PART SEVEN

I waited outside while 386 made the changes I’d requested. If I stayed within about ten meters of the dungeon, I could still hear him.

"Now this is a useful and interesting use of my time and mana," he said, like a sarky little butch.

"Get on with it," I demanded.

Yes, reader. Our universe was expanding.

Run Before You Can Walk

I knew that 386 was underwhelmed by his 'takings' on the first day, but I was excited. It was happening! I was doing something unique in the BetterVerse. There had to be a way to turn this into real-life cash! Forget 20,000 dollars a month - I’d have been happy with 200.

I made 386 get to work on our first expansion. Incredibly, the ungrateful little kids didn't come back the next day! In the end, it was four days before they returned. Four! What did they have to do that was better? Were they beaming the NBA playoffs direct onto the walls of their shirty little hovels?

Annoyed, I tried to research AI behaviour but most BV players aren't that interested in the minutia of NPC life, so the forums and wikis are pretty barren unless it's about combat or crafting or overpowered skills or bloody Ted Steel. As best I could tell, NPCs had 'schedule hierarchies'. So these kids would go to school if it was open. If the teacher wasn’t in school, the kids would forage for crumbs in the market IF the baker had baked fresh bread. If not, they'd go on a certain route that would intersect with various quest lines - so they could give clues to struggling players. If ALL THOSE THINGS weren't happening, then their AIs would be allowed to choose what to do that afternoon. So from their point of view, maybe they were coming back to the dungeon the next available slot.

The good news was that by the time they came again, 386 had finished my expansion, and without telling me, he'd made some changes of his own. Thankfully, these didn't involve spears or lava or razor wire. And even better, we hadn't spent that much mana. My Ski Ball trap had cost the minimum - 100 MP. It was just some wood with a bit of glass. 386 told me he was using glass ‘from his stock’ which is why the whole thing was so cheap, but I didn’t understand what he meant until chapter 10. (That’s weirdly meta. I’m not sure if I’ve just annoyed myself or if I think it’s pretty funny. Why not smash the like button and let me know in the comments? And don’t give me that ‘because it’s an ebook’ excuse. There’s a button somewhere. Smash it.)

[I'll be talking a lot more about 386's stock of materials. It turned out to be the biggest single factor affecting our success or failure. If you had heard of me before your aunt gave you this book, it's because I figured this out early on - quite by accident.]

I asked 386 to make a second Ski Slope, which should have cost 100 MP, but that's where he decided to get creative, and what he made ended up being more like 150. The new room I came up with was virtually free - it was literally just a room with some bits of glass strategically positioned and a modicum of shaped, painted wood. From those humble beginnings, I believe that this was the room that gave 386 the most joy. Which is ironic because he ducking hated it at first.

Identity Theft

The kids entered the dungeon with an extra friend in tow. Now there were 3 boys and 3 girls, or, as 386 described it: "Three of the boney, leaky ones and three of the soft, squishy ones." He added, full of disdain, "they talked the entire time. I have filtered out all the discussions about how to kill a witch, where to find good jam, and why a certain guard sneaks into a certain attic twice a week."

On with the tale.

They were still a little cautious at first - after all, this place had been a 'killer' dungeon for most of their lives. But their fear left them when they saw the new game.

"Wow! Me first!"

"No way! I bagsied it!"

"Bagsie doesn't work in Gargantua. You have to say shotgun. Don't you even read the codex?"

However they organised it, one kid ended up playing Ski Ball. When he finished his shots, he noticed a new addition. "Look! It says my score! 120. Beat that, losers."

Player 1 from the Grand Opening ended up being first to play the new game, too. She stepped on the trigger plate and picked up a wooden mallet. She looked at the 3 by 3 grid of round holes that faced her. "What do I do?" No sooner had she spoken than a wooden tentacle popped out of a hole. Reacting like a champ, she smacked it as hard as she could. The score counter changed from 0 to 1.

"There's another one!" cried a boy. P1's younger brother? Out of a different hole popped up a derpy-looking skeleton. A one-foot tall Lennie!

"Smash it in the face!" shouted another girl. P1 obliged and her score went to 2.

Then from two different holes came two monsters simultaneously. One was a bog-standard giant spider thing, covered in eyes. The other was an evil wizard. He looked like me but with all intelligence and charisma stripped away. He looked - and I'm sorry to have to use words like this in the family-friendly version of this book - he looked like an absolute remedial.

TIME OUT FOR A BITTER DISPUTE

"Dude, I need you to change that design right now."

"Can't. Can't spare the mana. And the kids loved smashing it. It fulfilled its objective."

"Contact the Engine! Submit a contract dispute!"

"I did. The answer just came back. The Engine thinks it's a fair depiction of you and wants one for her own office."

"Lies. I’m not even a wizard! I’m Gambit from the X-Men!"

“You look like a wizard with a concussion. Now shush. I’m trying to tell you a story. The girl was easily hitting the single monsters that popped up but now there were two at once.”

BACK TO IT

P1 smashed the evil wizard, but the spider retracted, unsmashed, before she could get to it. Instead of being angry or frustrated, the girl laughed. It was weeks later when 386 pinpointed that innocent, delighted giggle as the first time he started to believe in the project.

Enemies continued to pop up, sometimes alone, sometimes two at a time near each other, sometimes two at a time on opposite sides of the grid. Then, at the end, three at once.

Final Score: 6.

P1 was so hyper she had to jump up and down to release some of her pent-up energy. "That. Was. Awesome!"

"My turn! My turn!"

Smashy Smashy Joy Joy

The excitement of the game room was starting to subside when one of the kids came back. He'd been exploring the new corridor that we'd made. "Um."

That was all he needed to say. Ten eyes turned to him. "What?"

"There's another game down here. I think it's a game."

His energy was sort of conflicted between curiosity and fear, so the other kids followed cautiously. They went down the corridor - like 386, I was starting to think in tiles - a corridor three tiles long. It led into a very simple 4x2 room. On the left-hand side we'd added a 'shooting range', 6 tiles long. This lane was blocked by a piece of thick glass that rose about a metre. Just enough to discourage people from climbing it.

6 tiles away was a wall. In the centre of the wall, I'd placed a simple archery target with three rings. I thought the kids would instinctively want to hit it, but to make sure, I'd added scores to the various areas. The bullseye was 100 points, the next ring 50, the outer ring 10. Then I'd lost confidence and added more objects. A cheeky spider was on the bottom-left of the wall, marked with a '25'. On the top-right was a red dragon worth 250 points.

"Cool!" said one of the kids.

"We need a bow and arrow," said another.

"No, look," said P1. She pointed to a glass jar that I'd left in the room.

There was a moment of absolute silence. It was in such a moment that Archimedes invented the word eureka; in such a moment that Zuckerberg thought 'what if there was an easier way to rate the hotness of chicks on campus?'; in such a moment that some hacker thought 'what if Billy-Bob's password is bewbs420?'

The kids all leapt at the jar - the strongest came up with it. She strutted to the glass barrier, took aim, and hurled it at the central target. It got no-where close. There was another moment of reflection.

"I saw some bottles outside!"

A stampede ensued, and they squabbled over the bottles I'd placed by the entrance. The fastest got to throw them down the lane, and then they all went home to gather other things to throw.

Smash! Plop! Crash! Splittle!

It was glorious.

A stroke of genius.

At the end of the frenzy, when the kids had quit for the day, 386 had added 2.7 MP, about a square metre of glass, and about a pound of rotting fruit and stale bread.

386 presented that data to me in tones of surly disgust.

"But buddy," I told him, "they're bringing stuff and giving it to you. They used to drag your traps outside. The tide has turned. Don't you get it?"

He didn't respond right away. Then he said, "I need you to leave."

I think that was the 5th or 6th time I thought the whole project was over. I went home, had a shower, had a pizza, watched reruns.

But it wasn't over.

He was hooked.