"Well, have you heard any news?"

Chaplain Evan Micheals was seated behind his much-beloved teakwood desk in an almost quaint out-of-the-way office that looked like it was pulled directly from a sixties movie soundstage. He blinked tiredly and ran a broad hand across his bald head. Almost on instinct, that hand drew down to his ear as though he were holding a phone. It was a common move among folks his own age: He still remembered a time, back in the tender and halcyon days of his youth, when the greatest telecommunications device on Earth was hand-held with a touchscreen. Three cheers for the "selfie generation," he thought, there's not that many of us left. "Regarding what, Colonel Tallet?"

"What else? I'm talking about our figuratively AWOL lump of gray matter." Tallet, a young man who (in the chaplain's opinion) was far too "early" for his rank, paced the narrow room like an agitated parakeet in a cluttered cage. Augmented Reality applications made it possible to speak face-to-face with someone a thousand miles away as though the both of you were in the same room but, as if to remind you that your conversation partner wasn't really there, were designed to make his or her image translucent. From Evan's perspective, it made his office look haunted. "I thought you were going to handle this situation before it got out of hand, Michaels. You and I both know the Pentagon's invested too much in that jumped-up abortion to let it say "so long" and ride off into a virtual sunset."

"God, Tallet; the man's gone roughly half a day and you're already plotting a recall?"

"That thing is U.S. military equipment, Chaplain, not a man. There's nothing and no one to recall, only war materials to be requisitioned."

Damned Naturalist Party and their damned political appointees; he can be reasonable anywhere else, but Core Children turn the man into an ideological hack. The chaplain put on a solid poker face. "The United States Constitution's Bill of Rights, three dozen federal and state laws, and enough regulatory statutes to load a convoy of cargo trucks say otherwise, Bill. Don't paint yourself into a corner, or the upper brass will have you out on your ass faster than you can say "military tribunal."

"Don't patronize me, Michaels! I am aware of the current legal restraints. At the same time, you are aware that the issue has been raised in committee. Depending on the upcoming election, the Coalition Movement will have enough votes to affect a constitutional amendment."

"It'll never happen, Colonel. You and I both know the Coalition shot itself in the foot when Senator Raines and his toadies let loose their anti-augment tirade over an open mic. Your Movement is so far down in the polls you're practically into negative numbers." Michaels pinched the bridge of his nose. "Cut the crap, Bill; what are you really calling me for?"

"I want access to ROQ-T357-Alpha's ID codes, including the dummy codes it's using to hide with."

"The words "a cold day in hell" come to mind, all of a sudden."

"You have no choice, Evan; technically, I am still the direct ranking head of the orbital defense project. I have the right to those codes."

"No, you don't. Rock has mustered out. He is now a private citizen, with all the protections that entails." Chaplain Michaels rested his elbows on his desk and interlaced his fingers. "As the man's psychologist, I also have the right to doctor-patient privilege."

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Maybe you have the right for the gray matter, but not the tech attached to it. That machinery is still military issue: Give me the codes."

"Not happening. You can wail and flail all you want, Tallet, but I'm not rolling over at your say-so."

"This isn't over, Chaplain. Bet on it." At that, the line was cut.

"It never is, is it?"

----------------------------------------

Deeper within the Fusionweb, PDE chatrooms were buzzing as always with a million different subjects and an infinite variety of viewpoints. One such site, known as the "Diamondback_Bar_&_Grill.EXE," was a clearinghouse of BBS threads, game update forecasts, and (extremely useful for someone just coming out of a dive) a daily events and weather tracker for any subscriber's local area out in the real world. There an all-new thread kicked off; one which would have much heavier repercussions further down the line.

As the name implied, the site was actually designed to replicate the image of a bar and grill. There were open barbecue pits everywhere, alongside a profusion of counters, taps, and barstools. Tables and booths filled every open space, leaving just enough room for a Partial Dive Exploration avatar to squeeze between them from one group chat to the next.

Near the center of the website a particularly industrious avatar, with the appearance of a humanoid sloth wearing a bomber jacket, hopped up and down on a table booth while waving a sign that said "Come and discuss," the sloth shouted, "come and discuss!"

"I'll bite." An ordinary-looking man, save for the fact his hair was a literal thundercloud, took a seat at the booth. "Where at? Almorra, Jindelg, the Ancinean Republic? Everybody knows that wherever a Core Child pops up the entire zone starts flowing like greased lightning."

"True, true." A butterfly fluttered in for a landing, then produced a bottle of beer out of thin air. The insect inserted its proboscis down the the neck of the bottle, swallowed noisily, then extracted it. "The NPCs are real enough, but when a Beta shows up you can't tell the difference between an Ember and a Spark. Core Children have got some ridiculous processing power."

"That's the thing," the sloth shot back, "this one's waaaaay out in the boonies. You ever heard of Diatom?"

The other two shrugged, but a fourth avatar with the appearance of a floating black-and-white television from the fifties ambled up and answered. "What, seriously? Who'd wanna' hit the Anthracite continent in winter? That place is a damn ice ball!"

The butterfly opened a screen displaying the zone's stats, and whistled. "Double-digit? That's a nasty low level. What a waste."

"Maybe for high-level players." A fifth avatar joined the group: it had the body of a Japanese pop idol, but the voice of a long-haul trucker. "I heard the SOAI traffic is picking up in the area. Probably the Beta's fault; they love them a Core Child. Could be a big opportunity for the noobs to have an adventure without the rankers showing up and hogging all the glory."

"You're not lying." Several more joined the thread, lead by a red-eyed "edgelord" with white hair and too much black in his outfit. "There's already been one huge event, according to the log: Massive riots spread all over the capital city, fires, violence, rebellion. There's even word that a monstrosity broke in and kaiju'd all over the place!"

Someone whistled. "If that's just the opener..."

The sloth bounced up and down on the table. "I know, right!? What's worse is the Beta got to have all that to him-or-herself! This could be a gold rush!"

"Only if you're a bright, shiny, new penny;" another avatar interjected, "I mean, I could whistle up my little bro and let him have at it, but what good does that do me?"

"You don't get it." "Cloud-head" snapped his fingers. "The more subscribers get into the zone, the crazier it'll get. If this is a real gold rush, then the EXP will be flowing like water. If the zone gets to have too many "upper digits" packing it out, then the SOAI will raise the difficulty level for the zone in order to keep it from being overrun. If that happens the gold rush won't die out, it'll only feed off the chaos and get even bigger. I've seen double-digit zones enter the "three hundreds" territory in just a couple of months that way."

"Whoa," someone muttered, "I think I need to make a few calls."

"Exactly." The sloth sneered at the rest of the rapidly-burgeoning thread participants. "We've got a motherlode in the offing: It's time to cash in."