Chapter 1 : All that glitters is not gold. There is also silver. and bronze...

.::.1 year ago.::.

I am depressed.

Well, depressed would be a bit of an overstatement. It's more of a boredom. A boredom that came as a result of attaining what promised to rid me of the boredom I had already felt, as I was already top of the class with nothing to to learn, and the poverty of living as an unemployed university student, leeching off of their parents, not stopping for once to think of getting even a part time job. By paying only for bare neccessities and being forced by my parents to show them every reciept and all of the change, they only payed for what I needed to live and no more. I shudder at the mere thought of asking them for money, even a penny. I needed money and some form of entertainment. And then a friend at my uni proposed Operation *xxxx*

Operation *xxxx* sounded promising, and simple. Grab a few other guys from the Advanced Computer Science class and form a club. the club would then participate in next year's programming competition. Every participant gets a reward, even if the lower "prizes" were simply for pity. Those who only attained the lower prize tiers got nothing other than the award of pity. If you won first place, however, it is a completely different story. Winners received a trophy instead of the ribbon that others received as an award for their participation. They also recieved a gold plated trophy encased in a bell jar with a dark stained mahogany base buffed to a shiny finish, and carved by a world renowned sculptor. The trophy itself was just as beautiful. It was a model of a document that had, engraved on it, the very code that won the contest for that person. the trophy was gold plated, the text on the document standing out, as the trophy was made of silver that was coated in gold, so engraving lets the radiant silver show through. Every few years the design changed, and this was the first year this design was being used. Groups were allowed to participate, but there was a limit of four people to a group. Each member of the winning group would receive their own trophy.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The team drooled as they viewed the un-engraved trophies. The team consisted of Me, my friend mentioned before, whose real name is unknown, though his nickname is K, Vincent, the burly, monstrous, but somewhat socially lacking smart guy, and Sam, the childish, shy, girly, and quite popular with the girls I should add, genius. Hey, you hating on my descriptions? I'll cut you! Ah forget it.

Also, many believe Vincent was once a spy for some european country's government, but that is open to debate.

So, as I was saying, I was the thought of as the least mentally gifted, but still had an advantage over the others. There used to be many coding languages are out there, such as the C family (C, C++, C#), Java and Javascript, Boo, and others. over the early decades of the past several centuries, they have been overtaken in favor of newer, more simple languages that can be typed in plain english and still be used as code legible to a computer. The old languages have been almost forgotten, dissapearing into the background. The only reason I knew of it is because of an antique book that I uncovered while searching for dinasaur bones. It wouldn't hurt to try looking for them, could it? I was five, alright! I read the book and didnt understand anything it said. My parents also took away my computer and made me study from then on due to my excessive computer use.

You may ask, why does having knowledge of this book, especially since it is considered ancient and no one even knows about it give you any advantage? I was getting to that. Shut it. Thats because it was part of the challenge we would soon face.

*xxxx* - May or may not receive a name later in the story.