Cadmos went limp and suffered Lasva to haul him back into the conversation. “That sounds great, Lasva. It's a little surprising we haven't heard about it, though. When was the AGN created?”

“A little less than a week ago. We haven't told anybody yet, officially. The first broadcast is scheduled for . . . Does anybody have a watch?” The fellows, gentlemen all, obliged her so far as to look at their wrists to make sure, but of course none of them did. Then they wondered why they had done so once they remembered that gentlemen claim from earlier held a non-positive truth value. Ulrik, Burmin Trivvis, Saptres Muria, and Hemt T. Elf, or rather Hemt Y. Zelf, were simple soldiers; Ben I. Sloup was a normal villager of low social status; King Ostros and Solemn Declaration both had royal titles and no need for couth; Cadmos was an adventurer, the least estimable career of all.

“Too bad. It's soon, anyway. Let's go watch the big premier broadcast.” Lasva hiked her dress up again with her right hand while her left maintained its accustomed interview position of grabbing the subject by the collar. The other officers submitted to circumstance and followed her back toward the data center. “Veronica Delfosse, the most prominent news reader in all Convergence/Divergence, is kicking things off. You'd better believe Chaos Cuisine's number-one anchor, Titus Bromley, didn't turn this offer down, so he's next. We've got contributors from everywhere on board. Not all of them are professionals like Bromley, Ronnie, and me, but they'll learn. Ababa and Babab will cover Always Leveling Titan, Diao Yuanjia handles Radiant Illusion Country, Ruthven's trying his hand over in Holy Legend Army, Fridolf Bartel in Furious Galaxy with a Primrose-class frigate handling ship news, the works. Except Everyday Pin, because the only news they have there is bowling scores you can look up no problem. And any and all games in the Styleful Happy!! galaxy, because they have reporters already. They're all in a guild. That they wouldn't let me join! Boy, they're not gonna like the inter-ludic coverage they wind up getting.”

“There are competitors, then. Don't blame me too much for doubting you, Lasva. It's the peril of a courtly upbringing,” said King Ostros.

“Tell it to the content creators, because I know you came into this world by falling over a wall just like the rest of us. But sure, we got rivalries. Them, Kaneko from Modern Incidence Record, some others. They started asking all these questions about who was setting the whole thing up, and where the money was coming from, and why AGN headquarters has to be in the corporate cyberpunk dystopia of Convergence/Divergence, stuff like that. You'd think we were shady or something.”

Since they were walking along the Enzet cliffs that looked down upon the crashing waters and smiled at the ocean's futile effort, Ben I. Sloup was inspired to take the high road. “But you responded to their concerns with full and complete answers, right? Though obviously they weren't convinced.”

“You think we're dumb? We told them to direct all inquiries to our lawyers, who are all on vacation and never coming back, and not to bother calling that number again because we're breaking all our phones and selling the pieces to orphanages to make Christmas ornaments. If they want to keep bothering us and ruin Christmas for the orphans, well, they can do business how they like, I guess.”

“Is that what I should do when you ask me questions? Lasva?” asked Cadmos.

She rolled her eyes despite his inability to see it, being dragged behind her as he was. “The New Eclipse Dragon's job is to drop gear Eclipses want, right? Well, our audience is the Eclipses, you're the dragon, and I'm Tiboleus the Overpowerer, get it?”

“I understand the analogy, but I'm not sure if there's a good reason for me to accept that place in glub glub.”

Hemt turned backward as he skipped across the great ocean that separated the continents of Sadalsia and Yoerbla. “We're sure the spinoff won't have a water level, aren't we? Our main guy is the only one sinking, which would be pretty embarrassing for us if it ended up mattering, you know, just a terrible reflection on our efforts to get him fight-ready.”

The sight puzzled Ben, who asked, “What's up, Cadmos? Nobody else sinks.”

Lasva shook Cadmos a little as she walked over the placid water. “The only one to be announced for Ersatz Struggle. The only one who gets to drown. What a world.”

It was Ulrik who came to his rescue. Not as far as his underwater distress, and not because he intended any relief, but nevertheless. “They gave him a drowning animation for when the submarine hit him,” Ulrik explained. That day, as he looked around at the blank faces of the excessively raritied through his +INT swirly glasses, he learned for the first time that not only are fundamental facts about the world not universally understood, but worse, that different cultures live each in its own world undergirded by fundamental knowledge and perceptions not shared beyond it. He fixed that by telling them what really mattered.

“When he's sailing to Yoerbla in the story, a submarine surfaces and hits the ship. The cutscene for it is the greatest artistic achievement of the past three thousand years. And the AMVs! Or MADs if you prefer. I'm going to show you all 'Subthumping' once we get this AGN thing over with, and I envy you for having the chance to watch it for the first time. Not these guys though,” he said as he pointed to Saptres Muria and Burmin Trivvis. They both nodded long, their heads driven by the inevitable sympathy of feeling any officer who spent eight hours straight watching videos of Cadmos get hit by a submarine would have, except maybe Cadmos, but probably him too.

Not much of the ocean or of the tumultuous kingdom of Lanmaran had been implemented, and therefore Lasva reached the data site before the Rares had explained half of the submarine edits they had seen, a necessary precondition for the unveiling of the tier list created in the Rare closet one lazy evening.

On a corner of the plaza that already existed as a rectangle defined by smooth gray bricks, busy Construction beavers were hoisting a gigantic screen up to the top of a supporting structure possessed of wondrous capabilities. The attached billboard or monitor could be rotated either to be set in a better position or for nonstop spinning as well as tilted upward for the convenience of passing pigeons or downward for the mole officers that would probably be added in Part 5, the way things were going. Three brick roads escaped the plaza, and each of them had six bungalows along it in some state of construction. Along the sides of the main square, the ministry had already placed an incipient pizza ovenatorium, an institute for hot dog grillification, a noodle place, and more along those lines, none yet completed. Other highlights of the plaza included . . .

Society Page Lasva interrupted. “Look back at the screen already, you dopes.”

“Isn't that like entering the dining hall while it's being decorated? I was instructed not to do that by someone who didn't seem to take it seriously. That's the surest sign that an expert is covering well-trod ground,” King Ostros said. The others eschewed both flippancy and listening to Lasva at all, so perhaps he ought to count as something of a gentleman after all, comparatively.

“Yeah, I investigated that. Didn't get a single authority figure warning me that I was too close to the truth, so I figured there was nothing in it.”

“That's a sound heuristic, if we make it a little more general,” Saptres Muria said.

“Uh huh. If a Strategist didn't spend three chapters on it in a treatise that goes straight from the printer to a dusty shelf, it doesn't count, right? Wait until you're a celebrity or a Reaper to have opinions.” Lasva pulled Saptres's tunic over his head, kicked him off the bricks, and exchanged secret Reaper handshakes with an admiring Ulrik and Burmin Trivvis.

“Reapers! Shaking hands! I thought Quircy Rau's speech about a universal civilization spreading through all the games in our cluster like a terrible disease was an exaggeration. Also poorly chosen as a simile, since she seemed to be in favor of it. But today I see some gentility in your awful class for the first time.” Ben I. Sloup scratched his temple with his rifle in confusion and a complete lack of both survival instinct and firearm discipline.

“That's the secret part,” all three informed him.

The industrious cables and pulleys of the Construction crew worked the titanic screen closer to its proper setting near the pinnacle of the fancy stanchion, Olympian in size yet Byzantine in sophistication and Atlantic in having a bunch of stuff under it. The man in charge, Eten, backed up across the plaza to get a better view, backed up some more, more than that, still more, till he bumped into the gaggle of spectators. “Sorry, didn't see you there. Impressive, isn't it? You're probably curious about the clubhouses. Yeah, we have three done already.” He pointed out the aforementioned bungalows with a muscled finger that deserved to be an example in a video lecture on setting a sustainable lifting schedule. “Wruden Calx said you could set yourself up in whichever one you like, Cadmos. They're identical, but if you care about the location . . .” He shrugged.

“That's good to know, Eten. 'I'm the hero, so give me the best one.' Should I say something like that? Ha ha. But that's not why we're here. That really is an amazing monitor. I wasn't sure this was the best place to watch the inaugural AGN broadcast when Lasva suggested it, but I'm convinced now.”

“Yeah, AGN. I never heard of it,” Eten said, and by that relieved Cadmos's cadre of the stigma of not being with it. Unless Eten also was not with it, which, come to think of it, sounded plausible. “That was before Wruden Calx talked about it. He told us to drop everything and get that screen up in a hurry. One of his silent partners insisted. Well, we can't take orders from people who don't speak up, but it sounded like a worthy challenge. Yeah! Look at that!”

The display was fit into place and all its wires connected just in time. It flickered on and showed a woman sitting at a desk who struck the officers as highly professional-looking insofar as she was not wearing either a ball gown or a flat cap and shorts. “That's Veronica Delfosse,” Society Page Lasva informed them. She put her hand to where her flat cap used to be and dropped it to her ball gown. “Sometimes I wish I had a bob like that, but other times I wish I were in a better game, and I bet Ronnie feels that last part but double.”

For the debut of the All Games Network's pan-ludic broadcast service, the higher-ups had naturally chosen the most scintillating, ratings-driving, world-reshaping story they had, which was a report on questions over the hygienic standards of the food carts in the Paradise the Enchant courtyard. As a contrast, the AGN remote camera crew took a tour through a spotless kitchen belonging to one of Convergence/Divergence's restaurants that could boast the distinction of never having been sued over food poisoning successfully. An interviewer went on the streets where all the honest people lived to ask what game they trusted to provide the cleanest, most downright sterile food-like items there were. Vice President Lane, Miss Hawkins, Technician Santiago, and other instances of the Security faction all recommended C/D to anyone who wanted to save on janitor salaries and sawdust purchases.

“Now I know why Wruden Calx wanted everything ready,” Eten said. “He must have heard about a food hygiene report coming up and was worried the C/D guys he contracted wouldn't bear scrutiny.”

“Doubtless.” King Ostros turned to Lasva. “What does it cost to get that kind of, what might we call it, diegetic advertising?”

“I have a price list somewhere.” She patted herself down. “Maybe on my other alt. Eh, just go down to headquarters if you're interested.”

Burmin Trivvis raised his hand. “Hey, um, isn't it really bad to say that kind of thing out loud?”

“Why? Who's gonna report on it?” Lasva laughed. The others joined in since they all saw the humor in the situation except for Eten, who had been too pleased about his crew's success in a tricky job to listen to unproductive japery. Not that he would have put it that way. Who would? Leaznalo perhaps, and nobody listened to that guy. “That reminds me. I have to go write up a story about how NAME HERE was selected for inclusion in Ersatz Struggle, which is or is not a surprise after placing Xth in the last popularity poll. See you later, plainboys.”

Cadmos waved. “Goodbye, Lasva. All right, guys. Back to work.”

“Yes. The work of developing a multimedia promotional strategy to create and maintain the impression that generic-looking officers are better suited for attention and spinoffs than more exotic designs with more niche fanbases,” Saptres Muria replied. “Do I have to mention all the bribery we're going to do?”

Apparently not, since the others were already running toward Vigilant Patrol to farm up some tradable items.