Kevin woke up slowly, the deep-seated and apparently long-neglected needs of his bladder having finally made its concerns known through the dark realms of Morpheous. Scratching his jawline, he considered his need to shave and resolved to engage in the three S's before tackling anything else. After breakfast at Denny's, Kevin had begged off any further adventures, citing his need for sleep. Melody had the energy to burn, and she had volunteered herself to help Julie start looking for a newer car.

After attending to his immediate bodily needs, he wandered out to the kitchen and glanced in the fridge. Fuck. "Grocery shopping," Kevin muttered to himself as he sat down at the table and pulled out his phone, starting to make a list. He paused two minutes later as he was finalizing the list. 'I'm going to be in my VR rig for the next twelve days,' he thought to himself, his mind finally firing on all cylinders. He deleted the list and started again. Protein bars, meal replacement shakes, and water was what he needed. After a few more moments of thought, he added some frozen Pizza's to the list, not wanting to leave Julie to starve while he was embedded in his Dungeon. A quick trip to the Wal-Mart app and he had his order in place, and five minutes later, he was pulling out of the garage, having clipped his panniers into place and made sure his Rok straps were clicked in.

As Kevin shifted up into neutral and coasted into online pickup spot number two, he couldn't help but let his grin widen. He fucking loved this part. Opening his Wal-Mart app, he identified that he was in pickup spot two and ready for his order. He took off his helmet, hanging it from his mirror, and unlocked his panniers as a blue vested Wal-Mart employee arrived, pushing the cart that contained his order. "Uh, 47056?" the young woman asked hesitantly as she looked in the cart, and then at Kevin's unassuming 919. Kevin nodded happily, waving her over and showing her his confirmation on his phone. "How..." she said slowly, as Kevin started loading his panniers with forty-eight meal replacement shakes and four cartons of protein bars. "Balance is the key," he said over his shoulder to her. "Gotta keep the weight balanced evenly between the bags, which is why I just order even numbers so I can pack em both the same way." He placed four frozen pizzas in the top clamshell of each pannier and locked them down. Kevin grinned to himself. Perfect fit.

He turned back to the cart and grabbed one of the two forty bottle packages of water. He dropped it across the rear seat, overhanging the panniers, and then snagged the second one, stacking it on top of the first. Keeping one hand on the two cases of water (they always like to slide off, as the bike was on its side stand, and the angle was just steep enough), he grabbed a rok strap, threw it over, and started tightening it down. He repeated the process on the other side, and then turned back to see the woman - Becky her name tag identified, pulling out her phone and taking a picture of the Honda in all its heavily laden glory. He waited for her to snap the photo, then wordlessly moved to the center of the frame and gave her"The Fonz." Clicking another picture, Becky grinned and gave him a thumbs up. Kevin pulled on his helmet and gloves, then fired up the 919, dropping Becky the wave as he rolled past.

Once home, Kevin unloaded his groceries, sending a text to Julie letting her know that there were frozen pizzas to be had and that he was going to disappear into his VR rig for the foreseeable future. It was time to start really playing around with the creature system. There were just too many options available for there not be some cool and unexpected things that could be done, and Kevin wanted his Dungeon to be not only a place for people to grind but also a place of wonder.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Robert throttled through another curve, coming up over the hill and seeing the Ouachita river to his right, and signage for 270 flashing by. He tapped the rear brake, bleeding off a little speed before he dove into the next corner, his head moving up and down in time to the music blasting out of the speakers. As he straightened up, a yellow sign alongside the road caught his attention. Depicting a wiggling arrow, it said, 'Winding Road Next 72 Miles.' His grin broadened, and he moved his left thumb over, pushing next on the audio controls until he heard the riffs from 'Returning to the Fold' start to thunder out of the speakers. Pushing the repeat track button, he wiggled in his seat and got into the zone.

Twenty miles later, he pulled into a scenic overlook and shut down the Vision. Robert stretched, grabbed a bottle of water out of the cooler he kept on the back seat, and wandered over to picnic table that looked over a picturesque valley, seemingly untouched by man. "Fucking beautiful," he said to no one in particular. He had needed this. The only downside, he reflected as he downed half the water bottle in a go, was that he didn't have anyone to share the view and ride with. There were a couple of people at New Realities who rode, but none of them were serious tourers. 'I wonder if Kevin tours,' he mused to himself. The P.I. he had hired to investigate the kid had looked for past indiscretions and current behaviors. He hadn't dug into the kid's vacation habits. Idly curious, he fished out his phone and fired up the Developer Login tracking application he'd cobbled together a few weeks ago.

Robert had known that he wasn't hiring the best and the brightest when he'd been interviewing the dungeon developers. The best and the brightest were already firmly ensconced at the big studios. No, he was interviewing the newbies, and the guys who hadn't had the talent or the drive to push their way to the top. In short, he had chosen the best of the bottom of the barrel. He'd done his due diligence; however, Robert truly believed in Reagan's adage of 'Trust, but verify.' So, he'd put together an app to track the developers he'd hired. He opted to sort by time logged in, shortest to longest and frowned. The developers had all had the tools for about a week now, except for Kevin, who, as a last-minute addition, had only received them three days - no, four days ago. Kevin should be the first on the list.

Gary Largkin was the top of the list of underperformers with only twelve hours logged into the tools. Robert grimaced. Gary's father had died last week, and as an only child and his father a widower, Gary was responsible for making all the necessary arrangements. It was frustrating to know he hadn't invested much time in his Dungeon so far, even if the circumstances were understandable. Below Gary was Edward Kelly, and then Raymond Phillips, and then... he scanned the list.

Robert whistled. Kevin had logged thirty-eight hours in the past three and a half days. Switching the app to sort by completed, he pulled up the hours logged information. So far, eight of the Dungeons were flagged as complete, with the highest number of hours logged at fifty-four and the lowest at forty-one. Robert closed the app and slipped his phone back into his jacket. As he stared out over the valley, he engaged in a bit of mental math. The eight Dungeons that had been completed were those created by the most experienced developers he had hired. It was to be expected that they would have an edge and be able to deliver the finished product the most quickly.

Shaking his head, Robert stood up from the picnic table and stretched before heading back to his Vision. The dice were cast, and all that remained was to see how they fell. He felt reasonably confident that the finished Dungeons would be alright. Probably not exceptional, but solid grind fests with ample monsters. The first month, maybe even longer, was going to be all about the players experiencing the engine, and the library of stimuli. He grimaced as he thought about some of the things New Realities had done in order to gather those stimuli. Robert put on his helmet and then his gloves before turning the key and thumbing the ignition. Rolling out of the overlook and back onto the road, he twisted his wrist and let Deep Delve fall into the mental rearview.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Julie was doing her best to be cool, but she was totally loving this Charger. Melody was riding in the passenger seat while the owner, a gentleman in his seventies who had suffered a stroke several years and while having recovered, no longer trusted his reflexes enough to drive, answered a steady stream of questions from her. A deep dark blue, the car was eight years old, but only had fourteen thousand miles on it. It had spent its entire life in a garage, and according to the owner, had never even been driven in the rain. He was moving out to Arizona to be closer to his grandchildren, and because the dry heat would be kinder to his arthritis.

At seven thousand dollars, it was definitely in her budget, and aside from being the R/T model was loaded with every option that she could imagine. She and Melody had already looked up the year and model, checking for any recalls, and looking for any trends in terms of high mileage issues. Julie pulled into the owner's driveway and hopped out of the car. Glancing at Melody, who was helping the owner out, she received a thumbs up, meaning that Mel hadn't noticed anything wrong during the test drive. Julie skipped around the car and leveled her devastating smile at the owner and said, "Any chance of cash discount?"

Twenty minutes later, Melody was following her in the Beast while Julie happily drove her new car home. She had paid sixty-five hundred dollars for the car, and she couldn't be happier. 'Pulling up in this,' she thought, 'is going to help a few of the stuffier clients take me seriously.' As she drove, she made a mental list of the high-end properties she'd shown unsuccessfully. Her boss was rather generous in that he rotated the properties through the agents each week, which allowed even the younger crowd to have a crack at high commissions. Julie didn't have a roster of wealthy clients yet, but she was a damn good saleswoman, and there were a couple of properties and clients she felt she had just been a percentage point away from closing.

Pulling into her garage carefully, she smiled as she got out of the care and looked it over. Maybe it wouldn't make a huge difference in her sales. But damn, it looked good, and she loved the way it drove. Bouncing into the house, she rendezvoused with Mel in the kitchen, the Beast having been consigned to curbside parking. Melody was already in a chair, rocking back and forth as she grinned. "I'm in love!" Julie said, melodramatically placing a hand to her forehead and falling into the chair across from Melody.

Melody laughed and pantomimed, clutching her chest in shock. "Oh lawd, her hearts been stolen!" She replied in a truly terrible southern drawl. Julie grinned. "So, car sorted, dinner?" Melody shrugged and said, "I have the night shift with my Dad tonight, so I have about an hour." Nodding, Julie wandered over to the fridge and opened it. She blinked. She closed the fridge. She looked at Melody, who raised her eyebrows. She opened it again, this time flinging the door wide to show Melody its contents. Cartons of Ensure were stacked up like tiny, tasteless bricks on the lower two shelves. "Guess Kev isn't planning on eating real food for a while," said Melody slowly. Julie closed the fridge and opened the freezer above it. There, neatly stacked, were eight frozen pizzas and a yellow post-it note which read, "Can't cook, must work, don't starve, love Kevin."

Taking the note out of the freezer, she dropped it in front of Melody as she turned to the stove and set it to preheat. Melody gave a bark of laughter and said: "I love that boy, even when he's super focused on something, he still remembers to feed us."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kevin was deep into the development tools menu system. You could do almost anything you could imagine with the tools. In point of fact, he hadn't yet discovered something he wanted to do and couldn't. He had decided that his cavern, being open to the sky, needed some avian residents. He was initially hesitant to add birds, fearing that they would subtract from his resource total while not adding anything of real value. Digging deeper into the menus, he discovered that he could label creatures as 'Ambient,' which apparently meant that while they could be killed, they didn't provide any rewards for doing so. This revelation resulted in him shelving the monster creation and distribution in favor of populating his forest cavern with its non-combatant residents. He'd logged out of the game and dug deep into the ecology of the coastal redwoods.

Two hours later, he was back in and ready to get creative. Insects, reptiles, fish, birds, and rodents had all been generously added to his little ecosystem. In doing so, Kevin had discovered more resources to add. Bird eggs took only one one-hundredth of a resource point each, and a school of trout took only one-twentieth. He had decided to differentiate the various grades of creatures by darkening or lightening the 'Verdant' pattern he used. Ambient creatures were the lightest, giving off the very lightest shade of mint, then neutral who shone with a brighter emerald, and finally aggressive, which retained the original hue.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

As he was looking through the menus, considering what ores he could have available to be mined, the alarm he had set began to flash, alerting him that the sixteen-hour threshold he had set for himself had once again been reached. Kevin initiated the logout procedure and felt the customary wave of exhaustion roll over him. He had read the studies conducted over the years and knew full well that anything more than sixteen hours a day wasn't sustainable in the long term for VR immersion. It was advised to take a break every four hours to attend to bodily functions that shouldn't be suppressed for too long.

Hurrying to his bathroom, Kevin noted with exasperation that the studies had all been accurate, and having to piss this badly every time he logged out wasn't only unhealthy; it was also fucking annoying. Washing his hands, he also considered his empty and angry stomach, which didn't take kindly to sixteen hours without food. Walking directly to the fridge, he powered down two meal replacement shakes before power chugging two bottles of water, with the dual purpose of hydrating and washing the chalky shakes down. Walking back to his room, he stopped as he noticed a yellow post-it stuck to his door.

"Kevin, set your rig to allow messages, dude." Slapping a palm to his forehead, Kevin sighed. He had forgotten that every app needed to have its permissions set. He walked into his room, grabbed a pen, and appended the post-it note to include; "My bad, fixed it," and then moved the post-it over to Julies' bedroom door. Having sorted out his roommate's communication issue, he set the alarm on his phone and laid down for an eight-hour nap.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It had been three days since Julie had gotten her car, and she was ready to declare it her lucky charm. She'd closed another property, a duplex that had been sitting on the market for a year and a half, just eating time and energy whenever it was shown. Julie had been able to convince a property management company that owned a few other units in the area to expand their business and purchase the property.

She had already shared the good news with Melody and had sent a message to Kevin, who had replied from inside his rig with a thumbs up and a smiley face. Pulling into the garage, Julie considered if it was worth blowing off a little steam this weekend. The commission on the duplex sale was almost four thousand dollars, which gave her some significant padding in her checking account. Then again, Kevin would probably give her one of those meaning-laden glances that made her feel like a twelve-year-old who had been caught eating an entire carton of rocky road. Assuming he noticed.

Julie knocked on Kevin's door, and after a minute of no response, poked her head in. Sure enough, he was on his couch hooked up to his VR Rig, presumably slaving away for New Realities, doing whatever it was they had hired him to do. She frowned as she considered sending him a message to ask him to surface for a bit. She hadn't talked to him in four days; he hadn't even seen the new car. Closing the door, she decided she'd give it till the weekend. Then if he hadn't surfaced, she'd drag him out to be social, if only with her and Mel.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Melody grimaced as she grabbed yet another handful of GoJo and went back to scrubbing her hands. She wore gloves when working on a bike, but the sad truth was that the shop just generated filth. Brake dust, road grime, and various other sources of black gunk ended up coating pretty much everything. 'At least,' she thought to herself, 'I'm not too concerned about my nails.' Max was a tomboy and proud of it. She knew she was cute, and there were a few guys that would be happy to lock her down. But family came first, and Dad was a time commitment that didn't leave her with much left for a social life.

She clocked out and headed to her bike, pumped for the weekend. Julie had been busy all week, and Kevin was interred in his VR rig, so she hadn't seen her friends all week. It was time to loosen up and kickback. Stuffing her helmet on, she thumbed her ignition and considered her route home. Publix for subs, a liquor store next to Publix for beer, and then straight to Julie and Kev's. Melody was absolutely certain she had clothes there so that she could eat, shower, then drink while hanging out. It was a solid plan.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Robert relaxed in his hammock, light clouds racing across the sky as afternoon settled over Joshua Tree National Park. He'd arrived just before noon, and had stopped on the way in for some beer and a fresh case of water. Despite the hundred and two degree temperature, Robert was feeling good as the shade from his rain tarp kept the sun off, and the stiff breeze wicked away any sweat. 'This,' he reflected 'is heaven - an ice-cold beer, and no other humans for miles.'

He was pulled from his reverie by the buzz of his cellphone. He leisurely pulled it out of the hammocks pocket and glanced at the screen. Two PM. Which made it five pm back in Florida, and thus time to check and see how the Dungeons were doing for the week.

Thumbing open his app, he habitually sorted by least number of hours and sighed. Gary was still trailing the pack, although he had put another eight hours in. Maybe he'd gotten his father's affairs in order. Scrolling down, Robert searched for Kevin's name. Scrolling further, and further, he finally reached the bottom of the list, where Kevin's name stood proudly. 'Damn,' he muttered, as he did the mental math. At one hundred and one hours, Kevin had logged in sixty-one hours in the past five days.

Closing the app, Robert opened Outlook and created an appointment to reach out to Gary Monday morning. Hopefully, Gary would have logged a few more hours over the weekend. Robert hoped all of his Dungeon developers would succeed, although the hastily constructed models suggested that at least five percent of the dungeons were likely to fail after the first few months. The models predicted that the Dungeons most likely to succeed would be themed, heavily combat oriented scenarios. The hyper-competitive MMORPG raiding types would flock to those. The next most likely Dungeons were those that provided thematic resources, most likely elemental themes. However, the water element was unlikely to succeed, and instead, the model predicted that any Dungeon that specialized in Ice would be visited instead.

Finally, the model suggested that there would be successful Dungeons that simply excelled in having an engaging design. Robert slipped his phone back in the hammock pocket and took a sip of his beer, a grin spreading across his face. Over a hundred hours spent building a Dungeon with only one thousand resource points to spend? He just knew that Kevin was going to bring something unique to the game.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Two ravens in the old oak tree," Kevin sang along to himself "one for you and one for me, bluebirds in the late December, I see signs now all the time." He had piped music into the developer tools environment. Kevin was giving his Dungeon a once over before diving back into the menu system for creature behavior. He had decided not to use badgers as an aggressive enemy and instead had opted for small packs of wolves, a few mountain lions, and a rather angry grizzly bear.

The depth and range of options available in the creation of the Dungeon were simply staggering. If you went deep enough, you could accomplish almost anything. Kevin's most recent discovery was that he could not only set the creatures to respawn; he could also set a time frame for between two and twenty-four hours. And so he had set up his ambient creatures to reappear after two hours, his neutral creatures after eight hours, and his aggressive creatures after the full twenty-four hours.

He had further discovered that you could set 'Safe Zones' in your Dungeon, to allow a party to rest while being safe from aggressive creatures. Kevin had set up two of them, one on the southern end of the cavern where one of the streams pooled and disappeared down under the rock. The other was much deeper in and was located on the far side of the waterfall. He knew that if he were exploring the cavern, he would want to be able to take his time.

Now, he was diving deeper into the menu system for creature behavior. It appeared that there was a sort of "If, then" system in place, allowing him to trigger certain behaviors. Kevin turned his attention to the Badger burrow he'd placed near the entrance to the Dungeon. He scrolled the options and set the neutral creature to flee if attacked. He didn't want his adorable Badger to be murdered by the adventurers after all. He knew their type. There were plenty of MMORPG players who attacked the neutral creatures in games, despite there being little reward to be gained.

Not in Kevin's Dungeon. He proceeded to set each of his ambient and neutral creatures to flee if attacked. Further consideration of the menu showed a "Follow" option. 'I wonder,' Kevin thought as he looked through the list of actions that could be used to trigger the "Follow" option. He selected his Badger and then set the options to cause the cutie to follow when given a fish.

'I wonder if there is a way to set him to friendly... is friendly an option?' Kevin mused to himself as he continued his delve into the developers' tools.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Julie shuffled back and forth as she danced to whatever Spotify was playing, all while running a brush through her hair while she carefully operated the blow dryer. It was Friday night, and while she wasn't going to have a huge party, she knew Mel was going to show up soon, and Dave might pop by as well. All that remained was to drag grumpy bear Kev out of his self imposed hibernation.

After sorting out her hair, and applying a touch of makeup, she heard the front door slam, and Melody's battle cry of "What up my bitches!" echo through the house. Grinning, she grabbed her phone and quickly sent a message to Kevin; "Company, time to get out of your hole." Julie's bedroom door was thrown open, and her space invaded by a dirty, smelly Melody. "Ugh, Mel, shower!" Julie pantomimed, waving fumes away while holding her nose. "Yeah, I fucking know, right?" said Melody as she stomped through Julie's room and yanking open the bottom right dresser drawer, which she had claimed as hers years ago. "Getting fuckin' hot, I swear I'd dropkick a toddler if it would get me A/C in the shop." Julie mouthed 'Dropkick a toddler,' to herself as Melody pulled out some clothes and headed for the bathroom, yelling over her shoulder, "Wake Kevin up! I brought Publix subs and beer!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Melody hummed to herself as she fired up The Shower Head of Tormented Souls, stripping off her work clothes before climbing into the gloriously preheated shower. Grabbing a bottle of whatever Julie was using for body wash these days, she started lathering up. "Fucking hell Julie, Vanilla?" she muttered as she scrubbed off the work funk, shamelessly having stolen her friends' loofah. Melody believed that Julie wore way too much Vanilla. She used vanilla deodorant, shampoo, laundry detergent, and perfume. Usually, there were lighter scents in the old body wash department, but apparently, her friend had gone full-on candy factory this month.

Toweling off, Melody was glad she kept a hygiene shelf in Julie's bathroom closet. At least she didn't have to borrow her deodorant. Pulling on her gym shorts and a t-shirt, she walked out of the bathroom and pounded on Kevin's door. "I'm gonna eat my sub, and then yours if you don't get out here," she yelled through the door. There was a muffled yell in response, which she couldn't make out, but it was enough of an acknowledgment. Melody skipped to the kitchen, where she found Julie tearing into her Mojo Pork sub, clearly having located the unattended subs from their clever hiding spot in the middle of the counter.

Grabbing her Italian footlong, and a beer, she sat down across for Julie as she opened the beer, took a drink, then tore off the paper covering her delicious food. "How's he doing?" she said, after swallowing a huge bite. Julie chewed, swallowed, and replied: "Well, assuming your cunning lure of Publix works, this will be the first time I've seen him since last weekend." Melody paused her brutal assault on her sub. "He's been in his rig like 24/7, eh?" she asked. Julie nodded before taking a sip of her beer. "Yeah, unless he wandered into the garage in the middle of the night, I don't even think he knows I have a new car," she responded.

Melody nodded at that. She'd been friends with Kevin for long enough to know that he had a crazy strong work ethic, and he tended to focus to an almost obsessive degree on his hobbies. Combining these two traits clearly resulted in an extra antisocial Kevin. Well, it was her self appointed duty to drag him out into the world.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of their subject matter. Kevin, she thought, looked like shit. "Dude, you look like shit," she said. Kevin had dark circles under his eyes, and although he was freshly showered, he hadn't shaved, resulting in a short, dense beard covering his face and neck. "Also, you have a fuckin' neckbeard," she went on, grinning at his barely audible growls. "I banged out sixty-two hours in the past five days," he muttered as he grabbed the remaining sub from the counter, along with a beer, and slumped down into the chair between her and Julie.

Melody nodded, and went on, "Yeah, you look like a ten dollar crack whore," she said sagely. Kevin winced and replied, "That's a little harsh," he said before he started to grin and pointed at his face "I still have my teeth!" Melody reached over for a high five, which was duly delivered. "So, New Realities cracks that whip pretty hard?" Kevin shrugged and tore into his Rueben. "Let's just say I'm keeping busy and making myself useful," he said.

Melody took a drink and considered. She kind of wanted to press him a bit about what he was doing. Sixty fucking hours in a week was some pretty hardcore work, especially in a VR rig, and if she knew Kev, he wasn't taking a break every four hours. "You pausing every four hours to shit, piss or jerk off?" she asked. Kevin shook his head while grinning, "Nope, and let me tell ya, after sixteen hours, I'm pissing like a fire hydrant." Melody gave him a sidelong glance as she resumed her attack on what was left of her sub. "You gonna be able to slow it down after launch?" she asked.

Kevin raised an eyebrow at her. Damn that eyebrow. He was like fuckin' Vetinari with that shit. After swallowing, he responded, "I can't discuss the project I'm working on for New Realities due to an NDA; however, I feel that I will be able to start working a normal forty-hour week before the VR immersion does any permanent damage." She gave him a thumbs-up, unwilling to relent her ongoing battle with her meal.

As Julie started expounding on her new car, Melody took a drink and smiled. A bit of Kev and Julie was just what she needed to switch gears for the weekend.