“It’s not just a game,” she said, her hands on her hips. “It haslayers. And it’s about to become virtual reality.”
“Uh-huh.” I turned back to my desk. “As I recall from what you showed me, it was simply a simulation of some vaguely Caribbean pirate setting with a lot of murder and mayhem.”
“That’s only one part of it. Most players think that the goal of the game is to go pillaging—that’s attacking other ships to take their money and goods—but really the game is a complex social infrastructure of colonization and world building. Right now my crew is about to go into defense mode to protect our island from the evil Black Corbin, who wants to take it from us.”
“Your crew?” I asked, making a mental note to talk to Bill about feeding Tara’s unhealthy addiction to online games.
“Yeah, I’m the crew wench.”
My eyebrows rose as I envisioned the letter I’d send to the game’s creator about putting a minor in an adult situation.
“You can just stop with the Mom Brows. It’s nothing like that,” Tara said, the disgusted tone in her voice doing much to reassure me. She hadn’t yet expressed an interest in the opposite sex, something I was all too happy about.
“Our crew is led by Bartholomew Portuguese. He’s based on a real pirate, by the way. PC Monroe said he did tons and tons of research on him to make the character believable.”
“I see. Still, I told you two months ago that schoolwork took precedence over world building. Playing a pirate won’t get you into college—”
“PC Monroe says the economical model that the game uses is a real one, and that to understand and be successful at it means I have a good head for business. I have a weaving shop. I sell cloth. I make money at it, Mom.”
Her calculated dig hit pay dirt, despite my better intentions. “What sort of economic model? How much profit do you make?”
“A lot.” The smile that blazed across her face was rife with pure satisfaction.
“Enough to buy me three sloops. I even have a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of costs and profits.”
I narrowed my eyes at her again. “That was a low blow. You are an evil child to use my love of spreadsheets against me like that.”
Her grin turned up a notch. “You always say you have to be ruthless in business, and this is all economics. Buying and selling and profit margins and supply and demand. Only it’s set in a pirate world rather than this one.”
“Hmm.” I wondered for a moment what pirate finances would look like. How much would monthly grog expenditures run, and could you depreciate the costs of storing it?
“You‘dmake a killing there,” my little rat-in-child-form added in a persuasive tone of voice. “With your business degree and stuff, you’d be rich in no time. I bet you could even have your own crew.”
For a moment an image flashed on my mind’s eye of myself standing at the helm of a tall ship, the sails fully rigged, the bow of the ship cutting through the azure waters, salty sea air brushing my face as I ordered the cannons to fire on some helpless ship. A little voice deep inside of me let out a cheer, but it was quickly squelched as another rumble brought me back to the present and reality. I turned back to my computer. “Good try, Tara, but not quite good enough.”
The teasing light in her eyes died. “Dad would do it.”
I flipped a couple of pages of the symposium paper to find a quote I needed.
“I’m sure he would. He has little else to do with his time while he is between acting jobs.”
“At least he spends time with me! At least he’s interested in the things I’m interested in! All you want to do is work, work, work. You don’t care about me or anything I want to do. I wish I was living with Dad instead of you!”
“I refuse to get into a comparison argument of my parenting skills versus your father’s,” I answered, quickly typing up a couple more sentences. “And I hardly see how my lack of participation in a silly game can be thrown in my face as depriving you of attention.”
“Because! If you were playing it, too, we could be on the same crew. And you could help me with my weaving shop, and I could teach you how to sail a ship.”
“I don’t have time to learn how to sail a ship, and besides, I get seasick easily.”
“You won’t even try! You won’t even look at it!” she wailed, throwing her hands in the air in a gesture of sheer frustration.
I’m not a monster. I might admit to being a bit more caught up in my job than was normal, but I took pride in the fact that I had a solid work ethic, and took responsibility for making sure that my job, and the jobs of those I could help around me, were done to the best of my ability. Despite all that, the underlying plea in Tara’s voice generated an unpleasant ripple of guilt within me. I had no intention of wasting my time playing a nerdy online game, but if it would make her feel I was more involved in her life, it wouldn’t hurt me to at least see what it was about.
“All right,” I said, forestalling the emotional eruption I knew that was soon to follow. “If it will make you happier, I’ll take a look at the game.”
She was silent for a moment. “You will? You’ll sign on? The whole thing, the VR unit version? It’s majorly cool.”
I frowned. “How much does it cost?”
