Chương 96: CDM 2, Chapter 32: Call Center

"We haven't watched The Wilds: Alaska in a while," Nathan said, scrolling through our streaming options with a remote in one hand and a piece of pizza in the other. Lil' Dorion, his stuffed dire guinea pig, sat on the couch next to him. It looked just like a normal guinea pig except it was larger than a house cat and had long front claws and two long fangs that reminded me of walrus tusks. He added, "If the frost giants were considerate, they would have scheduled their appearance closer to the finale."

"It has felt a lot less exciting since then."

"Louis is doing a run." Nathan clicked into the stream to read the description.

"A-ranked badlands gate, possibly a cyclops boss."

"Those are pretty big dungeons. Could be a long run."

"Looks like they're 7 hours in. I'm good with this if you are, bro."

"Sure," I replied. A badlands gate was only partially like the rocky pillars and sharp hills you would see in the South Dakota Badlands, but dungeon gates mixed them with stretches of tropical jungle. When Nathan and I first saw an overhead view of this gate type, he remarked that the two environments mixed like spots on a black and white cow. Which is to say they didn't really mix at all. They existed right next to one another, but the edges were stark and harsh.

Just then, the stream cut to a view from the party's scouting drone. In the distance above the treeline, five birds with green and purple plumage circled what was either a nest or a potential meal. The skeletons of these monsters closely resembled what we know as pterodactyls. In the dungeon, these monsters used a variation of the Taunt ability to temporarily Stun their prey. The ability could only target one creature at a time, and it required the monster to be in an active dive.

For a crawler, it felt like suddenly being afraid to move, like another step would surely end in your death. Because of that ability and because people are bad at spelling, pterodactyls in dungeons were known as "terror birds" or just "terrors." The drone panned down to two bipedal creatures with woody-brown feathers. The scale was tough to judge from a drone, but these were "bigals" (pronounced biggles like giggles) and were usually around 25 feet long, making them seem like oversized velociraptors.

In addition to their size, bigals used earth magic to shake the ground, open chasms, or erect earthen barriers, all of which helped them to trap or corral prey. Their skeletons matched what we called an allosaurus. When a museum put a set of these bones on display, they earned the nickname "Big Al." Left in the hands of stream viewers and chatters, all allosaurus monsters became commonly known as bigals.

"Haven't seen bigals in a hot minute," Nathan remarked.

"Running into those sucks for Louis." Bigals had exceptional hearing and loved to third-party an active battle, attacking the healthiest creature before turning on the wounded. Two meals for the price of one. If Louis' party was too loud, bigals would come running but not attack until the worst possible moment.

"Did you hear they found a tribe of ogres in Montana?" Nathan asked after a long stretch of no conversation.

"I just finished three straight shifts. My world was only as big as the RAID room."

"Dude, that's not a yes or a no."

"Sorry, no."

"Seven of them in the Rocky Mountains, first sighting they've had in three or four decades."

"Yeah, I missed that completely," I admitted.

"How long you think until the Divas can take ogres?"

"One by itself is C-ranked, so if the setup was in our favor, we might be able to manage it. Really, though, I wouldn't want Megan to be our only frontliner in a fight like that. Way too dangerous." Nathan nodded along as I spoke.

"That's assuming we're not pulling some Diva bullshit, though."

"Huh?"

"Like blowing up trolls or poisoning goblins. Diva bullshit." I laughed.

"Yeah, that calculation doesn't include 'Diva bullshit.'""Speaking of," Nathan began.

"I have an idea for the Banning Mine nest. It's elaborate and relies on the train tracks that run nearby. We need to do another scouting visit to see if what I'm picturing could work."

"What are you picturing?"

"Shh."

"Really?"

"Yep. I'm the one baking the cake. It doesn't come out of the oven until I say it's ready." Sighing, I said, "Not even a hint?"

"I already told you the train tracks are the key." I couldn't think of any tactics the train tracks enabled for us, so I dropped it. After a while, Nathan mused, "I keep thinking about whether or not Nad-Nade extends the sponsorship after the show airs."

"What about it is on your mind?" This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"What life looks like if we get it and what life looks like if we don't. Both ways scare me. Deciding what to do about my day job if it works out is stressful as fuck, but not getting it will be pretty heartbreaking after everything we've done. Aren't you thinking about that stuff too?"

"I keep hearing people at work talking about jumping ship," I answered.

"Auditors have been up our asses, and leveling settlers means a lot fewer gates to go around. Even Cortez is thinking about taking a job in New Eden."

"How serious is he?"

"I haven't known him that long, all things considered, but he seemed serious to me."

"It sucks to lose him, but people quitting is good for you," Nathan said.

"That makes you more valuable. All of this wild hunting stuff was about getting a better job in the agency, right? Sounds like fewer competitors would help too." He didn't know it, but Nathan was referring to the Unsung Heroes. Other than a few attaboys from McDouglas, I didn't have any measurable progress to point to. I still didn't know what they even did. All I could offer Nathan in reply was a noncommittal shrug.

"Nad-Nade money would be great, but being a creator is so unpredictable. How many 'big stars' have we seen come and go? One viral moment, and then you never see them again."

"Dude, hundreds. I'm not stoked about running ductwork, but the stability is amazing. Feels like the first time I've gotten to a point where I wasn't terrified about paying bills. I totally see where you're coming from."

"I need another beer." I stood to go into the kitchen.

"Hook me up too." Two more Pittsburgh RAID drones got shot down on my day off. They were not easily replaced, so our fleet dwindled. Presently, we had enough in working condition to have near-complete coverage, but we started having to sometimes decide what sites took priority and which could go unmonitored until another drone was available. Enforcer Black caught me up on that development as I waited for Cortez to come into work to start our shift.

"Have you heard anything new about the lawsuit?" Black asked me in a hushed voice. The RAID room wasn't the most private place to speak.

"Nothing. You?"

"Not a word."

"Enforcer Gray, come here, please." Enforcer Chapman yelled for me from the conference room, and it occurred to me that was the first time I heard her raise her voice. As I stood, Black mouthed, "Good luck" to me. The conference room table was covered in papers and binders. With the additional scrutiny on RAID, Chapman had unofficially claimed this space as her third office it seemed.

"Enforcer Cortez is taking a sick day. We don't have a spare body to give you a partner for inspections, so you're off fieldwork for the day. The helpline is short-staffed, so you're going to help them for this shift. Third floor. They're expecting you."

"The helpline?"

"Correct. Is that an issue?"

"No, ma'am." On the third floor, a silver-haired woman with black cat earrings pointed me to a desk in a small sea of telephone operators. Of the other ten or so working, at least half were on active calls, filling the room with one side of several conversations. My chair as an intern was more comfortable, and the wood veneer on my desk chipped and peeled.

"Your headset is tied to the computer program that manages calls. If you click 'answer' when you get an alert, it automatically comes through your headset. Follow the script and write in the answers you receive. When the call is over, categorize it and wait for another call. The transcription is automatic, so your notes don't have to be direct quotes. If you need to transfer a call, click that tab in the corner there and pick something. Any questions?"

"I don't think so," I answered.

"Good. Thank you for pitching in for us today."

"Sure." I quickly learned that the "help" in helpline should have been "complaint." Unsurprisingly, the majority of the calls I fielded were civilian noise and parking complaints. Harvest sites were a nuisance, and even when guilds followed procedure to the letter, someone would always be unhappy. I dutifully followed my script and filled in the little white boxes with the answers I received. A handful of monster reports came in, and not a single one of those callers struck me as credible.

They each seemed a bit frantic on top of openly paranoid. One woman said a troll looked in her window every night. An elderly man said he could see goblin eyes in the trees when the moon was full. My absolute favorite was a raspy-voiced woman who believed her next-door neighbors were goblins in disguise. Toward the end of my shift, we were inundated with calls about the crawler portal not working properly.

A separate IT and help center entirely were responsible for those sorts of inquiries, but crawlers grew impatient being on hold and started to call us, hoping we either had an answer or could get them around the long hold times. We could do neither. Crawlers were unhappy about that and expressed their frustrations to me personally since no one else could listen.

By the seventh vitriol-ridden shouting tirade, I had become immune to it, so I turned the volume down on my headset and checked my phone while they raged on in my ear. From what I could piece together, the portal was hanging right after a gate reservation was confirmed. The next step after that was supposed to be a confirmation page, and then all the same information was sent to the user's email address. That confirmation page never loaded, and the email never came.

When users refreshed the page, they found that the gate they wanted was still listed as available. The portal did, however, withdraw funds from the bank account on file. A bunch of gates were likely to end up double or triple booked, and the accounting team had a mess of refunds to issue. One indie crawler I spoke with bought the same E gate four times over, for example. Her bank charged her for overdrafting her checking account, and she had a rent payment to make, the money for which was now in CDM limbo.

When my shift was over, the repetition of the script echoed in my head, as did the half dozen beeps and boops the call software used for alerts and confirmations. Though I might not have been certain about my professional future with the CDM, I knew with complete certainty that working the help line was not where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. A CDM number called my phone, and I answered, expecting to hear a gate offer.

"Is this a bad time?" Enforcer McDouglas asked.

"Nope. Just driving home."

"I'm sure you saw the excitement around the C gate today, and Inspector Dempson got the assignment."

"No, sorry. What C gate?"

"I assumed RAID would be a madhouse over it."

"I got to work the helpline today." McDouglas laughed.

"Chapman is serious about making you pay your dues, huh? Anyway, a C gate opened in the parking lot of a private logistics company, so a drone ended up with the perfect view of scarab beetle parts in the back of a truck. When our people got on site, the whole company was shredding files and smashing hard drives."

"Black market gate harvests."

"You got it." Dungeon harvests were taxed heavily, creating an incentive for harvesters to get materials out of a gate without ever having declared them to the CDM or the IRS. Fortunately, most black market sales were for items and materials that had value but weren't particularly dangerous. Scarab shells, for example, were not a danger to the public the way blight slimes were. Tax evasion was taken just as seriously, though.

McDouglas continued, "This is a pretty big bust, and Dempson asked for you when he heard you were working RAID. Interested?"

"Already turning around to go back to the office."

"My man. Dempson will be expecting you."