It had been a fun afternoon with George, Norma, and Little Rey. I hadn’t seen Riley anymore, but that was logical. If she had been ok with being in the same room as the small boy, I would have found it weird. Leaving and locking yourself up in your room were perfectly healthy reactions. We had played old-fashioned board games. It felt like the first time in a long while where we had enjoyed each other's company. Without complications or hidden meaning. Except crushing them in a game of monopoly.

But now I was back to my safe place, my sanctuary. The place where I used to be all alone. It was week four of sharing it with a whimsical teenager who taught me the ways of game mechanics. Did I want to go back to the place I thought so real it gave me headaches? Yes. Was I doing so much better it was a staggering difference? Ow yes. Was I proud of myself for coming so far, so quick? With only a little, or some people might even say a lot of help from a know it all teenager? Most definitely.

Going into believing it real was no longer an option. I now saw it too. I had become Neo, seeing the world for the simulation it was. It was sad. The muddy and dying grass underneath our feet was all part of an elaborate motivation tactic. Once you realize that, a small part of the obsession for it gets lost. Thank god my obsession was near limitless.

In the distance, I could hear the twenty-nine people we had hired slave away at the threes. There were only twenty-nine because you couldn’t hire past thirty helpers before you joined a league.

But now, with everything done, we were ready to make the next step. We had a field, with drawn chalk lines. Corner flags made and placed. Goals made of wood, like everything else, placed and with the right measurements. Greyish, molded, and ancient looking nets in them. Picked up from the store for fifty bucks each. Two dressing rooms with plumbing. The plumbing a bittersweet reminder of our hard work. The dressing rooms looked like a Finnish sauna that got out of hand, but it worked for now. We even had two benches serving as dugouts and a scoreboard where you needed to change the numbers by hand. An equipment storage behind the dressing rooms.

After the lightning incident, Henry needed another two weeks of fixing and finishing the dressingrooms which included another visit of a plumber. The plumber was not the same but felt like a twenty year younger replica of the first one. No swag what so ever. So he was sent back once he had fixed the mess we made. During that period Riley and I had gotten our hand dirty by trying to build the equipment storage. Now it stood, I couldn't decide if it was ugly of itself or something we did.

At one point we had gotten bored and carried away. Making a mote around it and constructing a mini drawbridge was a sight to see but not practical. A 'Knight' showing his butt hole, painted on the construction and thought of by Riley. It was a sight to see for a bunch of different reasons. The 'hole' was a Bullseye, and you needed to hit it to make the drawbridge come down. We both felt a profound sadness when Little human informed us that our creation wouldn't count towards the actual building. So we spent three days on 'repairs' and the result looked like shit.

Everything else looked glorious in my eyes though. Riley said it looked closer to a wild west themed amusement park. I had to agree that some cowboys and a bunch of horses wouldn’t look out of place.

We placed the benches, or 'dugouts', in front of the dressing rooms. The fence in between. A small gap in the fence where players were to go through while getting off and on the field. Behind the gap stood the two dressing rooms. The right one had a door and little stairs to get to the door a little easier. Sitting at fifty centimeters high into the construction it was a challenge to get in without. Inside, Henry had divided the rectangle into two. A wall with a gap separating the two sides. One room where players could shower and go to the toilet. The other had benches screwed onto the wall and a railing where the players could hang their clothes. Basic, but good enough for now.

The other dressing room on the left didn’t have a door or stairs. Inside the shower comprised tree tubes that provided the bare minimum of a cold shower. We had to make benches to meet the requirements, but we screwed them on at a twenty percent angle. Riley and I had spent quite some time discussing how to make it as uncomfortable as possible. The difficult part being how to do it without breaking the rules of the lower leagues. I could barely call the result a finished product. But we met the goal. It was enough to enter the lowest league and to annoy the opponent.

Both structures looked magnificent. I had thanked Henry many times and even the obnoxious teen had grown to like the guy.

And while Henry was building away, my army of lumber people was making me cash like water. Or at least compared to what I was earning before. A. Johnson and D. Johnson still stayed in the pre-teen era shed. The rest were sleeping outdoors. They looked at me funny and whenever I came close there would be an endless stream of 'scuuse me, sirs'. But while looking at me funny made me feel funny it hardly mattered. The stares were nothing compared to the nine-hundred and ten dollars they made each four days. In the last twenty-eight days, they had made six thousand three hundred and seventy dollars. That was enough for all the buildings and then some. I had now a little over six hundred dollars in my wallet and these lumber people were making more as we spoke. I had to replace the bunch every two weeks. But who cared about that bit of inconvenience? The startup cost had been rough but now that that was over with they were a solid stream of money.

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We were ready. All boxes ticked. Now the actual fun could begin, the most essential part of the game. The actual players. The thought alone brought a smile to my face. Players made the game, the rest only made to aid their performance.

I was looking around for Riley but she hadn't logged on. Not done with whatever trauma suppressing activities she was undertaking inside her room. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting her to join me for this. Whatever advise she had about this being a game and all, didn’t matter. This was where I shone, this was my area of expertise, my knack, my absolute knowledge.

It was time to build a team. I needed team members. I needed players that were not real but acted like they were. Bits and bytes that were almost no different from reality. Well, Riley said they were bits and bytes. I didn’t know what bits and bytes were but the obvious reason, that they were some kind of snack, didn’t seem right.

I walked towards the shed that held all my equipment and went to a spot I had never been. The backside, facing the east. Here, there was a little cover build so that the boxes underneath wouldn’t get wet and low, half a meter high walls surrounding the space. The boxes had appeared the moment I completed the list of requirements. Little human had told me its purpose in one of its information dumps. It was here that they stored all the players I could choose at the start. I liked the little detail. Keeping the player records in something that looked like stable, seemed appropriate. Riley had laughed and said it was one reason no one chooses the left bucket and thus realism. I had not understood why.

That was until I opened one of the boxes and saw it was full of A4 paper.

All the boxes together must contain tens of thousands of papers. Each with the description and stats of one player I could choose. I took the chair that Henry had made when he had nothing left to do and sat down in front of the pile. Took the box I looked into and sat it on the ground. Then I picked the first piece of paper. In a moment of reflex I wanted to put my reading glasses on, but then I remembered I didn’t need those here. I laughed a little and lifted the paper to reading distance.

The first player out of thousands upon thousands was Ada Mayo. A midfielder. One meter and sixty-five centimeters long and weighted almost eighty-five kilograms. Thirty-five years old. Parts of his description read “You got workhorses and luxury horses, Ada Mayo rather rides horses. Has no long-term plans for his life, no will to win, and speaks nothing else than his mother language, Spanish. But if you want someone who knows how to party and makes a killer Pina Coladas Ada is your guy.”

If that didn’t put him on the “I rather die” pile then I didn’t know what would, but his stats seemed to be even worse. He had a five in free kick accuracy but the rest were below a three. Creativity, natural fitness, and stamina even had a zero. Of the forty-nine attributes a player had, the guy averaged on a one point eight. This guy was worse than bad. Hoping he was an outlier I went to the next as I crumbled Ada into a ball of paper and threw him in the mud.

“Jed McDermott” I read of the next paper.

“His former crack cocaine addiction has inhibited his quality as a football player.” I stopped reading, crumbling the paper. The next on the pile was Dean Mooney. I skipped right to the description and read out loud, “Most notable for beating up his girlfriend. Served a prison sentence of two years. Still has potential left. But it's not much.” That wasn’t promising. His average stats were a solid two point six. Heading and tackling were an eight. Aggression being an eighteen was not surprising and another reason he went into a crumble. Except for the obvious 'I do not want wife beaters in my team' rule I had just made. I was glad he didn’t stand next to me while I did it. I was not much of a fighter... On to the next paper. Macaulay Zhang. The moment I spotted the words “Sex addiction” I crumpled him like the rest.

The following ten had no different responses. I sighed and logged out. I needed a smoke. This would be a long night.