“Oh. My. Goodness. SO rogeekic. Geekmantic? In any case, as cute as a bug’s ear, seriously.”
“Actually it is, kind of, isn’t it?” said Dorothee. “I never thought of it that way but I suppose time is the great healer.”
“Hey,” said OJ. “That’s kind of cruel.”
“Oh, I kid. I kid, because I love … tormenting you, that is!” said Dorothee.
“Did your friends really make an RPG metaphor for how out of your class Doro was?” Apples asked OJ.
“Unfortunately, yes,” said OJ. “I cleaned it up a bit for the retelling but essentially that was the conversation.”
“And I’m an ‘Aeriffie’, I don’t even know what that means but I’m quite sure I don’t want to be one,” said Dorothee. “Honestly, if I’d known that’s what you and your friends were talking about before you came over history would have been changed forever. I mean really, ‘Aeriffie’? It sounds so sordid somehow.”
“Actually they ended up deciding that you’re a Pure Aerith,” said OJ.
“I don’t know what that means, either!”
“Well, I always thought of you as an Elena, though—”
“Really now, stop talking OJ, I’m this close to declaring our entire relationship non-canon.”
“It’s nothing bad, I’ll explain the whole thing to you later.”
“No thanks!”
“You don’t have your friends over enough, OJ,” said Apples. “I want to spend more time with these people. I haven’t seen Rooster for aaaaages.”
“Yeah, since he moved out of town it’s been hard to keep in touch with him. You know he hasn’t come to a game in like six months.”
“I know … how about Bax, then? Bax was hilarious, so serious but so, like, weird, where is he?”
“I’m not sure, actually … he went off to do the whole university thing up north and then kind of disappeared. I dunno, you just lose contact, I guess.”
“Oh,” said Apples.
“I didn’t really hang out with Tracy so much after that night either,” said Dorothee.
“Yeah but she sounded awful, did you really have such a friend? Sorry, such a ‘friend’?”
“She was okay, just … all right, she WAS kind of awful, but I was a little bit awful back then too, to be honest,” said Dorothee. “I was still embarrassed that I liked playing games, can you imagine? What a kid I was.”
“Still, though,” said Apples. “What was it that made you talk to OJ more? I mean, I remember what he was like back then and seriously he was even worse than now.”
“Hey,” said OJ.
“I know, he really was,” said Dorothee. “I dunno, I think … I think what it was, what it really was, is that … somehow, I don’t know how, just … this feeling I had … I just felt that this guy, this scruffy, weird-looking guy with kind of a semi-creep flavour to him—”
“Seriously, hey,” said OJ.
“—this guy … standing in front of me … with this, I dunno, this such an earnest expression on his face, and something in his eyes, a look, a feeling, a … vibe, your honour, that just told me that he … had a really cool little sister.”
“Awwww, awesome—OJ, you gotta admit that was awesome,” said Apples.
“I have to admit that was awesome,” said OJ. “But still, hey.”
“Ahh,” said Dorothee. “Champion for life.”
*
“—so that’s basically what’s going on.”
“Got it. Essentially what you’re saying is that you need the Charisma of Lair #5—namely me, Dee Petite—to come on board and make some proper graphics and write some proper scripts and take care of all your niggly little bugs and bring this whole project together.”
“No—”
Now that’s very odd, because I could have sworn you just said ‘no’,” said Dee. “Perhaps my ears have gone Bizarro on me.”
Vin sighed. “This thing doesn’t need … I don’t know, what were you implying, ‘fixing’? I just want another person in on this, Lewis has been busy with some family stuff lately, and I’m not as good a programmer as he is, I can’t do half the stuff I want to do—and he was the ‘artist’ of the two of us, and the … the designer, I know it’s starting to sound like I didn’t do anything, but—”
“Just calm yourself, all right? Take a few breaths. Would you like a lollipop?”
“Um, what flavour?”
“I have cherry and I have Blue Hawaii.”
“Oh, Blue Hawaii please.”
“Here you are, then.”
Vin accepted the Blue Hawaii lollipop with a certain amount of dignity. He unwrapped it as Dee took another look at the game.
“I like it,” she said, “I can’t say that I don’t, but it just seems way too, what’s the word, what’s the phrase, what am I trying to say here—buttoned-down. Constricted. You have, if I may speak frankly, retarded a lot of the potential here. Why can you only have one monster?”
“We thought we’d start simple—”
“Okay, so you’ve started, now it’s time to open things up a bit.” Dee absently sucked on her own lollipop (Flavour: Cherry) for a few minutes as she played through a couple of screens. “And add more content, for goodness sake. Are those notes you showed me everything you’ve done?”
“Oh, no, that’s just the overview folder. There are some hard copies of some older stuff in that drawer, and the rest are on the project server.”
“Let’s have a look, then.”
Vin sucked his lollipop while Dee read through some of the notes.
“I like the detail you’ve gone into,” she said, after quarter of an hour or so. “You’ve got some good ‘big ideas’ here. I like your ambition.”
“Um, thanks.”
“But this engine … you need to go 3D—”
“Uh—”
“Vin. I know about, understand, and fully endorse your little pixel fetish but really, with what you want to do, with the direction you’re going in you need the flexibility of a 3D engine. You know about FreeFly, right? ArtFly?”
Vin rubbed his forehead. “That’s the, um, the ‘virtual exhibit’ thing #6 are working on.”
“If you look at it from the outside, sure. Get into the guts and it’s a fully-functioning 3D engine—efficient, clean, portable, and very, very modular.”
Vin looked at Dee.
“You really think—”
“I really KNOW that this’d work for your thing. Correction: OUR thing.”
“You’re going to—”
“I’m already on board. I’ve been looking for a decent project and this could be the next boom around here, we’re past due for one. Who else you got in this thing?”
“Um, well, if you’re in then … you and me, basically. And Lewis once he sorts out his family stuff.”
“Huh. Okay, that’s okay. That’s good, actually. Don’t want to spread too quickly. Listen, I’ve got some stuff I need to do today but let’s meet up tomorrow. I’ll send you a mail, okay?”
“Um, okay, sure—”
“Cool. Later, then.”
*
Apples unwrapped a fun-size Hocus Pocus bar and put it in a bowl, then used a spoon to crunch and crumble it up before mixing in some vanilla ice cream until it all went creamy, thus creating Cream Crunch Whip (Chocolate Edition). She took the bowl and toddled out to the couch in the lounge, eating as she went, lumped into said couch, and turned on the TV.
“I thought you were going to school today?”
“There’s no sense in rushing, right?”
OJ thought for a moment, then shrugged.
“Fair enough,” he said, then shuffled off to the kitchen to get some cereal.
“How are you enjoying your day off?” Apples called.
“Grrrrrrreat!” OJ called back. “By the way, I hope you’re not watching anything important because I’m playing a game once I finish this cereal.”
“Oooh, what game are you playing? Can I play too?”
“Bloody stupid old Monster Gariben Ira-Ira Freedom BASTARD game that it is. And no, it’s not two-player.”
“I can watch though, right?”
“If you want to.”
Quarter of an hour later saw OJ quietly swearing at the game he was playing.
“Is this fun?” Apples asked, as she watched OJ’s character (who was a rather petite, rather cute, rather heavily-armoured girl) stagger across a field carrying a heavy egg.
“No, it’s unbelievably frustrating,” OJ grunted, shortly before a bird-like thing leapt at his character from off-screen and swiped at her ankles, causing her to drop the egg, which subsequently smashed against the ground.
“Oops,” said Apples. “Was that—”
“GRARGLEBARGLEGAH! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!”
Apples watched as OJ’s character produced a large bone hammer from nowhere and proceeded to reduce the bird-thing to little more than a bunch of feathers and a red smear on the landscape.
“Is THIS fun?” Apples asked, as OJ’s character, apparently unsatisfied, went after the bird-thing’s family.
“Actually yes,” said OJ, as he caught a bird on the upswing and sent it flying into the side of a cliff. “I like to think of it as ‘balance’.”
Apples watched for a few minutes more.
“I’m not really sure if I get this game,” she said.
“Join the club,” OJ muttered.
“So why are you playing it, if it’s not that fun?”
“It’s just compulsive, I guess,” said OJ, as he brained a couple of giant lizards. “And satisfying, kind of. Because it’s so frustrating and fiddly and difficult there’s a definite sense of accomplishment whenever you actually manage to do anything.”
“Huh.”
“But really, it’s just the closest thing right now.”
“Wha? Closest thing to what?”
“To a better game. There are SO many things I’d change about this stupid thing. Almost everything, actually.”
“I get that feeling all the time.”
“Yes, but in my case I’m not thinking ‘this game needs more puppies and rainbows!’.”
Apples huffed.
“Rainbows and ponies, ACTUALLY.”
“It has quite a few ponies, just not in this bit.”
“You don’t club them to death, do you?”
“No, they’re not ‘monsters’.”
“Good.”
“Not that I would anyway.”
“You clubbed those chicken-y things pretty good.”
“That’s different. They made me drop that Taralesque egg.”
“Aha! So if a pony made you drop a Tiramesque egg then you’d club it!”
“Hm. Interesting moral point. Maybe, if it really annoyed me.”
OJ kept playing for a bit longer, then sighed and turned off the console.
“You’ve sucked the fun out of it for me,” he said, wearily. “Reminding me how pointless it is. It’s not like there’s much of a story or anything, it’s just grind grind grind with nothing to show for it except a complete set of Parakalata armour. Which is admittedly impressive if you know what went into obtaining it, but even so.”
“Sorry if I made it unfun for you,” Apples said, earnestly.
“It’s fine, I’ve got better things to do with my free time anyway—”
“Like prepare for your date!”
“Which is seven hours away. I think I can put off getting ready for just a little bit longer. How about you? Shouldn’t you be getting to school sometime today?”
“Oh I suppose so fine then here I go.”
“You’ll enjoy it once you get there, you always do.”
“I know, it’s just … I’m not enjoying it NOW. ‘Later’ has no meaning in the World of Fun!”
*
Later:
“I … am … back!”
“She is back?”
Paraparaparapara, paraparaparapara, paraparaparapara—
“You gotta do what?”
“I gotta believe!” cried Apples.
Parapara pa, pa!
Several Mayberry students watched Apples for a few moments in case she was going to do anything else, then, seeing that she probably wasn’t, they wandered off. Unperturbed, Apples packed her little portable sound system back into her bag and then headed for Magical Clover Rainbow Dance Dance Dance room.
“TOAD!”
“APPLES!”
“COMBINE!”
The two friends high-fived while adopting suitably dramatic poses.
“You haven’t been back for ages,” said Toad, after she and Apples had finished their combo-attack animation. “I was kind of wondering if you’d gone for good this time.”
“No way! No way no how! Where’s Vin?”
“Oh, he’s doing this game project thing, he asked me to do some concept art for it last week but since then I haven’t heard from him. I think he wanted to talk to you about it, actually.”
“So what are we waiting for? Where is he? Game, you say? Do you have the pictures you did for him?”
“Yeah, they’re in my portfolio. I kind of got into them enough that they’re worth including, hang on a moment and I’ll show you.”
Apples wandered around Magical Clover Rainbow Dance Dance Dance room while Toad looked for the pictures. It was a large room filled with various desks, cabinets and cupboards, the walls covered in murals and sketches and paintings—Apples found a couple of hers that had been marked with the tiny but distinctive Mayberry ‘untouchable’ mark. One was a small, intricate pastel drawing of Dorothee, if Dorothee was a dragon-cat. Another was a small coloured-pencil drawing of an expressive young blob in a happy anthropomorphic landscape of merry hills and adorable foliage.
“BloBlobby Bee!” Toad said, joining Apples in looking at the blob. “He almost got voted in as class mascot this year, just barely lost out to Mr Long Hat.”
“What? That creepy thing? These modern times!” Apples cried, shaking her fist at nothing in particular. “But anyway are those the pictures?”
“Yeah … I’m pretty proud of them, actually.”
Apples cast a discerning eye over the drawings—they’d been properly inked and shaded, and it was obvious that Toad had put a lot of love into them. One was of a scuttling, evil-looking beetle thing. Another was of a floating crystalline entity with sad, somewhat blank eyes. The third, the one that really caught Apples’ attention, was an action scene; bleeding, bloodied and battered, a fox-like animal wearing an angular mask stood determined and ready to strike back, as some kind of chitinous monster prepared to attack once more.
“Wow, this one’s awesome,” said Apples. Toad smiled proudly.
“Thanks, I really got into that one.”
“I love this little fox thing, is this in the game? What kind of game is it?”
“I dunno really, I never got a chance to see it, Vin’s been really busy lately. Me too, actually, but you know when you really get into a drawing … everything else kind of disappears.”
Apples had adopted a thoughtful pose.
“If he’s working on a game,” she said, beginning a slow pace up and down the length of the room, “then he must be in one of the Nerd Lairs. If my memory serves me correctly—as it USUALLY does—he favours Lair #4. Logic would suggest that this may be the place to begin our search for a certain Vincent B. Autobot.”
*
“Vin! Vin! VIN!”
“Huh—Apples! When did you start coming back? Hello!”
“Just today, Toad said you were working on a game, lemme see it!”
“It’s, uh … we’re actually—I’m working on a new version—”
“Just show me what you got, I saw Toad’s concept drawings and they were radical!”
“Hi Prinny. I’m glad you came too, I really wanted—”
“Hey hey hey! It’s my favourite girl-named-for-plural-fruit!”
“DEE!”
Apples ran up to Dee and side-fived her before spinning to touch heels.
“I thought you ran away!” said Apples, after she’d picked herself up off the floor. “Didn’t you run away to Japan?”
“I ran back again,” said Dee. “Missed this place too much.”
“Me too! Not the running back from Japan thing, the ‘missing this place too much’ thing. It’s great to be back! And there’s this game project thing happening, what up with that?”
“I’ve got the old version up,” Vin said, “if you want to have a play with it—”
Apples was already at the computer, pressing random keys to figure things out. Within a minute she was happily guiding a cute little purple tortoise through a dark cave, battling other monsters.
“This is cool,” she said. “It kind of reminds me—ooh! Portoise became ‘Determined’! That’s it, Portoise, don’t give up!”
“Um, as you can see,” said Vin to Toad, who was watching Apples play, “it’s pretty basic here, we’re actually trying to get a 3D engine working to base things on—”
“What?” Apples turned to look at Vin, shocked and dismayed. “But these graphics are so cute!”
“I know, it’s just—”
“Well, I guess 3D is okay too as long as it’s not, y’know, too realistic or anything,” said Apples. She turned back to the game. “Can I get out of this cave and go somewhere sunny and fun? Like with green fields and trees?”
“Um, not in this version—”
“Oh. Well, I guess I’ve played enough for now, then,” said Apples. She grinned at Vin. “But it’s cool, really cool. I just like green fields and ridiculously blue skies and fluffy white clouds, and where everything has eyes. In games, I mean. You know, like … games that look like games? Happy games? Places you’d actually want to visit. Lots of the games OJ plays are like just all brown and grey and not that nice.”
“I kind of agree,” said Vin. “I want this to be like a ‘fun’ game, a ‘game’ game, so even if there will be ‘darker’ places like this cave, there’ll also be bright happy places to balance them out. Um, eventually.”
“Okay, cool. Just making sure.”
“Apples,” said Dee, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “Seeing as you’re back and all, I was wondering if you’d be interested in listening to a little proposition of mine.”
Apples looked at Dee. Dee smiled, and held up something small and colourful.
“Lollipop?”
*
“OH MY GOODNESS BEST DAY EVER!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” said Dorothee. “I had fun too, I invented a new drink—”
“I’m making a—oh, really?”
“It’s lime soda with ice cream mixed in.”
“Oh! What did you call it?”
“… cream lime soda.”
“Doro. We’ve got to work on—oh, is that OJ home?”
“I’m not doing another musical routine, I’m tired from doing nothing all day.”
“I know, it’s EXHAUSTING, isn’t it? Back in a jiff!”
Apples zoomed out to greet OJ home.
“Hiya! Soooooo how was your daaaaate?”
“Fine, it was fun,” said OJ, taking off his jacket and hat and putting them on a stand. “We had ‘white’ tea.”
“What! White tea!”
“Actually it’s still kind of brown, though.”
“Oh. Well, anyway, come through, come through—”
“Apples, this is my house where I live,” said OJ. “You don’t need to invite me in.”
“I’m just ‘playing host’. Doro invented a new drink, it’s called a ‘Creamafragilimealicious’.”
“Lime soda with ice cream mixed in?”
It sounds delicious.
“I’ll get her to mix us up a couple,” said Apples, “let’s all have one! Dorokeep! Creamafragilimealiciouses all round!”
Soon Apples, OJ and Dorothee were all sat around the dining table, enjoying their refreshing and delicious beverages.
“So anyways,” said Apples, “as I was saying before I was so PLEASANTLY interrupted, I’m making a game!”
OJ stared.
“You’re what?”
“Well, it’s not really me who’s making it, I’m just … hang on a moment …”
Apples pulled a small piece of paper from her pocket.
“I’m the ‘Happiness Assurance Officer’,” she read. “So fancy! And I’m also ‘President of Making Sure Everything is CoolHappyAwesome’ apparently? Anyway, it’s my job to make sure everyone’s happy and getting along nicely, and I’m also doing some writing! Because they wanted to include a ‘guide’ character? So that’s going to be me! I’m trying to think of a good name for her—right now I’m leaning towards ‘Gecko Strut’.”
“That seems somehow appropriate,” said OJ. “What kind of game is it?”
“Like a monster-fighting RPG thing, right now you just wander around a cave beating up other monsters but they’re doing this like huge big revival or rebirth or something, my friend Dee Petite’s in charge of it and she’s doing, like, amazing things. Super-amazing things. And Vin’s the one who came up with it, well actually it was him and his friend Lewis but Lewis had to go home to look after his family or something so now it’s just Vin, except it isn’t, it’s Vin and Dee and me and Toad and some assorted nerdites and really it’s so cool!”
“I feel ridiculously jealous,” said OJ.
“You can be my adviser if you want,” Apples said, graciously. “Since you know more about games than me, I mean about the ‘workings’. But actually Dee was saying some stuff to me that made me feel like I actually know a lot more than I thought I did! Because you know I love rules so much, and I mean I knew games are basically just a bunch of rules all pasted together, but she really kind of made me remember that properly if you get what I mean. She’s so smart. She’s been to Japan, did I tell you that? Like five times! She can speak Japanese!”
“It’s good that you’re fitting in so nicely already,” said Dorothee.
“I know, I feel so happy to have a cool new project to work on, I actually have homework tonight! I have to write some stuff and also if I have any input into the game I can ‘submit’ that as well, ‘submit’, it sounds so official!”
“Do you have the game with you?” OJ asked.
“Yeah, there’s a CD in my bag with the old version on it—but that’s like nothing compared to what this new version will be!”
“I might … I might go play it, it’s for the computer, right?”
“You are correct, sir!”
Apples watched OJ scuttle off towards her bag, then turned to Doro.
“I knew he’d be happy,” she said.
“Is it fun? The game?”
“Yeah, really fun! I think you’d like it, the monsters are cute and it’s pretty simple and addictive.”
“What’s it called?”
“Right now ‘Monster Cave’—I know, it’s so boring. We’re trying to think of a new name but nobody can really agree on anything. I wanted to call it ‘CuteHappy Monster Dreams of Rainbows’ but nobody else seemed to think that was appropriate.”
“Sounds like a good name to me,” said Dorothee.
“Thanks, Doro! Toad kind of liked it too, but still, ‘inappropriate’. Anyway, aside from inventing drinks what did you do today?”
“Just lumped around. I had two baths, it was pretty decadent. I did some baking, too.”
Apples gasped.
“What! Seriously? Baking? You?”
“I made yoghurt cakes.”
“Yay!”
“They didn’t quite turn out right but they’re okay.”
Apples zipped off to the kitchen to investigate the cakes. When she returned a minute later it was with her mouth full.
“SO good,” she mumbled.
“I’m happy you like them, they’re pretty easy.”
“It’s been ages since you baked!”
“I just really wanted to do something productive.”
Apples nodded. “You have to find that balance—you were darn tootin’ right about that! Just bumming around all the time isn’t good, you have to do stuff too! I think maybe the best way to do things is to have like a ‘project’ or … well, maybe ‘work’ I guess but anyway, you should have something important to do but then when you’re not doing that you should just have fun, right? Relax with fun! Hug a trouble!”
“This is pretty good!” OJ said, from where he sat at the computer. “You can tell they’ve really done the groundwork with it, in terms of design and balance. Do you get more than one monster in your party later?”
“Not yet, that’s one of the things that’s going to change in the new version.”
“Once it’s ready I definitely want to play it,” said OJ. “I almost want to stop playing this one, just to wait for the new version. I guess your monster doesn’t carry over?”
“Vin was talking about having some kind of link between the two but Dee said it’d be too much trouble.”
“Maybe I’ll stop now, then. Although I’m pretty close to levelling up …”
Apples smiled as she turned back to Dorothee.
“I pick my projects well,” she said.
World 2-3
Prismatic Garden
WELCOME TO THE FANTASY ZONE
