Chapter 52: Kanani

The buyer sat on the front doorstep of the building, relaxing next to a man who could have been his identical twin. Both were slender Samoans with long, curly black hair. Neither had any of the authentic tribal tattoos Hugh might have expected, whether out of choice or because they hadn't been able to get any in-game yet.

The man on the left jumped up when he saw Hugh approaching, marking him as the player rather than the Navigator. "Aloha," he called. "It's the man of the hour, here at last. You know you're famous, brah? Your face was all over the Net before I logged in."

Hugh laughed and waited until they were close enough to shake hands to reply, "And here I thought Hawaiians saying 'brah' was a lie mainlanders told each other."

"True, it's not used as often anymore, but it's the secret of my family's success, brah. Gotta give customers what they want, even if it means talking like a throwback. After a while, it's programmed in. My tutu, he's ancient and he still says 'dude' like every third word. But you ain't here to hear about him. Let's find a table and talk turkey."

Hugh led them over to the closest table and took the time to introduce Frankie.

"I'm Kanani," he replied, then gestured to his twin. "This is my Navigator Kamaka."

"Our Navigators are running an errand, but you'll get a chance to meet them later," Hugh said. "Okay, so I'm going to jump right into this, if you don't mind. When I originally messaged your brother, he agreed to two hundred thousand Zettabits to buy out my rental. Before we use our Books to write out the final contract and transfer the property to your name, I was wanting to offer you a way to cut the price in half."

Kanani and Kamaka both froze in place, startled by the offer. Hugh held up his hands to stall them. "I don't think it's anything you wouldn't be willing to give, so hear me out. You're from Hawaii. I'm sure you came prepared to make your world into a supply line for your restaurant, which means you've scanned plants and fish I probably never heard of and you know how to prepare them into something edible. What I'd like is for you to let me scan the ingredients you brought with you so I can add them to my world and I'd like copies of your recipes so my NPCs can remake your dishes for themselves."

"And you'd cut a hundred thousand dollars off the price for this?" Kanani asked suspiciously. "My family's food is good, brah, but it ain't nothing that special. Our place on Oahu is small and ain't fancy. We make things like poke bowls, barbecue skewers, and Spam musubi—common stuff tourists aren't afraid to try. You could get the recipes off the Net."

"Maybe, but I couldn't get the ingredients and I wouldn't know for sure if the recipes are authentic Hawaiian. You see, I'm intending to make my world into a tourist destination where players can go to discover new plants and animals to take back to their own worlds. Ideally, I'd like for every town to have their own cultural identity so you could travel around the place for years and keep discovering new little towns and villas. For that to happen, I need a much bigger variety of scans than I currently have. I need fish for the oceans, tropical trees and fruit, critters and bugs and birds. I've never been outside my own hometown, so the most exotic stuff I have are from the zoo. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Fo' real? I think so, but it still don't sound fair to you. This is a hundred thousand dollars, brah. I hate to kick a gift horse in the mouth, but it don't seem like you're asking for enough in return. Like I said, we don't have any secret family recipes to serve up. It's just good, solid food."

"Is that a no?" Hugh asked in surprise. "I really don't feel like I'm losing as much as you think. Securing the place only cost me a grand. Even if I flip the place to you for a hundred thousand instead of two hundred, that's still a hundred times what I put in to the place."

"Nah, I didn't say no, but I know people must have offered you more cash than we did. I walked around this entire Food level to see if we could buy a place cheaper on our own and everything is already taken. Even the ones being resold have million dollar price tags on them. I bet you turned down a fat wad of cash to give us this opportunity, brah, and it ain't my family's way to repay kindness with cunning.

I have a better offer for you, now I know what you want. Why don't you give me a week? I'll call my tutu and have him take my scanner around the islands. He knows where to find stuff no one else would think to scan and he can go to our local zoo and the aquarium, too. I bet he finds things no city boy tourist would ever see. If you want authentic Hawaiian, we'll get it for you—clothes, landmarks, recipes, music and the instruments to play it. All that junk and more. You come back and you can scan my entire memory module, but you have to agree not to use it outside your own world. That sounds a lot more fair that what you be asking. What do you say, brah?"

"That would be amazing!" Hugh exclaimed, holding his hand out to seal the deal. Creating the contract in his Book was as easy as it'd been with Frankie. Both the Zettabits and the rights to the shop were exchanged automatically by the system once they confirmed the terms and the contracts turned gold.

"It done that easy?" Kanani asked with wide eyes. When Hugh nodded, he laughed. "Mahalo, brah. You two hungry? Imma be trying out the kitchen first. The directions you sent about building up my world worked great. I have everything I need to make some test dishes. I can have you something ready in ten minutes or so, if you don't mind vegetarian poke bowls and musubi. I'd love to make you some of my tutu's char sui pork skewers, but that needs time to marinate. Next time, yeah? I'll make taro rolls and poi, too, when you come back."

Before Hugh could officially accept, Kanini eagerly left, disappearing into his new restaurant. He watched in amusement as the Navigator Kamaka shrugged as if to say, 'What can you do', and followed him.

"What field did you work in out in the real world?" Frankie asked once they were alone. "I know you're a gamer, but what else do you do? Are you in acquisitions?"

Hugh tilted his head, wondering how the doctor came to such a conclusion. "I drove a delivery truck for an energy drink company," he replied bluntly. "I had a route where I went through different parts of the city every day and I'd restock the little refrigerators they keep around checkout kiosks."

"Really?" he exclaimed, his voice hitting a high note that made Hugh wince. "I'm not sure I can believe you. Everything I've seen you do has been brilliant. I keep feeling like you're ten steps ahead of me on understanding how things work."

Hugh huffed. "And I keep telling you, I'm a gamer and this is a game. Of course I'm going to be better at playing than you at first. I have more experience in adapting to new systems. But if this was the real world? I wouldn't know the first thing about writing out a contract to buy or sell property. I barely made it through the red tape to rent my own apartment. Don't let what you see fool you, Doc. Games are designed to be friendly to new players and allow everyone equal opportunity to participate. What I'm doing really isn't anything special. I'm just trading, which is one of the most basic things you can do in a game. The system is doing all the hard shit. I'm just hitting confirm."

"But your vision for your world—"

"Again, it isn't anything special. Loads of people are going to be building up their worlds. Why wouldn't they when doing so is free and means they don't have to work a boring day job to support themselves? Once they reach a certain point, their NPCs will do all the work and they can enjoy a life of luxury. The only reason people will actually need Zettabits in this game is for convenience—buying cooked food instead of making it yourself, hiring the services of a skilled doctor instead of learning how to diagnose NPCs yourself, buying technological advances instead of waiting for your NPCs to figure it out, and so on."

"I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. I suppose I can see where you're coming from, but I still think it's amazing how quickly you've seen the potential in things and are moving to take advantage. You're going to have to let me visit your world once you get it set up. It sounds like it's going to be amazing."

"We'll see," he replied. "I might bumble everything up and end up with a giant mess of hybrid cultures."

Frankie chuckled. "What, like the real world? I think you'll be okay if that happens. Someone wise once said variety is the spice of life."

"Let's just pray I don't burn my tongue."