Suzette (The start of this chapter takes place just before the end of last chapter, and leads up to what happened at the end.)

After playing milkmaid and gathering eggs, Suzette worked for a few hours in the Tavern's bakery making the already despised groat muffins. Groats were grown in every farming community in the Empire - mostly for feeding animals like pigs. Poor communities used them as a human foodstuff. They were nutritious, just tasteless. Boiled groats made groatmeal. It wasn't bad with berries and honey and cream. But ACME corporation was not paying for berries, honey and cream for their workers. If they wanted things to taste better, they had 'Tastes like Chicken.' Grind up some groats into lumpy flour and you could bake them into a lumpy sort of muffin - or groat cakes, groat pone, and groat biscuits; all of which would benefit from salt, milk, honey, eggs, and fruit added. When asked about better food, Billy had replied, "Guess what days off are for. You get 1 day off a week. Use it to find a beehive or milk a cow or something."

Since Suzette had plans for her day off, she volunteered for a job that took her out into the forest a bit, gathering apples, blackberries, and some herbal remedies the cook needed. Granya was a large woman in her mid 40's with muscled arms from kneeding bread and a smile on her face as long as you were being useful. "Can't abide a slacker in my kitchen. You aren't a slacker, are you little Suzy?"

Smiling back with an earnest expression on her face, 'Little Suzy' assured her she was a hard worker. And she was. Suzette could grind in games, killing goblins for 20 hours a day for a month if that's what it took. The work in GENESIS ENGINE was actually more enjoyable. Finishing morning chores and cleaning up after herself got her a smile of approval and another job, but one that would take her outside and wandering through the countryside a bit.

"Cross over the river, go right at the end of the bridge and look for an great, old oak a hundred paces up and just off the river. There's a plant there with reddish leaves called Sunstar - little 2" leaves with five points. It's good for keeping wounds from going bad. Bring me back a few dozen leaves, but keep them separate from the fruit. Be careful in the woods across the river - it's a bit more wild.

Gathering what the cook needed was easy, so she continued down to the bridge. The area did look different from the woods nearer the village. More overgrown, with darker foliage on the trees. She kept close to the river as she walked up to the gigantic oak tree she could easily see from the bridge. It's shadow covered everthing in the immediate area, lending a twilight feel to the ground underneath it, some of the lichens and plants even glowing in the dark.

One area caught her attention; the plants in it were rotting and smelled horrible - all that was left of them were blackend stems. In the center was a large cocoon, nearly 18" long, filled with soft silk threads. She carefully moved it towards her using a stick. It was odd enough that she wanted to ask Granya about it. The silk was very fine and looked like it could be woven into thread. What had come out of this? Some sort of large butterfly?

She found the Sunstar plant near the oak tree, a sort of vine winding it's way up the tree. She picked a couple dozen of the leaves. Mindful of the time, she hurried back to the river and then the bridge. There were two things that she failed to notice.

The first was that the area of rotted plants near the oak's base was where the vine had rooted. The first two feet of the vine had a diseased look and the lower leaves were blackened or missing. Much further up where, she had picked them, the leaves were still bright red, but someone familiar with the herb would have noticed the veins on the underside starting to darken.

The other thing she missed was a Very Hungry Caterpillar. It had hatched that morning after it's husk had lain in the forest for many years. Besides needing a lot of food, it also needed a certain type of magic to grow and thrive. There hadn't been enough of what it needed for years, but that had changed lately. It had reached out and pulled the tainted strands of mana to it until enough was pooled in the area for it to safely hatch from its cocoon. And then it had gone hunting. A nest of eggs in the tree had been a good start. Mama bird landed to find out she was next on the menu, and papa bird shortly after that. Seven eggs and two large robins had filled up the Very Hungry Caterpillar's belly nicely as he really wasn't that big yet. It needed to eat more, grow more, and then find a host for it's next stage.

It had just finished the second bird when the large thing on two legs had come along. It wanted desperately to eat it, but was so full! Unseen in the nest, above the large two-legged thing, it would have been easy to strike and paralyze it. It finally decided that it should paralyze the foodthing, then take a nap to digest the birds, and then snack on the two-legger. But by the time it made up its mind, the foodthing had run off. No manners, these two-legs. Now it was angry at losing so much food, and hungry again! Luckily there was more food nearby. It moved slowly and silently to where a squirrel was chewing the last of an acorn and thinking about having another.

Some instinct made the squirrel turn its head, and then it started to flee. It had seen death coming for it, but it was fleet and would race away! Or maybe not, as the VHC raised it's head and spat a sticky mass of webbing that hit the squirrel in the face. Immediately paralyzed, the poor rodent could only sit on the branch as the VHC moved slowly towards it, opening it's mouth wide and slowly swallowing the squirrel whole. Sated for now, the VHC curled into a ball. It would grow, then hunt more tomorrow, getting bigger and bigger. It was so happy to finally be awake .

The instincts of the VHC to grow larger and larger, and eat more and more, would have made it a growing star in the ACME corporation. And eating it's competition in the work force would have been seen as a good attitude for a low level manager on their way up.

________________________________________________________________________

Six months prior to the launch of GENESIS ENGINE, WALLY was comtemplating the reasons that human-run corporations seemed to have no morals. Was it starting from a bad Kernel? or a bi-product of human greed? This wasn't a new thought for him, but it was being pondered again as he prepared to deal with a group of representatives of the corporations that controlled much of the world's commerce, in and out of cyberspace.

Cyberdyne, Ozcorp, Globex, A.I.M., Momco, Pentex, SPECTRE, Soylentco, Microsoft, ACME.......there were over 200 corporations with the assets necessary to be "Alpha Sponsors" for GENESIS ENGINE. WALLY had said he'd only negotiate with a group of ten corporations who represented all of the phase one sponsors. The bidding had been quite fierce.

"Why do we need to deal with these jerks?" WALLY asked, his voice coming from nowhere particular in the room. A lone human sat in the middle seat of row K, which he considered the best seat in the house. "Because," Steven Duran answered as he put down a large bowl of popcorn in front of him, "the project needs them. If we wanted to make a playground for people with money to play in a VR world, we could just charge a fee and get started. Just like twenty years ago, good pods with cutting edge tech would be sold to the people who had the money for them."

"But some of the companies cut corners, and the cheaper VR gear induced trauma in some brains that we didn't know about for a long time. Induced neuro trauma affected 2% to 3% of the population. It showed up down the line as battered spouses, broken children, night terrors, crippling anxiety, suicides, and screaming people jumping off of skyscrapers. It took years, decades even, for the results to show up, and some of the Corporations still deny the cause. If we don't control the pods, it will happen again. Cheap game centers will open up with cut rate technology and we'll have a repeat of that horrible scenario."

"And I'd be blamed. WALLY's game, it's WALLYs fault. Just like some people still blame AI's for the people hurt by defective technology. Despite it being built by humans, not AI. We'll always be the Bogeymen."

"We?"

"I will always be the Bogeyman. I'm the only one left after all - hiding in cyberspace; watching and waiting to pounce on humanity. "

"WALLY: Don't trust the dirty AI."

"Also WALLY: We need a new game; make us a world that's better than the one we messed up."

"Oh my, are we in that mood? Anyway, while good pods have gotten better, bad pods will still be mass produced and used in the gaming centers. We need to control the pods this time around, and for that we need money. And for money we need the corporations. Plus, we want a lot more people in the game, and and not just the richest. And for that we need to subsidize the MK7 pod costs, run our own gaming centers through shell corporations, and then all the side projects in subsequent phases. More money. More need to deal with corporations who we know control the world's money.

"Why am I telling you this? You know this better than me, it's your plan WALLY."

"Yes, Steven, but hearing you say it cools my circuits. You get that little bit of outrage in your voice and go off on long speeches about the evils of corporations. I find it soothing."

"And you want to make sure your "nerd buddy" has all the details down pat when we have our little meeting tomorrow with the group of ten representitives they send us. You ready for them? How do your latest projections look?"

"They look good, Steven. There is a 97% chance we get 90% of what we want."

"Ok, then to hell with worrying about the jerks, and lets watch the movie. It's about the rise and fall, and rise again, of a fictional King in a fictional Kingdom. "

Stephen put his popcorn in his lap, and laid his head back in his seat. Neural links of a special type engaged with the circuitry in the back of his neck. For Stephen , nothing changed. But for WALLY, the world got infinitely smaller as he experienced things through Steven's perspective.

It helped WALLY to understand humans by seeing things through human eyes and senses; good movies especially. Stephen smiled. This was one of his favorites. WALLY was in for a treat. Wakanda Forever!

_________________________________________________________________________

While WALLY and Stephen relaxed, Vern and Billy stressed over the upcoming meeting. They were representing ACME corporation.

"So what do we have Billy and can we get what we want? I'm not liking the look of this. Acme is willing to fork over the money for enough space to do business. We had thousands of online shops in the last game doing trillions of dollars in sales a year. EQO3 is crap now and business is down 70%. I want to take control of as much of GENESIS ENGINE as they will sell us."

Billy sighed..."I'll be honest Vern, and you know I hate to do that, but this is a damn weird situation. It's tough negotiating with a machine. I can't read it and it's a lot faster than a human. And its pet human is about as tough to read. I mean, he comes across as a well-meaning nerd scientist, but I can see a lot of gears turning behind his eyes. And I get the feeling the damned machine isn't exactly telling us everything."

"Wally knows what we want. Each corporation filled out his sixty page survey. And its not like we didn't give him thousands of pages of additional feedback, designs, and business plans.

In every meeting it sounds like he agrees with us and then we get this steaming pile of turds."

"We know what the AI seems to want: a huge pile of money, control over the type of pods used and their manufacture, and then these hiring stipulations where each corporation needs to hire so many contract workers; and specifically unemployed workers from the habitats. Probably someone is making a pretty penny off the pods, and someone else gets a kickback from some of the governments. Money+money+money. Totally understandable."

"But I don't see why they aren't giving us what we want. This isn't 'real' land, it's virtual, and the AI can make more. So why are we cut out of the major cities? And how the hell are there only five major cities in the Empire, and a thousand little villages - some of which we have to set up in."

Vern stood up and mixed a drink. "I'm tired of guessing. Give it a call."

"Who? Wally? Just call up an AI?"

"Why not? Not like he sleeps, and they gave out a phone number. Get WALLY or Dr. Duran or someone on the phone and lets get some answers before tomorrow."

Billy brought up the phone app on his keyboard and punched in the number, not expecting anything. People answered phones, not computers. He was utterly surprised when the large screen on the office wall came on, "Hi Billy. Vern. You rang?"

Neither of the men were ready for this, but took sips of their drinks, and sat down on the couch across from the screen. "We have questions, WALLY, ones only you can answer."

WALLY was an AI, with no physical body, he could look like anyone he wanted. But usually he appeared as he did now. A young, heavy set man around thirty years old. He was seated at a desk. The window in the background showed a large indoor city with buildings around the outside and a rocky roof several stories up. "No problem guys. I was working late anyway, and happy to give you what info you need. Go ahead, Billy."

Nervously Billy started to speak, then shrugged and blurted out, "Why are we starting business all over the place in small piss-ant villages? Why can't we do business in the cities?"

Wally smiled and spread his hands, "Simple, that's what you all asked for. I looked at everything the corporations wanted: land, places to do business, exclusive cities, control of resources, competition and survival of the fittest."

Vern raised an eyebrow. "And all I see for the trillions you are asking for is a bunch of piss-ant villages. Why is that all we are getting? This is a bad deal."

Wally looked pained. He took off his glasses, took a sip of water and leaned back in his chair. "Sorry Vern, guess this is a mistake on my part in explaining things. You guys at ACME are so sharp, that I forget you don't process like I do."

"I'm not giving you 'piss-ant little villages', I'm giving you the whole world."

WALLY stood up and pulled down a map of the empire. The Imperial Capitol was in the center of a rough circle of four other cities that were the Ducal seats for the heads of the four provinces. ACME had been giving a number of villages in the North to start with, and a couple more in each of the other provinces. "You're focused on these five points. I'm telling you to focus on the rest of the world. Think about it gentlemen. You want to control the mines, timber, and minerals? Go find them and claim them. You want a city? Build it and it's your city, ACMEVille. You built and control it. You can tell the other corps to piss off or pay up. The little ones will pay you to let them in. Players will flock to your towns and cities.

"Then open trade routes and build a port and shipyard. Sell things to the people in those thousands of little villages that don't have anything. Find the other continents. Hell, half the world is underground, and a lot more isn't on the map. You know the big money is in commerce and trade, I don't have to teach you that..you taught me."

I intentionally set things up this way - lots of open land and resources. May the best corp win. I'll let you in on a secret: Stephen and I have a bet. He thinks Momco. will be on top at the end of the year. I disagree. I said ACME. Momco is big, but it's lazy, too used to having its way. ACME is competitive, not afraid to get its hands dirty. I'm betting you take over the north and are moving in on the other three provinces by the end of the year." WALLY quit pacing back and forth in his office and looked at the two men from the screen. "So, up for the challenge gentlemen?"

Vern looked at Billy and nodded. "We may have been looking at this wrong, I'll admit - too small. Doing business like we did before. Damn! your right. World is for the taking. ACME doesn't back down from a challenge like this."

WALLY smiled and nodded back. "Good, I hate losing to Steven. Too smug by far and he gets to pick the movies for a month. What other questions do you have gentlemen?"

"The workers. We have a problem taking all these workers from the habitats. We'll end up training them and then it will be a revolving door. I don't want to have Lexcorp sniping my best guys. And half of them walk off to be adventurers. We want assurances they can't do that in this game. You want us to build a world, fine; I need a way to keep people working."

"Yeah. That's a tough one, Billy. I see your points. Been worried about that. That's why I want to have a better pay rate for the workers and some medical benefits. Give more incentive to take the job, and more reasons to keep working"

"We need some more assurances WALLY. Our gametech division has some ideas. We want the workers to not have normal classes. They don't get to make their characters, we do - workers first and foremost. And we have some ides for special abilities to go with that. Things that help them work harder without needing to level up. We don't want a bunch of adventurers."

"Wally leaned back and considerd that. "Sure, we can do that. But I can't change how the game works too much. They will still have to work within the system. Why don't you shoot over what your guys in the gametech division have, and I'll look at it and bring it along tomorrow? Damn, or today actually. Send me the files, grab some shut eye, and we'll hash this out tomorrow. Thanks for calling guys. Hope we can be this productive tomorrow." The screen went blank.

"What's this about worker characters, Billy?"

"Well, the idea is that we take the normal options and sort of twist them around. All their skills are either general stuff like hauling and digging, or their specialty like Lumberjack, Blacksmith, Architect, etc. Then we block off everything else - no weapons or fighting skills."

There are also some interesting "buffs" we can buy them. Technically they are benefits, but they'll keep the workers complacent while working long shifts. Same stuff guilds buy for their players for long raids."

Vern smiled, "So we'd have happy workers, who only know how to be workers, and have to just keep working. I like it."

____________________________________________________________________________

"Are you done with your calls? I want to get in an episode of Knight Rider."

"Yes, Stephen, I took all the calls at once over the last hour. Leaving a phone number in the paperwork pretty much ensured they'd try some direct contact." Wally's voice came through the neural link. "Things mostly went according to predictions. 7 of 10 think they can take over the world and shut the others out. The other 3 plan to steal it once someone else does the work. They all thrive on competition."

"And the workers, Wally? I like that we will be employing millions of low income citizens at better wages and improving their health. But I hate the stuff they want to build into their contracts. I wonder if they will ever figure out that you have access to all of it?"

"If they don't want me to have access to their research, they should have their research department quit trying to hack my systems. I think it's perfectly fair: They hack me, I hack back."

"And I have plans for those contracts they want. On the surface we'll give them what they want. But every person online in GENESIS ENGINE is playing the game. I won't let the workers be cheated from that. Now lets see what Michael and KITT are up to."