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“HEY”
“hey”
“u there”
“u made this game right?”
“lmk when ur back”
I grinned reading through the messages I’d missed. There was only one from Ben. It said, “Haha! Awesome. See you after work.”
I answered him first. “Got my first user! She made a feature request, and here we are.”
There was an email from Exelichai waiting for me, just like Ben had predicted. It used an infographic to list all the best ways to drive engagement and discovery. It was exactly what Ben had listed off the top of his head: cover image, gameplay trailer, paid promotion, and description. I was 0 for 4, but I’d be one better by the end of the day. And I’d already found a user.
I got another message while I was thinking that. “hey! u there?”
I hesitated before answering. It was nice to have a user, but she was coming across kinda high-maintenance. I was a little worried I couldn’t live up to her expectations.
Before I could decide, she messaged again. “i see u. i know ur there”
I sighed. The chat module I’d installed at dawn used a Friends List with active/inactive notifications. That was my fault. There were also block and mute features, so I’d be okay if it went bad.
“Hey,” I wrote back. “Thanks for trying my game.”
“hey!” she wrote back. “love to talk about it. whats ur number?”
I felt a little silly asking, but I was still so new to this platform. So just to be clear, I asked, “Phone number?”
“haha yeah.”
I wasn’t ready to give my number to a total stranger. That was too much. But I didn’t want to offend my first user, either. Feeling a little guilty, I typed back, “My phone’s busted. I can chat here, though.”
“oh” She went quiet after that, and I felt bad some more.
I typed out a few more replies, to ask for her opinion or thank her for her feature request, but I didn’t end up sending any of them. The ball was in her court.
I pulled up the Edit Game page and scrolled through the asset catalog, wondering what to work on next. The police station? The fancy mall up the street? My favorite Tex Mex place?
Problem was, I still didn’t really have a story. I had a lady assassin gunning her way through the poor part of town, but why? What was her goal? So far she was a stranger stumbling her way through my life, but with a lot more bloodshed.
I messaged Ben while I was thinking about it. “I still don’t have a story. What does she want? Think about it.”
And now there was a new message from Cass1884. “whatcha working on?”
“The game,” I wrote back. “Plot. Why is the girl with the gun here? That sort of thing.”
“she’s tangled up in it. not her fault. fighting bad guys.”
Obviously, yeah. I rolled my eyes, but I put on a nicer attitude for my new fan. “Good idea! But who are the bad guys? Why?”
“drug cartels. human traffickers. the apartment manager is a bad guy.”
I laughed out loud. “Hey, I like that! Can I use it?”
She didn’t answer right away, and I started feeling dumb for putting her on the spot. A tiny message popped up saying, “Cass1884 is typing,” but after a moment it went away with no message. That made me feel worse, both because it really seemed like I’d put her on the spot, but also it meant she’d seen all my aborted attempts earlier.
Before either of us figured out what to say next, there came a pounding on my apartment door, and a moment later a key turning in the lock. Mr. Hauser—my real apartment manager—came through the door with a face like a stormcloud.
I snapped my laptop shut and jumped to my feet. “Hey! What are you doing?”
He snapped right back at me. “Fixing your mess! It’s Thursday! I’ve got a repair crew.”
“It’s Thursday?” I knew how stupid it sounded as soon as the words were out of my mouth. How had I lost track of a whole week?
The old guy snorted. “It’s Thursday. You’ll probably want to clear out for ten hours or so.”
I had no place to go. I stopped those words before they came out though. “It’s fine,” I said. “I can work with them here.”
“You really can’t, kid.” Before I could argue, he frowned at me hard. “You can’t. Insurance. I warned you on Sunday.”
He seemed ready to go to war. I wasn’t. My shoulders fell, and I stepped back. “Fine. Gimme a minute to change, and I’ll get out of here.”
He almost argued that, but then he shrugged and went back outside. I heard him speaking slowly in bad Spanish to the repair crew before the door fell closed.
I pulled on yesterday’s jeans and grabbed a clean T-shirt, then stepped into the damaged bathroom to brush my teeth. A minute later, maybe, Mr. Hauser was banging impatiently on my door again. “You dressed kid? We’re all waiting!”
“Just a minute!” I yelled back, and it felt like I was a teenager yelling at my dad again. I grabbed my shoes and a fresh pair of socks, but one of the socks had a gun in it. It swung like a wrecking ball and smashed a bruising blow to my shin.
I yelped. It hurt!
“Dammit, kid. If you hurt yourself in that bathroom—” He started turning the key in the door again.
I didn’t want to deal with him. I scooped my socks and shoes up in my arms, the gun still concealed in the middle, then grabbed my laptop and plopped it on top. Mr. Hauser came through the door with a dozen bored Mexicans right behind him. “You okay, kid?”
“I’m fine,” I said, “Stubbed my toe. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t want you back before eight,” he said.
“To my own apartment?”
“To my apartment,” he answered, angry. “You just pay to sleep here. And you ain’t done that recently.”
That took the wind out of me like a gut punch. “Eight it is,” I said. Then I slipped past him and out to my car.
I sat for a moment behind the wheel, catching my breath and waiting for my anger to wane. I stashed the incriminating socks under the passenger seat, pulled my shoes on barefoot, and then looked at my closed laptop.
I flipped it open, and there was my game—my game!—with a new message from my first user. She had proposed making Mr. Hauser a drug-smuggling human trafficker, and I’d asked her if I could use that in my game.
“yeah” was her answer. “y not? could be fun”
I grinned at that.
I had a story now.