Connection Unknown: Chapter 3 Part 1 of 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 3:

08/03/2242

Brad Lee rubbed his scalp, shaved to a fine shine, and adjusted his glasses. The hallway lights and the light from the last twin wraparound screens in the office illuminated the desk cube, a timer rolling down to zero.

“Well, this is it, huh?” Stuart Martin, his long-time friend and business partner, sat opposite him, nursing something amber and iced.

“I guess so, the end of an era, the end of Orion’s Belt,” Brad looked around the office, once so filled with life, now a skeleton of what had happened there. He sipped from his beer bottle.

“Kind of echoes—hello!” Stuart yelled into the room.

The desk cubes, once covered in knickknacks, pictures, and nerd-dom, were now as lifeless as every other office in the building. Sanitized. Cables hung from mounts, the screens sold off with the chairs and keyboards. The testing suits were gone from what had been the office’s boardroom when they moved in so many years ago.

Maxxel’s night stretched beyond the windows, twinkling with the other towers of the corporate elite and financially secure.

Shuttles took off for orbiting stations while actual open space spread out, trimmed and contained, as sanitary as the offices themselves.

They shared a quiet minute.

Brad had married the love of his life and buried him a year ago while working on Orion’s Belt for Orion’s Belt Enterprises.

A weak smile trembled over his features as he sighed and drank from his beer to numb himself.

“Well, I propose a toast.” Stuart raised his glass.

“To?” Brad raised his, halfway.

“To the end of Orion’s Belt, a magnificent game, and to the end of Orion Belt Enterprises and our corporate overlords!”

Brad rolled his eyes and smiled but still tapped his glass against his friend’s. “To tanking as no one has tanked before.”

“Amen!” Stuart chuckled, taking a big swig of his drink. “If you hadn’t found that loophole in the new contract, we would have been stuck working on some loot box, game arcade shit for the next hundred years.”

“Next time we’re thinking about bringing in more financial help, let’s not,” Brad muttered.

Taking their company public should have been a great deal for them, but as time had gone on, they had allowed more shares out into the market. Quietly, they had lost control of their company and been forced to follow what the new board ordered them to do, or else they would be out of a job. They made a massive amount of money, but they didn’t get into making games for the money.

“So, you ready for our next project?” Stuart asked.

“We’ve only just figured out the systems and started planning on how it’s going to work on paper. Don’t have a team yet either.” Brad pointed with his beer. Stuart was the ideas and the energy; Brad was the one who kept that energy in the right direction and managed the behind the scenes.

“I wonder how many of our investors are shorting our stock right now,” Stuart mused.

Brad sighed as Stuart jumped from one thing to the next.

Using a mix of gestures and his screen-glasses, he found the information. “We’re nearly two hundred percent shorted.”

“Going down like a meteor.” Stuart snorted and raised his glasses. “Well, at least we’re majority shareholders again!”

“You really went and bought out the majority voting stock?” A message pinged on Brad’s glasses, distracting him.

“Hell, yeah. What’s the point of having money if you don’t waste it from time to time?”

“Do Mary and Felipe know?” Brad’s voice trailed off, as he read, frowning.

“Something wrong?”

“Nah, just…guess there’s a lot of people checking out the game before the server closes. Just got a notification that some of the standby servers went online.”

Brad reached out and activated the screen. A counter showed the number of people currently online as an alert blinked.

Brad put his glasses on his head, frowning at the alert as he widened it, reading it through.

“Did you buy new firmware?”

“The hell would I do that for?” Stuart leaned forward, blinking back the alcohol. “What the…how many people?”

“Forty thousand and rising.” Brad’s voice distant as he expanded the alert, eyebrows pinched together as he scrolled with one hand, his mind burning through the haze over his brain.

“What the—” Stuart snatched Brad’s glasses from his head and started using them, with gestures. Brad kept scrolling, his frown deepening as he held his chin.

“Dude, uh, we’re making news?” Stuart pinched in front of his glasses and threw it on the screen.

A darker man with pink and neon-green streaks through his carefully shaped hair, wearing a silver and black suit with neon-blue kerchief, spoke on the screen.

“Orion’s Belt, a much beloved game by my fellow MMORPG fans, has pulled a fast one! Rumors have been rife that they’re going down the chute but today, on the last day of Orion’s Belt, diehard fans found something new in the game lobby!” He paused, switching to the camera on his side. “Sphere World!”

The reporter waved his hand as if he were painting the game in front of them. He was overtaken with a video feed of people running into the rear of dropships, of people then jumping free and clear of them; pitched battles—a group of dropships laying down heavy fire, and tearing into defenses.

“It’s a zing, my friends!” The camera pulled in toward the host. “Now you’re thinking, oh just another shot, Clio, man—who cares when things are heating up with Fleet Commander?” He held the camera, clenching one eye, a smile hanging from his lips, about to blow the listener’s mind.

“This is a fully immersive MMORPG.” He waved his hand and a video showed up. “Daywalker four-one-seven landed at one battlefield, and then ran to another battlefield. No server jumps, no lag. There’s crafting from miners, to factories, to ships of all kinds, weapons, and bots galore. Oh yeah, ’cause you’re not doing this in your skin—whole automation, my people!”

A bot appeared next to Clio, holding a rifle.

“That looks pretty cool,” Stuart said.

“Yes, to enter Sphere World you’ll need a bot! Now, where’s the catch? Well, the people over at Orion’s Belt have been naughty boys.”

Stuart coughed on his Scotch, and Brad smiled behind his beer.

“You see, you get one free bot, but you have to pay for additional gear. But—there’s more than one job out there for you to earn platinum. Mining, building, piloting—Sphere World has jobs for all. Controlling nodes brings a stream of wealth right into your net account.”

Stuart paused the stream and threw out the latest articles.

“What the hell?” Brad muttered. He brought the holographic projector on. The deserted office turned into the Orion’s Belt game lobby. There was a constant stream of people entering; he followed them through the office, watching them enter Sphere World.

“Well.” Stuart drank his Scotch, leaving the desk cube to look at the doorway.

“You have anything to do with this?”

“Nope, not me. Never seen this before.”

“Then what the hell is it? The hell are we supposed to do?” Brad rubbed his scalp.

“Calm down, man. You’ll go bald with worry.”

Brad glared and Stuart snorted.