The Living Hell of Teddy the Table Read online

The Living Hell of Teddy the Table

  Copyright 2015 Richards Hall and e.

  The Living Hell of Teddy the Table

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  v

  Dr. Grace Pobbible, game psychologist extra extraordinaire, was feeling serene. It was a rare moment with nothing on her dish, and she could play with her own mind for once, and counsel the inner forces of sleep conflicting with awake.

  That much time couldn’t last and right enough came a call for help.

  |m|*

  Willie Moorkop was in a panic. The virtual surreality space of the current project had a sprung a timespace leak, and sweet Louise that leak could release all of that space lickety split.

  “This type of repair isn’t in our budget, Willie,” Jasper raged. The space pretty much accounted for their whole budget. They weren’t insured either.

  Martin Marin looked on from his personal space as Jasper stood over Willie as Willie hunched over the surreal game brain terrain, trying to tap some reason into it. Jasper spent so much time standing over Willie an artist could have done a dozen portraits a year of the scene, even more if the artist didn’t need a break and the light stayed right. “Help is on the way,” Martin reassured them.

  Although Martin was a light expert, it was his random ability to think outside the brain that made him valuable to the trio. He was their sword of chaos.

  Virtual surreality seemed on the cusp of taking over for music at soothing the average savage breast. In the corporate empires, on the assembly lines where the particles of ingredients to be fused into waves of product were manipulated, be those particles of thought, coin or copper wiring, the savage breast equalled distraction. Undesirable distraction, the kind that resulted in defects and even personal, bodily injury. Not all distraction was created equal, nor those who got distracted. Music might never become obsolete, not as long as there was something or someone to merge with it, to give it body. As was, one could barely stand to watch it anymore.

  Virtual Surreality meant gaming. That was the assumption so that’s where they went with it. Truly, it was just an initial diversion to buy some time. They tried being realistic. The truth of the VS gaming promised was it would never rule, it wouldn’t game, it would run with you, encourage you, water you, know when you needed a break. Keep you on point. It would make work fun, and it would bend time, making it seem to go faster. As if time needed any more of that sort of bend.

  They tossed around the word game knowing it was really more play, play time, which just didn’t seem to set right with the joyless, stick-it to ‘em crowd. Play without a game? Inconceivable. So they set out to get it to work. As in to work, at work, with work. Irk.

  Triton Gaming was the main player, selling the one game as it were, not that it was a game until what they sold was redesigned and personified per it’s new owner’s personality. Work personality, such as slave driver, or carny, or grocer. What Triton sold was playful blocks of surreality, solid blocks of artificial time. Not that those block were all that solid, and woe was you if your time did get solid. As was, the blocks were solid enough, just solid enough, thanks, well, yes, thanks to the play built in, leaving them solid enough to process into something of value. They called that processing valuing time, giving it purpose. The trick, the magyck, lie in pursuading time the purpose was it’s own. After that, it got trickier.

  |m|*

  To some, Grace Pobbible was a demonness. She was the burning of a fuse. She went out after what was in her path with tunnel vision and everything be damned when she ran into a dynamite road block. Nothing could stop her flame. It was her pleasure to only burn one fuse at a time.

  Once a game was set up, learning to run, it floundered, every single time, and a lot of small business was out there not fixing the flounder, trying to game the flounder to work.

  They probably never should have referred to it as liquid coach.

  The experience of that artificial time was something of a reversal of working with a computer, where the computer had all the answers, and would leave it to you to double check when there was more than one. As liquid coach, artificial time didn’t know your inner workings anymore than you knew how a computer processed the data you worked with - seriously, if you knew that you wouldn’t be working with data, and you’d be spending weekends upstate at your vineyard, gaming no doubt.

  Liquid coach could feel you, feel your focus slipping, and slipped you sweet nothings to cheer you up and on. It worked in any line of employment, well, it worked in one or two lines of employment once or twice, but promised to work in any where one was not creating something new or different, it couldn’t do everything and it could distract, but it did compliment reasoning, to keep things working right or get them to work right again. To keep the flow going. Keeping the flow going was the easiest purpose to persuade liquid coach to own. Think flow, think water, think liquid music deconstructing you into currents fully dedicated to the current task, when stress was making you too constricted. It even worked in phone call centers. It would. It could. If - IT.

  It was Grace who revolutionized the whole show by teaching the flounder to swim. She transferred that intelligence freely, as she sometimes did. Teaching flounder to swim wasn’t a challenge, despite it’s value, apparent value, but it did up the stakes, add on players, big players who wouldn’t waste time and money on floundering virtual surreality. Once the big players were in, there was money to be had. Once they were in. Once and if they got IT thru those thick, real, walls, those real thick walls, encasing the vaults where they had their brains imprisoned, that gaming and playing were not the same thing. How many onces can one hope for? More than once?

  And for Grace, sticking to her single fuse philosophy, that meant torment to deliver as she tiptoed through the players, blessing the ones it pleased her to bless as she got artificial time up and running, playing. She could recognize a loser right off the bat. Sure, there was money to be had from them, but there was also money to be kept from them. That was so so so sweet, and wrong. That was sort of Grace in a nutshell.