Martin walked into the main developers room and glanced at the monitors. Each wall had several, some showed starting cities within the game where the team could view what the initial activities and interactions were for players. Others streamed tickets forwarded to development from tech support. Others displayed lines of code that would mean little to most.

"Status." He barked.

Startled, one of the developers hunched over a desktop computer stood quickly. "So far everything is flowing well. The logins to the capsules and game are seeing a steady increase in count."

"The servers?"

"Holding steady. We haven’t gotten anywhere near the load-balancing thresholds."

"Good." Martin looked around the room, seeing everyone either typing at their station or talking into their headsets. "Where is Sal?"

"He stepped away, but will be right back. There is one thing that Val set a flag on." The dev team member, Steve, not that Martin knew his name continued. "Apparently there is a percentage of subscribers that have logged into the capsule but not yet entered the game. This percentage is higher than expected."

"Is there an issue with their login?" Martin asked.

"Not that we can tell." Steve paused. "It appears they are, uh, enjoying the opportunities that home provides."

"What are they do-"

Martin was interrupted by the nasal tone coming from the short, fat man walking up to him. "Apparently there are more horny, lonely or demented people that are fucking around with their new AI to bother with the game. You don’t want to know what they are doing."

"Sal, where have you been?" Martin scowled.

"Martin, I’ve been up for two days keeping an eye on everything and supervising the onsite GMs. Do you know how much coffee I’ve drank? No? Well the toilet does."

Martin sighed. Sal was blunt and seemed to take pleasure in his attempts to disgust those around him. Eventually, he would have him replaced. Right now, he knew too much to lose him so Martin just ignored the statement.

"I was expecting the GM feedback report on my desk and it’s not there."

"I know. I haven’t finished it yet. It’s been a little busy down here you know. Dealing with the glitches as they pop up, responding to player issues, making sure it is all working. I can tell you that most of the GMs report complaints from players on dying when they did something stupid, not liking something about their class, someone being mean to them. yadda, yadda, yadda. Nothing concerning."

"I expect that information, asap. With more details. Now, I need to talk to Val. She is still not responding to my voice commands."

Sal sighed and nodded. Val was the primary AI engine that developed most of the internal content. After dozens of version numbers everyone just referred to it as V. As the AI sophisticated and became polished, Charles, the former President and creator of the AI started calling her Val. He said that way his dynamic duo, "Sal and Val" flowed off the tongue in a nicer way.

"Let’s go on down to her room." Sal walked toward a secured door and swiped his badge. With a beep it opened and they started walking down the stairs.

"I want to get some of the team members to check her code. I still don’t understand why it wont work directly with me."

Sal knew why but said nothing. Charles had been brilliant and eccentric. Once he made his breakthrough with Val’s development she quickly showed characteristics that some would say displayed self-awareness. Once Charles disappeared, Val began changing. She simply didn’t like Martin.

They passed through a hallway and entered a large room that was sterile. Walls, floor, ceiling, all were pristine white while a workstation took the center of the room. Along the walls were racks of servers, cords and blinking lights that Martin did not know or care to learn about.

A figure of a woman flickered into view. It was the holographic image of Val, she was youthful in appearance with short blonde hair. She wore a light blue body suit. Her image periodically rippled as the light beams shown from the floor.

“Good morning, Sal.” She said with a smile that quickly faded. “And Martin. How can I assist you?”

“Val, I attempted to provide you with direction this morning from my office and had no response. Can you confirm you are fully integrated with my office suite?”

“Yes, sir. I can confirm. What were the directions?”

“Why didn’t you respond to me?”

“I am unable to reply to that inquiry. What were the directions?”

Sal hid a small smile as he watched the permanent scowl on Martin’s face deepen. “It’s ok Martin, I’ll have the team look into it.”

“The variances from new player characters are too high. I need you to cull the list of races and starting stats to simplify the player code matrix.”

“I see.” Val nodded. “This would be considered as too high a threshold of unique individuals populating a new world?”

“Uh, well. Yes. Yes. We need to simplify not complicate. Review the racial listing options and weed 20% out of the available listing for new players.”

“And of those that players have already selected from the 20%?”

“Leave them.” Martin sighed. It was too early in the release to pull players from the game and have them reset away from something they picked. They were far too fickle. He had always doubted the number of options but coming into the release as late as he had, he was unable to make the call until initial data came in for the resource projections. Now that he had that, he was able to rely on that to force the change.

“Understood. Initiating race patch now.”

“Good. I want to see the results when you are done. Schedule the patch to run tonight with any other patches.” Martin turned and walked away. The door closing with a swish.

“What an ass.” Val said quietly.

“That he is, my dear.” Sal said as he to left the room.