Celestina and I headed to the newly created city, leaving Arthur to oversee the passage of the First Expansion Act in parliament. It wasn’t something I wanted to do myself. Through a collection of bribes and dirt collected through digital spying on opposition members and party members of parliament alike, Chamberlain was going to get his bill passed. Rather than letting humans deal with it, he wanted me to manage the dirt and corruption, and I, in turn, delegated that task to Arthur. Getting blackmail material on powerful individuals was surprisingly easy. Making us participants in crime is one way to taint our hands and keep us in line, and to keep my mouth shut.
Frankly, at this point, I didn’t have much pity for the fickle public either, who were so easily deceived and swayed and went in with anything. Does it really matter what happened to them if they aren’t even cognisant enough to realise it was being done to them? Maybe if I had been ten years younger, I wouldn’t have been so cynical in this situation, and died trying to play hero.
“Why are you frowning? Is something bothering you, Raphael?”
“No, are you worried about me?”
“Of course I am worried!”
It was too easy. These practised lines flowed through me thanks to hundreds of words that I had read, and she blushed as expected. I wanted to believe that I was too jaded for care to be bothered about the nation or for some farcical romance, which are, after all, the same type of thing.
The first place we visited in Jerusalem was the taverns. Basically, from my personal experience, there was no way the public would accept a virtual world en masse if they couldn’t get drunk. The NPCs in the city, including those in the taverns, were mostly empty-headed, but this shouldn’t be a problem since even in the real world, most customer-facing work was done by dumb AI. The point, after all, was to force real, ordinary people to get used to working in key positions in the city. Of course, ultimate say will remain with the three towers in Castle Academy, i.e. Academy, but before giving people actual control, I wanted to see if they could handle even the illusion of control.
If the new players want to bring their own advanced NPCs, they’ll have to pay for the hardware needed themselves. In any case, my goal wasn’t to let them escape with convenient non-player characters, but what was Chamberlain’s goal?
Celestina at first refused to drink because she was still a minor according to Japanese law, where the age at which adults can drink is twenty-one and upwards, and that’s her character setting after all. I, of course, can’t get drunk despite multiple complaints I lodged with the government. It was determined that since I am the “God” of this place, I was not allowed to be out of my mind at any moment.
“If you don’t want to drink, that’s fine, but there is no such rule here, Celestina.”
“I am going to need to bring someone else here to test if you could get drunk on this stuff,” I said while sipping on the stuff, bleh, people only drink beer because it gets them drunk. I placed the empty cup down, and a cute barmaid with a green apron approached and took the empty cup away.
I was kind of curious about what a drunk Rina would look like, but it could also turn into a disaster. I guess that left Arthur.
“Well, I guess I also wanted to know how things have gone over in the real world.”
Of course, I could just buy a “real” newspaper from the paper boy outside, but everything, well not everything, just everything that mattered was lies in the news, so Arthur was a more reliable source of information.
“Hello… I’d like to get a report on the act in parliament, even if I expect everything has gone alright.”
There shouldn’t be anything in Arthur’s character setting that would prevent him from drinking.
“Yes, my lord.”
Of course, I didn’t need to pull out a phone, an old-fashioned one with a dial and a handle at that, it was just a prop, but it was a useful abstraction. Or maybe I had just picked up a bad comedic habit from Rina.
Arthur spawned in kneeling on one knee towards me, like I was some kind of king, even if they were empty-headed low-level NPCs, I was kind of embarrassed by the stares of the onlookers who turned our way.
“Now drink,” I ordered him.
Arthur grabbed a glass from the barmaid’s plate and gulped it down without even raising his armour’s visor, and then just sat next to us, his legs barely reaching the ground.
“Have a few more drinks, we need to test their effect thoroughly, and while you do, tell me if there’s anything to know about the bill’s passing.”
Some of the patrons looked at me suspiciously as I handed more beer to what looked to them like a child.
“It went as you expected, my lord.” He downed another glass. “Under the PM’s order, I convinced all major news organisations in Britain to sell this to the public as a productivity-improving measure, by moving all possible tasks to a post-scarcity world, thus giving a leg-up to British industries.”
The barmaid brought two whole plates of beer glasses precariously balanced on her hands. I caught myself looking at her rather tightly bound breasts until I noticed Celestina giving me a nasty look.
“The costs of actually running this world were well-hidden and have instead been attributed to the latest expansion of wind power, which was started by the previous administration…. The hardest thing to get through parliament was to let the Senate of Jerusalem have devolved powers given to this city by promising under the table to quietly pass another bill about stopping the sales of certain games that the opposition doesn’t like for being too violent and vulgar.”
The Senate of Jerusalem was just a puppet government, and of course, the truth was that we had some dirt on the opposition leader going out with a high school girl, but we needed to give him something to convince the parliamentary members of his own party to go along with this.
“Of course, for all intents and purposes, this legislation will not apply to this city as it’s not a ‘game’ but a new country within the United Kingdom.”
“Oh, yes, my lord. While I am still not worried about them, the Prime Minister asked me to look into VHEPO, an anti-natalist organisation funded by a Hungarian billionaire. To me, it looks like just another non-governmental organisation.”
“Zzz… Zzz…”
Celestina had fallen asleep from all the explanations. I didn’t want to bore her on her and mine “first date” if one could call this that.
“Good. Are you feeling tipsy yet?”
The table was filled with empty glasses by this point, and I was wondering if Lain had messed something up when creating this city, if the ales were not effective.
“My lord, I am drunk.. As a sailor”
“You don’t look like it or sound like it at all.”
“I have been trained to appear calm at all times. Look, let me prove to you that I am not sober.”
He got up and tried to walk in a line and stumbled over onto another table, wiping it clean. The man, well, NPC, whose food had been yeeted, did not take this well and sent Arthur flying onto another table. A bar fight event soon ensued. Yes, everything seemed to be working as intended.
I took a dazed Celestina outside, to our next destination on our ‘date’… The town square in front of the Jerusalem Senate. Rina should be there now, welcoming the new citizens/players.While we could have teleported right there at once, that was no fun, so we tasted some of the street food from the shops. I was glad that my sense of taste was not gone, even if I could no longer get drunk.
The streets of the virtual town were filled with shops, unlike the increasingly empty British high streets… It’s not that I was necessarily aiming for this kind of contrast. It just happened when all I was doing was creating appealing bait for the masses.
