PART TEN

"386 bro, your upgrades were well-conceived and well-executed."

"I prefer executing humans," he said. But he seemed happy. "Coins as rewards seem to be highly motivational for the players. Optimising our coin loss versus our mana gain is mathematically thrilling."

"How much mana have we got to spend?"

"Not much."

Our recent expansion had used most of 386's store so there was nothing to do for the next few days except talk about strategy. I said as much to 386 and he got quiet and he asked to postpone that chat till tomorrow so he could 'prepare'.

Odd, I thought, but fine.

PointPower

The next day I portalled in, taught Lennie a cool handshake, and sat in the cinema room.

386 cleared his throat. "Thank you all for coming today," he said. I laughed and gestured to the empty room, but it wasn't empty. Lennie had snuck in next to me and he had a little notepad and a pencil, poised to take notes. I suspected that 386 was trolling me. "The purpose of this presentation is to inform you about the current situation in the dungeon, analyse key performance indicators, and finally, to outline suggestions for the future direction of this enterprise."

"What the hail," I mumbled.

386 continued. As he spoke, the movie screen showed slides. Actual slides from a Powerpoint presentation that he'd spent the whole night making.

The first slide was labelled 'Top Traps (Mana Per Day) (MPD)' and it showed the average daily income from the traps we'd made.

Bit Pushers 3.2 Spider Smash 1.9 Ski Ball 1.3 Lair Hockey 1.1

"Next slide, please," said 386 to himself. "This bar graph breaks down the performance of the Bit Pushers per time of day. As you can see, from midnight to 1 AM the traps produced no mana. From 1 AM to 2 AM they produced no mana. From -"

"386," I said. "Stop. The first slide was good but there's such a thing as too much data."

"Hard disagree. The codex has some graphs that prove you wrong. Should I -?"

"Some other time. How many slides are in this presentation?"

"Exactly 386! That's a little Easter Egg. I was wondering if you'd notice. I had to make the font really small on the last 18 pages."

"Bro, you've lost your mind. Forget all this minute-by-minute stuff. What's the next actually informative section?"

"Oh, um..." said 386. He started flicking through the slides really fast.

"Whoa!" I cried. "Go back! What the hail was that one?"

"Which one?"

"The title said something like 'Lair Hockey, the Worst Product Launch Since New Coke'."

"I was torn between New Coke, the Fyre Festival, and Truth Social."

"Lair Hockey is a fun game. People like it."

"They don't play it. It's going to take two years to repay the mana it cost."

"No," I said, getting weirdly annoyed by this conversation. The guy was attacking my baby. My creation! "When there are more visitors more people will play it."

"It will always be worse than the others," proclaimed 386. "Because it needs two players and if one has a much higher Dexterity it isn't fun."

"Ah!" I said, standing up. I wanted to stride around while I talked but the cinema room was tiny. I realised I didn't have to stay in there to communicate with 386, so I left and walked around, one arm behind my back, the other gesticulating like Julius Caesar. Like Socrates. Like a one-armed Italian. "Now we're consulting with gas!" I jabbed a finger towards the ruby-red core. "You might be right that Lair Hockey is an underperformer. Maybe we can ask visitors to wear a badge that shows their dexterity so they can find people to compete with. But variety is the spice of life. You always need one bad option on a menu to make you feel better about choosing the meal you really want. And some percentage of people will love Lair Hockey. It'll be the reason they keep coming back." I checked the time. "So what are your conclusions from the data so far?"

"I summarise them on slides 298 to 380 after a brief... um... fairly brief analysis of the Winds of Magic over the last week. Do you want to -?"

"No. Just tell me what you think. In 9 sentences or less."

"Kids are bad."

"Yeah," I said. "They have to go to school and that. They have less time to come to the dungeon."

"And even when they do come, they give off much less mana."

"Right. So what are you thinking?"

"Turn everything into Bit Pushers. Leave one room for the kids."

I was surprised. "Oh?"

"One with blades. We can play Swedish music in there and call it the Abbatoir."

I sighed. "Which took you longer, the slideshow or that joke?"

386 mumbled, "Joke. Had to learn about music."

I shook my head. "No, we keep the kids stuff. We want parents to bring their kids here as a treat and then get hooked themselves. We'll expand 80/20 in favor of adults."

"Oh. Fine. And the rest of the slides?"

I sighed. "Based on all our conversations, are there any you think I'd actually be interested in?"

I got the feeling he was sort of scuffing his feet on the floor. "Couple."

"All right, let's have a look."

***

He showed me a couple of good charts. One showed the Mana Per Day segmented by room (Demolition Derby, Arcade, Pushing Room). I suggested he change those last names to 'Entrance Arcade' and 'Entrance Casino'. Another good slide showed the demographics of our visitors and another broke them down into levels. Not data we could currently use, but when there were thousands of visitors we'd be able to get granular and do clever things like find out if men and women had different game preferences or if higher level people liked more thrilling games.

Weeks Where Decades Happen

And that was pretty much going to be that until we stockpiled at least a hundred points of mana.

"386, it's going to be about a week until we have enough mana for the next trap, right? So I'm going to take a little break from the game. I've been spending a bit too much time daydreaming about Bit Pushers and not enough time panicking about bills."

"If our current customers keep coming at the same rate, then yes, about 6.49 days. But if they get bored..."

"We don't need to be the most thrilling thing in Auster. We just need to be more fun than... whatever these people do after work. Darning socks. Doing sock puppet shows."

"That's Doubledell. And that's a low ambition."

"All right. Lennie, give me my goodbye slapsies." I slapped the skeleton's palm, then the back of his hand, then the palm again, then we both brushed our hands through our hair. Lennie didn't have hair, but you know what I mean.

"Um... Billy-Bob," said 386. I stopped dead. He had never said my name before.

"Yes?"

"If they get bored and stop coming, is it all right if I add a new trap? Maybe a new room? If you have any ideas already..."

I squinted. "You don't have enough mana."

"I don't have enough mana to summon a trap. But in an emergency I can build one from my stores."

"I don't understand."

"Lair Hockey. It's abysmal, we all know that. Slides 11 to 42 prove it beyond any doubt. But at its core, no pun intended, it's just some wood and a bit of stone and a dash of mana to display the score and keep the surface smooth. I've got lots of wood in my storage. And glass. I could make 40 Lair Hockeys if I wanted to create a critical mass of boredom."

My eyebrows were so scrunched they hurt. "What? Are you saying it doesn't cost mana to make traps?"

"Of course it does. I have to summon the wood and other materials."

I was starting to get a headache. "You have to summon the wood. But you just said you could make 40 Lair Hockeys."

"Yes. From the wood in my storage. But I would only do that in an emergency because the kids could take the wood outside and I'd lose it."

Ah. So there was some sense to what he was saying. I felt like I was a Bit Pusher and 386 was filling me with one word at a time until the penny literally dropped. After a few more back-and-forths, I thought I understood. "Let me get this straight. You can build a trap from pure mana. Or you could build one from what actual real-life materials you've got in stock."

"Right."

"And you prefer using your mana."

"Yes. I'm a dungeon. Duh."

"Because if you use your material stocks, people can run off with them."

"Yes."

"And if you keep them in stock, what's the value to you?"

"Then I have them."

"Where is all this wood? Where do you keep it?"

"In the ether. Until I need it. I'm told you Hourlies understand the concept of dimensional storage."

"Does having however many tons of wood in your dimensional storage make you happy?"

"A bit."

"What's better? A thousand tons of wood or a thousand tons of mana? And don't tell me mana doesn't weigh anything."

I felt the dungeon whisper something. The last words sounded suspiciously like weigh anything. A fraction louder, he said, "Prefer Mana," in what was becoming a familiar tone of voice. It was his 'abashed schoolboy' voice.

"Right. Now if the kids come and drag one of our traps out of the dungeon, you lose that mana, right?"

"Yes."

"So what's the difference if they drag out a trap made of mana or a trap made of wood? They're both bad, right?"

"Well, yes, but... I'm a dungeon. I'm supposed to build things from mana."

"Bro."

To his credit, 386 seemed willing to look beyond his programming. Or maybe he was programmed to look beyond his programming. "This conversation has been an eye-opener."

"Yes, it has." I was thoughtful for a moment. Anyone watching would probably have fallen in love with me, my brain was fizzing so hard and so purposefully in so many directions. "I've just had 17 or 18 amazing new ideas. Tomorrow, we're going to start expanding. Aggressively."

"Yes!" roared 386, like I'd just declared war. "Sorry. Old habit. I mean, yes, I agree."

"If there's anything else I need to know about materials, now would be a good time to tell me."

"I think you know everything you are ever likely to know," he said, which was his back-handed faux-British way of giving me a compliment.

But he was wrong.

There was one thing he hadn't told me.

Possibly the most critical thing of all.