Nimbor – Control Center

Obscure-Mystic Media, Sydney

As each player’s status came online several screens flashed a green light showing each one had successfully entered the digital world, from his position overlooking the log-in process was Marcus Forrester, who had a personal stake in this ambitious project. With his own children being counted as part of the player base for the first wave of players, he had invested interest in the success of Nimbor. Marcus was pulled from his thoughts as his Second-in-command, Jordan Robinson running up onto the platform covered in sweat.

“Sir, it's…”

“Breath Jordan and focus on the words,” Marcus said attempting to control his already racing mind.

“Its… Mackenzie Sir, He’s… taken over the servers.” Jordan said while collecting his breath.

“Which Servers?”

“A-All of them Sir.”

Marcus’ face drained of all colour as a sense of dread overshadowed him, his first thought went to his children soon followed by ‘the players’. Marcus quick sat at the main computer as he frantically began typing upon the keyboard, hoping to regain some measure of control otherwise the 1 million lives which included the lives of his own children would be at risk.

As Marcus and Jordan frantically worked away, just keeping ahead of the system-wide lockout, Mackenzie’s plan was starting to take effect. Marcus needed to upload his pet project quickly even if it was only in the Beta phase, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to help from their end.

Marcus’ side project was codenamed: Phoenix, which would allow the world to watch key players from each of the participating countries, his son had been selected by the system as the player from Australia. The only downside was that the program was incomplete and had limited functionality and for the moment Project Phoenix was a glorified streaming service.

As the system entered complete lockdown Marcus activated his Phoenix, Alexios along with others from around the world would now become the main stars of their very own TV-Show-like broadcast. Marcus leaned back into his chair while resting his head against his desk, thinking back to the moment that Colin Mackenzie had entered his life. The man was once upon a time in his youthful days a genius computer programmer, before becoming the CEO of Obscure Studios, a film production company. Now the real Colin had returned and in a big way, mixed the worlds of video games and television into something never truly seen before.

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Both men were drawn back to reality as someone came up the steps of the control platform, Marcus stood from his chair and turned to meet the face of Mackenzie’s chairman of the board, Arthur Cameron.

“Marcus, is everything going smoothly?”

“No sir… it would appear that our CEO has taken complete control of Nimbor along with every player currently logged into the system across the globe.”

“There must be something we can do, maybe if we remove the helmets…”

“NO! sorry Mister Cameron sir…”

“Easy Jordan, what my second-in-command is trying to say sir is that in doing so you would be condemning each person to be trapped permanently within the system and under Mackenzie’s total control.” Marcus paused to take a calming breath, “Now some players would not see a problem with that but their loved ones might, but Jordan and I have managed to upload my side project.”

“This would be your Project phoenix correct?” Arthur asked.

“Indeed sir.”

“And this program helps us how?”

Marcus moved to stand looking at the mass of monitors that made up the map of the earth with each of the log-in site locations, turning to face Arthur once more.

“We spin the story that the pre-selected players will be the heroes leading the charge to stand against Mackenzie and that we will be featuring their adventures on a daily basis akin to that of a streaming service TV show.”

“To what end, Marcus?”

“To show that even if Obscure-Mystic Media is Mackenzie’s company, not everyone here supports him and his actions.”

Looking out over the 30,000 Australian players to the world map that show the rest that made up the 1 million player base, Arthur took a calming breath before turning his steel-coloured eyes back to Marcus.

“Very well, you have the board’s full support. Do everything within your power Marcus.” Arthur agreed shaking Marcus’ hand.

And with that Arthur led the rest of the board of executives off the platform and out of the massive room.

“Great speech boss,” Jordan said sarcastically.

“Jor.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Shut up.”

“Sure thing boss.”