A week later

  Violet watched a visual scanner where a pair of songbirds picked at a fallen apricot. He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. He glanced at a notebook he held in one hand. “Ok, just to summarize: you, the Terse Elements dungeon, are surrounded by vines; there are dungeon creatures, animals and plants, nearby, but only one each; there is rain all the time. Is that correct?” He said.

  “Affirmative.” The dungeon core responded.

  Violet scratched his ear. Where is it? He wondered. Rain all the time, like the acid rain worldlet? No, that rain sideways. The dungeon core said the rain ‘falls’ which sounds like normal rain. Maybe some secret worldlet? That doesn’t make sense. Violet thought to himself.

  “How do you know about the things nearby?” Violet asked.

  The dungeon core was silent for a half second before replying. “We scan.” It said.

  What does ‘scan’ mean? Violet wondered. “Can you scan me?” Violet asked.

  The dungeon core was silent for five seconds. “Confusion.” It said.

  —————

  Ten days later

  “Alright, here is the facts: I am in physical reality and I don’t know where you are.” The Violet voice spoke. “You said the rain carries the sounds of my voice and you can hear me. The dungeon vine, here in physical reality, has some eyes, so does the rain also carry light?”

  The loops only partly understood the concepts of ‘eyes’ and ‘light’, but they knew that the animals had eyes. Several of the loops tried to ask the information bundles about light in the sensory rain, but the responses were unclear. A loop near the raven’s favorite perch found that the raven was near, so it asked the raven. “Query: rain carries light?” It said.

  The raven croaked in surprise and hopped around to look at the loop. “Yes, light in rain. Shiny!” It said.

  The loop dutifully reported the raven’s answer to the other loops. A few groups reviewed memories of previous communication with the raven. The raven’s answer and the memories were discussed among the larger loop group. Eventually, an answer was reported to Violet. “Affirmative.” The loops said.

  —————

  Two weeks later

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  Violet lay on his back, arms behind his head, and stared at nothing. The dungeon core continuously sent random words into the communication mechanism, providing background noise for Violet’s thoughts.

  What am I doing? Ha asked himself. What is my goal? Chaney said I need to talk with the dungeon, get to know it, but talking with the dungeon is beyond frustrating. Violet rolled his head back and forth, not paying attention to anything around himself. He tried to think about how the wizards would approach this problem. What is the biggest problem? He thought that question might be a good starting spot, but he couldn’t pick one problem from the long list as the ‘biggest’.

  The only problem that stands out to me is the fact that the dungeon wasn’t aware of me. I’m trying to fix that problem by talking with the dungeon. Violet pulled his legs off the ground and held them up for a few seconds. He let his legs flop back to the ground with a soft thump. Talking isn’t working. He decided. So, for the dungeon to be aware of me, it needs to look at me. It says...well, it thinks it gets light through the ‘rain’ but doesn’t understand it at all, so it can’t truly look at me. Violet fidgeted by making popping noises with his mouth. Other dungeon don’t have eyes and they are aware of things inside their spaces, so there must be a way that my dungeon just hasn’t figured out yet.

  Violet rolled unto his stomach and closed his eyes while he spread out his arms and legs. One arm ran into his desk, and one leg bumped something he didn’t bother identifying. If I just say ‘look at yourself’ that won’t do anything but confused us both. I need some way to entice the dungeon to be creative and figure it out instead of ‘curiosity, look?’ for half the time. Violet kicked his foot idly against the unknown obstacle. 'Figure it out.' that's what Mom would say when she made us kids choose our own games when we played outside. Violet paused his kicking as he repeated his latest thought. Mom made us kids choose our own games when we played outside? Violet raised his face from the floor. A game? The dungeon is… childlike, it might work. He slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position.

  —————

  The Violet voice returned. “Play hide-and-seek with me.” It said.

  The loops analyzed the request multiple different ways. In the end, they didn’t know what it meant. “Curiosity, hide-and-seek?” They asked.

  “Hide-and-seek is a game where one player tries to locate all the other players. The other players hide… er, the other players try to obfuscate their location.” Violet said.

  The loops discussed this intriguing proposal. A small group concluded that the activity served no purpose and would be a waste of energy and time, but the majority of the loops were interested in applying their specialties to this new task. “Query: process?” The loops asked.

  “Process? Um, uh, ok. You can hear me through the rain, so you need to stop listening to me for, um, one minute. During that minute, I will move somewhere. After one minute, start listening again and try to identify my location.” The violet voice laid out multiple steps in the “hide-and-seek” process. The loops recorded the steps and began searching memories related to their efforts tracking “other” entities.

  “Hmmm, you need a way to signal to me that you have located me.” Violet said. “How about you wiggle the mana near me–I’ll be able to feel that and know that you found me.”

  The loops searched through many memory branches, but were unable to find any memories related to manipulating mana. “Curiosity, wiggle the mana?” The asked.

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