You live in a utopian society. Really. There are no dark hidden plots. In fact, it is your job to stage fake conspiracies to give the eager adventurers some ‘evil plot’ to thwart in order to keep them from bringing down a wholly benevolent ruler out of a misguided need to be the hero.
“I love my job,” I whined into the couch cushion. “I love it so much.”
“Sounds like it!” My supervisor said. They were watching me with considerable amusement, chin balanced in the palm of one hand, arm upright on their desk. “Are you going to report, or are you going to wallow in the accomplishment of a successfully completed Narrative?”
“I’ll report, but I refuse to sit up,” I tell them, face down in the worn, lotus-patterned velvet. The couch was dark green, and the lotuses were pale cream, and pink. The Couch was the most comfortable piece of furniture I’d ever encountered, and after the past few months, I absolutely deserved to be flopped out on it.
“Usually when I take reports where the agent is lying down it’s because they’re in a hospital bed,” my supervisor said. “But I think I’ll allow it this time.”
“Thanks boss,” I said. “So first, my Hero was a piece of work. Completely convinced of his own superiority without any evidence to support the claim. Stupid levels of arrogance, boss. This kid had been through so much behavioral correction and still wasn’t getting the message. How did I end up with a kid like that? I usually have There is a Bigger World Out There With People In It, Sign Me Up kids.”
The moiety I’d been working with was one of the hyper-organized, insular ones that don’t have a lot of direct contact with the Greater Society. They were mostly or completely no contact, except when absolutely necessary. The kids who went Hero from these kinds of backgrounds wanted to break free and run a little wild. They wanted independence over security, and you had the Narratives to provide. You gave them little hints of a wider outside world and cracked down on them until they slipped “free” and joined a different moiety, or returned home, more mature and settled in their skin. I was good at those Narratives. My kids learned about themselves and the world outside their moiety and went on to new places to live happy mentally healthy lives.
“It didn’t seem like anything went wrong with the Narrative,” my supervisor says. “Your Hero completed his Journey, learned valuable lessons of survival, and is settling in well with his education track at his new moiety.”
“From outside, maybe,” said. “From inside the Narrative, it was a mess. I initially decided to use one of the hard modes of the City Under Ground Narrative. The kid was just not getting the concept of cooperation and teamwork, so I stuck him with a varied group of Heroes with strong personalities–and he fucked them over.” I knew there was a chance that if something bad happened the kid would abandon his companions. It was the kind of behavior he’d displayed before that had marked him for inclusion in a Narrative. What I had failed to do was take into account how badly this kid could fuck over the other Heroes, or what the other kids would do in self-defense.
One of the other kids got hurt. It happens, it’s not a good Narrative if you aren’t in some level of actual danger. My main kid made no effort to get the kid help. My kid lied about what he’d done, but the kids didn’t trust him, didn’t believe him, and kicked him out of the group when they couldn’t find the injured kid. And by “kicked out” I mean literal kicking and with extreme prejudice. (The injured kid had been med-evaced and sent to another moiety and was doing well.) With the removal of “my” kid, the remaining kids formed a little community that was due to be contacted by their home moiety and a second one in a First Contact sort of situation.
“From there, I decided to shift my Hero into a Captain’s Courageous Narrative because it was pretty clear someone needed to kick the stupid out of this kid. That seemed to work a little better. I impersonated a ranger from one of the environmental remediation moieties and made contact with the kid. I escorted him back to a ranger station where he got medical attention. I set up mentoring opportunities and the kid ran off twice in the name of independence and self-determination.”
“You had to rescue him from yellow jackets and a black bear didn’t you?” My supervisor asked, scanning through my written report.
“Uuggh,” I said intelligently. “One of the actual rangers took over mentoring him and kicked his butt in an obnoxiously brotherly fashion. The kid’s developing an interest in remediation and biodiversity, though he’s still an arrogant little shit.”
“Sometimes it just takes the right person,” my supervisor said. “Do you think a ‘My Side of the Mountain’ Narrative would have been more suitable for your Hero?”
“Heavily modified, maybe,” I said. “Kid vs. the Wilderness Narratives usually involve an animal companion of some kind, and if I couldn’t trust him with a peer, I wasn’t going to trust him with a highly trained therapy construct.” I snorted. “I could have done one of the Narratives like ‘Troublemakers Will be Euthanized’ or ‘There is a Horrible Price to Peace’ but the moiety’s council probably wouldn’t have signed off on it.” The set up for both was years in the making and required dishonesty that many outside and inside the Narrative found psychologically upsetting.
“Solace moiety hasn’t done There is a Horrible Price to Peace since that one incident where a Hero tried to blow up their town hall in retribution for the Horrible Price,” my supervisor said dryly.
“In my defense, the Horrible Price was really horrible, and the agent assigned stuck me in a no-win, thinking I’d pick the least horrible option,” I said. “They also completely underestimated my ability to create incendiaries when panicked. If the Reveal had been sooner–”
“You probably still would have burned down the town hall,” my supervisor said.
I sighed. “Yeah. Fair.”
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