Book 2 of My Fiance is an Alien is out on Amazon, it is selling for 2.99, if you like this book please think about purchasing one of my novels to help support me, the links for them are above, and thank you in advance to anyone who picks up a copy.

Simon Tralo was asleep, his wife on one side of the bed and his daughter sandwiched safely between them protected from whatever night terrors had haunted her this time.  The house was entirely quiet, the only sound was the buzz of the electric conditioning that ran to keep the house at a cool 70 degrees.  He had  a smile on his face as he peacefully slept, all the worries of the waking world a distant thought in his dreams.

At least he slept until that hateful ringing woke him up.  It wasn't the alarm clock, no that made a different sound this was his vidcom, and very few people would call him at this time in the night.  Groggily rolling over he sat up on the edge of the bed, bleary blinking his eyes.

He was a fairly fit man, standing at five foot eight with a nicely built body.  He attributed this to the fact that he had a lot of time in the day to just spend working out with his wife, seeing as the both of them were home almost all day.  He ran his hand through his hair, pulling it back over his head in a almost subconscious way.  He looked to be in his late 30’s with a morning shadow on his face that likely would not stay longer than a day or two.  

His wife stirred and he covered the vidcom with a hand, muffling the sound in an attempt to keep her asleep, rising out of bed he walked to the door of the bedroom vidcom in hand, and as he passed the hamper he fished a random shirt of his out and slipped it on.  

It was two a.m. who the hell was calling him this early? Or late depending on how he decided to look at it.  He slipped the shirt on, even though he had no pants he would answer the call like this, not that they would ever know, he would make sure they could only see his upper torso. As he walked by the coffee pot he pressed the button, as he did so a new cartridge slid into place, and instantly the coffee was poured into a cup the machine provided, even pouring a mixture of the cream and sugar as it poured the coffee using the liquids to stir themselves.   He took a sip and sighed, damn coffee was good.  Grabbing the cup he walked into his office, it was a small room, with several old style file cabinets and an old faux wood desk.  He sat down in the chair and plugged the Vidcom into the port in the base of his skull, clipping the device to the front of his shirt.

“Simon here, what's up?”  he answered the phone, this was far from the first time he had to get up and answer the phone like this, it was after all part of his job.  He was a part owner of Tralo and Richard’s trade caravan, a multi game trader’s guild that guaranteed deliveries across over 150 different games. This was how he made money, he didn't work a normal job but instead plied his trade in vrmmos, it was amazing how much people were willing to pay to get certain items in games.  Honestly some days he still had trouble believing he made this much money simply running a gaming trade company.  It had been a silly idea, one that he and an old friend had come up with, and on a whim they had tried it. Within the first month between his economics degree and Trevor Richardson’s game know how they had set themselves up as the go to caravaners in the game.  The had started by charging small amounts, $20 here or there to deliver the goods.  But soon there names grew and the brought in a few players, by the end of the year he had a full payroll for almost 20 people and they were looking to expand to other games. Even in games that didn't have looting, a lot of people would rather pay then grid for resources.  In the past ten years they had set up the most successful multigaming company to date.

“Hey bro, we might have a problem.”  the person speaking was none other than the co owner of the company, Trevor Richardson.  He was a man about the same age as Simon, but was much skinnier and had this long blonde hair,  and a lip peircing.

“I assumed as much seeing as you called me at,”  he looked at the clock on his desk, it said 2:26 holy hell had it really taken him that long to get a shirt and some coffee? “Almost 2:30...”

“Yeah, you know I only call at a time like this if it is important.” while Simon was the economic side of things in this company Trevor was the gamer, the one who would log in and check in on different operations, he was also the one who made sure people were being treated fair in game and set up events that made working in the game fun.

“Lay it on me, what happened this time?”

“Well that game we just expanded into, you know that what was it called New earth online?”

“Just a sec,”  Simon said, and pulling open a drawer he pulled out a file that was titled New Earth online. There was also a huge stamp on the front of the file, it read ’Risk: High’  he opened it and glanced at the summery he had made for himself. “Ok, got it, go ahead.”  he said.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I can't believe you still keep paper files.” Trevor shook his head.

“Safer this way, no one can hack paper can they?”  he said, he had started doing this after there site had been hacked, and there caravan’s had been harassed.  Now all routes and files were on paper, keeping all the files completely off the web.  

You can't hack what isn't there.

“Fair enough,” Trevor said with a shrug.  “But like I said we have an issue, today we got raided.”  he said, and Simon looked at the sheet of paper, in large bold words he had written: Full loot.  It was a rare game type, there was only one other one he had known of that worked like that.  “I know what you are going to say and yes I know one raided caravan is not something to bother you with,”  trevor said before Simon could open his mouth. “The issue is that isabella turned in a letter of resignation over it, I was able to talk her down, but I had to raise her pay and re assign her to a different game.”

“Last name?”  Simon asked, pulling open a drawer that held all of his employee’s files.

“Valadi” finding the file Simon pulled it out.  It would appear as though she was one of their oldest and most trusted employees, she had been working with them for the past six years, and her pay and benefits reflected this.

“Seems to me like you handled the situation, what needs my attention?”  he asked, making a note of the change of pay on her file, writing it in with a pen, he would re type it up later, but for now this would do.

“Well, she was the only volunteer we had for the game.”  he said, “and after the video went live we are not getting any new people wanting to play the game.”

“Video?”  Simon asked.

“Video of the raid, posted by some woman calling herself Desert Willow,”  he said, “Apparently they were set upon by bandits, or raiders or whatever and were captured, and then a third party came in and killed those bandits, and then killed her and the guards from the game we had hired. I could see how it would be pretty traumatizing from the video..”

“If it was that bad why didn't she just log out?”  he asked, the company always stressed that there employees were more important to them than the product.

“Game has this feature, if you are in combat in the last five minutes you cannot log out.”

“What?”  Simon asked, this was a shocking feature.

“Well, you can still log out but your character will remain in game for ten minutes even after you exit, apparently there was an issue with what were called combat loggers, people who would get into a fight and log out right before they died, preventing them from losing anything, so this was the fair solution the A.I. came up with.”

Simon nodded, in a full loot game it would be quite unfair if one side could log out and just leave, not losing anything, and the other side might have wasted resources in an attempt to kill them.

“But you better watch the video,”  Trevor said, sending the file to him.  His vidcom beeped and he tapped it, popping up another screen in his field of view.  He watched from the woman’s perspective as the two of them snuck in and killed the raiders, they were a very well coordinated and effective team, it was likely they had done this for quite some time.  It didn't take but thirty seconds and all the men that had attacked the caravan originally were dead.

This was an awfully graphic game, most Vrmmos had opted for a more family friendly orientation in order to gain the most amount of players, it was rare to see this much blood gore and bits…

He saw the man, blood dripping down his arm from the shot in the shoulder, he watched as he walked up and executed the guard, and then pointed his gun at isabella.

“Wha-What are you doing?”  she asked looking at him with wide eyes.

“What am I doing?”  he repeated, pointing the gun at her.  “I am raiding.”  he responded, pulling the trigger.  Simon watched as her body flopped over to the side, lifeless, spilling blood all over the cracked pavement, and he shook his head.

“Did you see his stats?” Trevor asked, and in response Simon tapped the display on his vidcom, calling up the man’s stats, he scrolled through all the meaningless info until he found something that cought his eye.

100% damage threshold.

“Fucking crazy right?”  Trevor asked, there was a smile on his face. “Who plays like that?”

“Sounds like an adrenaline junkie to me...”  Simon replied shaking his head, “But yeah, fucking crazy.”

“So what do we do?”

“Incentivise the game, raise pay for players willing to go there, and use some reverse psychology, hype it up, say stuff like only hardcore real gamers can handle it there, get some of the youngblood members all hyped and ready to go, we will have more volunteers than we will know what to do with.”

“That is a good idea, but what do we do about those two, you know Mrs. Willow and Mr. Raider there?”  

“Nothing,”  Simon said with a sigh, “Nothing for now, that caravan was lost, we lost it to the first raider group, he did us a favor by keeping it out of those asshole’s hands,”

“But he killed isabella and the surviving guard.”

“He did, so compensate the guards, and make sure you keep that one with all those piercings around, he seemed to know this raider, that might come in handy should he choose to continue down this path and things go south.”  Simon said, taking another sip of his coffee, and was sad to find it was cold. “I leave the rest up to you, if there is anything else call me.”

“You know I will bro, give that hot wife of yours a kiss for me.” Trevor laughed.

“Any kiss I give her will be from me-”  Simon shot back, but the vidcom was already disconnected, he shook his head with a slight smile. Looking at the file on his desk he shook his head, new earth online huh? Wanted to play rough with him?

So be it.

Two can play at that game…