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Flames erupted from the demon god’s snout as it raised a lash of fire high above its head. Lava pulsed through its veins and its horns glowed red. Maxi’s armor gleamed from the sun god’s boon and her sword shone with the light of a thousand suns. She was a Paladin from the Land of the Burning Sun and was about to defeat the demon that threatened all of existence... until the power went out on her computer.
Her mom stood in the threshold of her room, holding the power cord to her PC.
“Ma!” Maxi yelled.
“By my calculations, you are out of free power for the month,” Tara said. “Should you wish to continue using your computer, I will need you to contribute $23.03 to the power bill.”
“I’m in a top 5 Guild. They’ll kick me out if I don’t defeat the Tharkrendarg.”
“Then perhaps you should have thought of that when you decided to play computer games instead of looking for a job. It’s been six months since you graduated from college. Six months! Most places kick you out for not paying rent after only one month. All I ask is help with the power bill. I’m not even charging you rent,” Tara ranted as she collected all the power strips in the room, including the ones Maxi had hidden after this had last happened. Once finished, Tara pushed up her annoyingly oversized glasses, fixed her frumpy sweater that made her look like a librarian, and, as she left the room, added, “$23.03, and I’ll give them back.”
Maxi buried her head on her keyboard and screamed. She pulled her phone and chatted the guildmaster Teristaque03: Ma took powerstrips. Will murder the demon god tonight.
Teristaque03 chatted back: Tick tick. 18 hours left or u out.
Maxi cursed as she stripped out of her pajamas and went for the black pant suit Tara had bought her when she had graduated. She couldn’t even leave the apartment without getting flak from her mom if she didn’t at least pretend she was job hunting.
She tied her blonde hair back in a respectable ponytail and put on her appropriately sized glasses. Even though blonde wasn’t her natural color, and the dark roots were showing, she looked passable for an interview with the suit on. While she got ready, she checked her bank account balance.
–$432.35. She had overdrawn only about $35 in total, but the rest was overdraft fees. Over the course of a weekend, two energy drinks, some fast food, a new pair of headphones, a couple of metro tickets, and a piece of fruit ended up costing her nearly $400 in overdraft fees. Why the card wouldn’t charge her one overdraft fee and decline the other transactions, she would never know.
Maxi got some monthly income from her Spasm channel. It certainly wasn’t enough to cover the overdraft, but was good enough to pay her portion of the power bill and other charges her mom made her do to “earn her keep.” Sometimes, Tara would make her pay for groceries. However, the Spasm balance was currently empty.
Maxi sent out a few chats to borrow the money, but the ones who did reply told her no. She wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t very good at paying people back. Not that she intended to never pay people back, she was just biding her time, waiting for that Spasm channel to grow. The problem was that she never had enough followers to make serious money, and when she did try to get more, she seemed to lose as many followers as she’d gain.
She was forever on a treadmill, making enough money to give her a glimmer of hope that something big was on the horizon, but never enough to convince her mom that she already had a job.
In the meantime, she had a workaround. She’d temp for a while, pretend it was her first big job outside of college, and then get “laid off” or some such nonsense a week later. It was enough to keep her mom off her back most of the time.
Hopefully, the temp agency would have something for her. With even an eight-hour shift, she’d get enough money to pay her dues and enough time to clear the dungeon again, as no doubt the demon god was dancing on her charred corpse the moment she hadn’t reconnected.
The only reason she had stuck with the agency so long was that they did the same day payments and didn’t seem to care when she walked out on a job. They were a warm body factory, and she was a warm body.
After checking the agency’s app, she sighed. No jobs were available. That only meant she would have to walk in. The recruiters who worked there were as averse as she was to anything that resembled work, and would dawdle on posting the new positions because some walk-in like her would always show up to take the job and save them the couple of clicks it would take to push it out to the app.
She sent a few more desperate pleas for some cash, stuffed her phone into her blazer pocket along with her wallet and keys, and left the apartment. Ten floors, a metro gate, and several trains later, she was out of the Bronx and in Manhattan, standing in front of the lamp pole outside the temp agency. Rival agencies would sometimes post their job ads right outside, and the manager, who always seemed to have a scowl on her face, would tear them down.
The particular ad that caught her attention must have been fresh, as evidenced by the phone number strips that hadn’t been torn off yet. The words that had caught her eye were “SAME DAY PAY” and “GAMIFIED EMPLOYMENT.” Then there was some bullshit about joining the revolution and finding a new way to work.
She was about to head into the agency when, on a whim, she scanned the QR code. It went to a black website with a button that said: “Click here to change your life.” She couldn’t escape the feeling that the whole thing was sus and decided to call the number instead.
“QUEST: QR CODE SCAN FAILED, -1 Level,” an automated voice said. “Player5970125 is now -1 Level. XP penalties apply. Adaptability: -2.”
The automated voice clicked off, and the line went dead.
“Whatever,” Maxi said out loud and went into the temp agency.
***
BY THE TIME SHE WAS out again with no work assignment, the stone-faced manager had torn down the job ad. She cursed and pulled up her browser on her phone. The tab with the ominous button was still open. Since there was nothing at her regular agency, and most new places took hours she didn’t have for their assessments, this seemed like the best option. She clicked the button, and it asked for her camera permissions. She quickly pulled all the stray hairs back into her ponytail and clicked “allow.” But rather than a Zoom call with an asshat named Mike, the camera view appeared on her phone and a green line overlaid the sidewalk.
She moved her phone from side to side and an arrow appeared to point her to the correct path when the green line went off screen. She followed the mysterious direction through the city, and after several twists and turns that left her discombobulated as to her exact location, she came to a nondescript office building that was tall, but plain enough not to stand out in the skyline. The odds were she had seen it plenty of times across the water when she was gallivanting in Brooklyn, but it was just part of the background.
There were no markings or adornments of any kind to indicate a “revolutionary gamified company” was lurking inside. It was probably three dudes who rented a table in one of those shared office space floors where half the companies were startups or podcasts, but she was running out of options. Her Spasm following didn’t respond to her requests for tips. Not that she had that big of a following, considering she could barely pay her part of the power bill.
She sighed and went inside. A single bored security guard sat at a desk in an enormous lobby that should have been bustling with people for a building so big.
“New employees take the 12th elevator,” the guy said, not even bothering to look up. “When you’re inside, just say ‘intake,’ and it will get you where you’re going.”
“New?” Maxi said. “I haven’t even applied.”
“Player5970125. Level: -1. Take the 12th elevator before you get an annoying coworker XP penalty.”
The gamer in her cringed at the thought of another hit to her XP, and she complied with the man’s instructions. The same day pay better be true because she was already starting to dislike this place. The man turned his attention back to some monitors behind the desk, and Maxi walked toward a bank of twelve elevators with six on either side.
They were labeled one through twelve, saving her the trouble of going back to ask the guy if it was the set on the left or the right, which would no doubt result in another XP penalty. She hit the button, and the door opened right away, which was odd. A building large enough for twelve shafts, and no one was in sight but her. She couldn’t go up her apartment building’s lift without riding with another person, or passing them in the lobby or hall, and her building was small by the city’s standards. The city she lived in was one of the largest ones in the world, and the lack of people felt disconcerting to her.
She almost decided to cut loose and find another way to earn cash. She had crap she could pawn for $20, but she’d never hear the end of it from her mom. It would be hard to concentrate on the dungeon with Tara lecturing her all night.
Also, Level -1. No, she could stay at least until she was Level 2. The lack of people was probably because they all worked in shifts. Any moment now, the lobby would be full of employees going to their lunch break.
She stepped inside the elevator. As soon as the door closed behind her, she pushed the only available button, which was unmarked. Nothing happened. Hesitantly, she said, “Intake?”
The lurch of what was no doubt an express elevator almost knocked her down. She must have shot up quite a few floors. It was hard to tell without any indicators, but in any case, she must have been riding to a place high up in the building, because it took a while for the doors to open again.