by A. J. Markam
“I’m filing a report on this incident,” John said.
AND IT WILL GO DOWN IN YOUR PERMANENT RECORD, I wanted to shout from the Violent Femmes song, but again bit my tongue.
I’d almost bitten it in half by now.
“Look, this job isn’t for everybody,” John said. “If you don’t like it, get out. If you don’t want to work here, then leave. But if you’re going to stay, then clean up your act. You make one more mistake of this magnitude and it’s a fireable offense. If you can’t be an adult on the job, don’t bother showing up for work tomorrow.”
FUCKING ASSHOLE.
I kept my expression carefully composed, though I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks and the muscles in my face twitching as I said, “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t. Dismissed,” John said, and turned back to his monitor.
I got up and walked out of the office.
Then I went and stomped around the grounds outside Westek for twenty minutes before all my fantasies of violent rage finally subsided to a manageable level.
Motherfucking PRICK! Condescending SHITHEAD!
I kept replaying the conversation in my mind, but this time used my esprit d’escalier to skewer him mercilessly.
Okay, it was actually more like berserker screaming than witty responses, but whatever.
You have now burned through all your residual goodwill.
WHY, JOHN? CUZ LEGAL SAID I COULDN’T SUE YOUR ASS ANYMORE?
There are standards to this job, and we expect you to uphold them.
WHAT, LIKE FUCKING ANGELS UP THE ASS? IS THAT PART OF THE STANDARDS, YOU GODDAMN HYPOCRITE?
Look, this job isn’t for everybody. If you don’t like it, get out. If you don’t want to work here, then leave.
OH, IT’S NOT FOR EVERYBODY, HUH? IS THAT – IS –
I slowed down and frowned.
His words kept bothering me for some reason.
If you don’t like it, get out. If you don’t want to work here, then leave.
…why did that sound familiar?
don’t like it
don’t want
like
want
I stopped in my tracks like somebody had punched me in the gut.
The Oracle.
…there is only ‘I like’ and ‘I do not like’…
…there is only ‘I want’ and ‘I do not want’…
…if you cannot abide the sunlight, ask the sun if it will stop shining…
…it may well set at your request…
…but if it does not accept your entreaties, then either stay and accept its light…
…or step into the shadow and look back no more…
How the fuck had the Oracle known this was going to happen with my job?!
Then I realized the obvious: she hadn’t. That was impossible.
Her advice to me was just boilerplate metaphysical mumbo jumbo. Thousands of people were going to hear it over the course of the game.
Like horoscopes and fortune cookies, it was just vague enough that people could read into it whatever they wanted and apply it to whatever situation they were in.
And yet…
There was some truth at the core, and that was what was hitting me hard.
Now that I had calmed down, I examined my position a bit more rationally.
I was fucking furious at how my boss had treated me – but as much as I hated John right now, I had to admit he had a point.
The way I’d acted in the dungeon towards the Four Assholios had been… well… let’s just say ‘egregious.’ I still thought it was funny and an epic pwning, but I had to admit it had been juvenile and tasteless.
And the fact was, I was on Westek’s dime when I did it. John had every right to bitch at me.
What if there had been video of what I’d done? What if the entire incident had gone viral? Westek would be looking at tens of millions of dollars’ worth of bad publicity. Maybe even hundreds of millions. I’d actually dodged a bullet by only getting an email complaint.
And I would have lost the best job I’d ever had. I was getting paid top dollar to live in a virtual fantasyland, do cool shit, and bang hot chicks.
And fall in love.
I suddenly felt ill. I hated that I couldn’t stop thinking about Alaria. At my lowest moments, I would always return to her and think about everything I’d lost.
But, again, I realized that the problem, ultimately, was me.
This entire downward spiral I found myself in was because of me. Not Alaria – me.
I’d done something really fucking stupid by trying to get the programmer to change her. I’d betrayed her trust, and I’d been dumped. Rightfully so.
It was time I accepted the consequences, let her go, move on with my life, and start acting like an adult.
Instead of a whiny little bitch.
There’s a part in Jimmy Buffett’s song ‘Margaritaville’ where he talks about there being a woman to blame, and in each successive verse he goes from ‘it’s nobody’s fault’ to ‘it could be my fault’ to ‘it’s my own damn fault.’
I’d finally moved into the ‘it’s my own damn fault’ phase.
…with the help of an old lady the size of a grasshopper.
I marched back up to John’s office and knocked on the door again.
He looked up. First he was surprised, then suspicious. “What is it?”
“I just wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier. I realize now I’ve been screwing up a lot lately, and I had a bad attitude. But things are going to be different from here on out. I promise.”
He looked a little shocked, then a tiny bit impressed. “Alright – I’m glad to hear it.”
I nodded, said “Thanks,” and turned to go.
But something stopped me.
“John?” I asked.
“What,” he said, distracted by something on his monitor.
“You know the Oracle in the Tomb of Tharos?”
“What about her?”
“They pre-write everything she says, right? Like fortune cookies or horoscopes?”
“No,” John said, still only half-paying me attention. “It’s a form of AI like Alaria. The game actually analyzes all your actions and looks for patterns it can help you with in gameplay. So every time she says something, it’s personalized.”
I stood there in shock.
John looked up at me quizzically. “Why?”
“…no reason,” I said, stunned. “Thanks.”
John gave me a weird look as I closed the door and left.
Had the Oracle been able to predict my blow-up with John because of how I’d messed with the Four Douchebags?
It seemed unlikely… yet here we were.
All of her words still didn’t make sense to me, though. The whole thing about Ask the sun if it will stop shining didn’t really seem to apply to my current situation.
But if she hadn’t been talking about work, then what had she been talking about?
26
I logged back in and found myself in bed looking up at Meera standing next to me.
“Naughty Master, sleeping the day away. I thought we needed to get back to the dungeon.” Then her voice grew husky and suggestive. “Unless you want to spend the whole day in bed…”
If it had been Alaria suggesting it, I would have taken her up on it without hesitation.
But I’d had enough kinky sex for a while.
“Nope, we need to go to work,” I said as I jumped out of bed, ignoring her disappointed expression.
I got dressed, then we ate a quick breakfast and set off down the streets of Exardus.
I found myself unexpectedly cheerful. I even whistled a little Disney tune and thought of the REAL words in my head:
I owe,
I owe,
It’s off to work I go!
Or as my uncle used to say, Another day, another dollar. A million days, a million dollars.
Or gold pieces.
Whatever.
Stig and Blutus were waiting for us at the entrance to the dungeon. With them and Meera as my backup, I got invited to join a group quickly, and I led them through the maze.
Then we came out, and I did it again.
And again.
And again.
By the end of the day, I’d done it seven times and I was bushed – although we’d had another good day. Nobody had let me keep the entire treasure haul like yesterday, but I’d still walked off with loot worth 42 gold, for a two-day total of 83. Not too shabby.
Not only that, but I’d leveled up again. Level 17! No new powers, but my Mana, Intellect, and Stamina had all gotten another bump.
“Let’s go out and celebrate tonight,” I told the group.
“Or we can stay in and celebrate,” Meera purred.
“…let’s go out,” I said, ignoring her pouting.
We traded in my loot, which freed up my bags for the next day and put a pronounced jingle in my pocket.
On a whim, I decided to swing by the shipyards on our way home. I could keep three gold for the impending celebrations and give Varkus 80, which would put a small but symbolic dent in my debt.
“Wait here, guys,” I said, and left them by the docks.
I walked into the main office and asked for Varkus. A female goblin secretary, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and a piled-high bun of silver hair, looked me up and down snootily. “What is this in regards to?”
“I want to pay him back some money I owe him.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding surprised. “One moment, please.”
She stood up from her desk and disappeared through a wooden door.
“Send him in!” Varkus’s voice boomed from the next room over.
The secretary opened the door wide for me. “Mr. Gark will see you now.”
“Thank…”
My voice trailed off as two armored goons – one orc, the other a werewolf – dragged the beaten and black-eyed pulp of an elf past me. He was unconscious, and some of his limbs were bent in directions that God and Westek never intended.
I swallowed hard. I knew it was only a videogame, but Jesus.
Now I knew why the secretary had sounded surprised when I said I wanted to repay my debt. Most people who owed Varkus money didn’t walk in voluntarily on two legs; they needed to be dragged in.
And apparently dragged out, too.
I paused, then glanced over at the secretary.
She jerked her head towards the room as though to say, Go on, get on with it.
I took a deep breath, then walked through the door.
One victim out, another one in.
The goblin was sitting behind his desk, fat as a teapot in a doll’s chair.
“Ah, Mr. Hertzfelder, my favorite Warlock,” the goblin grinned, his monocle glinting against his green, warty face. “I hear you have my money.”
“Some of it,” I said, and proudly clacked down eight 10-gold coins on his desk.
He looked at the small pile in a manner I would describe as decidedly underwhelmed.
“Is that all?” he asked, puzzled.
“Well, it’s part of it,” I said defensively. “It’s just two days’ haul.”
“Two days, you say?… hrm.”
It was a somewhat alarming ‘hrm.’
“What?” I asked, my paranoia level creeping up.
“Is 40 gold what you would consider to be an average daily take from whatever… ‘activities’ you’ve engaged in to repay the loan?”
I could hear the air quotes loud and clear, and I didn’t like them.
“There’s no ‘activities’ – I’m grinding the Tomb of Tharos six or seven times a day.”
“Ah, yes, I see,” he said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Didn’t stop him from sweeping the gold pieces off the desk and into his vest pocket, though. “Once again – is this what you anticipate to be your average daily haul?”
“I…”
I stopped and did a quick walk down memory lane. Actually, I’d had something of a windfall that first day. The time with the Four Douchebags, I’d gotten all five pieces of treasure near the Ghoul graves for a total of five gold. And then the cool group had given me an extra piece of treasure… and that one group had given me all ten pieces of treasure from the dungeon, which was 15 gold in one fell swoop…
But I couldn’t count on getting that every day. In fact, I’d had to do an extra dungeon run today to get essentially the same amount.
“…more or less,” I said uneasily.
“More or less, hrm. Well, at EXACTLY 40 gold a day, seven days a week, you’d be able to pay off 280 gold a week.”
Jesus – seven days a week?!
That was a pretty rough schedule… if you weren’t in an immersion rig doing quality control for a videogame company, that is.
On the surface, though, 280 gold a week sounded pretty good.
But I could tell from the ominous undertone in the goblin’s voice that it wasn’t.
“The problem is, you’re incurring 10% interest per week. Compounded, by the way.”
“Ten percent per week?!” I shouted. “I never agreed to that!”
“Oh, but you did.” Varkus performed a little sleight-of-hand, and a rolled-up piece of parchment magically unfurled from his palm like he was unspooling a yoyo.
My contract.
Varkus pointed to a line of microscopic print. “Right there.”
I leaned in closer and squinted at the words.
Clause 29: Weekly Interest of 10% – Compounded.
Shit – that was over 520% annually! At least!
Of course, it made sense that the video game mob would be into loansharking, too.
Varkus continued. “Which means that every week you pay me 280 gold, you’ll be going at least 120 more into the hole. Which means that you will pay off your debt to me in precisely… oh… never.”
As I stood there, I could feel the blood slowly trickling out of my face. “Are you sure?”
“Heh heh… am I sure,” he chuckled to himself. “Of course I’m sure, I wrote the contract.”
Varkus pulled a cigar out of a fancy gold box and clipped the end off with a vicious-looking cigar cutter. He frowned, then rubbed a splotch of blood off the razor-sharp blade with a silk handkerchief.
“Hrm… thought I cleaned that after the last fellow I used it on,” he muttered to himself. Then he looked up at me and grinned. “He didn’t exactly pay me, but he did leave a tip. The tip of what, I won’t say.”
I shuddered.
The goblin lit his cigar and puffed on it. The air filled with the loathsome, bitter reek of goblin tobacco.
“Everything I’ve just said is based on the best possible case of a seven-day interest cycle, but – for the sake of simplifying things – I was ignoring the fact that you owe me the first week’s interest in two days, which means you’ll only net out 160 this week. Which means you’ll go from owing me 4400 in two days, to…”
He paused just a second to calculate in his head.
“…4664 next week.”
“Wait – no!” I protested. “4400 minus 160 is 4240 – ”
“And 10% interest on 4240 is 424, giving us 4664.”
Oh God.
I was starting to feel sick.
“So,” Varkus said as he puffed on his stogie, “I suggest you find a slightly more lucrative line of work. Maybe assassination for hire. I could point you in the right direction if you like, make a few introductions for a small finder’s fee. A bright young fellow like yourself could be pulling in, oh, 800 a week killing the right kind of people.”
My stomach turned. “What kind of people?”
“Oh, you know – politicians, judges, witnesses. Problem people.” The goblin smiled. “I could have you work for me, but you’d have to start off at the bottom, and I don’t pay my new hires more than 300 a week.”
“Doing what?” I asked, nauseated but still morbidly curious.
>
“Usually breaking the bones of other people who owe me money,” he said as he blew out a smoke ring. “Anyway… think about it. The assassination bit, I mean. Good business, that. Growth industry.”
“…okay,” I said, with no intention whatsoever of ‘thinking about it.’ Being a Warlock came with its own set of moral quandaries; I didn’t feel like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire by becoming a mob enforcer.
“And whatever you do, don’t even think about leaving town,” the goblin said.
Suddenly my hand felt strangely warm.
I held it up and stared in horror at the circular pattern glowing yellow on my skin.
It was the seal that Varkus had stamped there when I signed the contract.
“Because that will allow my men to track you wherever you are in the world,” he explained. “And when they find you, they won’t just break your legs.”
I swallowed hard as the seal faded away from my skin.
There was an uncomfortable silence as the goblin puffed on his cigar and eyed me with his cold, fish-like eyes.
I finally jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I, uh… I’m gonna go now.”
“Don’t stumble on any bodies on your way out,” he grinned, and then spun around slowly in his chair, giving me his back.
I walked out of his office in a daze, and threaded my way through the shipyard in the growing darkness.
400 a week – just to stay even! That wasn’t even paying down the principal, just the interest!
I would need almost 60 gold a day!
I could have solved this problem easily by going out on the internet and paying a thousand dollars on the black market for 4500 in-game gold. Even though Westek actively discouraged the practice, people with way more money than sense regularly farmed out their gold-making activities so they could afford that nice new flying mount, or buy their own Century Chickenhawk.
It would suck to pay out a healthy chunk of a paycheck just to get myself out of this Varkus jam, but it would suck even more to have to grind dungeons for the next three months.
However, it wasn’t the economics of the situation that decided me against it; it was my boss’s warning still ringing in my ears.
You don’t get to buy your way out of every problem. You got yourself into it, you get yourself out of it like any other player.
