“PainTrain on your left!” Cobalt Blazer shouted, then he swore as the pug tank failed to react in time and one of the Spider Monkeys they were fighting darted past him, they had picked this spot for the express purpose of making it possible for a tank-type to protect the backline. Spider Monkey was, in his opinion, simultaneously a misnomer and entirely, horrifyingly accurate at the same time. They were monkey sized spiders, with eight creepy monkey arms that had too many joints. To top it all off, the monstrosities also had monkey heads, but with extra little monkey eyes, that had a disgusting cross between mandibles and monkey teeth for a mouth.

“Caeruleum Ignis!” he shouted, firing a resplendent blue fireball at the creature that was the product of nearly the entire first day’s available log in time of grueling research and effort. Shard wasn’t like other games, oh sure, you could just buy skills from trainers, but that only gave you copies of that particular trainer’s spell. You could also do your own research, spend a bit of time in the library or an Arcane Manufactory, and actually develop your own skills. Skills which you could then teach to other people! Cobalt was exceptionally proud of his spell, it had taken so much effort to create because he had infused a form of water mana into it that gave it its trademark color and made it stick to things like tar.

As the rogue Spider Monkey writhed on the ground in a futile effort to extinguish the hellish flames that were about to claim its life Cobalt heard a shout and looked up just in time to see his tank go down under an outrageously huge ball of Spider Monkeys.

[PainTrain has died!

[PainTrain has left the party!]

[PainTrain whispers: Dude you are the worst DPS I have ever seen]

[PainTrain has blocked you!]

As soon as the first notification dropped Cobalt went into damage control mode, and his hand flashed to his pouch, pulling out the spell components for something he had kept in reserve for moments just like this one. Tossing the special pouch containing everything he would need into the air he made several arcane gestures then shouted. “Ignisque Caeruleum!” A swirling mass of roiling, liquid blue flames manifested in front of him and quickly grew to the size of his torso before bursting out in a wide cone in front of him and coating the writhing mass of feasting Spider Monkeys in sticky blue fire.

[You have taken 14 damage!]

[You have taken 12 damage!]

Cobalt swore again as the still burning Monkeys seemed to collectively decide to take him with them and swarmed him. As they rapidly depleted his health pool he decided that the next spell he created would be a crowd control spell, no more of this relying on dodgy rando-tanks that can’t even figure out how Shard handles aggro.

[You have died!]

[System Alert: You have been in-game for 8 hours. Safety Protocols engaged, Emergency Logout initiated. You will be automatically logged out in 30 seconds.]

Just as he got the message he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Since he was being logged out anyway, he just accepted the immediate logout option and tugged the helmet off his head as soon as the band around his throat retracted. He pulled his phone out and looked at his notifications, finding a message from one of his poorer friends that didn’t have a helmet yet, Bro, I just got mine! You are never gonna believe how! So FREAKING cool!

He decided to call him instead of texting back this time. “Hey Tom! Did you get my text? Bro, you have no idea how crazy what just happened was!”

Tom was still a bit down about dying right before the forced logout, so his response was probably a little less enthusiastic than it would have been otherwise. “Yea? What’s that?”

“So, you know how I’ve lived in this care home since my parents died right? Well I was just getting home from school, and as I was walking in the door wondering if I would be able to use my foster mom’s bucket, this crazy long limo rolls up, and I was all confused, because who on earth would roll up into this part of town in a limo? So I’m standing there all confused, just staring at it, when the door opens and out pops my foster mom! She was just standing there next to it, looking kinda dazed, so I started to get worried, cuz she’s been real nice and good to us, like having a proper mom. So I rushed over to make sure she’s okay, but she waves me off towards the door, then starts walking in herself. I go in behind her, and find a stack bro, a STACK of buckets just sitting there inside the door with two bolts on top.

“As if that wasn’t crazy enough, there’s this full page of paper stapled to the stack that says in some big fancy font: Courtesy of Evan Ebonheart, Thank you once more for taking such good care of my mom and working so hard to make the world a better place. Like, seriously bro, I can’t even. I just can’t even right now. There was one for each of us! That old bird my mom looks after is EVAN FREAKING EBONHEART’S mom! So I’m about to try it out right now, maybe I can convince mom I’m sick tomorrow like you did today, but I wanted to know what you thought about it.”

Tom thought back on his experiences in Shard for a moment. “Bro, I just got eaten alive by a bunch of super creepy spider monkey things that were still on fire from the last spell I cast, and it was hands down the coolest experience I’ve had in any game I’ve ever played.”

* * * * *

Rebekkah was in her element. She was sitting at the head of a massive oak table, meeting with their board of directors. As all of the others got settled and ready she cleared her throat. “Alright everyone let’s begin from the top. I want numbers. How many new hires from each department, and is it enough manpower? If not, what are you doing to fix it? We can start with R&D.”

A relatively young man in an immaculate business suit stood up. “Yes ma’am, we have fourteen new hires going through your required screening process right now, my team leads tell me it’s not nearly enough to make any headway on improving tech at this level, most of them are dumbfounded by it. We’ve been stuck in a cycle of hiring in bulk then firing the ones that don’t get it, which is most of them, but we are making some headway. The latest projections estimate that we should have one fully functional team by the end of the month, then ballpark three months for the second team to be filled out.”

“Good, Software?”

A grouchy middle-aged man stood up with a scowl. “My entire department is a farce, everything is being handled by your two friends, Jason and Evan, who somehow have total autonomy and fall under the purview of not one of our departments. We haven’t received any guidance on projects we should be pursuing, and as such I haven’t bothered to do any more hiring.”

Rebekkah laced her fingers together and rested her chin gently on them, her elbows on the table. “Hmm, you’re absolutely correct I’m afraid. Everything is indeed being handled by my friends at the moment, but you seem to have missed an important point. One I am quite certain I made very clear to you when I gave you your position. Our company is a gaming company, as such we require a department very much like yours, filled with creative minds that can dream up our next big game. My friends are good, but they cannot be solely responsible for everything Archangel produces, I would never let them take on that kind of workload. You’re fired, collect your things and remove yourself from the building. HR?”

A woman halfway down the table jumped. “Y-yes ma’am?”

She ignored the former employee’s shouts of outrage. “Find me a replacement for Mr. Browning that won’t need to be led by the nose in order to get anything done, until then I will see if Evan will oversee his department for the time being.” She was annoyed by this development, her friends wanted absolutely nothing to do with the business side of things, trusting her to handle it, and so far she had, but finding a new Director with the proper mindset could take time and she would rather not let an entire department sit idle while she searched.

She sighed, she had noticed recently that she and her friends were falling into particular roles in this little game they were playing, she was the scalpel, ensuring everything was running smoothly and cutting away the cancerous growths. Evan was rapidly turning into a rock thrown in a pond, every time he made an appearance he managed to send waves in every direction and create a global uproar. Kinzie was mastering advanced tech at a seemingly impossible rate and was swiftly turning into their own little gadget queen, providing them with the solutions to problems they hadn’t realized they had. Jason was something of a ghost in the machine, he had his hands in almost everything, but preferred to stay out of the public eye, he was working with Lisa on the ship blueprints feverishly, had made massive contributions to the lore and world-building of the game, and in his downtime he was working on new types of ships that integrated what he had learned from Lisa’s database.

She was about to press on in her meeting, when her communicator activated. “Everyone it’s Evan, we need to talk.”

She stood. “Meeting adjourned, you know what I want, I expect your reports on my desk by the end of the day.” Everyone just watched in astonishment as she dropped everything the moment Evan asked for her presence. She could tell they were wondering just who he was and whether she was really in charge or not, and she might end up having to fire half of them when they tried to push their luck. She didn’t really mind, it would be fun.

* * * * *

Kinzie was elbow deep in something new she had been taking apart and putting back together for a few hours, coated nearly head to toe in the clear golden lubricant the thing used. “I think I understand how it works now! Lisa, activate the projectors and help me with some modifications! Pull up the schematics, perfect thanks, now take out this, this, this, and this. Move this here, that there, and add two, no, three stabilizer rings around the bottom. Now for the new parts it’ll need, I’ll trace out what I want, please refine and run background sims to check functionality?” She was waving her arms about inside the hologram like a loon as she made modifications to what had started as a bog-standard inertial dampener plate.

“Everyone it’s Evan, we need to talk.”

“Crud, Lisa will it work?”

“Yes, although I’m uncertain why you would want something like this.”

“Because it’s fun Lisa! Can you print me up a small version real quick? About the size of a basketball? If it works at that scale anyway.”

“It should, and sure, one moment.”

* * * * *

Jason scribbled out the section he had just finished with an exasperated sigh.

“Jason,” Lisa said softly, “did you just scribble on a blueprint?”

“Yes, sorry, old habit. I just can’t seem to get everything to fit in this one, I was trying to design a single-seat fighter for space combat, but there just isn’t enough room for both a person and ammunition at the scale I was shooting for.”

“Why would you want to make such a thing?!” Lisa’s voice was alarmed. “The Confederation stopped using them hundreds of years ago because modern computing has made them a death sentence, less than fifty percent of them survived any given battle even back then! It would only be worse now!”

Jason froze. “That’s bad. I guess my dreams of having a fleet of carriers are dashed.” He stared at the floating blueprint as it un-scribbled itself. “Couldn’t take it?” he asked Lisa.

“It, it was bothering me, why would you scribble something out on one of my files!”

Jason laughed. “Technically it’s my file and just happens to be stored in your brain, but I get it and I’m sorry. Hey, wait, I just had a thought. I’m pretty sure I saw something somewhere about instantaneous communications, how does that work and how big does it have to be?”

“Quantumly entangled particles embedded in a specially programmed computer core, and not very big, just a pain to create and maintain. Why?”

Jason grinned. “Maybe my dreams of a fleet of carriers aren’t quite dead yet, and I think I just got an idea for game number two.”

“Everyone it’s Evan, we need to talk.”

“Put a pin in this one will you Lisa?” Jason asked as he headed for the door.