*Ring* *Ring* *Ring*

Jaden blearly lifted his head off his desk wiping a bit of drool from his chin.

Briefly reorienting himself the cause of his waking once again reared its head.

*Ring* *Ring* *Ring*

Gazing around his comfortably sized room eyes skipping over the blue walls and posters in favor of the surfaces present he eventually spotted his phone sitting on his nightstand.

Getting up from his chair with a catlike stretch and blinking rapidly from the bright sunlight streaming through a large window that sat above his desk Jaden walked over and grabbed his phone.

Sitting down on his bed he glanced at the caller ID before accepting the call.

“Hey Jaden hows it going?” a stern toned voice came through over the phone.

“Pretty good” replied Jaden who then let out a drawn-out yawn before continuing, “What are you calling so early about?”

“Early? Its noon Jaden… were you up all night again? I swear im going to tell the technician to put a playtime limit on your pod when he comes to install it later.”

“WAIT WHAT!” exclaimed Jaden, “I thought you said the pods were supposed to go out on Saturday!” he said as he glanced at his clock to ensure he hadn’t slept an entire day he was both happy and confused to see that it was Friday.

“Hehe, given your history with the company the board of directors was all too happy to send you an advanced pod and access to the game. At least when I suggested it and explained who you were… you should be able to log on about 5 pm tonight and get a slight head start.” replied the voice.

“STEVEN!” said Jaden, “you always spring shit like this on me last second!”

“Well given that you still play that Craftsmaster character in a game that hasn’t had an online server with other players for you to sell your gear too for 7 years now im really excited to see what you can do with what we created,” said Steven.

“Welp, I have to go now. Good talking to you, the install man should be there in about 10 minutes so I would recommend getting dressed at the very least” finished Steven.

“I’ll consider it, cya” replied Jaden snarkily as he hung up the phone.

Walking into a huge closet he started to consider the decisions that led him to the point he was at now.

When he was nine years old his mother died of a rare mutation caused by her job in an air filtration plant. It was eventually determined that her death was because the management of the plant cheaped out on the worker’s protective equipment. This opened a hole for his father to sue them into the ground, unfortunately the death of his mother caused his father to fall into a deep depression and abuse his body with alcohol and lack of sleep. With his father essentially out of commission, he was forced to quickly overcome his grief and be relatively self-sufficient.

Eventually, a few years later his father, despite having recovered mentally by this point, died of cirrhosis due to his extremely heavy drinking.

At this point, he was 17 years old and in his last year of high school so eventually it was determined, mainly because he was already basically self-sufficient and was inheriting a massive sum of money, that he would be allowed to live alone until he turned 18 despite being a minor.

The one condition enacted by the court however was they he wanted someone to check up on him weekly, to this end Jaden asked his best friend, Steven’s, parents, to take on that responsibility. They accepted and he lived his last year of high school alone before heading off to college. This was the point that Steven and he parted ways, Steven’s dream was to launch a startup while Jaden planned to study business in college.

The next time he was in contact with Steven was halfway through his college career, one night he got a call from Steven who was sounding a bit desperate. Steven asked Jaden to invest in his company, he claimed that they had just made a huge breakthrough but no bank would loan to them as they had little in tangible assets and investors considered them extremely high risk.

Jaden had known Steven since kindergarten, it didn’t take much convincing before Jaden invested $300,000, a third of his remaining money from the settlement his dad had agreed to with the air treatment plant, for 49% control in Stevens company.

This investment would be one of the best ever recorded in history. While at the time full dive VR was a blossoming technology one aspect still evaded developers, the infamous time compression. Stevens company that faithful night had made a breakthrough, they had managed to slightly alter time perception while in a full dive. The change was minuscule, barely a .01% increase to perceived time, but that tiny increase was the key to it all.

With Jadens investment they advanced by leaps and bounds, it started with military training pods but eventually almost every company based around VR was using AlphaComp Industries time compression algorithms in their games and tools.

At this point, the company was literally valued at billions of dollars. Jaden decided to sell all but 10% of his shares. This one sale made him one of the wealthiest men in the world, he really didn’t change much from the money he made however. He was still the same geeky kid who spent hours doing what he loved, except now he didn’t have to work to maintain his passion and he could live much more comfortably.

He loved crafting. It was just what he did. The feeling of creating fantastical weapons, tools, armors, and equipment was amazing to him. Unfortunately, he could never really find a game that let him have total freedom when crafting. The closest he got was an ancient 2D MMO that let him design his weapons the way he wished with very few restrictions. There were still some flaws though, the game had no multiplayer servers still up and while the crafting was excellent the combat utterly sucked, this drove off a lot of the players.

He was even at one point considering putting together his own team to create the game he dreamed of, what was the point of money if you didn’t use it? However right around this time, he received some exciting news from his friend Steven. Steven’s company would be launching a new VRMMO at the end of the year, and being his best friend and hearing him rant for hours at a time as a kid Steven had made sure that the game was nearly limitless in what you do in all aspects, including crafting.

That led up to today. The game was set to launch tomorrow, but it seemed like he would be getting in a little bit early. Glancing at his watch Jaden realizing he better get a move on as he had been reminiscing for 8 minutes and Steven was known for good timing.

Pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of jeans Jaden rushed down the huge staircase of his, for all intents and purposes, mansion.

Grabbing a cup of coffee from the machine in his kitchen that had started brewing when it sensed he woke up. He was just in time to watch the AlphaComp Industries truck pull into his driveway from a beautiful wall-sized glass window.

Opening the door for the installer and his helper he directed them to an empty room he had set up months ago explicitly for the pod. It took about 10 minutes for the workers to bring in the sleek silver pod and get it all set up, before he left the installer approached Jaden and handed him a letter saying, “the boss told me to give this to you before I left, have fun with the game!”

Thanking him Jaden closed the door and began to open the letter in his hand.