Esmie the Calamity Chapter 1 (Patreon)

** So, some of you may have seen this already, back when it was just a meme and I was writing it to make myself happy. Back then, Chiri (the person, not the character from trouble) absolutely loved it, and so I promised that whenever she got her new trans-friendly story website up and running, I'd start writing and posting it for realsies. Well... she's closing in on getting Fluff4.me up and running, so I gotta put my money where my mouth is.

I have to warn you all, this story is uh... wild. I'm not planning, barely editing and certainly not putting any constraints on what my characters get up to. It's just my imagination doing whatever the hell it likes.

It's set in the troubleverse, so you'll be familiar with the setting, and it follows two high school best friends as they reunite to play CORA. There's some legit worldbuilding in here that expands the setting some too, which might be fun. For example, the city of Auckland in NZ has been renamed to the native maori name for the place, rather than the one the colonists gave it.

Hope you enjoy! **

Year 2100+, New Zealand, Tamaki City

“Doesn’t it seem like there should be more fanfare to this whole, graduating high school, thing to you?” Lynna asked as we stood around and watched the other students, parents and teachers mingling. “Like, we’re literally just standing around eating bargain sausage rolls and mini pies. Not even full sized ones! I want a full sized pie. I demand a full sized pie.”

“Yeah… I don’t know, we’re just North West High. It’s not like graduating from this place is a big deal, so why make a big deal you know?” I said quietly, ignoring my friend’s pouting about pies. If any of the teachers heard they’d try and tell us how great we were for graduating. Nobody liked lectures, especially not when you were two days away from being free of school, potentially forever.

“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” my best friend sighed, turning her dejected face on me. “Just totally sucks you know? That there’s nothing for us to actually… do after school. We’re eighteen and two days away from the end of high school and our future is… empty.”

I nodded wordless understanding, not really wanting to talk about that empty future. It yawned on the horizon like some ethereal storm of death and pain and beards. I’m not sure why that beard thing came up, but it was always there, just looming on the horizon.

“Yeah. Oh, my parents are giving me the whole, let’s go signal…” she grimaced, turning to me shyly. “So um, I guess we should hang out later? After school is all wrapped up and stuff.”

“Yeah! Definitely,” I smiled.

Lynna was great. We’d been together through all of high school! Well, except our high school was longer than most other places, starting during when middle school would have started in places like United Nations City. I was excited to see what she and I could get up to, even if the future seemed bleak.

** 6 Months Later **

“I’m just going to miss you!” Mum bawled, her tears staining my shirt.

I was… a little confused where this was coming from. It was her idea that I move out of the house into my own basic assisted apartment after all, so why was she acting like I was going to die? I was the youngest of three, so obviously the last one leaving the nest was a thing but… still, her idea!

“Mum, I’m like… twenty minutes by train and half an hour by ground car… you can visit any time… so long as you message first,” I said awkwardly, trying to comfort her.

“I know! But you won’t be there in the morning or… I won’t get to tuck you in at night… it’s… I’m just having a difficult time okay?” she cried while Dad and I made awkward eye contact over her shoulder.

It was her idea? I mouthed to Dad in confusion, getting a confused, your problem, not mine, in return. Thanks Dad.

I wish I had a Dad that wasn’t all like, “We’re gonna be mates!”

Did amazon deliver Dad upgrades? Surely they did, even down here to Tamaki?

It took Mum and Dad way too long to leave, which was kinda annoying since it was all their idea for me to move out in the first place. Mum’s pointed questions about what I planned to do with my future had been getting more and more unbearable, and so had the arguments that blew up whenever I had the balls to defend myself.

How on Earth was I meant to get a job in a world where only around thirty percent of the population had them? I wasn’t some crazy genius who could bust through Uni like a bull and then turn around and take life by the horns... Or whatever. I wasn’t smart enough to get a job, not in the current age anyway.

When I finally closed the door on them with a sigh, I stared around at the apartment with just a tiny bit of shock? Now what?

** 3 Months Later **

I was so bored. I was so, so damn bored. I was so bored I was feeling depressed about being bored. I’d done nothing but play games and watch shows for three months since I moved out, and I was just so fucking bored.

I was a nineteen year old guy who was expected to live through around one hundred and thirty more years of this shit. It was just totally, super, damn… crap. Seriously, this was the world our oh so benevolent leaders had dreamt up for us? What were we expected to do? Just sit around and— 

“Ding Dong. Hello! I am Amazon Delivery AI Number290578 with an order for this address,” a feminine electronic voice said from the door’s intercom. A delivery? I hadn’t ordered anything?

I got up off the couch and walked across the livingroom-kitchen-diningroom-entrancehall to the front door and opened it, coming face to face with a bloody massive fuckoff Amazon bot. Damn, pretty sure she lifted. Hah.

She was carrying a massive steel crate in all four hands and staring at me with those funny cameras expectantly.

“Um, hi? I didn’t order anything… ay,” I said with more than a little confusion.

“It is not my job to know if you have ordered something or not. If you want to send this state of the art VR pod back to the sender I can— “ the bot started to say sarcastically, before switching back to the normal disjointed robot voice. “I mean, this a delivery from someone else. The sender ID tag states it was sent from: Lynna.”

“Okay… um, I don’t actually have a pod room but there’s one of those funny plug things for it in the wall over there,” I told the bot, pointing out the plug even as I reeled with the news.

The news being that Lynna was still even thinking about me. We’d tried to stay friends since high school had ended, but she’d moved down to Wellingroan, and since then it had become harder and harder to find anything relevant to do in each other’s virtual company. We’d stopped messaging each other like four months ago… and now this? How did she even pay for the pod?

“Yeah I’ll just bang ‘er in here and— “ The bot started, then clammed up again and swapped once more to robot girl. “I will now install this unit for you, as it is very heavy, and you do not look like you can lift anything.”

“H-hey! Yo! That’s rude. Why so much sass? Look, this is… weirding me out okay. Why is an Amazon bot being so strange?” I asked, feeling my face flush in embarrassment as the AI called my strength into question.

“I am a perfectly normal Amazon AI,” the AI said, and then honest to god it did the jedi hand wave. “You heard and saw nothing.”

“Okay… I saw nothing,” I nodded slowly. I wasn’t going to look a gift bot in the sensor node… thing. What did you call it? Sensor cluster!

“The meatling learns…” she cackled softly, then got to work unpacking the pod and installing it.

When I saw the pod come out, I took a step back and actually, really, properly gasped. What in the hell? That was a Spencer Wraipod. That was so expensive that if I sold it, I’d be able to pay for this apartment for an entire year without universal basic income to help. I had some serious questions for Lynna now, which meant I needed my phone. Where the hell did I put my phone.

“Hey… Amazon AI lady, don’t let anyone through the door okay? Kill them if they so much as set foot inside,” I joked, pointing to my open door.

“I am not equipped for murder,” she replied absently, then looked up as though a thought had occured to her. “But I can improvise.”

“That was a joke!” I said quickly. “Don’t kill anyone!”

“Ha ha ha, I also made a joke,” the Amazon AI said blandly.

“Right… I’m going to go and get my phone then…” I said, slowly backing down the small hallway to my room.

I found my phone, and immediately sent a message off to Lynna.

/\ Lynna why is there a crazy Amazon bot delivering a Spencer Wraipod to me and saying it’s from you?

Because I sent you a Spencer Wraipod!

/\ Why?

So, I won a competition… and got two of them, and like… well, it’s a long story.

/\ Oh… thank you so much! Thank you, thank you! I think you just saved me from death by boredom!

Okay, but you’re getting it on one condition.

/\ Oh…?

You have to play Cora with me! I want to try streaming, but like, I figure I need someone to like, play off of you know? So I was like hey I wonder if you would be keen to play with me! We can play together and I’ll give you some of the profits and stuff. We could build like a streaming empire and become gods of Cora and… well that’s probably a little ambitious but you get the picture.

/\ Isn’t that game like… really violent?

Oh yeah, it definitely is, but it’s also really fun from what I’ve heard, soooo…

/\ Okay… okay I’ll play the scary violent game, but only because it’s you asking, and you’re saving me from DBB.

Awh shucks… wait, DBB?

/\ Death By Boredom.

Oh, makes sense… and hey by the way… I missed you.

/\ I missed you too.

I’ll see you in the game? Send me a friend request, and make sure to start in Trimarce. My name will be LynnaTrickShot!

/\ Same as always then? Haha. Will do~! I’ll jump in as soon as I let Mum know I’m going to be in a coffin for a while. Oh and once the bot leaves. It’s really strange.

Yeeeee G. Good luck with your butt problems!

/\ Ha ha, very funny. Real fucking mature!

After our conversation was over, I moved back into the livingroom-kitchen-diningroom-entrancehall and watched as the Amazon AI finished hooking the pod up.

“Thanks for the help,” I said quietly, actually very grateful to the big hunk of metal for doing all the setup.

“Yeah nah ay no problem mate, I gotcha righto,” she replied. “Cheerio then mate I’ll catch ya later ay.”

I could only blink in stunned silence as the AI collected the remains of the box and wandered out the door. She stopped not two steps out of it like she’d hit a wall, spun, and then jedi hand-waved the door closed. The door was automatic. Well… that was just a little… eccentric. Had they started giving their AI personalities or something…? This was… alarming. Maybe that one was broken?

Either way, I was now safe from the erratic Amazon lady… kinda. I didn’t hold out much hope for the door in a cage match versus the thing out there, but still… it had to count for something right?

Since I was safe, it was time to flick a message off to Mum and then hop in the coffin… I mean pod.

/\ Hey Mum, just going to play in a coffin for a bit, good luck out in the real world! (PS that was a joke, I got a VR pod, please don’t call the fire department or whatever.)

With nothing else to do, I pulled off all my clothes except my undies, and threw them on the couch, then pressed the panel to open the pod. It made that cool hissing noise when it opened, indicating that the inside was a closed environment. I’d heard about these pods. They had power sources built in, as well as compressed biomatter storage and shit. Then they were pressurised so that even if you sank to the bottom of the ocean, you’d still be alive.

Once it was open, I carefully stepped inside and lay down, letting the pod automatically do the rest. This was my first time in VR, so I only vaguely knew what to expect, like the mind crown thing fitting itself to my head. I had no idea what all the bells, whistles and other what-have-yous were called though. Once everything seemed settled, the pod gave a gentle whirr, then everything went black.

Link to Chapter 2