounds great, and sometimes it sounds awful.”

“But your stated desire, that your stream be entertaining, seems to indicate a choice to prioritize fame despite its risks. Why?”

“You’re going to be asking me that a lot, aren’t you.”

“If this dialogue is distressing—”

And the AI might know that, literally, by his heartbeat or sweat level or how often he was blinking… God, that was a little freaky. “No, it’s fine. Being uncomfortable isn’t always bad. Obviously, or we wouldn’t endure some of the crazy grinds on these games.” He rubbed behind one ear, staring at the fishing rod… because now that it was a more realistic thing, he wasn’t sure how to use it. “It’s just… if this does well, maybe I can help with the money, you know? And my parents wouldn’t have to worry about college funds for me. I might even be able to get a car. A used one, of course, I’m not expecting Goldie-level money. But enough money to buy a used car and put aside enough for college is already dreaming big, given that I have… what, five subscribers?” He laughed. “Probably won’t get more than that, because I want to learn to fish. Can you teach me to fish? Not fake-game-fish. Fish like if I ended up in real life, I would know what to do.”

“The simulation of real world fishing in a fantasy world would entertain you?”

“I’m betting it will, so let’s find out!” He shook his head, grinned. “Fish is gonna roast me. And I don’t care. Let’s find some spotty perches.”

***

Amanda opened her eyes on the ceiling and struggled with resentment. When she’d talked with her obstetrician about activity restriction, Dr. Carol had suggested a far more liberal schedule, one that had included doing most of her normal activities. Her body, though, had other ideas, mostly by ambushing her with exhaustion and brain fog on and off all day. She hated that baking a batch of muffins now constituted exercise and going to the bathroom a celebratory event. And she most of all hated how whiny she felt about it. With a sigh, she levered herself upright and attended to necessities. Passing through the kitchen, she found two of the muffins missing and smiled. Well, there were some compensations to her state. And she’d enjoyed her fantasy cooking quest more than she’d anticipated.

No doubt Nick was waiting for her. She had a small but quick lunch and curled up on the couch to see what would happen next.

The centaur camp had developed a giant wagon, the kind of fantasy wagon that looked like a quaint house with lanterns and pots hanging from the corners of the eaves. Kavon the Cook beamed at her and said, “We’ll be leaving by sunset! Best do your shopping prior.” And then a pause, and a question scrolled across the bottom of her vision: Enter Character Name?

Oh no, she needed a name? She looked down at her sturdy equine legs and blurted, “How about PonyMandy?”

Name Accepted. “Best do your shopping prior, PonyMandy!”

Amanda covered her face with a hand. Hopefully that wasn’t going to make her sound ridiculous to the gamers who were watching the stream. Hopefully no one was watching! Which brought her to… shopping?

When Nick trotted out of the forest, Amanda said, “Do I need to shop for some reason?”

He paused. “Do you have starting gear? Other than the cookie pouch?”

“No…? Unless you count my clothes. And the quest reward.” Amanda brandished the wooden spoon. She’d expected it to be six feet long, given the whole fantasy motif, but it was just a very long but otherwise normal spoon. “Do I need other things?”

“I’ve got enough for both of us, unless you want to go shopping….”

She hadn’t been his mother all his life for nothing. “Or I could find something to brain with this spoon, and get some XP?”

He started laughing. “Seriously? I don’t think you can kill anything with that. Unless you hit it for a very long time.”

“It’s how the game works, isn’t it? You advance by fighting monsters?” At his expression, she hastened to assure him, “I’m fine with fighting monsters. I’m not a ‘negotiate with monsters’ type.”

Thankfully he grinned. “Yes, I remember you setting up a trap for the one under my bed when I was six.”

“I was pretty proud of that trap. And your father did a good job with the monster remains he stuffed in it while you were sleeping.”

He was laughing again. “We are a weird family.”

“Maybe a little. But seriously, if the point of the game is leveling by killing things, I’m willing to do the thing. I don’t want people to pity me. You know, clueless mom dragged around by her gamer son.” Surprisingly, that was true. And she did feel like braining something with a spoon might be satisfying. It continued to be novel to have energy in the game world that she didn’t in her real body.

“Not everything in the game is about killing things,” Nick said. “Some of the quests are… well, like the cooking quests you just did, but less detailed. Sometimes you pick herbs—oh, that reminds me, here.” He pulled four beautifully cut crystal vials from a belt pouch and handed them over. “These are endurance and healing potions, in case you need them… oh, you know, how is that going to work? Will the wireset make you feel different when you’re hurt? I wonder if they’ve thought that out.”

“Now I do too,” Amanda said, but she accepted the potions while hiding how pleased she was that he’d been thinking of her. “So I can level by picking flowers?”

“You couldn’t before… at least, not effectively. But maybe now profession quests will be more rewarding. And honestly… mom… if you really want to know what I love about the game….”

“Oh, but I do!” She paused, hoping that hadn’t come across as too enthusiastic. “Seriously. Show me why you like doing this.”

He glanced at the centaurs. “If we’ve got time…”

“They said we’re leaving at sunset.”

“Then come with me.”

Amanda wasn’t sure what to expect, but that it would be… pleasant? To trot along after Nick wasn’t one of them. She felt alert, and walking was effortless, even through the uneven terrain. That she could feel the dappled sunlight on her pony back, and how it shifted in patterns of warmth as the trees nodded in the wind… how was that possible? It was so… so pastoral.

And the forest was beautiful. Someone had made this forest… drawn it, she supposed, with some kind of 3d modeling program. Had come up with the glossy shrubs of the underbrush, and the shy little yellow flowers that looked like flakes of sunshine. What was it like, to sit back and brainstorm what a forest should feel and look like?

“Here,” her son said, stopping in a copse encircled by graceful white-barked trees blooming with lavender flowers. The light fell in golden shafts, with motes of sparkling white pollen drifting through them. As they walked to the top of the little hummock in the center, an amber squirrel darted up one of the trees, shaking loose a few petals. And as it did…

“Is that music?” she said, wide-eyed.

“Yes! These are sighing birches,” Nick said. “They only grow in places where Cervinaethi have prayed to the goddess Pecorae and received a blessing. This is the only plenteous copse in the Greenweald. Because this is human territory, and there aren’t that many Cervinaethi near here.” He stared up, squinting, with a big smile. “You should see it at night. That’s when the trees sing by themselves, without a squirrel to kick it off.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Like a postcard.” She glanced at him. “So are there quests here?”

“I guess, sometimes. I just like exploring, though. Finding places like this, and discovering their history.”

“You could do that in the real world…?”

He snorted. “Like there’s anything like this near us.”

“No,” Amanda conceded. “There’s not.”

“There’s a brook over this way with fish…!”

As she followed him, Amanda tried to find reasons to not sink into the loveliness around her. What appalled her was the realization that her foremost objection to all this was that it would make her dissatisfied with her tiny backyard, with its carefully mown grass and the fence shared with the Nesbitts, and the sole oak tree that was mostly responsible for inflaming their allergies twice a year. Places this beautiful existed in the real world, but her family certainly didn’t live near them.

Could she blame Nick for loving this in a way he couldn’t love his neighborhood?

More worrisome, was she actually satisfied with her life… or had she resigned herself to compromises? Some of that was necessary in life. But there was compromise, and then there was resignation. She and Felix used to talk about getting out of suburbia one day. But it had been a long time since either of them had had those discussions.

Amanda watched her son hop over a downed tree, overgrown with a filigree of moss, and began to question her certitudes.