“Good morning all, thank you for being present for a meeting this early,” Mr. Herman Powers, CEO of Nornyr Online said. His hologram shifted forward, leaning on his elbows by a hologram table. Even though he had greying hair with stress wrinkles on his face, he was still handsome and full of charisma. He was the CEO of several large tech companies before getting the position of CEO of JYE. “Also, thanks to Mr. Stone for being with us even though you took a late night trip to Mervell.”

“It’s fine. I had a nap," I said, laughing heartily. " I would have travelled here this morning but I thought it was better to be here as soon as possible in case something bad came up."

Mr. Powers, or rather, his hologram smiled, his powerful shaved jaw jutting out. “Just a bit of introduction then since Mr. Stone is new to our company.” He gestured to the man beside him, also a hologram. “I’m sure you know Mr. Armand. And this one is Mr. Cao, the head of the team we’ve sent there in Mervell.”

“We’ve talked a while ago,” I said, giving an acknowledging nod to Mr. Cao’s projection. "I hope we could meet in person later today, Mr. Cao."

“And Mrs. Alabaster, head of our public relations.”

I also gave her a nod with a respectful smile. The four holograms were projected around the living room of the suite I got in a hotel in Mervell. The room was quite spacious with most amenities seen in the most modern hotels. It wasn’t a five star, unfortunately. However, all their best rooms had a JYE VR pod as part of their entertainment compliments!

Best hotel ever. Well, for now anyway. Since I wanted to try going on a Hunt with other people later.

“Mr. Cao, what do we have?”

Mr. Cao was looking at something that was outside the scope of his projection. He said, “Well, the police won’t allow us to examine the machine, quite understandable, but we were able to get the unit number. I’ve given it to Mr. Armand.”

Mr. Armand said, “Initial analysis shows no defects. We’re performing a deeper check on a control unit from that batch we have stocked. We’re also tracking all units from that batch in case we need to...” Mr. Armand licked his lips before saying, “Uh…recall.”

“We didn’t get much data since the police were still investigating the case. Mr. Stone also told us that it’s better not to pester the police,” Mr. Cao said with a laugh.

I said, “It’s a small city so I wasn’t expecting their medical examiner to work round the clock. Crime rates have been at an all-time low anyway so I suppose they don’t have much on their plate right now. Hopefully, they’ll release the results along with the police report after lunchtime today. That’s the preliminary report only, but we will be able to know the cause of death.”

“Any chance that we’ll get a copy of that before release?” Mr. Powers said.

“Well, we could talk to them. However, I advise that we don’t interfere for now until we make sure that a malfunctioning JYE unit was not the cause of death.”

“Isn’t it better that we make a statement now?" Mrs. Alabaster said. She peered with stern eyes from her glasses. I wondered why she just didn’t get surgery or some implants for her eyes. Maybe one of those people that don’t like the bionic implants that were proliferating now. “There are some journalists and reporters asking about our stance on the matter. We might make it to the early news in the US. People are talking that perhaps JYE pods could cause...accidents.”

“Yes,” Mr. Powers said. “We don’t want what happened to Grae’s WeeCees.”

I was familiar with that case. “Well, that has a lot to do if our product is actually at fault here or not.” I raised a brow at Mr. Armand.

“It is my firm belief that it wasn’t caused by our products,” Mr. Armand said in a slightly hurt tone. I could understand what he felt. This was his creation. I didn’t think that he was actually sympathetic to the deceased, rather, I felt that he was offended that his creation was suspected of failing. I thought that he was a generic ‘good’ guy, but apparently, he has hierarchies of what he cared about.

I find it fun to discover new things about people around me.

Mr. Cao cleared his throat. “We did talk to the neighbor early this morning. We just said that we’re reporters. Mr. Stone said that it looks like we’re admitting liability if we openly investigate. Anyway, the neighbor did say on the news that the unit was turned on, what he didn’t say was that the lights around the port wer turned on.”

“Green light?” Mr. Armand asked.

“Green light,” Mr. Cao confirmed. “The unit was not only turned on but was also in the middle of playing the game. It appears he was able to detach himself from the game.”

“But that’s not possible. You can’t just will yourself to…I don’t know,” Mr. Armand said, stuttering in disbelief. “Stand up and leave the game? Yes. You can’t just do that without logging out of the game.”

“He disconnected himself while he was inside the game? Not with logging off the game?” Mr. Powers said. That’s what you’re saying?”

“Well, that was what it looks like if the unit’s port light was green. That means the game is running and his account is still logged on. This doesn’t make any sense.”

I raised my hand to get everyone’s attention. “That’s why we should be discreet right now. It might be the spinal port malfunctioning, our unit malfunctioning—”

“Never,” Mr. Armand said with a passion.

"It might even be a murder case for all we know. If what the neighbor said was true, someone could have pulled him out of the pod while still inside the game and, I dunno, short-circuited the spinal port? Is that possible?"

"If the spinal port of the dead reporter was defective," Mr. Cao said.

"But our machine could not have caused death if you were forcefully disconnected," Mr. Armand said. "Zero. Chance." He said with emphasis.

"Well, that's good then," Mr. Powers said. "If it does turn out to be a murder case, I hope we are able to distance ourselves as much as possible."

"JYE pod, murder weapon," Mrs. Alabaster drawled. "Best headline a journalist could hope."

"Any comments from a legal perspective, Mr. Stone?" Mr. Powers asked me.

"I was actually from Chives and Clives," I said.

Mr. Powers raised his brow. "That's the law firm that handled the Grae WeeCee lawsuits several years ago."

"Yes. I was a senior associate, assisting Mr. Clives, the senior one, may he rest in peace." I then looked solemn, as if I was thinking what to say next. "I can't divulge some details because of attorney-client privilege, but I could tell you about the cases filed against the company. Those are public records now anyway since those were settled.

"Anyway, the normal practice when companies decide whether to recall or not is to weigh the costs of possible lawsuits from defective products and compare it to the cost of the recall itself, along with the costs of replacement, and then recall if the former was costlier."

"We do have a projected value for that, Mr. Stone." Mrs. Alabaster shared to us several files. I didn't bother going through them because that wasn't the point I wanted to make. "As you can see, given our generous percentage chance for failing units, recall and replacement would still be more costly."

"I thought we have already established that my work does not have defects?" Mr. Armand said in a slightly raised tone.

"Mr. Armand, let us hear what Mr. Stone has to say," the CEO said in a commanding but calm voice.

"Besides that value, there are formulas that include future costs to the company," I said.

Mrs. Alabaster quickly said, "I'm afraid we won't be able to produce a value for that. Loss of goodwill, future sales..."

Why do they keep interrupting me? Fuckers. I inhaled and continued. "There was an unforeseen problem with the Grae WeeCee case. Majority of the lawsuits, which also resulted in bad press, loss of goodwill, bad reviews, all that, werea claims that were unfounded. Now, we always have those unfounded claims when it comes to products, unscrupulous people looking for a quick buck, but the Grae case was different.

"The defective WeeCees of Grae at the worst could get your hand amputated, well, death actually from poisoning, but no one died. There were several who lost their hands. What happened next was that people, after watching the news of legitimate claims, blamed all of their pains, even things like carpal tunnel syndrome, sprained hand,nonsensee like those...they blamed it on the WeeCee and filed class suits. Those weren't even supposed to be class suits.

"They were filed across the world. The costs alone, in legal fees to defend against all of that. I can't mention the cost by the way. Plus sanctions by governments against the subsidiaries because of the public clamor." I then kept silent. I don't need to elaborate more. I think they knew what I was driving at.

"The moment we make sure that it's not our products fault that that person died," Mr. Powers began to say.

"It's not," Mr. Armand said.

Mr. Powers just rolled his eyes before continuing. "After the reports come out that it's not our fault, we will then engage in an aggressive campaign for spinal port safety and all that."

"Maybe even give free spinal port checkups for those who buy the product?" Mrs. Alabaster said. "Building up goodwill."

"Yes, that would be good. We could even have a new slogan 'Others fail, but we don't'. Something like that?" Mr. Powers said.

"Maybe you should leave the slogan making to me."

"Right, right, Mrs. AlabasterAnd Thank you Mr. Stone for your insight," Mr. Powers said.

"If it's a defective car, people won't blame it for migraine, unless they crashed it. But for a VR pod that connects to a spinal port? Even a small word that it might be defective...," I exhaled dramatically to show my point. "I won't be surprised if lawsuits are filed because of claims that the VR pod caused tootaches."

“Can you give us the Hunt for the crystaminds?” some random fucker said. He had his party behind him. They were probably a few levels above me. I just reached level fifteen and was able to join a Hunt. I quickly grabbed the crystaminds request since that was what Norman suggested people would want and had a high likelihood of getting me teammates.

“I’m sorry, I want to take this quest. Maybe we could work together?”

“You just reached level fifteen, right?” he replied. “It’s my first time seeing you here.”

Am I the only one who couldn’t differentiate Marukdryons based on facial features? Am I racist towards my own race or something?

“See, uh, you can’t really help out our party,” he continued. “There’s five of us and we can easily do the crystamind gathering quest and you’ll just take some of the XP and rewards.”

“I’ll just wait for other people then,” I said politely, fake politely, of course, but they wouldn’t even know if I was faking it or not. “I really want to do a Hunt and this seems to be one of the easy ones.”

“There are other easy quests out there.”

“Many people go for this one so there’s a much larger chance of getting new teammates.”

“People want that quest for the ingredients in making potions and other bottled consumables,” another guy said. “You don’t look like you’ll have a need for those so just give it to us. We have a Forager and a Healer on our team so it would help us out.”

“I’m going to stick with this one,” I said cheerily. I wondered who was the bigger asshole here. Me or them?

“Just give us this one because you’ll be waiting for a while. Just take the next one.”

“Guys, guys, relax.” Two players walked towards us. They placed themselves between in front of the party that wanted to take the crystamind Hunt.

One was a female, that much I could tell, since she was smaller than me even though she looked like she was higher-levelled. Or, at least, a person whose character was a female Mardukryon. I wasn’t certain if it was allowed to have a different sex in-game compared to your real-life sex. I assumed that it was possible. The female had bottles stringed along her flank. She had a belt just below her humanoid torso full of circular glass containers. Her leather armor had some weird plant growth; vines weaving around and patches of some sort of tree bark. She carried a spear and a shield, like I did, however, she also had a rake strapped to her right flank.

She said, “Mardukryons work together. No forcing around people here. Let’s be mature here guys.”

“He could take some other quest,” the first guy who approached me said, waving his arms in exasperation. “Why this one? This is like the low-level Hunt everyone wants to do. He can go do something else and give this to us.”

“We’re going to party with him,” the other newcomer said. He was a large Maradukryon. Half a head taller than me. He had a small hammer slung low by his waist; perhaps he was a blacksmith. An armor that looked like it came from the shell of powerful versions of Carbores covered his body. An axe with a single head and a long handle was strapped to his back.

The other party backed down. One of them sighed and said, “Fine, fine. We’ll let this go.”

“Remember the rules of Mardukryon community. All of us help each other out until we get out of this mountain. Many players, including most of the pioneers, have already left us and changed characters. Let’s not chase away the newer ones.”

“We’ll just wait for the next one. Anyway, where’s the big man, ChilliMaster?”

“Not here, that’s why we’re on our own. Might as well farm crystaminds ourselves than set out a request. And we’ll help this newbie in his first Hunt.” Blacksmith guy joined in the quest as well as his friend.

Mephistopheles056 has sent you a friend request

Justalyne has sent you a friend request.

“You need to add us.”

“Sure,” I said.

"Hey, nice name," Mephisto said.

"Thanks."

"Now let's go on a Hunt, newfound teammate," Justalyne said. "I have a boring ass shift later in a couple of hours so let's make this quick."