Intermission 1: Kevin

Kevin breathed out as he exited his game pod. The village won the raid. His team even came in fifth overall in terms of points. He had no idea how the points were totalled, but since this was a beta version of the new game, and no one else was playing it yet, coming in fifth to non-player characters seemed like a let-down to him.

He had not expected the game to be so good when he got the envelope from Turtle World Games. He had never heard of them before. Apparently, they were a new gaming company with full virtual reality gear to connect players to the game. Everything felt so real. The company delivered the game, and the virtual reality pod free of charge and even encouraged him to stream as he played. After being in the pod for days, he could see why they wanted him to stream. The game was amazing. When connected everything felt so real. The touch of grass under his feet, the taste of the grass under his feet. There was a physical, tangible, real sensation so really it was easy to forget he was just playing along.

When he played, he was no longer just a corgi with an office job and a small team working under him. The game was a chance for him to be a warrior of old, righting wrongs, and doing good. The first monsters he had come across were strange humans, and he did what he would do in any game, fight the monsters. Somehow, they had sent him a team invite, which started him on a new adventure.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The elders told stories of an ancient civilization of humans that kept the Canine race as pets or trained the dogs to do the tasks humans did. It was all hog wash. The Humans extinction was just the most recent extinction event. They, like so many other animals, just disappeared. He thought about how this was 1998, there just was not time for those kinds of stories. The Eiffel Tower was made by pre-writing Canine civilisations, not some ancient humans.

But in this game, sometimes the humans seemed to communicate as if they were Canines, anthropomorphising the humans so well they were almost Canine. Kevin had no idea why the developers of the game would take this route in their story. Ancient human theory was a fad long past its prime.

Something stuck in Kevin’s mind though. When the human guard said he was a good boy, his streaming numbers went up quickly. He had over a million viewers now. His office even offered to keep his salary if he advertised their company logo on the corner of his stream. People, including his bosses, wanted to see more of the game. He knew that he was going to get better deals from others to have their logos on him, but he was loyal. His work pack could always use the boost. Plus, Monica was due for a promotion. If she took over his team, they would be in good hands.

Kevin may have erred, resulting in his character dying in the raid, but he wanted to go back to his game pack. Plus, he had a new outfit already picked out for his pet goblin.