Chapter 10: Uninvited Guests
The Woman in white stared at me with a thoughtful expression and said "Hello Jason, we were quite surprised to receive your e-mail asking if your gaming studio could test out our new game, and even more so when you offered up your revolutionary gaming helmet as terms for early access."
I looked at her blankly processing what she was telling me "wait a second who are you, and how do you know my name? I've went to great lengths to hide my name, and I'm not sure I know what your talking about. I dont remember sending...." then mid rant it hit me, this must have been something set up by Eden.
I put on my best fake smile, of which I am sorely out of practice, and say "oh now that you mention it I remember sending that a while ago, I am glad you agree to the terms." I said thru clenched teeth
"to be honest it was rather simple to find your real name with Edens help, and my name is Vera. we were skeptical at first but after going over the initial plans for your helmet we are very happy with the terms. we had a VR helmet in development but yours is alot better, so it will save us alot of time on development. meaning we can launch the game a few months ahead of schedule."
"I'm so glad you like it" I say my voice drippping with sarcasm. "it was actually my thesis project when I got my engineering degree, but I'm sure you dont want to hear that story so tell me why are you here?"
"Well sir we are here to finalize the documents, and discuss further arrangements."
"what further arrangements? you get the designs to my helmet, and we get the game isnt that all there is to it?"
"well sir it's not that simple, since this game is so immersive and could be potentially hazardous to the publics health you and the members of your game studio, will have to be monitored at our facilities untill the release of the game."
"there is no way I can do that, I have a job I have to go to and a life to live outside of this game" I lied, because to be honest I dont really have much of a social life, and the only job I have is a hacker for hire when I'm desperate for cash.
"I apologize for the inconvience sir, but this is non negotiable. you will of course be compensated for your time spent , and you will receive free room and board, but you will have to be monitored to make sure there are no adverse effects."
" what kind of compensation are we talking about here?"
"that depends on you sir for every glitch and/or error that you find you will receive 10,000 dollars and if its significant enough it could be more. we will also note any recommendations or suggestions, and if they are approved then you will of course receive a reward." and with a sly smirk she added
"of course If these terms are not acceptable to you then the other arrangments that were previously discussed can be put in motion."
Catching her drift about the "other arrangments" I relent and reluctantly say
" those arrangements sound fine, so when do we leave?"
with a smug triumphant look the woman says "well Jason we can leave as soon as your packed, or if you prefer you can come to our head office in the morning after all I'm sure you are rather tired after a 6 hour dive. oh and don't forget to get the origional plans for your helmet.
"considering I'm very tired and it will take some time I'll just head to your office tomorrow evening"
"ok Jason we will await your arrival then" and with that Vera gets up heads to the door with her 3 goons in tow.
after I hear the door shut I get up from my chair and stretch my sore legs willing the cramps to subside. I go to the fridge and pull out some left over pizza, I stand there eating my pizza contemplating what my next move will be.
I Hear a buzzing and go to the computer desk where I left my phone. I look on the screen and see that its Friedthunder calling me. i take a deep breath and answer the phone.
"hey fried what's up"
"what's up?! WHATS UP?!! HOW THE HELL CAN YOU BE SO CALM! do you know I just had 4 people I my house! IN MY HOUSE!! some pipsqueek and his 4 thugs some how found my lair and threatened me!"
"I know fried I had some visitors too. there isnt anything we can really do, we just have to play along for now till the game is out. i apologize for all of this its my fault for dragging you into this."
after a moment of silence I hear fried breath heavily "ugh.... dont worry about it were brothers anyway right we should battle through thick and thin together."
"thanks fried, all four of us can get through this we just have to work together. so how was the game?"
"even though I dislike Eden and Alcon, they made a pretty amazing game everything was so realistic and i could even smell the earth and B.O. of the other NPCs"
"I know right! my starting place was a village in the woods I could smell the flowers and fresh air it was pretty amazing, I'm not sure how Eden did it exactly but I'm sure its sending some electrical impulse to our brain and triggering the smell center or something to that nature. have you fought any monsters yet?"
"of course! my starting area is a wide cavern with a town situated in the center, so just out side of the stone gates there are plenty of moles and I even saw a pretty viscious wolverine chasing this idiot around. I was lucky that he didnt lead the thing to me I would of died for sure!"
" I think that was a hidden quest or something, there was a little girl that was being attacked by a wolf and I saved her and killed the wolf, she happened to be the chiefs grand daughter."
"WHAT!!!!! are you kidding me! maybe he is still running around with that wolf, I have to go red, I'll see you tomorrow at Alcon."
with that Fried Hung up and logged back in. I looked at my phone and saw that I had 5 missed calls from SoftCode so. I gave her a call but it went straight to voice mail. so I just told her that I would talk to her tomorrow at Alcon.
I called BabySparrow and he picked up on the first ring.
"hello master are you ok? I'm assuming you had company too?"
"yea they left not long ago, I'm assuming you are going to Alcon in the morning?"
with a heavy sigh he said "yes they didnt leave me much of a choice"
"alright then I wasnt able to talk to Soft yet so it's me you and fried for sure that will be there we have to stick together and play along with this for a little while."
"I understand master, so how was the game for you?"
"besides the pain from attacks it was alot of fun"
"pain? didnt you turn down the pain threshold before you went out to fight?"
"pain threshold? what is that?"
"pain threshold is the percentage of virtual pain you will feel, compared to real world pain. the tutorial that Gia narrated said that you can change the pain tolerance it starts at 80% and you can change it all the way down to 20%. did you really fight monsters with 80% pain all the time?"
"Damn it! the one time a tutorial has something actually helpful in it I space out!"
stifling a laugh Baby said " it's ok master...pfft... at least you know for later"
"thanks baby I'll be sure to remember that... I'm feeling tired so I'll just see you tomorrow ok."
as I hung up the phone I thought could hear Baby laughing. but I just brushed it off and crawled into bed exhausted from the day.
Weekly Power Status
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