As it turned out, the Developers' tools were more than willing to let Kevin molest the geography of his dungeon in any fashion he cared to. Chopping the top of the mountain was quick and easy. Hollowing out the mountain to create a giant cavern took a bit more finesse, but a large part of that was just getting used to the tools. Luckily, someone had helpfully included the trusty 'Undo' feature.

After he was done, Kevin wound up with a cavern that was one thousand feet tall at the center, where a three hundred-foot circle opened to the sky. It spanned a bit over three thousand feet across, and the sides sloped down very gradually, before plunging to the ground, allowing for over a hundred feet of clearance at the edges.

Now he just had to fill all that space. Kevin mentally rubbed his hands together, gleefully. 'Giant Sequoias...' he was pleasantly surprised to find that the entry for the tree in question popped up as he thought of it. "That is going to save some time," Kevin muttered to himself, as he selected the tree. Upon selection, a familiar grid structure appeared over the cavern floor and walls. With a shrug, Kevin selected the grid more or less in the middle of the cavern. The ghostly image of a redwood appeared in that space, and several sliders and menu options appeared next to it, allowing him to customize his new tree. With a grin, he moved the slider for height to the top, watching the tree stretch over three hundred feet up. Kevin then slid the width slider over, expanding the tree to thirty feet in diameter. He grinned. This was going to be awesome.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Kevin said as he started going through the menus to the side of the spectral tree. There were dozens of options to turn the majestic redwood into a plant monster. Backing out of that menu, he concentrated and pulled up a menu labeled 'Themes.' "Ok," he muttered as an array of choices appeared, "cosmetic themes, yes, good. Tentacle horror, bad." Kevin picked an option from the middle of the list 'Fractal Pattern - Underlay', and watched in awe as his translucent redwood appeared to gain a solid appearance. A pattern of cracks grew beneath the bark, spilling out an ethereal purple light. The effect was incredible, and Kevin just watched as the dim light spread up and around the entire tree. He could almost make out a pattern to it. Kevin turned his attention to the familiar color panel on his right, and moved it from the purple spectrum, over to the green area. "God, this is so much easier," he grumbled, remember the good old days, about two years ago, when he had to rely on his accuracy with a mouse to select the point in the spectrum he wanted. After a bit of revision, he selected a color that the system labeled as 'Verdant' and was to Kevin the perfect color of summer grass or an oak leaf in July. Of course, when expressed in an eerie dispersed glow, it was a little less friendly, but seemed to him to be equally healthy. Happy with his design, he planted his fully grown, verdant fractal pattern underlay redwood. As it appeared, in all it's majesty, the system prompted 'Would you like to save this creation for future use?' Grinning, Kevin selected yes, and went to work, planting his redwood forest.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Julie sighed as Melody tore off to Kevin's room. Her friend was an irrepressible ball of energy. She'd often wondered if being so short had compacted her natural energy reserves, and resulted in Melody boiling over, like a kettle left on the stove too long. Julie stood, followed her friend to Kevin's door and said, loudly, "He's probably wearing his VR rig and can't hear anything." Melody paused, considering, then dropped her hands to her sides and looked up at Julie. "But... dude. Deep Delve!" she said, her volume having fallen to a more reasonable level.

Julie nodded, understandingly, and grabbed Melody's hand, guiding her to the kitchen as she said, "Yeah, I know, Deep Delve. We probably would have had a celebration and everything if I hadn't well, you know," she finished with a sigh. "Been a total dumpster whore?" Melody said brightly as she dropped into the kitchen chair with more force than her sub-one hundred pounds should have been able to generate. Julie grimaced, "I probably wouldn't say that," she muttered, "but, yes, if Kevin hadn't have come home to an unpleasant situation." She pasted on a grin, and continued "Anyways, you know how Kev is, all work and not enough play, so we should just plan to do something nice for him when he surfaces."

Melody's widening smile unnerved Julie, and she began to wonder at the wisdom of suggesting any sort of celebration in front of her. While Melody was an irradiating little ball of sunshine most of the time, she was absolutely fanatical about her VRMMORPGs. Her normal level of energy went from an eleven (on a scale of one to ten) to a thirteen. Ordinary mortals couldn't support the level of enthusiastic devotion Melody displayed towards her favorite game, which for the past six months had been Deep Delve.

"Yes...." Melody said, melodramatically. "We should have pre-launch/new job Deep Delve Party!" she finished gleefully, pumping her fist in the air. "No, no no no," Julie half begged, "I promised Kev I would dial it back down on the partying." This was not, she thought, an actual lie. Kevin had pointed out that she might have a problem with drinking. And parties and drinking sort of went hand in hand, so in a way, Kev had really asked her not to let Melody throw a gigantic over the top party, right? Right, she decided. "We should do something special for him, but low key ya know?" Julie said. Melody appeared to be giving the idea serious consideration. At the very least, she seemed to have stopped vibrating. "Ok," Melody said, "No party. We'll figure something out, though, because the end of his Wal-Mart enslavement must be celebrated!" Julie gave an internal sigh of release. Crisis averted.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Robert twisted the throttle as he powered out of a long sweeping curve. When the Vision had been released back in '08, he, like all his riding buddies, had been totally turned off by its appearance. The huge fairing, the sweeping lines, all seemed more akin to a spaceship, as opposed to an American V-Twin touring bike. Victory had positioned it to compete with the Harley Davidson Electraglide, as a fully dressed touring bike, and while on paper they both checked a lot of the same boxes, the Vision's styling had just been so far from normal, that he'd dismissed it out of hand. Fast forward nine years, and he had been in the market for a new bike. His Ultraglide had racked about a bit over two hundred thousand miles and was getting to the point where he was going to start to need to do real maintenance on it. Steering head, pulleys, new fork seals... And he had kinda gotten that "I want a new bike" itch. When he rolled up to the Polaris dealership, he'd intended to test ride a Chieftan. But their demo model was being taken for a spin, and the sales manager had tossed him the keys to a '17 Victory Vision in a glorious dark blue metallic flake and told him to come back in an hour, and the Chieftan should be back.

Robert had set aside the afternoon for bike shopping, and with nothing to lose, he had hopped onto the blue behemoth. Five miles and twenty minutes later, he hadn't been able to wipe the shit-eating grin off his face. Everything on the bike just fucking worked. The floorboards were long, and the whole cockpit was roomy enough that he could stretch his legs out fully on the floorboards, which was impossible on any other bike he'd ridden. The bike was as heavy as expected, but once you got moving, it handled like a much lighter bike. He'd made it back to the dealership an hour late, and with a hundred and twenty miles on the bike. The salesman had just grinned at him and held out an evaluation on the trade-in value for his Ultraglide, and said: "How you wanna pay for it?"

It turned out that the salesman, Rick, had developed a tactic for selling the Victory Vision. "I wait till someone comes in looking to test ride something else, then throw them on the Vision. Works every time." He'd went on, "Everyone hates the way they look, but if you ride one, you'll buy one." And he wasn't wrong. That was eighteen years ago, and today, with over three hundred thousand miles on the clock, his Vision still made him grin.

'God,' Robert thought, 'I needed this.' The race to bring Deep Delve to market had started about a year ago, when it became clear that the capital raised wasn't quite going to go the distance. The studio had spent what had seemed at the time to be a ridiculous amount of money mapping sensations for the game. It was a well-understood methodology for creating VR immersive elements. You strapped on the VR helmet and ran a program designed to simply read the neural responses to stimuli. The limitations were the vast amount of additional processing power required, which necessitated being connected to a server rack worth of hardware, and was thus not particularly portable, nor easily powered without ready access to 220v outlets. So, as an example, mapping the stimuli from skydiving was a non-trivial exercise, and had cost the company almost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per jump to attain the data for. It took ten jumps in various weather and temperature conditions. Granted, this was one of the more expensive options. Mapping the stimuli of a walk through a grainfield at noon in July was considerably less expensive.

Everything said and done, the studio's goal of having the most complete and immersive library of VR experiences succeeded, but the cost was ruinous. Over five hundred billion dollars were spent on that portion of the development, nearly eighty percent of the funds raised. The remaining capital was spent on the VR engine to take advantage of the library and hiring tens of thousands of graphics design majors who graduated into a market place that didn't have employment for them. The idea of evolving dungeons was faithful to the concept of the game; however, the studio had initially intended to use in house designers. Then the money ran out. And the panic set in.

Robert had been with the studio since its inception. He didn't have a pension or a 401k. Everything was tied up in Deep Delve. And so, when the clock was running down, and the cupboard was bare, he had suggested contracting out the dungeon design, allowing developers and programmers to build their dungeons and retain a small portion of the subscriber revenue as payment. It turned out to be the only idea that was affordable. He'd gone a step further and suggested the company look for underutilized talents, maybe hire a few struggling fantasy fiction writers with a background playing MMORPG's (which all of them seemed to have), but cooler, more traditional heads prevailed. Towards the end of the project, just as the last of the pre-orders were finalized and the developers were contracted, HR had experienced a glitch, and Kevin's application had floated in.

Robert had taken advantage of having an open slot left. He'd first hired a private investigator out of his own pocket, paying the man a thousand dollars for a little background on the kid. It was easy work, the man had claimed, checking into an unsuspecting kid. He'd come back clean as a whistle. Robert hadn't expected anything else, but with the argument he planned to make, he also wasn't taking any chances.

He knew that Deep Delve was going to be, initially, wildly successful. The library and engine assured that. The novelty of true to life sensations wouldn't get old too quickly. That being said, if the studio wanted true subscriber retention (which they did, as while they made thirty dollars and change on the initial sale, the twenty dollars a month subscription fee is where the money really started to come in), they needed more than just a VR sandbox where you could look however you wanted. So, the key to the whole thing was the dungeons. And Robert just knew that most of the developers the studio had contracted were going to fuck that up. They would stick to the same old formula and produce crypts with skeletons and caves with trolls and kobolds. And while that was fine for attracting and keeping the hardcore gamers, he knew they had to have genuinely innovative and unique dungeons for people who weren't gamers to play in.

Forty percent. Forty percent of the presales had been made to individuals who had never played a VRMMORPG before. That, Robert knew, was fucking unprecedented. If they could keep those people engaged and subscribing, the game would explode, and alongside it his stock options. This was it. If everything played out well, he would be independently wealthy. And it wasn't going to be the bored, broke, underemployed developers they had scrounged up to work on commission for a signing bonus that delivered that dream. It was going to be Kevin Claypool.

As he entered another sweeper, Robert smiled, leaned the bike over, and throttled out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Melody twisted her wrist and winced as she heard the chatter of the valve train. She hit the kill switch and looked over at the RUB (Rich Urban Biker), who was anxiously watching her as she gave his bike a once over. "Dude," she said with a sigh, "you've got twenty-eight thousand miles on the clock - have you ever checked your valve lash?" The RUB, whose name she didn't recall at that moment, looked at her blankly and stuttered out, "I didn't think Harley's needed that?". Melody grimaced. 'This,' she thought to herself 'was what happened when your marketing worked too well.' "Yeah," she said. "Most Harley's have hydraulic lifters, but the V-rod is a higher compression higher-revving engine that was developed in conjunction with Porsche and, as a result, has shim under bucket valves that do need to be checked and adjusted, about every fifteen thousand miles." To give him credit where it was due, the RUB ran his hand along the gas tank and asked: "Can we fix it?" Melody nodded and gave him a thumbs up and a smile "Yeah, it's still running alright, so chances are good they are just a bit loose." She grabbed an order pad and scribbled down her best guess, which was usually pretty good. "Figure about five hours to take everything down and put it back together," she said, "shims are like a dollar each, so parts aren't going to be shit, it's really just the labor to get in there and measure the clearances, and swap the shims to get the clearances right again."

The RUB, whose name she now remembered as Eric, looked relieved and asked the inevitable question, "When can you get to her?". Melody looked around the shop. The rule of thumb in the shop was that whoever inspected and diagnosed the bike was the one who did the work and billed on it. She had a chain and sprocket job for a kid who didn't seem to understand the concept of cleaning and lubing his chain, and a belt replacement on a Road King that probably wasn't even necessary, but the owner was a 'do it by the maintenance schedule' kinda guy. "I got a couple of hours worth of work on bikes that came in earlier," she said, "but I can get started on it this afternoon, and have it done for you to pick up tomorrow after twelve."

Eric (she needed to work on remembering names, damnit), nodded gratefully, and signed the work order she threw together. "Call me if something comes up and it won't be ready" he said. Melody grinned and replied, "Will do, but I doubt I'll need to, the two of you will be riding off into the sunset tomorrow night!" He flashed her a thumbs up and scooted out of the shop, phone in hand, probably trying to get an uber. Melody sighed. Not all RUB's are assholes, she reminded herself, some of them just aren't mechanically inclined, but still loved to ride. She could respect that. Cracking her neck she walked over the CBR600R that needed it's fourth fucking chain and sprocket set in ten thousand miles, and set to work, taking joy in knowing that she was going to charge that little shit another three hundred dollars for something he could have prevented with twenty minutes, and a twenty-dollar can of chain lube.

As she worked, Melody let her mind drift. Deep Delve. Man, it was like a touchstone, like a mantra. Deep Delve. And it was finally coming. She'd read that it was confirmed that the studio had spent half a fucking trillion dollars on the engine, getting the game to feel like reality, but better. She had stopped playing her last VRMMORPG almost eight months ago, and she was fucking jonesing for a fix. But with her Dad having gotten worse, and the shop, she just hadn't had the time to keep up with a hardcore, elite gaming guild. She had invested a lot of hope into the idea that Deep Delve was going to be revolutionary, and give her an escape that didn't require the time investment that all the VRMMORPG grind fests required.

And they had hired Kev. It was nice for someone else to recognize his awesomeness. He was a bit of a mudge, sure, but in the grand calculation of things, Kevin came out on the sunnyside of awesome. And working at Wal-Mart was killing him. He never said, but Melody was certain that his soul was slowly withering in the dark depths of the refrigerated hell that he spent so much time in. She dropped the rusted sprocket set in a bucket as she broke out the new ones. She had convinced the kid to use aluminum this time, so at least when his chain rusted out, she wouldn't have to pull the sprockets off again. Deep Delve.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kevin pulled back, mentally at least, and looked down on his creation. It was, he thought, fucking unreal. He had created a redwood forest, with a smattering of laurel, maple, and oak trees growing in a pair of clearings he'd deliberately left open. Several patches of huckleberry and blackberry bushes could be found amongst the giant trunks. Keeping in mind that redwoods liked it damp, Kevin had placed a waterfall along the eastern edge, where it plummetted eight hundred feet down into a deep pool, which then flowed into a pair of streams that meandered through the cavern. One of the streams ending at the western wall, another ending at the southern, where it created a shallow pool before disappearing underground. He had been quite liberal with applying the 'Verdant' template he had created, and the result was spectacular. When he turned off the Sun (and at that moment, he truly felt godlike), the cavern was illuminated by a vibrant green glow that spread through the mist the waterfall created.

The options Kevin had discovered as he laid everything out were overwhelming. He had temperature selections for the water, as well as PH balance and mineral levels. Once he had added the waterfall and streams, he had started to add moss and some aquatic plants (he had sort of fixated on the water feature for a few hours), and the system listed options that were compatible with the mineral content and temperature he had chosen. It was as he added finalized the flora of his cavern that Kevin discovered the next piece of his dungeon puzzle.

Resouces. Apparently, the first level of a dungeon was limited to 1,000 resource points, in keeping with the idea that it was intended for players leveling from level five to level ten. Further investigation of the system showed that harvestable plants, which included mosses, berries, and even trees, counted against that total. Apparently, one resource point per resource collected from the source, so while a patch of moss or a water lily only counted as one point, a blackberry bush counted as ten, and an oak tree counted as two hundred. Kevin had received an error when he had tried to assign a redwood as a resource, leading him to believe it contained more than one thousand units of wood. Which to be fair, it probably did. This further lead him to the 'Dungeon Denizens' menu.

"Fuck, Robert wasn't kidding around when he said they had fucking everything," Kevin breathed as the menu expanded. Kobolds, goblins, gnolls, undead of every flavor. It was a veritable variety of villains, an avalanche of adversity, a bounty of bad guys, a... Kevin stopped alliterating at this point. "Ok," he said to himself, "Deep breath. What goes in a giant redwood forest?" The answer was simple. Animals. He could stick some bears, or wolves in there. He focused on the menu, and the monsters disappeared, to be replaced with an alphabetic list of animals. Narrowing his eyes, he scrolled down the list rapidly until he paused at the menu option for 'Badger.' The menu expanded out, listing a few dozen species. Overwhelmed, Kevin chose the first option on the list 'American Badger' and was rewarded with the image of a three-foot-long badger. It had cute white markings on its face, was simply a badger. He placed it on the ground in the curl of a redwood root and waited for a system prompt. He had learned that he could rely on the system to ask him additional pertinent questions when he added features.

'You have added an American Badger (female) to your dungeon' the system prompted. 'Would you like to set this creature as aggressive, or neutral? (Note that aggressive creatures cost full resource points based on their level, and dispense full experience shard rewards, whereas neutral creatures resource cost are halved, and can be set to dispense half experience shard rewards or no rewards).' Kevin paused, considering a moment. He needed more information. Putting the Badger to the side (he had learned he could do that while building the forest), he focused on the menu and concentrated while muttering "Resources." And the system responded.

'Resources - Each dungeon is allocated resources based on the maximum level of the intended player completing it. Initial dungeon levels are set from level five to level ten, allocating 1,000 resource points. Points may be spent on harvestable resources, and on creatures and their rewards. A base-level creature for this dungeon, if neutral, is .1 points. An aggressive creature is .2 points. This value was determined by allocating one resource point to a group of beings that a group of players might face. As the default group size for the dungeon is five, a five-player group would meet a party of five creatures, worth one resource point. As the level of the creatures increase, so does the resource point cost. A level ten neutral creature is .5 resource points, where a level ten aggressive creature will cost one full resource point. As an additional note, resources are by default common. They can be upgraded to uncommon or rare at the current depth of this dungeon. Uncommon resources cost twice the number of resource points to place. However, they can be modified concerning the rewards they offer. Rare resources cost quadruple the number of resource points and offer further options in terms of rewards. The dungeon cannot be finalized without the inclusion of at least one rare, aggressive creature.'

"Well then," Kevin said, "floor bosses are a thing." He glanced over at his Badger and brought it back into focus. He moved his focus over to the Badger menu and looked at the options. Sure enough, there were options for its loot, as well as its name and its size and its level. The menu also contained the now familiar menu for customizing the Badger's appearance. 'First things first,' Kevin thought as he applied the 'Verdant' template to the Badger. He was delighted as the pattern of the Badger's fur changed, and the tips of some of the hairs began to glow slightly. "Now that," he said, "is one adorable Badger." He then frowned. He wasn't exactly going for adorable, was he? This was a dungeon, not a vacation spot. With a sigh, he set his Badger to the side and prepared to exit Deep Delve. The helpful clock that kept track of how long you were logged into the game indicated he'd been working for a bit over fourteen hours, and while he couldn't feel it, he was absolutely certain that he needed to piss like a racehorse.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Julie was a little bit worried. She wasn't quite sure when exactly Kevin had started working, but it was Sunday morning now, and she'd not heard from him. She sighed, wishing he had opted to turn on the external communications option on his VR rig. She doubted that whatever he was doing disabled it, and it would have let her message him to see what he was doing, and more importantly if he wanted to grab breakfast. As she was folding her laundry, she heard the telltale scream of the showerhead of tormented souls and knew that Kev had emerged from his VR rig. She walked to his room, nudged open the door and called in, "Dude, you wanna grab some breakfast? Denny's down the block, my treat!" A few seconds passed, then she heard the showerhead of tormented souls end its wailing lamentation. Kev's voice rang out from the shower, "Say again? " "Breakfast at Denny's, on me," Julie yelled into his room. "Sure thing, I'll be out in five," Kevin replied.

Julie walked back to her room and grabbed her phone. She knew Mel had done a night shift with her Dad, and could probably use a pick me up meal as well. She shot a message to her friend, inviting her out to Denny's with her and Kev, then grabbed her purse gave herself a quick once over in the six-foot-tall mirror she had mounted on the outside of her closet door. Good enough for Denny's, she decided. She went to the garage and backed her beat-up old Ford Explorer out into the driveway. Her recent commission check was going to pay her rent and bills for the next month and get her into a newer, nicer car. It was shallow, but appearances matter, and it was hard to sell a three hundred thousand dollar house when she drove a one thousand dollar car. People judged. She knew that being young and quite frankly beautiful certainly helped her in that regard. But still. If she arrived at a showing in a car that didn't have a sun-beaten paint job and sounded less like it needed a new exhaust, it would be just that much easier to be taken seriously.

As she ruminated on the many ways her career would be improved by a shinier car, Kevin emerged from the house, looking like about a dollar fifty. He looked worn down, and Julie knew that he had worked through the night. She reached over and threw open the passenger door, the latch for which had ceased opening from the outside long before she had bought it. Kevin slid in, closed the door, buckled up, and leaned back in the seat. "Dude," he said. Julie nodded sagely and replied, "Dude." As she pulled out of the driveway, she asked Kevin, "So, pulled an all-nighter, eh?" "Yeah," Kevin replied, squinting against the morning sunlight. "I can't tell ya what I'm doing, but I can say that it's gonna eat a pretty huge chunk of my time for the next two weeks." "But big money, right?" Julie asked as they rolled to the intersection and waited for the light to change. "I don't think I told you yet, but I got a thirty thousand dollar signing bonus," Kevin said a bit more cheerfully. "Dude!" Julie replied, "That's awesome!" Kevin shot her a grin. "Yes," he said, "yes, it is."

They arrived at Denny's about four minutes later. It was just outside the subdivision they called home and was a favored hangout for both the residents and USF students who lived nearby. Julie dragged a staggering Kevin into a booth and nodded to the waitress who walked by, asking for a pair of cokes to start. "So," she began, "I also have good news on the job front." Kevin opened his eyes and quirked an eyebrow. Julie went on, "The reason for the party the other night, was that I closed a house for someone I had sold to a few years ago, making it not only my first-time repeat buyer but also the largest commission I've ever earned." Kevin reached over the table to deliver a high-five. "That's great, just one more step towards your inevitable real estate domination." Julie grinned at him, "Yep, and while it isn't thirty grand, it is ten, which means I can pay my bills for a couple of months, and finally replace the beast with something a bit more upscale."

It was at this point that their conversation was interrupted twofold, first by the arrival of their drinks, and second by the arrival of their Melody, who crashed into an unsuspecting Kevin like a tiny tiger pouncing onto a larger, unwary water buffalo.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Wassup bitches!" Melody yelled in what she knew was not an indoor voice. She gave up trying to nudge Kevin over, as he didn't seem to be taking the hint today, and just crawled over him to take the inside seat of the booth. "I'll have a coke as well," she informed the surprised waitress before she turned her attention back to Kevin, who seemed to have recovered from her pouncing. "So," she said grinning, as Kevin straightened his shirt. "Word on the street is you're bailing on Satan and saddling up with New Realities." Kevin gave her a glance that seemed oddly wary and nodded. Melody grinned wider, and said, "Don't worry, I flipped my shit earlier when Julie told me - you were logged into your VR rig and dead to the world." Kevin quirked an eyebrow - she wished she knew how he managed that, at best she could just sort of scrunch, and she wasn't going all Edward d'Eath over it. "So Julie wouldn't tell me shit or let me throw a party for you, or anything, so I'm just all hyped up and can't blow my load, so tell me what they have ya doing!" She finished, bouncing in her seat a bit.

Kevin dropped the eyebrow and replied with a god awful serious look on his face, said, "NDA." "Dude, really?" Melody asked. Her best friend got a gig working on Deep Delve, which was going to be like, her whole life, and he couldn't say what he was doing? That sucked. She pouted. "Can't say a damn thing, eh?" Melody said. Kevin nodded. Melody sighed. Everyone knew about that court case where the Alpha tester ended up in prison. New Realities was not fucking around with their NDA's and their intellectual property. Kevin grinned and elbowed her gently in the shoulder as he said: "All I can tell you is that when you play it, you are gonna fucking flip your shit on a truly epic scale."