Isaac knocked on the door of his supervisor's office.

"Hey, bossman. You got a second?"

The IT worker's boss looked up from his computer, "Yeah, of course. What's up?"

Isaac walked into the office, sliding into one of the two chairs and leaning back.

"Can you tell me why we're changing our bug hunter policy?"

Isaac's boss sighed and scratched his head, "I should've known you'd be up here to talk about it."

"Of course I'm up here to talk about it," Isaac said. "That policy works."

"And it bogs down the ticket queue."

Isaac looked confused, "But that's what we have the AI for? Its entire job is to do that middle management task of delegation."

The boss shook his head, "I'm not disagreeing with you, but I can't do anything about it."

"What?" Isaac asked.

"Orders from the top."

"The hell, Chris?"

Chris put on a sarcastic tone, "Apparently, our metrics aren't up to par with the standard."

Isaac blinked, "They realize we're troubleshooting completely new technology, right?"

"That's what I said," Chris sighed. "But no. The new head keeps talking about target numbers and national averages, and we're lacking in all of that. He thinks it's because we spend too much time on useless tickets."

Isaac rolled his eyes, "Like the bug reports."

"Like the bug reports. So the AI is getting retasked. It's going to start merging tickets with similar issues. Once the issues reach a threshold, the bot will assign the ticket. If it doesn't reach the threshold in a week, it gets closed."

"Did this new guy ever even work in IT?" Isaac questioned. "That's such a dumb policy."

Chris shrugged, "It's the best I could do in the situation. He wanted to restructure most of the ticketing system. It took me and the other department heads to talk him down to this."

Isaac groaned, "And this is a sweeping change too. Isn't it?"

Chris nodded, "All tickets."

"What about cheaters and rulebreakers?" Isaac asked. "I know I'm not on that team, but will this affect them?"

"Oh god no," Chris said. "Can you imagine the shit that would go down if we did that?"

A knock interrupted the two. Isaac turned around to see his coworker Bill.

"You two talking about the new policies?" he asked.

"That's right," Chris said.

"Then do you know why we're changing up the rules for rulebreakers?" Bill asked.

"What?" Chris asked.

Bill nodded, pulling out his phone, "Yeah, look."

Chris and Isaac stood, the former grabbing the offered phone and reading.

"This is a prank, right?" Isaac said after it finished.

"Oh, it better be," Chris said, seething. "How dare that asshole go over my head and send this! I'm the head of this department, for Christ's sake! He can't just do this without consultation!"

Chris stomped out of the room, shoving the phone back into Bill's hands and leaving his two employees. Isaac watched him go, shaking his head. He looked back down at the phone, re-reading the email that the new IT director sent to the player relations team.

Dear Employees,

Due to an increase in the number of unresolved tickets in the player relations queue, we have resolved to change our policy on submitted tickets. Previously, the employee in charge of a ticket would work with other departments to affirm cheating, then work on delivering a satisfying conclusion to the submitter. However, in doing so, the player relations unresolved tickets have grown disproportionately compared to the other departments. To remedy this, the new policy in place is to close the ticket once it is resolved and direct players to open a new ticket with our new resolution committee to deal with customer satisfaction. We believe this change will make your jobs more streamlined and increase job efficiency.

Mark Wester

Direct of IT at Vert Inc.

Isaac shook his head. What was this company coming to?

Dylan looked at the email reply from his support ticket in surprise. It had been two days since John's attack and Skyline's fall, and Dylan hadn't wasted time in submitting a ticket. Sweet Dream made sure to cut the footage he needed, exposing John's cheating using the duplication glitch for Vert to see. Dylan then added the request to recover his destroyed materials. However, the answer he'd gotten confused him.

Superfan39526,

Thank you for informing us of this issue inside our game. We here at Vert value player integrity and fairness. Your report of the duplication glitch has been filed, and we have confirmed your evidence. We have banned the player in question and are making sure that no one else can use this glitch in the future. However, we are unable to complete your request for item recovery. That aspect is now being handled by a new department and requires a new ticket. I have taken the liberty of creating a ticket for you, which you can find here: ITRC-005641.

Dylan wondered why Vert couldn't just return the stuff to him in this ticket. At least, that made more sense in Dylan's head.

Oh well, there was nothing he could do about it. Besides, the support technician had given him the link to his new ticket. So at least Dylan didn't have to go through the process again. He clicked on the link, opening up a new tab in his browser.

It seemed that whoever was in charge of this ticket hadn't gotten around to it yet. Though, it looked like the ticket was assigned yesterday night which might mean the support technician hadn't gotten around to looking at it yet. Dylan helpfully added in the information the last technician had asked for in the ticket, figuring whoever was in charge of this one would need it as well.

Once he finished, Dylan opened up the next set of emails from Pete. Dylan and the committee in charge of the expansion had been shooting emails back and forth, confirming a number of details from the story to the enemies. Dylan had to admit that it was a lot of fun working with the group, bouncing ideas off the creative designers.

Currently, the working plot was that Dr. Zlo had recently gotten into model trains, the villain using them to plan out his meticulous crimes. The idle hobby had turned into something of a passion for the villain, and he started thinking of ways to create more authentic dioramas. The mad scientist then decided that if he was going to be authentic, what better way than to use the original items. And thus, the shrink ray was born.

The next step was to figure out how Dr. Zlo utilized the shrink ray. At first, the team suggested using an army of drones to shrink down items. Dylan vetoed that idea rather quickly. It sounded too close to the last two expansions. Plus, Dr. Zlo wasn't the type of villain to share. Instead, Dylan suggested using a giant mobile base that flew around the various cities. But the team mentioned that anything like that would need a ridiculous number of defenses to deal with hordes of heroes. Multiple bases might be suitable, but once again, it felt too similar to the alien invasion.

After a few more emails back and forth, Dylan finally got an idea. What if they shot the shrink ray from orbit and sent out squads to collect the items. The heroes would have to work on fighting off Dr. Zlo's minions while figuring out how to get up to the space station. They could even include a quest that involved gathering scientists to reverse the shrink ray.

The developers loved the idea, adding that Dr. Zlo could have a boss stage where the heroes were shrunken down and put in a miniature gladiator arena. Dylan loved the idea and instantly approved it.

The group spent another two days discussing the basic structure of the expansion, adding in various minions and traps that would thwart the heroes–but not too many, Dr. Zlo still had to lose the fight–until the player received a reply to his ticket. What he saw chased away his good mood.

Superfan39526,

Thank you for submitting a ticket. Unfortunately, we are unable to complete your request as we no longer have the ability to recover your items. As you know, World of Supers is a big game. So large that our backups are only able to store so much data. Because of this, we are only able to store data from the last three days. Therefore, we are unable to recover your items as the time period for recovery has passed. However, we can grant you enough materials to remake the broken items. We hope that this is an acceptable compromise and wish you a pleasant day.

"Three days?!" Dylan shouted, his voice tinged with anger. "Why the hell would you wait four days to get back to me then!"

That meant Menagerie had to rebuild Skyline. That meant Dr. Zlo had to rebuild all his items. That meant Mabel, Brunhilde, and the rest were all gone!

"What the fuck is this bullshit," Dylan muttered.