The Gamer Chapter 1090 – New Year’s 1 - The girl that just wanted to game (Patreon)

“Yes, Mom, I’m sure… yeah, I know… Stefanie is across the ocean anyway… I’m turning 19, it’s not a big deal… Love you too. See you later.” Lee hung up the phone and let out a lengthy sigh. “Is it normal that mothers keep pestering you about tea over every little occasion?”

“Kind of, yeah,” John confirmed.

“Can’t say,” Gnome, standing in for all of the present humanoids without proper parents, gave her opinion.

“If she cares enough to call ya,” Rave gave a half-joking response.

“If she even knows you exist,” Nia added and made the room go silent.

“If she doesn’t watch your dad beat you,” Eliana growled into the quiet. In response, Siena giggled, which seemed, and was, incredibly tactless. What would have been unacceptable behaviour towards a stranger was just how she and the pretty little psycho bonded. “What the fucking fuck is so funny, you edgy cuntwaffle?!”

“Congratulations, you just won the depression games.”

“I always win those. It’s the only thing I have, now that I can’t even eradicate this worthless fucking species.” As she said that, Eliana sounded gradually more like Thana. It happened sometimes and was fundamentally not alarming. With how much of Eliza’s traits usually dominated, the failed goddess had to have her moments as well.

Undine put her arms around the smaller girl and pulled her into a hug, “You have us.”

“Don’t you fucking pity me! This isn’t about me, it’s her cock-slobbering birthday!” Eliana gestured wildly towards Lee.

“It’s a day.” The gamer girl shrugged and threw her phone on the nightstand. “I’ll spend it like every year: playing whatever I want.” Quickly, she climbed onto the Couch. She was next to John, lying her curvy frame out on the Couch that extended to make it comfortable for her. Round butt attractively raised; she inched a little bit closer until her head was almost over his crotch. “Won’t be solely video games this year though,” she said and poked John’s quickly growing erection.

“Enjoy it while we still have time.” John groaned when her lips wrapped around the head of his cock and she took him as deep as the angle allowed. While her pretty pink mouth travelled back up, he reached his full hardness. “It’s going to be a busy day,” he sighed.

A pop announced Lee’s departure from his cock. It was a very temporary one, her face nuzzling against his cock. “Do you know how many doujins I read, wondering if I’d ever get to do this?” she asked, huffing his scent. “I feel like a member of a harem story, except I don’t just get sex but also everything else I could ask for.” She licked her way up to the tip, where she stopped for a moment. “Hey, Mat, Sylph, want to join me over here?”

“Fuck, if you’re offering,” the First of Wrath said, while Sylph was over in a storm of words that was too fast to really comprehend. It also ended immediately when she landed in front of John. Kissing his balls, fondling them carefully, she sent pleasurable electricity through his cock. Metra mirrored Lee’s position, laying down on her stomach to John’s left.

“Thish ish what I like,” Lee slurred, half licking her side of his cock and half making out with Metra.

John felt a little bad that this was about as much of a birthday gift as he would give Lee. Like Scarlett, she seemed to have absolutely no care for the day. Not that he could blame her. The one birthday he did care about had been this year’s, but that was more because it marked the anniversary of his powers than because he got older.

They would have gotten her something if Lee had asked for anything. Between the gaming PCs, the recent Christmas gift, and the sex, she was absolutely happy though. The problem with low maintenance partners was that it was really difficult to pamper them. What John could do was let her do as she wanted and maybe give her a little spanking in the next hour or so.

It was the morning of the 31st of December, 2018. Because the day would be exceedingly busy, with numerous events planned before and after midnight, the coming two hours would be the last time they had a chance to have sex this year. Nothing special had been organized, and in a way, John preferred that. The special occasion orgies were nice, but they would lose their charm if they happened so quickly one after the other. Letting things escalate into various sexual engagements, large and small, like they usually did at this hour of the day, put a nice line under the developments of the year.

They lived the dream life. A simple visualizer gave a video to the beat that was playing via the flatscreen. Rave was making out with Scarlett, Siena was touching herself, Gnome was reading something on her phone, Undine was still cuddling with Eliana, Nathalia was sitting on Salamander’s face, Aclysia was over in the kitchen, preparing their breakfast, and Momo was sitting between Beatrice and Nia, making out with both of them in turn or at the same time. Everyone, sexually engaged or not, was clearly happy where they were. A warmth filled the room that had nothing to do with the summerly weather outside. Only Lydia was missing and they would see her soon enough.

Their last breakfast of the year was scrambled eggs with bacon. The last big orgy happened in the shower. The last game they played together was Mario Kart. It was an exceedingly usual day. Lee revelled in it. John revelled in it. The harem revelled in it.

Then duty called.

__________________________________________________________________________

The unpleasant part of having power was responsibility. John could import ingredients for his meals from the entire globe and expect a discount on half of them just so some people somewhere else could get a favour from him. In return, he had to spend the majority of the day running around and making last minute preparations.

“I couldn’t possibly…” one of his organizers said to him, stopping when the Gamer raised his hand.

“Is that screen running?” he asked and pointed at the massive contraption mounted to the side of a building. It was one of several dozen event spots all over the city and, provided that the local organizers hadn’t screwed up, one of hundreds across the entire Federation.

The idea was simple: provide public areas for people to coalesce around and celebrate the new year together. Around each screen, federally funded stands handed out food and drink. ‘Funded’ in this case meant ‘subsidized’, meaning the things on offer were incredibly cheap (for festival food). It doubled as a scheme to further the Token’s presence in everyone’s pockets, as the subsidized parties were obligated to use the lower value coins as change, while also accepting dollars. It let the least valuable coins get into circulation.

The only downside of this was that the exchange rate was entirely made up, because John had absolutely no idea how many dollars were flying around in his Federation, much less the Abyss at large. This lack of possible economic oversight (not even control, just accurate data collection) was just another reason that the dollar had to be banished from the internal market as soon as possible. How could one possibly decide on economic policy if there was no data?

So, the Tokens would most likely go out at a loss. Luckily the Mine was going to get upgraded soon.

None of that mattered for the current predicament though. “Is that screen running?” John asked again, when the organizer hesitated with his answer.

“No, Mister President,” he finally confessed.

“Do we need that screen to broadcast my speech and the final countdown?”

“We’re playing the song?”

“No, we’re not playing the song.” John remained calm, for now. “Stop distracting.”

“I assure you; we will get this done, Mister President.”

“But will it get done quicker if I haul this to its destination?” John tapped on a giant bundle of replacement cables, some as thick as his arm.

“Yes…” the organizer surrendered.

“Then tell me where to take it,” he demanded and was finally pointed in the right direction. Throwing the two hundred kilo of metal and rubber on his shoulders as if it was a simple piece of luggage, John carried the load to where it was meant to replace some faulty cables. ‘God bless his health, but if I ever have to deal with someone so reluctant to let me do manual labour again, I will fire them.’

This was far from the only incident that John had to deal with. Even as he unrolled the cables and climbed up the scaffolding to which the screen was attached to to get them to the right socket, his double was somewhere else in the city. A big event meant a great many things that could go wrong and, worse, it meant that there was a big number of organizers who wouldn’t dare ask for support until it was abundantly clear that it was either the request for help or failing in their task.

In a way, John found that behaviour laudable. Wanting to fix issues by oneself was an attitude he could respect, the problem was when there were people that, either due to pride or paranoia, didn’t know when they had to give up. The end result of that was that the final few hours of any large project was riddled with small and large emergencies that had to be fixed in a hurry. Many of them, John had accounted for. There was a reason why they had replacement cables immediately available. Should something come about that they weren’t prepared for or if their resources ran out, there was always winging it.

John was far from a construction worker. By now, however, he had spent enough time among craftsmen, builders, and resource gatherers that he had learned two lessons. One, humour in the field was often rough and, more importantly, two, an absolutely incredible amount of things were held together by makeshift solutions. Whether it was in programming, building, medicine, factory work or smithing. Wherever things were done manually, something would go wrong and be solved by either ingenuity or whatever the equivalent of duct tape was in the profession.

And there was absolutely no need to condemn most of it, because most of it worked. Whenever John wondered how humanity made it this far, he remembered the one time he visited a construction site for project management purposes. It had been an unannounced visit and so he had gotten to witness a bunch of construction workers taping together a number of beer bottles they had recently emptied. ‘What possible reason could there have been for that?’ had been the obvious question.

The answer was that the concrete floor had been meant to have a circular pattern on it, but the construction company had failed to provide precast plates with the pattern on it. The construction workers did have excess concrete powder though, so they just decided to get the job done by pouring the slabs themselves and imprinting the patterns via the bottom of the bottles.

It was absolutely genius. Not only did it work but they also had an excuse for drinking at the job. That was the kind of motivated work John loved to see. It was effective and it was hilarious. He had given all of them a raise and, as a joke, a card with the number of an anti-alcoholic therapist.

Those were the kinds of thoughts he distracted himself with, as he travelled all around the Hudson Barrier. As quick as he worked, there was no way he could have checked every event location and other issue by himself. Luckily, he had his harem to rely on. Everyone helped somewhere. Some, like Scarlett, were extremely useful in their specific field. Others, like Sylph, could only help as moral support or by being effective physical labourers.

Regardless, they got all the important things in order.