Chapter 7: Patch Notes
The System updated on a Thursday.
I found out in the NexoDrive lobby, where every screen in the building was playing the same animation — confetti, a spinning gift box, and the words QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATE in a big friendly font.
DUNGEON SYSTEM v11.4 — WE LISTENED!
Thank you for your valuable feedback! Enjoy the following improvements:
- Fixed an issue where exits were reachable without threat engagement.
- STAFF ONLY doors now require a staff badge. All staff have been notified.
- Monster feeding windows reduced from 4 seconds to 0 seconds. Enjoy!
- Treasure goblins can now open doors.
- Wellness exemptions now require a licensed external provider.
- Gratuity prompts now display at reduced brightness in low-visibility environments. You’re welcome.
- General stability improvements.
Liya read it from the top of a vending machine. “Huh,” she said. “It’s your greatest hits.”
She wasn’t wrong. The exit was Sector 7. The staff door and the goblin were Gobi. The feeding window was a crowbar I never got back. The brightness bullet was a healer’s tip screen in a dark warehouse full of things that hunt light.
Somebody upstairs had gone through my file line by line and patched every door I’d ever walked through.
“They fixed me,” I said.
“They fixed you,” Liya agreed. “You’re the issue from the issue tracker.”
Rob was already at the front desk, holding a printout of the patch notes.
“Bullet five,” he said, before I could say anything. “Read bullet five and tell me that isn’t targeted. A licensed EXTERNAL provider, Jon. They wrote that bullet about ME. I am being persecuted by a changelog.”
“You were self-certifying your own panic attacks.”
“I was managing my wellness at scale.” He was already filling out an appeal form. Joe took the form away from him. Rob produced a second form. Joe took that one too, and they went out the door like that, producing and confiscating.
The part nobody applauded came in the news that night. A Grade-E over in the garment district, six contractors, a boss they couldn’t burn down, and an exit that used to be optional and wasn’t anymore.
The report called the deaths unplanned attrition. It called the locked door a stability improvement.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Joe texted me the article with no comment, which is the loudest thing Joe knows how to do.
I sat with that for a while. A week ago, those six could have walked out. I’d done it in front of everyone, and the System’s answer wasn’t to tell people about the door. It was to lock the door.
“You’re doing the guilt thing,” Liya said from the arm of the couch.
“Six people.”
“You didn’t lock the door.”
“They locked it because of me.”
“They locked it because a locked door keeps the engagement numbers up.” She yawned. “You just gave them the idea for free.”
* * *
I took a job the next morning. Grade-E, a collapsed mall, four other temps who all looked like their rent was due the same day mine was. The new rules were posted at the entrance in cheerful letters.
CLEAR CONDITION: Reach the exit.
THREAT ENGAGEMENT: REQUIRED.
(Exit unlocks upon engagement of primary threat.)
The primary threat turned out to be a thing like a bull, if a bull were nine feet tall and made partly of concrete. It stood in the middle of the food court, directly in front of the exit, not doing anything.
The four temps checked their companions, and the companions all said the same word, because they always say the same word.
Engage.
They meant fight. Everyone always means fight. Four temps against a concrete bull was going to go the way it goes in the news articles, and the exit would stay locked the whole time, because those were the rules now. Because of me.
I read the posted condition again. Engagement of primary threat. It didn’t say defeat. It didn’t say damage. The System had spent an entire patch closing my doors, and then written its shiny new rule in the same lazy legalese as all the old ones.
I walked up to the bull.
Behind me, somebody said oh god.
The bull looked down at me. Up close, its eyes were small and brown and tired.
“Hey,” I said. “Long shift?”
The bull blinked.
“You can hear me,” it said.
“Yeah. You been standing here since the patch?”
“They moved me here Thursday. I used to be three floors down. There was a fountain.” It looked over at the dried-up planter beside it and went quiet.
We talked. About the fountain, mostly. About shift lengths, and how nobody comes to the food court anymore except to stab things.
A screen slid down between us.
THREAT ENGAGEMENT: DETECTED.
Type: DIALOGUE.
Verifying…
Verifying…
Requirement met.
Note: that is not what engagement means. you know that.
The exit clicked open. Fifty feet away, four temps stopped preparing to die and stared at the green light over the door, then at me, then at the bull, who had gone back to thinking about its fountain.
“Door’s open,” I called over. “You just walk out.”
This time, they walked out. All four of them. That was new.
* * *
The clipboard woman at the surface station scanned my badge without looking up.
“Method,” she said.
“I asked it about its day.”
She typed something. I like to think it was “conversation,” but the screen behind her just said [UNRECOGNIZED], the way it always does.
Then it said something it had never said before.
USER CLASSIFICATION RESOLVED.
Rank: F — ASSIGNED.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You have a rank now.”
Liya hopped onto the counter and read the screen twice, and for once she took her time about it.
“Nobody gets assigned a rank,” she said. “You buy one, you grind one, you fake one. Assigned isn’t a rank, it’s a filing label. Somebody put you in a drawer, and it’s somebody with the keys to the patch notes.”
I looked at the little F on my profile.
Ranked. After all this time being nobody, somebody very important had finally decided exactly which nobody I was.