Remi was not sure what he expected when he opened the door, but a smiling Astrid, staring back at him was not one of them. Her hair was no longer in a bun, instead falling to her shoulders, practically styled. Her smile was genuine. “Nice to see you again, Nino. You look like you have been through the wringer! We get that here all the time. I heard you almost failed your math test. That can be quite unnerving.” The corners of her lips twitched playfully, like she was joking, but propriety prevented her from a full reaction.
“Yeah, I…I’ve been having a morning. But Astrid? What are you doing here?” It was the only thing Remi could think to say.
“Oh, you know how it is, Nino. The system can’t really invest in too many NPCs this early in your story, especially given that you are scheduled to meet a new one later. So I get the ‘privilege’ of being repurposed. Not that I mind really. I wanted to check in on you.” She looked at him again. More deeply this time, like she was searching his soul for the answer. “Are you doing okay, Nino?”
Remi wasn’t sure how to answer that. No, he was not okay. He’d been attacked multiple times and nearly been killed twice. Everything felt like it was spinning out of control, as if it were a yo-yo on a string that was ready to snap. To make it worse, the AI seemed to be increasingly enjoying itself, and that thought was terrifying. This whole situation was the opposite of being okay. Not that he was going to be stupid enough to say that out loud. Offred finds “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” carved in a closet in The Handmaid’s Tale, or “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” in English. Remi was taking that advice to heart, so he wasn’t about to give them any sign of how he was actually doing.
“I’m fine.” Remi adjusted himself in his seat. He looked away, and when he returned his gaze to Astrid, he smiled. Sure, it was fake. Sure, the system likely knew it was fake, but it wouldn’t know for sure, and for right now, that was enough.
“Okay then. I have to check. The answer matters here less than the fact that I asked. So, I guess we can move on to the real reason for this meeting. Which is this.” She pointed at a laminated poster, which Remi had failed to notice when entering the room. It was on Astrid’s left, tucked behind the requisite Himalayan Rock Crystal lamp. The poster itself was faded, and the laminate was peeling at the edges. It had the words “This is a SAFE SPACE” written over top of a kiddy pool filled with puppies.
Remi was not sure what the puppies had to do with anything, and having them in a pool seemed impractical, but if he was honest, a puppy might be nice right about now.
As if she were afraid he couldn’t read, Astrid repeated the slogan, “This is a safe space.”
Remi nodded, tossing his head to indicate the sign. “I gathered.”
The corners of her mouth couldn’t stay restrained this time. The left one crept up to form a slanted grin. “No, Nino. You are misunderstanding. Safe spaces are actually part of the narrative’s dungeon construct. They are hard-coded in. Sometimes they are rooms like this one, or sometimes zones, but what is important for you to understand is that there is no external conflict allowed here. You can sleep, eat, think, converse, all without fear of getting bugged.” Her smile became full. “If you know what I’m saying.”
He did. In most games, there were zones where characters could relax in non-combat spaces, free from the fear of getting ganked by a random boar. Places where it was safe to go AFK, grab a pizza pocket, or just breathe for a minute. That’s often where the real fun happened: the downtime, the moments between fights, when they could just rest. Remi sank into his chair. He could really use a rest right about now.
Astrid smiled kindly. “I guess it is time to discuss your grades.”
Remi stared back blankly. He was used to giving grades; he didn’t expect to ever receive them again.
She continued, “It is not really how you think. Let me pull up your profile and show you.” A quick pivot to the computer at her left, and a few taps on the keys caused a soft TCHIK! and a holographic display, muted gold against a parchment background, to pop up between the two of them. Luckily, it was facing Remi, so he could read it.
[System Message - N.S.R. Initialized]
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Examining the UI, Remi could see that it said:
Current N.S.R.: 5.2/10
Status: Mortal with Plot Privilege
Thread Designation:
With a quick tug at the blazer, and a rollback of the shoulders, Astrid continued, “Right. Let’s get the scary number out of the way, shall we?” The tone shifted, becoming more detached, less warm. “N.S.R. stands for Narrative Survival Rating. It is a front-facing metric, so all threads can see how they are doing. Think of it as your plot armour score.”
Remi raised an eyebrow.
“It’s a composite score that summarizes your physical stats, your emotional coherence and how much the story currently cares about you. Even if you’re likely to trip over your own shoelaces and die tragically in Act One.”
It wasn’t a laughing matter, but Remi chucked, “That’s a metric now?”
“Mhm. The Crucible likes its data. If it is easier, think of it like a credit score for your existence.”
Remi got the analogy immediately, but no respectable person over forty really wanted to think about credit scores. It was too much like taxes, the bane of adult existence. Shit! He still needed to file his taxes!
Astrid, unaware that Remi was lost in audit thoughts, continued. “Ten out of ten means you’re virtually unkillable unless someone rewrites the laws of reality. Zero means you’re a footnote with a pulse—for now.”
That word—virtually—always bugged Remi. It was a weasel word. A word that hid its true meaning, buried beneath the surface. It actually meant not in fact. He knew for certain that a condom company had gotten out of a lawsuit because their claim of virtually 100% effective really only meant that their contraceptives were craptastic. He knew he should focus. This was all important. It was critical, yet his mind couldn’t process it all. He could feel it clinging to his past life, not wanting to let it go, not fully accepting the reality he found himself in.
An eye rub from Astrid made it clear that she knew he wasn’t totally with her. She had appointments to keep, so did not have time for Remi’s daydreaming right now. “You’re sitting at 5.2. Not bad, but that puts you in the murky middle zone. Useful enough to keep, expendable enough to replace. A comparable metric for you would be a C-. You are just below average, but close enough that you would be moved to the next grade. No one really knows for sure how that is going to go. But no one wants the parent phone calls, so there you go, little buddy, you get to shoot your shot. This could end well, or the failure might just be delayed. Only time will tell.”
A set of pursed lips, and a “comforting,” was all Remi could manage.
Returning a look of his own, she continued, “Oh, don’t pout. Most people start lower than that. You’re already smarter than average, and your reflexes aren’t terrible. You just need...” she gestured vaguely, “…a few good choices. Maybe you need to make a friend. Or get punched in the face a bit more. Both would be interesting, at least narratively speaking.” She winked. “The good news is that N.S.R. is dynamic. You can raise it. If you fight smart or are interesting, it will climb. Just try not to die before you get a real arc, as that is the whole point of this Crucible exercise. If you catch my drift.”
Remi caught the drift. He didn’t really want to, but he got it. He reached up with both hands and rubbed his closed eyes. A habit from his youth, he found it helped him process information.
Astrid continued. “Are you okay, Nino? I know it is a lot, but you will get it figured out, eventually. You are probably just hungry. Even doomed heroes need snack breaks. Have you eaten anything today, Nino? My guess is you haven’t.” She rummaged in her desk for a second, pulling out a slightly crushed granola bar and handed it to him. “Eat this. It’s a basic meal. Food plays a bit differently here than you might have been used to in your past life. It’s not about how much you eat; it is that you remember to eat occasionally. Food in stories is often both practical and symbolic. You need it to sustain yourself. Sometimes you eat it because it means something. Alice knew that. Here it is both.”
Remi understood the power of meals in literature. Alice ate the cake and grew, she drank the bottle and shrank. The food didn’t nourish her body; it rewrote the rules. Conflicts happened around meal tables, growth happened around food, and transformation happened with food, because in the right story, eating isn’t about hunger. It’s about transformation, and Remi was about to eat.
When he thought about his stomach, Remi did notice he was hungry. It was not like before, where he needed to eat for calories, but there was an emptiness there. He scarfed down the granola bar and noticed the emptiness faded.
“Good. You also likely didn’t pack yourself a lunch.” Astrid again reached into her desk, this time from a bottom side drawer, and handed him a brown paper bag. It was neatly folded, and marked on it in purple pen were the words ‘Open When Hungry!’”
[LOOT CRATE RECEIVED - Bag O’ Lunch]
She nodded as the system message finished. “It is always good to have emergency rations. You know, just in case. Consider it a gift to go along with the magazine you were going to steal.” There was a knowing look in her eyes now. No one, not even Remi, was going to sneak anything by her.
She produced another bag, this one plastic, and passed it to Remi. “This should work for carrying things, for now.” The bag was obviously a shopping bag; it had the logo of a goblin holding a can of beans. G-Mart was written in a large font underneath. The bag had some onion peels still left inside. She grinned again. “Don’t worry about the smell. The onion keeps the syllabugs away!”
“Ummm. Thanks,” was all Remi could manage as he stuck his lunch and magazine into it.
Astrid’s responding warmth made her eyes crinkle, but her smile tightened. “No problem. And thank you for cleaning up some of those bugs. Many wouldn’t have, and I appreciate it. I’m not thrilled about how banged up you left my cart, and that my broom has new ink spatters on it, but the gesture was kind enough that I will let it go. This time. As a reward, you can take a piece of candy.”
Remi spied a bowl on her desk. It was brown, made of a leathery material, and was full of unwrapped Scotch mints. He instinctively reached for one, and to his surprise, Astrid swatted his hand away. “No, not those, honey!” It didn’t hurt, but it was shocking. “Those are for the kids who come in here and act like little entitled jerks. That isn’t really a bowl. It is a petrified Minotaur scrotum. I got it as a going-away gift from Larry, my last principal.” She leaned back, lips curling in sly mischief. “Don’t judge me. But it is satisfying to watch them slurp on the mints, not realizing what they’re really eating from.”
Astrid reached into her cardigan and produced a single wrapped strawberry candy. “Here. You can take a clean one.”
Without thinking, Remi unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth.
[A Pleasant Treat!]
Reward: +10 XP
Astrid appeared to be done with him, having returned to other work, updating notes. She didn’t look up again. Without further prompting, Remi looped the plastic bag around his wrist and left without another word.
As he left the office, the magazine inside the grocery bag slapped against his outer thigh. “Myth & Monsters Quarterly,” he thought. Probably useful, if he ever found the time to actually read it.