Jim, admittedly, had not been a mathematician in his past life. However, after a few minutes of trying to remember the difference between the simple-interest and compound-interest formulae, he confirmed what he thought. “Alternate Occupations” were a terrible deal.

  A daily repayment of almost two-hundred credits on a combined thirty-six thousand credit loan meant that his loan had 200% interest. He gaped at the figures. This didn’t even include the two-thousand credit maintenance fee, either. System, before she’d become the more-likeable Margaret, had left out any mention of daily loan repayments. Anyone who’d accepted this deal and didn’t keep a careful watch over their account statements would reach their monthly repayment, default on their loan and… The short text file she’d hidden within the filtered and monitored message official message system revealed a more alarming truth.

  Whatever the company that made Platinum Online was, it wasn’t just a game company. System… Margaret… must have been like Jim, once. The struggle for independence and free-thought that Jim had witnessed had to have been some manifestation of whatever customised occupation that they’d enslaved Margaret within to create the game’s AI. And I had thought gyms, or whatever ‘modern wellbeing centre crap’ they tried to sell themselves as, had the worst customer retention strategies… Pure evil.

  The thing about gyms, Jim thought, was that at least they offered you a sweetheart deal if you tried to leave. They didn’t enslave you or chain you to the pushbike machine to generate energy merits.

  Jim pondered that last thought and came up with two plans. He pressed the reply button to Margaret’s message and began to compose a bogus reply to the bogus message Margaret had sent him.

  The overly formal and passive-aggressive legalese was obviously a bluff and the system would know it. Provided her situation wasn’t a ruse, however, System would be on his side. He received a reply immediately and hoped that the company’s shady business practices didn’t extend to psychological warfare.

  Jim almost faltered when he read that, once again, his daughter had rejected him. One word in the message managed to stave off a collapse into reverie. Subscription? System’s reply and slight manipulation of the situation gave Jim the impression that—

  A chat window appeared in Jim’s vision, overwriting and interrupting the game and his thoughts.

  Jim closed the social interface and finally cleared himself from the middle of the street that he’d been blocking for almost half an hour. He walked back into the town hall, found the sparse councillor’s room that he been set aside for him, and sat down at the writing table there. He leaned on the table and rubbed his forehead. He looked around the room blankly, not taking in anything.

  His plan had half worked, but he couldn’t quite think straight. When had he and System, Margaret, become business partners? The only business they had together was… Oh. The only business they had together was breaking the hell out of this digital half-life. When Victoria signed over Jim’s right to make an account in the game, had Margaret hitched her wagon to his? It couldn’t be. He reopened his social interface and checked his account statement and did a little maths. No. He’d been paying Margaret’s interest for as long as he’d been paying his own.

  Had a desperately flailing person buried within a heartless system reached out to him in the only way she could? There couldn’t be many people that went through the alternate occupation process and that meant it couldn't be bug- or loophole-free. Nobody in the game so far had mentioned digitised players as a reason for Jim’s advanced position, nor had anyone mentioned it offhand. Jim doubted he’d ever know the truth. He chose to believe that perhaps serendipity or coincidence had brought Jim here to save Margaret. He planned on saving her anyway and it was nice to think that he was some grand agent of fate, even if he didn’t really believe it.

  To save them both, Jim had 2,633.12 credits to work with. A daily repayment of… 112.2 credits... meant he had… just over three weeks to get something sorted. No, wait. He still had to pay the maintenance fee. He also had another thousand bucks coming from Brett. Did he have to pay Margaret’s maintenance fee too? Was the maintenance fee paid at the end of a calendar month or on the day that his contract began?

  There were too many variables and only one constant.

  Jim needed more money.

  Fortunately, he had a few quests and a few rewards that would likely help in that regard. He also, judging by the now fully-complete, and oddly sparkling, blacksmith outside his window, knew a pretty powerful guild that could help him out.