NOVEL NEXT Chapter 109: Refreshments
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Hiram: The prize for work well done is work to maintain it, lest someone's faulty memory later paint you in a bad light. This is partly why, when you decide to play at all, you must play to win.
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Saturday, November 23rd 2090, about 4:05 pm MST, Montana City
Sam Patel's office was sleek—a perfect VR paradise. Everything gleamed just a little too much.
"Listen," Sam said, waving Gordon inside. "I've evaluated every bitstream hitting your IP. At first, I thought you'd snuck something into the code."
He paused. His expression shifted—serious, tight.
"But then I looked at Marie's IP."
He held Gordon's gaze. "I know. You know. We *all* know why we're not telling anybody."
Gordon didn't move.
Sam pressed on, fast and low: "But I figured it out last night. And now we're booked on the *Robbie* show for a followup."
He exhaled sharply.
"So we're gonna figure out how to tell the truth, without getting me eaten *or* enabling a wave of copycats. Because I really—*really*—don't want to do either."
Gordon stared at him.
The short Indian man was clearly quite serious.
His beard was quivering.
"Um," said Gordon, "I didn't do anything that revolutionary."
"I'll stop you there. You didn't cheat. You didn't jailbreak. You didn't inject anything dirty. You DID send him Marie's action log using the dev scripts we included for streamers. A mistake, in hindsight."
"Okay, true."
"So now Gallant's in a class of his own, only AIs on the board with more input than him is the dungeon or world class AI's."
"No."
How the hell did you make such good AI with such limited contextual awareness? Gordon wondered.
"We're better than you think we are," Sam said, grinning feraly at Gordon. "But."
Gordon heard the importance in the syllable.
"I can't—I won't lie. But if I tell them the truth—if I say you just piped stream metadata into a state-sensitive AI script using in-game features—with your little script—"
He dropped his hand and locked eyes with Gordon.
"—then every wannabe genius with ChatForge and a Twitch account is gonna try it. And most of them are gonna screw it up and bloat the server load, and you know it."
Gordon did know it.
He let out a slow, sharp breath.
"So help me out here, Gordon. How do I tell the truth. . . without teaching the whole playerbase how to build a ghost in the shell?"
"I guess Robbie gets a second guest, and I lie my ass off."
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Gordon thought about it all day. The stream would be in the late PM, so Sam had grudgingly allowed him to leave their think tank without answering the problem.
He rejected recursive programming—the scripting language didn't support it.
He rejected remote control and instruction caching for the same reason.
Mirroring was out.
. . .wait. Hold on. Remote control.
What if. . .
. . . a necromancer with remote control minions claimed to have helped Gordon do everything live? How that would work the community can debate forever, there were a ton of input varieties in-game. None of them the right answer. Specters COULD do similar, but they'd have to be piloted remotely. So what would a specter do in this potential situation?
Well, it could pass a second stream of commands to Gallant, just like the script did, but based on another player's knowledge instead—yes—that was doable. It would have worked, and without needing scripting, and would make imitation much more difficult to consider trying.
It could work. Sam concurred: Gallant and Gordon were not generally online at the same time, and Gallant did his best work when Gordon was offline—or, they could spin that.
It would do.
Gordon placed a call to Karen's greatest enemy.
"HALLO," said the necromancer. "Yuri is happy to hear your voice!"
"I've never spoken to you."
"You are streaming with Cuts_like_Karen, ya?"
"Ya—yes. . .?"
"You tell her for me, Yuri is being unbothered by his humiliating defeat? She is quite a woman, I would duel her ANYTIME."
"That might not be what she's hoping to hear from you."
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"Yuri is honest! That is what fans love about him. Me. Sorry, it is so EASY to fall into American cinema speech patterns. I use them to learn English!"
"So, honestly, you want me to tell her. . .?"
"Yuri is her biggest fan. You tell her that. She is grace and power in one box, with wit like her swords, and Yuri will never turn down the chance to test himself with her skills."
Gordon paused. This was not what he'd expected.
"You tell her," said Yuri, "She is the blank in Yuri's combat logs. She has died to her friend, not to Yuri. Thirty fights! Thirty! Her friend kills her twice in a row. This cannot stand. This can not stand, my friend."
"That would . . . bother me?" Gordon tried.
"We must drink together to settle the balance," Yuri explained. "Our bodies our swords, on live camera. It will be Yuri's first time showing his face. My face. I shall shave."
"Wow, that's brave," said Gordon, at a complete loss.
"We shall drink American whiskey, for her advantage," he said firmly."
"Let's make a deal," suggested Gordon.
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"I'm doing WHAT on a Thursday night?"
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"She can't drink whiskey," Claire said seriously. "She'll get naked."
"Shut. Up?" asked Gordon.
"For some people it's whiskey, for some it's tequila. This is a problem, Gordon."
"Crap. What'd she say?"
"Hell yes. What did you expect her to say? 'Our bodies our swords'—she was HYPED."
". . .Claire?"
". . .Gordon."
"How do you know that?"
"College party," Claire said flatly, not looking him in the eyes. "I will not be elaborating."
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"YURI IS SO PLEASED!" Yuri pronounced. A bottle of tennessee honey sat next to him, on camera. He turned out to look a lot like his counterpart, but with a much broader face that made up for the height and slender musculature. More . . . vegan than stick insect. His beard was nice.
Claire hated him on sight.
That man was going to drink too much.
"Today," he explained, "It is the game liar!"
He spread a deck on the board, flipped it slowly, manually. Not a card player, this one.
"The goal is simple: Yur–––❖–––I say I have this card, you call me liar when I do not! Then the drink."
He grinned wide enough to show teeth. "If you are wrong—you drink."
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It was late. It was the time zone—Gordon was struggling to stay awake, but it was prime time in Germany for a drinking game. Apparently.
Karen had asked to use his camera setup. It didn't bother him—exactly. It made it hard to sleep, though. He could hear Yuri's fans cheering over the discord. The man was in a studio with an audience.
His bed was ten feet from the card table, but out of view. He was fully clothed. He didn't usually try to sleep that way, so unfamiliar itches chased themselves around his back and legs. Meantime—cheers. Yuri, for Karen. Karen, for Yuri, or the stream for either.
Karen's bottle was half-full.
It was midnight.
She'd chosen Old #7. She spritzed lime juice between shots.
She was a better liar than he was.
But he was a much, much bigger man than she was.
Gordon pulled up the chat after a while, despairing of sleep.
> DrDeathroll: No I'm serious she's gonna die, someone stop this.
> JackieEnglish: I've had more than that.
> stormfronting_YourMother: Yeah nah I don't believe you, she needs water and a bed. He's a monster
Gordon thought about it. He thought again.
He rolled out of bed, and pulled up his rolly chair next to Karen.
"Hey, guys," he said. "Gordon Stone, "Big Iron" here—Yuri, she's smaller than you physically. Are you scaling your score?"
The big man looked shocked. "OH NO!"
"What's the score?" Gordon asked.
"Twelve!" Yuri cried. "She is up by two. Get her water. Yuri will drink six more and tomorrow—Karen must ask tomorrow for final results."
"I could still win," Karen muttered, groping for the bottle and missing.
"Much water," said Yuri, suddenly grave.
"I promise."
Karen was having trouble walking. Gordon shut off the cameras, and the lights, but she was already curled up around his pillow. He sighed and went to get water. One glass. Then another. Two pints.
Was that enough?
He had no idea.
Drinking beer with Harry hadn't prepared him for this level of alcoholism.
She wasn't even holding up her head when he woke her, trying to get her to drink.
"I—I can drinnnkkk," she assured him.
He sat cross-legged and draped her across his lap, holding her upright by the shoulders.
She finished one glass.
The robot took it. Why she never gave her used drinks to the roomba-looking thing, he had no idea. It was literally as easy as holding it out and waiting for the telescoping arm.
"One more?" he asked.
She answered with a warm rush across his stomach and groin.
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He showered.
He changed the sheets.
She stayed kneeling over the toilet.
He doubted she could see him well enough for modesty to matter, but wrapped a towel around himself anyway—inside the frosted glass.
She was asleep when he came out. He woke her up. Airways clear. Eyes unfocused and unsteady.
He couldn't leave her on the bathroom floor.
2:00 am.
Claire would be asleep.
He thought about it for a minute. She was sleeping calmly again. In the wrong place, but seemingly healthy.
"Admin_AI," he prompted the air quietly. He'd trained it on his voice—it didn't have to be yelled at these days. "Suggestions for healthcare, patient overdosed on alcohol, last dose two hours ago, minimal resources?"
"Based on reported context: turn sideways. Elevate head with a pillow. Spread towels, optionally, for hygiene. Monitor until half-life of alcohol dose has passed."
He only had two towels. Yet another symptom of AI monitored just-in-time laundry. He placed both down on his bed, giving her the left side—his least favorite. Just in case.
"Admin_AI," he prompted. "Enable bedroom security camera. Monitor Karen using security feed. Wake me if she turns over or is in distress."
It chimed agreement.
She was so light. He placed a bathrobe over her—lacking a blanket. Another over his clothes and he was ready to sleep.
Sleep came faster than he expected.
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When he woke up, Karen was naked.