stone, prince, rye, barley, duke, spelt, earl, oat, ford, bong, king, brown, baron, lee, howard, rice
“If we always let SeecheeTri pick some random environment,” Ko said. “It’s not always going to be someplace sexy.”
Af wasn’t even sure what today’s random environment was. Indoors, high-ceilinged, gloomy, with shafts of light through dusty air from windows far above. They were in a sort of corridor formed by stacks of brownish burlap sacks on either side. They were labeled, Af saw: rye, barley, spelt, oat, rice. A granary?
“We can rise to the occasion,” Af said. “Remember the war museum? And we don’t always have to be sexy.” That didn’t come out like they’d meant it to. “Sexy is good,” they added quickly. “But what makes this work is that we connect in other ways too, right?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Ko said.
They came to a door. Outside was blindingly bright, blue arc above, verdant grass below. A flagstone path led toward a tidy ancient brick dwelling. “The other thing about SeecheeTri,” Ko said, is it really seems stuck on Olden Earth for some reason. It’s hardly ever Ganymede, let alone Zephyr Station.”
“Artifact of the training data, I think,” Af said as they strolled down the path. “It’s been making pastoral European scenarios for centuries, but it’s only got decades of data on Zephyr. And why would we sim Zephyr? We could just go there.”
That concept sat there for a split-second, meeting in real-space, terrifying like the void at the galactic core. Af pushed past before Ko could seize on it. “There are a lot of NPCs with very, um, white, names,” they admitted. “Lee Baron, Howard Ford, and so forth.”
They opened the door Inside wasn’t quite as neat as outside. Af’s eyes seized on a strange object on a small wood table across the room, a sort of smudge glass bowl with a tube extending from it.
“And hierarchies,” Ko said. “Kings, princes, dukes, earls, and so on. But I don’t mind. I’m happy to be wherever you are.” Ko noticed the bowl-thing too, and frowned. “That looks a bit anachronistic.”
“Remember the dessert that guy Chad got at the crane restaurant?” Af had done some research, and the results were still in their cache. “I think that’s called a ‘bong’.” They nudged Ko, “Wanna get stoned?”