Crafter's Passion

by Kris Schnee

  * * *

  Stan slept uneasily, dreaming of being surrounded by a chorus of nagging voices that all stopped suddenly, leaving him in a void. He woke in a cold sweat. Around him was his comforting little room and the faint hum of air conditioning. He flung his thin blanket aside and tried to cool off. He was going to be slimy and gross if he didn't shower, but he was using too much shower water. He'd have to compromise.

  Stan grabbed a towel for decency and walked into the bathroom. Rather than scan his ID card into the shower stalls to start tracking water, he just wet the towel down briefly with a sink and retreated to a stall to wipe the sweat off himself.

  He felt cleaner, yet ridiculous. "Is this how it's always going to be?" he asked no one. "Some tycoon gets turned into an immortal and only has to worry about how he should have fun today, while I have to take sponge baths?" The fact that he was spending time thinking about it reminded him that somebody like Oro had all the time he wanted.

  He went back to his room and used his Slab to do some research. Thousand Tales had a fan-made wiki and other guides, forums and related sites, most of which weren't censored on the American Internet or this Community's. The main wiki had all sorts of information about the game. He looked up Oroblanco but found nothing. What about uploaders? There was a lot of info about them, or at least rumor. He read:

  [Time rate: One oddity of uploader and AI characters' lives is that they experience time at a different rate than us. A human brain runs on about 18 watts of power but the digital mind systems aren't nearly so efficient, yet. Between power usage and available processing power, these "residents" think and live at a varying time rate that averages around 1/3 or 1/4 of real-time. Your resident friends might have trouble keeping up with you!]

  Boo hoo, thought Stan. Wait a minute. What else can't they do well? Are they, like, disabled in there?

  He kept researching. Residents of the game world, "Talespace" in their slang, sometimes went outside to the real world by operating robots. In reality their powers were limited to whatever the bots could do, and Ludo didn't have any (known) army of machines as good as humans. Come to think of it, Oro's bandoleer had looked beat-up; could their stuff get damaged? Yes, said the wiki. [Equipped items need maintenance to maintain their quality and appearance, especially after taking damage.]

  The game had given everybody pointless busywork. Or maybe it was a way to limit how much stuff people could have; somebody like Oro couldn't have a dozen magic palaces and racecars without them rusting to ruin. Unlike some real-world bigshot who could just hire maids and butlers.

  Actually, why can't they do that in Talespace? There was an opportunity here. A way to get paid within the game. It would be harder to turn virtual coins into real money, but he could probably at least swing a continued game subscription if he earned enough. Maybe he'd continue making friends with Oro and other immortals, and one of them would pay his way into Talespace.

  He scoffed. I sound like a girl wishing for a prince to whisk her away. Stan yawned and noticed he'd gotten a reply from Mina, saying yes to the baking invitation. She was even online at this hour. Before he could think too much about it he typed [Hi!] to her.

  From her own little room Mina wrote back, [You can't sleep either?]

  It was easier to write the second time. [Wondering what I'm going to do with my life. The uploading thing bothers me.]

  [It won't last. That'll get banned or hacked to heck.]

  He'd assumed that the uploaders had it made, that they were invincible now, but that wasn't true if their whole system got shut down. [If I got in, I'd fight back against that.]

  [Well obviously.] Mina paused. [Everybody wants to survive, even if they're not real people.]

  [You don't think they count?]

  [If we're going to argue, we should be in the kitchen!]

  Stan wrote, [It's almost midnight!]

  [So? We'll be quiet. It'll be fun.]

  * * *

  The rules didn't require them to be in their rooms, just to remain in the dorm after curfew and not to go into anyone else's room. So, Stan's first chance to hang out with Mina consisted of furtive, quiet baking in dim light. She was extra stealthy, wearing grey pajamas over her dark skin. It was fun working with her on a couple dozen chocolate chip cookies. Once they'd done the hard part and gotten the oven going she said, "We might get some extra credit from Baron Hal in the morning."

  "I didn't show up to get SCS points for my cooking work." Stan blinked. "I wasn't thinking about my score at all."

  "Well, you should. I'm getting out of here after next year and going to college. You?"

  Stan stared into the oven, which had the brightest light in the kitchen. "I don't know. I would've said, get done with my service years and then bum around, go to a trade school or something. My brother's in the army, and... I guess they've kind of straightened him out, but I don't think that's for me."

  "Why not?"

  He said, "It's too hard. Why go through all that trouble of getting shouted at and maybe shot at?" Stan shook his head. "I'm kind of rattled after playing some Thousand Tales and meeting one of the uploaders."

  Mina folded her arms and leaned back against the counter. "Yeah, that'd freak me out. They don't even have souls."

  He didn't know how to answer that. "The game doesn't tell you who's what. But I managed to sell stuff to one of them, and I bet I could get real money or favors."

  She listened while he went on about the idea of doing in-game maintenance for them or selling them things they didn't have time to gather. Then she laughed. "Sounds like you enjoy figuring out how to exploit the game more than the game itself."

  "I hadn't thought of it that way. I'd just been fooling around and seeing what it can do. You can turn just about anything into a resource."

  They chattered for a while about the game and their work, until they both couldn't quit yawning. Stan watched Mina lean over to check on the oven and she came up smiling. "Looks done." They brought out the fresh cookies and left them on the counter for the smell to waft through the dorm, maybe infiltrating people's dreams.

  He said, "I'm on shift for making breakfast for everybody tomorrow, anyway. Thanks for staying up."

  The scent got to him, giving him mixed-up dreams of killer robots who could only be placated with cookies. He had to make them within the game because that was the only way they could eat, like offerings to ghosts. In return they offered him one wish, but he had no idea what to ask for, and so he missed his chance.

  * * *

  He was on kitchen duty all morning and afternoon instead of doing field work. Hal, the Community's director, had forced him to put the treats away for lunch because "you kids shouldn't be eating junk for breakfast". Fair enough; Stan figured it was Hal's job to keep everyone healthy, though he doubted eating the same thing for lunch helped any.

  He itched to play Thousand Tales' audio mode at work, but couldn't do it while he was in the kitchen with other people who might tattle about his playing the supposedly-forbidden game. They mostly zoned out with educational games on their Slab tablets that kept their official SCS education rankings high. He had no interest in "The Green Clean Team" or "Factory Fanatics", all meant as some kind of job training that tried not to be boring. Tried. Stan preferred his own game.

  Once the lunch shift was over, Stan had the rest of the day off. He hopped into Thousand Tales of course.

  On Island East-2 stood Stan, in the dungeon, with the rickety raft. He dragged it out to the beach, scavenged more wood and some interesting shells, and paddled his way back west. The raft disintegrated just as he got within sight of East-1. He held onto a chunk of wood to help him float but couldn't carry the rest in his pack. All he could do was start swimming! A scary fish swerved into his path but he managed to detour until it lost interest. Finally he sprawled onto the beach with a bunch of stat penalties for being wet and tired. Belatedly he realized, "I probably ruined everything in my backpack."

  A note said, [Nearly e
verything you're carrying is safe, like coins and a sealed bottle, but that can be a problem with other objects. There are several ways to get waterproofing.]

  That sounded reasonable. He'd assumed that jumping into the water with a load of items was harmless, but that was his own fault. "Fine."

  He headed west to Central Island across the bridge. So far he just had that crude backpack full of loot, and he couldn't carry much more without a better pack. He looked over the junky resources he'd scavenged, then the things he'd looted off his party members' bodies. None of the equipment was listed as magical, and the item descriptions were starting to give him more serious labels like [Crude Wooden Bow] for Alaya's weapon. Even he could probably make something better with a little practice.

  He could make something better! That could be fun. Besides, he'd swiped this gear from people he'd agreed to help, so maybe he could replace or upgrade the stuff by way of apology. Stan headed over to the Crown & Tail's workbench to give it a try. Along the way he jumped around for the fun of bounding up the sunny shore.

  He tapped the bench of tools and tried to fix up some items, but it buzzed at him. [Equipment repairs require access to improved crafting stations.]

  The bartender directed him to the "maker workshop" a ways inland from the beach. It looked like an old fort, a squat wooden cabin surrounded by a spiky wall of logs. Why not a giant golden palace? Probably it had been built by the players using the game's own physics. That was pretty neat. He walked right in through the open gate.

  Inside was a craftsman's playground. Saws, drills and other tools covered some of the tables. A whole corner was devoted to colorful glassware and bubbling fluids. A green-robed figure was busy at that alchemy station, pouring beakers one into another and making puffs of steam. The only other person working here was a smith in a leather apron and goggles, making a pleasant rhythmic ringing of metal. Behind him loomed a forge where slabs of metal were glowing cherry-red.

  Stan looked around and asked, "Is this stuff open to the community?"

  The alchemist turned around. He had deep violet scales like a dragon on his nearly human face, and waved with hands that were clawed and scaled like gloves that stopped near his wrists. "Yeah, but it's expected that you pay five copper a day." A sign on the wall called that a suggested donation.

  Stan grumbled. "I've just started to get money."

  "You're obviously new. I'll cover you for today." The part-dragon walked over to a coin box.

  Stan interrupted him. "I want to do it. I'll pay." He fished out his own coins and paid the fare. He was poorer again, but he wasn't just taking someone else's stuff. Well, he did backstab his teammates earlier, but that was fair play. Or at least within the rules.

  The alchemist tilted his head. "Whatever. Was there something you wanted to make?"

  Stan pulled out one of the damaged wooden armor bits. "I was hoping to repair these."

  "That stuff's junk, you know."

  Stan fumed. "Of course it's junk. I don't have anything better. I've never had anything better. I don't know what I'm doing and I've got only newbie skills and I want to get something done, okay?"

  "Whoa, whoa." The craftsman did a belated animation of holding his hands out defensively, as the game picked up on his player's words. "Are you more concerned with your skills, or with getting better equipment? Because I could probably just give --"

  The smith said, "I wouldn't even suggest it." He was intent on some kind of puzzle that hung in midair above the anvil; he was only pretending to hammer while he rearranged some grid of dots representing metal forging. "The lad wants to be his own man. Let him."

  "I thought you were an NPC," the alchemist said. The smith just grinned at him. "Well, fine, newbie. Skill practice, then?"

  Stan nodded, and was a little surprised at himself. If somebody handed him the Mythic Armor of Awesomeness, he'd just be a flailing idiot in a nice outfit. Or... or if he had a ship like the one he'd seen, he wouldn't know how to use it.

  "Then before you repair anything, you could try crafting from scratch. Start with the auto-crafting system and make similar armor pieces."

  "I already made this club with the advanced system."

  The alchemist peered at it. "Huh, that's good for a first try. But you don't seem to know about smoothness and balance." He rattled off a few game-rules details about shaping objects.

  The smith said, "You'll need wood. And for that you'll want to borrow an axe, which I happen to have." He finished his puzzle with a triumphant little fanfare, and the dots burst into sparks and transformed the glowing lump of metal into an iron-hafted axe. He dipped it into a barrel of water, probably for show. "Go chop down a tree and chop up some chunks to work on."

  Stan cursed silently. His pack was stuffed with the loot from the dungeon, including the stolen equipment, but he had only been able to save a little of the wood he'd harvested. "I'm not keeping the axe though."

  "Borrow, I said. Bring back more wood than you need, maybe?"

  Stan dumped out his bag of loot and left the workshop to find the nearest trees. The island had plenty of palms; they probably regenerated quickly. He found one about a foot across and equipped the fresh iron axe, imagining that it'd still be warm in his hands. The wood-cutting itself was pretty boring and his attention started to wander.

  [Try advanced mode?] asked the game. Stan shrugged and said "Yes." A rapidly varying power meter appeared so that he had to aim and time his axe strikes instead of just mashing a button. A window popped up to mention the idea of notching one side of the tree to control how it would fall, something he hadn't known about. When the trunk finally snapped he dodged and then went to work hacking it into chunks that took him two trips to carry, along with more palm fronds and a coconut.

  [The coconut is the plant's seed.]

  Stan looked at the ruined stump, which was fading out to become a dirt hole. He shrugged, tossed the coconut into it, and covered it up. Maybe the forest didn't just respawn all on its own, since this island didn't reset.

  Back in the workshop he returned the axe, hopped over to the woodworking corner, and messed around. A swarm of tutorial windows offered to show him all sorts of things about lathes and planes and drills. He knew most of that from having gone through a wood-shop class in high school, where he'd made a C+ quality birdhouse and a B- whistle that both got collected at the class' end and scrapped. Now, instead, he built a pair of wooden arm-guards for some adventurer to battle the undead with. Then a second pair that was actually halfway decent. The wood itself started with a slight quality bonus for his manual chopping, labeled "OK Lumberjack".

  "Maybe a tackle block next?" the smith suggested. "You could sell it to any shipwright."

  Stan called up the plans and built a tricky three-piece pulley sort of thing that he had to assemble with wood glue and pegs. As he sanded the wood and whacked it a few times to test its strength, he started to imagine using it to haul sails into the sky. There'd be a ton of work involved in making a real ship piece by piece. It was a totally impractical idea. But he'd just made one of those pieces, and someone might actually want what he'd built. He smiled up at the smith and said, "What else can I make?"

  He disassembled the bone swords and shields (basically worthless, he was told) and used the material to reinforce the arm-guards, also adding palm-fiber cord to tie them on with. The cords weren't part of the blueprint; he'd just asked how you were supposed to put the things on. One little upgrade later and the statistics for the guards showed that they'd be less cumbersome for the change.

  He tried glueing together the damaged equipment he'd swiped, using some exaggerated repair system that turned into an abstract puzzle to justify undoing the items' damage. The alchemist saw him fixing the wand and laughed at the thing. "If you want to do magic, you'll want better gear than that."

  "It's not mine." He wasn't sure he wanted to bother with the magic system, but it could be fun to try. "What would I need to get started? Just wood like this?"
/>   "Spellbook?" said the smith.

  "B-O-O-K," the alchemist answered. "No, that's for lame wizard-style magic. For the shaman system it's easier to start. You basically get a wand with the coolest materials you can find, then --"

  An armored swordsman burst in, shouting, "Sharks!"

  The smith grabbed his hammer. "All right, let's go. Coming, lad?"

  Stan hastily equipped a pair of the wooden arm-guards and picked up his club. "A fight?" He followed and the dragon-man came along too.

  The shark attack was on shore, not off. A dozen humanoid sharks had waded ashore with nets and spears to start raiding the town. Stan laughed at them, but then he was only seeing them through a screen and in third-person mode. He flicked the camera into first-person and had to admit the effect was scarier.

  The island's adventurers spilled out of the Crown & Tail and a few other buildings to join the battle. Stan followed the smith's lead and targeted the nearest shark. The monster towered over them all. It lunged at them teeth-first and took a hammer and club to its snout. Stan expected it to fall back but it just got more aggressive, fighting with close stabs and slashes of its spear. He got jabbed for a major wound, parried the next blow with a satisfying sound effect and a splash of color, and struck back at its arms.

  Then another shark-man he hadn't noticed snagged him in a ragged net. Stan yelped, then looked around his room as though anyone would care about the noise. In the game there was a display of what buttons to mash to try breaking free, but nothing worked. He was getting dragged into the ocean despite the craftsmen, who were busy.

  It didn't really matter since it'd just mean a loss of items, and he'd left most of his stuff back in the workshop. He quickly brought up his inventory. He was going to lose that potion Oroblanco had given him; it was in his "pockets". The gunner had said it was for use while swimming. Instead of fighting the net he tried to use the bottle.

  The camera went to third-person to show him growing, stretching, until he burst free of the net in a flick of... fins? He was solid grey, a horizontal fluked tail thrashed behind him, and his air meter had expanded. He was a dolphin!