Chương 85: CDM 2, Chapter 21: Product Placement

"You're at work, right?" Beth texted at about 1 a. m.

"Yes."

"Me too, but I couldn't wait to tell you. The Divas have a new sponsor."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We've been emailing back and forth for a few days, but they just confirmed it."

"Who is it?"

"Gate Girl Glitter." I looked up the brand.

"Lip gloss?"

"They're launching a line of eye shadow too."

"When did they reach out?"

"I messaged them."

"You made this happen? Like pitched it and everything?"

"Yes. I'm sorry it's a cosmetic brand. I just had a feeling we had a good chance with one of those."

"Don't be sorry. That's awesome. Really really great. Good work."

"You're not mad that it's makeup?"

"I'd sell my soul if the price was right."

"Don't say stuff like that."

"Sorry. But really, this is super cool. Thank you for making it happen."

":)" Beth hadn't brought up seeing our parents since we talked about it a couple nights back. Every time she texted, I expected the message to be about that. Another sponsorship was welcome news, of course, but the longer she went without saying anything, the more worried for her I got. If the situation made her feel so cornered as to freeze, abandoning hope for any action at all, I didn't want to leave her alone to suffer. At the same time, I also didn't want to pressure her. Emotions were hard.

I could barely manage my own, so I was never really sure if I was doing right by the people around me when I reacted to theirs. Was I giving them enough space? Too much space? Did they want to talk about it? Or would it be better to leave it alone? The alchemy of it all made me forever doubtful of every interaction I ever had. The overnight RAID duty was a little more exciting than usual, but not by much.

The drones caught a group of crashers running into an E gate, which was the first time that had happened when Cortez and I were on shift. That excitement was short-lived, as our role in the bust itself was really just sending a text message to alert the proper points of contact. We had two more goblin sightings not near any known SOCs. If I squinted, the datapoints we had collected over the last few weeks had an epicenter outside a town called Donora.

That information was still limited, but I made a note to myself to look at satellite images of the area when our shift ended. I'd probably put a shower and food between the shift and that research, but you get the idea.

"Enforcer Black told me something about local culture, but I think he was messing with me," Cortez said, breaking a long stretch of silence.

"What was it?"

"He said when the snow gets bad, people put out 'parking chairs.' That means they shoveled it, so it's theirs, and violating that is kind of like starting a war."

"Oh, that's real."

"So like, what, people just put folding chairs out on the street?" Cortez asked.

"Any chair will do. You'll see a variety."

"What happens if you use the spot anyway?" I laughed.

"Retribution. Last year, a car on our street got buried in snow and then sprayed with a garden hose. That thing was solid ice."

"That's hardcore."

"Parking chairs are serious business."

"Good thing I've got off-street parking at my place," Cortez said.

"You don't have to rub it in."

"I wouldn't say I'm coming out ahead on that one. If I added up how much that parking space cost, I bet ridesharing everywhere would be cheaper." Cortez paused to read his phone screen.

"I got a buddy working the RAID pilot in Seattle."

"Yeah?"

"He says they've had three drones shot down so far."

"That's like $600, 000." Cortez nodded.

"Basically every community group in the city has filed privacy complaints. They don't want cameras floating over their neighborhoods."

"I don't blame them."

"I wouldn't want to hang out in my yard with one of those hovering right over me."

"Same."

"Would be nice if this didn't go beyond a pilot program," Cortez added.

"You're hoping it fails?" He shrugged.

"I think it's a good cover-your-ass program for the CDM, but I don't know that writing a bunch of new parking and placement citations has really made anyone safer. I know we haven't seen a lot of crashers since it launched, but I think the Baker Bill moved that needle, not drones." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Because they're afraid of CKs?"

"Hell yeah. Even animals know to keep their heads down when hunting season is in."

"That's true." Speaking far more softly now, Cortez added, "I hope RAID gets cut. I don't want even more surveillance in my life. I know that's hopeless, though." Enforcer Grensmith sent me a link for a folder on the CDM shared drives. I should have gone right to bed–or "to couch," at least until Beth moved out in another week or so–but I was too curious about the CDM's brief foray into wild monster hunting to sleep.

Nathan came out of his room, on his way to another shift at the airport, but paused when he saw me at the kitchen table.

"Are you up early or haven't gone to sleep?" he asked.

"Haven't gone to sleep. The CDM had a monster hunting initiative once upon a time, and I was going to read up on it."

"Think there's something useful for you and Meg in there?"

"For us, but yes." Nathan grinned. He liked being included as a Dungeon Diva.

"Right. Alright duder. I'll see you on the other side." As the door clicked shut, I started sifting. The Rapid Invasive Species Response program was "designed to address the long-term consequences of gate surges by eradicating wild monsters within our borders." The strategy had a few guiding principles that immediately stuck out to me: Hiring caster classes was deemed financially unviable.

Multiclassing martial classes into casters would be cheaper in the long run, especially since the CDM could more easily lock those second-class casters into service contracts, something akin to soldiers in the military. Want the multiclass? Commit to several years of wild monster hunting for the CDM and demonstrate leadership potential along the way.

All builds were to be optimized around wild hunting needs, which I already knew, but I thought it was interesting they specifically stated they would not select unlocks that "could reasonably be duplicated by technology." For example, Far Sight was an ability offered to archers to improve how far they could see. Binoculars and scopes made that possible, so the unlock should go to something more productive. Wilderness training, satellite imagery, GPS navigation–None of these were worth replacing with an unlock.

That made sense to me, and this was well before drone tech hit the scene. The exception was rangers and druids. Those classes could get to a proficiency that technology couldn't, but the CDM had only planned to hire a select few of those. Every brawler and berserker was pushed into a tank build. Defenders were too, of course. Fighters were directed to specialize in spear work, balancing strength, speed, and durability rather than leaning hard into either strength or speed.

Megan's dex build, the Machine Gun, wouldn't have been approved by this initiative. The preferred archer build followed a similar philosophy of balance, hitting a middle-of-the-road compromise between a dex build and a power build. They advocated for Stun Shot over Piercing because it was better for "crowd management." That also meant no Dual Nocking. This build went with Improved Ranged Accuracy instead.

Interesting that an unlock replaceable by technology was seen as a waste, but an unlock replaceable by practice and instruction was not. Then I remembered who we were talking about. One Improved Ranger Accuracy unlock was probably way faster and cheaper than putting a bunch of time and money into ranges and specialized instructors. The project files also included a note about why Marksman builds were not included.

The possible damage bonuses with a Far Shot combo must have been notable enough that they wanted to preempt arguments for its inclusion. The thinking was simple: Clear shots at extreme distances were hard to come by. When they were available, the window of opportunity could be as brief as the flicker of a flame. The documents also made a short note that voidwood bows were considered, but "despite the exceptional tactical advantage, the costs of voidwood bows, or any above ironwood quality, were prohibitive."

I guess I hoped for an insight into wild hunting, something I hadn't thought of before, but the program was relatively basic. If civilians reported monster activity, they went out to kill them. The builds were a little old school, more well-rounded than the builds of today that tended to lean so hard into one idea that they broke reality. Being more educated about the CDM wouldn't hurt, but this was a bust. Maybe it wasn't a bust.

Late that afternoon, after a delightful nap, I had a thought and emailed Enforcer Grensmith:"Out of curiosity, are there wilderness survival experts in the CDM still? Maybe a better question to ask, do you know any that give lessons?" He replied, almost instantly. Grensmith always did that somehow, and I wasn't the only one who had noticed. More than one person suggested the theory that Grensmith had an email bot. That was the only way one person could do that at all hours of the day.

"I do know a local. Retired CDM. I'm attaching his contact information. Also, if you're interested in wild monsters, you might find this study interesting." Kimmy the scouting drone addressed one of Megan's and my major weaknesses: information gathering. Wilderness survival was a shortcoming we hadn't addressed. Sure, the majority of SOCs were in urban areas, but whenever one wasn't, we put ourselves at risk. Domonkos' lessons made me slightly more confident about going for a hike, but only slightly.

There was a lot we didn't know. Investing a few ad dollars in more training seemed like a good idea, and I already knew Megan agreed. Before Grensmith, we had no idea where to start looking for something like that. The study Grensmith sent was interesting. A mass analysis of dungeon gate data gathered from around the world found a trend. The rate of gate variants, like my hobgoblin or duster runs, had slowly increased, year over year. In the last ten, those rates seemed to increase sharply, noticeably so.

The early, gradual increase was known, apparently, but it was so gentle as to seem unremarkable. The recent spike was concerning. But why did it spike? That was the big question that had yet to be answered. Nathan had theories, which we discussed at length over drinks at Milly's.

"Maybe the system works in phases, and this is the next one," he began.

"The question would really be what those phases are based on. Number of gates closed, maybe?"

"That feels too arcade-y for me."

"What do you mean?"

"You're describing a cosmic high score, like someone is counting. But trends are usually something building up or something going away, right? That rip in the ozone layer? Build-up of chlorofluorocarbons."

"The gates appear and disappear, though," Nathan said.

"That's my point. It's not like they are accumulating, so what's the mechanism forcing the change?"

"The count."

"Where is the count stored, though? There has to be something measurable. Cause and effect." Nathan drank his beer.

"Okay, I got it. What if the supply of gates is finite? We describe it as being random, but what if a gate is like a drop in a keg? That's your measurable change. Every drink lowers it a little bit more."

"You did not make that up just now."

"Dude. I totally did."

"You read it somewhere."

"You never appreciate my genius." Laughing, I admitted, "Okay. It's good. Keeping the liquid metaphor, there would have to be an order to what comes out, like liquids that separate into layers."

"Basically, yeah. I can buy into that."

"This reminds me of our intelligent design debates," I said.

"The structure of it all."

"You just established that liquids separate into layers on their own. The magic of chemistry."

"I think it's the increasing difficulty. That part feels narrative to me."

"No man, that's not 'narrative.' Every bad trend makes things worse and harder. That's why it's a bad trend. Alcoholism, lead in the water, crime rates. One direction on the line graph is good. One direction is bad, and I think you can tell when it's bad. That's like a law of physics or some shit. Nature, not narrative."

"I admit defeat, so this isn't me challenging you, but what does the good line look like for dungeon gates?" Nathan thought.

"See what I mean? Damned if you do. Damned if you don't. Close the gates, the difficulty keeps going up. Don't close the gates, the world is overrun by monsters, and the gates get harder anyway." He nodded.

"Ah. I see your point. Yes, There is a name for that line that I made up right now. That's called 'a reality curve.' Both directions suck."