Lost in Translation

Finally, with much of the Greymoor estate united under one goal, it felt like it was my moment to shine. The Royal Ball was less than a month away, and I was running out of time to grab Vivian Greymoor’s attention to course correct her horribly distributed stats.

And so, while Vivian patched up her relationship with Emily and the affairs of the household defaulted back to normal, I occupied myself with editing Vivian’s user interface to be more beginner friendly.

I started by transforming the text of each of the character attributes into hyperlinks that would jump to a specific page on a new database that I labeled as “Vivipedia,” a comprehensive encyclopedic resource for all of her attributes. Each page consisted of what skills she could acquire from each attribute and how much experience and levels she needed for certain milestone achievements.

Then, I reduced the size of the stat screen and introduced a new widget on the right hand side, a feature I liked to call “ViviDailies,” which included a suite of recommended daily activities that Vivian should engage in for optimal experience leveling.

Fortunately for her, I found that reading was one of the most efficient uses of time in acquiring experience, and Vivian already read at least thirty minutes before bed every night. But other sources of good experience included conversing with strangers and smiling at them, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt Vivian to know about these options.

Finally, to introduce her to all of these new features, I wrote a relatively short personalized message that would appear when Vivian would next open up her screen:

Dear Lady Greymoor,

I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Kyle Young, and I’m a sentient human being that is currently living inside the magical artifact that you have been using for the past two weeks, an artifact that I like to call, the Kyle Young System. This may come to you as a surprise, but rest assured, this experience has been just as confusing for me to navigate.

I have only recently been able to edit and transform the contours of the magical artifact, which has now allowed me to communicate with you. I hope you don’t mind my intrusion, but I think you’ll find that my help and advice will surely be needed for the long road ahead.

Needless to say, I am strongly in favor of your pursuit of revenge against the crown prince, Prince Pendragon. I, myself, on some level wish for revenge against other powers that be, and I want to commit myself at this moment to aiding you in any way that I can.

While you have misused this artifact for the last few weeks, do not lose hope, as I am now able to communicate and verbally assist in all affairs regarding your stats and abilities. Please click on any of the attributes to be rerouted to your personalized Vivipedia page, where I explain the minute details of each and every one of your characteristics. In the meantime, PLEASE ONLY PUT POINTS INTO willpower, personality, and intelligence. They are the only stats that will matter for your appearance at the Royal Ball.

This message is getting a little long, and I risk running out of space on the screen, so suffice to say, I am excited to be working with you.

Warm regards,
KYS

As I finished the message, a pair of thoughts occurred to me.

The first thought was why I had spent so much time on preparing all of this work for Vivian, when I could have just let her mess up as she pleased. I answered, immediately of course, that it was because there was nothing better to do. When Vivian ate lunch alone in the gardens, for instance, singing lovely cadenzas for the birds, it was up to me to fill time so as to not die of boredom.

This answer satisfied me intellectually, but like an insect bite on your leg or forearm, it nagged on a more primal sensibility. It itched for me to scratch at my flimsy reasoning, to rip it apart and reveal some deeper wound within.

I ignored that urge and addressed the second thought, which concerned what Vivian’s new relationship with me would now look like. After all, the moment this interface went live, Vivian would know that a living breathing (well, not breathing) soul existed in the artifact she possessed. Would she be looking forward to conversations with me and getting to know me better?

It made sense to me that she would. After all, freeing a tormented soul from within the confines of a magical device was a story since time immemorial. And so, to prepare for this eventuality, I began to draft more messages that I would send on a daily basis.

These notes ranged from general encouragement to compliments to reminders about good stat-building habits. My commitment to this project reached a point where I realized I needed to stop, because I had begun writing the equivalent of fortune cookie aphorisms.

After deleting the poorly written stragglers, I finalized the edits, committed the changes to Vivian's new user interface, and waited eagerly for her to see my work.

Lady Greymoor was browsing her father’s study when her notification bloomed. She had made it a habit to visit her father’s quarters at least twice a day since he had returned. Unlike the monotonous distance between mother and daughter, John and Vivian Greymoor thrived in each other’s company.

While Stefan acted aloof, Vivian took great interest in her father’s work, asking questions, constantly borrowing books from his personal collection, and often acted more like an advisor than a daughter. John Greymoor, in return, admired his daughter’s sharp inquisitive comments that complemented his own wealth of experience.

“You think the Viscount is playing us?” her father was asking, the two of them postured over a map of a local city, “How?”

“If I had to guess, the Viscount wants access to the Port of Morovia for smuggling,” Vivian tapping a spot on the map near the water, “The local banks say he’s been hitting the town with gold deposits every day for the last three weeks. There’s only one way that’s possible.”

When she spoke with this brand of certainty, I forgot that this was the same person who frustrated me on a daily basis with her complete ignorance of stat-based RPG systems.

“So maybe the Viscount’s found a new deposit,” John stroked his chin, “His estate oversees three mining towns, so it’s possible. How did you learn this?”

“The banks don’t like him.”

“And they’re smitten with you?” her father smirked.

Not possible. Average personality ranking, remember?

“No, nothing like that, it was Stefan who had the connections.”

“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. You did a great job,” John Greymoor rested a hand on his daughter’s shoulders, “But the question remains, what he’s doing with that gold, and if he is running a smuggling operation, is he laundering more than just gold? Let me step out and grab Cyrus, I’ll be back in just a moment.”

When her father had left the room, I could hardly contain my excitement. Vivian sat down and keyed the pulsating notification on her bracelet. In a moment, my newly display flashed before her eyes.

“What? What is all this?”

I assumed she would be surprised. It’s okay. Just take your time Vivian. Calm down and read what I have written for you. Together, now that we can communicate, we have a real shot at making your revenge at the Royal Ball a complete success.

“Oh no, is it broken? Did I break it?”

Huh?

Vivian gazed perplexed at my new user interface. She shut it off once and rebooted it, only to stare with the same quizzical confusion. What was so difficult for her to understand about the new design and the new messages? Was it too overwhelming? Did she not know how to read and had been faking it all her life?

Exasperated, I turned my attention to her new stat menu to investigate her bewilderment.

All the graphical changes I had made to it were still there. The resized interface, the additional widgets, all of it was as I expected it to be.

But the actual words on the screen had mutated into complete nonsense. Those foreign symbols that first appeared when I awoke in this world were back with a vengeance, and both Vivian and I gawked at them with no ability whatsoever to comprehend them.

Huh?