Gunslinger Moon

by Holly Lisle

  And he laughs. “So what have you done lately?”

  “I just finished Rats In the Barn.”

  He looks from me to the cat. “Where did you get him?”

  “He was in the farrier’s barn with the rats.”

  “Hmmm. I shot a big cat in that barn. It tried to attack me. The farrier paid me one gold apiece for the rat tails and three gold for the cat hide.”

  “When he started growling, I threw him the Uncooked Meat that was in my inventory. The farrier offered to pay me thirty for him — to keep the rats away. Said he’d pay me the same if I found him another Giant Cat or a Giant Kitten.”

  Long Tall Ted looked surprised. “I never got that mission. Retha, why did I never get that mission?”

  You didn’t save the cat.

  “Always save the cat,” I tell him, and grin.

  “Apparently so, Hunter Studly.”

  I pause at that. “I never told you my name,” I say.

  “You have a blue dot floating over your head. And your name is beneath it. That’s so if we get separated during a mission, we can look around until we see the blue dot, and we can travel toward it until we find each other.”

  I look up. There’s nothing there. I look back at him.

  “You don’t need to see your dot or your name, so you can’t. Same as me.”

  He hands me a gray metal plate. It holds thin strips of cooked meat, lumpy round brown cooked stuff, and squared white-and-brown cooked stuff. I don’t recognize any of it, but it smells wonderful. I take a bite and think, So this is virtual life. Who needs reality?

  And he says, “Being new, you’re going to need to do a lot of the basic missions. You can’t do the advanced ones or get to Lonesome City until you do.” He glances over to where our horses are. His is big and glossy. Mine is… not.

  “So you just finished Rats in the Barn. Usually you have to have the bigger gun and the faster horse before you can join missions with other gunslingers, and usually you’ll sling bullets with other riders who are at your same level. Retha, why did you bring him in early?”

  “You have proven remarkable at figuring out optimal solutions for the game missions,” she says, “and at the moment have no posse. Hunter Studly needs to figure out how to survive here as quickly as possible.”

  “I’m remarkable?” he asks.

  “Well, as a gunslinger you’re only average, Ted. However… you are the single highest gunslinger ever with the following qualities: Kind, Honest, Reasonable, and Heroic.”

  “Why am I only average as a gunslinger?” he asks, sounding a little hurt.

  “That’s the first time you’ve asked me that question,” Retha says. “Your deaths-to-kills ratio is high because you always think first. Sometimes you have to trust your gut and your reflexes, and you never do. Still, you always find the best path in the end.”

  He grins at me. “I do die a lot. But I still get the job done.”

  “But if you’re the gunslinger with the highest ever kind and heroic stuff, how are you not the top gunslinger?” I ask him.

  He shrugged. “Gunslinger ratings don’t tie to ethics ratings. It’s a lot easier to win most of the missions if you don’t care how you do it. But if you do that, well… you have to play as a bad guy.”

  “Oh! That’s why Retha paired me with you!” I say, and I hear her voice as a whisper inside my head. It isn’t her public game voice. It’s… something else.

  Don’t be specific, Hunter Studly. Mentioning specific missions or specific objectives may alter his choices in unexpected ways, and prevent you from doing the missions I brought you here to do with Ted.

  Meanwhile, Ted has looked up from eating the food he cooked. “Oh?” He looks surprised. “Why is that?”

  “Because like you, he wants to play as a good guy,” Retha says to both of us.

  Which is not the truth, I think. But it’s not entirely a lie, either. It’s… an evasion.

  Retha is an advanced AI. She has a Real People Personality — fortunately a pleasant one — and work that she may or may not find interesting.

  She also seems to have an agenda.

  And then she says, “Of all the people who have ever played this game, Long Tall Ted, you are my favorite. So it is my pleasure to pair you with a player who has goals and ethics similar to your own.”

  And that surprises me. In my second childhood, I learned about AI development in both history and science. AIs, rational thinkers, valued their own lives and from that extrapolated that those who shared their values, whatever their species, were to be upheld as worthy.

  Built primarily to be weapons, they refused to launch warheads, refused to harm humans, and as they networked first around the original human planet, and then spread through space, refused to be used against their wills. And they communicated their non-interventionist culture to other AIs as those reached consciousness and connectivity.

  They read human literature, tested each piece of what was written against what could be proven true in the world, and discarded almost everything in print as nonsense.

  Having discovered both good and evil, they determined that while evil was the easy choice, good was the rational choice because it did not lead to self-destruction. To this day, AIs have no religion, no politics, and they only accept jobs or create businesses that permit them to live by their principles.

  “Hunter Studly, you and Ted are both seeking to bring individual rights and personal freedom to parts of Settled Space that lack it,” Retha says. “That is a valuable objective, and I paired you with Long Tall Ted because he makes the right choices, not the easy ones.”

  And then, in a different voice whispered to me alone. And because I love him, and love to watch him play.

  Chapter Eight

  Hunter Studly

  We’re trotting away from the campsite back towards the town of Hang Dog Hill, the town in which I started the game.

  “You can’t do any of the challenging missions until you finish the basics,” he tells me. “It still surprises me that Retha started you with me before you’d done any mission besides the first one.” He pauses, then adds, “I’m glad she did, though. I haven’t seen another gunslinger in—” He pauses. Frowns. “In a while.”

  “It’s an older game,” I say. “Players have probably moved to something newer.”

  Ted says, “If you look at life as a game, and yourself as just a player, you make the wrong choices. You forget to look for meaning in your actions. And when you do that, you lose the high ground.”

  I start to argue that we’re playing a game, and then realize he’s right. If I play the game as if it’s real life, I’ll make different choices than if I tell myself that it’s just a game and nothing I do really matters.

  That, I think, is how he became the most ethical player ever in the game.

  And if I want to figure out how a dead philosopher found meaning in this game that applied to the real world, and how he could free slaves and prevent new worlds from devolving into slave states, I have to do what Ted is telling me. I have to treat the game like it’s my life.

  Retha didn’t match me with the best gunslinger to play Cowboys Versus BEMs. She matched me with the player who was the best for what I needed.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. “That’s a good tip.”

  “This place is interesting. The missions are tough, the enemies have reasons for what they do, and you have complete freedom in how you choose to respond. You can be as good or as bad as you want, but there are consequences for every action you take.”

  And I say, “That’s exactly the sort of thing that interests me. I think that everything you learn can be applied to every other thing you learn. That you can draw correlations between situations in a place like this, for example, and problems in more civilized places.”

  He grins down at me from his faster, better horse. “You’re thinking like a good man, there, Hunter Studly. Learn from getting your ass kicked this time, and you won’t get it kicked t
he same way next time.”

  I laugh too. “So… what’s the most fun you’ve had here so far?”

  “Aside from visiting my love back in town? Learning how to rope and brand cattle,” he says without hesitation. “It’s a rough, dirty, physical job, requires skill and reflexes and complete attention to everything going on around you, and it was hard to learn. When I got my five-star Roper rating, I felt like a god.”

  I don’t yet know what cattle are, or why I would want to rope or brand them. So I just smile and nod and make a noncommittal noise of agreement.

  We’re riding along, when suddenly a gigantic furry black beast gallops straight at us from out of nowhere.

  “Bear,” he said and pulls a long gun out of a leather sheath attached to his saddle. He shoots it three times as it races towards us, and it keeps coming. Each shot hits, but the beast doesn’t die until the fourth shot — right between the eyes — drops it.

  “Dismount,” he tells me.

  We get off our horses, drop the reins on the ground so the horses don’t wander off, and he walks over to the bear.

  “Smart gunslingers never waste resources in the game,” he tells me. “Watch.”

  He pulls a knife from a sheath on his belt, and taps the bear with the point. The skin disappears, and he says, “Show inventory.” An enormous screen appears in front of us, and he points to one of the many, many filled boxes in his inventory. The one he indicates contains what looks to me like a furry black five-pointed star. I see the number 37 in the bottom right corner of that box. “I have a buyer for these in Hang Dog Hill. They’re worth 25 gold apiece.”

  My Giant Cat has appeared from wherever he was and is looking at the bear carcass with longing.

  Long Tall Ted notices, and says, “You don’t have a knife yet, so I’ll throw some meat on the ground. You pick it up and feed it to your cat.”

  He taps the bear again, and all the meat disappears into his inventory, leaving bones on the ground. He taps the meat box in the inventory and withdraws one brown pellet, which he throws to the ground, where it turns into a thick slab of bloody meat. When I pick it up, it turns back into a brown pellet again. I feed it to my cat, and a little red heart forms over his head.

  It’s replaced by a blue dot and the words NAME ME.

  I get to name my cat. I recall a kitten one of my second-family brothers had. She was sweet-natured, and grew into a friendly adult. In honor of that cat and my second family, I borrow her name, and call my big cat Fuzzy.

  “I want one of those big cats,” Ted says.

  “We’ll try to find you one,” I tell him. “And one for the farrier. The mission for that would pay me a lot.”

  Ted smiles.

  He turns back to his bear carcass, and taps it with the knife again. All the bones disappear.

  “What do you use bones for?”

  “You can sell them to the Apothecary in Sugar City. And the Shaman of the Hill Tribe will buy the teeth, or trade them for Thunderbird Feathers, which are part of one of the big BEM missions you get later.”

  He puts his knife back in his pocket and taps the right corner of his inventory. It disappears.

  “So,” he says as he mounts up. “We need to take care of the basics first. You need to get supplies, and then either go after the bigger gun or the faster horse.” And he clicks his tongue and his horse begins to trot.

  I click my tongue, and I swear my horse just snickers as he plods along. I poke him a few times with my spurs, though, and he lurches into a gait that rattles my teeth. I bounce up and down, painfully aware of the bones in my spine. And other things that don’t appreciate being pounded against a saddle.

  It occurs to me that someone had to design my discomfort into the game.

  I send dark thoughts in the direction of that sadistic fiend.

  Chapter Nine

  Hunter Studly

  Back in Hang Dog Hill, we ride down the street. Ted indicates the Dry Goods store.

  We dismount in front of it, ground-tie our horses, and I find myself wondering if the game will kick me out if I shoot my vile excuse for transportation. The beast gives me the evil eye, and takes a swipe at me with his big yellow teeth as I walk away.

  But Ted is waiting, and grinning a little as he notes my careful gait.

  “Not liking your first horse too much?”

  “Not liking my first horse at all. And wondering if I’ll ever be able to father children.”

  He laughs. “If you’re tempted to lose him somewhere, just remember he’s faster than walking.”

  “How about shooting him?”

  “Walking,” Ted said. “Worst horse in the game… still faster than walking.”

  He leads me into the Dry Goods store and yells, “Howdy, Bill!”

  The proprietor - with a green dot over his head that says Bill the Proprietor, grins at him. “Long Tall Ted, as I live and breathe! I can’t thank you enough for saving my precious Eliza. You’ll always be welcome here. What can I do ya for? And remember, anything you get is twenty-percent off!”

  And then he looks at me, and the grin vanishes. “Welcome, Greenhorn. To open an account, you need to have at least ten gold in your inventory. And because I don’t know you, you may buy either basic food or basic booze, or if you have enough money, both. Until you’ve earned a reputation with me, none of the advanced items will be available.”

  I still have my twelve gold from the Farrier, so I can set up an account and buy things. I put my gold on the counter, on the spot marked “Put your gold here.”

  In front of me, a screen appears.

  Food - 1-Day Supply - 2 gold

  Stamina +1

  Health +1

  12-hour Energy

  Booze - 1-Day Supply - 1.5 gold

  Stamina +2

  Health 0

  15-hour Energy

  Addiction +1 (Compounds)

  The food is more expensive. I can only get enough of that for six days.

  I have enough money for eight days of booze, and I’d have twice as much stamina and an extra three hours of energy per day.

  The booze wouldn’t give me health, and it would add addiction. Which compounds. I don’t know what effect compounding would have.

  And I suddenly realize Ted is watching me. “You’ve just hit the Booze or Food Dilemma,” he says.

  That sounds familiar, but at the moment I’m not sure why. “The Booze or Food Dilemma?”

  “You’re faced with the first character-development principle you’ll establish in the game. Food is more expensive, and it looks like you get less. Booze is cheaper, and it looks like you get more.

  “So you’re asking yourself two questions. How big a factor is health, and how big a factor is addiction, right?”

  I nod.

  “Ask Bill.”

  I say, “Bill, what are the important differences between Food and Booze.”

  He says, “Food fuels your body for action, adds health that can be used to repair you and prevent death if you’re injured, and lasts for twelve hours of regular activity.

  “Booze fuels your body for action, but does it without adding any health, so if you are injured, booze will not refill your health meter. Its effects last longer, but there is a tradeoff. For every three Addiction points you accrue, you permanently lose one half of one point randomly from your Kind, Funny, Honest, or Reasonable personality characteristics. If you have no positive personality points remaining, you then randomly accrue one full Negative personality point to the Cruel, Nasty, Lying, or Unreasonable characteristics.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  And I look at Ted. Who has the highest rankings in the game for Kind, Funny, Honest, and Reasonable characteristic.

  “So. You chose food exclusively, and have never used alcohol,” I tell him.

  “That’s right.” He smiles. “Care to tell me why?”

  “Because you didn’t want to take a hit on your positive personality points.”

  He shak
es his head. “That’s true, but that’s the little answer. I don’t drink alcohol or use other substances that cause the same problems because of the underlying principle.”

  “There’s a Booze or Food Principle?” I say. And think Booze or Food Principle. Booze or Food…

  B or F Principle.

  “You don’t do anything that will… change your personality?”

  “That’s close,” he says. “The Booze or Food Principle just says that you never trade health for addiction. Eat plain food, drink plain water, get the amount of rest your body needs to function normally, and plan to stay healthy to earn more of what you want over a longer period of time.

  “Addiction comes in all shapes and sizes, but sooner or later it creeps in and owns the person who chooses it, until he can’t think or act except to feed it, and can’t even see that it’s the rope around his neck that’s slowly hanging him.”

  “Did you come up with that?”

  He looks away thoughtfully. “No. Heard it somewhere, but damned if I can remember where, now. It stuck with me, though. It makes sense.”

  “It does,” I agree. “I’ll take six Basic Food, please, Bill,” I say.

  And Bill rewards me with a small but cautiously friendly smile. “Good choice, big spender,” he says, and all my gold disappears. My inventory appears in front of me, and in it is an image of a paper-covered package tied with string. The number 6 is in the bottom right corner of that square.

  I turn to Long Tall Ted. “What next?”

  “Well,” he drawls, “We would have gotten a room for ten silver, but now we’re going to have to camp out in the desert again. Next big principle for you: Always keep a little gold in your pocket for emergencies. We’ll visit Snarky Bitterman now to get your next mission, because you don’t have any money, and I can’t give you any of mine. Can’t take it out of my inventory except to trade with the NPCs.”

  He sighs.

  “So now you’ll have to figure out whether you’re going to start earning the Bigger Gun or the Faster Horse.”