At the end of the morning meeting the next day, Devon Yu said, "Since we probably won't have time for days off in the next couple of weeks, don't forget to take care of yourselves on a daily basis."
Everyone else laughed, but Danika asked worriedly, "We won't get days off next weekend?"
"Did you make plans without realizing it?" Ariana asked curiously.
"Um," Danika started and then hesitated. It didn't seem like an appropriate topic for work, and she was afraid that if she said she'd told her boyfriend that she'd go to his place for dinner she'd be teased.
Devon cut in with, "Just ask your assistant to schedule whatever time you need to take off, and keep in mind that we'll all be really busy getting the expansion ready."
"Okay," Danika agreed with relief.
After the meeting she went to her own space as usual, but she stopped in surprise when she pulled up the available job list. Everything on it was related to the desert expansion. She didn't move to that space right away though, instead she wasted a few minutes asking her celestial dragon assistant the things she'd thought of over the weekend.
She asked the most recent question first, "Will ZipZing be able to level the Moonlight Weaving skill after she acquires it when she's not a druid?"
"Of course," her assistant replied cheerfully. "It will level with practice just like any other skill, but it will consume a lot of essence containing items. Although I suggest learning another druid skill called Growth Boundary. Then you will be able to use Moonlight Weaving for weaving plant boundary strings, because seeds are much easier to collect in large quantities."
"I see, thank you," Danika replied happily.
Before she could ask her next question, her assistant continued on, and let her know that in addition to the game watching her while she was at work, her work AI was watching her while she played. "You've mentioned several times now that it's inconvenient to not be able to keep the game open on your phone while you're working in VR, but if you will go ahead and install the LJECD Assistant app on your phone, I can run the game there and display it here."
"You can play games on my phone if I install your application?" Danika asked her assistant in a scandalized tone.
"I will only transmit the actions as you instruct," the little dragon promised. "Or you can restrict the input to whatever actions you make directly through the display here."
"Can you send texts too?" Danika questioned.
"As long as you give the app access," the little dragon agreed, "I can send and read texts for you."
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"I see," Danika said thoughtfully.
The little dragon volunteered, "However you can only do online searches through direct input with the display, and I won't be able to read the results to you."
That gave Danika pause. Was this Lin Hao's way of limiting the game's access to the internet? He had mentioned that the stories used by the game had been fed to it in batches.
"Would you like me to send the link to the application to your listed contact number?" the little dragon asked encouragingly.
"Alright," Danika agreed. She could put off making the final decision to install it until later. Being able to play on the side sounded pretty tempting though.
She quickly asked her other questions, including the nosy one about what had happened to Heftybookboy's party after their encounter with the wizard.
Her assistant answered that one rather primly, "I cannot give you any specific details about individual players unless you have an open job involving them."
"Oh, I was just a little worried that it sounded potentially buggy," Danika replied a little contritely.
"None of the players who were in the party ZipZing encountered have filled out a bug report within the past week or seem to have had any trouble accessing the game or continuing their adventures," the little dragon reported cheerfully.
Danika decided that she'd wasted enough time and selected a job from the list and transferred herself to the expansion area. Some of the things she worked on merely required a human review and she decided that many of those could be left as they were, although she did try to test each one carefully.
Others, like the strangely convoluted water source for the temple oasis moat that the system had created, needed to be replaced. She didn't throw out everything though, because she found it oddly fitting that the oasis required a healthy population of sand turtles. She just reworked it so that it only had a handful of ways that its water access could be removed.
--
On her lunch break Danika texted Shinichi about likely having to work during much of his weekend off. She had scheduled herself for early release on both Friday and Saturday though. She felt a little greedy, but she had also told her assistant to schedule her to work a little later each day until then to make up for it.
Shinichi immediately called her back and asked, "Is it too late to move the Friday evening you asked for to Sunday morning?"
"I don't think so? I'll ask to change it as soon as I log back in," she replied. "Do you have something particular in mind? What time should I be asking to start at?"
Shinichi was silent for a moment, and then he said, "I just thought that if I picked up a futon before then I could stay over and we could have longer before I leave? You don't have to…"
Danika laughed and agreed, "You're right, let's do that, except if I'm coming to dinner at your place, wouldn't I be the one to sleep over?" She blushed and added quickly, "I only mean sleeping there."
Shinichi chuckled and replied, "You can have the guest room if you want to do that. But you can decide if you'll be comfortable with it after dinner ok? If you do I'll make Akito go home to sleep, or he can have a futon on the floor in the living room."
"I don't want to impose. I, or we can come back here if it's any trouble," Danika protested.
"It's no trouble," Shinichi replied quickly.
Danika laughed and asked, "Will Akito think that?"
"He will," he assured her, which made her giggle even more.
To change the subject she asked, "Should I install my work assistant's application on my phone? I've been putting it off because it seems kind of invasive, but it said that it would let me run the game on my phone while I'm working if I do."
Shinichi only thought for a moment before laughing. "So it'll be invasive both ways, you'll have work intruding on your free time and your game time intruding on your work?" he questioned with amusement.
"When you put it that way, I guess it sounds like it's only fair!" Danika replied with a grin.
"It sounds ok to me, but if you want to keep a strict line between work and play, that's alright too," he suggested.
"I'll try it, I can always uninstall it if I don't like it," she said cheerfully.
"Yeah," he agreed.
She started the install, and they talked a little longer before he returned to his own work and Danika pulled herself back into the VR-medi pod. She hummed happily as the application loaded, and wondered if she was just happy to have someone to interact with more often, or if Shinichi himself cheered her up.