by Simon Archer
“Well, um.” Minou was caught off guard by the challenge, having nothing to say. “Should we begin with where you would like me at the beginning of the assault?”
“Excellent question.” I congratulated her. “Where do you think I would like you at the beginning of the assault? I’ll take suggestions at this time.”
“Well, I, ah…” Seemed the pretty kitty was lasting shorter than the others were. Had she already worked herself up before when she was watching the other two? “I think… ah…”
“Any time now,” I said to her. “You can speak up if you need to. Now’s the moment.”
“Hey!” The clever cat tried to distract me. “Watch this!”
Minou bent over backward, placing her hands on the ground as her back arched as far as it could. That couldn’t have been comfortable for her, but she was still holding onto me with her legs, so I obliged her. If she wanted to feel like she was winning, I didn’t have any problems with it. She knew full well that she wasn’t going to last much longer, anyway. Might as well get some creative positions out of it.
“Did you have a creative battle plan for me?” I asked her, watching her bounce around in her contorted position. “I’ve yet to hear anything from any of you.”
“Um… ow!” Minou faked an injury as another distraction. “I am injured!”
Ha! She thought I’d slow down long enough for her to collect her thoughts. Sorry, if the others weren’t let off that easily, you wouldn’t be, either.
“Oh, well, dear me, I sure hope you’re well.” I kneeled down to ‘help’ her flatten out. “Does that work better for you?”
“One second.” She unhooked her legs to spin herself around on me, now down on all fours in an ironic position. “This is a bit better.”
“That’s good.” I took advantage of the position to ‘drive the point’ home. “How’s this? Is this better for you?”
No intelligible response. She was just as lost as the others had been, and a fair bit sooner, I might add. In no time at all, I swore I heard a tiger’s roar at the end of a tight series of convulsions. She was going nuts.
“That isn’t an adequate answer,” I antagonized her further. “You’ll have to speak a little English if you hope to score. You’re in last place behind Kate’s random shouting of tactical vocabulary. It’s not looking good for you.”
“Wreck my body like you are going to destroy your enemies tomorrow!” she roared again, barely getting her sentence out before her animalistic side began to take over.
“For the record, that only half counts as battle dialogue,” I ruled. “But, if you insist that I demonstrate the battle plan on you, I shall do so vigorously.”
And so I did. The tactical precision, the militaristic fortitude, the sheer force behind the assault as I pilfered and plundered as I pleased. There was no corner left unravaged, no place I could not find and root out all the insurrection within the enemy. Again and again, the surrenders came in waves, the defenses against me not holding a candle to the onslaught of power I could still muster, even after such a long and robust series of battles before. My might was beyond anything that could stand against me.
After the final surrender, Minou was left to lay there, staying in the same position as before as I pulled out of the field to reassemble my ensemble of clothing. I was glad that I had a spare handkerchief at the ready to give out again, as the mess was just as bad as with the other two.
Having made my point abundantly clear with each of them, I’d fully reclothed myself, finishing by adjusting my tie, as I stepped to the door. The girls were still just resting where I left them, still letting the waves of ecstasy wash over them while they reminisced in the events that had just occurred, and the gifts I’d just given them.
“That should leave you all with clear heads for tomorrow, I think.” I slid through the door, trying my best not to expose the carnage I’d left behind to the people in the hallway. “Make sure you’re at the briefing early tomorrow.”
“Yes, master!” They all said at the same time, prompting a few comments from the people outside.
With just a look, I silenced the people outside, all of them now treating the door to the breakroom like it was a holy site, not to be looked upon or mentioned as they rushed themselves past and around it. They all knew what was good for them. I didn’t take disrespect for my girls lightly.
Now, it was actually time to prepare for war.
10
Tad Smittyson
Jesus fucking Christ, if it wasn’t one thing, it was another!
I’d just spilled my champagne on the pants of my new suit, the latest in a thousand fuckups that’d been thrown on my lap today. There went a couple of thousand dollars just down the drain. If it wasn’t my limo driver being late to work today, or the rush hour traffic, or my lunch being late, or the lip I kept getting from my secretary about her missed vacation over the phone, it was my brand new suit getting ruined on the day I was going to show it off.
The past few months had been a fucking shitshow for everyone in HunterKiller, and every day just kept getting worse, especially for us who had to captain this sinking ship. Not that these fucking animals who worked here would know how to pour our water from a shoe if the instructions were written on the heel. From what was once a once-a-month business meeting to discuss close to nothing and then get fed a free lunch had turned to once-a-week actual business meetings discussing the latest part of our company that was on fire since we released the game Forge of Heroism. God, I shuddered whenever I heard that name now.
In all of our projections of what issues could possibly arise from the release of this game, everything that was coming up was always beyond our predictions and our control. Nothing that happened within this game would even be brought near a leash. The players alone kept finding strange new ways to add debauchery and horror to every last corner of the game world like it was their day job.
The fancy-schmancy quantum server should have helped remove problems with the massive amount of information it could hold, being the greatest feat of computing engineering mankind’s possibly ever attempted, but it seemed to pop up a few unique kinds of problems as a result.
We told the world that we had a new operating system to put on that server, bragging about its new-fangled ability to ‘adapt,’ or change things around in the game based on things the players did. There wouldn’t be moderators simply because we didn’t have to moderate a server that spanned across the world manually when it would moderate itself automatically. The ‘heroes’ should see the real consequences of their actions in a shifting world that would react to the decisions they made, working twenty-four hours, seven days, and fifty-two weeks. They could meet new, unique people, fight unique enemies, and make substantial changes.
At least, that’s what we sold them through the advertising. Most of that was a lie. We did put a fancy automatic moderating system into it, but it was mostly stripped of its higher functions and basically just holding the game world together. We cut half of our staff the day after we slapped that puppy in there, saving millions of dollars for the company.
The problem was, the moderating system was apparently buying into the propaganda, probably due to some overzealous programmer trying to get a promotion by stepping outside his lane. Now, thanks to that programmer’s sloppy program, the game kept changing things even when they shouldn’t, to begin with. I couldn’t throw a cow around in my inbox without running into some ‘urgent’ message about a raid boss moving away from its designated spawn point, or disappearing from its spawn point altogether, or a shop suddenly changing from one type to another without any updates, or a new raid boss showing up all on its own and making what should be a beginner’s zone into a hellish nightmare just by being there. Nothing was where it should be, and there were no ways to keep up with the constant changes.
Thankfully, it wasn’t really my problem. I was just the guy who got told all the nitty-gritty issues coming up, and I used to look at them all to
see who I needed to yell at. That was until I realized that it was much more efficient to just ignore the problems instead of answering all these emails. I got paid the same either way, and the players were still buying their subscriptions. They weren’t the ones complaining. Well, the ones that went batshit crazy complained, but who cared about them?
As I stepped out of the limousine to head to the boardroom, I tried my best to cover up my champagne stain on my undershirt to hide my embarrassment from my fellow executives. Hopefully, I could head through the lobby, swipe my keycard to get past the metal detector, and head into the elevator without anyone seeing anything. The last thing I needed was for Fred to point it out in front of everyone, like he did with that toupee incident. God, I hated that guy so much.
Oh, mother of God, speak of the devil. There he was. Frederick Huusmaker, an old, crusty son of a bitch that I’d have sooner punched in the face rather than looked at. Why did he have to be so damn late? Yeah, I was late, too, but fuck that guy for being late at the same time. At least be late later!
“Hey, there, Tad!” Fred’s voice could have woken a coma patient with the urge to kill whoever was making that noise. “Man, talk about bumper-to-bumper traffic, right? My limousine driver, what’s-his-name… well, anyway, he barely could run those red lights to get here!”
Just as I mashed the ‘close door’ button on the elevator, Fred flung his hand over the corner, stopping the door from keeping us apart as we were now forced to ride together. I clenched my fist with white knuckles to diffuse at least a bit of my growing killer intent as I prepared to ride this horrific ride up with Fred.
“I’m just glad that my wife’s on vacation for the week with her friends,” Fred continued, “Strange it had to be at the same time my gardener was sick with something for the next week, but life’s funny like that, right? She’d be nagging up a storm to get me off my fat ass and out the door sooner, so maybe it’s all for the best. That, and she’d have caught my girlfriend in the house. Haha! Man, what an ass on her…”
Ignoring Fred and the inane retelling of his fucked up life, I closed up my jacket, buttoning it up and playing it off as a simple readjustment. It was the same thing every damn day, with the wife, the girlfriend, the two kids in private school, the one kid in Yale, over and over again. We all had wives and girlfriends, Fred! Fuck off with your ‘grand retelling’ of your day like it’s interesting.
“… and let me tell you, Sharla--Sharla’s in Yale, by the way--anyway, Sharla’s coming over next weekend to visit, and we’re gonna pull all the stops for her, with a new dress, a tiara, and a roll of hard cash for the, uh, *ahem* unfortunate time she had with one of the other boys. I guess not all of those college men can be as innocent and pure as my girl in Yale…”
I had to pretend that my chuckle forced out my nose was just me clearing it out, bringing a napkin up to my face to further hide my fit of laughter. Sharla, pure and innocent? Everyone had slept with Sharla. Even I’d slept with Sharla at least once. Same for Deb, Fred’s wife. This was, what, the twelfth time Sharla’d been given money to deal with the aftermath of her working out her absentee-father issues without a condom? Something told me that she didn’t get into Yale because of her excellent test scores.
“… and I’m certain it’ll all pass over in a week. Your thoughts, Tad?”
“What?” I snapped out of my attempt to tune Fred out at the sound of my name. “What’s happening? Oh, yeah, I’m sure your, um, daughter will love the… tiara.”
“Not that, but I’m glad you think so.” He laughed at me. “I’m talking about my idea for the meeting today. Brody said that it was going to be something big today, but I doubt that shit.”
“He said something about today’s meeting?” I wracked my brain, thinking back on all the times I’d talked to Brody. We never talked, so it was a pretty short list, but I couldn’t find anything saying what this meeting was going to be about, just that email that he wanted us all here today. Why couldn’t he just let us all call in from home for this shit instead of coming into the office in person? “I thought we were just going to discuss whatever bullshit had come up in the past week for an hour, and I could go back home. God, if it’s an actual problem, we can have middle management take care of that.”
“The ‘shit’ this week requires a bit more thought, according to our chairman,” Fred walked through the doors as they opened up to the hallways. “Apparently, we’re all going to be working ten-hour weeks at the end of this.”
“Jesus, what could it possibly be now?”
As we stepped through the double doors into the boardroom, we knew very well that we’d have only been interrupting the two or three people that actually bothered to show up on time this week. Not that I worried about any penalties. Brody usually never cared.
My bet would have been that we’d have only seen Cheryl and Harmony there. Both of those bitches were teacher’s pets, and I’d have loved to shove them out a window for all the work they’d convinced Brody was a good idea for us to partake in. I remembered when this job was easy. Hell, half of my job was just having the job in the first place, but those two were forcing us to do ‘leadership’ things and make ‘decisions’ all the damn time.
Maybe it’d have helped us out if they were at least hot. Then we could just stare at them while they made our lives a living hell. You know, like how a good marriage should work. But no. Cheryl could have side-checked an elephant on the way to a bakery she’d eat out of business, and that light breeze would blow Harmony over, catching the wind in her canopy of curly hair. Now Cheryl the Hippopotamus and Harmony the Bitching Tree were sitting at the opposite side of the room, next to the chairman himself, as we entered.
However, thanks to the dark gods against me having a good day today, the boardroom was full to the brim. The long table had every seat filled with my cohorts and fellow board members, leaving two seats open for Fred and me, being the last ones to show up today. The blank stares of all the other board members met us, and suddenly I found myself in the same political boat as Fred Huusmaker.
How was I the only one left this out of the loop? Why was everyone taking this meeting so seriously? They even had binders they were looking through. I could have sworn that Cheryl and Harmony were the ones behind this somehow. Those two bitches.
Sitting at the other end of the long table was the man in charge for now, Amadeus Brody. I’d never met a man with quite as finely trimmed a goatee as he had, or heavily dyed hair to cover that grey he was not doing a good job of hiding. I wasn’t ready for this shit to be good.
“Glad that you could finally join us, Ted, Freddie.” Brody, his voice as nasally as ever, greeted us as we entered. “It’s good to know that you take this problem as seriously as the rest of us.”
“In all fairness, sir,” I sat down in the open chair, “and I hope that you’ll allow me to be frank, here, but The Forge of Heroism has been a problem for a while now, hasn’t it? Every day, we’re getting a new--”
“Seems that you’ve been paying a whole lot of attention, too.” Brody rolled his eyes at me. “The Forge of Heroism is not a problem in the slightest.”
“What are you talking about?” I scoffed, “you can’t be serious. We’ve been experiencing a problem a day with that game. I’ve had my secretary put up a filter on my emails to weed out everything that keeps cropping up.”
“None of those problems matter, though I’m glad you’re earning your pay so well,” Brody informed me with an eye roll. “Those sorts of complaints are always expected with a game this popular. Cheryl, please repeat your report on the fiscal turnout of this game.”
“Yes, sir,” Cheryl, a goddamn sea cow of a broad with a tight bun in the back of her head, stood up while she lifted her binder as a visual aid for her presentation. “Ever since we released Forge of Heroism, our profits have been climbing. Even the snafu of the missing villain to the game has been smoothed over with a strategic ad campaign painting it as a feature of the game overall.
Being an MMO, the populace has come to enjoy the sandbox nature, and will wait an expected fiscal year before we will have to provide some sort of expansion.”
“Is the problem the missing villain?” I asked. “Mr. Yin was super popular in the beta. What happened to him?”
“That question, and a few others, may be addressed in the presentation. Pay attention.” Brody corrected my perfectly rational question.
“So, what’s the problem we’re having this meeting for, then?” I asked, while the rest of the board groaned at me. “What? I’m sorry, I don’t understand the inherent problem in us making money hand-over-fist with this new game. If the complaints are just that, why did you get me out of my house for this?”
“Some parts of the financial increases we are experiencing from this game are… unprecedented,” Brody explained. “Perhaps Cheryl’s presentation will explain further. Cheryl?”
“What isn’t unprecedented are these increased profits at the initial release.” Cheryl’s finger pointed to charts and bar graphs representing large sums of money. “We expected that the PR we have been pushing out for this game as a revolution in P-Cept technology would bring a return in the hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. Nearly every gamer in the world has purchased and is playing this game.”
“Alright, we’re making money like we thought we were,” I sighed, “I’m still waiting for the punchline here.”
“There are a few unforeseen problems.” Cheryl continued. “Shortly after its release, the amount of money it made for us began to spike dramatically as interest in the game increased, and even more players were intrigued to purchase this game. It made more money for us during its run of little over half a year than all of our other games in the same period of time combined. Forge of Heroism is a powerhouse of an MMO that we could milk for years.”
“So, the money is the problem?” I laughed, “first I heard that one. Why do we care if it’s making more money than we thought? That’s a good thing! Or did you already forget the first lesson in running a business? We’ll just take credit for the genius we didn’t even have to come up with, and they’ll eat it up. Can I go home now?”