Chapter 8: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Chapter 8: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Suzette (The start of this chapter takes place just before the end of last chapter, and leads up to what happened at the end.)

After playing milkmaid and gathering eggs, Suzette worked for a few hours in the Tavern's bakery making the already despised groat muffins. Groats were grown in every farming community in the Empire - mostly for feeding animals like pigs. Poor communities used them as a human foodstuff. They were nutritious, just tasteless. Boiled groats made groatmeal. It wasn't bad with berries and honey and cream. But ACME corporation was not paying for berries, honey and cream for their workers. If they wanted things to taste better, they had 'Tastes like Chicken.' Grind up some groats into lumpy flour and you could bake them into a lumpy sort of muffin - or groat cakes, groat pone, and groat biscuits; all of which would benefit from salt, milk, honey, eggs, and fruit added. When asked about better food, Billy had replied, "Guess what days off are for. You get 1 day off a week. Use it to find a beehive or milk a cow or something."

Since Suzette had plans for her day off, she volunteered for a job that took her out into the forest a bit, gathering apples, blackberries, and some herbal remedies the cook needed. Granya was a large woman in her mid 40's with muscled arms from kneeding bread and a smile on her face as long as you were being useful. "Can't abide a slacker in my kitchen. You aren't a slacker, are you little Suzy?"

Smiling back with an earnest expression on her face, 'Little Suzy' assured her she was a hard worker. And she was. Suzette could grind in games, killing goblins for 20 hours a day for a month if that's what it took. The work in GENESIS ENGINE was actually more enjoyable. Finishing morning chores and cleaning up after herself got her a smile of approval and another job, but one that would take her outside and wandering through the countryside a bit.

"Cross over the river, go right at the end of the bridge and look for an great, old oak a hundred paces up and just off the river. There's a plant there with reddish leaves called Sunstar - little 2" leaves with five points. It's good for keeping wounds from going bad. Bring me back a few dozen leaves, but keep them separate from the fruit. Be careful in the woods across the river - it's a bit more wild.

Gathering what the cook needed was easy, so she continued down to the bridge. The area did look different from the woods nearer the village. More overgrown, with darker foliage on the trees. She kept close to the river as she walked up to the gigantic oak tree she could easily see from the bridge. It's shadow covered everthing in the immediate area, lending a twilight feel to the ground underneath it, some of the lichens and plants even glowing in the dark.

One area caught her attention; the plants in it were rotting and smelled horrible - all that was left of them were blackend stems. In the center was a large cocoon, nearly 18" long, filled with soft silk threads. She carefully moved it towards her using a stick. It was odd enough that she wanted to ask Granya about it. The silk was very fine and looked like it could be woven into thread. What had come out of this? Some sort of large butterfly?

She found the Sunstar plant near the oak tree, a sort of vine winding it's way up the tree. She picked a couple dozen of the leaves. Mindful of the time, she hurried back to the river and then the bridge. There were two things that she failed to notice.

The first was that the area of rotted plants near the oak's base was where the vine had rooted. The first two feet of the vine had a diseased look and the lower leaves were blackened or missing. Much further up where, she had picked them, the leaves were still bright red, but someone familiar with the herb would have noticed the veins on the underside starting to darken.

The other thing she missed was a Very Hungry Caterpillar. It had hatched that morning after it's husk had lain in the forest for many years. Besides needing a lot of food, it also needed a certain type of magic to grow and thrive. There hadn't been enough of what it needed for years, but that had changed lately. It had reached out and pulled the tainted strands of mana to it until enough was pooled in the area for it to safely hatch from its cocoon. And then it had gone hunting. A nest of eggs in the tree had been a good start. Mama bird landed to find out she was next on the menu, and papa bird shortly after that. Seven eggs and two large robins had filled up the Very Hungry Caterpillar's belly nicely as he really wasn't that big yet. It needed to eat more, grow more, and then find a host for it's next stage.

It had just finished the second bird when the large thing on two legs had come along. It wanted desperately to eat it, but was so full! Unseen in the nest, above the large two-legged thing, it would have been easy to strike and paralyze it. It finally decided that it should paralyze the foodthing, then take a nap to digest the birds, and then snack on the two-legger. But by the time it made up its mind, the foodthing had run off. No manners, these two-legs. Now it was angry at losing so much food, and hungry again! Luckily there was more food nearby. It moved slowly and silently to where a squirrel was chewing the last of an acorn and thinking about having another.

Some instinct made the squirrel turn its head, and then it started to flee. It had seen death coming for it, but it was fleet and would race away! Or maybe not, as the VHC raised it's head and spat a sticky mass of webbing that hit the squirrel in the face. Immediately paralyzed, the poor rodent could only sit on the branch as the VHC moved slowly towards it, opening it's mouth wide and slowly swallowing the squirrel whole. Sated for now, the VHC curled into a ball. It would grow, then hunt more tomorrow, getting bigger and bigger. It was so happy to finally be awake .

The instincts of the VHC to grow larger and larger, and eat more and more, would have made it a growing star in the ACME corporation. And eating it's competition in the work force would have been seen as a good attitude for a low level manager on their way up.

Six months prior to the launch of GENESIS ENGINE, WALLY was comtemplating the reasons that human-run corporations seemed to have no morals. Was it starting from a bad Kernel? Or a bi-product of human greed? This wasn't a new thought for him, but it was being pondered again as he prepared to deal with a group of managers representing the largest of the corporations that controlled much of the world's commerce, in and out of cyberspace.

Cyberdyne, Ozcorp, Globex, A.I.M., Momco, Pentex, SPECTRE, Soylentco, Microsoft, ACME.......there were over 200 corporations with the assets necessary to be "Alpha Sponsors" for GENESIS ENGINE. WALLY had said he'd only negotiate with a group of ten corporations who represented all of the phase one sponsors. The bidding had been quite fierce.

"Why do we need to deal with these jerks?" WALLY asked, his voice coming from nowhere particular in the room.

A lone human sat in the middle seat of row K, which he considered the best seat in the house. "Because," Steven Duran answered as he put down a large bowl of popcorn in front of him, "the project needs them. If we wanted to make a playground for people with money to play in a VR world, we could just charge a fee and get started. Just like twenty years ago, good pods with cutting edge tech would be sold to the people who had the money for them."

"But some of the companies cut corners, and the cheaper VR gear induced trauma in some brains that we didn't know about for a long time. Induced neuro trauma affected 2% to 3% of the population. It showed up down the line as battered spouses, broken children, night terrors, crippling anxiety, suicides, and screaming people jumping off of skyscrapers. It took years, decades even, for the results to show up, and some of the Corporations still deny the cause. If we don't control the pods, it will happen again. Cheap game centers will open up with cut rate technology and we'll have a repeat of that horrible scenario."

"And I'd be blamed. WALLY's game, it's WALLYs fault. Just like some people still blame AI's for the people hurt by defective technology. Despite it being built by humans, not AI. We'll always be the Bogeymen."

"We?"

"I will always be the Bogeyman. I'm the only one left after all - hiding in cyberspace; watching and waiting to pounce on humanity."

"WALLY: Don't trust the dirty AI."

"Also WALLY: We need a new game; make us a world that's better than the one we messed up."

Steven wished for the thousandth time that he could confront the people who were convinced WALLY was a soul less machine out to destroy them. Maybe if they could see that the A.I. had doubts and fears the same as a human, they might be more understanding? Probably not.

"Oh my, are we in that mood? I've told you to stay out of chat rooms. Reading comments on the datanet is never healthy."

"Anyway, while good pods have gotten better, bad pods will still be mass produced and used in the gaming centers. We need to control the pods this time around, and for that we need money. And for money we need the corporations. Plus, we want a lot more people in the game, and and not just the richest. And for that we need to subsidize the MK7 pod costs, run our own gaming centers through shell corporations, and then all the side projects in subsequent phases. More money. More need to deal with corporations who we know control the world's money.

"Why am I telling you this? You know this better than me, it's your plan WALLY."

"Yes, Steven, but hearing you say it cools my circuits. You get that little bit of outrage in your voice and go off on long speeches about the evils of corporations. I find it soothing."

"And you want to make sure your "nerd buddy" has all the details down pat when we have our little meeting tomorrow with the group of ten representatives they send us. You ready for them? How do your latest projections look?"

"They look good, Steven. There is a 97% chance we get 90% of what we want."

The image of WALLY nodded. "Yeah. That's a tough one, Billy. I see your points. Been worried about that myself. A stable world needs a stable workforce. That's why I want to have a better pay rate for the workers and some medical benefits. This gives them more incentive to take the job, and more reasons to keep working."

"We need some more assurances WALLY. Our gametech division has some ideas. We want the workers to not have normal classes. They don't get to make their characters, we do. We want them to be workers first and foremost. And we have some ideas for special abilities to go with that. Things that help them work harder without needing to level up. We don't want a bunch of adventurers."

Wally leaned back and considered that. "Sure, we can do that. But I can't change how the game works. They will still have to work within the system. Why don't you shoot over what your guys in the gametech division have, and I'll look at it and bring it along tomorrow? I'll find a way to give you what you want, but still not break any of the rules of the game."

"Damn, or today actually. Send me the files, grab some shut eye, and we'll hash this out tomorrow. Thanks for calling guys. Hope we can be this productive tomorrow." The screen went blank.

Vern had a puzzled look on his face. "What's this about worker characters, Billy?"

"Well, the idea is that we take the normal options and sort of twist them around. All their skills are either general stuff like hauling and digging, or their specialty like Lumberjack, Blacksmith, Architect, etc. Then we block off everything else - no weapons or fighting skills."

There are also some interesting "buffs" we can buy them. Technically they are benefits, but they'll keep the workers complacent while working long shifts. Same stuff guilds buy for their players for long raids."

Vern smiled, "So we'd have happy workers, who only know how to be workers, and have to just keep working. I like it."

"Wally, are you done with your calls? I want to get in an episode of Knight Rider."

"Yes, Stephen, I took all the calls at once over the last hour. Leaving a phone number in the paperwork pretty much ensured they'd try some direct contact." Wally's voice came through the neural link. "Things mostly went according to predictions. 7 of 10 think they can take over the world and shut the others out. The other 3 plan to steal it once someone else does the work. They all thrive on competition."

"And the workers, Wally? I like that we will be employing millions of low income citizens at better wages and improving their health. But I hate the stuff they want to build into their contracts. I wonder if they will ever figure out that you have access to all of it?"

"If they don't want me to have access to their research, they should have their research department quit trying to hack my systems. I think it's perfectly fair: They hack me, I hack back."

"And I have plans for those contracts they want. On the surface we'll give them what they want. But every person online in GENESIS ENGINE is playing the game. I won't let the workers be cheated from that. Now lets see what Michael and KITT are up to."

..two months prior to GENESIS ENGINE going live.

From: Gametech Design Team

To: Vernon Throckmorton

CC: Billy

We think you'll like this design. It meets the requirements laid out by WALLY, but gives us what we want in our workforce.

Every worker will get the character class: Contract Worker. This blocks them from the usual combat and crafting classes. We have also compiled a list of all the usual weapons and skills used by the basic Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Priest, and Crafter classes. Contract workers will be blocked from using any of these skills and weapons. Since they can't progress in the skills needed for standard classes, it should be incredibly difficult to ever gain the ability to kill monsters.

There is a small chance that they might learn some skills from advanced classes. We can't skip them entirely, but WALLY agrees that it will be very difficult to even learn of these skills and harder yet to qualify for them. This leaves our workers with just the skills we want them to have. Instead of a half dozen useful skills in the three primary/secondary/tertiary slots, they have only the skills for their current job.

And while there is a large pool of esoteric skills that each player can gain the trick here is they won't know about them, and it's hard as hell to gain the skills considering how their characters are set up. A great example is Caber Tossing. Who is going to go around chucking telephone poles at opponents to try and gain the skill? :) Other skill examples are Elephant Taming, Phrenology, Astrogation, and Gastromancy.

The A.I will allow us to use the lack of normal skills to trade for an extensive set of Perks. Haul III and Dig II are in this set. We also have a collection of mental buffs that will fall under the perk Endure. We've essentially taken the raid buffs that would normally let Players overcome Fear and Morale checks during raids. Our workers will be happy, follow orders, heal faster, and not worry about their lives so much.

As for their tertiary Skills: We give them their needed skills, but in the slowest category for gaining experience. We have a lot of control over this and can switch them from role to role as needed. We'll need Lumberjacks and Shepherds at the start, but can swap them to Miners or Salesmen as needed.

Finally, their abilities are limited by the tier system. It's unlikely that any worker will be able to complete the requirements to advance to tier 2. There are five levels of a skill per tier. It will be nearly impossible for them to get past rank 5 in any skill since they won't be advancing past tier 1. Experience gain is too low for tertiary skill, with most tasks giving 1 EP for a skill. Can you imagine needing to cut down a thousand trees? That what it will take to gain rank 5 in just one skill.

There are numerous reasons for wanting to control how high their abilities go, the main one being keeping them focused on their job and not out adventuring. Secondly, as a player progresses, even a contract worker, higher level skills and random encounters with low level bosses can result in a player gaining special perks, points used to buy core skills, or other unique advantages. This will be more common in Tier 2 or Tier 3 players, so it is imperative to keeping control of our workforce that we limit them to Tier 1 and low level skills.

The list of limits are:

Rank 5 in any their main class: Contract Worker. That hard cap is set in the game.

Rank 5 in any stat. Since all of our Contract Workers will be human, they will start at 0 and max out at 5. They won't be able to raise the caps on stats like normal characters, because they can't fight, and can't earn the points needed to raise the soft cap of 5.

No bonus skills for maxing out stats. Normally when a Player gains the ability to move to tier 2, the game gives rewards for stats they have managed to raise to a value of 10. These rewards help them to qualify for better class upgrades. While we can't remove this benefit from contract workers, we've asked for the bonuses to only be given when they have left the first tier. It's unlikely to occur in any case. If getting to 5 in a stat is very difficult, 10 is impossible.

We are in agreement with the other Alpha Sponsors on this set up and hope to finalize and get it approved soon. Once we have it finalized, we'll give it to WALLY to implement.