Top Level Player, page 3
It took some convincing before Jazz’s fingers were willing to release. She took a shaky breath and ran her fingers through her frizzed-out hair.
“Is this how things are going to be? Is this how life is here?” she said.
“Ooooh. You’re suffering from a status effect. ‘Summoning Sickness.’ That passes in a few hours. But, to answer your question, no, this isn’t how things are going to be. Remember the brochure? The After-Image is huge and has something for everyone. You’ve just got to finish the tutorial and then you can head out and find your spot. No time like the present to get started! First off, I’m LP.”
The driver pushed his goggles to his forehead and held out a hand. Jazz stared at it for a few beats before her thoughts cleared enough to remind her that handshakes were a thing.
“Jazz,” she said.
“And I’m Laurel!” the fairy piped.
“Welcome to forever, Jazz! I’m LP, and this here’s Doodad. You wanted to complete your map, right?”
“No. I just need to get to the field office to talk to customer support.”
“No, no, no. Take it from me. You want to complete the map. Let me give you the tutorial rundown. You see—”
Laurel buzzed up to him and jabbed a finger in his face.
“Hey! Listen! I’m her helper so I will ‘give her the tutorial rundown.’ We just haven’t gotten to that part yet.” Laurel spun in place and cleared her throat. “As a new arrival, you’re expected to complete the tutorial! The tutorial will familiarize you with the skills necessary to thrive in The After-Image! As this is your first arrival here in Tutorial Lobby, the exits will unlock for you when you have completed five of the twenty-five objectives currently in your list. Those objectives are—”
“Doesn’t matter!” LP said. “What matters is, one of them is ‘Complete the Map of Tutorial Lobby.’ That involves hitting all fast-travel points, and awards you one hundred Plot Tokens in total. On foot, that’ll take you the better part of a day. Hire me and I’ll get you done with it in five minutes, at which point you’ll get paid one hundred tokens, they’ll replace the ones you paid me, and it’ll be like you got the ride for free.”
He snapped his fingers.
“Speed run strats,” he said.
“Okay. And fast-travel is…?” Jazz said.
“Fast-travel is—” LP began.
Laurel flitted up between him and Jazz and shouted quickly: “Fast-travel is a way to move quickly between places you’ve already visited. fast-travel allows you to move instantaneously to any of the local fast-travel points on your map and with minimal delay to non-local ones. Currently unlocked fast-travel points: Respawn Square.”
The fairy turned and gave LP a self-satisfied nod.
“The point is, once they’re unlocked, things are way more convenient for you.”
“Sounds like it. And you’re sure you can get me there safely?”
“It is literally impossible for me to get you there unsafely, since death is disabled in Tutorial Lobby. What’s important is I can get you there quick and in style.”
She mulled over her options. Her instincts told her it was a terrible idea to trust this man. She honestly doubted it had been wise to even get into his vehicle in the first place, and the offer seemed like an excellent opportunity for a scam or worse. Having experienced all of five minutes of this place, she was already reasonably certain her instincts would not be of much use here. She was going to need new instincts, and that would mean trying new things.
“Deal,” she paused. “How do I pay you?”
“Making a purchase is easy!” Laurel blurted before LP could steal her thunder. “All you have to do is reach into your ‘small item’ inventory—which, in this case, is the pockets of your lab coat—and withdraw the desired number of plot tokens! Alternately, I can automatically exchange tokens on your behalf.”
She raised an eyebrow and reached into her pocket. Laurel helpfully reached behind her back and unfurled a bit of parchment far too large enough to have been concealed there. As Jazz felt her fingers slide across assorted shapes, Laurel gave Vanna White-style sweep of her hand to indicate individual entries on a list of items that evidently could be found in her pocket. She had a pair of goggles that would have been useful if she’d known about them before the ride. When her fingers slid across what felt like a stack of ceramic tiles, Laurel nodded and presented “Plot Tokens: 1010.” She grabbed just one of the tiles and Laurel helpfully split the entry into “Plot Tokens: 910” and “Plot Tokens: 100 (Held Item).”
Jazz pulled the token from her pocket. It was a neat rectangle, smooth with comfortably rounded edges that illuminated like cut acrylic. A pixelated font labeled it “100 PT.” She held it over LP’s waiting hand, but a thought occurred.
“Wait. How do I know you’re not just going to dump me on the curb and drive away without taking me on the trip?”
“Doodad, show her the task screen.”
The weird little bundled up critter tottered over to a small display in the dash of the dune buggy and pawed at it.
“Is that a mummified Baby Yoda?” Jazz asked. “I don’t watch a lot of new stuff but it sure has the overall shape of one.”
“It’s not a Baby Yoda,” LP said.
The sharpness of his tone suggested this was not the first time he’d been asked such a question. Doodad finished his prodding and the screen showed a much more personalized version of the same menus Laurel had been presenting via parchment. Assorted star ratings and customer satisfaction metrics were scattered about the screen, but the main entry said “Give Jazz the Grand Tour (Pending Payment)”
“See that? Once you pay up, you’re my next objective. I fail to deliver and I get dinged. That’s financial poison for a gigger like me.”
Jazz looked to Laurel.
“Is that true?” she asked.
“Oh, yes! Customer satisfaction is a key aspect of the Algorithm as it pertains to people participating in the thriving ‘gig economy’ in The After-Image.” She clapped her hands and squealed. “Do you want to hear more about the gig economy?”
“Not right now,” Jazz said.
“I’ll remind you!” Laurel sang.
Jazz dropped the token in his hand. LP flipped it into the air and Doodad caught and stowed it.
“Here we go!” LP said.
He revved the engine screeched out of the parking spot.
“Doodad, gimme the gear.”
The dune buggy spent as much time drifting diagonally as it did moving forward while LP teased it through the streets. Doodad rummaged under the cargo net and revealed two pairs of headphones. He helpfully provided one for Jazz.
“What’s this for?” she said.
“Put them on! The Warthog’s pretty loud and I’ve got a whole tour guide schtick.”
Jazz fished out her goggles and fitted them in place, then donned the headphones. LP finagled them onto his head with one hand and flipped down a microphone. They were roaring their way up what seemed to be an on-ramp to a massive highway.
“We’re already pulling up on our first stop. If you look to your left, you’ll see McDarbucks. We’ve got all sorts of restaurants, but McDarbucks is sort of the lowest common denominator. Every hub’s got a couple dozen of them scattered about. For some reason they made this particular one a fast-travel point.”
“People still need to eat in the afterlife?”
“Not really. It’s more of a social activity nowadays. Also a good way to get hit points back or handle your status effects. And it’s not the afterlife, it’s The After-Image.”
“And they have a restaurant on the highway?”
“No. It’s down there in Cozy Corner, the restoration station.”
“Then why are we on the highway?”
“Cuts down on the number of intersections I have to navigate. You’d never believe how bad some of these newbies are at driving. Are you afraid of heights?”
“Not particularly. Why do you—”
He hammered his foot on the accelerator. The buggy bucked like a bronco, rearing its front tires into the air. The highway on-ramp continued to turn, but LP did not. His front wheels grazed the guardrail. The rest of the buggy tore through it like tissue paper and they went arcing off the on-ramp. A few seconds of hang-time ended with the buggy slamming down onto what turned out to be a rooftop garden on one of the shorter buildings. Shrubs and trellises burst into fragments and he lurched off the far side of the roof, vaulting across the street and smashing through the windows of an office building across the way.
Three or four more destructive stepping stones like that brought them back to street level just as they reached the parking lot of the restaurant.
“Fast-travel Point Found: Tutorial McDarbucks,” Laurel said, conjuring a quill to mark it down on her map.”
They slammed between two cars waiting at the drive-thru and started rumbling across the concrete parking spot markers. Despite the excellent suspension of the vehicle, LP’s next line had the telltale tremor of their tooth-rattling journey.
“Up ahead is the primary shopping district. That’s where you’ll get clothing and stuff. You can order out of catalogs and via the internet, but unless you spring for the insta-sampler add-on, you’ll need to go to actual stores to try things on.”
Jazz raised a trembling hand and brushed some broken glass from her hair. It dissolved into digital pixie dust a moment or two later.
“Did we just smash through a bunch of houses,” she said, disbelief the only thing keeping her from having a full-scale meltdown.
“Yeah. It was faster. Try to keep up, okay, I’ve got a rhythm to this thing. The fast-travel point up here is the Re-Spec Shop. If you want to rearrange your physical appearance, move some attributes around, swap out your PDA, that’s where you go.”
“We’re not stopping there, are we?” Laurel said, her voice small and lost among the chaos of whipping wind and growling engine.
The Warthog screeched past. Laurel breathed a sigh of relief.
“Fast-travel Point Found: Tutorial Re-Spec Shack,” the fairy noted before dispelling the map and quill again.
“Up ahead is the entertainment complex. If you want to go see a movie or a concert or whatever, you’ll be able to do it there. Most of the bigger acts don’t come to the Tutorial Lobbies, but the movies are still good. There’s usually something worth watching playing. Retro or current. In this complex there’s just the one fast-travel point, and that’s the Wire Feed HQ.”
“What’s that?” Jazz asked.
“I’m the one who is supposed to be telling her all of this, you know,” Laurel said.
LP ignored the PDA. “You really don’t know this stuff? It’s super basic, all in the brochure.”
“I never got a brochure,” Jazz said.
“Huh… Well, if you’re really hurting for cash, The WireFeed’s where you’ll make ends meet. I forget exactly how it started—”
“I know!” Laurel said.
“—but I know it’s a Google thing. All of their abandoned projects sort of accumulated. Wave, Buzz, Hangouts. And then eventually the whole thing collapsed on itself like a neutron star and WireFeed was born. It was a huge dud in real life at first, but it was the first social media to offer real-time sync to The After-Image and once that happened it exploded. Nowadays it’s the biggest industry we’ve got down here. You turn off private mode and just let folks stream your life. Some people do it full time, some people do stunts and stuff. But you get paid per hit, with a bonus for each living person watching. I’m not a fan, hence all the gig work. But sooner or later, everybody does a stint.”
Laurel marked off the fast-travel point on the map, not even bothering to announce it.
“The one person to come through here and not know all this stuff and you had to steal my thunder,” the fairy grumbled.
“Okay. Brace yourself, there’s a ramp coming up, and then we’ll head to the scenic district…”
Five heart-stopping minutes later, Jazz’s mind was buzzing the rapid-fire info dump about what was apparently her new home. The healthy dose of adrenaline (or whatever sequence of zeroes and ones passed for it in this simulation) made it a little hard to internalize it.
LP rumbled to a stop. A mangled stop sign and a pulverized piece of statuary dropped off his front bumper. The building, and indeed the surrounding area, looked like no one had been through it for ages. None of the telltale property damage of intense roadside shenanigans like LP’s. No litter was scattered about on the ground. No foot traffic. It was a deserted section of an otherwise very active place. The building was unassuming enough. A bland storefront with a small placard labeling the place “After-Image Field Office.”
“And that takes us to our final stop. The Field Office. Where customer service complaints go to die.”
The driver hopped down and paced around to the passenger side. He reached up to help her down in a disarmingly gentlemanly way. One wouldn’t picture someone who would take a shortcut through a museum lobby as being chivalrous.
Laurel conjured her parchment and quill again.
“Fast-travel Point Found: Tutorial Field Office,” she said, marking it down. “I’m just going to mark this down as a shadow achievement, ‘Ruin your PDA’s day by taking the fun part of her job.’ Congratulations…”
“This is the field office for the people that run this place? I would have expected something a little more… impressive.”
“Probably it was in the beginning, when it was buggy, but nowadays a combination of bad service and good program stability means no one comes here, so they downgraded.”
Laurel finished jotting down her notes. She let the props drop from her hands and flutter away to nothingness, then held one hand out, palm up.
“Incoming reward. Objective Complete: Fill Out the Map. Reward: 100 PT.”
She held the hand up over her head and an envelope conjured into being, along with a four-note fanfare.
“Well? Take it. Unless you want me to open it,” Laurel said.
Jazz blinked a bit, finally pulling her wits out of the psychological rosebush they’d gotten tangled in. She grabbed the envelope and tore it open. One hundred PTs were inside, in the form of a single token.
“Mission accomplished, Doodad,” LP said, climbing into the driver’s seat again. “Put it in the books.”
The bundled-up buddy reached into his raincoat and produced a small paper card.
“Oh, right! I almost forgot.” LP took the card and handed it down. “If you ever need another ride, here’s my contact info.”
“I’ll take that!” Laurel said, buzzing up to intercept the card. “I am responsible for maintaining her contact list, after all.”
The fairy held up the card and jabbed it upward into thin air. It stuck there precisely as though she’d slipped it into a clip, freeing her hands to produce the quill and parchment again.
“LP. Driver and overall killjoy…”
Laurel finished marking it down and delivered the card to Jazz’s pocket.
“You have completed the objective: Add a new contact! Reward: 10 PT,” Laurel said quickly, presenting another envelope.
“How do I get in contact with you? I don’t have a phone.”
“Your PDA will know what to do.” LP revved the engine again. “Good luck getting anything out of the Customer Service folks with only 1000 PTs.”
“One thousand and twenty,” Laurel corrected.
He peeled out, streaking off. Jazz turned to Laurel. The motion sent another cascade of broken glass and shredded shrubbery to flutter from her hair and vanish.
“First, is that typical of how things are going to go?” she asked.
“There was nothing about that interaction that was substantially different from how things are expected to go here,” Laurel said. “Except for his rigid insistence on doing the fun part of my job.”
“You enjoy just telling me random things about how the world works?”
“The whole reason I’m here is to do minor tasks and provide simple instructions. Telling you stuff you need to know is called job satisfaction for me.”
She scratched her head. “I’ll try to be more mindful of that.”
“Thank you!” she sang. “By the way, you wanted me to remind you about your interest in the gig economy.”
“Um… Not just this minute. I’d like to get this sorted out.”
“I’ll remind you,” Laurel said happily, drifting along beside Jazz as she stepped through the door.
“What was that jab about how I’d have a hard time getting help without money?” Jazz asked, scoping out the interior of the office.
“It is a mean-spirited myth that After-Image International gouges their customers for customer service tasks. You can receive world-class service for free, and only certain very minor tasks, as well as some optionally accelerated timelines, require nominal fee.”
“Uh-huh. I thought I turned off advertising.”
“That wasn’t advertising, it was an entry from the corporate frequently asked questions.”
“It sounded like PR wank.”
“That’s mostly what you get out of frequently asked questions,” Laurel conceded.
“Can we turn that off?”
Laurel sighed and summoned her menu. She scrolled to the line labeled Proactive euphemistic language regarding matters likely to result in formal complaints.
“If you keep turning off useful features such as these you’ll be missing the lion’s share of my very valuable service.” She plucked the check mark and tossed it away. “Though I’ll say that the knee-jerk corporate toadying wasn’t my favorite part of my programming.”
Jazz smirked. “You know, Laurel, I think with enough personalization you might turn out to be a pretty entertaining sidekick.”
Laurel waggled a finger. “Uh, uh, uh! A pretty entertaining personal digital assistant.”
Jazz returned her attention to the office. The bland, unimpressive exterior was perfectly representative of the interior. It looked like the reception area of a dentist’s office or an accountant. For the life of her—which she realized was a phrase she’d have to excise from her vocabulary, given recent events—she couldn’t figure out why a simulated environment would make a place that looked like it had been shoehorned into an existing corporate park.
