From her seat, she directed me back down the Merrimack Turnpike, towards Nashua. It was a bit out of the way, but once she said Nashua, I had a good idea of where she was going to take us. Sure enough, she directed me to get off on the Daniel Webster Highway, and I just smiled at her. Zeke figured it out soon afterwards, and an enthusiastic “Hell Yeah!” meant we all knew what was next.

Pulling up in front of La Burrito, the home of “Burritos the size of your head” as Yena remarked upon seeing them for the first time, we were all ready to dig in. I realized as we parked, that we still hadn’t discussed the little device attached to our wrists; our conversation had diverted all attention away from it. I raised my wrist to bring attention to it. Yena shook her head, saying only “after dinner, when we all have food in our stomachs.” I reluctantly nodded, knowing how stubborn Yena could be. If she didn’t want to say something, nothing was going to get her to change her mind. And, I was getting a free dinner out of the deal, so… winning?

Fortunately, it was relatively quiet, so we were able to get a booth and within ten minutes, three absolutely enormous burritos were on the table, along with 3 pitchers of soda; forget glasses, this place just gave you pitchers to reduce the number of refills the waitstaff had to do. (It was ingenious in my opinion!) We dug in with gusto, the college student metabolism allowing us to demolish them in short order. As the server passed by, Yena handed over the gift card, paid for the meals and we headed back out to Colin.

As I got the car back towards Route 3, I tried to broach the topic again.

“Okay Yena. What the hell did you get me into???” I said, quietly but urgently. Í’ve never seen an NDA that included death as a penalty for breaking it. What is this hardware?? It’s like something out of a science fiction novel.”

Yena put her hands up in a ‘slow down’ gesture. “Okay! Okay! I can answer, if you take a breath!” she said. I nodded reluctantly and let her talk.

“So while I was on campus, I started looking around at the various clubs, trying to find some new people to meet. Being on campus alone was not quite as awesome as I’d imagined, especially when you’re almost five hours from home.” I nodded that I understood, and she continued.

“Well, besides the TKD team, that kept me pretty busy, but I also ended up joining the gaming club down there as well. I figured between those two I could find some common ground.”

“Okay…” I said, leadingly. “Any luck?”

Yena nodded, impatient to continue. “I found most the of the TKD team people were people were nice, but it was a lot more competitive than I had expected. For my weight class, I was pretty much the best one there, and it wasn’t much of a competition. One of the boys got pretty butthurt that I kicked his ass so easily, and so I found myself constantly being harassed by some of the other team members who were friends with him.” She grimaced in distaste. “It sucks, because he is really a condescending ass; but he can’t do too much as the instructor loves me. But the gaming club, now that was more like it!” A smile lit up her face, and in my rearview mirror I could see Zeke nodding along, a grin on his face as well. She continued “It was a pretty small club, maybe ten people? Half of them only played Magic: The Gathering, so we didn’t really interact with them much, but they were nice. The rest were playing D&D, and were just starting a new campaign with the start of the school year. I was the “geeky Asian girl” they were happy to invite to the table.

“What class did you play?” I asked, unable to stop myself. Yena grinned, this time happy for the interruption. “A Monk” she said, and I sighed.

“What??” she said, defensively. “I like monks. They kick ass and they have ridiculous dodge potential!”

“You always play a monk!” I said, unable to stop the laughter in my voice.

“And Zeke always plays a Paladin class, but you don’t mock him for it!” Yena retorted.

“Oh yes I do!” I said. “He always plays a Halfling Paladin. 6’6” beanpole roleplaying as a Halfling!”

“He does always make short jokes in our games…” Zeke agreed, grumbling from behind me.

“How can I not???” I said, defensively. “The jokes write themselves, seriously!”

“ANYWAYS!” Yena said, loudly and clearly trying to get us back on track; “I come to find out that DM for the group is Theodore Snowton.”

“Wait… I said, shock in my voice. Snowton? As in, THE Snowtons??”

Jack Snowton was a reclusive figure in the tech industry. Hardly anyone saw him anymore, except from the few virtual interviews he gave whenever he had a new piece of tech he was dropping. Richer than Jobs, Gates and Bezos combined, the guy was a certified genius. His company, Snowfall Technologies always seemed to be releasing something new and earth-shaking, be it Chefly; a new AI technology that was able to watch you cook, and give real-time instructions on how to cook better, including stopping you from doing something that would ruin the meal. Or BFG – Best Freaking Gamer – an app that you installed on your machine which would watch you play games, and offer tips, tricks and custom lessons to increase your skill, for a low fee. He had also created a few games which pushed the boundaries of what VR could do, and of course could be tied into BFG. We had never tried those, as the cost of those rigs was tens thousands of dollars, and it wasn’t really ready for primetime yet. But the streamers and people who were invited to use it all said it was absolutely amazing and like nothing they’d ever seen before. Whenever a product was even teased, the hype buildup was insane.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Yup!” Yena said, happily. “Although I don’t think the other kids in the group know who he is; they seem pretty socially clueless, and he’s just ‘Ted the GM’ to them.” She continued, “I thought his face looked familiar, and I asked him one night after the session was done if he was related. He smiled and said I was one of the few who figured it out, but he doesn’t advertise it to folks, because he doesn’t want to be hounded for access to his father. He appreciated that I asked him when no one else was around, and I promised to keep his secret. When Zeke came to campus, I invited him to the group as well, and we slotted his character into the campaign. He got along with Ted really well, and the two talked sports and gaming like they were fast friends.” Yena stretched for a moment, clearly enjoying the attention being on her. If I wasn’t driving, I would’ve glared at her, but I just made a motion for her to continue while focusing on the highway. I heard Zeke chuckle in the background.

“Okay, so you made friends with the stupidly wealthy guy’s son. What next??”

“Geez, Xander! Let me set the proper stage here! How can I properly show how awesome I am if you don’t let me build up the proper amount of drama??”

I groaned, and she laughed at my reaction.

“Okay, okay!” she relented. I’ll speed things up and spare you a bit of background. “It was the final session of the semester, and Ted had set up a huge fight. We were breaking into a prison to rescue the king of a rival nation who’d gotten kidnapped while he was there on a diplomatic mission to try and prevent war between his kingdom and theirs. It was a really fun session, and Ted’s a good GM. It ended on a cliffhanger, and everyone left in good spirits. As everyone was finishing packing up, Ted asked us to hold back, as he had some GM notes for both of us.”

I nodded, impatient for her to get to the point.

“After everyone had left, Ted told me that his father had a new product, and he needed alpha testers. He was looking for people with flexible minds, and the availability to spend a week or more away from their normal routines to fully test out the product’s features. What’s better than college students on break?? Originally when he approached us, he was only looking for me and Zeke, but when we mentioned we wouldn’t do anything without you, he agreed to include you as well.”

I nodded, but something was nagging in the back of my mind, and I was trying to tease it out, but without success.

“So what’s the terms of this alpha test?”

Yena smirked, obviously happy she had my attention. “Well,” she said, “Firstly, we had to wear the GNAT…”

“That’s got to be the worst product name I’ve ever heard!” I exclaimed.

Yena nodded. “Yeah, they admitted they’re working on it, but that’s not what it will get called at launch.” She continued. “Once you have it on, it takes 72 hours for it to fully calibrate with your body. During that time, it will measure your strength, health, agility, memory, etc. to get a baseline of you as a person. That will get uploaded to the system for the next phase, which will be in about four days.”

“Okayyy” I said, hesitantly, “and what is the next phase?” Yena smiled, happy to be feeding me the information in drips.

“The next phase is visiting their testing facility, which is in New Hampshire. For that phase, we must spend a week there, pushing the new tech to its limits. Everything is included; food, lodging, etc. It’s an elimination style contest; each day there will be a challenge. If we beat the challenge, we get to continue. At the end of the seven days, if we’ve managed to complete every challenge, we each get a million dollars.”

Zeke gasped. “You never mentioned THAT part!” he said, indignantly.

“He told me after you’d left the room to go to the bathroom” Yena replied. “Also, he said to not mention it until Xander had his unit as well.

“Given the terms and conditions, I can understand why…” I said. “Death is a pretty final EULA. Also, what’s with the whole ‘Starbound Collective’ thing they mentioned? That seems pretty grandiose, don’t you think?”

“As if some rich person hasn’t used “Star” as part of their product before?” Yena retorted, counting off on her fingers. “Star Wars, Star Trek, Starlink, Starfield”

“Hey now!” I said, wounded. “Don’t go linking all those together!”

Yena rolled her eyes. “The point is, sounding grandiose is not that strange for new products.”

I could grudgingly agree with that.

“Okay, okay. A million dollars… damn. I wonder what the challenges are. They must be hard for that kind of payout.”

“People have done dumb stuff for large sums of money for forever, man.” Zeke said, smiling. “Survivor, Squid Game…”

“If you start with the alliteration as well…” I growled. Zeke threw his hands up, mock surrendering.

I blew out a breath, thinking. A million bucks would be life changing money, for all of us. My parents worked hard, but as 2 teachers they could struggle to pay the bills. Yena’s dad ran his own business, but as the sole breadwinner it was a lot of stress on him, I could tell. Zeke’s dad died when he was young, and his mom pulled a bunch of shifts as a nurse to make ends meet, but I know he’d be thrilled to be able to help her out. And as much as I loved Colin, it was time for a new vehicle. I don’t need a Lambo for a new car, but something younger than I was and not burning oil on the regular would be a nice upgrade for me. Plus potentially the ability to live on campus for a change and not commute sounded heavenly.

“I’m not sure what my parents are going to say when I have to try and explain where I’m going, without actually telling them where I’m going” I said, thoughtfully.

“You’re creative, you’ll figure something out.” Yena sounded confident. I was decidedly less so.