NOVEL NEXT Chapter 36: Luxury Food
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Mau_dev: We're jacked into your neural cortex. I could have made wolf steak taste like cocaine feels. But then you'd all log out and be disappointed in your Fruity Pebbles. 'Hands off the joy button,' that was my motto. The focus group and my boss told me to get fucked, though, so that's what it is. Learn your limits, enjoy yourselves responsibly.
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Tuesday, November 12th, 2090, about 5:13 pm MST, Montana City
Gordon wasn't a huge fan of eating in Ghostlands. The game was designed for two- to three-hour sessions, meaning players could log out and eat as usual. But along with its optical cortex interface, the game also had an excellent connection to the part of the brain responsible for taste perception. The headset even provided tactile feedback to simulate the sensation of chewing.
Most players used mouthpieces to prevent themselves from grinding their teeth while eating in-game, but Gordon still didn't like it. He found the whole experience frustrating. The sensations were real. The flavors were often exquisite. And yet, he would log out of Ghostlands at 10 PM, only to realize that everything was closed and he now had to cook something on the stove like a starving college kid. He had never actually been starving, but from what his roommates described, the experience felt similar. When he did the shopping, the larder would be bare. When he cooked for himself, the results were mediocre at best. And when he had to do all of that at an inconvenient hour? Even worse.
After a stream, he usually ordered pizza—except, well, nobody should like pizza that much. He was sure of that. Eating pizza every day was excessive. Pizza, BBQ, Mexican—and then the cycle would begin again. He was lucky he was constantly active, or he'd weigh four thousand pounds.
Still, his character had to eat. All Ghostlands characters did. The game had a basic nutrition system: each player had a required daily intake, which burned off whenever they healed. It also burned off if they spent time away from the game, which Gordon considered straight-up manipulative. Nutrition was dirt cheap, though, and players could gain bonuses based on the last thing they ate. His favorite was deer jerky. It tasted like actual deer jerky—not bad, if you had to taste something—and it increased his Speed stat by one until his next meal. He had been eating nothing but deer jerky for years. Admittedly, the taste was getting tiresome.
So it was a bit of a surprise when Karen, after spending almost half an hour getting her outfit just right, dragged him to The Finer Things in Wutaar. The food there was terribly expensive, she admitted, but it was also designed to hook players with their first bite. She had several favorites—favorites she'd never shared with anyone, since Claire refused to sit down and eat in-game.
Something about epic spells to cast and dragons to ride made cafés seem boring.
Karen insisted she wasn't bitter about it, but Gordon could hear the underlying friction between two good friends with wildly different playstyles. Claire didn't see the point in spending money for no mechanical gain—no lasting benefit, just an ephemeral experience—when she could get the same food in real life, for real. She had all the spending money in the world. If she wanted no-frills hibachi, she could go to a no-frills hibachi. If she wanted filet mignon, she could get filet mignon.
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Gordon wasn't exactly opposed to eating in-game, but his thoughts were simpler: I can afford it in-game, but not in real life. So why remind myself that real life sucks?
But Karen had a point. Sometimes, you do something unusual just to share it with people who enjoy it.
And so, Gordon found himself sitting there, eating a baguette-shaped slab of pink monster meat, charbroiled to hell and back, stuffed between two halves of a bun and piled high with cheese.
And loving every second of it.
"That's why I think it's important for people to try new experiences," Karen said, smug. "You don't know what you like until you try everything on the menu. Like … you don't know, for example, maybe you'd like butt stuff if you tried it."
Gordon had zoned out—he was known to do that when it came to food—but that, and the accompanying wink, brought him back. He sputtered, the very realistic sensation of fluid in his sinuses making him choke.
"I…" He gasped for breath. "I didn't do anything to deserve that."
Karen pouted. It was attractive in real life, let alone with high-saturation lighting and bloom sparkles in her eyes and off her perpetually glossy lips.
"Karen," he complained, "we can interact like real human beings even if you don't go for maximum shock value every minute of the day."
She looked at him, clear blue eyes taking in what he was saying but not giving anything back.
"I've missed our talks," he said seriously. "The whole being streamed constantly thing is starting to feel like a chore. You've got a mask up—I get it, I really do—but just remember there are other ways."
He offered a half-smile, deliberately letting the joke fall flat.
"You could always bribe me with shiny presents if you want me to pay attention to what you're up to."
It wasn't really about the joke. It was a crack in his mask, just wide enough for her to see through—to know he missed her being genuine.
She chewed for an eternal moment. Gordon's real ears heard her silence in the haptic bay beside him, a subtle change in the background audio he took for granted. He blindly reached out his real arm, disabling haptic tracking, and squeezed her shoulder briefly. It always surprised him how small she felt to the touch, with how boisterous and active she was in motion. The move would be visible to anyone watching their studio stream now, but that would be basically nobody who wasn't oogling her haptic suit-clad person, hopefully, a smallish crowd at most.
"Leave me a few secrets," she said at last, swallowing what had to be simulated mush. "But … maybe we can catch a flick later or something. Just like old times."
Gordon groaned and swallowed the rest of his wyvern steak in two bites. It tasted so good, but this had been a mistake.
+2 Pace, his interface reminded him.
Dammit.
Karen noticed his scowl. "Too much? I won't make you watch anything if you don't want to."
"I just don't like the optics of pre-gaming on a Pace booster," he admitted. "I don't even use it for the draw, but it's the principle of the thing. A movie sounds great."
"Just make it clear that you're going natty, it'll be okay," she said, cavalier as always. "You're at just … 22 Pace, after that? Even if you were running solely off stats, you still wouldn't be more than a little bit of an outlier."
"Out of 24, practically speaking," Gordon protested.
"And my Courage is at 24, maxed. You don't see anybody calling hax on me. It's just—your build."
Gordon nodded. "Either way—thanks for the run with me. I needed to do something more active."
"I'm down for anything," she said wistfully. "Anytime."