"What?" Celeste asked in disbelief.

Jasper shrugged. "Yeah, we had to do a full rollback. Not much we could."

His wife looked at him with quite a bit of disappointment in her eyes. "But I waited two weeks for this..."

The developer had to shrug again. "Not sure what to tell you. Apparently, the world was overrun with zombies and the undead."

Celeste huffed. "What? That doesn't mean you have to roll back!"

Jasper sighed. "I know, but the two major heroes of the war were a pair of brothers. One in red and one in green... Yeah, overalls, too, for some reason. While not carbon copies of any known IPs, they were close enough that we decided it wasn't worth the risk. So we have to perform a rollback. It is unfortunate, but this situation was much more prevalent when we didn't go into the game. Martin has a theory that it might be due to the long run times. It forces the AI to artificially seed the world. While it isn't publicly stated by the company that invented the AI, we suspect it was trained on some known IPs, meaning that the longer it gets to run, the more prominent those IPs become."

Celeste grumbled a little again but then sighed. "Does that mean we don't get to go into the game again before you go to that conference?"

Jasper nodded. "Yeah, I am afraid it does. Did you figure out if you could join me?"

She shook her head. That was to be expected. One of the many downsides of being a teacher was that you couldn't really take vacation whenever you wanted.

Jasper kissed her before going to make dinner for them.

Four days later, Jasper and Martin were boarding a flight to the United States. The flight was horrible, mainly because they had to fly using some of the cheapest tickets they could find, thanks to company policy.

The jetlag was intense. Both of the programmers were barely standing when they exited the gate of the flight. Customs were a mess as well, with Martin being pulled aside for a random inspection, which Jasper suspected wasn't random.

Ultimately, they managed to get through with only twenty minutes of delay. They entered the airport baggage claim just as dawn hit and found that Weird World Computing had sent a driver.

The woman was short, with orange hair. Not red, but long bright orange hair. She had a bright smile on her lips as she spotted the two programmers. She had to wave a sign with the company logo over her head, as she was incredibly short.

"Morning, gents. And welcome to the States." She said with an accent that Jasper couldn't place. He instinctively tried to mark the accent as a bug, and when he failed to do so, he blamed his jetlagged brain for making him forget that he wasn't inside a digital world.

"Thank you," Martin said as Jasper tried to comprehend her accent. He ended up chucking it down to 'American' since he had no idea what else it could be.

"The name is Riez. I am an intern at WWC, but I have been assigned to help you while you are here. If you need anything, just call me, and I can point you in the right direction or figure out who to ask for more information. Though, if you ever need a gaming session, I can definitely set that up as well." She continued talking as they walked out of the airport, with Riez talking about her current score in various games that WWC had made.

Jasper and Martin wanted to match her energy, but they were exhausted from the flight. They managed to keep some polite conversation as they drove to the hotel the company had paid for.

The hotel was a novelty. While not extraordinary in any way, it was definitely professional and clean. The two programmers took a quick power nap before they got ready to take on the day.

Riez was waiting for them with a bright, smug smile as she looked them over. "So, what are you going to show us tomorrow?"

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Jasper gave her a return smile and wiggled his eyebrows. "Wouldn't you like to know? I think that we will be spending the day setting things up. Can you take us to the headquarters?"

Riez nodded and led them to the car. Jasper was really missing his Endurance Domain, which allowed him to forego sleep, but the power nap helped quite a bit. It allowed him to focus more, and he took in the car that Riez was driving them in.

The car was probably expensive, but it was one of those things that Jasper had never really learned. To Jasper, the vehicle was bigger than most cars he had ever seen and a shiny black. It definitely had a logo, and four wheels as well. He missed the effects of the omniscient scholar power that would let him know just about anything.

Martin seemed excited about the car, actually walking around it before getting in to see it in its full glory.

The drive to the corporate building was fairly long. Riez talked for most of the trip. Jasper was more than happy to indulge her. However, Martin just made a couple of grunts whenever he was asked something, more interested in studying the car.

Weird World Computing Headquarters was a sight to behold. The building was shaped like a torus, with an arched gate so cars could drive into the centre. The headquarters was mostly made of glass, showing various offices and meeting rooms filled most of it. Jasper couldn't imagine that the work environment would be good, as the glass would mean that the building might as well have been a greenhouse.

Riez didn't park in front of the entrance, instead driving into an underground parking garage that had been set up for employee parking.

"Great, so when we get in, all you need to do is look over the setup and pull your current build from the N-drive. Oh, and remember to have your access cards visible at all times." The intern said with a bright smile.

Jasper looked at Martin as the big man pulled out a small card with an image of him and his employee ID. They never used that card in their own offices, so Jasper had, of course, forgotten to pack his.

"Yeah, we might have to take a quick detour and get me a temporary card", He said.

Riez got this absolutely smug look on her face and grinned. "A temporary card? What are you, a tourist?"

Jasper grumbled a little as he had to make the walk of shame. Any employee using the company garage could use an elevator to get directly to their office. However, to activate the elevator you needed an employee ID card. So Jasper had to walk up the ramp to the underground garage and head into the company foyer.

The young man behind the desk was very helpful. It did remind Jasper of the time he tried to talk with the mayor of Marcusburg, which felt like ages ago but, in reality, was less than a month.

A temporary card was quickly established, and the developer could join his colleague and the intern in a large slice of the torus-like building set up as an assembly hall.

The room had clearly been designed to hold a great many people and even had a permanent scene set up. The walls and ceiling were made from glass, with vents on the floor to give some air whenever the assembly room was filled with people.

Since the assembly hall filled the entire torus section, the walls were dome-like except at the ends. One end was clearly the intended way for people to enter the room, while the other end housed the scene. Thanks to all the glass, the room had the feeling of being outside, but Jasper noted that the windows had outside-mounted roller blinds that would allow large sections of tarp to cover the glass. That was probably useful for visual presentation.

Speaking of presentations, Jasper was supposed to be a keynote speaker, so while Martin wandered over to a deep-dive setup where he loaded in the latest version of Kalish, Jasper went to the scene.

With a couple of quick adjustments, Martin set it up to loop a single day and set up a character that had every single Domain and infinite Energy. No need to limit everyone else. Celeste, Martin, and Jasper were really only putting limits on themselves to keep things fun and gamify their work.

Jasper, on the other hand, found a computer at the scene, where he logged into his Virtual Desktop. Here, he found the presentation and added it to a shared local drive. Checking that his presentation would run, Jasper had to spend thirty minutes battling with the local antivirus system that had instantly isolated his file.

He went through his presentation several times, not speaking loudly but simply going slide by slide, thinking through what he would like to present.

With that done, Jasper rolled his shoulders and turned his attention to Riez. The intern had been in the system, and her eyes were wide as the helmet slipped off her head.

"Quick question, Martin... how much trouble would you get in if I, let's say, borrowed access to the early build of this world? Purely for, you know, 'research' purposes." Riez said, clearly already pulling out her phone to request access to the drive that contained the game world.

Martin shook his head, and Jasper answered. "Can't do that, I am afraid. I am pretty sure this would impact your productivity."

Riez sighed and then nodded. They finished a couple of other details before going on a tour of the office. It was definitely impressive, much more impressive than the apartment that Jasper and Martin used for their office.

However, both of the developers were tired, so after the tour, they went out to grab a bite to eat and then headed back to their hotels for the evening, falling asleep rapidly.