The following month blurred past as we funneled all our energy into creating Black Fire Online.
More than twenty people contributed. A surprising number of staff in Sagingan Haven had a background in IT. There were hardware and software engineers—as different as fire and water—testers, graphic designers, project managers, and many other minor roles I wasn’t sure were necessary. Still, Reggie and Matthew both stressed that they were all critical.
I even developed some programming skills as we helped debug the prototype. They were rudimentary, and I made a ton of mistakes, calling out stuff that wasn’t bugs after all but changes that Reggie made without telling us. This pissed me off at first until Reggie, again, assured me that it was all part of the creative process.
We stood before a huge flat-screen television, viewing a user interface mock-up Matthew pioneered using Reggie’s code. Andrei controlled the demo while Shay checked for errors. She was a master of the arts beyond storytelling.
“It’s good,” she said. “Really good. Wow. So sleek and streamlined. Yet, it’s how you say? Heartless? It needs a bit of something.”
“Personality,” uttered Uncle Nestor in agreement. “It feels like I’m using Myspace or something.” He explained that Myspace was the first global social media site. It focused on posting content instead of Likes and reactions. “It was healthier,” he went on. I had to agree.
Black Fire Online was, so far, a collection of user profiles, comment feeds attached to shows, and what we were temporarily calling Community Spaces. The latter were message boards like Reddit or Discords divided by topics where users could post all sorts of content. As soon as we opened it up, I told Janice, and she made the first official community space—no surprise—Ashes to Atienza.
There was, however, one more feature I was most curious about.
We tuned into The Crest and its Killers, Episode 1, the part where Seskone took Quoreflux’s hand. It was paused and zoomed in on Seskone’s face, giving the audience a full view of his glistening, strained eyes.
Only this time, Shay left a comment.
[Hoy! He’s handsome, isn’t he?]
The comment showed up in a popping bubble, though barely noticeable. You had to squint to see it. At first, we thought the feature was distracting, so we made the bubble more transparent. We could fine-tune the appearance later, but seeing a user respond to a character moment was a different feeling as if we were all sharing in the experience. I imagined all of The Crest playing out like that—people reacting and commenting, belonging to a community.
And generating money.
We hadn’t settled on a business model yet. Still, I already had some ideas: charge more per stitching cartridge, enact a subscription fee that could be paid through privacy coins on a crypto exchange, or make it a free feature to generate more interest and, thus, more money.
“That last option won’t work,” Auntie Havannah said. “This stuff isn’t cheap. We’re already over budget. And the issue isn’t money. It’s notoriety. Imagine we release something that’s not perfect. First impressions are important.”
She was touching on something else we had all noticed: Black Fire Online was bugged as hell. Some of the features didn’t work correctly. Shay’s comment appeared on The Crest as intended, but we got errors when Andrei and I tried to post our own. The links would take you to weird places. Sometimes we couldn’t post content without causing the whole system to go offline.
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But Reggie and Matthew eventually fixed these. They required redesigns, delays, and money.
But after that, we were ready to test BFO with real people.
----------------------------------------
I went to Janice with a proposal. I had been thinking about her offer to share the code, which was out of the question, but I didn’t want to leave her in the dark. She was my sister, after all.
“And you think he’ll agree to this?” Janice asked.
“I think he’ll do what I tell him,” I said. “My concern is with you.”
Janice exhaled. “I know the people at A2A. Some like Black Fire. Others don’t. I could get you maybe five people. Would it be enough?”
It probably wasn’t enough for the larger scale, but we’d need all the outside help we could get—meaning people who hadn’t seen Black Fire Online before. We had become jaded over the past month that we had been developing Black Fire Online. This, Reggie told me, happens to everyone creating anything. It’s like having someone else edit your book, Shay had said as well; you need to give your work to a fresh pair of eyes.
“At the start,” I said, “but we’ll need more.”
Janice stared me down, and I could see the thoughts turning in her head. We were both going to be in the crosshairs of the Philippine government, so we might as well work together. At the same time, it would be like we were both shouting while we waited for the hunters to come.
“Just once,” she said.
The following week, after Shay introduced us to five of her friends at A2A who would be willing to test, we posted our first ad for Black Fire Online on the A2A website.
***BLACK FIRE ONLINE - ALPHA TESTERS REQUIRED***
There were three sign-ups on the first day, four on the next, and dozens by the third day. At the end of that week, we had over a hundred people from the public willing to test Black Fire Online. Combined with Janice’s A2A contacts, even more showed interest in testing the app.
We took them all.
[Rodrigo: Hello?]
[Evelyn: Hey. Is this working?]
[Henry: Yo… what’s up? This is so cool. Did you guys see Plane Jumper?]
[Marcus: That show was fantastic. I loved it when…]
These comprised our first messages across the app. More people joined in, discussing their favorite shows, scenes, and characters. They speculated on future releases. They requested new features. We fixed bugs and warded off the attempted cyberattacks from—we guessed—the Philippine government.
And sometimes, the discussions didn’t have anything to do with television at all.
[Evelyn: Hey. So, what happened to PAL 578?]
[Marcus: Divine intervention, obviously.]
[Rodrigo: Bullshit. That was the Giants.]
[Tomas: It wasn’t any of that.]
Even more of the Alpha Testers were starting to use Black Fire Online as a tool to communicate with each other. A2A was the most active messaging board, spreading anti-Atienza rhetoric, sometimes making me turn my head. This wasn’t BFO’s intended purpose, but they were using our platform, at least—and paying for it.
We felt like a social media network during its early days, fueled by a vision, constant positive feedback, a seemingly endless supply of funds—the result of my Uncle Nestor and Auntie Havannah coming through—and the desire to create something new and lasting. Our hopes were at their highest. We got into a rhythm. Shay, Reggie, Andrei, Matthew, and I met for lunch and discussed the subsequent releases and fixes. Andrei stopped worrying about the Kalawang Clan—all its members were probably in jail anyway. Reggie lent us some ideas from his time at Metamatics. Shay recruited more Alpha Testers, creating mini-documentaries using AI actors in place of us to give prospective testers an insight into the process.
It seemed nothing would stop our momentum.
I was wrong.