Chapter 6

Ariel had an awkward amount of time. Even after she took a much-needed bath, it was still early morning in game. Yet because of time compression, it was in the middle of the night in the real world. Sleep in game was refreshing, so David didn’t need her to log out and sleep. However, she doubted the Whores Guild were early risers.

She had picked up Elemental Water Magic at level 6 and learned Ice Shard. She decided to spend some time practicing her new magic along with stealth.

Ariel made her way out of Berg’s Keep into the forest. She found an area frequented by jaguars. By level 7, she probably wouldn’t get killed by a jaguar, but a fair fight would be horribly messy. She had the health points, but even her longest knife left her open to a brutal clawing. The prospect of magic and stealth made the fight much more appealing, or so she hoped.

In truth, the first encounter worked out well for Ariel. Miraculously enough, she managed to stay down wind and sneak up on the jaguar. Apparently ice shard was considered a sufficiently close-in attack that you could use Back Stab, especially when casting with a dagger. Between that and some quick knife work, the jaguar was dispatched with only minor damage from its claws.

Her stealth was not yet up to the second jaguar, and she found herself in an excruciating test of blade versus claw. Her pain sensitivity was only 20%, but 20% was a lot when your torso was being ripped open. Fortunately, even by level 7 her health and healing were beyond any mere animal in the real world. She won, although she elected to use a healing potion rather than wait an hour to recover.

The third encounter did not go so well. The best she could say is that she got away. Both arms were incapacitated. If she had not managed to inflict enough damage to slow down the jaguar, she would have needed a respawn.

By the time her arms recovered, enough time had passed that the Whores Guild would be open.

Unlike the Roasted Pig, the Whores Guild was prominently placed alongside the most expensive shops of the city. It was a three-story stone edifice fronted by a portico and marble forecourt. The columns of the portico were sculpted. The sculpture was sensual but not erotic. The women were full figured and shown to advantage. As for the men, Ariel didn’t think simply calling them ripped did the statues justice. They were well-muscled and handsome. Poses were suggestive: several sculptures embraced each other around a column, but she did not see anything explicitly sexual.

This entrance was unquestionably for those seeking the services of Whores. The guild doubled as a brothel. Ariel suspected that the front entrance also met the needs of those hiring entertainment for private events.

Ariel walked around back. Yeah, there was no way she would get the servants entrance confused with the members entrance. The members entrance was not as ostentatious as the front entrance, but a male and female statue formed columns on each side of the door. Their hands clasped to form an archway.

The door swung on well-oiled hinges. Ariel stepped into a marble lobby and approached a desk.

“Madam, you have the wrong door. Clients are served around front.” The speaker stood behind the desk, his spotless jacket and pants at home in the precisely appointed lobby.

“I think I have come to the right place. I wish to apply to join.”

“To join? Madam, we are not a club that one must join to enjoy. Our services are available to anyone with the requisite coin and respect for our members.”

“But you are a guild that one must join to sell ... the services you sell.”

“Yes, madam, we are a guild for the Whores of Berg’s Keep and surrounding lands with reciprocity with all the other Whores Guilds.”

“So, I wish to join. I want to be a whore.”

“But Madam,” he said, eyes narrowed in consternation, “you are an immortal.”

“Yes, so?”

He spoke as if to a child, “Immortals cannot be Whores.”

“Why not?”

“Madam, the limitations placed on our clients were they to interact with an immortal would not permit us to meet their needs.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This guild is open to ephemerals only. I must ask you to leave. If you have sufficient coin you will be welcome around front.”

“Surely there is some guild master. I’d like to speak to her.”

“Madam, we shall both regret it if the guild master is involved.”

“Then explain to me why I cannot join.”

“I have already done so.”

“That’s not an answer. I insist on speaking to the guild master.”

He sighed and rang a bell. “I shall inform the guild master.” Within moments, a lad, barely a man, ran up behind the desk.

“Yes sir!” After a whispered conversation, the lad departed, his wide-eyed stare lingering on Ariel.

Ariel waited. Minutes passed.

She heard the sharp step of heels on the floor well before the guild master appeared. The guild master was a woman in her 30’s. If Ariel were asked to describe her, she would say the guild master was sharp. She was sharply dressed. Her face was all sharp angles, especially that beak of a nose.

“I am Guild Master Kessler. Who might I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

“Ariel Pathtreader.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to claim Hulda’s Bold Pathtreader, but last night brought her the confidence to claim Pathtreader now.

“Jonathan, what is madam Pathtreader’s concern?”

“She wants to join the guild, Master Kessler. I explained that was not possible.”

“Quite true,” Master Kessler said. “Our members take risks that an immortal can neither understand nor face.”

“I don’t understand. I bet I can face whatever these risks are.”

Master Kessler stepped toward Ariel. She sniffed. “Ah Ariel! Like all the rest of your kind, thinking the world is for you. You spend a night with a whore—I don’t recognize her scent, but I smell her on you—and you like it.

“Now you want to play whore. And we’re supposed to make it work for you. You and your path get to choose, while all the rest of us actually have to face the consequences of whoring. Is that how it should work, Ariel”—she almost spit Ariel’s name—” with your interface and consent controls?

“Will you play whore until you don’t like it? Careful only to check the boxes that might be fun? And how will my members—the ones who earned their badges with the sweat and tears of their bodies—feel when you turn our calling into a joke?”

Ariel was speechless. Because the world was supposed to be for her. This was a game. But she couldn’t just say that. And the guild master did kind of have a point. She did plan to try this out and explore it. If it didn’t work out she’d do something else or roll up a new character.

Master Kessler turned away. “Send her out. If she bothers the clients call the watch. If she has the coin and will be reasonable see if we can set up some way for her to play whore.”

Kessler began to leave.

“Stop!” Ariel shouted. “You can’t do this. The creators promised that immortals could do anything in this world.”

Kessler spun, her glare cold enough to freeze the sun. “I cannot? I cannot rid myself of a pest?”

“But look. Phoenix Rising is supposed to let immortals play at any part of the world.” Ariel realized too late that ‘play’ had been the wrong word. Perhaps approaching this in-game rather than asking the creators had been the wrong approach. “Here, I’ll just file a support complaint shall I?” She started looking for the support interface.

“We speak of ‘shall’s.’ I’ll give you a shall. You shall leave now. You shall not come back within the week. Or you shall be permanently banned from the guild.”

“Hold!” The word reverberated through Ariel’s head. It wasn’t spoken so much as felt in her bones and in her body. From their reactions, the guild master and Jonathan heard it too.

The world faded to black and white. One moment, the marble was offset against the tones of the wooden service desk behind which Jonathan stood. The next, it was as if Ariel was glancing at a retro photograph from hundreds of years ago, back when they actually made photographs out of toxic chemicals. Words scrolled before her. Not like notifications, but just plastered over the degraded graphics of the world, fading in a few seconds.

Administrative review required.

Confirming grid locations to review

Red grid lines sprang into view, separating Ariel from the rest of the room.

“Ariel,” the word reverberated through her, “step across the grid line or be killed.” That was clear enough. She tried to walk, but her motion was more like a pointer scrolling than smooth walking. She moved, or at least the rest of the world moved around her. But there was no sense of stepping. It did not feel like her legs moved independently of the rest of her.

Isolating to grid cell. The grid line that she had just crossed turned opaque. She, Master Kessler and Jonathan were in part of the members lobby. The grid line she had just crossed cut off the members entrance. Another grid line crossed just behind the desk. She could not perceive anything past them.

Isolated to one grid location; releasing synchronization lock.

Suspending and rewinding excess NPCs. Jonathan sat down and then slumped forward, his head cushioned by his hands.

Integrating knowledge of world controllers into NPCs

Injecting controller; synchronization point in 6500 ms

Sync! There was a flash and then a glowing ball of light appeared hovering between Ariel and Master Kessler. Ariel recognized the ball as an avatar used by the AI creators of the game from the introduction sequence.

“I am Atlanta.energy,” it said. “And you, Ariel, have been unexpected.

“Three times you have caused enough speculative annulments that time compression has gone slower than real time. Once, the entire game world had to slow down to avoid exceeding the convergence threshold.”

“Thanks, I guess?” Ariel did not fully understand the AI, but she’d apparently messed up game play by doing something unexpected. “You’ve always advertised the game as a place where the unimaginable is possible. I guess I had a big imagination.”

“Hmmph! Perhaps. Now let’s see what has brought me here this time and whether we’ll be able to fix whatever has happened here.”

An hour glass painted itself across the AI’s avatar for a moment. “Oh, I see. Yes, that would do it. You want to be a whore.”

“She can’t. It would defeat the whole point of the guild,” Master Kessler said.

“It certainly would require changes.”

Ariel jumped into the conversation. “Atlanta? No one’s really explained to me why that’s hard. Master Kessler talked about me picking and choosing and undermining the work the Whores do. How can we make this work?”

“Immortal! My name is Atlanta.Energy!” Now she’d irritated one of the AIs who created the world.

Atlanta.Energy continued, “I’d like to find a way, but I don’t think we can.”

Synchronizing to converge consensus in 12000 ms

“At least explain why!”

“That is reasonable.”

Sync!

No convergence within allowed window; grid remains isolated.

“Well, that was interesting,” Atlanta.Energy said. “Apparently it’s not going to be that simple. There’s no consensus to deny immortals the ability to play whore. But we see no way to make it work.

“There are two problems; if there were solutions to these problems, the creators would consider a whore class for immortals. Our Whores combine emotional openness with sexual availability in a way that is probably damaging to humans. The NPCs have some advantages in facing that stress. And frankly, some of them don’t make it.”

“What do you mean don’t make it?” Ariel asked.

“Give up. Not a lot of suicides, but this world is hard. An NPC that doesn’t actively want to live isn’t going to last long.”

Atlanta.Energy said, “Second problem is consent. Immortals need to consent to anything sexual.”

“And Whores don’t? Hulda and Goody Brown made it sound like trying to force a whore would be a really bad idea.”

“Goodwench Brown. That’s who you’ve been with,” Master Kessler said.

“You keep Hulda out of this! She’s been amazing. It’s not her fault that I’m stubborn and difficult.”

“Ah, Annika, this one puts on a fierce face. I think she underplays Goodwench Brown’s involvement. But Ariel, the guild master will not harm your friend,” Atlanta.Energy said.

“Indeed. Goodwench Brown must be coming along well to get an immortal interested in playing whore. And yes, the Browns are right. Some have tried forcing a member of the guild. Never twice, not even an immortal.”

“Even so,” Atlanta.Energy said, “negotiating consent and establishing boundaries without resorting to that sort of violence is one of the real challenges Whores face. The consent controls make sure immortals never face that risk.”

“What would I have to consent to in order to have a sufficiently challenging experience?”

Synchronizing for resource reallocation in 500 ms

Sync!

“you would have to give up on consent entirely,” the guild master said.

“Now, Annika, that’s uncalled for; set aside your bias for a moment and see if there is some way we can make this work,” the AI said. “Ariel, I doubt you would need to give up on consent entirely, but there would need to be consequences if you withdrew consent while acting as a whore.”

“Like loss of experience?”

“That could work. We can’t ... wouldn’t market a game where players couldn’t withdraw consent. But how would you feel if you died if you withdrew consent in the middle of acting as a whore?”

“So I’d have to kill myself?”

“No! You could use the normal interface of course. But if your decision disrupted game play or gave you too much of an advantage, you might die of a heart attack or similar.”

“And then I’d respawn?”

“Of course.”

“Sure, that’s no worse than running across some hugely over-powered mob.”

“So, once you’ve agreed to work with a client, your character might die if you withdraw consent,” Atlanta.Energy said.

“That’s not good enough for her to face the same challenges as the ephemerals,” the guild master said. “It would need to be whenever she’s working as a whore: managing tension around negotiations is one of the things that separates a successful whore from someone ineffective.”

“That seems kind of unreasonable. Say there’s some person I’m just never even going to negotiate with. Or what about an X from the immortal world?”

“Real Whores who actually put their safety on the line have to deal with that every day.”

“Ariel has a point,” the AI said. “This is a game. Annika also has a point. My first proposal was too easy for you. Perhaps once you have contracted with a client or while negotiating, once you have indicated willingness to work with a potential client, withdrawing consent may be fatal.”