January 3rd, 2039

Kyle Marin set his coffee on his desk and tossed his backpack onto his office chair. The bag had set the chair slightly off balance and it swung around so the back of the chair was pointing towards him. “New year, new opportunities.” He said to himself as he draped the jacket over the back of the chair. It had been nice of the company to give everyone a late start. It was only coming in at 10:00 instead of 8:00, but it was still nice.

Kyle had trained to be a game designer. He’d always been a gamer at heart and figured that it’d be fun to do that for a living. For the most part, he had been right. Mokro is his first job out of college and it paid enough to cover rent, student loans, and some fun money for the weekends. He’d even been able to start up a retirement program with Mokro where they matched the first five percent.

The work had been harder than he had thought it was going to be though. More coding and programing than gaming. Not too surprising though. It took years to make a game and that was only the beginning. Companies needed to keep a small army of people working on the title to make sure that it worked properly. Let alone when they wanted to expand the game.

Kyle got in with Mokro when a recruiter had come to his college during his last semester. She had talked about the room for growth at the company and all of the latest technology that they would utilize. Not that he had any doubts that he would be applying. Kyle saw the Mokro Arts logo every night when he logged onto Arella Everlasting. It had been a brand new release at the time.

He did his internship at Mokro Arts. His department was responsible for working on bugs that had made it into the game and fixing them. To be honest, it had been a lot more tedious than he thought it was going to be. His absolute favorite bug caused the player that just opened a treasure chest to burst into flames. This would have been a great trap idea and they were actually working on saving that piece of the bug. The problem was that for about a week, Kyle and four of his co-workers had opened and looted a chest. Then, they would note if they burst into flames, the contents of the chest, the character’s inventory, the character’s equipped items.

They had repeated this process so many times, Kyle actually considered passing up treasure chests when he found them playing Arella Everlasting when he was playing at home. He didn’t of course, but he had considered it. It ended up being a very strange combination of players having a certain ring equipped on the left hand, having so many coins on them, and the chest containing a specific piece of armor. This resulted in one less bug in the game and a new high level trap in certain dungeons. This had also gotten him hired on after graduation.

A few months later, people in suits started meeting with the CEO of Mokro Arts. This wasn’t unusual, but there had been more meetings than normal. The people themselves didn’t seem like your normal marketing or game industry types. Tension had been high at Mokro Arts ever since. Lots of rumors going around. Most people said that the company was going under. Another popular rumor said that the Mokro Arts was now the property of Russia, Japan, or some other country. Some of the more depressing rumors had the company bought up by the competition for the hardware and software rights. That would mean that everyone was looking for work and not just having someone else sign their checks.

This was not helped when each department had done a fresh round of drug screens and background checks. Kyle had lost a few friends as a result of those. Good guys that had made a poor choice over the weekend.

His boss had made a point of assuring him that everything was going to be alright. All he had to do was keep up with his job responsibilities and not break any laws. She had been right. They had announced that Mokro had been acquired, but there were not going to be layoffs. Heck, they had even received a Christmas bonus.

Kyle had settled in with his coffee and turned on the computer. Once he had put in all his identification, an urgent calendar notice popped up on his screen. There was a company wide meeting starting in the conference room in twenty minutes.

He took a long drink from his coffee. It looks like last month’s mystery would be sorted out here in the next few minutes. Kyle glanced through his emails and didn’t see anything pressing, so he got up and made his way to the third floor conference room.

The conference room pretty much took up the entirety of the third floor. It was often used for whatever the company currently needed. Before Christmas break, there had been stop motion actors in this room filming their parts for a few new cutscenes

It had been a great day. They sent out an email saying that the actors had agreed to stay to have lunch with all the employees. He had pulled down his three promotional posters and made sure that he made it to lunch early that day. Kyle has felt like a complete fanboy, but it had been worth it. On the poster for the Aspen Order, he now had King Graven’s signature. On the poster for the Scaled Dynasty, he had the signature for Empress Anacara. Well, the actors that portrayed them at any rate.

Kyle had sat down in the middle of the conference room while daydreaming about the autographed posters back at his desk. The room was slowing filling up with programmers and testers. He straightened up and started to pay attention when he finally focused on the front of the room. The long table at the head of the room included all of the senior executives, the company’s CEO, two group conference speakers, and one older man dressed in a military dress uniform.

Kyle watched his coworkers come into the 10:30 meeting. Most were in good spirits thanks to the day’s late start. It was interesting to watch their expressions as they went from a loose informality of the day to an anxious quiet as they noticed the dark blue uniform of a Space Corps General.

As the last of the programmers were seated, the head of marketing stood and clicked on the microphone attached to his suit jacket’s collar. “Hello everyone, I’m Charles Elm. I know that you all have heard rumors circulating last year about the company being acquired. I’m also sure that the nice bonus you received for the holidays should have put you at ease about us downsizing or closing the doors. I’d like you all to welcome our guest, General Colin Edwards.” He then sat back down and started the room in polite round of applause.

The General stood and tapped his microphone. He then clasped his arms behind his back and stood at parade rest. Unlike the head of marketing who moved around a bit during his introduction, General Edwards could have been a statue. The dress uniform of the Space Corps was modeled after the famous Dress Blues that the Marines are known for. The main difference was the pants were completely black and the jacket was such a dark shade of blue that it may as well have been black as well. The white accents of the General’s medals stood out dramatically against his chest.

“As of Midnight on December 31st, Mokro Arts is now a subsidiary of the United States Space Corps. As Charles mentioned, all of your jobs are safe. We have no desire to purchase a building full of virtual reality design equipment. We wanted the men and women with the know how that was able to create and maintain Arella Everlasting and take it to the head of the market just six months after launch. I can tell that you are all very confused as to why Mokro Arts is now a subsidiary of the USSC. I will make one thing clear. You are not enlisted, nor have you been drafted. If you have pulled your head out of a VR helmet in the last decade, you should be aware that there has been a push to establish a presence in space. We have developed the technology to create a terraforming operation on the moon and Mars. We have the ships to get us there. We have the crews that will be able to run the stations and support our troops.”

“The problem comes with getting our troops there. While it only takes three or four days to get to the moon, Mars is a different story. In an Explorer class ship, it will take six months to get to Mars. The fully loaded terraformer will take an estimated twelve-eighteen months to get there depending on the ending mass. Having to provide living quarters and the weight of the provisions would increase that exponentially. It will save us a lot of fuel, space, and time if the crew was in cryo during this time. Our long term goal would be to get to Saturn’s moon, Titan. That would take over seven years for a space vessel to even make it there”

The General took a moment to reach down and take a drink from his bottle of water. A few of the programmers shifted in their seats while the General was taking his drink. One of them towards the front raised their hand and started speaking immediately. “I still don’t understand. Are you wanting us to program in war bond advertisements or something into AE?” General Edwards set down the bottle of water. “Definitely something. Cryogenic hibernation is a new technology. The developments show that the technology is viable and the initial tests have been completed. Our first volunteers went under cryo for forty eight hours. When they were woken, they were very disturbed. They told us that they were aware of every moment that they were under. It turns out that the mind is not asleep like we originally believed. forty eight hours is a very long time to be alone in your own mind. Eighteen months of that would drive most people insane. That is to say nothing of the years it would take to get to Titan.”

“Your goal is to continue making this game viable to the public. You will work with our scientists to develop a way to integrate the game into the cryogenic hibernation capsules. Also, you will need to make this game interesting enough to suit all manner of players. While a large number of members of the USSC will be interested in playing the game as it is, many will have very little interest in sword swinging. There will need to be other options for them as well. Remember, that these individuals will be inside the world that you are crafting for months to years at a time. “

“Not too much will change from your normal work here last year. You will be getting new colleagues from the USSC that will be working with you to assist with any changes that need to be made to the game to make it compatible with the capsules. They are programmers like yourself, so they can help you make any adjustments to the game itself that have been suggested by our research on what the members of the USSC would like to have included to the game aside from the current magic and swords. Thank you for your time.”

The general walked back to his spot on the desk and sat down with the directors. Charles stood back up and clicked his microphone. “Thank you very much everyone. Please head back to your departments and you will have a meeting with your department heads to talk about any changes that will need to be made. This is going to be an amazing year!”

The mood seemed mixed as the employees got up and made their way through the office building. Some were talking excitedly and gesturing with their hands to the heavens. Others were grumbling darkly about never wanting to be part of the military. The majority seemed to be saving their opinions on how things developed and wondering what will happen when their new colleagues arrived. Kyle just stared at the general and shook his head in amazement. He was going to be working with space marines!