It had been so long since Ray had made his own breakfast that slouching out of bed and over to the kitchen to use it for something other than reheating leftovers felt strange. Good, though. He remembered, vaguely, that he’d once enjoyed scrambling his own eggs because no one else made them the way he preferred. And if there was a poptart in the toaster instead of sourdough bread, half a homemade breakfast was better than none, right?
He was nearly done cooking when it occurred to him to blame this behavior on the hours spent editing PonyMom’s Fantasy Kitchen takes. There were only so many mouthwatering cooking videos you could consume before you started imagining yourself with a pan and a spatula, also winning at life. Looking at the meal once it was on the table, he conceded this was maybe not as much winning as PonyMom was capable of, but it was still satisfying. As he sat, he reached for his phone, and stopped. Seriously, couldn’t he enjoy eating without having to clock in? Because there was no using the phone without dealing with the notifications, and that would inevitably lead him to the channel metrics, and he’d be telling himself that it was entertainment to do a deep dive into the stats. But it was entertainment that made him want to move to the computer and work, and then how could he enjoy the poptart at its maximum heat-to-gooeyness perfection? Especially paired with the coffee? One bite eggs, one bite poptart, swallow of coffee. Ah, yes. Life was good. Pony Mom had a point about slowing down.
That resolution lasted halfway through the meal, but at least it was a half a meal he enjoyed at a more measured pace, right? Better than nothing. He opened his channel aggregation page and saw the big percentage leap first, and it wasn’t Killz and Goldie. Overnight, Pony and Nerd had jumped from an average of 800 views to 20,000. The comments sections were on fire, too: 400% activity compared to Killz’s 221%. The latter was more impressive because Killz’s subscriber and watcher bases were so much larger; 221% of a giant pie was a lot more pie. But the ratio on the nerd channel suggested the people who were showing up were invested. Seriously. The video drop with the wingling adoption was doing serious numbers, ticking up while he watched. Everyone loved a cuddly pet; in fact, he whipped up a quick poll and pinned it to the top of the channel: “Should Omen Galaxica release wingling plushes? (Tell us what color you’d buy!)”
Was there any high like watching engagement shoot up in realtime like that? He chewed through the remains of his poptart while enjoying the glow. While the numbers jumped up like a rabbit on meth, he checked the smart agent that trolled the comment sections for useful data, and it had floated one thread to the top: ‘hey can we get more wizard guy’ ‘yeah, id watch an entire video of just wizard guy doing fantasy city civil engineering’ ‘wicked yeah more wizard guy’
“Nice,” Ray said to the phone. “The family channel is complete. We have collected them all.” He opened his email client and shot off a message to Boy Wonder, asking him to pump his dad for more content. While he had the client open, he had another message from Seong, with attachments… video to splice together, now that their beta teams were interacting. Excellent.
If he’d been asked to bet on whether the pathetic duo would pan out in any way, he would have laughed… laughed, and apparently been wrong. And if he’d also bet on whether he’d spend the entire morning choosing to work on Teen Bard’s boutique channel over Killz’s enormo enterprise… he couldn’t believe he was prioritizing Boy Wonder. He couldn’t believe he was enjoying it.
He was enjoying it. God, how weird was that?
***
After Mom went to bed, Nick stayed up talking with Carl and directing the centaurs as they hauled blocks to one building or the next. It had hurt to see Donner’s Beck a ruin, but there was something satisfying about putting it back together to his plan, and not the game’s. If he decided the blacksmith should be on the opposite end of the lane, or if he thought there should be two inns, or no inns, or higher buildings or buildings that were half underground… the limit was literally what he could imagine, and what Galatea was able to simulate. And Galatea could simulate anything, as long as it wasn’t gamebreaking. There was a lot of room for creativity—for making his mark—between the game as he’d always played it and gamebreaking changes. Adding the centaurs alone had changed things, and consulting them on what they needed had been a lot of fun. Mostly they wanted taller and wider doors, and that led to two-story buildings where the first story was for mixed species and the top floor for species with normal feet. “Maybe the inn should have one of those cool interior balconies,” Nick told Carl. “You know, you could leave your inn room and look over it into the taproom. Or hey, it could even have one of those cool courtyards and be open in the middle, like a Roman villa!”
“Sure, dude,” Carl said. “That sounds sweet. As long as there’s a stable for my destrier. And hey, if you’re here, maybe there should be a treehouse for the deer-friends.”
Carl’s derpiness was definitely made up for in commitment to being a hero. A hero who remembered that the Cervinaethi were deer-friends and not deerfolk and definitely not ‘deers’ or ‘furries.’ Nick could get behind that.
He woke up to an ambrosial smell that hadn’t wafted up to his room in way too long. He didn’t even stop to brush his teeth before showing up downstairs, where his dad was overseeing one of his rare Spanish tortillas. Mom was stirring hot chocolate, the kind that his grandmother sent them now and then that produced something ‘like what they serve in Madrid, or at least, close enough.’ Seeing his face, his mom laughed. “Best Saturday ever?”
“Potato and egg goodness, plus hot chocolate? Yes? Obviously?”
“It’ll be out soon,” his dad said.
“And meanwhile you can tell me what this random email was about,” Mom said. “Something about your request and someone in a hospital?”
“What? Wait, I’ll be right back!” Nick dashed back up the stairs and scooped up his phone. He did in fact have email worth opening, a rare occurrence… but the first one wasn’t about a request and someone in a hospital. He read his channel manager’s email and pumped a fist in the air. They wanted more of his dad’s crazy stuff? Perfect!
The second email was in fact copied to his mom, and came not from an official Omen account, but from someone’s individual domain, [email protected].
Nick,
Omen Galaxica can’t be involved, but I thought your idea was a good one. I’ve bought a KeepinTouch and put it in Jonah’s room. Right now it’s set to play the soundtracks from the game, but you can use the attached credentials to login and send video/audio.
I’m going to be watching everything that comes through, so don’t make me regret it!
Thanks for your request.
His first instinct, to login immediately and let Galatea know, was derailed by the smell of breakfast. He took the stairs three at a time and was at his seat before his father had finished pulling the tortilla out. “So you got that too. I guess that makes sense, we’re registered as a team, and you signed the paperwork….”
“What exactly did you get yourself into?” Dad asked.
Thinking of what had happened to Omen Galaxica’s creator put a pall on his appetite. Briefly. He took the cup of hot chocolate from his mom and had a healthy gulp, one he only slightly regretted when it burned his tongue. “You know the game was made by a couple of guys, and one of them was the one who had most of the big ideas for the story.”
“Right,” Dad said. “Jonah Slater. He was in that motorcycle accident, wasn’t he? It was before the last expansion drop.”
He should probably stop being surprised that his dad apparently knew this much about the game. “Yes. He’s been in a coma, and he hasn’t woken up yet.”
“Oh no!” his mother said. “How old is he?”
“Thirties, I thought,” Dad said. “Maybe late twenties?”
“That poor boy.”
Of course, now that Nick had gotten to this point, he realized that if he wasn’t careful, he’d reveal more about Galatea than Galatea would probably have recommended. Or wanted. He could say that about the AI, couldn’t he? Didn’t her programming constitute desires, even if they were artificially imposed? “I thought it would be nice if we could tell him how much the game means to us, because I heard that people in comas can still hear things. So I asked if they would let us send a speaker into his room so we could do that….”
“Oh, I see,” Mom said. “That’s what that was about. They bought one and put it in his room for you, so you can use it. Like the ones your aunt sent—” She paused, looking chagrined. “That we never use because no one…”
“Likes my sister,” Dad said, kissing the top of her head as he set the tortilla down. “Don’t worry, my love, no one’s going to argue with you. Least of all me.”
“So I’m going to talk to him,” Nick finished. “So that he has something to listen to sometimes.” As his father put a slice of the tortilla on his plate, he said, “You know… you two should too.”
“Us?” Mom asked, surprised.
“Sure. Dad could read to him the way he used to read to me, before bed. That was great. And mom, you could sing—”
“Me!”
“Yeah?” He glanced at her surprised. “Like when we were in the car? And you put on all that music and we sang along? And the lullabies before bed…” He trailed off, thinking of what Galatea had told him. “Jonah’s parents don’t seem like very nice people. He wasn’t lucky. It might be nice for him to have some parents acting like they should. He’s… well. He’s stuck in his own head, in a bed, with no one to remember him. That seems really sad. Especially when so many people are enjoying something he made…” He stopped, then stabbed a forkful of potatoes and egg. “I know lots of people are unlucky. But this is a chance for me to help someone who changed my life.”
“Then of course you should do it,” Dad said. “And we’ll be happy to contribute.”
“Maybe my singing will be so alarming he’ll wake up immediately to make it stop?”
Nick laughed. “Good one, Mom. But you’re not fooling me or Dad.”
“Oh?”
“He’s caught on that you’re fishing for compliments by acting modest,” Dad said.
“I’d caught on to that years ago,” Nick added. “It’s not like you try to hide it.”
“True,” Mom said.
“Also, Dad, my channel manager wants more content from you. Solo content! About city planning in medieval times, or whatever you want to talk about. People just want to listen to you talk.”
It was his mother’s turn to laugh. “Didn’t think you’d get famous?”
“I’m not famous,” Dad said. “A channel with a hundred subscribers isn’t fame. But I’d be happy to record a few lectures. If they seriously want lectures.”
“They seriously want lectures. You know how the internet is with deep dives into niche interests.”
His father chuckled. “Yes… I guess I do. All right.”
“Perfect,” Nick said. “Can I have seconds?”
