Chapter 626 – Strategy Meeting

Chapter 626 – Strategy Meeting

The wall closed behind them with the smooth sounds of well-oiled machinery snapping into place. John, Chemilia and Beatrice entered Scarlett’s domain. Sitting in her swivel chair, back turned towards them, she was looking up to the giant screen that she usually employed to display the map of the region.

Currently, it was instead holding a bunch of code. Now, John barely had any background in coding. Best he could show was that he had been the best in the IT class, programming some minor things with Java. As such, proficient wasn’t a word he would use to describe himself.

The code on the screen, however, even without extended knowledge, did not fit any standard programming languages. Sure, it had all the square and pointy brackets one could want, but a number of arcane symbols in the code that had no place in the English language were rather telling that something was off.

“Okay, John, listen,” Scarlett suddenly spoke up, without looking over. “This line of code,” she waved towards the screen, causing one line to be outlined with blue marker, “is supposed to create a signature scan of the phone-holder’s magical footprint that then gets sent to the database.”

“Sure?” John answered, walking towards the table. Exchanging a confused glance with Chemilia, they watched the redhead as she continued on.

“It’s supposed to,” Scarlett’s finger’s tapped steadily on the armrest of her chair, “to make sure a first signature does not get immediate access to the program. They first have to be confirmed by the magical signature of a person with moderator access. That’s what this bit does...” the marked area changed, “...so why, the fuck, does it instead just create a backup in the moderator area on the server side, all while not giving access?”

“I don’t kno-“ John tried to tell her, wanting to ask what all of this was about, but Scarlett interrupted him.

“Be quiet, rubber duck, I’m explaining the code to you.” Her red eyes glared, the magical circuitry inside them flashing numerous times. Shutting up, although he was still supremely confused, he just listened to her ramble on, marking different areas as she talked about. “So this bit makes it scan, this bit checks whether they’re already in the database and what rank they have, and this bit creates a new entry if they aren’t. This bit then assigns a descriptor to the entry, depending on whether or not a moderator confirms them, giving them either the role of confirmed member or intruder... Ah, THERE IT IS!”

Scarlett suddenly jumped out of her seat. The expression on her face made it look like she had just succeeded in finding her mortal enemy and she was now taking the greatest pleasure in tearing them limb from limb. To John, it just looked like she changed a line of code. “Found the bug?” he asked, now having an inkling about what was going on.

“Yes,” Scarlett fell back into the armchair and turned towards her two visitors, the screen shutting off the moment she took her eyes off it. “Had the wrong shortcut set for intruder, so it would give the moderator title but the shut-out commands for those that aren’t confirmed overwrite the access commands so they still couldn’t use the program.”

“Well, I am sure you know what you’re doing.” John understood what she was talking about there, at least in theory, but he had no idea what she was doing broadly. “I just have two questions.”

“No, you have a million questions, because that’s the type of person you are,” Scarlett corrected him, fidgeting with a pack of cigarettes. She opened the box, it was almost full, only to toss it back on the table. “A pain in my fucking ass with all the things you keep wanting to know.”

“Last I checked you liked it when I was a pain in your ass,” John pointed out.

“True enough,” Scarlett conceded the point, resting her head on her knuckles. “Get the questions out of your system already. We have better plans for the rest of the day.”

He was about to point out that she wasn’t doing herself any favours by bantering back at any given opportunity, but decided to get on with it himself. “So, first: rubber duck?” that question was easy enough. Of all the things he had been called in his time, and thanks to Eliza that was a big catalogue, that one was new for him.

“I used you as a stand-in for one,” Scarlett explained with a semi-bored expression. “When programmers are stuck, it’s recommended they talk to some inanimate object and explain the code in detail for what it is supposed to do. Helps find bugs or ‘unwanted features’. It’s called the rubber duck method, so there ya go.”

That was easy enough, second question though. “Didn’t know you wrote the code, much less potentially faulty one, I always assumed you just will programs into existence.” He knew that sounded a bit stupid, but he was still interested in hearing her explanation.

“Technomancy is the art of manipulating electronic input.” Scarlett rolled her eyes, again reaching for the cigarettes and again throwing them back. The Gamer guessed she was trying to reduce her consumption after she had been chain smoking these last few days. “I can’t just will code into existence. Writing it with my mind is a lot quicker than typing, is the whole thing. Also, way more prone to bugs, unless you’re good at it.” She crossed her legs. “And I happen to be the best.”

John could imagine that a number of bugs or unwanted sentences would sneak themselves into his code if he had to write stuff out with his mind. He would be in the middle of writing a command line and suddenly have twenty words describing whether he could eat steak off his girlfriend’s butt for dinner today.

‘Kudos to her mental discipline, I suppose,’ John thought. “Well, those were all of my questions, so we can start now if you want to.”

“I do,” Scarlett said, grabbing the pack of cigarettes for the third time, this time unable to resist the temptation of nicotine. Before long, she was exhaling smoke. “But there are some things we should get done first.” A part of the floor next to John opened slowly, metal lids made from numerous segments moving in unison, as a platform rose. On it lay three items, all of them of a bronze aesthetic, with shimmers of gold and deep purple.

Contact with them had also been established and was quite prolific. Hanging out with the CPDI had netted him some sort of benefit outside of amazing sex with cat-eared reporters after all. The porn/news channel was very popular over there.

Next to them was the Outer Mandate. No contact with them yet. They lacked a leader to talk to, which made things difficult. What that ‘guild’ really was was an umbrella term for all the foreign tributaries of the Mandate of Heaven, China’s super guild and one of the (currently) nine members of the Divided Gates, the strongest guilds on the globe. Depending on how rigid they were on holding onto these tributaries, John could run into some massive problems down the line.

North of that were some other small fry guilds and something called ‘The Crave’ up in Alaska. They were just sitting there, doing nothing for centuries. Very friendly fellows, despite their menacing name. At least that was what John’s diplomat on that front assured him. While the Gamer was curious about them, they were so far away, in location and importance, Scarlett didn’t even bother showing them on the map.

The Gobbo Nation was the goblin equivalent to the Catto Nation. Not much to say about them, except that they were incredibly aggressive towards Fusion’s communication attempts. They were annoyed that the Gamer had not yet appeared on their own favourite network called SSSN (Shortstack Sluts Search News). The defence John had for this was that he had not yet heard of this network and that he would be happy to talk to them.

That was a currently ongoing diplomatic affair he would happily see through personally.

The Upwest Corner was completely devoid of any information. All that John knew about them was that they existed. No communication attempts had yielded any results.

“The Lake Alliance grew a bit,” Chemilia pointed out, pulling John’s attention back to the local problems. “Seems like they gobbled up a few of their own border areas.”

“As we grew stronger, those opposed to us get closer and look for how they can keep up themselves,” John stated, nodding as he noticed the changes. “Nothing too surprising... although I hate how our borders look with the Lower Lake Guilds...”

“A complaint from a really high place you have there, after we doubled our size in the last two weeks,” Scarlett pointed out. “Although the name display would be twice as big for Fusion if we got that single area that protrudes into our space.”

“Can’t you just rewrite the code to curve around there?” John asked, only half-joking. Was it pure vanity that he wanted to see the name of his guild as big on the map as possible? Yes. Did he still want it? Absolutely yes. Map painting was about half the reason he even played grand strategy games.

“I could, but that doesn’t seem like its worth my time.” Scarlett forced out the sorry rest of her cigarette by dropping it on the floor and stepping on it. “Just work harder, then you get your bigger name.”

“Sure, sure, let me do all the work so I can give you a bigger free-trade zone,” John grumbled in a playfully offended matter.

“What else are you good for, John?” Scarlett asked, giving her lover a very tiny smile.

“A number of things,” the Gamer defended himself.

“Interruption.” Beatrice suddenly did exactly what she said. “The intent was expressed to keep this short. Stay on topic.”

Scarlett nodded towards the passive maid. “Good girl. Did you have any luck with contacting our other neighbours?”

“New Libraria refuses to answer. West Gestalt says they want to stay neutral, but also ask if we would help them against East Gestalt. East Gestalt says the same but in reverse. The Death Zone is still there, doing nothing. Florida, well,” John scratched his head, “after I had to personally decipher the riddle they had put on the Abyss Auction, just to get their email, they didn’t respond to me personally but instead wrote an email to my office and... have you read it?”

“I don’t check your office mails, so no,” Scarlett answered, giving him a questioning glance. With a wave of his hand, he told her to go ahead. A few moments later, the map on the screen was replaced by Youtube, playing the link they had, without any further context, sent him.

They watched the entire thing. It was quite amusing, but nobody laughed because none of them were sure what they were looking at or why they were looking at it. Even Scarlett was too perplexed to say anything before it ended. “So, Florida continues to be crazy...” she mumbled. “In other words, there is nothing about our current situation we can really improve right now, is there?”

“Not really, seems like we have to wait for developments,” John agreed, which wasn’t what he wanted whatsoever. “I want to organize a meeting with all the small local guilds around us, try to get them in, but as far as major developments go, we’re currently confined to waiting for someone to do something. Be it the Lake Alliance answering to my white peace suggestion, them attacking or some third party doing something.”

There was agreeing silence after that, nobody really had anything to add. “Then the strategy is... waiting,” Chemilia summarized. “Frustrating, but good for your vacation.”