The Dao of Dug

Chapter 1

Yep, he was still in the back seat.

Looking in my rearview for the fifteenth time didn't make my passenger any less creepy. Unlike innocuous hitchhiker ghosts, this fucker didn’t appear to be intending to leave before we reached his destination. Misplaced hopes dashed, I tried to play it off like I was checking traffic.

I wasn't the kind of person who was put off by Goths or Punk Rockers, but the guy in my back seat was something else. It wasn't what he was wearing. Overall he had a clean-cut kind of look, real middle-american nobody. It was something in the set of his eyes and his smell that had alarm bells ringing in my head.

Hard but vacant and a touch too close together, his eyes likely got him the permanent creeper label in high school. That was already bad, but the smell was really freaking me out. It wasn’t the usual pothead thinking he can cover it up with cologne scent. I'd have been happier with even the dreaded "shat-his-pants after a bar crawl" stench.

It was ammonia-like and vinegary, like old sweat and something sinister. I could have lived with that, but the fun didn’t stop there.

The creep was either jacking it through his hoodie pouch or fondling something knife-shaped. Neither was a fantastic option, but I wanted it to be the former instead of the latter. A fact which was a strong indicator of how genuinely fucking awful my decision to pick him up had been.

A decision I had made because I thought I was smarter than Dug.

Dug of the Grateful Dead T-shirt. The veteran driver who made sure I wouldn't veer into oncoming traffic or creep out passengers. He had spent a whole half hour with me before signing off on my employment after only driving three blocks. Dug had seemed like a pothead with a shit work ethic.

I wish I had listened to Dug. Dug knew what was up.

"Hey, listen!" Dug had giggled at his joke. I sat staring at him, hoping he'd get out of my car already. He hadn't noticed my "vibe" and stared into the middle distance over my shoulder when he continued.

"Don't pick-up clean-cut dudes after midnight," he said, then nodded in agreement with himself.

"Why?" I'd asked, too confused to remember I wanted him to leave, not impart stoner wisdom. Instead, I was racking my brain, trying to figure out what reference he was mangling.

"Because like, only serial killers and evangers are out that late. Them and alchies. Alchies are cool if they tip," Dug said sagely. I nodded, only half-listening.

"Groovy," I said, and he nodded again. Then he finally got out of my car. I watched him walk back toward his own but felt like something was amiss. That the world was a little less complete when he got in instead of unfolding a scooter with a practiced snap.

Evangers. I assumed now that he meant evangelists. I'd had a couple ambush me on rides before. It had never been a pleasant experience. How anyone could think that would encourage people to accept a religion was beyond me. It was like trying to sell perfume expressly by spraying it in people's faces.

Despite the unpleasantness and that I was an atheist, I wished that was what was happening. I could easily suffer through being asked if I'd accepted the Baby Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

If I'd had the brain cells to spare, it might have become the moment I found religion. At the very least, God, Buddha, and Zeus would have been receiving some rather frantic prayers. Instead, I glanced back and caught a glitter of metal.

He definitely wasn't just touching himself. My mind scrambled for some way to not end up stabbed to death. I wasn't fond of math in the first place, and ending up a statistic would be adding insult to injury.

Insult to murder?

It didn’t matter but panic was insisting that tangents needed my attention resources too. That was when a warning message popped up on my heads-up display. The heads-up display I didn't have because those weren't real outside of movies.

Kill one person to qualify!

That was all it said. Staring at it, I heard a delighted cackle from the backseat but didn't register it as essential. I only had eyes for the impossible sign on my windshield. Something about the incongruity of it had my heart hammering in my chest louder than it had even when I realized I might be murdered.

What I was seeing wasn’t right on a fundamental level.

Somehow, I managed to tear my eyes away. Routine or some sixth sense reminding me I'd had my eyes off the road too long. Unlike what to do about the guy in the back, my next thoughts crystallized in an instant. I was heading for a busy pedestrian crossing, and there wasn't enough room to brake.

Everyone I was looking at was mid-bar-crawl and too slow to realize I was barreling toward them. It was my fault they were in danger. Mine, not the freak in the back seat.

I exhaled, the tension in my body releasing as I turned the wheel hard. The sound of metal and glass crushing was all I could hear as my car whipped into the phone pole. Knife in hand, the creep went flying past me and out where the windshield should have been.

It made me feel a little better to see him collide with the sidewalk despite the pain I was in. That guy could go fuck himself with his knife as far as I was concerned.

Vision blurry, it took a moment for me to realize the sign hadn't disappeared. It was floating in the air, but the message had changed:

Kills: 1

It said in its impersonal red letters. It looked like a shitty sans-serif font, the sort I'd have gotten a dirty look from my professor for use in a project. Ah, the art degree. The financial black hole I'd been busting my ass driving to pay for.

The number one wasn't stable. It shimmered before settling on two only to start shimmering again as I began to lose consciousness.

"We ask for one kill, and you give us three, including yourself. Nice initiative," a guy in a hooded robe said as I opened my eyes. I was seated at a beautiful desk in a comfy chair with an expensive-looking carpet under it. The guy in the robe had a nicer chair, but that was to be expected.

Whoever owned the office would have the best seat. Simple enough logic. That all of this floating in a swirling abyss had a less readily visible explanation.

"Uhm…what did I qualify for…Sir?" I asked after a few minutes passed while the Hood read something in a file folder. He looked up, and I realized I wasn't talking to a person so much as the abyss itself. I forced myself to blink, feeling I shouldn't look for too long.

"How polite… Oh, it seems there was a glitch with your invitation. Hahaha! You went for it not knowing that? You're a real go-getter," the Hood said. I smiled or at least forced my mouth into the general shape. It didn't feel like I was smiling, though, which was weird. After working customer service jobs for years, I was an expert at pasting them on.

"You are the winner of a prestigious opportunity to establish a Dungeon," the abyss began, manifesting cans of cola on its desk and pushing one toward me.

"You'll be competing against the forces of Order to accumulate points. Now, it's a very cushy position. Only it does come with quite a lot of management duties rather than hands-on killing," the Hood started, and there was a weird hitch in his shoulders like he was bracing for something.

"If you want to be knee-deep in blood, guts, and glory, we do have a few lesser opportunities. Demon Lord or Grand Calamity are particularly popular," the abyss continued as I drank my cola and listened. It was cherry vanilla, a flavor I had conflicting feelings about.

"May I ask some questions before I choose?" I asked, and it nodded. They nodded, I corrected myself. He didn't feel like any kind of human, but it was a shitty thing to use "it". Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should have been panicking. Or at least worried about my situation more than pronouns. I felt calm. Way too calm.

"You said "management" and "dungeon" earlier. I got a sim vibe from that. Is that the right idea ... like I'd be designing it and filling it with monsters?" I asked, hoping I was right. The Hood nodded again, and I felt like they were smiling somehow. A weak smile like a star had died somewhere in the universe, and I watched as the embers flicker out.

"Exactly," he said, sounding pleased but not hopeful.

"It's funny. Despite putting out games to indoctrinate your species, we’ve got a very low return on investment lately. The majority of you seem to only understand FPS or dating sims," he said and sounded tired. I nodded, feeling sympathetic. If he was dealing with "the hardcore" then his job was bound to be miserable. Most of them had likely never seen something like Sim World let alone played it.

Letting my guard down was a mistake, but one moment of sympathy was all it took. I had tutored my share of idiot savants who could draw with great skill but had all the imagination of toast. Thinking about them I felt I'd found a brother in arms. It was enough to make me forget I was too calm or wonder if there were cosmic roofies in my soda. The cherry vanilla soda that was now an orange one somehow.

"Would killing adventurers be the main source of points I could earn, or are there other methods?" I asked but wasn't hopeful for an alternative. I'd been a pretty serious tabletop RPG player at one point. Even though it had been years since I‘d had that kind of time, I remembered the basics. It was weird to think they'd been priming me for the situation I was in.

"I have to apologize. I'm not familiar with the more in-depth mechanics. You're the first person who's even asked about that," he said and I felt like I could detect a bit of embarrassment. It was strange to get impressions from a being that was face- and formless. It could have been something in his voice, but even when he paused, I felt as if I could see emotion.

"Okay… are there any specific drawbacks I should be aware of before starting?" I asked. It was the last question I could think of. Well, the last question I could think of I wanted to ask. There were plenty more I should have. Ones I'd be demanding answers to if my mind was working normally. Instead, I felt like most of them didn't matter or wouldn't be answered.

Chief among those I didn't want to know about was the current tally of points between the sides. The second was how much my contributions could tip the scale. I was happy with the idea of living in ignorance of the value of my contributions. It was cowardly, but I was comfortable with that.

"That I know of? Two," he said after some deliberation, seemingly lost in thought.

"If your dungeon consumes more energy than it produces, it will experience collapses. Newest to oldest parts”, The Hood informed me and then took a drink from his soda for the first time. It was odd to watch since I could hear the sounds of drinking but couldn't see anything.

"Second, if you fail to produce two points in your first calendar year you will be penalized. I'm not privy to what the penalty will be, but I'm pretty sure it's either death or torture," the Hood continued after some consideration. It wasn't such a bad thing unless the points were hard to get.

"Okay, can I request to start at the beginning of the year wherever I'm sent to do this?" I asked and was rewarded with another dying-star smile.

"Ha, normally we dump you in with only a week left of the calendar year. Since you asked though, I'll give you two," the Hood said and I got the feeling he was telling the truth. Like his smile, I wasn't sure where the feeling was coming from.

"Deal," I said and he blinked, taken aback.

"You'll take it?” he asked. He felt like a dude, but I felt like I was assuming things and just too embarrassed to ask, 'Hey, are you a guy? Cuz I feel like you're a guy and it's throwing me off.' I could hear the stupidity in the very thought. It didn't deserve to be spoken and I crushed it to death in a corner of my mind. The corner I usually reserved for imaginary spiders.

"It suits me better than Demon Lord at least," I said, not sure but not wanting to have to go kill things the old-fashioned way either. The dying-star smile collapsed into the brilliance of a Nova as he beamed at me.

"Excellent! You have style and smarts," the Hood said and offered me a hand to shake. I took it out of habit and as we shook the force of it traveled through my entire being. I had a feeling this was what they meant when they said ‘wrung like a gong’.

My vision turned murky and as it cleared I found I was sitting in a comfy chair at the foot of a mountain range. Before me stretched what seemed like endless desert punctuated by wind-sculpted stone. It took several minutes for me to accept the sudden change in scenery and an hour to absorb what I'd agreed to.

A thought struck me. "Who was the third person I killed?" I said aloud to the trees and mountains around me, recalling my stated kill count. I'd almost forgotten in all the weirdness.

"Eric Rashad, age 75, died of a heart attack when your car stopped only inches from him. You received a bonus since he didn't have a history of heart disease," he whispered in my ear, sending a shiver down my spine.

"Th-thanks," I said, nodding as I tried not to shit in my comfy chair.

"You’re welcome. I enjoyed our chat. Text me any time if you have a question, or just want to talk," the Hood said cheerfully in my mind before hanging up with an audible click.