Robert was having a very bad day.
It started in the morning, when he learned his coworker had been fired for showing early signs of overwork related stress. This led to Robert being called into work for a double shift, three minutes after falling asleep.
The bad luck streak continued when he found out which route he was being asked to drive. He would be driving a Greyhound hoverbus between cities, which meant a long, somewhat dangerous route through an area that had occasional Antithesis sightings.
Then a passenger's baby threw up on his shirt while they loaded onto the bus. Per corporate policy, he could not leave his seat while the hoverbus was running, nor could he shut it off during work hours. So Robert had no choice but to drive his route while wet and stinking of vomit.
At this point Robert was quite miserable, but fate was not done with him yet. Midway through his route, something broke inside the hoverbus's engine, and he found himself slowly losing altitude. He landed the hoverbus safely in an open field, but now he was forced to exit the vehicle and troubleshoot the engine, relying on nothing but online manuals accessed via his augmentations.
On the bright side, he was finally able to change his shirt.
Just as Robert was nearly finished with the engine, though, he heard screams from within the hoverbus. His eyes shot towards the woodline one hundred meters away, and his blood ran cold when he spotted a trio of Model Three Antithesis emerging from the forest. He cursed under his breath as his fingers sped up, trying desperately to complete the repairs before the aliens could reach him.
The xenos shot across the field as one, running shoulder to shoulder as they approached the bus- and Robert. Eighty meters. Sixty. Forty.
Robert didn't even hear it coming. One moment the Model Threes were nearing the twenty meter mark, the next a cobalt blur shot across his peripheral vision and the aliens vanished from sight. He turned to see what had happened and traced a scar across the grass, filled with broken bits of machinery. Sound seemed to catch up in that moment as he spotted a hovercar skipping across the field.
It bounced once, twice, three times, then fell heavily on its rear bumper, nose pointed towards the sky. It hung there for what felt like an eternity before slowly, inevitably, tilting forwards, falling heavily onto its belly.
Everything was silent for several moments as everyone processed what had just happened. Before Robert could fully register that he was still alive, the pulped remains of the the Model Threes began to rain from the sky, soaking his pristine, white shirt in green plant matter.
Goddammit.
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“…and so, per Director Fields’ orders, we will be doing a full rewrite of the story for Excelsior 14-II. The writing team will be expected to submit the first draft for this two weeks from today. His feedback was, and I quote, ‘I would like to see something edgier, with a less depressing ending.’”
No one groaned, but I could tell they wanted to. Rewriting the story for an AAAA game in two weeks was absolutely brutal, and meant insane amounts of overtime. It was debatable whether they’d be able to sleep. But so goes the grind of working for a game dev in 2056. And what the hell was that feedback?
“As for the programming team, due to the recent controversy regarding the Samurai+ Engine, the Director would like you to do a full conversion over to Unity 3XD. Keep in mind that you may also be required to make changes to accommodate any events in the story that the engine currently cannot support once the revisions are completed.”
This time the manager didn’t list a deadline, which everyone understood to mean they had until the writing team finished their own assignment. I had to wonder whether Junichiro really expected these projects to be completed on time, or if he was simply relaying the words of Director Fields. Probably the latter. The man was clueless about game development and I doubted he even read the original draft.
“Erica, your team is going to need to redo the art to match the new draft, as well as provide new models for all objects, characters, and backgrounds in order to match the new style.”
I waved my hand in acknowledgement. ‘Team.’ What a joke. I babysat a dozen purpose-built art generating AI, each of which was dedicated to a specific type of art and model. Characters, ships, weapons, etc. He and I both knew I was only here so the company could claim to have a human art team and technically be telling the truth. Most game developers had fully migrated to AI already.
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What a waste of a degree.
That said, it meant I was in for way less work than everyone else with this latest round of redoes. The game had been stuck in development hell for years now; I wasn’t even the original art director. There was a betting pool on whether the dev team was a money laundering scheme for the director or if he was simply that incompetent. No one expected to collect on it, though.
After the meeting wrapped up, I hurried back to my office to input the new design parameters and then clocked out. Everyone else would be putting in overtime; I, on the other hand, just had to see what kind of garbage the AIs spat out over the weekend. It would be predictably derivative and reminiscent of a dozen-dozen IPs created over the course of the last century, and absolutely no one would care.
Okay, the players would care. As far as the company was concerned, that meant no one.
It took me the better part of ten minutes to get to the parking deck where my hovercar was waiting. It was a dated model, but it did the job. If I ignored that a recall was put out for it five years ago. In this day and age, that didn’t equal a free fix- it simply meant the company wanted to ‘fix’ an issue they intentionally included at the customer’s expense so they could make a few more bucks off of an older model vehicle.
As I couldn’t afford the fee, I would simply have to take the risk.
It was another hour before I made it home, crowded as the traffic is in Charlotte these days. Once just another city in North Carolina, after the fall of the United States, it had overtaken Raleigh as the capital and grown into a megacity choked and crowded with most of the former state’s population. Like any megacity, it was composed of countless sky scrapers layers on top of an undercity where all the maintenance was done, and the poorer you were, the closer you lived to the ground.
The poorest just lived under the ground.
I lived about halfway up a residential building, which meant I was solidly lower-middle class. I received pay befitting an art team manager, even if I didn’t have a real team.
But that was too depressing to think about, so I shifted focus to my plans for the weekend. There was a convention in old Virginia this weekend, and I was planning to drive up there tomorrow morning. I had my costume all picked out and ready: the Mjolnir Mk V from Halo: Combat Evolved, based on the model from the original Halo: Reach, not the most recent remake. The newer versions had begun revamping old armor designs to include things we had learned about real power armor over the last half-century from samurai that used armor for exceeding what we could build today, and while they were more realistic, they lacked the artistic vision of the earlier designs.
I popped a frozen dinner into the microwave and went over my costume one more time, determined to make sure not a detail was out of place. The suit was largely plastic, but it was solid plastic, not hollow, and much sturdier than the coated Styrofoam some cosplayers liked to use. That method was easier to form, but my armor was a lot sturdier. It had LEDs inserted into all the right places, and a helmet treated to be orange only on the outside, without tinting my vision.
Deciding everything was in order, I inhaled my tasteless meal and proceeded to pull on the suit, just to be sure the fit was correct. It was right about then that I got a call over my augs. There was only one person that would be calling me at this time of day: my mom. This was a weekly event, but I had kind of lost track of time.
“Hey mom, what’s up?” I said as I shimmied into the suit. The greatest thing about modern augmentations was the ability to operate them hands-free.
“Erica Lynn Taylor, is that a costume you’re wearing?” she interrogated with mock-anger. I forgot I had my augs set to simulate my current appearance for video calls, and mom always made video calls. “Are you going to a con without me?”
Yes, I normally attended conventions with my mother. She was a huge cosplayer too, and had been on the scene way back when a lot of my favorite retro games were first released, back before I was born. She’d introduced me to both the games and the hobby of cosplaying, and I wasn’t embarrassed to admit it. It was good bonding time.
“Sorry mom, didn’t mention it because I knew you had a shift this weekend. I was planning to just keep it quiet so you wouldn’t be disappointed, but I forgot to change my aug settings back…”
“Oh, don’t worry about my feelings young lady, I’m more than old enough to manage my disappointment,” she riposted with a smile. Her augs were set to show the entire background of the room she was in- she was sitting in her workshop, and a series of cosplay suits were hanging in the background. She was probably working on a new one before she called.
“I know, I just feel bad about going alone…but one of my contacts needed a replacement for their booth, and I owed him a favor.”
“That’s alright, I understand. But! I wanted to let you know, I decided what I’m doing for the next con!”
“I swear to fuck if you say Bayo-“
“Bayonetta! Too late, already made the costume!”
“Mom, no.”
“Mom, yes!”
“You are fifty seven.”
“And I don’t look a day over thirty five.”
“No one wants to see your granny bits. I don’t want to see your granny bits.”
“My daughter is too gay to make me a granny.”
“…technically, I could still adopt.” She gave me one of the most unimpressed looks I have ever seen. I didn’t take it personally- she’d never been grandbaby crazy and I knew the comment was entirely a riposte of my own.
“Erica, the day you decide to adopt a child is the day I eat a costume of your choice.”
…I had no argument for that, so it was time for another option.
“If you wear that costume I will go in your Feferi cosplay from 2014 and post all your Homestuck cosplay photos online.”
“How do you even have…? Actually, I’ll take that deal. We’ll go as Bayonetta and Feferi. Talk to you next week!” she said, hanging up the phone before I could respond.
Goddammit, I forgot the woman was utterly shameless.
“Eh. Beats the time she went in a metal bikini. Still gonna post her dark past online, though.”
Putting it out of mind, I continued to prepare for my trip tomorrow.