“Hey James!”
Waking up from a sound sleep, the boy known as James groaned internally as a female voice called out to him and he tried to mentally cling onto the dreams that were quickly escaping his grasp. As the final sleep induced vision blurred into the deep recesses of his mind he rolled his body around so that it was facing away from the disturbance to his peaceful sleep and covered his exposed ear with the bed sheets. As he finished turning he grinned sheepishly and dozed off, not even noticing the sound of his window creaking open or the light footsteps that followed.
“James.”
A few more seconds passed before the female voice called out to him lightly, waking him up completely. Although he was awake, as soon as he had woken up he recognised the voice and stiffened his body so that it appeared like he was still soundly asleep. He knew that if he made a single movement the person behind him would immediately take the opportunity to disturb him somehow.
*Pat pat*
The slight sound of hands pressing against the bed sheets suddenly filled the room and to him they might as well have been trumpets, each pat sending a shock through his still tired mind. Suddenly the bed sheets were moved back across his body and the girl behind him began to pat his arm to check if he was already awake. He lightly rolled his body along with the force of the pats but his body tensing had already been felt by the other person. A couple of seconds later the patting stopped and he sighed in relief.
*JAB JAB*
“ARGH”
Bright sunlight shot into his eyes as his body forced itself upright due to the pain of the jabs that had just been sent into his ribs. Before he could even see the person that had attacked him, the bed that he was sleeping on lifted up underneath him and his body was sent sprawling onto the floor, his mattress following close after him and squashing him under its weight.
“James you lazy bum!”
“My god Sarah!”
James grunted as he lifted the mattress off of his head but stayed lying on the floor, too tired to move. As soon as his eyes had adjusted to the light he blinked and saw the person that had thrown him and his mattress into the air. A slender girl in a white shirt and blue, square-patterned, skirt was staring at him angrily with her hands against her hips. She was looming over him and the light brown hair that was whipped behind her ears made her look all the more menacing.
“I see that you’re as screwed as always, schools in an hour and if you’re not ready then I’m leaving without you.”
He poked his tongue out at her, “I see that you’re as freakishly strong as always.”
A pillow suddenly materialised in front of his eyes as Sarah threw the weapon she had grabbed before into his face. He jumped into the air to dodge it and wobbled as his feet landed on the ground and he stood up. Before he could pat himself down to see if he was okay more projectiles flew towards him and smacked onto the floor around him.
“Hey those are my clothes!”
James hastily bent over to pick up the school clothing that had been strewn across the floor and felt a slight breeze against his back. Turning to look at his window he exhaled in exasperation as he saw that it was wide open. He picked up the last of his clothes and looked at the girl.
“Can’t you just come through the door like an ordinary person?”
Sarah rolled her eyes at his words, “You wouldn’t wake up if I did, besides its easier this way.”
He looked at the clothes that she had just thrown at him and frowned. They were warm to the point of almost being hot despite the room itself being fairly chilly. He moved across the room and closed his window, then walked towards the door. As he passed Sarah he ran a slightly chubby hand over her hair and she let out a little squeak.
“Thanks.”
She nodded while grinning and he sighed. Just by feeling his school uniform he could tell that Sarah had ironed it just before coming over. She had clearly gotten up early and snuck inside his room to take them before leaving again. It would have meant waking up at least an hour earlier than her usual time to do it.
He sighed.
Sometimes she seemed like such a nice person that he didn’t know what to do. They had been neighbours for nineteen years, as long as they had lived and childhood friends for almost as long. Even if he wanted to keep her out so that she wouldn’t do this he couldn’t bring himself to lock his window that was almost parallel to her own room’s window. He had tried once and she had kept knocking until his mother had yelled at him to open it for her.
As he walked to the door he noticed that she was twiddling her thumbs, “I’ll make breakfast after my shower.”
She smiled in contentment and he almost allowed a grin to cross his face before hiding it behind his usual expressionless self. They had been friends for so long that he was able to read her like a book, she had clearly skipped breakfast just to iron his clothes, or more than likely just so that she could taste his cooking. As he moved down the small corridor he moved a door back and grabbed a towel from the small cupboard he had opened up.
He turned into the shower room and Sarah rushed by him towards the kitchen and living room area. It wasn’t any great shame of his to admit that he knew how to cook, and pretty well too. He had started learning from a young age after a horrible incident had imprinted itself in his conscious and subconscious mind.
During their home economics class in primary school Sarah had given him and their home economics teacher some of her cooking and after they had both come back from the hospital he had vowed that if he could help it he would never allow her cooking to see the light of day again. In turn, he himself had learnt to cook so that she didn’t have to and she came around for breakfast, lunch and dinner almost every day. In fact, it was such a common site for their neighbours to see her entering their house from the window that they had long ago stopped calling the police whenever they saw a shadow moving into the house in the morning.
“Oh Sarah!”
As James entered the shower room and closed the door behind him he heard the rustling of clothes and shuffling of feet as his mother greeted their guest. She wasn’t even slightly surprised that Sarah had somehow gotten into the house without going through the front door since it was just instinct now to assume that she had gotten in through his room. Any and all sounds of their conversation were drowned out as the water began to flow from the tap and his black hair stuck to his ears as he wet his hair. He glanced at the mirror before entering the water fully and saw that the black bruises that had marred his tanned skin a few days ago were already gone.
“Oh I’m so glad we have you here to wake up James, he would probably be late to school every day if it weren’t for you.”
Sarah grinned as James’s mother went through the same routine of praising Sarah that she did every morning. “You know I always want to wake him up just like you do but by the time I’m awake it’s already too late, waking up late is a family trait you know. Oh I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t for Howard.”
“Oh, Ines, how is Howard? I haven’t seen him lately.”
Ines glanced at Sarah at the mention of her husband’s name, he worked the early shift in the mornings and although he sometimes came for a late dinner Sarah hardly ever saw him. Even after years of visiting the house she could count the amount of times she had seen him for more than a few hours on two hands. She knew that he was the only reason Ines was always awake when she came by. Once he had worked an overnight shift and Sarah had returned after school for lunch to find that Ines was still asleep at four in the afternoon.
“Well he’s a busy man Sarah,” Ines jovially pulled out a chair from the table and motioned for Sarah to sit down, “Business has been booming lately so he hasn’t been able to spend much time at home.” A hint of sadness tinged her voice and Sarah shook her head as well.
“That’s too bad.”
Ines pursed her lips in a thin smile and let out a light laugh, “Well I guess it can’t be milk and cookies at the Fernandez household all the time.” She set three plates down on the table and sat down patiently, they were both waiting for James to finish his shower and cook them breakfast. “Besides,” Ines looked up at Sarah, “Howard likes the work a lot more than the quiet times. He’s definitely a lot more energetic lately, I’m sure you know what I mean.” She winked at Sarah and the girl blushed slightly.
“Oh ho, why’s a pretty girl like you blushing at something like this? You’re so innocent Sarah.”
A glint appeared in Ines’ eyes and Sarah groaned. Since they had talked to each other almost every day for as long as she could remember, Ines had become more like a close friend than her friend’s mother. But she was the kind of friend that liked to snoop and play matchmaker whenever she could.
“Honey if you’re waiting for that thing over there then you’ll be here forever, the boy’s as thick as a brick.” She pointed at the room where they could hear the sound of water hitting the ground as James showered, and then she jiggled her chest playfully while making kissing motions “You’ve got to make your own move. Be that strong, independent woman that your mother’s always telling me you are. Besides you work so hard for that body,” she eyed Sarah up and down, “Honestly it’s going to waste and if you don’t make haste-”
‘Oh crap.’
Sarah groaned and tuned out the woman’s words as Ines began to rhyme. She knew that once Ines started with her bad puns she wouldn’t stop until James came back and she was distracted by his cooking. One after the other the bad puns that would make a full grown man cry exited her mouth and Sarah wondered how she managed to come up with new ones every time they met.
“Oh god, please stop.”
“I heard you dance,” Ines ignored Sarah as she once again winked at her, “Why not dance to his pants?”
“That one didn’t even rhyme!”
“But you didn’t deny it either.”
“Deny what?”
Sarah and Ines turned around as James came back into the room. As always his showers were incredibly fast and Sarah could swear that most of the time he spent in that room was taking his clothes off and putting them on again rather than actually showering. She admired his school uniform and how clean it looked, her own handy work. To her chagrin she saw that they were wrinkled in some places. It had probably happened when the clothes had crumpled on the ground.
‘I probably shouldn’t have thrown them at him.’ She thought regretfully.
James looked calmly at the plates that the women had lain out in front of them and a small smile crossed his face at their expectant expressions. He shrugged his shoulders as though he was accepting that he had no choice than to cook their food.
“All right then girls, is the regular breakfast good with you?”
“Yes!”
Ines and Sarah grinned as they spoke at the same time and James rolled his eyes at them.
~~~~
Inside a massive building, various people in multi-coloured shirts and uniforms were idling around or chatting to friends while eating their dinner. Each and every single one of them was an employee of the OmniGame Corporation, one of the multiple gaming companies dedicated to creating virtual reality games to put out to the public.
The various staff members were coloured in terms of the sections they worked in. Public relations employees were wearing navy blue blazers which were nice to view and quite suave and sophisticated, the manual labourers that maintained the building were dressed in bright orange jumpsuits and various programmers were designated yellow t-shirts and allowed to wear pants of their choice.
Because it was already seven o’clock most of the employees that were doing the night shift were lining up at the buildings canteen in order to grab the freshly made food before it cooled down and grew soggy. Although the company itself didn’t express any differentiation in treatment between its employees, any outside observer could come in and instantly realise that there were far more groups of yellow, orange and blue than there were groups of mixed colours.
“Hey Howard!”
As a voice rang out loudly across the room, a man wearing the yellow shirt of a programmer, Howard, turned around to face the source of the shout. His gaze rested on a man in a gray suit, casually moving around the tables of the canteen and startling the nearby staff, their reactions causing Howard’s mouth to turn upwards in a grin. As the man drew closer to him Howard spotted a familiar face, freckled and looking as clean and bare as a baby’s bottom. If he hadn’t known the man since they were both five years old he could have sworn that he was only in his early twenties, rather than his late forties. Howard gathered as much air into his lungs as he could and shouted a reply back to the man.
“Joey! What do you want you bastard? You’re not coming here to give me more work are you?”
At Howard’s words several of the staff members that had noticed the gray suited man turned and looked at him in surprise. Despite the fact that there were many people wearing blue, orange and yellow uniforms, there was only one gray suited man in the entire building, the Director of this branch of the OmniGame Corporation, Joel ‘Joey’ Tour.
The building had several types of employees but in terms of the top brass that actually made decisions there were only a select few, at this branch there was only Joey and the three managers working underneath him. If Joey wanted to he could have this yellow shirted man fired in a second and no one would bat an eyelid. In fact, generally the programmers were seen as the most dispensable of the employees at OmniGame. Programmers were being churned out into the work force every day and most would kill to gain a comfortable position like a job at this corporation.
At the mention of the name ‘Joey’ many staff members that were eating their dinners turned their heads and stared in amazement, the director was rarely seen even during company meetings let alone at the cafeteria during dinner time but everybody recognised him straight away.
Then they too turned to face the man that had so casually addressed him. Did he want to get fired? Several of the onlookers had already decided that this programmer’s fate had been sealed.
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“Why is a yellow shirt being so disrespectful to that executive?”
“Just watch, he’ll be fired in a second.”
Their looks slowly turned from annoyance to shock as the large man the Director was walking towards suddenly stood up from where he was eating, walked up to Joey and slapped him hard on the back. The Director tumbled forward, almost falling onto the ground and saved himself by ungracefully grabbing a nearby table corner and banging his hand on it to steady his body. Before the Director could react, Howard crossed his arms and repeated himself.
“Hey you bastard, I heard that you’re sending more work my way. Life’s not like a box of chocolates, I know exactly what I’m going to get here and that’s a lot less time to spend with my family.”
The nearby staff held their breaths as Joey took a second to recover from the shock of the heavy smack. Contrary to the expectations of his employees that were expecting a bloodbath of a lecture and a quick firing of the programmer, a large grin spread across Joey’s face and he laughed.
“You’re right. I have more work for you. But I have a couple of incentives that might convince you to take the job.”
Once the words left his mouth Joey looked around the canteen as though noticing for the first time that he was standing in the middle of a group of employees that were staring wide eyed at the scene happening in front of them. Joey stood up and firmly brushed his hands down his suit, smoothing any wrinkles and adopted a semi-annoyed expression, completely losing the grin that had crossed his face only moments before. He briskly motioned for Howard to follow him and the large man sighed and moved to follow the Director.
Howard had already finished eating so it was really no skin off his back. As soon as they exited into the long metallic hallway of the building he turned around to face the Director, who he could only see as his good friend, Joey.
“You always were the smarter one. What sort of incentives are we talking about here?”
Howard dreaded the thought of being given a bigger workload, but the mention of ‘incentives’ had made him curious. Although the two walking down the hall seemed as different as two people could be, one tall and rough looking and the other small and dignified, they had in fact been best friends for years.
So it was incredibly strange that Joey would seek him out during dinner time rather than just waiting for him to go back to his programming department. In fact, they had kept their relationship as best friends a secret for most of their time working at the company for fear of Joey being seen as showing favouritism towards a single person. Howard himself was the head of his programming department, a small drop in the ocean compared to the massive OmniGame Corporations overall employee number but still a comfortable position to be in. Should the company think that this was due to Joey’s influence and not Howard’s excellent leadership and programming skills then it might harm their reputations even if the accusations were untrue.
Despite all this, Howard didn’t hesitate to follow Joey through the metal halls of the building. The pair walked side by side and eventually reached an elevator which would take them to the sixth floor of the building. As the dull music of the elevator filled the small space Howard looked at his long-time friend.
“You know I’m basically a foot taller than you right? When are you going to fix that?”
Joey laughed.
‘I see Howard is as blunt as ever.’
He hadn’t been given much time to talk with his friend since he had joined the company’s executive position, and this was including the fact that they were neighbours. He was simply working too many hours in his job to be able to make time for any social relationship. Even his daughter was spending more time eating dinner at the neighbour’s house than with him.
“I have no interest in body modifications, besides what’s the use of being taller? All I ever hear from you is complaints about how you can’t enter rooms properly because you keep banging your head on the entry way or how annoying it is that you have to bend down to kiss your wife.”
“Well I complain but I actually really like it. Besides you’re a director for one of the largest companies in the world right now, you need the height to add to your presence and confidence.”
“A single branch of the company,” Joey reminded Howard and the man shrugged, his yellow t-shirt bulging as his muscles threatened to break through it. “And besides that’s complete nonsense. Nobody has judged a person from their looks for over two hundred years now.” He looked up at Howard as they continued to walk down the metal hallways, “Besides I don’t see you sitting in my director seat right now.
Howard chuckled, “Ouch, that’s a low blow. You know I’m perfectly happy doing what I am, I’m living the dream.”
Even though Howard was chuckling Joey’s face had adopted a frowning expression. His friend was one of the smartest people he knew, in terms of book knowledge he was perhaps a few levels below Joey but Joey knew that his strength laid in his street smarts. He knew how to talk to people, he was perfect at organising large projects and he seemed to radiate a charisma that made him a natural born leader. If Joey was the cool, calculating type that treated each and every staff member like they were cogs in a machine then Howard was the man that instinctively drew people towards him and made them work not because they were important cogs in a machine but because they were members of a family that helped each other out.
They were complete opposites in every way.
“Well, you’re probably wondering why I brought you here. We’ll I’ll need that magic talent of public speaking you have.”
Joey was of course referring to Howard’s speech making ability. If Joey practiced a speech for hours he wouldn’t be prepared to say it out loud in a meeting, Howard on the other hand could be asked to do a speech on the spot and still have it come out as perfect as the companies writers could have scripted. His ability was so great and uncanny that Joey had always joked that instead of speaking Howard was actually hypnotising the people listening to him instead of talking to them.
‘If only he had joined the public relation department.’
“You know I don’t like to talk to the higher ups.”
Howard was shaking his head as he walked but Joey understood where he was coming from. He himself was simply the director of one of OmniGame’s many branches and Howard was even lower in the ranking ladder with the simple position of being the head of his programming department. The work they laid into the latest virtual reality game the company was working on, Eternity, was simply a small drop of water in the vast pond of code that thousands of employees were adding to everyday.
If Joey needed Howard to talk to the people that were above Joey in terms of position then it would be because Joey wanted to pitch an idea to them, and most likely that idea would involve a lot of hard work and stress and be unsuccessful in the end.
“Besides,” Howard looked at his friend as they exited the elevator, “Don’t you have your blue suits for this sort of thing? What’s the use of public relations if you get your programmers to do all the talking?”
Before Joey could reply they finally stopped and found themselves facing a large, silver door. For the most part it was fairly simply but engraved on the front was the OmniGame logo, three triangles interlocked, and Joey reached into his pocket to grab the key card that would open the door.
*Swish*
“Well for this thing I want someone that does actual work on the new game to do the presentation. And who else is more involved in our companies work than the head of one of our programming departments?”
The door slid open and the two walked in, Howard stretched his arms and walked straight to the comfortable chair that Joey had ordered for people that were going to be waiting to talk to him. Joey quickly walked over to a box behind his desk and bent down to rummage through its contents. When he came back up Howard was surprised to see a small, furry creature in his arms.
“You’re planning to bribe me with a puppy?”
Joey smiled, “God no, I think James would forget to feed it after a few days. I couldn’t sentence the poor thing to death like that. This is for Sarah.”
Howard nodded, he couldn’t deny that his son was likely to start something but forget about it after a few days or weeks. He was exactly the same as his father in that respect.
“I’m sure Sarah will love it.”
Joey brought the puppy over to Howard and the man let the little creature lick his hands.
“So you’re getting your daughter a puppy, does this mean you’re going to give something to my son?”
Joey nodded and Howard noticed that there was something else in his hands, a large electronic chip that looked like it belonged inside a computer rather than somebodies hands. There weren’t many things that could truly surprise Howard when it came to company work but his eyes widened as he instantly recognised the chip.
“Is that a neural interface Joey?”
Howard realised his question had come out rather harshly and turned the chair around so that it was facing the Director fully. If there was one thing he hadn’t expected to see for at least another few days it was this chip, the thing he had called a neural interface.
In fact, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that this chip was the single most important thing in this building. This was because, theoretically, it allowed the person using it to enter OmniGame’s latest virtual reality game, Eternity.
Joey smiled at Howard’s reaction and passed the chip to him, making sure to keep the puppy’s curious tongue well away from the electronic piece.
The chip itself was fairly large, about five centimetres long and wide, but its capabilities couldn’t be underestimated. Every day for the last ten years the entire OmniGame Corporation had spent billions of dollars and sent tens of thousands of employees to do what every game company dreamed of doing, creating the latest and greatest virtual reality game. All of their efforts could be accessed with a single device, this neural interface.
“Give it to James; I know he shares your passion for video games.”
Howard stared at the chip in his hands. In the beginning of the development of the chip the company theorised that a person could simply connect the neural interface to their neck or body and they would be able to access the game whenever they wanted to. But over the course of time they had found that instead it would be easier, cheaper and more realistic to insert the chip into a computer pod which a person would enter into in order to play the game. The pods themselves were easy to make and had already been around for years as a type of ‘new age’ game console but as for the chip, that had taken the most time to develop. The neural interface represented millions of hours of the various company branches employee’s work and effort, all condensed into a single form. Perhaps Howard was one of the few people that really knew its value as the head of a programming department that had spent years of their own lives to make this game as perfect as they could.
But Eternity hadn’t been released for the public yet.
Something as sensitive and well developed as Eternity had naturally been given the utmost priority in terms of protection, various details regarding the games content and playstyle had been kept hidden from the public. Should any of that information be leaked then it could be sold for millions of dollars online to the rabid gamers waiting for Eternity’s much anticipated release, or even worse, by rival companies wishing to gain some sort of foothold in the game for their own reasons.
As though reading Howards mind Joey shrugged, “It’s fine, we plan to release in a few days and there’s no way that word will get out about this. It’s actually for my own use to test the game but you know I have no interest for these things anymore. There are several thousand beta testers working around the world, one more won’t make a difference.”
‘Joey you bastard.’
Howard knew that his friend was lying. Since they were young Joey had spent his time studying harder than anybody else he knew, the man was undeniably a genius but when mixed with hard work his talent only shone harder. And the only thing that had kept them both together this long had been video games. Even during his university years, even if he had had the important test of his life approaching Joey would always find time to play with Howard on one game or another. He and Howard had both joined OmniGame because they wanted to be close to video games for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that Joey had been driven by games to become the successful man he was now.
And even though they were both a part of the development of Eternity, with the amount of people working on it, it was simply impossible for them to know everything about it. Howard estimated that between them they had knowledge of about one percent of the game and this was still a tremendous amount. If Joey gave him the neural interface it would probably mean that has would go several days without playing Eternity and by the time he entered it he would only be one of many. There was no experience that could compare with being one of the first people to enter a game.
“This idea of yours,” Howard carefully tucked the neural interface into his pocket, the actual product was built to be sturdy so he didn’t run the risk of damaging it, “Better be pretty damn brilliant.”
Howard didn’t comment about any of the things he had been thinking. The fact that Joey had even gotten a neural interface meant that he had pre-ordered it from the executives of the main company branch. But Howard also knew that when Joey set his mind to something he would follow it through until the end. If this idea Joey had come up with was so important that for the next few days Joey would be too busy to play Eternity then Howard would gladly help him see it through.
Howard crossed his arms and smiled. He would give James the chip as soon as he got home, but for now there were things to be done.
“Alright then, let’s get to work.”