No Sleep Without Answers!

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Ok, so… My eyes were burning real bad and my head fell on the keyboard a few times. I was paying attention to what Crow-boy was talking about, I swear. But OMG was I ready to pitch a tent over here.

Like, he and Ray were just talking and talking and talking…

Crow did give us some useful info, though. Now we knew that Troja and others were play testers who were responsible for manipulating the glitches and stuff. With that, we could get an idea of who they were in the real world and probs’ sue them or something.

He also said that it started about 2 weeks ago from an update, which was a huge detail.

I’d been keeping a little notepad next to me with all the info we learned about this game and its bugs, plus the studio too. I decided to review it and get my thoughts together…

We knew the game was in a bad place when we got here, which was why Teny-chan brought us in to try and fix it from the inside in the first place. Veteran devs at the studio were missing, and the higher ups were on vacation, so none of them could do that themselves. How long were they gone again?

That guy named Paul Dunhan had been missing for about a month, and Ray talked about him like he was some kind of legend, so it felt safe to group him up with the missing vets of the studio.

And Micky said the other devs were gone for a few weeks, but would it be a stretch to call that a month as well?

So, there were 2 major events here so far. Paul and the other vet devs stopped showing up to work about a month ago, right? Nobody left at the studio knew about that or knew where they went because they were all half alive from the crunch time. And the upper management were all out on vacation, so they didn’t give a frack what was going on.

2 weeks later, things started to fall apart after a major update that compromised the games security and let cheater playtesters have a field day.

“Sounds like someone did this on purpose…” I mumbled as I poked my chin with a pencil. “They waited for management to screw off, then somehow convinced a whole bunch of vets to stop showing up… It’s way too convenient timing.”

But, my Ray has been there for like ten years. Why wasn’t he on the list of vets who were gone? Unless they didn’t consider him a vet. I mean, that was a blessing in disguise.

Wait, he ‘did technically’ go missing. Tensei brought him into the game!

Not that I was blaming Tensei, but was it possible those studio vets, or at least one other of them, was in there too? That would make sense if nobody could find them.

“Whoever did this, it had to be someone who knew the game and wanted to ruin it before it launched. Maybe The Virus is a playtester? No… They wouldn’t have known how to update the game until after things got bad two weeks ago. Plus, only admins can mess with the games files.”

The Virus must have been a dev. It would make sense if they’d been using access points to mess things up from the inside. Who would be able to track them? But if that were true, then that meant Tensei would have had to help whoever it was, because she was the only one who knew how to spawn those in.

“Holy crap!” I shouted, scratching down all of that. “This is so freaking weird.”

Tensei had to know something. I had my suspicions already, but she needed to spill some secrets to me. My hope was that she wasn't involved on purpose. Someone might have tricked her.

There were just a few big issues. What was the motive here? Why would anyone want to mess up this game when it was supposed to be a big deal in Japan? Was there something going on we didn’t know about?

And if the devs were in the game, where did they go? Why did they go there? Micky made it sound like it was a lot of people.

With all my might I had to resist the urge to tell Ray all of this right now. I had a way of communicating with him without chatting it out, but Tensei and the others were right there, so they’d be suspicious if they saw me start typing up on the hud.

I had to wait until we were alone to give him the deets.

“Ahh… My pretty head hurts…” I rubbed my forehead, feeling the dried makeup smear all over my face. “What time is it anywa…”

*10 PM!?*

“Holy crap! I’d been playing all day?!”

I felt like such a slug. Like wow. I can’t say it was all wasted, but what the heck…

-Hey, guys… I’m ready to fall asleep over here… ( ︶｡︶✽)-

“Oh, Rose…” Ray spoke up. “Hon, I was going to suggest we head out and fight tonight, but it’s probably really late for you… Get some sleep, dear.”

-Are you guy’s gonna’ be all G? Like, I don’t want to leave and come back to a game over screen.-

That was my biggest worry. Ray couldn’t fight back without me, so he’d be a sitting duck.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got Ginger and Davy here protecting us. Plus Tensei can message you if anything goes wrong.”

“I should log off for the night too,” said Crow. “Why don’t we save our raid for tomorrow when we’re all well rested?”

“That’s fine,” Ray said. “Rose, go get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

-Ok. I promise I’ll get on bright and early, Ray. So you just hang tight and stay safe. Good night. I love you so much!-

“Love you too, Rose.”

“And, kissy emoji…” I pressed that button a few times and made Ray do some frilly looking kisses to the screen.

I didn’t need to turn off the computer, so I just let it go into sleep mode and got to my nightly routine.

…A few hours later…

I finally got in bed at 1 AM. This was the most tired I’d ever been in my life, laying in probably the most comfortable bed and stretched in the most comfortable position. The room was cool, and the nice breeze from the ceiling fan was great.

“Gee, sure would be nice if I could fall asleep.”

Did I mention my head was racing faster than a derby car? Like, what the heck was wrong with me?

Maybe all that blue light and anxiety of Ray and the missing devs wrecked my sleeping rhythm. This sucked.

With every toss and turn it just felt like sleep was not happening. There wasn’t even a point in laying down if my mind wasn’t going to cooperate.

“Tea time.”

...One boiling pot of water later…

I picked out a chamomile packet because mom said it was the quickest way to fall asleep. Each time I dunked the stupid T-bag I had a giggling fit, thinking about how Ray’s knees were falling apart every time I T-bagged an enemy.

“Probably shouldn’t do that to my guy,” I sighed. “I wonder what’ll happen when he gets back to the real world.”

No matter what that man looked like, I was going to love him up like ice cream on a hot day. But this lady couldn’t deny that his video game look was smokin' ever since I did those edits. He had all the muscle of his late teens, and all the maturity of his mid twenties. Best of both worlds.

“Ahhh! Now I just wanna’ kiss that guy.”

I was saving a nice wet one for him. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep. I wanted his nice warmth next to me. Playing him in a game was fun, I guess, but honestly I couldn’t wait to have him safe and sound back home, in my arms.

I only had the bare minimum lighting on while I sipped away at my tea. At some point I’d moved onto the balcony for some much needed fresh air and looked over the moonlit parking lot. Each of us had designated parking spots here at the apartment, but Ray’s was empty.

“I’ll get you home soon, Ray. I promise. And I’ll figure out who’s behind this too.”

*Ring Ring!*

Was that my cell? I mean, of course it was, but why was it ringing at this hour?

“A Face-chat? From… Tensei?”

I slid it open and suddenly was greeted with the big smiling face of my little girl. God, she was so cute I couldn’t even.

“Lady Rose!” she shouted, her face taking up the whole view. “I can see you! Hi! Can you see me?”

“Hey, Teny-chan!” I tried to give some energy here to match hers. “I can see that cutiepie face of yours. What’s up? Everything good in the game?”

“Yeah. Everyone’s sleeping and Crow had to log off for the night, so I got bored and wanted to talk to you.”

Talking with anyone sounded great right now, but her especially since I needed to know some things. I had to be careful though so I didn’t spook her. Anytime we brought this up, she acted weird.

“Anything for you, Teny-chan. How did you know I was up by the way?”

“I looked through your phone camera.”

“Creeeepy…” I immediately uttered.

“You think I’m creepy?” She frowned.

“No! I mean, it’s you, Teny-chan, so I don’t care. Just not used to someone always watching…” She was such a sensitive little thing. “Anyways, Teny-chan, mind if I asked you a few questions about the game?”

“Yeah. What would you like to know?” She flew away from the screen and sat in some kind of cozy chair next to a warm fire.

“You’ve been with this studio a long time, right? At least since they started working on the game.”

“Oh, yeah!” she said. “I’ve seen it go through so much, even before they gave me a body.”

That was an odd thing to say.

“How does that work?” I asked. “You didn’t have a body before?”

“A while back I was just a program put into the game to watch over its people and development at the studio. I don’t know who made me, but they must have been real smart. Someone found me in the code eventually and put me in this body.”

Like her original creator, she didn’t know who did it.

“Wow, I’m really glad you're so smart, honestly,” I said, trying to flatter her a little. “When did you learn you could bring people into the game?” I asked.

“It’s actually a mechanic they snuck in,” she said. “It works super well, but they haven’t decided to tell the public about it yet. I don’t get why, since it’s such a big deal.”

If Ray knew about that, he would have said something. Which meant this was something secret that they knew would change the world. I mean, were they wrong? They’d make billions on that patent if they suddenly were like “Oh, did we mention you can actually dive into the game for real?” Not to mention the cheesy sci-fi dystopia we’d live in if the government got ahold of that tech. Ray loved those dumb movies.

“You can look through emails, right?” I asked. “Maybe you can check out the big wigs' reasoning?”

“I’ve tried, but they always talk about this stuff behind closed doors,” she revealed. “And if you’re wondering, they don’t know I’m watching. I did intercept a message stating that something was going to be revealed Sunday night, so maybe that’s where they were going to reveal it.”

“So, who’s been working on it if it's such a closely guarded secret?” I asked, taking a sip of my tea.

“That’s something I’ve been trying to figure out.”

“How long has this been a thing?” I asked.

“Hard to say, because the records have been scrubbed…” she poked her chin. “The system for it is constantly being updated though, and I only started to notice it four weeks ago… But there’s hardly anyone in the office anymore who had the experience to work on something this big.”

I bolted back in and started writing that down. This info was big! She might have just cracked open a big part of the case!

“Lady Rose!” Tensei shouted. “Come back! You left me on the balcony!”