Can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. What I really need now is time, so obviously I should just be using the game's freaking time scaling and trying to at least do some extra analysis on a dataset that way.

Carl climbed the stairs on his way to Bobby's room, and Mina followed close behind. Hoo boy, this isn't at all my forte. No chance we'd be able to get a new contract and NDA together fast enough for this though, and all our usual security consultants would still take at least a couple hours to get things moving through the HR processes no matter how many corners get cut. What a disaster. Shouldn't have kept punting this off just because it seemed more annoying than harmful. Really goes to sho—

"So you'll simply log in, as you've said it's called, and then you'll give my regards prior to returning?" Mina asked.

"Yup," Carl said on Auto-Carl while his mind already worked away at the possibilities. Let's see. I guess I'll just copy the log dump parts to Bobby's computer off my laptop, and then I should be able to access it with the dev mode keyboard once I'm in? Honestly this whole thing is a fluke. I had the logging verbosity set to debug levels from when I was first putting the switches in, and I must've gotten distracted and forgotten to reset it. Only reason I didn't notice the log size is because of how much drive space we've got at the office and the cron job that prunes temp files on that server every so often. He shook his head. Dad always does say it's better to be lucky than smart.

They reached the top of the stairs, and he turned towards the girls' rooms, passing by his office—temporarily Mina's room—to his youngest daughter's. He sat at her desk, which was just as neat and organized as his, and set his laptop down next to the keyboard.

"I'll sit with you if I'll not be a bother?" Mina said, accompanied by the sound of someone settling gently onto the neatly-made bed behind him.

"Sure," Carl said, already busy logging into a separate multiseat session on Bobby's always-on computer using his own account to avoid messing with whatever she'd been doing. He found his laptop on the network and started transferring the relevant segments of the log files that he'd trimmed in preparation for moving them to an unsecured computer.

"And you'll remain right here for the duration, naturally," Mina said, probably just a little anxious at the idea of…

He paused and turned around. "Yeah, of course," he said in his best reassuring tone. "I'll only be in for like, one or two minutes, tops. Gotta get a little thinking done for work while I'm there too."

"Alright," she said, still seeming a little anxious. "Um… Be safe."

"Be back before you know it," Carl said as he turned back to the monitor on the desk. He grabbed the brain link headband next to the keyboard and set it on his head before pushing the button to—

He immediately touched the orb in the character selection room like usual…

And then he was back in the passenger seat of Mina's car with Vol at the wheel and Ir'alith standing on the hood as they hurtled along at an extremely unsafe speed.

"Are we hanging out now?" Vol shouted while leaning her head out the window she'd cranked open.

"I'm back," Carl announced.

"Huh?" Vol said, flicking her gaze over to him before returning it to the non-road that they were really just driving way too freaking fast along for anyone to possibly be able to reaAAAAAct to anything that came up.

"I'm back," Carl said again.

"Hello, Carl," Ir'alith said in her silky voice that he could listen to all day as she continued to stand on the hood of the car, peering down at him through the windshield with her helmet now held in one hand and her tail waving along, gripping axe-dad behind her. "It has been some time since last we met."

He waved. "Hey, Ir'alith, hey, Seth'tith," he called.

"Did you go somewhere?" Vol asked. The car veered sharply. "This is definitely the best part," she said excitedly, spinning the wheel in the other direction now and continuing to fishtail the vehicle back and forth between a series of really, really big rocks.

"Er, yeah, I logged oooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut?" Carl said, absolutely not flinching even the tiniest bit as the car came way, way, way too close to ramming into a rock.

"We are going for a drive again!" Ir'alith said in a more excited tone. "To have fun!" Her axe-bearing tail lashed out, transforming the upper part of rock they'd nearly struck into dust.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Fuck, this is so much fun!" Vol shouted, throwing her hands—both of them, even though she was supposed to be steering the freaking car—into the air.

"Fun!" Ir'alith agreed. The car continued to weave sharply back and forth, and she swayed in time with it, never seeming close to losing her balance, completely unfazed by the rooOOOOOOOck they'd very nearly just hit.

Carl forced himself to relax—though obviously he wasn't gonna be super worked up over just some crazy in-game driving since he wasn't a total noWHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAob—and sank into his seat. "Uh, anyway," he began, "Mina's staying with me and Annie now. She says hi, and she's doing okay."

Vol flashed him a grin. "Good! She'll be happier there. Probably."

"Faster!" Ir'alith called.

"Nah, we don't need to go any faster than this," Carl said.

"This is as fas—Fuck, there's a fucking rock under the fucking pedal!" Vol said, sounding furious by the end of the statement. She stomped her foot down and there was a crunch.

The car lurched forward, moving even faster, and their surroundings became a complete blur.

"Uh… Uhhhh…" Carl said as he clung to his seat, which helpfully had small handles installed at the base on either side, he now noted, which were probably additions Mina had made in acknowledgment of how tense he sometimes got when she'd driven a little recklessly, but were nooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITOOOOOOOoooooooow very important to him on a personal level, and he couldn't imagine living withooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooout them.

Ir'alith tipped her head back, and a massive burst of purple fire streamed out of her mouth towards the sky, the heat so immense that he could feel it rolling over him even as it moved in the other direction.

"Yeah!" Vol cheered, again deciding to take both hands off the wheel to just freaking throw them into the air like it didn't even matter a tiny bit whether she was actually controlling the path of the car.

Okay, okay, just gotta not think about any of this. Need to get back on track h—

"Incoming message," the game's voice announced to the accompaniment of a tiny phone icon beginning to blink in the corner of his too-minamalist HUD that didn't even have a speedometer, which he felt would probably be way too scary to even look at right now so probably it was a good idea not to have one.

"What the fuck is that?" Vol exclaimed, looking around.

"Message from Drake Storm activated," the game announced.

Drake Storm? Who the heck is—

"Carl!" Tim's voice called. "Hey, buddy, didn't expect… One sec… Didn't expect to catch up with you again so soon!"

"Dragon magic." Ir'alith's amazed-sounding voice somehow carried over the thundering of the car tearing across the wasteland.

"Oh, hey, Tim," Carl said. Wait. "What the heck kinda name is Drake—"

"It's a great name, Carl," Tim said in his Trust Me, I Know What I'm Talking About voice. "Trust me."

"Who's Tim?" Vol asked as she spun the wheel again, this tAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIime causing the car to tip hard to its left side with the right half completely in the air for a moment. "Fuck, this is so awesome!" she said.

"That doesn't sound like Annie," Tim said immediately. "Didn't you say you just played to fish, Carl? Oh, wait, you meant that kind of—"

"No, no, definitely not," Carl said, putting a stop to all of that just as immediately when he saw where his friend was headed with his always-on curiosity. "This is my friend—just friend—Vol, Vol, this is my friend Tim, who apparently goes by Drake Storm now." Alright, I'm just not gonna look around anymore. Gotta focus. Such a ridiculous name though.

"Tim?" Vol said with the inflection of someone disapproving of something. "Drake Storm…"

"Drake Storm. This is an unusual name," Ir'alith said.

"Whoa, she sounds sexy," Tim said. There was a muffled sound through the processed-sounding message audio following the statement.

"Oh, uh, that's Ir'alith," Carl said with an eye roll at his friend's sort of expected reaction, feeling a brief flash of awkwardness as he suddenly recalled a certain, specific, related train of thought he'd had during one of his in-game thinking sessions back at the workshop however many game-days ago. He shook it off immediately though because that was a settled thing in his head, and there was no need to ever consider it any further for even a single second. "Keyboard," he said to start getting things back on track.

Nothing happened, and he frowned.

"This Drake Storm is your friend, Carl?" Ir'alith asked in an odd tone he'd never heard out of her.

"Yup," Carl called back a little distractedly, "known each other a really long time. Probably my best friend since I was like, I don't know, maybe ten?" His voice resonated a little in a weird way that it hadn't before. Huh, she must've cast some kinda voice echo-y thing so I don't have to yell? Having high-level friends really is the best way to play. Gotta really focus and get started crunching this data though. If this doesn't work, I'm really out of ideas. "Keyboard," he said again.

Still, nothing happened, and his frown deepened.

"Ir'alith's a beautiful name," Tim said. "Regal, even."

"Keyboard," Carl said for a third time, using more emphasis.

"I thank you for this compliment, Drake Storm," Ir'alith said slowly, as though considering her words.

"Go back, you're Carl's best friend?" Vol said.

Carl wasn't really even paying attention anymore though. He tipped his head back against his seat and groaned. Are you freaking se