Data Dragon Danika

"Exactly, so everything has to be much better prepared than it would be for a regular game expansion," Lin Hao agreed. "The biggest problem we"re having is that they want us to do something to restrict the mechanical device creation in the game."

"What? Why? I mean, I can understand why electrical devices are restricted, but why mechanical? And what will that do to the gnomes?" Danika questioned as he got his food.

He turned back to her worriedly and saw that she"d already taken a tray for herself and answered, "Electricity isn"t actually restricted right now, it"s just alive."

Danika stopped with the pudding she"d selected held mid air, and asked, "It"s alive?"

"Yeah," Lin Hao agreed. He pulled a drink bottle out of a gla.s.s fronted refrigerator and asked, "Want anything from this?"

Danika set the pudding on her tray and pointed to a soda that she liked. Lin Hao got it down for her while explaining, "You can summon electricity with silk and amber, and there"s lightning and stuff, but electricity in the game always shows up in the form of an elemental. Even the tiniest sparks, so it won"t obediently run a device."

"What if it was your pet? Or you coerced it?" Danika questioned.

"Well, if you put enough work into it, you could probably figure out short term work arounds, but why bother when you"ve got magic?" he questioned in return. "They just want us to limit the complexity of devices somehow."

"Won"t restricting the complexity of devices interfere with enchanting and spells too?" Danika asked suddenly.

Lin Hao eyed her with respect and nodded. "How did you figure that out?" he questioned as he seated himself.

"I can chain my spells together like moving parts, and Logical Heart"s description of how his stone s.p.a.ces are created sounded like layered devices too," she explained.

He leapt back to his feet and moved the chair on her side of the table to the side. "Sorry," he apologized. She shrugged and he continued, "I keep warning them that it"s like they"re asking us to restructure the entire physics of the game."

"Why did they even want to?" she questioned.

"Apparently too many people are complaining that it detracts from the fantasy aspect," Lin Hao explained with disgust. "And that"s why the next expansion is supposed to add to the arabian elements, except they don"t want to use real arabian legends like we fed the game during construction, but western interpretations, and they want us to move the genies to the western desert."

Danika struggled to keep up with everything that was implied in his explanation. She felt too tired after the long day to be sure that she was catching the drift of his complaints. "You fed the game legends?" she asked after a minute.

"If people had to construct everything in this kind of system, it would take millions of them," Lin Hao pointed out. "So the game is designed more like a construction tool, and it considers all the information it has that might relate to a query and then constructs the most likely combination that could match it."

Danika suddenly thought of the blank entries in Kit"s magical book of races and asked with shock, "So things like all of the available half races haven"t even been built yet? They weren"t designed?"

Lin Hao waggled his hand back and forth in a seesaw motion and said, "Some of the more obscure combinations were entirely generated by the system, but most of the common fantasy races were tweaked to be more in line with the standard. Like the system shocked us all when it decided that elves must be half dragons, and it gave them the ability to use an immaterial form and made them unable to enter houses without an invitation."

Danika swallowed her last bite quickly and questioned, "That sounds more like celtic elves? The fee or sidhe or whatever?"

Lin Hao took another big bite and nodded. Thankfully, despite his messy appearance, his manners weren"t bad and he finished it before saying, "Yeah, I kind of liked the variation, but the design team freaked out and claimed that the system had mistaken them for vampires."

"How did you fix it?" she questioned.

"Inundated the system with Tolkien and DND stories. And then introduced a couple of fields to the races for "critical" traits so that, for instance, mermaids must have fish tails instead of fish fins or faces," Lin Hao explained obligingly.

Danika returned to his earlier statement about the expansion and asked, "Aren"t the western versions of arabian tales full of magical devices? Don"t the goals conflict?"

"I know, right? And Arabia wasn"t always as much of a desert as it is now. The hot south with its hills and mountains is really very suitable, not to mention that the genies are half etain and it"s more logical for them to be located between the human inhabited center and the etain inhabited volcanoes," he pointed out.

"So will the expansion begin with a cataclysmic event that flattens the southern end of the dwarven mountains, to give the genies access to the desert, and ends the wars of the dwarven kingdoms?" she questioned.

Lin Hao stopped eating and stared at her. Danika fiddled nervously with her utensils. He swallowed and instructed, "You should definitely go work in design integration. That"s the most logical and comprehensive storyline I"ve heard yet."

He dug his phone out of his pocket and called someone. "Oh, you"re sleeping…" he checked the time, "If I don"t call you back tomorrow, call me."

She waved her hands nervously and said, "I was just asking."

"You really should be sleeping too I guess," Lin Hao said a bit guiltily.

"I could really sleep," Danika agreed. "It"s been a long day."

Lin Hao insisted on giving her his number, and told her firmly, "We should definitely meet up again before you go home."

Danika made her way back to her room two blocks away without any trouble. But when she was transferring herself to the bed, she felt homesick for her own comfortable room layout. Here she had to use the chair, that she normally only used when going outside, just to move around. And then she had to transfer out of it, and back into it just to use the bathroom facilities.

She felt that it was going to be a long two weeks without even considering the training itself. She was almost asleep when she realized that she hadn"t even logged into "Living Jade Empire" all day. After a moment she closed her eyes again and told herself that she"d check her messages there while she ate breakfast.

As she fell asleep, she wondered how Aishin managed to stay so energetic when he had to travel so often.