by Kris Schnee
Bah. How was he going to get his Talisman back? He couldn't even get in easy contact with Ms. Parker because he'd relied on the game for communication with her and didn't have her actual e-mail address. Nor could he arrange for travel off-site.
What keeps me here isn't walls or chains; it's just a game where someone said I "have to" play a certain way. The point of the Community's game, the thing he was being rewarded for, wasn't so much a healthy lifestyle as obedience. If the rules suddenly changed to tell everyone to get naked or set themselves on fire, then that's what the good citizens would do. Stan fumed, then slept.
* * *
The next day he found Mina while working in the greenhouse. She, too, had been assigned to the sweaty mid-day shift today. He cleared his throat and tried to think of something diplomatic to say. "So. I guess you've heard what happened yesterday."
She looked stricken. "I didn't report you. Hal saw you weren't there for our event, he checked the logs, and then he got totally distracted. We were just standing around for ten minutes while he contacted somebody higher up. It sounded like he got info on your movement and network traffic. At first he was worried for you, but then he figured out you'd left town for a Thousand Tales event. And then he was ticked." She shook her head. "I've never seen him like that."
"He ranted about the Tales people somehow being Nazis," Stan said. "Something about how their company is hurting people."
"I'm pretty sure their AIs don't go around clubbing people to death."
Stan went through the motions of inspecting the experimental crops, going along the rows with her. "Then what's Hal's deal? He wants to enforce the rules, sure, but he's usually all smiles even when there're problems."
Mina gasped. "You know, I think he might actually be a person!"
"Uh...?"
She laughed and poked him with a ruler. "He's allowed to have feelings of his own, you know. Maybe he overreacted. I guess he just hates people running off unannounced, or he hates that game."
"Fair enough," he said, and smiled sheepishly. "I do want my Talisman back, though. And is Eddie in trouble too?"
"Hal took his machine but just gave him a wrist-slap for having unauthorized hardware on the network."
They worked quietly together. There was no game to keep his mind busy, but it was at least nice to be here with company. Mina eventually said, "Are you going to turn things around now and get a good score? Hey, why're you laughing?"
Stan stifled his guffaw. "Sorry. I was just imagining everyone stuffing their faces with ice cream because there was some new directive from the dairy industry and we wanted to get points for it." He'd imagined Mina in particular, scarfing down three gallons of Rocky Road because the rules now said it was good for her, but it didn't seem wise to specify.
"That wouldn't happen without a good reason."
Stan looked up from the plants and said, "Seriously? I mean, is there a point where you'd ever say, screw the rules; this one's stupid and I'm not doing it? Because that's what happened to me. And I think that scares Baron Hal. What if we all told him no to something? He'd stamp his feet and take away our points and say we have to stay in our rooms. And if we said no to that..."
Mina's laughter was nervous, a little hollow. "Have you been playing some kind of revolution game with that AI?"
"Actually no. My main character's the world's poorest smith, and..." It was okay to tell her, to share a little embarrassment with her. "My second character's a princess hanging out with nobles in a palace."
Mina coughed into her fist. "You? I didn't think you were the type to play one."
"Well, if you're going to use a third-person camera and stare at a character from behind, you know. Anyway you're better-looking. And the lessons aren't just in-game stuff. I would've loved to take high school courses this way instead of sitting in a classroom with thirty other kids." His eyes widened. "There probably are kids growing up training this way. Right now. A generation that has individual, personal tutors."
"Yeah, and telling everybody you're special, you're a prince or princess, even though the whole world's moved on from having royalty."
"Has it, really? We joke about Hal being a 'Baron', but he's not the only Community overlord to have that kind of nickname." Stan shook his head. "It probably would be stupid to tell every kid they're super special. In this game, though, you really aren't special unless you earn it." He told Mina about the "Royal Succession" contest and about his adventures in trying to be an island-hopping hero with a burlap sack and a wooden club.
Mina listened with interest. "If you behave yourself, maybe Hal will be willing to give the game back."
"Maybe. For now, though, I'm cut off from it. If you get the chance to leave the Community, maybe you can get in contact with a friend of mine and let her know I'm okay. I have her address but not her e-mail. Oh! I'm in the market for cheap remote-control drones, too."
"Why?"
Stan said, "To make money renting access to them for the game's uploaders and AIs. They'd pay to 'go outside' to an exotic location like our backyard."
She stared at him as though rethinking everything he'd told her about the game. "Did they put you up to that?"
"No, it was my idea. Mostly."
"That's kind of cool. You could chisel some money out of the rich people instead of the other way around."
* * *
Stan applied himself to the SCS. Besides Hal's judgment counting for one-seventh of his score, there were the six categories: Health (exercise, diet), Contribution (work, education) and Participation (social events, media use). Over the next week Stan worked out more often and ate exactly what the recommendations said. The Diet system was meant to be a fun little game with bonuses for, say, eating a mystery vegetable that was announced after dinner, like bingo. So, Stan made sure he sampled every single veggie on offer, like buying all the lottery tickets. Exercise? He worked out for the specified time on the specified exercises, exactly as recommended; he really had been behind on cardio. His work schedule was already assigned, but he volunteered for literally every opportunity that opened up. Most of the time he wasn't selected since someone else had signed up too, but he got credit for offering.
For Education and both parts of Participation, he showed up for every possible social event, every sing-along and movie night and lecture. While he was attending, he found ways to leave early or do something else at the same time. He was particularly proud of one time he watched a cartoon about sharing with his fellow 18-20 year olds, while using his Slab to post a short, cheery reply to every single topic on the Community forum, and paying adequate attention to an educational game about time management. He even controlled his water usage by doing the sponge-bath thing half the time. He was a model citizen, even if he didn't smell too good.
After a week of this strategy, Mina caught on. She came to him just before curfew and found him slumped exhausted in his chair, poking at his Slab. Talking ice cream cones in many flavors bounced around on the screen to teach him about diversity.
"You can't keep this up, you know," she said. "Can I come in?"
The evil vanilla cone exhorted the mint one to stop being minty. Stan was mostly ignoring them and skimming a borrowed paper book instead. He yawned and said, "Sure, come in. And, I can work hard longer than Hal can stay mad."
"I don't know about that. When that thread about Thousand Tales popped up on the forum and I squelched it, I had the chance to ask the Baron what his problem with the game really was."
"He wouldn't tell me."
"Of course not. You'd already gotten him mad. He knows I'm in his corner, so I could ask."
What was that saying Ms. Parker had used in conversation, once? "Only Nixon could go to China." It had taken her a while to explain it.
"Huh?"
"Nothing. I feel like I just gained points in diplomacy. So what'd he say?"
Mina leaned back against Stan's dresser. "Hal has a sister named Clementine. Ludo talked her into going to work at
one of the uploading clinics."
"And?"
She grinned and folded her arms. "Well, royal diplomat? You tell me."
"Where did the sister go? It'd have to be outside the country... Oh, I get it. Hal's so gung ho about his rules that he thought Clementine would be too, running a Community of her own or something. But instead she left the US, and they probably had a big argument about why."
"Basically yeah. She was a medic studying brain disorders and behavioral problems like Chronic Material Attachment."
"What?" said Stan.
"I had to look it up. It's the syndrome of being crazy insistent that nobody can take anything from you."
Stan laughed. "Mina, do you really believe in half this, this propaganda?"
She looked away from him. "I looked up your friend Parker in town. Told her what happened and that you're okay. She got all righteous on me like I'd kidnapped you."
"Thank you," Stan said.
"For what it's worth, she thinks you're pretty great for 'your rotten generation'."
"So are you. I started getting interested in the Tales educational stuff partly because I'm a slacker and I saw you're not."
"I know how to work with the system," she said, looking a little vain. "If you'd play along too, and I don't mean trying to smartass your way through it like you're doing, you could get into a college and work to reform things. Rearrange the rules, make the score system more reasonable, make sure honest folks are running things. You might be good at the Community supervisor job."
He tried to picture that. Sir Stan, running a little manor with an ever-changing array of kids farming and toiling under his command. "What did Ludo say to Clementine, to make her drop what she was doing and run off to join the digital circus?"
"I don't know. Scary thought, that maybe it was something the AI said. Some web of illusions and fantasy so convincing that it can make somebody rethink their life."
It probably wasn't just that Clementine had played the game and decided she really, really wanted to upload and become a space ferret or something. "Whatever happened, I bet she had to be ready to hear it. Ludo's not magic; he can't just send a robot to tap you on the head and whisper something and bam, you join forces."
But Ludo had shown him things, let him learn and explore and create, made him uneasy, gotten him thinking. Stan imagined zooming out from the Community and seeing how scrip flowed from Baron Hal to the residents and out to local businesses, then back to the central government. At the same time, a totally different system of imaginary money sloshed around in Talespace and a third network of favor-trading was bridging the worlds. He saw the near-identical standard clothing he and Mina were wearing and how it marked them. He saw the very walls and furniture of his room as living space, working space, that didn't have to be used for this particular type of Community but could be set to any purpose or even reassembled into something totally new. There were so many other ways of seeing this world than through the lens of one set of rules! He was a pawn in games much bigger than himself, but... he didn't have to be.
"Are you all right?" said Mina.
His face and hands felt like the blood had drained from them, leaving him in dread as though preparing for a battle. "I think, when Ludo or his minions say the right words to you, you don't necessarily know it at the time."
* * *
Another week of hard work and a blur of activities Stan didn't care about. The Slab's little games and the Community's activities were so dull that he buzzed his way through the book he'd borrowed from Eddie -- Technology In the Ancient World by Hodges, about ancient smiths and wheel-wrights and how inventions came about -- and into a book called Life In a Medieval Town that he found online. It was great to learn this stuff on his own, outside of any official channels, but he hardly had time for anything but filling in all the possible checkboxes to maximize his SCS. Also, damn it, he wanted to play Thousand Tales!
Mina shared a table with him over dinner. "I went out to visit Ms. Parker again."
"How's she doing?" He'd gotten Parker's e-mail address from Mina last time, but the lady hadn't said anything about Mina's latest trip.
Mina said, "She let me play. Do not tell Hal."
Stan looked around the cafeteria. Nobody seemed to care and the microphones wouldn't either, so long as he didn't start using words like "assassinate". He said, "How was it?"
"As royal aspirant Prince Minos, I bring word that that the game is pretty convincing."
"Oh, bull. You picked the same scenario I got?"
"I thought it'd be fun. Parker wanted to do some space thing but I just watched over her shoulder for a few minutes and got bored of that."
"Which teacher did you pick?" Stan chattered happily with her about whether their designated rivals were real people, and about Mina's first lesson.
She'd tried to break the game by demanding to head for the palace kitchen, which led her to a surprisingly in-depth discussion of how to cater for hundreds of diners at once. "I guess I learned something," she admitted. "Probably it applies to feeding fantasy armies too. Or the Community."
"A prince who can feed his people can't be completely bad."
Mina nibbled at her salad. "Which is why you shouldn't be so hostile toward Hal."
"As long as he can take my stuff and order me around and there's nothing I can do about it, he's a bad guy to me. Even if he mostly does a decent job with this place."
She sighed. "At least we can agree on Parker being decent. She offered to show up before curfew tomorrow night with junk food and her Talisman."
"Really?"
"I thought your eyes would light up like that. You both make it sound like a prison visit. Does the game mean that much to you?"
"Not the game itself, so much as the chance to do something different, to see some friends again, to learn something that's not on an approved list."
* * *
The next evening, Stan ducked slightly early out of a showing of the documentary "Hands Across the Border" so he could sneak to the southeast corner of the Community. He felt like a criminal even though he was staying within the arbitrary rectangular bounds of the farmland, just off the road. Ms. Parker rode up and laughed at the sight of him. "I figured you were a bit of an addict."
"I can quit anytime I want to," Stan said. "But I don't want to. It's nice to see you, ma'am."
She got out of the car and pulled out a plastic tub of brownies and her Talisman. "Covert food and game delivery for you, then. Are they treating you okay?"
"I'm trying to get a perfect score on my diet..."
"You could forget to record that you actually had a decent dessert. I'm sure you'll work it right off, and you can share the rest with your friends."
Stan thanked her and took the food and the Talisman, then looked around awkwardly.
Parker noted that Stan wasn't leaving the grass. She said, "Have they put a shock collar on you, to zap you when you're out of bounds? I've pulled over just outside the lines; I doubt anyone will notice or care if you sit in my car."
Stan said, "Why are you doing this, ma'am?"
"The flowers, mostly." She grinned. "You have some class, and a bored old lady is allowed to have eccentric hobbies."
Stan sat in the backseat of the car and fired up the Talisman. This was the new model, so the controls were laid out a bit differently and there were two cameras on the front for a 3D view of him. The game's title screen was in his own style, boards and bronze in front of an ocean. There were cobwebs on the logo. "Ha ha." He gave Parker up front a glance; she had an ordinary tablet and was reading. He shrugged and jumped into the game, happy for the chance to sneak in a session. "Endless Isles, please."
He reappeared on Central Island, where he'd saved most recently. The big plan of sailing out in search of an AI to shake hands with was a silly one, but it was nice to have a goal at all. A friends list showed that Dominic the mage was online, so Stan sent him a hello. While waiting for a reply, Stan tried out magic again on the
beach. The Create and Metal elements together gave him a coin's worth of copper for each successful casting. There was a reasonably short cooldown time, so the spell was a dull but reliable income source. Knowing Ludo, though, if he stood there casting one spell over and over there'd soon be a land shark or a volcano to distract him.
With just a little new metal, Stan hefted his hammer and backpack, and hurried into action. First he dumped his backpack-load of lumber outside the workshop, and then he went looking for trouble. In the jungle he surprised a pair of those big lizards. They hopped back and let out a double snarl. Three of these things had been too many for him, but he'd been wounded at the time. These things were resources. Stan gave a quiet battle-cry (mindful of Ms. Parker) and leaped ahead to attack the one on his left.
They snapped at him, but he got in the first strike and darted behind a tree. From there it was hit and run until he landed a solid blow to one critter's head and knocked it out. He started trying to cast a spell on the vines near the other beast's feet, hoping to entangle the thing, but the process was too slow and he got slammed against a tree. [Major wound!]
He recovered, dodged, then found he'd lost his hammer. "I am not starting that whole process over again!" he said, and whipped out his knife for backup. He feinted twice to force the lizard back, grabbed the hammer in his other hand, then charged ferociously with both weapons until in a flurry of traded blows the second lizard was dead.