* Hey, I don’t want to intrude, but if you have room, next time you go star-surfing will you take me? 15 kudos.
There were hundreds more like these.
‘Wow, they really love our cast.’ Sol beamed happily.
‘Yes and now the beings of the Metaverse have a chance to show their appreciation properly. THIS,’ Glitter turned on her announcer's voice, ‘IS THE METAVERSAL KUDOS CHART!’
‘The what?’
‘We’ve linked up all the hundreds of kudos charts and combined them into one huge chart. It still works the same way; every day you get one kudos to spend, if you want. But now we’ve got over 200,000 people listed and there are more people joining all the time.’
‘Amazing!’ Lady Sorrow was excitedly scrolling through, presumably to find her own score and eventually she found it: 73,830. ‘Not bad, mostly from my role in the cast I guess?’
‘Probably.’ Glitter nodded.
‘So, like, do we get a gold star at a million kudos now, or something?’ Eternal could hear a note of scepticism in his own voice.
‘Wait until you get out there, you’ll be stunned by what’s happening. Forget about gold stars. People are really into kudos. They’ll do anything to get it, anything. And look, I’m in the top ten. I’m getting over a hundred kudos a minute, mostly from people thanking me for setting this all up.’
‘Who’s number one, by this new amalgamated scheme?’ asked Mellow curiously.
‘Tiger Fang. His new symphony is a big hit.’
Eternal checked his own score: 44,824.
‘Not bad EV,’ commented Glitter, noticing him. ‘That’s a top ten thousand score.’
Detecting a patronising tone in her voice, he frowned. It might be time to get the party going.
4. Beneath the Waves
‘Ladies and Gentlemen: please pay attention to the following safety announcement.’ Eternal was not the sort of person to pay attention to safety announcements let alone broadcast them, but Angel had insisted and, as she pointed out, it added to the sense of impending doom. ‘At a certain stage of the proceedings this ship will rupture, the bulkheads will collapse under the strain of the pressure of the ocean in which we are sinking and tonnes of cold seawater will flood through the chambers of the vessel in an explosive fashion. If you have not backed yourself up recently, you may wish to do so now as once this happens the ship will become a NO TELEPORT zone.’
To the haunting sound of seven long blasts of the ship’s whistle, the party began.
Everything about the setting was vast. The ship itself was over a mile long from bow to stern and contained five hundred decks. The seas through which the ship was now beginning to descend were thunderous writhing depths of salt water, complete with tides and enormous surging waves that were currently breaking on the starboard flank of the settling ship and sweeping on right across the broad deck. Eternal could take no credit for the seas; they were the work of a friend, Indigo Aeon, who had made a planet-sized tank of sea for some long-since-forgotten game, and who had been only too pleased to obtain kudos by putting it at the disposal of the party.
It was the ship itself that was the proud result of Eternal’s own work. Having looked up the subject and, with some satisfaction, learned naval terms such as ‘starboard’ and ‘bulkhead’, he had done his best to reproduce a human-age vessel, albeit on a grander scale more suited to a major party than anything their remote ancestors could have managed.
To bring the decks alive with the full range of activities that people enjoyed at a good party, Eternal had given them entirely over to friends or cultural organisations whose works he admired. Glancing at the program, for example, he looked forward to visiting deck 343: The Songs of Wolf Stargazer. 209 looked promising too: The Squealadrome. Metaverse Morality were holding an ethics meeting in a suite on 118, in the hope that a sense of impending doom would stimulate their thinking, while Mellow had organised a fashion show for day two on 384. At the centre of the ship, though, was an immense ballroom and this was pretty much all the work of himself and Angel, as was the choice of music, although he was grateful to the bands and DJs who had accepted the invitations to perform on the stage there.
For a while Angel and Eternal watched without comment as their command post towards the stern of the ship was engulfed by swirling green waves that pounded the windows, crashing right up over them. The ship was sinking, nose first, water having been allowed to flood into the forward compartments, the sealed decks of the party now formed a striated bubble.
As each wave receded, the amount of light reaching through to the interior of the bridge grew progressively less, the patch of brightness at the top of the window growing smaller and smaller, until at last there were no more waves. Now they were standing in a dark green gloom, one requiring a red emergency light to illuminate the interior of the bridge.
‘Off to a good start I think.’ Angel glanced over at EV. ‘Nervous?’
He thought about this. ‘I am, a little.’
‘Don’t be, enjoy yourself.’ She gave him a hug. ‘Everyone else will.’
A flow of information to the controls in front of them showed that the ship had about half a million guests, it was by far the biggest party he had organised. But in some ways that made things easier, there was no possible way he could take responsibility for the pleasure so many people were having. They would be making their own entertainment. It was the ambient background and, perhaps, the scene at the ballroom, which he could affect.
For now though, there was nothing to do.
‘Shall we have a look around?’
‘Lets.’ Angel linked her arm through his and they stepped on to a portal pad.
‘How about starting with a visit to see what Glitter has done with seventeen? She was so insistent upon keeping it under wraps until the party began that I’m very curious.’
‘Why not.’
They stepped off in a room that had been decorated in what, to Eternal’s taste, was a rather garish silver and gold. It was filled with colourful machines, besides which were stools. On a huge display at the far end of the hall was a giant kudos chart, displaying multiple levels of the constant activity that it now measured.
Pausing by a machine, Angel stared at it with curiosity.
‘What is this?’
A female fox was sitting nearby and turned her bright eyes towards them. ‘They are slots.’ When this failed to elicit anything other than blank looks, she pointed to the device. ‘Look!’ She barked, ‘enter five kudos here. Press this button and then the wheels spin randomly. Depending on what symbols are on this line when the wheels stop, you win or lose.’
‘Win or lose what?’ asked Eternal, confused.
‘Kudos.’
‘There are mechanisms to get kudos?’ Angel was equally puzzled, ‘how do they work?’
‘I assign some of my kudos to the machine, but if I win, the machine tops up my kudos score. It’s really simple.’ With a slightly impatient note in her voice, the fox returned to the game. Angel and EV exchanged a glance; she raised one eyebrow.
A human female avatar wearing red stockings and matching silk underwear was walking down the aisles formed between the rows of spinning machines. Each time she passed by a player, she handed them a card. The machines were busy so it took her a while before she reached Angel and EV.
‘Glitter’s Escorts.’ Angel took a card and while she examined it, the woman smiled a red-lipped smile. Quizzical, Angel looked up. ‘What’s this?’
‘Would you like an escort for the party? Someone to show you around? Someone to make sure you get the most fun you can from the erotic decks?’
‘Oh. Glitter is providing escorts is she? That’s kind of her, I suppose.’ Eternal had taken the card and was frowning. ‘Fifty kudos an hour? What does that mean?’
The woman’s smile had not wavered for a moment. ‘It means you credit your escort with fifty kudos for each hour he or she or it spends in your company.’
The thr
ee of them came to a stop for a moment, as though caught in a slow wave. Around them the room was bustling, all bright colours and chimes. Seeing that Angel and EV were not going to avail of her service, the woman broke the encounter, continuing on past them, down the aisle, handing out cards and smiling her fixed smile as she did so.
‘There is something slightly distasteful about this.’ Angel was looking down again at the card.
‘Yes. Let’s meet Glitter and talk to her.’
Eternal: Glitter?
Glitter: Hi there, if you would like a male escort please talk to Sol Starrider. If you would like a female escort please talk to Lady Sorrow. For all other avatars please talk to Clarion.
Eternal: Glitter. EV here. Please respond.
Glitter: Oh, hi EV, it’s you. I was getting so many calls I put up an autoresponse.
Eternal: Mind dropping by the bridge?
Glitter: Sure, one minute.
‘Meet you at the bridge.’ Eternal nodded to Angel and teleported himself up to the control room.
A moment later Angel materialised and drew up a chair.
Hawk: Eternal, you got a moment? The incoming message was from Hawk of the band Quickslice.
Eternal: Sure.
Hawk: The band were wondering. You are getting a lot of kudos for this party right? Any chance you could give us like, a thousand each? I know we’ll probably get some from the crowd but it seems fair, right?
Eternal: You want me to allocate some of my kudos to you?
Hawk: Right.
Eternal: A thousand each?
Hawk: Yeah, that would be