PART THIRTY-ONE

MPD/Channel Views/Followers: Not now! Stop bugging me for numbers! This is an exciting chapter.

Put It in Neutral

I'm worried this 'pretending Nicki wrote certain sections' schtick is already played out. But the videos need to be experienced from a neutral point of view. That way you, my beloved reader, can see what a random internet person would have seen and be just as entertained slash confused slash bemused. Even though you're just READING the videos, remember to like and subscribe. You want to smash the dislike button? What's that? There ISN'T one? HAHA.

Where was I? Neutral point of view.

Who is the most neutral person in the world? Why, it's Valentino Niklaus, born and raised in central Switzerland, a country so neutral it's illegal to paint your kitchen anything other than magnolia. Valentino votes Christian Democrat, the most centrist political party. He drives a mid-range Seat Leon which is the world's most medium car in terms of gas consumption. He drives in the middle of the road and has caused 4 highway pile-ups in the last two years. He drinks Heineken.

Bitte Liken und Abonnieren

Guten tag, ich bin Valentino. I am from the German part of Switzerland but I drive a French car and have an Italian name. I am, how we say, multi-culti. A little Swiss joke for you, there. I hope you like it. We Swiss are as famous for our humor as you Americans are for your tolerance.

My hobbies include buying cryptocurrency, talking about cryptocurrency, and buying and talking about NFTs. I also enjoy the BetterVerse, though it would be more satisfying if every choice and conversation was recorded on a blockchain instead of 'quantum'. Quantum is such an obvious ponzi scheme it makes me sick. Still, the combat is very satisfying.

While browsing BV videos I discovered a strange American man on a unique quest. I am one of a few dozen people who watch this American. His videos are short but extraordinary, like music videos from OK Go. He wishes to find a gun in the extreme north of the game. But there are no guns. He is deluded. I will enjoy watching him fail.

Toblerone. That's another thing from Switzerland.

The American's second video is only two minutes long and goes like this:

The American is walking in the snow. He explains how he nearly died fighting a yeti. He says he is sick and tired of fighting yetis. He is sick and tired of snow. But he knows he is close. He can feel it in his bones.

Suddenly he hits something solid and bounces off, making a BOIIIIING noise. He lands on his back. It should be funny - this is the type of comedy Swiss people find uproarious - but I don't laugh. What did he hit? It makes no sense. The horizon was completely empty. I saw it.

He gets up, rubs his forehead, which he calls his 'noggin', and stretches his palms out. I realise I am holding my breath. His fingertips touch a wall. Just a wall, no? Then why are my palms sweaty? It's a colossal, camouflaged wall in the middle of nowhere. The American has found the gun! He is on the verge of becoming the most powerful player in the entire game! I am no longer neutral. His fans call him 3B. That's the name of his channel - 3B or not 3B. I will now call him 3B. I am his biggest fan.

A little exploration determines the wall is curved. It becomes clear he has arrived at a gigantic dome. Bigger than a stadium. What's inside? I am in turmoil thinking about it. But there are only 25 seconds left of the video. What the federer?

3B keeps tracking the dome's edge until he finds something different. It must be a door. Beside it is a plaque made of some sort of concrete. Carved into it are the words:

This place is not a place of honour.

No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.

Nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us.

This message is a warning about danger.

3B stares at the words. Then he shakes his head, takes out his portable save point and drops it. 'This is a job for tomorrow,' he says. The video ends.

He does not post a video tomorrow. Nor the next day.

I am no longer his biggest fan. Nor am I neutral.

I hate Billy-Bob Bain.

I will unsubscribe from his channel. I will remove my likes. Just as soon as I know what's behind that door.

You Got Mail

From: Nicki Valentine

To: Bain

Bain! What have you done to this game? You need to log in at 10 am tomorrow. Do you hear me? LOG IN AT 10:00 tomorrow.

NOT happy.

You Got Mail 2: AOL's Revenge

From: Nicki Valentine

To: Bain

So there we were, about to take down a big boss. Necromancer's thrall. Very powerful. 14 Swords of the Scales fighting in perfect unison. It was beautiful. 5/7 planning, 5/7 execution. Then at the critical moment, what do we get? A message from YOUR DUNGEON. It's not supposed to talk to us!

Okay, it wasn't a direct message. He gave us a quest. A quest! We were miles away. 'Get Bain to come tomorrow at 10 urgent' and in the rewards section it said 'Bain! Urgent!'

And he spammed me and the boys once every ten seconds. Quest updated! Tell Bain! Quest updated! Bain! You can't fight like that. We nearly lost our healers in the first five minutes and that would have been game over.

Just as we were getting used to ignoring the quest updates what happened? The ground shook and thousands of zombies clambered out. We weren't supposed to be fighting the necromancer. That comes later in the quest! So why's he sending his zombies at us? They dust themselves down a bit, look at us, and in their gravelly zombie voices they say, in unison, 'Baaaaaains.'

We just abandoned the mission. Logged out. There's lots of confused Swords right now, and because we didn't kill the baddies a great many lusty wenches are going to be defiled and despoiled and whatnot.

You'd better get to that dungeon on time tomorrow. And you'd better have a killer story for us.

There's No I in Teams

I thought about calling in sick but I didn't need the whole day off, just the morning. So I decided to have car trouble. For once, I got lucky. My boss was delighted to have me cover the evening shift.

I got to the dungeon at 10, and frankly, a lot happened. Then I went to work. It was after midnight when I got home.

I told Valentine I wouldn't have in-game time to spare for ages but if she wanted a fun story she could call me using a powerful and well-respected video conferencing platform. She set up a call almost immediately.

The next 350 words are sponsored by MICROSOFT TEAMS, the world's number 4 video conferencing software. It's a product I use all the time and am familiar with. I love the way it integrates with... what's this word? Outlook? Oh, Outlook. Yes, I use that. Totally. All the kids do.

My phone screen split into 6 boxes. One had my face. Four were taken up by Adam, Ben, Charles, and Damocles. His box actually said 'Damian' but I decided to call him Damocles until he corrected me. The final square was black except for the word 'Nick' and a mute icon.

We did some awkward small talk for a while but soon it was almost like being in the BetterVerse and I was able to loosen up.

Me: I suppose I should tell you what happened so I can get to bed.

Ben: This had better be good. You messed up a huge raid, Bain.

Charles: Did you go to the dungeon? But how can you be there AND at the north pole? What are you up to?

Adam: Let him speak, guys.

Some of you are probably thinking, 'but Bain! What did the beefcakes look like in real life? It's weirdly important to me that I know!' Reader, they looked exactly like in the game. Except that Ben was wearing glasses that made him look like the unattainable male lead in a 90s rom-com. Ugh.

Me: Should we wait for...? (I didn't know whether to say Nick or Nicky, he or she.)

Adam: No. Nick's here.

Me [fumbling with the settings]: I just realised I haven't been on MICROSOFT TEAMS for... a year maybe. We used to use it all the time. My book club.

Damocles: Did you hear at the start of the first pandemic that loads of people bought shares in a Chinese company called MICROSOFT TEAMS because their stock market symbol was Zed Oh Oh Em? It went up like 400% but the company was actually bankrupt.

Me: That's crazy. Wow.

Charles: Can we talk about how Adam owes me ten bucks?

Me: What for?

Charles: We bet on how similar you'd look on Zoom to your in-game avatar. I won.

Adam: Bain should tell us his story before Nick explodes.

Me: I'm just going to start from the start and not try to be funny or embellish it. Sound good?

Nick [via chat]: No embellishments. We all heard him say that, right?

I logged in at ten. I ran to the dungeon. 386 was frantic in a way I couldn't put my finger on. I told you I wanted to hire someone to run the theme park. Like, doing the day to day operations and customer service stuff that I couldn't do with my one hour a day. 386, when he finally stopped gibbering, said the perfect person was traveling through Auster and I had to go and intercept him and get him to the dungeon. 'Inside me! Inside me!' I didn't even have time to make a crude remark. 'Why are you still here? I gave you a quest. Go! Move! Argh! You run like a tentacle.'

I ran to the old town and soon enough a big convoy of wagons appeared on my minimap. I stood in front of them to get them to stop. A young guy got down and came over to me. He was nice-looking in a 'young Joseph Stalin' kind of way. Little beard, dimples, soft, brown eyes. He said he was called Konstantin and he had a quest to meet me. 386 had organised it from both sides!

I hopped on the front wagon and the convoy left the main road and headed towards the dungeon. This Konstantin guy seemed to have some clout. We got out and strolled towards the dungeon, but it turned out Konstantin wasn't the leader. He waited for this intense-looking guy to amble over. He was young - early 20s - unarmed, and in seconds went from taking in the whole scene to piercing me with cold, hard eyes. I didn't have long to wonder about him because then this elf woman appears, walks to his side and sort of snuggles into him. She was one of those women so beautiful most men avoid looking directly at her. My first reaction was confusion because she was so so so much hotter than the dude, but I looked again and his whole body had softened and he was smiling and no, he was just as attractive as her.

So that was a kind of mind-blowing three seconds just being sucked into their little whirlwind of charisma. I noticed more movement on my right and turned to see a teenage boy wearing one of those Peaky Blinders caps. My hands darted to my pockets to protect my valuables. He didn't notice - he was busy not looking at the elf.

Konstantin was patiently waiting for me to get a grip. I introduced myself properly and started telling him that I needed someone with hospitality skills to help me run this place.

'This place?' he says, looking at the entrance. You've seen it. It's pretty rudimentary.

The elf says, 'But isn't it a dungeon?'

Now at this point I did one of my immature reaction things. When I'm around high-status people I get sarcastic and defensive -

Nick [via chat]: Oh? We hadn't noticed.

The Boys: Giggling and sniggers.

- sarcastic and defensive, and so I hit back with 'Is the Pope a Catholic?'

As you know, NPCs always look up when accessing their codex, and that little moment where I know something they don't just helps me sort of feel like I'm in charge of the situation a bit. Saying all this out loud makes me feel a bit lame... but anyway. These guys, they don't look up. Konstantin does, but the other three don't. The leader dude slinks away from the elf and comes towards me. His softness is gone and he looks menacing. Politely menacing, which is one of the five worst kinds of menacing.

'Do you mean us harm?' he says.

'I don't know who you are,' I shoot back. 'I've got a job offer for Konstantin here.'

'What is the job?'

'Running my theme park.'

Again, he doesn't go to the codex. But I know he's never heard of a theme park. What kind of NPC is this? He glances at Konstantin, then back at me. 'What is a theme park?'

'It's a wonderland,' I say. Why am I being confrontational with this guy? To get more status than him? It's bonkers. He's not even real! I relax. 'It's where you go to have fun. Play games, go on rides. Have a little flutter on the gee-gees. Gamble,' I explain.

Peaky Blinders comes closer, holding his jacket braces with his thumbs. My hands fly back down to my sides, defending my pockets. 'What's the pay?'

'The pay?' My eyes bulge at the question.

'There is compensation, I hope,' said Konstantin. He was the kind of guy who always looks smooth and unruffled, but a few sad creases around the nose suggested the encounter had been disappointing for him.

'Pay? Sure, yes, of course. Pay. Loads of it.' I thought about that. 'Not at the start, obvs. We're growing. We're a start-up! Profit sharing. Percentages. I'm not one to make rash promises but a few years of this and you'll be the richest man who ever lived.' There are a wide range of reactions to this statement, ranging from a glare so cold it could flash-freeze a pineapple to good-natured amusement. 'Just come and look!'

And I stride towards the entrance all heroic but I bump into his guy who was there behind me. Young guy covered in blades. He'd snuck up ready to turn me into a human pincushion if I stepped out of line.

I brush off the encounter with my customary magnificence -

Nick [via chat]: What happened to no embellishments?

- customary magnificence, and I put my hand on Konstantin's shoulder and push him towards the dungeon.

You've all been there. You can guess what happens. They lose their minds playing the games. The leader one is absurdly good at everything, right away, but he still enjoys it. He punches one of the test-your-strength bags and 386 makes the score say 'Strength: 12' and they start bad-mouthing it. So I quickly explain to them that no, the dungeon knows everyone's strength exactly and he sometimes gives the wrong score to make people spend longer on the games.

Konstantin goes, 'So the goal is to make people spend longer on the games?' Good question! He's already thinking. He's sharp.

'Just longer inside the park. Playing games or doing whatever.'

The leader one gives me one of his looks. 'You can communicate with the dungeon.'

'Yes.'

'Ask it what it thinks my Strength is.'

386 tells me in a torrent of words, gasps, and noises. It falls to me to translate it into English. 'Umm, he says you have two Strengths and he won't tell anyone your secret and he's your biggest fan and could you punch more things please.'

That goes down extremely well, and they resume their tour. Peaky Blinders has lost his whole too-cool-for-school attitude and is acting like a 10-year-old. The elf keeps sidling up to the leader one and going, 'Ted, can I have another coin?' And then slinking off to the casino to bet on horse races.

Charles: Wait, you've got horse racing in there, now? With live horses?

Me: No it's that table-top racing.

Charles: What's that?

Me: You've never seen it? Little horses, like 4/5 inches high. You put your coin in to bet on a horse, they all have odds like 2-1 or 10-1 and then they're off! They just go from left to right but the speed isn't constant. There'll be one leading at the halfway point that will just suddenly be running through treacle. It's really annoying if you bet on that horse but great if you're losing and then yours gets a speed burst. Anyway, you can't be sure which one will win till the very end. It's quite entertaining. 386 has been tweaking the algorithms and we've tried putting little storm clouds that fly over and zap the horses, that kind of thing. But it seems to work best as a straight race. Oh, except we changed it from horses.

Damocles: It's horse racing without horses?

Me: It's called Wacky Races, now. In lane 1 there's a giant pig with a tiny goblin jockey; lane 2 is a unicorn being ridden by a baby unicorn; 3 is a man on stilts but he's drunk. Stuff like that.

Charles: Please donate your brain to medical science.

Me: The other big hit was a new ride called Knights of the Helm. It's basically dodgems - guests get in a little bumper car and drive around and crash into each other. It hadn't been very popular until today but these five people knew each other and it's more fun to ram your boyfriend than a stranger.

Charles: Well...

Nick [via chat]: Don't.

All this time, 386 is gibbering with delight. And I realise something obvious: he knows who these people are. They're game-famous. And he tricked me into getting them to visit him so he could show off to the other dungeons.

But it wasn't a total scam - Konstantin was asking me pertinent questions like 'why are there dead chickens everywhere' and 'why are there live chickens everywhere' and 'there's no way this place is making money, so how are you staying afloat' and 'why is that skeleton shaking a large, empty paper cup in my face does he want money?' And he understood when I told him that the more complex the games got, the less we could rely on guests intuitively knowing what to do. He asked about putting up signs to explain things. I explained that 386 couldn't directly communicate with people and the whole dungeon was reset every night. 'Which means you need me to bring signs in and out every day'.

I could see he was interested in the job. Very interested. We were hanging around the casino watching/not watching the elf scream at the teleporting turtle in lane 6. I tried to think honestly about the job and what it would really be like. 'It's going to be a weird job. Every day will be different. You'll have to think on your feet. It's only going to get more complicated. If someone kills the dungeon core then it's all over. I don't know what I can pay you. Probably not much to start with but it won't be long before this place is a total cash cow. All the chicken you can eat. And I own the inn just outside so you can stay there rent-free to start with. I can imagine soon there'll be a choice between giving you a raise and hiring more employees. I need to expand as fast as poss. That means underpaying you for at least five months. We have to grow.'

'Grow into what?'

The elf screams with rage and frustration, then bursts out laughing. 'Stupid turtle,' she says.

I point to her. 'That, times a million. The biggest entertainment center in the world. Thousands of daily visitors. Tens of thousands.'

'I see,' he says. He looks around, then he considers me. 'There's something you should know.' He takes a deep breath. 'I left Zenith because I'm gay.'

I wait for him to get to the point. He doesn't. 'So?'

'So I'm gay.'

'Do you want the job?'

'Yes.'

'The first thing I need you to do is find the wizard who sold me this magic incubator. It's supposed to pop out 12 chickens a day but it's doing 12 every three minutes or something like that. Then I need you to find a guy who can make a chicken nest outside.'

'A coop?'

'Bless you. I get most of my wood from some carpenters down the road. Try one of them. It'll probably take them ten minutes.'

'Did you say wood?' It was Ted, the leader guy.

'Yeah. We use a lot of wood in here. Making the games and rides and stuff.'

'I need lumber. Lots of. I noticed a sawmill nearby. I assume it belongs to those carpenters. Can you introduce me?'

'Sawmill? No, that belongs to some warriors of my acquaintance. It'll be a while before it produces anything, though. The trees are all new.'

The stealthy assassin guy spoke for the first time. 'Ted, are you going to be bothering every single person you meet about wood?'

'We need wood, Kris.'

Just then, one of the locals finished doing something with one of the coin converter boxes on the wall. The Ted guy was on him in a flash. Menacing politeness. The guy shrank. Ted smiled at him the way a witch smiles at a handsome young boy lost in her woods. 'Excuse me, sir. What did you just do?'

The guy looked down at his little coin pouch, then over his shoulder. The assassin guy was there, leaning. Casual. No biggie. 'Um... well I had ten bits.'

'Do go on.'

'So I popped them into this here slot.' He pointed to a box on the wall. 'And it gave me a silver.'

'I entirely understand so far.'

'And then I popped the silver into this box. And it turned the silver into ten bits.'

'An excellent, lucid explanation,' said Ted. 'However, there's the implicit question of motivation.'

'Oh!' The man perked up. He opened his pouch and pulled out a bit. It gleamed. 'You put in old bits and they come out nice and shiny. Here, why don't you keep this one?'

Ted eyed him. Then his expression softened. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Most enlightening. I wish you a pleasant rest of the day.' The man smiled and started to move away but then looked back towards the assassin and of course he had vanished. The man scurried away, clutching his remaining coins.

'Ted,' complained Konstantin. 'This isn't Zenith. I can't have you scaring my customers.'

Ted laughed. 'I thought he must have been stealing. Your customers, is it? So you're leaving us?'

'I think so. It's a rare opportunity.'

'Great!' I said. 'That's settled. Just start pottering around the dungeon getting a feel for the place. We'll have to make you a uniform. Have you met Lennie? Oh, there's lots to do. So little time.' I noticed Ted staring at the shiny coin. 'It's a shame you don't have loads of damaged wood. The dungeon can turn it into good-as-new lumber, same as with the coins.'

Ted was suddenly an inch away from me, with his hand on my shoulder. 'What did you say?'

I mumbled 'tape measure' and 386 summoned one onto my palm. I used it to push this Ted guy away. 'This is how much personal space I need. Thanks.'

He relaxed, smiled, and put his hands up in surrender. 'I apologize. But tell me more about the good-as-new lumber.'

A few minutes later I had a new customer. Ted would deliver rotten or burned wood and 386 would turn it into lumber and I'd charge a fee. Free money! Bonus!

'Right,' I said. 'I need to go.' My plan was to log out and rush to work and still have 20 minutes to get back to the dungeon later on, have a chat with my new theme park manager.

But 386 started yelling. 'No! No! No!' I thought he was upset that I was logging out, but it turned out that we had a bigger problem. Someone was approaching the dungeon. Someone with a small army.

Someone who looked exactly like Circe Polka Jr:

Circe Polka Jr.