Road to Freedom by Moskatero
A0 - Prologue
“You’re doing what!” screamed the old man wearing an expensive suit at Kyle.
“Quitting John, I’m quitting. I’m officially giving you my two weeks’ notice” Kyle felt like dancing. After three years of working like a madman, he was done.
“Why in god’s name would you quit? Is it money? Did you get a better offer?” After three years, the screaming red face of his boss and mentor tinge the moment with bittersweet happiness, he would miss him.
With a small laugh that managed to deepen the color of John’s face, Kyle answered. “No John, I would never think of working anywhere else. To put it in working terms, I’m retiring.”
“You’re Twenty-Four what the f*** do you mean retire, you’ve made more money in three years here than most do in a decade, hell you’ll probably have my job if I’m not careful”
The face was getting closer to purple and Kyle was having the time of his life. John helped and mentored him for three years and Kyle considered him a friend, but making John’s face change color was the only hobby he had left everything else was consumed by work.
“What everyone else means when they say they’ll retire. I won’t work another day for the rest of my life. I already saved enough money working for you to live a normal life for years”
Hardly the whole truth of the matter, but it got the response he wanted. John’s face loosed most of the color he had gained and he sat back into his chair, he had started to rise with every scream, hovering over the seat in other to tower over Kyle.
“So what? All this time you just used me? You excelled at this company like no other, all so you could live a simple life without work?”
Now John looked disgusted and disappointed. Time to pull out the big cards
“John, I’m quitting for the same reason I quit college four years ago”.
Kyle said it with a smile, he knew it would go bad, he had to at least try to salvage this friendship and it was crumbling, fast. C’mon John take the bait
That was the question Kyle always refused to answer, the reason why he quit college years ago. John knew it had something to do with money after all the boundless dedication and ambition shown by Kyle ever since he met him.
“Ha, so you’re finally going to tell my why you dropped out? I researched you, you know? I never did understand how a kid with a scholarship in both computer science and design could drop it all to become a stockbroker, specially one who never dropped from the top of the class”.
Now Kyle smiled, John was relaxed and interested, he still looked pissed but he was willing to listen.
“What do you know about Unicorn Corporation” Time to rekindle an old argument, and end it.
“That bloody game company you’ve spent half your salary on for the past three years. What does that have to do with you quitting, I´ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, that company is a stockbroker´s nightmare, it´s been near bankruptcy over a dozen times and no one seems to be able to predict weather one of their products will hit or miss. Investing in it is a stupid gamble, if you didn’t do it with your own money and you weren’t so damn good at this job I would have fired you the second I found out about such a stupid endeavor” Kyle had to smile, John had screamed that little once a month for three years and it never got old.
Looking at the once again red face of his friend and mentor Kyle pushed when he’d always changed the subject. “And what do you know of their next game?”
“Completely ridiculous: Years in development, an outstanding ten-thousand dollar price tag not to mention the three-hundred dollar monthly fee. They’ll sink, and they’ll sink bad and take your money down with them, sell the stock kid, don’t follow the rabbit” Kyle had to smile at the reference, plus John only called him kid when he felt Kyle was winning an argument.
“That’s not what I asked John, what do you know of the game itself?” Trust any stockbroker not to look past the crazy corporation history and the high prices of the new game.
“It´s some sort of innovational crap, something about it having 99% realism and that it just won’t sell” Now John looked unsure of himself, lack of research into a company or product is a stupid mistake for a stockbroker to make, even if on the surface something looks bad.
“No John, it’s a lot more than that. It’s the first game to fully use Virtual Reality technology. It generates a complete immersion almost indistinguishable from reality. In this game you don’t control a character, you are the character. You can see, touch and smell everything your avatar does, and you move it just like you move your body in real life.
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The Game also uses the most advanced artificial intelligence in existence. To the point that, unless they tell you, there is no way to distinguish between a player and an NPC. It transcends the meaning of game it is simply a whole new world”.
Kyle saw the stupefied expression in the old man and grinned, it’s not every day that someone shocks John Marquardt into silence .
“Four years ago when Unicorn Corp announced the development of Royal Road I started planning, even with the scholarship, life as a college student is not one of money. That’s why the second after the announcement was made I dropped out. You see, even back then I knew Royal Road would be expensive, really expensive. If I had continued studding it would have been a very long time before I could make enough money to play to my heart’s content, and even then I would have to keep on working”.
Kyle remembered his hand shaking when he dropped out and the terrible doubt that assailed him the following months.
“For the next year I studied the stock market, I learned as much as I could and started to invest all I had and make money, sooner or later someone would take notice and hire me, the rest you already know”. Kyle smiled at John when he finished remembering that strange interview three years ago.
“Of all the...” John looked completely devoid of words so Kyle kept on speaking.
“C’mon old man you knew I had a special reason for working my ass off. Hell, this isn’t even my field of expertise. I was studying computer science and design for Christ sake! Hardly a background worthy of a successful stockbroker. To this day I’m surprised you even hired me, grateful to my shoulder, but nevertheless surprised.”
Now it was John’s eyes that were glistening
“You are the most brilliant idiot I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. A game, you, who shock this company down to its foundations, who took to the job with mental abandon. Hell, you even inspired me to work harder and it was all for a game!”
By the end John was standing his face purple and his creams echoed in the building. He took a deep breath to continue yelling but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“John, this is my dream and my goal and nothing you say will change my path. I know you feel like I used you, and in a way I did. But in honor of our friendship I’m going to do two things, I’ll give you some advice and I’ll leave before our relationship crumbles any farther.”
Kyle stood up, and holding the old man’s shoulders, looked into his eyes.
“For the past four years the stock from Unicorn Corp has been slowly climbing, and in two weeks Royal Road will be released. It will change the world.
You say that I’m brilliant when it comes to stocks. Well, listen to me when I say this: Invest everything you have, everything the company has, hell, everything your family has into Unicorn, in two weeks the price will grow exponentially and from then on It will never go down, only up. With all your money you can probably get close to 1% of the stock. This is my advice to you as a thanks for everything you´ve done for me”.
With that Kyle turned and walked away and didn’t stop walking until he got home knowing he had lost his only friend and that it was time to go back to who he was before he even considered such notion after all a new world lay ahead.
For two weeks Kyle prepared for the launch of Royal Road. He installed a gym in the spare bedroom of his apartment foreseeing the need to work out after long sessions of playing in order to keep his body healthy.
Two hours before the release of the game, Kyle found himself inside the silver capsule, his mind going in circles about everything he knew of the game when a voice startled him.
Connect to Royal Road?YES / NO
Author Notes.
Hello welcome to my fan-fiction Road to freedom . Kyle´sa guy who´s lost all hope in the world and stakes everything into playing royal road, trying his luck at a whole new world.
I already have the first chapter written but i´ll post it after i get some feedback on this prologue, what do you guys think so far, it´s not much but i have a lot of cool things planned ahead and this fanfic will take place almost entirely on RR so this prologue is kind of an oddball.
If anyone could tell me how to change the size of a table so i´d be great.
Its a bit soon but i figured i might as well start looking for Editor/PR
Thanks for reading and hopefully i´ll update this fanfic at least once a week possibly more.