Esmie the Calamity Chapter 13 (Patreon)

** Don't worry, we'll get back to G's POV for her explorations of character creation soon :D **

Esmie’s POV

I got home with beginner books on jewelry, enchanting, alchemy, and sewing. Well, I also got home with a very chivalrous Fletcher by my side, sort of. He escorted me as far as my neighbourhood, saying that any further and he’d feel like he was stalking me. I was a little confused by that, but whatever. I was new to the whole guy-girl interaction thing from this side of the fence. Maybe there was some rule I didn’t know about.

Lynna wasn’t home yet when I stepped through the front door, so I got busy reading the books I’d bought. I’d always had issues in school, but in a very odd way. Sometimes I was really terrible at subjects like math, except when I suddenly wasn’t and found it incredibly interesting instead. Next thing I’d know, I’d have demolished a textbook in a haze.

So yeah, I wasn’t expecting to have much of an issue reading these skill books, no matter how dry they were. I knew that my brain would treat them like some sort of puzzle, taunting me with their unsolvedness.

I wanted to start off with enchanting, since that was the one that interested me the most, but I also figured that I should start on alchemy soon. Enchanting seemed like it took a long while to get good before you could make real money, whereas with consumables like potions, you could get a trickle of income pretty easily.

At least, that’s what the searches I’d done had told me. Well, apart from that one guy on twitter who was telling everyone that potions were a waste of time. Reading through that month-long argument was pretty funny. Some people chose the craziest hills to die on.

My exploration of enchanting quickly stalled out because the components needed to get started were rather expensive. Jewelry seemed to have a similar issue, so I was forced to focus on alchemy and sewing for now.

That focus turned into a whole week of study for both myself and Lynlyn. She had a ton of material for me to learn in relation to VR, streaming stuff… and like, everything else under the sun. It was wild.

Sadly, I was severely underskilled for the job I had accidentally fallen into, so now I had to get the basics ready before we debuted. The debut being when we officially launched our channels and started posting content. Basically, when we went public.

Living with Lynlyn was fun though, we had always gotten along so well and that appeared to translate into the game without any real hiccups. Actually, if anything, she seemed to be even more comfortable being around me now that I was Esmie instead of… well, the other guy.

This new turn in my life was hard work, but it was also really fun, and I was happy to have a proper purpose in my life now. If only the ingredients I was eating to gain knowledge didn’t taste so awful.

Which is why Lynlyn found me spitting out masticated leaves into a bin beside the crate I was using as a desk.

“Ew, what…” she exclaimed, standing in the doorway of my workshop room. “Esmie?”

Holding a hand up to stall her, I finished getting all the gunk out of my mouth and then lunged for the purification agent on the crate. I could only afford to take a few drops of the stuff, but it was enough to take the edge off the poison I’d just eaten. It was a herb that when dried would supposedly have healing and stimulant properties. Unfortunately for me, it also had a nasty poisonous nausea effect that made eating it raw a futile exercise.

“Yeah?” I rasped, smiling up at my friend while theatrically slipping my hand into my shorts. “Sorry, I’ve developed a vomiting fetish after all this alchemy stuff, I was just masturbating.”

To my disappointment, she just rolled her eyes. “Sure, sure. Get your hand out of your pants. After a week of your shenanigans I’ve gotten desensitized. You’ll need to come up with something new.”

“What if I squiggle your ears again?” I asked, standing up and taking a menacing step towards her. Of course, any menacing anything I did was undercut by my adorable squishy appearance.

Lynlyn just laughed and put a hand to my chest, stopping me in my tracks. “Enough, silly. We have a meeting outside of the game with Ruth.”

All the blood drained from my face, taking the fun along with it. “What?”

“In VR, still,” she added hastily, taking my hand in hers. “You can still be Esmie. Just port your appearance out to your main FTLN profile, I’ll show you how.”

I clutched at that hand like I was Frodo and she was Sam, complete with homoerotic undertones. What was with those two anyway? Had Tolkien actually just been a super repressed gay dude? Wait, that would actually explain so much, considering that the only major female character I could remember was the elf chick. Her whole character screamed of a gay male author googling, What do men want in a potential wife? Did he have google back then? Surely he did… google was eternal after all. It was their motto.

“Open your game’s settings menu,” she told me, squeezing my hand to bring my attention back to her. “There should be an account option.”

With my free hand, I did as she told me. I was quietly proud of my ability to use the thought commands in VR now too.

“I see it,” I replied, tapping on the option with a finger.

“Okay, now scroll to the very bottom. There’s a character appearance transfer option down there,” she said gently.

“Oh, I see it,” I said, and clicked on it. A dialogue box opened, asking me if I wanted to export only my human appearance, or if I wanted to bring any non-human traits too. It took me a hot second to choose, but in the end I decided to go with a normal human appearance. It would help me distance myself from my future status as some sort of strange internet celebrity. I could always change my mind later, anyway.

“Ready?” Lynna asked, ducking her head a bit to look me in the eyes. “Because Ruth is waiting for us.”

“Sure,” I nodded, smiling gratefully at my friend. “Thank you.”

She threw me a wink and blinked out of existence.

****

I arrived in the virtual offices of my new parent company, Idolive, with a body full to bursting with anxiety. I knew that it was all virtual, but the place was still massive.

The sprawling complex was set into the side of a fictional japanese mountain, one of many in the range that spread out into eternity in all directions. The buildings were all modern and clean, but also semi-comfy too. That last part was important because it served as a private place for all the idols to get away from their jobs, fans, and the public eye. It was just as much a resort as it was an office space.

Which made me wonder how Ruth was hopping between VR and regular old reality so much. Was she just guzzling anti-VR-sickness drugs? That couldn’t be healthy.

Lynna was waiting for me in front of the main entrance, and she put an arm around my shoulders when I stepped up beside her.

Going inside, we were greeted by a smiling AI receptionist, who quickly and efficiently pointed us in the right direction. We could tell she was an AI because she was labelled as such. The kind that might one day add an S to the front of her designation, so the helpful little floating holographic label told us to be nice.

It said a lot of good things about Idolive that they had that label there. It meant they actually gave a shit about their employees, no matter how far up the ladder to sentience they had crawled.

Lynna seemed to know where she was going, so I just followed her as best I could while my head swivelled like my neck was made of rubber. This place was incredible, like a mix between a japanese resort and the type of campus a tech-bro CEO came up with during a really saucy dream.

The hallways were long and sweeping, with intersections leading off in all directions, and archways that opened out into picturesque gardens and plazas. There were quite a few other people around too, bustling around looking all busy, sitting in meeting rooms looking busy, and even hunched over computers in offices, also looking busy. There was a lot of busy going on, and frankly, it was intimidating.

“Do you know what the meeting is about?” I asked, reaching for her hand. I wanted to hold it because… well, I don’t really know, general comfort I guess? I knew that I wasn’t interested in her, at least not romantically, I didn’t think? She was hot though, and I’d have a hard time saying no if she asked to sleep with me. Not that I knew what I was doing in that department, but yeah. Girls hot.

On a friendship level though, there was no one I trusted more. Lynna was incredible, and if this whole virtual idol thing worked out, I’d be forever in her debt. I just hoped I could keep repaying it by making her happy in any way I could.

“She said something about meeting a new member of our CORA Idolive branch?” she said, letting me take her hand. “I think Ruth wants to try and get the jump on virtual personalities in this game.”

“What’s the difference between virtual personalities and normal streamers in VR anyway?” I asked idly. “We’re all running around in VR.”

“Honestly, the line is pretty blurry,” she laughed, glancing down at me. “It’s the level of production quality, I guess. We have a full agency behind us to provide support. Plus, if we get big enough, I think they have us start to do big professional stuff like music or whatever. They also hold us to certain standards that a lot of normal streamers don’t have to follow.”

“So it’s like… instead of just being streamers, we’re streamers and…” I mused, emphasising the last word in a way that implied a whole breadth of different stuff that we might end up doing. Singing sounded like a lot of fun, personally. I’d always had a good ear for sound, I’d just never really cultivated it. Maybe I should let Ruth know about that?

My thoughts of song and dance were interrupted when Lynlyn slowed and approached a door to a meeting room that looked identical to all the others we’d seen. Ruth was visible through the glass, tapping away on a tablet while a man I didn’t recognise lounged with his back to us. Wait, a man? Huh?