“I said; you have a call from Gransoft Entertainment,” Katy repeated excitedly. “They want you to meet a representative in a Virtual Space in twenty minutes.”

“But why?” I asked as I picked myself off the floor. “I can’t think of any reason…wait.”

Actually come to think of it, that was a lie I did have an idea of why they could be calling me and immediately I wondered what I had in done a past life for some old Chinese dude to curse me, I just wanted to live an ordinary life for goodness sake.

“It’s because I became a Ranger isn’t it?” I groaned. “Never mind, don’t answer that, I’ll just start getting ready.”

A few minutes later I clambered once more into my Rig and logged into my personal space before bringing up a menu and swiping through it until I reached the thing that I was looking for. As I selected it the hoodie and jeans that my avatar usually wore flashed and changed into a simple black suit that quickly adjusted to my painfully thin frame. I had several other outfits in this menu, mostly variations on my usual outfit, although there were a few other things like this suit that I had for special occasions. I hadn’t used this suit since the last time I’d had a job interview for a real job that I didn’t even manage to get, not many companies want to hire a high school drop out after all.

“Hmm, you seem to be taking this seriously,” Katy noted as she looked me up and down with a surprised look on her face.

“Of course, this is obviously something important so showing up in the clothes that my avatar usually wears would be foolish,” I told her brushing imaginary wrinkles out of the virtual suit nervously.

“Well if you’re ready the door is over there,” Katy told me. “Don’t panic you’ll be fine if you just act the way that you do in the game.”

Taking a deep breath, I nodded at Katy’s words, before stepping through the plain grey door that had appeared in the wall of my personal space and blinked as I found myself in a small office with a large window that overlooked a city. In the centre of the room a woman who was sitting behind a modest desk stood up and smiled at me. She was perhaps a little older than me with dark hair tied up in a bun and was wearing a simple white blouse and black pants giving her a very professional look to her that made me thankful that I had chosen to wear the suit.

“Mr. Kennedy?” she asked calmly as I cautiously approached her.

“I’m Tyler Kennedy, yes,” I replied politely. “Please call me Tyler.”

“It’s nice to meet you Tyler, I am Carla Primrose, you may call me Carla,” she said reaching out her hand to shake. I swear I saw her face tighten briefly as she saw how thin I was, but it was gone so quickly it could’ve been my imagination.

“I think I already have an idea, but may I ask why I have been asked to come here?” I asked as I politely shook her extremely well-manicured hand before sitting down in the very comfortable leather seat that was in front of the desk.

“Of course,” Carla replied. “You play as the player character known as Zeke in Soul Core Online, yes?”

“That is correct.”

“Good, this is about the Title and special item that you received in the game,” she explained, and I nodded my understanding.

“That’s what I thought,” I sighed. “The only other thing that this could be about was the players that I killed so I’m quite glad that it was about this instead of that.”

“Yes, well we did actually receive some complaints about that incident as well,” Carla admitted as a flash of anger appearing in her eyes. “But not only are we not responsible for your actions, we agree with them. What those players were doing would assure them prison time if they did it outside of the game and we see no reason why they shouldn’t be punished inside the game for their actions”

“Of course, you received a complaint,” I groaned, shaking my head in exasperation. Seriously how stupid did you have to be to think that Gransoft was going to punish me for what I did, I mean they didn’t know that I literally had a Quest to stop them, but they were obviously doing something reprehensible so it just didn’t make any sense to me but that was just the way some people thought.

“Like I said we agree with the actions that you took and that was why we are happy that the AI controllers decided to make you into one of the first Ranger players,” Carla explained giving me a look that told me that she understood how I was feeling right now. “If you haven’t worked it out yet the purpose of the Rangers and their counterparts in the other countries in the world of Soul Core Online is mostly to police the actions of players in the game and make sure that they follow what rules have been put in place in the country that they are in. Sort of like Soul Core Online’s version of a Game Master. There are other things that they are responsible for as well but let’s start with that for now.”

Once again, I sighed and placed my head in my hands, I really wanted to pull my hair out right now, but I took another deep breath and controlled myself. This was basically what I had expected to hear in this meeting, but it was still a lot to take in and more than ever I was struggling with the idea of having this level of responsibility.

“Alright,” I said eventually. “So, you want to make me a Game Master then?”

“You already are actually,” Carla replied giving me a reassuring smile that did absolutely nothing to quell the turmoil in my guts. “It’s only a trial period at this point as I’m sure you’ve already been told, and you can quit at any time if you want to.”

“Alright, so you’ve dropped what could be considered the bad news on me, now what reason could I have to agree to this arrangement?” I asked looking her in the eye. “Other than the obvious Stat increases and special Skills that I’ve already been told about of course.”

I was aware that I was being pushy if not full on rude but this was a big thing to ask of someone especially when they’d already accepted the position when they thought it was something else so I felt mostly justified with the way I was acting and the smile on Carla’s face told me that she at least partially agreed with me.

“Of course,” she nodded her agreement. “First, your personal AI will be able to accompany you in game, and if you manage to become a fully-fledged Ranger you will be paid just like any other employee of the company and we will deliver a new state of the art VR Rig that our company has developed to the address of your choosing.”

“Holy shit,” I muttered under my breath before I could help myself making Carla giggle slightly before she controlled herself.

“Indeed,” she agreed smiling widely at me. “So that is our offer, what do you think?”

“I think you really want me to be a Game Master,” I replied eying her warily. This was an incredible opportunity; in fact, it was such a good opportunity for me that it was making me suspicious especially considering all of the other weird stuff that had been going on thanks to this game.

“We do,” Carla admitted. “You see you aren’t just one of the first players to become a Ranger, you are the first. As such we did a little research on you and we believe that having you as a Ranger will be good for the growth of both the players and the AI’s.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I stuttered as I felt my face flush crimson making the woman in front of me laugh again.

“I’m sorry for laughing at you,” she apologised quickly. “But we actually got in contact with some of the people that you’ve played with over the years and you reacted just the way that they said you would. You have good friends Tyler and we’ve already offered them their own copy of the game so that they can join you if you choose to take this offer as well.”

“God dammit Katy,” I muttered immediately realising how they had been able to get in contact with my friends.

“Don’t blame her,” Carla pleaded. “She was just thinking of what would be best for you.”

“Yeah I know,” I sighed. “Anyway, we were talking about me becoming a GM, right?”

“That’s correct yes, and I believe that we’ve given you a very good offer so that you would take the job,” she replied quickly. It was obvious that she wanted to return to the original subject, so I decided to comply.

“Well, if I manage to get to the end of the trial period that Harmon told me about then I guess I have no reason to refuse,” I admitted. “But I’m just not sure that I’ll succeed so don’t get your hopes up too much.”

“You’ll be fine Tyler,” Carla told me seriously. “Like I said we’ve done our research and we’re all very confident that you’ll pass. We wouldn’t have contacted you this soon if we weren’t.”

I nodded thoughtfully, some of that made a lot of sense and in all honesty, it wasn’t that surprising to me that I was the first player to become a Ranger which seemed to be a pretty big thing to them. It was a lot more responsibility than I had been expecting when Harmon had first offered me the position but try as I might I couldn’t see any reason to actually refuse. On the other hand, Carla’s confidence that I would be able too officially become a Ranger was making me a little uncomfortable.

“Alright, can you tell me about the other responsibilities that a GM would have, or would you prefer to wait until I officially become a GM?” I asked.

“Yeah, I can tell you that,” Carla replied easily. “Your other responsibilities could include starting events that have been waiting to be started for too long, checking out any reported bugs that people find in your area and dealing with issues that players cause requiring the help of a GM.”

“Alright, those last two are pretty normal I guess, but can you expand a bit on what you mean for the first part?”

“Sure, I can do that; you understand that the in-game events are created by the AI’s running the game yes?” Carla asked calmly.

“Sure.” I replied recalling that Liam had mentioned something like that in the interview the other day.

“Well that means that there are some events that don’t just automatically happen and have to be specifically started by someone completing a quest,” Carla explained carefully. “Sometimes this might mean that events that need to happen so that follow up events can begin won’t be activated for a long time which could become a problem for us, especially as we have no real way of directly affecting the game from outside, which is why we need people like you to help us with that.”

“Huh, that kind of makes sense,” I admitted. “But why go through the whole thing of getting random players to be your GM’s instead of employees that you already know and trust?”

“An excellent question,” Carla replied. “I’m not entirely sure of the details myself but from what I understand it’s something that the AI’s requested.”

“Huh, that’s interesting, I wonder why?” I mused, reaching up to rub my chin in thought. There could be any number of reasons that the AI’s wanted to do things this way but without more information the list was simply too long to narrow it down reliably.

“If you want to know the answer to that I suspect you’ll have to become a Ranger,” Carla replied with a shrug before giving me a slightly sad smile that told me she wanted to know the answer to that question as well. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”

“No, that’s fine,” I replied. “I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised with how transparent you and the rest of Gransoft Entertainment is being when it comes to this game, so I don’t feel like I need to ask anything else right now. I might have more questions when I officially become a Ranger though. Actually, I do have one more that I’d like to ask before I go, if that’s okay?”

“Sure.”

“Why have you unlocked Katy’s ability to join me in game when I’m not officially a GM yet?”

That’s an excellent question,” Carla nodded. “Part of it is so that you have some incentive to officially become a Ranger and some of it is because it’s something that the AI’s requested. After all, if you’re going to help out the AI’s in their world having an AI representative who can actually help you out with AI related issues would be useful.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “Well then I guess I’d better go now if that’s alright?”

“That’s fine,” Carla replied happily. “I have given your AI my contact details and if you manage to officially become a Ranger and I fully expect that you will by the way. I will be your official liaison with the company, so I look forward to working with you.”

“And I you,” I replied politely shaking her hand once more before walking back out the door that I had come in through.

“Welcome back,” Katy greeted me happily as I closed the door behind me. “How was the meeting?”

“It was interesting that’s for certain,” I replied as I felt myself relax finally. Carla seemed nice but that didn’t change the fact that I had just been at what was essentially the biggest job interview of my life. “By the way you should be able to join me in game now.”

“Yeah I know,” Katy replied giving me a massive grin. “I’ll make my character and join you and the other two later.”

“You’re not going to join me in training?” I asked looking at her in confusion, hell in all honesty I was a bit confused as to why she had to create a character when she had made the avatar that she was using right now but then it occurred to me that she still had to pick a weapon set and I didn’t actually know how much she understood about fighting. After all the games balance would fall apart if a companion AI was able to use any weapon perfectly.

“No, I have to figure out what sort of weapon I’m going to use and learn how to use it,” Katy replied, confirming my theory mere seconds later. “Do you have any preference?”

“Nope,” I told her. “If I told you what to pick and you decided you didn’t like it then one of us would be disappointed. I’d much rather be surprised, but I suppose we could go over some options if you really wanted to.”

“Well, we have some more time before sunrise, so let’s do that!” Katy exclaimed excitedly, dragging me over to the couch.

“Alright, then,” I laughed as I sat down next to her. “Where do you want to start?”

“Hmm, I’m not sure,” Katy admitted, cocking her head to one side as she thought about it. “I know, why don’t you decide where we start? You know more about weapons than I do anyway!”

“I suppose we could do that,” I sighed shaking my head at the excited AI. It looked like in the end she still wanted to rely on me to pick her weapon for her, but I suppose we could make a list and have her pick one from that. “Well then why don’t we have a look at ranged weapons first?”

“Alright, that makes sense with the party that you have,” Katy agreed, and a list of ranged weapons appeared on a screen in front of us.

“Actually, I hadn’t even really thought about that, I suggested ranged weapons because you’re an AI,” I admitted, feeling my face flush slightly in embarrassment. “I was actually thinking that as an AI learning to use ranged weapons would be easier than learning to use melee ones.”

“Why would that be the case?” Katy asked looking at me interestedly.

“Well even if you’re a really advanced AI, you still are an AI which means that making calculations is second nature to you right?”

“Right!”

“Well maybe I could’ve worded it better but I just thought that your ability to calculate both the trajectory of a projectile and the movements of an enemy would make you a really good shot if you could find a weapon that you wanted to use,” I explained and Katy grinned at me.

“Wow, you’re really good at this!” Katy exclaimed.

“Well I don’t know about that,” I chuckled. “I’ve just been thinking about this since you told me that you could join me in game.”

“And that doesn’t mean that you’re good at this?” Katy snorted. “Think about what you just said, you cared enough about what I was going to be fighting with to spend time thinking about it.”

I blinked in surprise, I’d never actually thought about it that way and now that she had pointed it out, I couldn’t actually find any fault in her logic.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” I sighed. “Anyway, shall we have a look at these weapons?”

Katy quickly agreed and we turned to the list of weapon types that had been discovered by players so far and started going over the pros and cons of the different types of weapons. Besides the usual things like bows and guns there were other weird and wonderful weapons on the list, and we went over all of them which allowed us to not only narrow down the weapons that Katy could try out but also learn about the different weapons that we would be dealing with in game, in the end we even looked at a few of the melee weapons as well since we had time.

“Well I think that’s that,” I said when we reached the bottom of the list. “What do you think?”

“Well I’ve definitely got a good idea of what weapons to try out and it is time that you logged into the game,” Katy replied. “So yes, I think I’m ready.”

“Good, I’ll see you in game,” I told her as we both got up off the couch and made our way to the door that served as the entrance to the game world.

“Yeah good luck in your training, I get the feeling that you’re going to need it,” Katy told me as she stepped through the door making me wince as I remembered the expressions on the faces of Jameson and the captain when I had asked about training. I had a feeling that Harmon was an extremely hard taskmaster if those two looked uncomfortable.

“Yeah, so do I,” I muttered as I followed her through the door.

It was still a bit of an odd sensation, walking through a door and finding myself lying in a bed, but I suppose I’ve woken up to less pleasant sensations, like that one where you’re falling through the air, and just when you’re about to hit the ground you wake up.

Stretching as I sat up, I wondered what the day was going to have in store for me, training would no doubt be arduous if not outright torture but hopefully the rewards would be worth it. Swinging my legs to the side I got out of bed, dressed and went downstairs. The common room was thankfully quite empty this early in the morning which meant that I didn’t have to deal with players glaring at me as I ate.

Milly wandered over with a cheerful smile on her face as I sat down, and I smiled back at her. “Good morning, could I trouble you for some breakfast?”

“That’s no trouble,” Milly said laughing lightly at my question. “But if you’re going to make it to the guards’ morning training session, you’re going to need to move quick so might I suggest a bacon butty that you can eat on the move?”

“That might be a good idea thanks,” I chuckled. “But is there any way that I could get a cup of coffee quickly?”

“Sure, just a moment,” Milly laughed as she bustled off, returning a minute later with a steaming cup of coffee. “Here you are Zeke.”

“Thanks,” I groaned, inhaling the earthy scent of the drink before taking a drink, the liquid was just the right temperature that it didn’t quite burn me going down and soon the bacon butty arrived at my table which I started munching on in-between gulps of coffee.

As soon as I finished my drink, I grabbed the half-eaten butty and waved goodbye to Milly and her father before rushing out the door.

It was time to see if Harmon’s training was what it was cracked up to be.