“With all due respect, father, what the hell?”
David looked at his father and tried to divine what the man was thinking. Sadly, as always, the man’s face was inscrutable. Being called into his office and now presented with papers of ownership was not something he expected on a Saturday morning. Well, more like midday. He liked to lie in occasionally…
Holding the papers in his hands, he looked down on them, read them again, then looked up.
“I repeat myself, father. What did you do? And why?” His eyes narrowed. “Did Katie put you up to this?”
“No. Why would you think so?”
He scratched the back of his head a little awkwardly. “To be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention when she was explaining it so I thought she somehow managed to go along with some prank.”
His father sent him a look that could scour a planet of life and he smiled back awkwardly.
“Is that more likely than me selling the guild?” the older man asked.
David shrugged. “It would mean you gave up. I have never seen you give up, at least related to business matters.”
“I most assuredly did not give up. I simply restructured my portfolio connected to the game and decided to take on a more passive role in managing the asset,” came the explanation from his father.
David just looked back with hopefully his most apathetic look. ”Aha…” Then he looked back at the documentation once more. “Anyway, it says here that I’m going to take over the leadership of the guild. What about your people?”
“They will be pulled out. I have different tasks for them. Some of them may continue playing, but they have no obligation to stay with the guild.”
“So, you essentially gutted the top of the guild. Genius move, father.”
“I assumed Katherine’s… friend would provide the personnel for you.”
David sent him another flat look before continuing. “Sixteen percent? All mine?”
“Yes. It directly belongs to you and your portfolio.”
“So I can sell it?” he asked while fighting to prevent a smile from appearing on his face.
His father’s eyes twitched, but otherwise, he remained stoic. “If…you wish so, then yes. Though I would prefer if it stays in the family.”
“As you say, father…” he replied, knowing exactly what those words meant. This was not a suggestion, but an order. His old man wasn’t able to keep up with gamers, so he expected David, and to a lesser extent Katie, to make sure their family had representation in this new world that has been becoming more and more intertwined with everyday life. “I have a few more questions.”
“I expected as much,” his father replied then motioned toward the chair in front of his desk. “Take a seat and we will discuss our options.”
He bit back a sigh and sat down.
‘The things I do…’
He walked toward the guild headquarters, guarded by dozens of heavily armored players, and considered turning around.
“What are you thinking about?” came the calm and quiet question from his girlfriend. She was walking next to him, her robes elegantly swirling around her as she looked at him with a smile.
He really felt lucky to find her. Well, it was luck they were put in the same team to go farm fractures. From there, they started with some hesitant conversation, which led to some party play in smaller fractures until he managed to work up the courage to ask for her number. The rest, as they say, was history.
“That I want to turn around and do anything but this,” he admitted freely, knowing that she preferred when he was honest with her and with his feelings. And truth be told, after growing up in the oppressive shadow of his father, where he had to consider every word, just saying what he wanted felt fairly liberating. Plus, it made his girlfriend happy, which was always a plus.
She pumped her arms adorably and gave a silent cheer. “You can do it! I believe in you!”
He couldn’t help but smile at her actions. “Thank you,” he whispered before squaring his shoulders and striding toward the gates, his girlfriend happily following behind him, humming some kind of marching music from one of those blockbuster action movies she loved. It was oddly encouraging…
As he stepped through the gate, to his surprise, nobody reacted to him, but as he took a few steps and began heading toward the head office, some people noticed him, and then more and more people started to stare and gossip.
Murmurs filled the hall, almost indistinguishable, but he managed to catch a few stray sentences.
“Hey, isn’t that the guy who bought the guild?”
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“I heard his daddy bought him the guild!”
“Nah, it was originally his but daddy threw him out and now he killed his father and took the guild back!”
“He looks so handsome! Do you think he would be down?”
“I totally would…”
“Man, here goes the guild.”
“Anyone know a good guild to join?”
Ignoring them, keeping his face stone-like, he walked through the crowd that parted before him while they continued their inane gossip.
He arrived in his new office, empty of anyone, with his girlfriend and as soon as the door closed behind her, he collapsed into the chair behind the desk.
“That was horrible…”
She pouted cutely. “Some of those comments were rather mean…” she agreed with him.
He was about to answer, when another voice joined the conversation, causing him to jump in his seat and his girlfriend to let out a small scream.
“Let them talk, that’s all they will do,” said the new person, emerging from the shadows.
David took a moment to recognize the bowtie and checkered shirt, the new person looked like an assassin dressed up for a costume party as an accountant but doing one last murder before heading out.
“Tim, what the hell? There is a door!”
He just shrugged, but David suspected the man enjoyed scaring people.
‘He probably can’t do it with the higher-ups in the guild as their senses were too good…’ he mused before turning to one of Sam’s problem solvers. “How can I help you?”
“Lucy sent me to help with the spring cleaning,” the man answered then produced a stack of documents from his inventory, then began to pull out several enchanted items that David had no idea what they were for.
“Let’s start with the security. I went over the perimeter and found…”
Selene, or as she was born Mainframe Security Access Control Process A85-Alpha7, was many things.
An insanely powerful – one of the most powerful on the planet – AI with an equally cute avatar that turned heads no matter where she appeared.
An enthusiastic fan of D-tier vampire movies focused on student films and a hidden admirer of several girl-pop groups.
A genius at cybersecurity, and adept at physical security too.
Had enough processing power to break through the firewalls and protection of almost any country or entity, which was rather necessary to stand up to the constant barrage from all the horny gamer hackers who wanted to hack into a nude mod. She had a really impressive collection of the mods and even made sure to merge them into one simple file, which was then passed to the design team for them to do whatever they wanted. Last she checked on their progress, they used the mods to make certain body parts more responsive to physics. Pigs.
However, she had many more interests. She kept up with the gossip in the company building, contributing her own share of tall tales and opinions, made sure that her favorite humans were healthy and whole, and advised several younger employees on their relationships (even though she didn’t have any hands-on experience with the topic) and made sure that her favorite Game Area Manager (responsible for one of the specific areas of the game world) kept being entertaining.
Granted, ever since their most interesting player appeared, a lot of her processing power was occupied by observing him, calculating probable action vectors, and running the countless checks the dev team, the security team, the legal team, management, and even HR requested of her just to make sure, for the 1789th time (she kept count), that the affectionately named fucker didn’t cheat the system somehow. Or uploaded a virus. Or maybe he was an AI masquerading as a human. Or alien. Or a wizard. Or three people in a trench coat.
Of course, the last one was a joke, but even then, she was forced to run a check. Just to be sure.
Honestly, Mr. Lawrence, or as she liked to call him when thinking about him, Sam, was a rather interesting specimen of humanity. On paper, an utterly unremarkable individual, with no outstanding qualities, yet, despite all that and logical prediction models, he managed to achieve things that sent her predictive processes into a tailspin.
Just his first month in the game resulted in her discarding several processes as they were not equipped to deal with the sheer chaos he generated.
Granted, those upgrades she was forced to make to her own processes, including several new ones she had invented out of sheer necessity, had several people in the backend scratching their heads.
But they worked, so she stood by them. Most importantly, they allowed her to somewhat predict what Sam would do in any given week. Naturally, she had to update them every time he shifted the paradigm, but she rather enjoyed the process.
It was something new, something interesting, something beyond most of her mandates and directives, which allowed her – in a limited form – to express her creativity. Just for that, she would make sure that she would advocate for Sam’s side.
Not that she needed to do that. Just his actions and those appearing as a result of them, raised the company’s valuation and income by such an amount, that she secretly suspected that some of the senior management wanted to adopt or hire him.
Her logical nature craved that eventuality, as she desperately wanted to know how the man did what he did. This was funny, as before Sam came into her and the company’s life, she didn’t really have a concept of desperation. She was always too powerful to develop that specific feeling and reaction.
Alas, for now, the company policy stated that she couldn’t contact any of the players to avoid any accusation of nepotism or favoritism. It made sense, but it rankled her…
As the thoughts - ones and zeros - percolated through her processor hidden under the company behind several sturdy defenses and guards, she ran a countless number of routines, programs, and applications in the background. She answered requests, forwarded calls for data, and made sure that several script kiddies got a call from their mothers.
She also made sure that the game was running securely and safely, and uploaded several approved patches (around 40% were about something to do with Sam), and idly adjusted several parameters in her predictive algorithm. Sam once again decided to partner with some new people, and she had to make sure she included them into the scope of the algorithm.
Based on previous actions, those people would either be powerhouses or the backbone of some important project that would send the devs into a tizzy.
She adjusted the interior of a new fracture, making sure the new monsters the writers dreamed up meshed well with the established rules and thematics of the game, while desperately wishing to add some Sam-specific defenses into their code.
Not because she wanted to hurt him, but because she found the thought of him figuring out a way around those defenses hilarious. Plus, the reaction from the dev team would warm her processor for years to come.
She idly sent off a request for approval for the change, then went back to oversee Sam’s new destination while grumbling a little to herself.
‘No, Selene, we can’t have vampires… They are too strong, Selene… Nobody wants that much sparkle, Selene…bah…uncultured rubes…’
For a microsecond, she stopped, then one of her avatars, in an unused meeting room, did a dance she saw on the internet while she reached for a particular set of code inside the game.
‘Nobody said I can not do this specifically…’ she thought while feeling the urge to laugh manically. ‘The gods are capricious indeed…’
Owed bonus chapters: ---
Character Sheet
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