The Gamer Chapter 1048 – A house of adorable creatures (Patreon)

The Menagerie was one of the oldest Buildings the Guild Hall had to offer. All the way back, when the Guild Hall hadn’t even covered half of Liberty Island, it had been first erected. It had come far from its humble beginnings as a small building with segments for various animals.

Nowadays, the Menagerie was a complex of simple and invitingly designed buildings. Distantly, the core building was reminiscent of the Parthenon, with several high columns holding up the ceiling that expanded past the solid walls. John refused to bring the typical artistic architecture of the Guild Hall down to the cheerful simplicity of children’s parks. Reasons being his own distaste for the disunited look of inner cities, the weirdness of putting bright yellow and red elements in the middle of an area otherwise meant to allow residents a stroll through the wood, and that the Menagerie wasn’t specifically aimed at children.

Undeniably, most of the people presently playing with the many cute critters around were under the age of twelve, especially in these morning hours. Past 20:00 or so, the clientele would have drastically switched. Over the course of roughly two hours, the parents would take their kids home and, in their place, office workers would arrive. Whether they came just to get some snuggles after a workday or had an impromptu date with someone, their cause for a visit was valid and John wouldn’t want the design of the place to make it seem like they were doing something inappropriate for their age.

There were activities one should abstain from as they were older, just as a matter of showing decorum. Appreciating cute animals wasn’t one of them.

‘Although the question whether these actually qualify as animals is still open,’ John thought and bowed down to pick up the Menagerie-spawn that slithered up to his feet. It was a snake, about the length of his arm, thin, and sporting both a feathered head and bird-like wings in the colours of the rainbow.

In Natural Barriers, something like this Rainbow Serpent would have been a downright legendary encounter. There were religions out in the world that had conceived visions of the creature, in awe of its magical potency. Perhaps the appearance of one of them had caused a catastrophe so large that it had spawned the Mesoamerican faith, which had then staved off the ‘end of the world’ by engaging in regular human sacrifice.

Given how Faith worked, their approach was more than likely counterproductive. It would have instead caused more Natural Barriers to spawn, which would have increased the number of disasters spawned whenever a creature within these Natural Barriers got strong enough to break out. The creature would have been destroyed by Gaia, leaving the local preachers certain that they just hadn’t sacrificed enough people and suddenly the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan demanded the sacrifice of 84,400 people over the course of four days.

The same kind of creature that had set off such a chain of events was now winding around John’s arm and the two of them booped noses. In its colour-shifting eyes, there was no intent to harm. The being wasn’t capable of feeling it because it had been spawned with the sole purpose of being cute. As long as it was in and around the Guild Hall, it didn’t require food or drink, and if it got removed from the barrier, or was killed otherwise, it would just evaporate. The Menagerie would register the missing member and spawn a new one.

‘Can a being without survival drive, the ability to procreate, and that’s sustained only by magic truly be called an animal? Is it even sentient?’ John wondered while scratching the snake under the chin. The top of the head was covered in short feathers, but the bottom, to make slithering easier, was smooth scales. The tiny Rainbow Serpent wagged the tip of its long body happily in response to the scratches. ‘Sure is adorable though.’

John came to the same conclusion as usual when contemplating the Menagerie: that he wasn’t dealing with a real petting zoo, but more like the most advanced simulation reality could create. On the advantageous side, this meant things were safer. Even at a petting zoo, a small goat could decide that it was having a bad day and ram a four-year-old. Horns or not, that would hurt.

A series of laughs distracted John from his overactive thought. Not far away from him, just two steps to be exact, his blonde lover was doing her best to pet the circle of animals that were coming towards her. They streamed out of the Menagerie through the tunnels that ran through the walls, the open fences that made the outside areas immediately accessible and the windows that let the birds leave their cages.

The alien aura that made humans reject pariah’s to the point that mundane people outright ignored their existence endeared animals for some reason. Theory was that their lack of higher reasoning inoculated them against the incomprehensible threat of the Nirvana, while they still felt that blanks had a very gentle demeanour towards unusual influences. There was also something to be said about pariah’s tendency to have no or few close ones, leaving them to befriend animals instead. Their body language would be trained to that end.

Nia, particularly, had an animal magnetism that left her covered by a number of critters, fantastical and mundane, climbing all over her. A ferret playfully chased a Landxelotl over her shoulders. A white owl with eyes like a swirling galaxy sat on her head. With puffed up feathers, it fit oddly well into the backwards oriented, voluminous and short strands that made up the top of Nia’s scalp. The immensely long rest of her hair, bundled up into a smoothly flowing ponytail, was being played with. A dragon-cat, a small pig and, judging by the fact that her hair moved even when nothing else was touching it, the Nevr’est that always followed her were all taking turns swiping or tossing her hair with paws or snouts.

All the while, a series of lizards, dogs, birds, and even small bears were lined up in front of Nia trying their best to look so cute that they were graced by the limited supply of hands. Her girlish giggling gradually transformed into hyperventilating.

‘I think someone needs help,’ John thought and kneeled down next to Nia. “I’ll take this half and you take that half, okay?”

“Five seconds minimum per pat,” Nia instructed him and the two got to work.

It took them about thirty minutes of constant patting, scratching and playing to get through the ocean of animals. What ‘saved’ them was that John had set it so only a certain number of animals could leave the Menagerie and they couldn’t go too far either. With all of the other things that could be done or found in the Guild Hall, he didn’t want one of the Menagerie animals to be mistaken for some kind of harmful wildlife. The other way around, he didn’t want wildlife that somehow made its way on the Guild Hall to be mistaken for harmless spawns.

Fur that his fingers combed through was soft, scales smooth, feathers fluffy, everything was perfectly groomed and the Menagerie animals willing to play with as much as a finger expanded in their direction. Not all of the animals were small. There was a fully grown wolf in there, with very dull teeth, eager to tumble around in the grass with whoever or whatever was willing.

While John stuck to patting, his date was absolutely willing to partake in anything on offer. Only after every one of the animals had gotten more than twice the previously established minimum did the blonde start to peel away from the crowd of cute things. She didn’t have to feel bad about that, several kids and adults in the area were almost as happy as her to take over. Jovial laughter filled the air. The two of them headed into the actual building.

The inside of the Menagerie was a room with very few walls. Most of those that existed were there to give animals of the arboreal or otherwise climb-happy variety a chance to show off their skills. A select few barriers existed with the purpose of walling off two areas that weren’t compatible at all. Going from the jungle area to the mountain one was a gradual transformation. From the mountains to the sea tank was a wall.

“So, what do you want to do?” John asked. “Cuddle the tarantulas, swim with the seals, pat the monkeys?”

“Yes,” Nia answered and practically threw herself at the closest animal she saw. In this case, she landed on the broad back of a reddish-brown tortoise. It made a pleased, deep sound and slowly advanced, carrying both her and the several birds that decided to land on her towards another area of the Menagerie. Because that animal was rather slow, John took a moment to sit down on a nearby bench and check his phone.

He still had some time off, but there might have been some explosions somewhere in the meantime, figurative or literal. There were no emergency messages, not even in the alert system for the Guild Hall. Since he was the owner, there were some malfunctions that he had to deal with personally, such as when someone managed to destroy a part of a Production Building. He was only alerted about big damages so any smashed flower pots required someone to find them. Usually that was then fixed at the click of a button, costing him some money and repairing the Building remotely. What wasn’t found got restored in its own time, but that generally led to a bigger loss of productivity than the repair cost.

‘Oh, a direct message from Scarlett,’ John thought and read it. It only said to call her. Deciding he had the time, he soon heard a single toot in his ear. The second was already replaced by Scarlett’s voice.

“Yo, when are you upgrading the Guild Hall again?” Scarlett asked out of the blue.

“Hello to you two, my beloved,” he sarcastically greeted her.

“I already greeted you with your cock up my ass this morning, can we skip this? I have to meet Nathalia in ten minutes.”

“I thought you still had to show her the ropes?”

“Not when it comes to intimidating a union representative.”

“You know, intimidating union representatives isn’t generally a good move.”

“It is when they ask for a pay raise that would force me to raise the product price above that of our competitor.”

“Can’t you give them some of your hilarious salary?”

“My salary from that company is the lowest out of the entire managerial apparatus. I’m gloriously fucking rich because I have my fingers in all the pies, not because I cut the biggest slices out of all of them,” Scarlett chastised him. “I’m a capitalist, not a leech. If they want higher wages, the union can make their own company and try to outcompete me. Seriously, they can go ahead. I ran the calculations – they can’t.”

“Just saying, you seem to get into wage disputes a lot,” John joked.

“Because everyone is at least half as greedy as I am and only a tenth as competent,” Scarlett responded immediately and then took a pause. The muffled sound of a cigarette clued him in where that came from. An exhale of smoke later, the technomancer repeated her question, “When are you upgrading the Guild Hall though?”

“When I get the Perks?” John flippantly responded.

“You have the Perks. I can count, John, you have one outstanding and enough GP to buy three, after the whole Death Zone shitshow.”

“I suppose I do,” the Gamer hummed melodically. Of course, he had already realized this himself.

“Yes, you do, and I just checked the input-output of the company that leases space in your Foundry and realized that we have more productivity than raw materials.”

“Sounds like the people can take extended breaks then.”

“They’re ambitious, they don’t want breaks, they want cash, and I can’t give them more unless they bring more in. Can I get an answer out of your teasing ass or do I need to threaten you with something?”

“What could you possibly threaten me with?” John asked in an amused tone.

“Sex embargo.” Scarlett took another cigarette huff, but continued before John could get his response in, “Spare me the spiel of how you could just dump everything in the other girls, we both know you’d go crazy if you couldn’t have any one of us. You’re endearing that way.”

“It’s endearing to be unable to keep your dick out of all members of one’s harem?” John asked.

“Come on, ya know we’re weird. I appreciate the want and ability to fuck over a dozen girls every day. Gives me power over you. Now spit out the answer, I have to meet Nathalia in two.”

“I’m keeping it for New Years,” he told her.

“Why?”

“Because it’d be an impressive sight, together with the fireworks.”

“An impressive sight isn’t worth eleven days of increased productivity.”

“I think it’s worth it in ways you can’t measure, my material lover.”

Scarlett sighed and said, “Suit yourself. Later.”

“Later,” John answered and put down the phone. Then he got up and looked for Nia.

Predictably, she hadn’t gotten far. The tortoise had carried her about twenty metres in the time it had taken John to have that conversation. By now, its shell was hardly visible. As for the pariah, her moving arms and face were still there. She was kissing a stoat. The tiny, ferret-like animal kept responding with tiny kisses itself, putting them in a back-and-forth cycle.

John was more interested in watching her enjoying herself than he was in cuddling with the cute animals. As much as he verbally derided Velka for her thieving, mischievous ways, she was all he needed to fulfil his monthly need of patting. He was keener on scratching Rave’s cat ears, if he was being honest.

After about an hour, he had to put the pariah before a choice. “So, I’ll have to go to work soon,” he told her, “Do you want to stay here or do you want to head back home with me for some private time?” He worded it carefully because of the kids running around.

Nia considered that long and carefully, holding a seal in her arms like a large plushie.

“Home,” she finally answered.