Staying in the game until it actually booted you was an interesting experience. It was very much like waking from any normal dream. I gradually became more and more aware of my real body, and my grip on my avatar in the game just seemed to slip away, until I was left fully awake.

I sat up and stretched. The sleep related benefits at work here were probably justification enough to put up with the risk of pain inherent in playing this game. It wasn’t like the injuries sustained were persistent. Rested, energized, but still riddled with small spasms and pains, I got up for the day. I’d need to double check when they had scheduled my surgery to get my augments out.

I made my way over to the kitchen. I had only bought enough groceries for a few days, so I would need to go again soon. I still had enough to cobble together an omelet this morning, so that would be a problem for future Will.

Once I had finished eating and getting dressed for the day, I picked up the AR glasses from my nightstand. When I put them on, I found that I had a priority email. Oops. The logistics of wearables versus purely internal hardware wasn’t something I had expected to have to deal with ever again.

All,

Emergency meeting. Report to the office as soon as you get this.

John

The timestamp was about an hour ago, about ten minutes before I had woken up. Once again I am going to look like an asshole for showing up late. At least I was already dressed and ready.

I set my emergency flag, fumbling only slightly with my AR interface, and then set off at a run toward the elevator. People moved out of the way as I sped through the halls. Once I got to the elevator and stepped in, I doubled over to catch my breath.

Strangely, the flow of solar energy seemed to be noticeably reducing my fatigue. Thus far I had only noticed mental energy and alertness, which were both perfectly reasonable effects, considering how deeply integrated the alien tech obviously was with our minds. But to affect the body in such a coherent and directed way? I hoped that it was just a placebo effect. The alternatives, wildly divergent set of possibilities that they are, were too disturbing to think about so early in the morning.

Whether I was imagining things or not, I was in top form by the time the elevator arrived at my floor. I finished my short run to the office, passed by the guards at the door, and entered the office. My worst fears had come to pass. Everyone else was once again already seated at the large meeting table in the middle of the office, John at the head with Mr. Roberts standing behind him. Everyone seemed subdued, with the sole exception of our Executive overlord, who looked furious. He met my eye and all at once, the fire seemed to die.

“Right,” he said, “the external glasses. You wouldn’t have seen the priority alert.” He let out a heavy sigh. “We’ve already been over our latest crisis, so I’ll just give you the broad overview. Come with me into the office for a moment.”

I followed him away from the common area, into the private office. John had plastered the walls here with a gratuitous number of motivational posters, punctuated by several photos in smartframes of him with a young girl and an enormous, fluffy white dog. He continued to be disturbingly wholesome, for a manager. Mr. Roberts shut the door behind us, breaking me out of my observations. The windows to the common area switched from clear to frosted. The sudden wave of dread I felt was only marginally mitigated by my pigeon’s efforts.

“I was looking over your contract yesterday,” he said.

What? What did that have to do with anything?

“I have to say, it was inspired work. You bypassed the additional background, suitability, and loyalty checks entirely. You gave up a substantial but ultimately unremarkable amount of money in exchange for something which is, at present, literally priceless.”

I had no idea how to respond to any of this, so I didn’t. I stood there frozen for another few moments before he continued.

“And all because you knew the exact shape of the lever you had, and recognized that you were in the right place and time to use it appropriately. And all from someone who has never had any training in that sort of thing. I even went back and got that background check, to make certain that you didn’t have that particular sort of training.”

He let that last statement hang in the air as he stepped around John’s desk and took a seat behind it. Nico was conspicuously silent. I guess whatever the hell was going on was above the level of the impression or stereotype or whatever it was that he was drawing on for his social knowledge. We were both in the dark, it seemed.

“Here,” he said, handing me a small stack of papers, “this is a conditional employment contract. In the event that your current contract should be terminated in some unexpected way, this one, being under my direct authority and signed ahead of time, would preempt any other attempts to employ you involuntarily.”

Well that was ominous. I held the pages so that the camera on my AR glasses could see them, and scanned over them as I had the previous one. To my eternal lack of surprise, this one threw up far more red flags than the last. The first was already enough to reject this out of hand.

“Ten years, with unlimited extensions at your sole discretion? No. I mean, no thank you, sir.”

I handed the contract back to him. He smiled, his pen already in hand, and lined through the section on extensions. He passed the contract back to me. I looked at the paper in my hand, but I wasn’t reading it anymore. I focused inward to get some additional time to think.

What was this? This contract was terrible, but he didn’t seem to be hostile or trying to force me to sign it. He took my complaint in stride and made the adjustment as if he had expected it. Was this some kind of test? Why? Why can’t I just go back to the days when I did not have to personally cross wits with actual Executives?

[You have elevated yourself. You cannot expect to move up, but face the same opposition as before.]

I guess that made sense. I had drawn attention to myself, and now I needed to survive it. Thankfully I had Nico to assist, but it seemed that I would need more. I took in the haul of butterflies from last night’s run. One massive, truck-sized butterfly with a system name tag, and forty-six smaller ones of varying sizes. I directed my attention toward Nico, inquiring if he could somehow set the massive one on the path to becoming some sort of lawyer archetype. I detected a sense of discontent shortly before he transmitted his answer.

[Yes, but I will need samples of ‘lawyer’.]

That worked. Why had he been unhappy about the idea though?

[I would like an assistant.]

I cast my sight over the cloud of smaller butterflies.

[They are fit only to be workers.]

Well, that explained why it took so much more essence to capture the big ones. I took a brief look at their minds, and confirmed that the small ones were made in a much simpler and less modular way. I guess my power counted all parts of something - physical, magical, and mental - when determining the cost for me to grab something. I resolved that the next major capture would be set aside as an assistant for Nico. He had done stellar work so far, and would be even more effective with staff.

[Thank you.]

So, can you start work on the butterflies?

[I cannot bridge the space between my office and the void.]

Well, that would be another thing I’d need to sort out sooner or later. For the time being, I simply moved Nico into my general inventory, and watched for a moment as he flew to the largest butterfly and did… something. There was some rapid-fire magical interaction happening, but it clearly involved that boss monster toolkit that Nico had, and without it or something like it, and without a firmer grasp of the magic system, I couldn’t understand what was happening at all.

Having at least gotten a start on the issue, I pulled my attention back to my body. I looked from the contract to Mr. Roberts, who was watching me intently.

“If this is going to go how I think it is, I’ll probably need to take this with me and comb through it on my own time, sir.”

“Alright,” he sighed, “type up what you come up with and send it to me.”

He seemed almost… disappointed? I couldn’t guess at what he might be disappointed with, though. At me, for failing some sort of test? At the fact that I didn’t want to have a battle of wits right here in the office? There wasn’t any easy way to figure it out, so I let it go. He motioned for me to sit in one of the chairs across from John’s desk, which I did.

“So, this morning’s disaster. The second wave of keys went out.”

What? But wasn’t that a good thing? We would have some extra help now, maybe a bit more build diversity to help deal with strange challenges like the tenth floor boss.

“No, we won’t be getting any additional personnel,” he said, reading my mind directly as Executives could apparently do. “We have, and I quote, ‘failed to equitably distribute’ our keys. The keys went out randomly, as far as we have been able to tell.”

Ah. Shit.

“Yeah,” he said, reading my mind again, “really throws an orphan into the machinery.”

What? Was he talking about me? My parents hadn’t bothered to get a license, so I had been taken and raised by the state after I was born… but why would I be thrown into machinery?

“Whoa there, that was a joke,” he said, seeing my obvious distress, “during the industrial revolution they would use… you know what just forget I said anything. The point is that this branch of the project is getting defunded at the end of the month if you guys can’t figure out how to get more keys. Everyone else is getting shipped off to R&D. You? I have no idea what happens to you, but I expect someone will try something.”

A light turned on.

“The contract. You’re testing me to see if it’s worth your time to snap me up before anyone else has the opportunity.”

He smiled, something between predatory and what I imagined fatherly to be like.

“Don’t sit on that contract too long. I’m looking forward to what you come up with.”

His expression darkened.

“Anyway, all work schedules are out the window. We’ve got until the end of the calendar month, that’s eleven days from today, to farm up some more keys. You testers are going to be logging in as soon as your login timer is up.”

I wouldn’t complain about extra game time. I had been a bit worried about the consequences of sleeping so much, so I hadn’t yet tried logging in at random other times, but the consequences were probably not worse than being defunded.

“Further, I need you to detain any new players you see. If they’re Chinese or European, let them go. If they aren’t then you are to gather personal information enough to identify and locate them outside the game. Failing that, just kill their avatar. We can’t have anyone else in this region getting their hands on any extra keys before we do.”

Well, that was seriously fucking sinister.

“Sir, that sort of thing really, really isn’t part of my job.”

“You’re right, of course,” he said, folding his hands in front of him. “Your teammate, Joe Rodriguez? It is his job. Be mindful of how far you are able to push things, and when you lack the requisite leverage.”

Ah. That was true. Before I could think of any potential solution, he spoke again.

“You likely won’t have to deal with that issue. I need your team to continue pushing further, as you have had the most success on that front. If the keys are in some specific location, or have a minimum level of progress before they start showing up, then your team will be the most likely to run into them first.”

He leaned back in the chair, looking thoughtful.

“I think that’s all I’ve got for you.”

The windows unfrosted. I stood and turned to leave, and then a thought struck me. I turned back.

“Sir, there is one thing.”

He motioned me to speak.

“My European ally suggested that this whole thing might be some sort of galactic rite of passage. Hearing about what happened with the second wave of keys makes me think that she’s right. If the aliens are punishing us for not distributing the keys evenly enough, what do you think they will do if we hunt down the people who got them randomly?”

Silence hung in the air. Mr. Roberts seemed about to say something several times, but then didn’t. After half a minute, he finally spoke.

“Your ally is probably correct. Unfortunately, we will soon have more immediate problems. How do you think the Chinese or Europeans will take it when we start detaining their players?” He shook his head. “International politics, interplanetary politics, it’s all above my paygrade. At this point I’m just trying to limit the damage.”

That was just about the least reassuring thing he could have possibly said. He dismissed me with a gesture, and I left the office as quickly as I could without running. I made my way back to the big table, where about half of the testers were still seated. I took my place next to Joe, who started talking the moment I sat down.

“Hey Will, John wants us to go get checked out for the whole infohazard thing that hit us last night. We should be able to get to medical and get everything sorted out before the login timer is up.”

I noticed that he still had some crusted blood stuck in his bushy mustache. Right, he hadn’t had a chance to wash up this morning. He spoke again before I could respond.

“Also, I wanted to ask your opinion on what passive I should pick, before we leave the office and can’t talk about it anymore.”

I motioned for him to continue.

“So there are three choices, all different sorts of passive control and awareness of fire, the first will boost raw power the most-”

“Well, isn’t that your theme for this character? That one is the obvious pick!” I laughed. He did not seem amused.

“Well, I’ve been watching you make do with a utility power, and I have been leaning toward getting some utility myself. The first one is a direct connection to the concept of fire. It would let me make fire more… fiery. Plus some control, it sounds like. Some kind of pure fire elemental path. The second one is literal pyrokinesis. Control over fire at a chemical level. That one sounds like it might eventually lead to more broad control over chemical reactions in general. That might be more useful in the hands of someone that actually studied chemistry though. The last one is weird. Flame Oracle. It said a lot of stuff that I couldn’t even begin to figure out. My best guess is some combination of fire and time powers, with an emphasis on perception, but it also sounded like it would do the least for my offensive ability. I’m torn between the second two. Neither really fit me cleanly, but it would be more fun to explore those than to just pick the first one.”

“Yeah, some weird options. I wonder if everyone with your class gets the same options. There are so many premade classes though, we probably won’t know until there are enough players to put together a wiki. Without knowing more clearly what upgrades they might get, there isn’t an easy way to know what’s best. For now, I can think about it on the way over to Medical. We should get moving. My login timer’s only got about two hours left.”

“Two hours? I’ve got seven on mine!”

I shrugged. “Mystic bullshit, I guess.”