PART EIGHTEEN

MPD: 39

"Ha!" I cried, five paragraphs ago, as I watched Valentine scream at the Scary Mirror. I was at a 10 on the jolliness scale. (Did you know that in Germany, scales go from 1-6? That's why you never see a really happy German. They can't even get to 7. Murica ftw!)

That number fell while I watched her interact with the 'Am I Hot or Not?' mirror. That concept had been rushed and just wasn't very good, but 386 thought we might be able to do some A/B testing with it so we decided to leave it there for a few days despite its… frosty reception.

"We're going to have problems with these copyrighted images," 386 said, watching the girls watch themselves in the big mirror. It was currently reflecting a MOUSE COMPANY movie dance scene and the girls were spinning around like the princess and the snowman and the elk (?). "We're not supposed to use other people's intellectual property."

"For an evil dungeon you're awfully keen to follow the rules."

"The ones that don't follow the rules tend to get... overwritten and blasted into the sun. We have to make our own scenes."

"We'll just tweak - Oh, she's at the last mirror. Wait till she sees all the ADORABLE KITTENS!" But the mirror wasn't showing what we'd agreed. My jolliness level dropped. Then plummeted. "386! Bro! What's this? A wedding? Why's she marrying a desiccated yokel dressed as Nosferatu? Don't tell me that's supposed to be... She's going to go ballistic!" My jolliness had hit low numbers - they'd have been low even for a German.

"Since you started bringing women here, I've been studying human mating rituals and I've discovered it's good practice to inject the idea of marriage early and often."

"What? That's not true. Oh, I can't believe this." I flicked the four of clubs at the screen, frustrated that I was unable to change what 386 had made the me in the mirror do. "I don't even wink. People who wink are the pits."

"I saw you wink at the music teacher! More than once!"

"Huh?" I scratched my head. "Nah. That must have been Lennie." I puffed my cheeks out and exhaled slowly. "Well, maybe it's for the best. You've burned all the ships and there's no going home. I'll just go and hide in a big wooden horse."

386 didn't want to talk about ancient Brad Pitt movies. "I've realised I have something of a flair for understanding humans and she will pop her head into the casino and then go into the Kill Room. Mark my words."

"We agreed to call it 'The Dungeon Simulator'."

The Betrayal

The screen flickered. It was the second time it had glitched. I still thought nothing of it. We watched as the three ladies left what they'd been calling the mystery room. Its real name was Cthulhu's Call of Mirrors, but maybe their name was better. There was another glitchy flicker - a longer one, this time - and when it resolved, the girls were sitting and kicking their feet, while Valentine was going through the casino door.

"386, show me the woman. Why would I want to watch the waiting room?"

"I'm currently engaged in a flame war with dungeon 299. Please stand by."

"Dungeon 299?"

"We have beef."

I tried to ask him more about it, but he put himself on mute. Valentine didn't come out of the casino, which was weird because she didn't gamble. I was stuck watching the little girls kick their legs. If you've seen the 2004 Brad Pitt vehicle Troy then you'll have an idea of how bored I was. To pass the time, I did some card shuffling. The VR headsets were pretty good at most kinds of feedback but there was something about the look, feel, and sound of a deck of cards folding into itself that was just ten out of ten. And, of course, I could manipulate the cards a gigathousand times better in the game than in real life. I had created one shuffle called 'The Achilles Deal' which was named after the character made famous by Brad Pitt in the 2004 movie 'Troy'.

Something crossed the screen, but when I jerked my head up there was no change. I frowned. Could it have been the woman coming out of the casino and going into the Dungeon Simulator? But then why hadn't the kids moved?

"Skip this bit, man. Life's too short." I stared for a little bit but then my attention drifted back to the cards. I shuffled and cracked and knuckled and oopsy-daisied until I heard a face-bleaching scream. My fingers stopped on their own and I looked up and nearly had a heart attack. The little girls were both standing on the same seat. The little one - Steffi - was clinging onto Jenny, who had a little stick which she was using to beat back a GIANT SWARM of ducking GIANT SCORPIONS!

(It looked like this, but in a dungeon, without Jason Argonaut, with two little girls, and about, ah, 13 more scorpions.)

"386!" I screamed. "What the duck! Why didn't you tell me this happened?"

"I didn't know," he said, panicked and flustered, zooming in on a scorpion. "I was tricking you. This feed is live!"

It's hard to explain what happened next. I had a lot of thoughts, a huge jumble of impulses and emotions, but also I was completely single-minded. Tranquil, even. My legs were on autopilot, running faster than I'd ever run before. Once my brain caught up with current events I hit stamina boost and went even quicker. Something clicked and I knew it'd be faster to jump onto walls and push myself diagonally through doorways - with my high dexterity I could keep my balance and momentum in a way that didn't quite obey the laws of physics. (You know, like Brad Pitt in the action bits of the 2004 movie Troy.)

My cards were in my hand and I burst into the reception area ready to fling them to all corners. I would hit every scorpion to get their aggro (aggression) and try to lead them away from the girls so they could escape.

"Girls!" I yelled, leaping up onto the nearest chair.

Jenny was sitting down, kicking her legs. "Wizard!" she said, with a big, surprised smile.

"Er," I said. There were no scorpions. Steffi was lying on the floor drawing on it with colored chalk. My heart was pounding. My knees suddenly gave way from the shock of there being no danger. I actually fell off the chair and banged my shins on the way down.

"Oh," said Jenny. "Do you need help?"

"No, thanks," I said. "I'll just curl into a ball for a second."

"Okay."

The Icing on the Cake

While I lay there trying to work out what had happened, Nicki Valentine came out of the casino. I tried to hide behind the chair-bench thing. "Sorry I was so long, girls, I was trying to get the skeleton to play a song I like. I'll have to ask those people how to do it."

"Why don't you ask the wizard?"

"There's a lot of questions I'd like to ask the 'wizard'. How to make the skeleton play music isn't in the top hundred."

"What's number one?" said Steffi.

She looked around the dungeon, blew air through her lips and inflated her cheeks. "I'd probably ask if he's got some medication he should be taking."

Jenny clambered over the seats and Steffi wriggled backwards on the floor - in both cases to stare at me. I put my hands behind my head and did a sit up. "One hundred! Look at the time. Girls, you should go home now." They looked disappointed. "By the way, I'm not a wizard. I'm a magician."

"What's the difference?"

"Wizards wear robes; I wear a cape. K bye."

They shuffled towards the exit. Before she left, Steffi turned and spoke. "Mister, where's the room where you smash things?"

"We're changing it. Trying something different. It might be ready tomorrow." I glanced over at Valentine. "If I survive today."

The Scene Where I Get Murdered by Some Woman

The kids scarpered. Valentine took a step to the right and so I took one to the left. "I didn't do the wedding thing," I said, ruggedly, my voice NOT getting all squeaky.

She took a step to the left and I took one to the right. She frowned at me. "I just want to talk," she said.

"Come back tomorrow. We'll make one of those prison rooms where there's thick glass and little phones and it's safe."

She tsked. "It's safe now."

I looked left and right, working out what I'd do if she attacked me from where she was currently LOOMING. Plan A was to throw all my cards at her in a kind of hyper-masculine cloud, and while she was distracted I'd leg it to the exit and get far enough away to portal out.

She tsked again. Then she unclipped her sword belt and let her weapon fall. "Look, Bain. I want to talk. I want to apologise."

That was unexpected. "What?"

"I freaked out when you knew my username. I wish I hadn't. It was just too big a shock and I lost my mind a bit. Even when it was happening I was regretting it but it was like I hit supercritical mass and couldn't stop the reaction. So I'm sorry. But I would like an explanation."

I scratched my head. "Well it all started about two weeks ago when I stopped taking my meds."

She didn't laugh. "Bain."

I sighed. Was there any harm in telling her? What would Brad Pitt do? Probably mumble about his name echoing through eternity while killing the one likeable person in the movie. "I'd actually like to tell you. If you don't put it online for a few weeks. As you can see I've got a little experiment going on here and I'd like to see it through. It's not exactly top secret but the longer we can keep other players away the more we can achieve."

"You keep saying 'we'. Someone is running this place with you, right? Someone I know?"

"Just promise to give me a few weeks of radio silence and I'll spill all the beans right now."

I thought she was weighing it up but I'd misread her expression. "Yeah, about that. I have mentioned you to a few people." My heart sank. "My crew. We're all Swords of the Scale."

In other words, they were a bunch of goody-two-shoes paragons of virtue who would lose their in-game powers if they hurt an innocent. Offline I'm sure they were all superjerks who cheated at Monopoly and took as much as they wanted to the 8 Items or Less checkout. "Oh," I said.

"They've probably already forgotten," she said.

I shook my head. I felt drained, as drained as though I'd spent 163 minutes watching a mediocre movie with like two decent fight scenes. Secrecy didn't matter any more. "Come on, I'll just show you."

Rubies Are Forever

She followed me into the dungeon core room. I pointed to 386's glowing red form. "This is dungeon 386. I can talk to him. We've been redesigning the dungeon to be less violent. Dungeons know things about their visitors. He knows your username and your top-level stats. It didn't occur to me that you'd be surprised that I knew your name. I mean, you knew my name." I held a hand up to stop her defending herself. "That came out wrong. I'm not trying to be confrontational. Of course you have a right to be mad. But it's probably ThetanSoft's fault. They shouldn't let me know private things. This whole thing where I can talk to the dungeon isn't supposed to be in the game, I think. That's why I want to keep it off the boards and off the streams. So I can keep using it until they find out about it. Um... But I still should have been more careful. Er... that's it."

"That's it? That's not it. That's three thousand more questions!"

I checked my clock. "I've got time for maybe four."

She glanced down and to the right. "I've got time for one." She locked her eyes onto mine. "How do I get in on this?"