April 10, 2039

Aaron Lawson stared at the point of the french fry waving back and forth in front of his nose as his brother was trying to get him to join in on his latest plan. They were eating out at the local fast food chain with their wives and Aaron’s youngest daughter, Valerie, after the morning service at church. Mack Lawson stabbed his fry into his chocolate milk shake before continuing.

“Seriously though, they are making big changes to the game and I think this would be a great time for you to get back into gaming. The VR has gotten so much better since you played Eventyr’s Lair. I mean, they have been dropping big hints during log in that things are going to be different soon. Since the USSC has gotten involved, they completely revamped AE! Most of the quests and adventuring and all is about the same, but they made all the townsy stuff more intricate. That’s where I figure that you can come in!”

Aaron’s wife, Marie, turned her head from her conversation with her sister-in-law and joined our conversation. “Mack, what are you trying to drag my husband into this time?” Mack’s wife, Ann answered. “He’s going on about Arella Everlasting. If he’s not on duty, he likes to shoot critters online with his bow and arrow.” She pantomimed shooting a miniature bow and made a pew-pew sound effect.

Valerie grinned at her aunt as her uncle Mack pouted. “First off, it’s a crossbow.” He balanced a french fry on finger gun to be the crossbar of his crossbow “Twang! Second, this isn’t going to be so much of Aaron here playing a game as getting a second job to help support his family.” Ann rolled her eyes, “Here we go.” Mack continued on, completely unphased. “Like I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted.” He said, drawing out the word rudely. “AE has been completely changing the towny stuff and Aaron here was the biggest sap for the townsy stuff when we played Eventyr’s Lair. They have made making crafting a huge part of the revamped game. There’s actually good money in it.”

Marie looked confused, “How would him making game money help his family at all?” Valerie jumped in on this one while she was flipping through pages on her phone. “Arella Everlasting has a way to convert money into the game money. One of my friends at school is actually doing it for a part time job. She said she made $200 last week collecting flowers and stuff for potions. She plays as a drop dead gorgeous elf with green hair.”

Mack looked impressed, “That’s good money for herbs. Sure beats me working here when I was in high school,” he said as he pointed to the back where they were making the burgers. “What I was thinking though is you can start up a blacksmith. You can make some really impressive weapons and armor in AE. With the new changes, a good smith can make gear that is better than most non-raid gear.” Marie sighed and looked at Aaron for clarification. “A raid is when you have to get a bunch of people together to fight a really tough boss. That’s when they drop the really good armor, weapons, and quest stuff.”

Aaron sighed and shook his head “Look Mack, I appreciate what you are doing and all, but I don’t have time for games anymore. With work and the kids, I haven’t been able to play much of anything since Eventyr’s Lair and that was about two decades ago!” Mack raised his eyebrow. “John is away for college. I think he’s probably ok. Valerie here is 17. She has a job, a car, and a 4.0. I somehow doubt she will crumble if you plug in your old VR helmet. Before you bring it up, yes, your old VR helmet will work for AE. Marie will be more than happy to have you out of her hair for a while so she can have some peace and quiet. The only thing that you will squawk about is that the monthly fee has changed a bit since you played Eventyr’s Lair a few decades ago. Since you’ll be playing in a helmet, it’s only a bronze level subscription which is $200 a month. That will not be a big deal though, since you are going to make all kinds of money as a blacksmith.”

“Like always though, the first month is free. To seal the deal, I have worked with one of the guys in my guild. You can apprentice under him as a blacksmith. You can work for him doing grunt work, learning smithing, and he’ll pay you $10 an hour. Then as you get better at smithing, you can make some serious coin and more importantly, make me some of that high level gear!” Having put forth his ironclad argument, he nodded to Aaron and Marie and chomped into this cheeseburger.

Marie shook her head. “That just doesn’t make sense. Why would your friend pay him $10 an hour and how could Val’s friend make $200 picking virtual flowers? It sounds like this game would go out of business in a few months.” Mack nodded. “You are completely right. There is a lot of money floating around. Quite a bit of it being cashed out. What you are forgetting is that everyone is paying $200 plus per month depending on their account type. Not only that, there are ways to put money back into the game. If you need the gold coins for whatever, you can transfer it directly into the game. Everything in the game requires gold. You get hurt in a fight? You need a health potion. You can heal yourself? Great, you probably need a mana potion. After that fight, your weapons and armor are beat up and you need to pay a blacksmith to fix it up for you.”

“As for blacksmith’s like Aaron, when he is going to need materials for everything he makes.” Mack spilled out his fries across the table, leaned a chicken nugget next to a cup of ranch, and then pulled his plastic knife out of it’s cutlery packet. “When he finally gets around to forging the legendary blade, Nugget Slayer, he is going to need to get a barrel of The Lady’s Blessed Ranch to quench the blade in.” At this, he dipped the plastic knife in the ranch cup and made a hissing sound. “However, he will need a small army to get past Evil King Nugget’s army of fry zombies and kill King Nugget himself! Each person in that army pays so much per month, will need so many health or mana potions, then need to have their armor repaired. Only then, can Aaron make Nugget Slayer!” Mack turned and offered the ranch covered plastic knife laying horizontally across his two palms.

Valerie picked up Nugget Slayer by the handle and turned to her dad. “I think it would be pretty cool if you could forge Nugget Slayer. Mom and I would be fine. You should definitely make some magic swords and take us and John to Hawaii.” Marie was smiling at that thought. “It has been far too long since we’ve been to the beach. Let alone Hawaii. If you are going to be playing though, we can’t have you spending your every waking moment plugged into that helmet like you did back while we were dating. I almost killed you. A few week nights, you can have Saturday after the yard, but you are mine on Sundays.”

Mack clapped his hands together loudly, drawing several glances from the other people in the restaurant. “It’s official! The boss approved. We’re coming over and I want to help get you started. The set up will be a bit clunky with your old helmet and I want to make sure you don’t make some dumb class.”

Aaron finished the last few bites of his chicken sandwich. “Well, I guess I have a part time job making armor for Marie and Val’s trip to Hawaii and making arrowheads for Mack. Should we start this afternoon?” Mack reached out and snached up the evil King Nugget and tossed him in his mouth. He gave a thumbs up as he started in on the fry zombies.

After the zombie horde had been dealt with, the families got into their cars and programmed in the route to get to Aaron’s house. Then, everyone settled back to enjoy the ride and the afternoon. As the autopilot navigated them out of the parking lot, the windshield synced with Aaron’s phone and displayed his search engines. He had about ten minutes after leaving the restaurant before he got home to research this game that he never paid much attention to.

The two cars pulled up to the house and parked themselves automatically before he had a chance to do much more than confirm that Mack was correct about the game’s economy and how it could be cashed out for real money. The doors swung open and everyone climbed out. Val walked straight into the house staring at her phone and typing away to her friends. Mack walked over to Aaron and tossed his arm around his shoulders. “You’ll love working with Brok. He will work you into the ground, but you’ll really pick up the skills. Soon enough, you can make me this griffin claw crossbow that I’ve had my eye on.”

Aaron grinned. “I’m glad that you have my best interests at heart. So, I haven’t looked into EA much since I didn’t have time to mess with any of that. Is everything pretty standard for a fantasy MMO?” Mack shrugged, “Pretty much, you have all your standard races. Human, elf, dwarf, orc, dragonkin, naga. There are alliances, but it’s not really a team vs team or anything. Each race can be good or evil depending on how you want to play. The server I play on has safe zones in the cities and free for all out in the mid and high level areas. If you really want, all of the cities have arenas. I know you said the whole Player vs Player thing was never your scene. There are ten classes, but I think you should do a melee class. As a blacksmith, you need strength and constitution more than anything. It’ll be a bit different from your necro on Eventyr’s Lair, but you will make due.”

Marie looked over at the guys. “Do you even still have that helmet? I thought that we tossed all the junk years ago.” Aaron nodded, “I know she moves in, your stuff moves out. You kept some of your stuff and I kept some of mine.” Marie looked over at Mack “Can we hook this one up to one of the monitors in the man cave to his tablet? I want to have a good seat as he makes Excalibur.”

They all walked into the house and Ann glanced down the stairs that lead to the man cave. “I get enough of that at home. Marie, I’m raiding the fridge and taking over the TV.” Ann walking into the kitchen as everyone else went down stairs.

Aaron went over to a tote of old mementos. Digging around in it, he smiled as he pulled out a few of the different things. “Marie. Come over here.” Once she arrived, he handed her an old action figure with a red cape and a faded stuffed dog. “Remember the kids dragging these things everywhere? I ended up paying the receptionist at work to fix up Mr. Fluffins when Valerie accidentally tore his tail off. John was so mad when this guy lost his hammer. I’m pretty sure that was the biggest tantrum that he ever had. Never did find that thing.” Tossing aside his high school yearbook, he pulled out his old VR helmet and control sticks. “I knew I kept it in my mementos box. I had a lot of good memories with this thing stuck to my head. Not to mention, only God knows how many hours I’ve been wearing it.” Marie bent down and picked up his class ring. She slipped it on her finger and rotated it around her finger like she did with it back in high school. “It’s good to have memories.” She gently placed the stuffed animal and action figure back in the tote. “Come on. I haven’t seen your brother this excited about something in a while. I’m surprised he’s not bouncing.”