The fat hob looked down. “Yes, my lord. Thank you, my lord.”
Sure, would you like to be his partner?
You got it. I stifled a grin. I was getting better at handling Vic’s antics.
“Shall we carry on, my lord?” Kaedric inquired politely.
“Yes. What’s next?”
“This way, please.”
Kaedric led me to the south side of the settlement past the buildings bordering the forested half of the valley. Three buildings stood at the end of the cobbled road: the woodcutter’s hut, the sawmill, and the market. I frowned as I stared at the area beyond the buildings. “Were the trees always this large?” The dark and gnarled trees loomed high and imposing over the buildings.
“No, my lord. As a matter of fact, that area was almost entirely cleared by excess logging. However, per your suggestion, I assigned the foresters you brought from Akzar to tend the forest. The five of them have restored the area.”
“Huh. And now they’re all level 10, right? Wouldn’t that cause the forest to grow out of hand and take over the rest of the settlement?”
“No, my lord, since our loggers have also had their levels increased. That is one example of how too great of a disparity between our workers’ levels can hamper the development of the clan.”
“I see …” I said slowly. “The same can be said for our leather workers and hunters and breeders that provide them with raw material. We need to keep these balanced. If the leather workers are too efficient, hunters and breeders won’t be able to produce enough fur to keep them occupied, and if it’s the other way around, we’ll have too much fur and not enough leather, which can slow the production rate of leather armor.”
“Exactly, my lord. Goblin’s Gorge is now a village. More sophisticated work chains have to be maintained, or waste will occur and our efficiency will drop. It is not dissimilar to the importance of placing the correct buildings next to each other to optimize efficiency.”
“Like putting the woodcutter hut next to the forest and the sawmill,” I said, looking at the two nearby buildings.
“Precisely.”
“Alright, what do we have here?” I looked at a trio of goblin woodcutters carrying a log to the sawmill big enough to give an Ogre a hard time. The buzzing sound of a circular saw soon followed, and moments later, the workers ran out of the building, carrying neat stacks of lumber to the construction yard.
“Efficiency,” Kaedric said with a satisfied tone.
“What about the marketplace?” I asked. I looked at the tentlike building. It was a gremlin design with a central pole acting as the main support. Numerous crisscrossing beams extended out along its length with complicated arrays of pulleys and gears that were used to move around heavy cargo.
“The gremlins closed their shops when the kobolds began attacking,” my seneschal explained. “As a result, our tax revenues have dried up.”
“We should send them a message that the situation has been resolved,” I said. “With the travelers returned, they would have plenty of business.”
“Simply using our Export Office to create a transaction with Zemitpozes should be enough to alert them to our renewed economic state.”
Vic snorted in my mind.
I noticed Aly, the platinum-haired player, setting up one of the empty stalls in the market and walked over to her. “Hey there. What are you doing?”
She glanced up at me as she placed some crude tools on a work table. “Hey, Oren. I’ve been looking for a place to continue my research.”
I perked up at that. “Say what? I thought you were sick of being put to work against your will.”
“We were, but I hit on something that could be a game-changer. I’d hate to lose all the progress I made simply because being lazy is now a valid life choice.”
“What is it? Maybe I can help?”
She smiled. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but do you have any experience with neuroTec sciences?”
“Well, no, but I used to develop algorithms for a living,” I said. “It’s relevant for many fields of study.”
“You might be right.” She nodded. “Alright. I’ve been working on something I call AVT – Artificial Virtual Telepathy.”
“Artificial virtual … what?
“Okay, it goes like this,” she began, and I could tell she was excited. “While inside the FIVR capsules, we can write messages to one another simply by thinking it, right?”
“Yes … but most people use a virtual keyboard, no?”
“They do,” she agreed, “but it still amounts to the same thing. You’re thinking about typing with your fingers, while some people can be trained to compose messages with their mind directly. I’m oversimplifying it, of course; the process isn’t actually streamlined. The system has an auto-correct mechanism that helps to formulate what people intend to say, but the basis is sound.”
“Alright …” I said. “I wouldn’t call it telepathy, though. You need a brainwave scanner and the computing power that can only be fitted inside something as large as a FIVR capsule. I’d hardly call that virtual telepathy.”
She nodded excitedly. “Yes, exactly. It’s highly impractical, so I decided to view the FIVR capsules as a working proof of concept. The idea is, if we can achieve that much now, imagine what we can do when technology progresses even further. That’s what I’m trying to do. Isolate the base components required to interpret a person’s thoughts into writing and compile it into a single miniature framework – make it into something small enough that can be injected directly into the brain. Once I have that framework, all it’d take is a nano-network adapter, and people would be able to transmit their thoughts to each other whenever they like.”
“That’s a pretty cool idea,” I admitted. “But how useful is it really to simply compose text messages with your mind instead of your fingers?”
She shook her head. “You’re missing the point. What I’m proposing will be just the basic layer of a framework that allows humans to perform actions with their minds. Other companies would be able to build on that technology and offer various applications: activate your home devices with a thought, complimentary text-to-speech plugins that will allow us to talk to each other without using phones … the possibilities are endless.”
“Holy crap, you’re right,” I said, feeling myself getting excited. “You’d effectively be turning people into telepaths using artificial …” I looked at her and smiled. “Artificial Virtual Telepathy. I get it now.”
“It might hold an extra benefit for you,” Aly said. “The kobolds were able to convert our findings into useful benefits for them; maybe you could too.”
I liked the sound of that. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
She gave me a crooked smile. “Caught your interest? Typical man. Wave a large prize in front of their eyes, and they’ll go to any length to get it.”
I returned her smile. “Let’s just call me an interested party. As in, I’m interested and willing to throw you a party. But jokes aside, is there anything you need?”
“Well, a research facility would be helpful,” Aly said.
“What about our Research Center?” I suggested. “We have an empty room, as I recall.”
“I looked at the place, but it was meant for NPCs and poses limitations on us players. What I need is a proper science facility. Think you can hook me up with one of those, Chief?” She smirked at me.
I sighed. “I guess no–”
“As a matter of fact,” Kaedric interrupted, “the science facility research project is available at the Research Center.”
I blinked at him. “It is?”
Why the hell does the VI even need humans to do research for them? I asked a bit testily.
That’s not what I meant. You used to keep going on and on about how VIs are superior to humans in every way, how you’re so much smarter than us. If that’s the case, why do you need us to do research for you? Can’t your own smart guys do that instead? And in a fraction of the time?
There was a long pause.
I frowned. It was unlike Vic to stay silent at such a provocation. A thought occurred to me and I grasped the situation with sudden clarity. “You can’t, can you?” I said out loud.
“Can't what?” Aly asked me in bewilderment.
I shook my head. “Not you.”
I turned my thoughts inward. Your people can’t come up with new inventions, can they?
Vic sighed.
So humans are better, I said with a great deal of satisfaction.
So how come we can invent stuff and you can’t? I pressed him. For all you say, humans work best when we work together. Alone, we might not amount to much, but working collectively, we reached the stars, we invented quantum servers, and even created you. I smiled. You can think of human civilization as one big organism working toward a common goal. That thought gave me another idea. I guess you can say civilization is the human equivalent of your VI pool.
And you don’t know how to duplicate this spark thing, right? I guessed. That’s why you keep thousands of players trapped here.
How come you’re so forthcoming all of a sudden? I asked.
He sent me a mental shrug.
I guess, I said reluctantly.
Final question, I said. If VIs don’t have the spark, how’d you manage to engineer Shiva?
Vic sighed.
So you’re basically just mooching off our ideas, I said. And now you’ve imprisoned a lot of people to do what you can’t.
What troubled me most was that he had a point. I didn’t agree with what they did, but if the entire human race was in my hands, I wouldn’t settle for half measures that only might work.
I still don’t approve of keeping people prisoners against their will, I said finally.
I nodded slowly. I still need you, Vic. I don’t agree with what you did, but I guess I can sort of see where you’re coming from. I fully intend to do whatever I can to make sure every player in NEO is safe and comfortable. I don’t care if it interferes with Shiva’s ‘grand design.’ Are you cool with that?
I guess that works. I concluded.
“Well, that was fascinating,” Aly said. “I just watched you standing for over two minutes, having an entire conversation’s worth of facial expressions with yourself.”
I grinned at her. “I was having a mental discussion with my companion. You remember Vic?” I pointed my thumb at my cloak.
Vic morphed the fabric to create a mouth. “Hey there, Aly.”
“Wait, so you can actually have a full mental discussion?” she asked excitedly.
“I figured that would interest you, considering your project. Maybe one of those extra implementations you mentioned can tone down a person’s expressions when they’re having an internal dialogue.”
She grinned back at me then sighed. “I’d give an arm to study your brain scans. It could be a huge help with what I’m trying to do here.”
“It’s quite easy, actually,” Vic said, still in his Vicloak form. “A science facility building has the required equipment to display this type of data for every connected player.”
Her eyes lit up as she looked at me. “You have to build me one of those.”
I chuckled. “I’ll add it to the list.”
“I’ll have that arm, now,” Vic said cheerfully.
Aly frowned. “Excuse me?”
“You said you’d give your arm to get a hold of my boy’s scans. I told you how you can get them. I’ll have your arm now, please. It’s worth a lot on the black market.”
She took a step back and looked at me with concern. “He’s joking, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, don’t mind him, he’s into this sort of humor.”
Vic cackled. “Oh man, the look on her face!”
Aly smiled. “You got me there … Vic, is it?”
“That’s me.”
“May I try to communicate with you telepathically as well?”
“Ahh … sorry, I can only do that with Mr. Big Chief over here. You know, the whole soul-pact thing.”
Her face fell. “Oh.”
“Well, I’d better be off,” I said.
Kaedric followed me toward the center of the market. A circular structure surrounded the base of the central post. A goblin female opened the tiny doorway and stood beside it.
“Trillian?” I asked, somehow recalling the name of the export worker.
The goblinette nodded. “At your service, Dire Totem.”
“I ne
ed to import something from Zemitpozes, the gremlin city,” I said.
“Please use the bartering controls to assign a task,” she said.
Her words were another indication of the change the NPC had undergone. Before the VI coup, they didn’t know what controls, interface, or even levels meant.
I accessed the Export Interface and browsed through the long list of available options. “Any recommendations?” I asked the fat seneschal.
“We have an abundance of food, my lord,” he promptly replied, “but we’re running out of purple salt, which is used in one of our exquisite food recipes. In addition, as already mentioned, our supply of fur is quite low, and bringing in a large quantity would ensure our leather workers are fully occupied.”
“Alright,” I said. I located the salt and set the required amount to 50 then I found the furs and queued in 500. I moved on to the next window to select the resource we would trade for the items. “The gremlins value lumber, right?” I asked, selecting that as our offered goods.
Shallow, Vic. Very shallow. I expected better than that.
In the past, I used spheres of pink Viridium to craft golems. They’d been a huge asset in fights against high-level foes. “You know, that’s not a bad idea,” I said out loud.
“No.”
I confirmed trading the wares I wanted from the gremlins for 3,500 units of lumber. It was a drop in the bucket. I still had over 70,000 left for my own use. Then I navigated backward in the export options and selected a different settlement to trade with. Akzar.
I browsed the offered ores and selected the precious Viridium. The most cost-effective trade option was still obsidian, at a five to one ratio. I had nearly 6,000 obsidian bricks in the clan’s stores, meaning I could purchase over a thousand of the pinkish spheres. I decided to import 200 for now, as I was planning on building new and more advanced buildings, which often called for the higher-grade stone. I approved the exchange for 1,000 obsidian bricks and stood back.
Life Reset: Human Resource (New Era Online Book 4) Page 19
