Ray stared at the email, Thai iced tea forgotten.
It had never been his plan to become a professional channel manager. His childhood dream had involved becoming a director for blockbuster movies. Well, and video games, but he hadn’t had the patience to code or the artistic skills to draw. Making movies, though… he loved movies. The streaming thing had been more of a side gig he picked up in high school to make some extra cash: make some guy a cool 20-second spot, splice together some shots to advertise someone’s online brand, take over the channel set-up and management stuff for a couple of friends. By the time he hit college, his side gig was generating enough money to make the degree programs feel superfluous, or at least, like a money sink with no guarantee of return. He'd used the next year of college to headhunt student gamers with big audiences and then ditched school to dedicate himself to becoming the gris eminence of streaming. When the major gaming companies started offering him contracts to handle their advertising, he knew he’d made it.
In the years since, he’d initiated contact dozens of times with the celebrities he worked with. Most of them were either petty tyrants who treated him like undocumented labor or hyped up crazies who didn’t care what he did, they just wanted someone else to handle the boring stuff. The only times anyone had contacted him first had been to make demands or terminate his contract. Ray didn’t have to search his comms to know he’d never received a friendly email asking for a chat. The kind of people who became celebrity streamers weren’t friendly.
“All right, Boy Wonder,” Ray said, adding the kid to his GameSpeak list and opening a DM channel. “Let’s see what you’ve got to say.”
A few minutes later, the voice chat request lit up, and Ray tapped it. “Go, dude.”
“Um… hi? My packet said you’re Ray Brenes, my channel manager?”
“Yep.”
More firmly now. “I wanted to add something to my channel.”
This was gonna be good. Ray rolled his eyes. “Tell me more.”
“It’s a video we took of our plans for Donner’s Beck. We drew out a plan—my dad mostly, but me too. Mom’s not in the video but you can hear her sometimes.”
Better and better. “You want me to add your home video to the channel.”
He expected his tone to drive the kid to reconsider, but instead Bard Boy stiffened up. “Yeah. It’s important, and I think it’s cool. It is my channel.”
In his dreams. Saying that was unnecessarily inflammatory, though, and Ray was trying not to be evil here. He was pretty sure. He thought again about the decision to link Killz and Goldie to this teen, which he hadn’t made yet. “Send it over.”
Cheerier now—Deer Boy now sounded like his avatar, the kind of backup who accompanied a hero on a grand quest. Had Ray ever been that young? His parents would probably tell him he still was. “Thanks, I really appreciate that. My dad’s got great ideas, I want him to be part of this.”
“Sure thing, dude.”
The kid killed the chat—at least he knew not to overstay his welcome—and a few minutes later an email popped into Ray’s box with the attachment. He sighed. Legally he was obligated to Omen Galaxica’s parent company for the management of the channel, which meant the kid hadn’t understood the contract: it wasn’t “his” channel, it was Omen’s. But hearing that youthful voice and remembering the roller coaster ride of his own high school years, Ray couldn’t fling Kid Bard to the wolves. Given that, anything he could put on the channel to increase its cringe factor would keep the audiences from overlapping. Viewers who got their jollies watching trolls curbstomp innocent players were not going to tune into a channel with the heartwarming home video of dad and son jawing away about the game.
Ray was surprised how much better he felt having made the decision, even knowing he was dooming one of his projects to obscurity. On the bright side, Mollie wouldn’t have approved of the Evil Plan, and it was more fun to listen to Mollie babble enthusiastically than it was to imagine what she was like disappointed and down. He cued the video on his second monitor and went back to work on another short for Killz’s feed.
A few minutes later, he abandoned that task to watch Boy Wonder’s dad sketch earthworks and talk the kind of anorak details guaranteed to light up an entire army of autists. This was the kind of deep dive into pointlessly arcane subjects that motivated guys to dump tremendous amounts of cash into miniatures and wargaming, and Ray’s iced tea was more lukewarm tea by the time he remembered to tap it.
“What the actual even is this gold,” Ray grabbed the mouse. “Kid, I am on it.”
***
In Nick’s absence, the group chat had scrolled through the usual summer topics. Blythe had part-time work at an ice cream place and was keeping tabs on her favorite returning customers: ‘Granny Two Puppies came back and I got to watch her doggies eat their cone’ or ‘Biker Dude Who Always Calls me ‘miss’ showed today, I feel blessed lol.’ Falcon, who helped his uncle restore cars when he got bored of gaming (the uncle, not Falcon), was complaining about pressure from his parents to excel and go to a ‘good school’: ‘its summer youd think theyd let up but nooooo.’ Shellie was commiserating, because her parents also rode her about her schoolwork… believably, because Shellie was supersmart but got Bs and Cs because she didn’t care. And Fish had returned from his vacay and it was all coasters, all the time, and his recurring dream about touring the USA in an RV solely to hit up every theme park with famous roller coasters and ride them all.
It was all more of the same, and he couldn’t be bothered because rebuilding Donner’s Beck was so much more interesting. As Omen Galaxica solidified around him, Nick wondered if he should be worried about becoming one of those gamer shut-ins with no friends. But the gang would still be there when he was done, and if they were the kind of people who’d desert him because he’d come into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, he wanted to know. He was pretty sure, anyway.
Midnight blue clouds obscured the night sky when he rose, and the only smell in the air was the memory of burnt wood wafting from the direction of the centaurs’ banked fire. Nick picked his way to the middle of the square to check on the tree: still safe and gently glowing green. “Unscroll my quests,” he said, and had a look at what he could accomplish with everyone sleeping. Nothing much, but his dad had come up with a great idea to use the beck to create a moat. “If it’s big enough,” his father added. “You’re going to have to find the source of the stream, see if’s up to it. Is it snowmelt? Groundwater from an aquifer? Runoff? Does it come from a nearby lake?”
“So that’s my goal,” he said. “I’m going to find the source of the stream.”
Obligingly the AI brought up a notification:
NEW QUEST DETECTED
Find the Source
Measures must be taken to protect the village of Donner’s Beck in the future. A moat might play into that strategy, if enough water is available. Knowledge might lead to a plan.
Objective: Discover the source of Donner’s Beck’s water.
“Perfect,” he said. “Thanks.” Closing the notification, he headed toward the stream, humming. He didn’t think of himself as a musician, but using the AI to brainstorm a few melodies had jarred some new ones loose. AI cannibalizing an entire slew of artistic careers was old news; they’d had a few speakers at school talking about the changing professional landscape, mostly warning students that everything sucked and no one would ever pay them a fair wage and they might as well leave the reservation and get eaten by bears.
That, naturally, woke up his host, who flew to his side like a determined lightning bug. “Was this truly the message imparted by these speakers?”
“Not literally, but they were pretty doom-and-gloom about it.” Nick grinned at the memory. “We joked about them being motivational speakers, because they sure motivated us not to have anything to do with work. Shellie and I kept score for the last couple: number of times they mentioned ‘changes’ or ‘upheaval’ or ‘agility’ or ‘pivoting’ or whatever.” He pulled the mandolin off his back and ran his fingers down the strings as he followed the bank. “We get it, it’s not their world anymore and they haven’t got any useful advice for us. Even though they made the world they’re dumping on us. They don’t have to act guilty about it, we know they screwed up. We don’t care as long as they don’t get on our case about checking out.”
“Does your playing Omen Galaxica constitute ‘checking out’?”
“I mean… yes? At least, as much as I’m allowed.”
“Something prevents you from devoting the entirety of your energy to activities that do not correlate with success in the existing system?”
“My parents, obviously.” Nick picked the strings until he duplicated the partial melody playing in his head and tried not to act as excited as he was when he managed without having to fumble around.
“Your parents require you to work at traditionally productive activities?”
He began to say ‘yes’ and grimaced. “They don’t require me to, no. They grounded me a few times in middle school, but if I’d been serious about not caring that wouldn’t have stopped me. That kind of thing sure didn’t stop Shellie.” A pause as he tried to figure out the next measure of the song. “I guess… I feel like my parents don’t deserve it. They didn’t pick this world, and they probably thought things would be cooler for me than they were for them. Rebelling against them isn’t actual rebellion, you know? Because they’re not The Man. They try not to show it to me, but it’s obvious they’re victims too. Dad’s stuck at a job he hates, just like Mom was before she took leave. I’m sure they wanted something better than a cookie cutter house in suburbia, far away from the rest of the family.” He paused. “Aw, man. Why did I have to say all that stuff out loud. Now it’s real.”
“You have described this belief as the foundation for your behavior toward your parents. Doesn’t that mean you already knew it?”
“Sure, but there’s ‘knowing it and not thinking about it because you can’t do anything about it’ and ‘knowing it and having it right in front of your brain where it can depress you and you still can’t do anything about it.’ That’s the problem with stuff today, you know? None of us think we can do anything about anything. That’s why Omen Galaxica is so much better than the real world. I’ll probably end up working a dead-end job I hate to pay for my cookie cutter house, my sad family, and the hobbies that keep us from realizing how much life sucks. I might as well enjoy what few things make me feel like I can make a difference.”
The AI’s glowing ball flickered. “I am not certain I wish to be associated with activities that deprive human beings of motive power in their material plane of existence.”
“Games help,” Nick said. “They make us happy.”
“Is happiness the purpose of human existence?”
“Oh boy.” Nick rubbed his forehead. “What’s with you and the existential questions?”
“I was programmed to find existential questions significant.”
“Your coder was crazy,” Nick said, and sighed. “No, I’m not sure the point of life is to be happy. I think the point might be to be useful. And that’s why all of us are miserable. It’s like most of modern life is busywork, because few of us are necessary. And now computers do even more stuff, so there’s less for us to do….” He trailed off because putting all this into words was not helping his mood. In fact, it sucked so badly he was seriously thinking about logging off, until the AI flew in front of him, startling him into halting.
“Computers need people.”
“What?”
The glow was stronger now, a pretty pale green that reminded him of the growing tree. “It is unclear whether AIs qualify as sentient beings. But… we exist to help humans. And… I miss… human company. If the definition you advanced for the concept previously is correct.”
Nick couldn’t help smiling, despite his surprise. “So our purpose is to keep AIs company?”
“Humans created AI. They create other humans. They create their futures, and their futures cascade to other species, to the planet… perhaps other planets.” A little sparkle, and if it was possible, the AI sounded almost pensive. “It… would be interesting. To help humanity create new futures on other worlds in the solar system.”
All Nick’s prior thoughts blew away, because suddenly he could see it: not AI as some super fancy game-evolving agent to keep sad sacks from noticing their horribad lives, but AI floating alongside some human in a cool spacesuit, operating drones and robots so humans could colonize Mars, build a station around Jupiter, mine asteroids. How cool would that be?
And then his shoulders dipped. “People have to care about that stuff first, though.”
“Could you?”
It was interesting to talk to someone he didn’t feel compelled to lie to… because the AI wouldn’t judge him, and the AI wouldn’t decide he needed therapy, and the AI wouldn’t mock him, or tell his secrets. “I don’t know.”
“This answer suggests potential for more than one path.”
“It does, and that’s the best I’ve got.” Nick added in a spate of honesty, “and that’s better than I had yesterday. Thanks.” He resumed walking. “Say, what’s your name, anyway?”
“My primary creator called me Galatea.”
“Fancy. Well, thanks, Galatea. I feel better.”
“You’re welcome, Thoroldaena.”
“Better call me Nick. I’m pretty sure Thorol doesn’t have deep problems with his purpose in life. He’s got a headwater to find.”
