Across from me, both hands flat on the table, Earl stared into my soul. Deadpan. A raw red cut was slashed across his left cheekbone. I stared back but looked away when he broke into a joyless smile. I tuned back into the tutorial.
After a brief awkward silence, Cornelius started his lecture, “look, a lot of what I say will seem like magic, but it’s just technology beyond your understanding. Easiest thing to do is to not ask why or how and just go with it. Now, back to the inventory system…”
“Wait,” said a man in the back wearing a suit, tie still tight around his neck, leg crossed in a figure four, expensive watch on his wrist. “You’re a humanoid moth, we’re in some dungeon cleaner than the subway system, we fought our way through a shield wall of Roman weasel soldiers, and you thought we would reach a suspension of disbelief at the announcement of an inventory system?” Others nodded their head in agreement. “You’re talking to the just-in-time inventory guru of New York City who’s about to be more famous than Beyonce.”
Cornelius sat down with a smug smile, hands interlaced. His furry antennae twitched. “Silly me, you’re right. Why don’t we do an icebreaker. Let’s go around the room, say your name, the last time you’ve been in a fight and what you consider your greatest accomplishment in life.” Cornelius pointed at a woman diagonally across from him with a white sweater torn on the shoulder. “Why don’t you start Crawler Clarabelle.”
“Hi everyone, well I’m Clarabelle Clemente, and…”
“We only go by Crawler names here Crawler Clarabelle,” Cornelius injected.
“I’m Crawler Clarabelle. Well, um, the last time I’ve been in a fight is never. And hmmm, greatest achievement. That’s a toughie. But if I had to pick one moment, I’d say it was when I beat out Leslie Plinkin for second place in the Teenage Miss Solar System Beauty Pageant.
“That’s it?” said inventory man. “That’s your culmination of your life.”
“You’ve never met Leslie. She’s so smug.” There was a pause, Leslie’s gaze was vacant. “Hey that dumb robot voice in my head just said I got a new achievement: Archrival. It says Leslie is alive. Is that true, mothman? Is Leslie alive?”
“If it’s coming from the AI, you can believe it.”
The rest of the icebreaker continued in similar fashion. The pigeons strutted around the corners of the room, hopping on a bookshelf, chairs, pushing each other with no rhyme or reason. A single pigeon perched on the back of my chair as if actually paying attention. Or more likely, hopping I had more food.
“Crawler Jacob. Unfortunately, the subway about a month ago with a guy playing the banjo. My greatest accomplishment. Smashing a banjo over a guy’s head. Most applause I’ve ever received.”
“Crawler Maria. Question, why are their lightbulbs in the torch holders along the walls? Wouldn’t flames be more appropriate.”
Cornelius, surprised and flustered, “my uh, my manager said I was too distracted by the flames and had them fitted with the bulbs. You lose your turn. Next.”
“Crawler Courageous,” Earl said. Not taking his eyes off me. Carol’s fiancé.” He pointed at me. Everyone aww’ed for the happy couple.
“Is that actually your name?”
“It let me change my name when I entered the arena.”
“Dungeon,” Cornelius corrected.
“Same thing,” Earl said while dismissively waving his hand. “I’ve never been in a fight before.” Liar. “But I played a lot of sports. Greatest accomplishment. Many would say it was closing the deal I just made with an international cobalt mining company. I say it’s getting Carol to saying yes to spending the rest of our lives together.”
Cornelius noted the impassive look on my face and jotted some notes down on his small yellow legal pad of paper.
The icebreaker continued in the same boring way all forced camaraderie progresses: Artificial answers, artificial smiles. We spend so much of our lives contently hanging limp so social norms can pull our strings. The comfort of the familiar, the fear of the unknown. Or maybe rather, a fear of the known, the beasts we cage inside us pretending as if the key to the lock wasn’t readily in our hand looking for a reason. The dungeon was designed to cut our strings. Our darker desires eagerly wait to turn the key.
Then we got to the guy in the Adidas tracksuit that sat next to me in the auditorium. “Crawler Ivan. I’ve never not been in a fight. Those weasels… I killed so many of those weasels. I burst right through their shield wall scattering their unity. I grabbed ones shield and used it to smash another in the head. The crunch… its shattered teeth rattled and rolled like thrown dice. I kept fighting the mutants until God said I was level 7 and the panicking wave of people pushed me beyond the thrill of battle.”
“That wasn’t God,” Cornelius said. “That was the AI.”
“I don’t see the difference,” Ivan said.