would allow.
Smorgeous assured him that everything was going to be fine. The familiar reminded D_Light of difficult times in his past when he had managed to pull through. The mistake would be fixed.
Sensing, perhaps, that his counseling was not helping, Smorgeous repeated an offer for sedatives. D_Light ignored this and, upon finding an exit from the mounds, found himself in the morning sun. He immediately beelined for a nearby grove of trees, which was just dense enough to conceal him. Finally able to lie down, D_Light agreed to the sedative. As exhausted as his body was, his mind was overly active, spinning in a whirlwind of activity. He needed to calm his thoughts, and none of his trance mantras were working. Besides, D_Light had no reason to use drugs sparingly anymore because, as a demon, his health contract was null and void anyway. In fact, as a demon, he was no longer in the Game at all.
An electromagnetic pulse beamed out of the embedded chip at the base of D_Light’s skull, focused downward through his carotid artery. Some of the nanobots suspended in the area where the blood had been irradiated were then activated, releasing their payload of drug molecules into his bloodstream. D_Light felt the effects immediately and lay face down on the ground; a twig pressed uncomfortably into his cheek. He did not even bother to make himself more comfortable before he lapsed into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 17
A tight feedback loop-that is one of the primary components of facilitating flow in any grinder game you design. Even as I speak, your feedback on my performance is trickling in, affecting the points I receive. Ah, I see many of you liked that example. Another twenty-three points for me! Thankfully, you did not have to send this feedback explicitly, as was necessary in the past. Instead, your brain patterns, your BPs, offer the feedback, requiring no effort from you. Otherwise, how could you concentrate on what I’m saying?
Now, this constant appraisal of my work puts me into a state of flow. I’m not off thinking about what I’m going to do with my newly won points. I’m not planning what I will be doing in the next hour or the next week, or thinking about the funny story my brother told me less than an hour ago. There is only the here and now. In such a state of mind, is it any wonder that grinder games yield such high productivity from their players?
Takin’, whose name was short for “taking care of business,” was playing well tonight. He had a fleet of twenty-five cleaning bots under his command, and thus far his team was ahead of every other cleaning team in his zone. Of course, this was no surprise to Takin’, who constantly strove to live up to his name. He had studied his route carefully. He knew the high-traffic tunnels and chambers with the greatest likelihood of filth. He knew how to deploy his bots in just the right ratio so that the high-traffic areas were cleaned properly, but not with too many bots which might be better utilized elsewhere. This was important because quality cleaning was not enough to bring in the big points; you had to be fast at it, too.
Takin’ only owned five of the bots he was using. The rest were rented, so the faster he finished the more points he would net. Besides, the house that ran these mounds and was sponsoring this cleaning game factored speed into the bonus system. They wanted their clients to have to contend with cleaning gamers as little as possible. The best cleaning crew came through like a gust of wind-gone by the time you knew it was there.
Which brings up the third qualification for a high score-no customer complaints. Since logging a complaint was only a thought away, pissing anyone off, even just a little, meant your house would hear about it right away. Nailing all these goals was tough, but Takin’ enjoyed the challenge. And it sure helped that the game kept him constantly apprised of his progress. He had mental threads on all his bots that turned colors-red, yellow, and green-in accordance with the amount of grime they were picking up. Red meant that almost no cleaning was occurring, while green indicated it was keeping very busy with its work.
Takin’s goal was to keep at least a quarter of his bots in the green and the remainder in the yellow. If he kept up that level of performance, he would constantly get reassurances from his game genie, a smooth, young female voice. She said things like, “I liked that move,” or “Oh, yeah, you do that so well.” His favorite one that was reserved for when he was really cleaning up was, “Takin’! Oh yes! Takin’!” which the disembodied voice cried orgasmically. She had tons of prompts, and the AI improvised well.
Takin’ had a hunch to play at the Anywhere apartment mounds today. He wasn’t sure why he should play there, as it was a little out of his way, but he had learned to trust his hunches-the subtle promptings of the OverSoul. And this time his hunch had really paid off. A massive stampede of unprecedented magnitude had just gone through Anywhere like a spanker cattle drive, and Takin’s bots were cleaning in the green across the board. It was going to be a good game.
Katria was on the other side of the planet, walking along a well-worn trail through a multicolored but orderly orchard of nectar trees. This was one of her favorite paths to stroll while grinding. The scenery of this route was beautiful, but due to the regularly spaced rows of trees and monotonously brilliant green grass carpeting the ground, it was not distracting, which was perfect for thought-intensive grinding.
Against all odds (as she understood them), she and Rhemus had lost the demon girl. Or at least for the moment. A sudden and disorderly exodus of the spanker ghetto had overwhelmed the sniffer bots that were stationed at the ghetto exits. The bots were very good at what they did, but they were not designed to process so many so fast.
Do you suppose this player, D_Light, as he’s called, knows that she’s a demon? blinked Rhemus. Is he actually helping her?
Hard to say for sure, replied Katria. The things he did, like logging her into the game and then starting that riot…Well, if he wasn’t trying to help her, I couldn’t imagine a more effective way to accidentally escape.
Yeah, and his beacon is off, Rhemus added. Few players run cloaked. I’d say he knows what he’s doing. We need to factor him in. It’s not often a mainstream player works with a demon. Might make this hunt pretty interesting.
Katria did not want an interesting hunt; she wanted it to be over. She had already spent far too many points on the sniffer bot rental fees. Having escaped the ghetto now, the two could have gone in any direction with nearly an hour head start. It had taken that long for the pandemonium to die down enough for a sniffer to find the scent trail again. Worse yet, shortly after finding the scent trial, they lost it-or more precisely, the trail had been demolished. Katria cursed her absurdly bad luck. A cleaning crew had gone through and scoured the area through which the fugitives had escaped. Now the few sniffer bots Katria kept on retainer hovered about where the trail had gone dead, impotently sifting the air.
I think it might be time to bring some heavy artillery into this game, Katria said.
A seeker, eh? That’ll be expensive, Rhemus replied with an attached Whinicon™.
It’s the right move though, Katria assured him. Now that the demon’s out of the bag, the bots are just too stupid to deal. It’s time to step it up. Katria sighed as she focused on a nearby purple and pink nectar blossom.
Rhemus paused for a few seconds and then said, I concur. I’m in for half of the fee.
That was why Katria always played with Rhemus. He did what needed to be done. They thought enough alike to work together easily, but diverged enough to not be redundant.
Thanks, Rhemus. I’m calling the bots off. The seeker will be in play within fifteen.
After making the appropriate arrangements, Katria opened a blink to her friend, OffDaLeash, to shake down what was what for the night. Katria figured she deserved a little break. The seeker would take it from here.
CHAPTER 18
