Warren and the Dungeon Seed

Chapter 3.The Game

“Warren!”

I was back in my room with Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick” on my headphones and drumsticks in my hands. I banged on my electric drum set, trying to follow one of the most complicated drum solos in history. I couldn’t keep time with it, but I was getting better. I played when I had to drown out the world, when I needed to escape. And I needed to escape more than ever.

“Warrreennnn!” My sister’s voice boomed through the apartment.

I ignored her again. What was I going to do? I had finished my shift and clocked out like everything was fine. But it wasn’t fine. I didn’t think I could go for one more day. I had been here before. Frustrated. Bored. Desperate for something to change, but unable to move.

I had a future once. People had told me that I would go to college and work on complex problems. But that was a long time ago.

Sofia whipped open my door and stood in the doorway. Her face danced with excitement. A wild grin stretched across her face. Her dark hair was pulled up into a bun, a clear sign that she meant business. She motioned for me to take off my headphones.

I did. I kept pounding the bass, keeping rhythm with my heart.

“It’s here,” she said.

My eyes opened wide. Finally.

“It’s here?”

She nodded.

We ran to the front door like we were kids again. Two delivery men stood at the door.

Sofia signed for the delivery and the men filled up half of our modest living room with boxes.

Our apartment was small, with a combined living room and kitchen of maybe 150 square feet. One loveseat sat against the wall opposite the kitchenette, its tattered and torn cloth covering half of one of the seat cushions. We each had our own bedrooms and, though they were tight, it was enough. More than most people who lived below floor 20 could afford.

“Honestly,” I said, “I didn’t really believe you when you said you had gotten a pod. How did you get your hands on a twenty-thousand dollar machine to play video games?”

Sofia sliced open a box labeled with a giant “1” and pulled out a set of directions a half-inch thick. “Well,” she said, “that doesn’t surprise me, Warren. You rarely believe a word I say.”

She started scanning what looked like a bunch of technical specs.

“Sofia.”

“Huh?” She turned to me.

“Seriously, how did you afford this?”

She turned away, her eyes back on the manual. “I didn’t buy it, Warren. I told you all this before. The government loaned it to us.”

I remembered part of what she had told me. Over the past decade, robots and artificial intelligence had taken a massive portion of jobs from people, especially in the United States. This led to unemployment and struggle for most and exponential wealth for a few. In response, the government tried a number of things to create employment. The factory I worked for was subsidized by the government, which protected human jobs, but at a terrible cost to the country.

More recently, with the rise of people spending more and more time in virtual reality worlds, the government passed a huge Jobs bill that supported low-earners to work within virtual reality worlds. More and more wealthy people were spending their free time exploring the metaverse, connected by machines called “pods” or “rigs” that read brain waves and allowed people to have very real experiences without leaving their homes. Or so I had heard.

They shopped and gamed. They went to online brothels and dance clubs. And this meant a whole new set of Jobs. Online worlds needed DJs, bartenders, store-clerks, and moderators. And corporations bragged about the numbers of humans that worked in their virtual businesses. Apparently, rich people preferred to be served by other humans. The problem was that people like Sofia and I could never afford a pod, so we couldn’t work these Jobs. That’s where the government came in. They loaned pods to people who needed assistance.

“Yeah, but why would they loan us this expensive machine to play video games with? I thought people in this program had to actually work.”

Sofia glanced at her watch. “They don’t monitor what we do with it,” she said. “As long as we make the weekly $2,000 payments, we get to keep it. If we miss more than one payment, they show up to take it away.”

Two-thousand a week was more than we currently made, combined, and didn’t even account for rent, taxes, and food.

“I know you love video games,” I said. “But this is insane.”

She looked back at me, this time holding my gaze. “I know what you’re thinking, but have a little faith in your sister. The last time a big gaming company released a virtual multiplayer roleplaying game, people made good money by gathering materials and selling them in-game. If I do this right, we’ll cover our expenses just fine.”

Sofia glanced at her watch again and then began slicing open boxes. She rummaged through materials, pulling a book out of a box with a glossy cover.

“Why do you keep looking at your watch?” I asked.

She walked over to me and handed me a gameplay manual. “Because we’re sixteen hours from game launch. Thousands of people will log in for the first time, and I have to assemble this pod before I can log in. Every second matters here, and I don’t want to get behind the curve.”

I laid back on the loveseat, kicking my leg up on the back of the couch. The front cover depicted a landscape with a forested mountain valley. A floating castle hovered above a glen. A small hero looked up at the castle, a large sword resting on their shoulder. They wore shining armor. At the top of the cover in big bold lettering, it read Integration Online .

The game did look amazing. Sofia and I had played dozens of games similar to this. Fantasy games with swords and magic, dungeon divers and platformers. Games of conquest and monster slaying. But to live in one and feel what it was like to actually shoot fireballs from your hands? We had never been able to afford virtual reality headsets, let alone a pod. We played old-school games on console, sitting next to each other on the couch.

“Before you get any crazy ideas,” Sofia said. “That hero on the cover won’t be me. I’m going to make money by selling herbs, ore, fish, and food to this guy. He can go on the adventures. I’ll rake in the cash. During a game’s release, people like me sell raw materials to heroes like this for profits.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What does it matter if you get a lot of in-game currency? How does that help us pay rent?”

“Really Warren, you think I’d fill out a mountain of paperwork and drop two grand on a week and not think of that? Look,” she said. “The game developers will allow people to pay for game time with in-game currency rather than US Dollars. I can buy gameplay tokens for in-game cash and sell them for real money on the open market. Then I'll pay our rent with that money.”

“But doesn’t that mean that all the rich folks who live above floor 100 can just buy the best stuff in-game and pay to win?” Games that allowed players to pay-to-win were unpopular with serious gamers and couldn’t keep users for long. It was so easy to buy your way to the end. They didn't create authentic challenges and fair play.

Sofia leaned over a large metal base, bolting what looked like the front section of the pod together. Her ratchet whipped back and forth.

“No,” she said, pulling a set of wires through a hole in the front panel of the rig. “Players can only remove currency from the game; they can't bring currency in. This will prevent in-game inflation and extend the life of the economy. In other words, people can’t pay to win.”

“Riiight,” I replied. “No game has ever been free of gold farmers. Bots find sneaky ways to help rich people bring their privilege from the real world into the game world.”

She shrugged. “Maybe you’re right, but they have an entire team dedicated to tracking down bots. I’ve heard that they even reward players for tattling on cheaters.” She smirked. “Maybe you should use your lie detection abilities to suss them out and make us rich.”

Sofia was teasing me. But her comment did spark an idea. I started drumming “Livin' on a Prayer” with my fingers against the book. I did my best thinking to the rhythm of the ’80s.

As Sofia continued to assemble the pod, I dove into the gameplay manual. I flipped through the pictures, read captions, and tried to get excited for her. I got lost in the pages that read like an advertisement. When I looked up from my reverie, Sofia had constructed the entire frame.

“Won’t everybody know all these money making techniques?” I asked her. “If everyone has all this game info, how could you get ahead?”

“Actually,” she said, “nobody knows anything. There was no open beta, and the internet has basically no information whatsoever. In fact, the development team claimed that they’re going to scrub the internet every hour for game information. They threatened anybody who shares game knowledge with suspensions."

That was shocking. “So no streamers, no wikis, nothing? Why would they do that?” The concept thrilled me. It was so easy to look up answers to games, find solutions online, theory-craft everything. The idea that nobody knew anything was— refreshing. Exciting.

“I’m not exactly sure yet,” she said, “is there anything interesting in that manual?

I glanced through some pages. “It’s mostly surface-level stuff — how to log in. Some basic lore.”

“Really?” She said, turning towards me.

She bolted in a chair on the inside of the frame and began attaching between the back of the chair and the processor. There was no screen. When a person connected, they would be able to use all five senses for complete immersion.

“What lore, Warren?”

I read a small paragraph to her. “In the year 975, the allied races lost their ability to wield magic, sending the world into chaos. Perhaps you, brave adventurer, can follow the clues and discover how the peoples of Integration Online lost their magic. Are you the hero who can return the arcane powers to the allied races?”

“No magic, huh?” she said. “Maybe I should focus on goods that physical fighters need then? Like metals and herbs.”

I stopped my fingers from drumming. My idea had solidified. A mixture of excitement for the game and desperation to not return to the factory filled my heart. I had to try.

“Sofia,” I said.

“Hmm?” She was nose-deep in her instruction manual.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

She turned to me.

“I can’t go back to my Job,” I started. My eyes went downcast. “They’re awful to me, and they’re taking away the sewing machines in the break room.” I tried to gather my confidence. I was so bad at this. I told her about my day, trying to keep eye contact with her but I often couldn’t. Sofia listened attentively, and I could see fire in her eyes when I told her about Tony and the manager. Sofia was the fighter. I wasn’t. “That side business was all I had to be excited about. I feel dead inside, like there’s nothing for me to be good at.”

“Warren, I…” she started. She sighed, her eyes looked downward. “I know I haven’t been the best guardian for you. I never should have let you quit studying. You were so smart. You still are. It’s just that I didn’t count on losing your income in my plans. I don’t think we can make rent without it. At least until I start making more money, then—”

#x200e “I was thinking that you can’t play the game 24/7,” I interrupted. I needed to appeal to my sister, the business woman. or this wouldn’t work. “Don’t good businesses try to use their capital at full capacity? If you play for sixteen hours a day, won’t this expensive machine just sit here not making us money for eight hours a day?”

I continued. “Why not let me play for those eight hours when you aren't using the pod? I’ll fish and farm and whatever you want me to do. I’ll work for you and follow your directives.”

She looked at me, her eyes calculating.

“You’ll listen to me and not get caught up in anything that wastes your time?”

I nodded.

“This isn’t a joke, Warren. If you can’t earn what you were making at the factory, you’ll have to go back. I can’t risk this investment on you screwing around in this pod. It’s a job, not a game.”

I nodded.

“Fine,” she said. “You’ll work noon-midnight and I’ll work the opposite shift. I’m used to being up all night anyway.”

“You’re really okay with this?” I asked.

“For now,” she said. “Go get ready. You start in two hours.”