Shit! That was the first thing I thought. Talk about a bucket of water and a rude awakening. This sense that all of this is real was regularly overwhelming me. And just then I had completely forgotten that this is a game. And the first logout was due after five days. Damn, that seemed so far away. And it meant that I had already spent 19 days relative or game time.

“Something wrong?” Ralgau asked.

“Did I say that out loud? Just… uhm… something came up and I need to leave the asteroid for a bit and eh... take care of some stuff…”

“Hey, I just told you how grateful I am. If you have trouble I’ll try my best to help.”

I looked over to him and the sincerity in his eyes. Honor and integrity were important to him.

“Nah. I appreciate it. It is not so much trouble and more something I need to take care of. I just got a reminder about it. The thing is, it will mean that I’ll be gone for eight or nine days. And I hate to be that guy. Especially after I pissed off the Red Moon I have to leave for a while.”

“Hrm,” he grumbled. Then he looked me in the eye. “You really have to go for that long?”

“Yeah, there is nothing I can do about it.”

“How come you remember that even though you don’t remember basic stuff about the universe? How things work?”

I tried scratching my head. Damn vac-suit. Also, my address right now is random asteroid, ass-end-of-nowhere-system, space, universe so maybe a vac suit was the right thing and scratching my head needed to wait. And why was it that whenever I felt any kind of pressure, my thoughts were all over the place and got stuck on the most ridiculous things?

“Honestly, don’t have a good answer to that and don’t want to lie to you. I will tell you eventually but not right now.” In my head I added on to that statement: ‘Mainly because I have no idea how to explain to you that this is a game I am playing and that you are an NPC and that I have to go back to reality.’

I didn’t know how this game would handle it. In older games, it didn’t matter. NPCs were scripted and went about their scripted routines without ever caring if you were there or not. But you didn’t make friends with them. You walked up, checked if they had quests and then went on your merry way. Then there are newer games where NPCs are steered directly by the AI. One option in those games was that they ignore everything you say about stuff that doesn’t belong in the game. The parent AI filtered everything that didn’t belong into the game world. However, the rule there was, don’t talk about outside stuff. And then there were the games where NPCs had on some level an ‘awareness’ of players. They called them outsiders or wanderers or something. And they ‘knew’ you would log out and go back to your world every now and then.

I had a feeling neither one of those things applied here and that made being logged out for two days an awkward conversation that I did not know how to approach.

“I will take Rustbucket and fly over to the station. I’ll also check in with the others and see if there is any business there that I need to take care of. You need anything?”

He shrugged. “Nothing I can’t take care of from here via the com array.”

“Fair enough. I promise I’ll check in on the Rambler and see how it is doing in your absence.”

He snorted, turned around and bounced away in the usual 0.4g loping gait. I on the other hand went back to drilling holes into our asteroid home and blasting bits off of it. Easier than to have more awkward conversations.

By the end of the shift my dreams of hitting another level in asteroid mining hadn’t materialized. So instead I had another round of awkward conversations. Talk about a consolidation price. I told them the same thing and much like Ralgau, they didn’t pry into my business but Mrk was understandably grumpy for me taking off for a little over a week after the Red Moon business.

As I was walking up the ramp to my little ship, Brelic and Ralgau approached me.

“Malcolm, a moment?” the Fell asked.

“Sure.” I turned around to them. It was strange. We used coms in hermetically sealed vac suits, yet we all still felt compelled to look at each other while we spoke. I wondered briefly why that was. Then I thought that this might be a great study subject for an anthropologist and then reminded myself that this is a game and there won’t be any anthropological research. At least not from outside scientists.

“We understand that there are things we all need to do from time to time and for now we won’t pry. We do trust you but let me make sure to put it out there: Does this have anything to do with the Red Moon or the safety of the people here?” Brelic asked bluntly.

I was taken aback for a moment. How could they think that? And then I looked at it from their perspective and I was sure I would have asked the exact same question.

“No, it has absolutely nothing to do with either. It will put nobody in harm's way and has no connection to the Red Moon.” I stated clearly. Honestly, it felt good hearing myself say it. “Which does not mean that the Red Moon won’t be coming around while I am gone. But I’d rather give those guys a kick in the teeth than talk to them.”

Ralgau nodded. “Told you.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Had to hear him say it again.” Then he turned back to me: “Get another turret or two while you are on station. We keep the claim going and the Red Moon away. Be safe.”

Those last doubts out of the way I made my way into Rustbucket. I don’t want to say that I had missed the little civilian miner, especially as I had ferried people around in it. But there was a bit of nostalgia as I lifted off the asteroid and activated the autopilot on a course to Belt Station. This is where I spawned into the game. Where I had taken the first steps, mined my first ore, made my first money.

And on the five and a half hour flight to the station I started to take stock of everything that had happened. I was in the game for what felt like a good chunk of time. But then again, in real life, only five days had passed. Because of the games I had played and competed in so far, I was used to hassling around, racing from objective to objective always making sure that I would keep a step ahead of the competition. And if I could not manage that, then I would make sure to find an edge. Anything that kept me out of mediocrity.

But here? Did I really have to? I had money sitting in my account and didn’t need to immediately create an income stream. If I wanted to, I could even invest money into the game after the release. Sure, I didn’t want to be one of the pay to win players but at the same time, could I treat it as an investment?

Assume I would find some people and create a mining claim. If I bought the equipment outright, that would run me about 300k. And we are talking about something proper with decent accommodations and gravity generation. Something a bit better than the tents we had. In real world money that would be 3000 Yuan Credits. Yeah, that was something in the fine print. If you invest money from the real world, you would receive 100 ICU for 1 YC but the other way round, the exchange was 1000:1.

But 3k YC was nothing for me. Now set it up on a higher ore density asteroid and don’t split it six ways. Instead pay miners a share. Let's say 50% of the yield goes to the corp, 50% split between the workers. Just taking into account the results we haad from around one week of mining together. That would be 500k in the corps pocket. Now assume I am not just some corp asshole but also invest in security for my people. Benefits could include two days off per week with paid transfer to the station, a CLON contract, more turrets or even mercenaries.

The thing is that in twenty days, which equates to five days outside the game, I could have raked in about two million ICE. That would be 2k after a week. After a month of running smoothly, that would come out as 8k YC. That was a crazy rate of return on investment. Could I do that down the line? Abso-freakin-lutely! And we are talking passive income here. Sure, some of that needs to be reinvested. But thinking that you could make 5k YC per month basically doing nothing, just paying your game account. Although I had no clue how much that would be. Still, I could always get something like that going and sit back.

So, no, I did not need to rush around. I could actually afford to take things a little slower and not rush from one thing to the other. The only thing I should keep a little pressure on was the ship. I needed to get my hands on it before release. Because if I showed up here with a random starting scenario, I was sure when millions of players poured into the game, someone would pick the same start I had. Not sure how that was distributed but I would not bet against others discovering the relic like I had. Long thought process short, that part could not wait.

When I finally made it to Belt station, I took some time to visit the banking office and paid off half my loan. Sure I could have paid off everything but I wanted to keep some cash on hand in case I needed it. Then I splurged on a steak dinner. This time without company and business discussions, a few drinks and a hotel room. And no, I did not check on the Rambler.

When I went to sleep in my hotel room. I woke up to the black of sleep being replaced by the black with a system screen. And a very uncomfortable feeling. Like vertigo, nausea and joint pains all rolled into one.

Please remain calm.

Logout process in progress.

11/15 minutes remaining.