16:40 GMT. Near Vilnius, Lithuania.
Sung observed the display in front of her. The symbols scrolled past like in that old Matrix movie she had seen once as a kid. She blinked hard, and then again. They really shouldn’t look like that, except the hangover she felt was somewhat severe. She had claimed that it was both bad luck to celebrate the alpha test before they executed and regretted that she had given in to the celebration despite her observations. Then she had the extra bad luck of drawing the short straw to be on operations duty when the simulation went live.
Chae-Won Hyeon-Ju Jae Sang (채원현주재상), went by Sung for short. It was easier. The easier path was often, if nothing else, less burdensome on her personal life. And the various pronunciations of Sang, in any dialect, hurt her ears. Sung didn’t have many strange pronunciations, despite being a letter different. She still heard some strange mannerisms but those were significantly less grating and easier to appreciate.
{It’s likely both a bad transcription of the Korean and a terrible misinterpretation of the name, but the narrator believes the name was intended to mean something along the lines of: 'despite of average stock, through strong effort shall wealth be gathered.' Her parents were somewhat aware of their naming convention and hoped it would explain that exceptionality could arise from someone well tended. Please don’t ask me to interpret their child-raising pedagogy or interpret Sung’s brother’s names…}
She tapped the screen in front of her. Yeah, the symbols were still strange. Sung pulled her keyboard close, blinked again, and typed in a command to get the summary layout of the alpha test.
Eight test servers were online. Following the normal service schedule, the other thirty-two servers had been shut down for routine maintenance and cooling. Twenty-nine of the other servers were already online, and the other three should be up in a few minutes.
Of the eight test servers, six looked close to reboot. Sung checked the clock. It had been about four hours since they went online. She calculated that it had been about seven and a half game days. That was a little lighter than expected, so maybe the challenges were too easy. The ideal spot had been about seven and a half hours or just over two weeks of game time.
{But, in fairness, despite her parents pushing Sung into more prestigious career paths, Sung had done right by her name. The wealth just hadn’t been material.}
Each day should pass within thirty-two minutes, calculated from one minute of reality to an in-game hour. So, where were these last two servers? Seventy percent. Not bad. And forty percent?! What’s that about?
Sung wanted to pull up the forty percent version first but went with the seventy percent to confirm there were no major issues that weren’t normal.
PuzzleLocked Alpha Test Server 03.
Test completion: 72%
Start time: 11:15 GMT.
Estimated completion: 16:41 GMT.
Ideal completion: 16:45 GMT.
Delta: 4 min.
Players online: 64.
Overall, not bad. Perhaps the other alpha tests had skewed her perception and that Server 03 might be exactly on par. It would be good to see and analyze the readouts when the tests ran, but that was for another day when the hangover wasn’t a shroud.
With restrained fear shown as glee, Sung clicked on the data for test server 08. Let’s see what’s got this one in a bind!
PuzzleLocked Alpha Test Server 08.
Test completion: 40%
Start time: 12:30 GMT.
Estimated completion: 03:00 (+1) GMT.
Ideal completion: 20:00 GMT.
Delta: 300 min.
Players online: 9.
The glance told her that, maybe since the number of players was reduced, the challenges were harder to accomplish. But that estimated completion time was overly high. As in, not proportional to the normal curve. Assuming they completed at the same rate…Sung did more calculations. They’ll be in the simulation for over two days. That’s significantly outside of our threshold.
Sung considered a couple of immediate concerns. The first was that she hadn’t been home last night and Anna was already pissed that Sung had both gone out and drawn the short straw. The second was that something was wrong with the simulation that prevented the players from accomplishing their objectives. The third was that this might cause undesired blowback on the PuzzleLocked expansion that she did not want. Beyond that, only wild things ran.
{And another point! Sung has her priorities mostly straight, although her actions are less than ideal. She thinks about her sweetie first, then the players, then her company. Don’t let the stock buybacks convince you that a company isn’t looking out for itself as number one.}
Sung texted Anna.
Sung->Anna: Late. Working through a small glitch. Sorry. 🙁
Anna->Sung: …
Sung->Anna: It’s nothing alarming. A glitch that might fix itself. But don’t plan to wait up.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Anna->Sung: …You mentioned you might be. It’s a big day for you! I’m excited to celebrate your success with you!
Sung sighed. Life had been easier once she met Anna. She hadn’t told anyone, but she’d likely consider quitting her job if Anna had asked it of her. Since Anna was fully supportive, though, Sung had felt free to take creative leaps.
Sung->Anna: I’ll be on low comms until clear. I love you…
Okay, number two. Amplify data test server 08. Sung clicked a few buttons and a larger readout scrolled down the screen.
PuzzleLocked Alpha Test Server 08 (Hotel server)
Test completion: 40.01%
Start time: 12:30:02 GMT
Estimated completion: 03:00:03
Ideal completion: 20:00:02 GMT
Delta: 300 min
Players online: 9
Player starting location:
Bay: 1
City: 2
Farms: 2
Keep: 0
Lighthouse: 1
Monastery: 1
Monument: 1
Tower: 1
Cats pet: 22
Achievements: 21 of xx
Max interface unlocked: Daemon 2
Locations solved: City, farms, lighthouse, monastery, monument
Sung looked at the readout and wondered. Nothing looked unusual, except they had only 40 percent despite solving five of eight locations. Technically, they should be at 60-something percent, roughly matching the current expected completion timeline. I don’t need to call this in, then.
But Sung had doubts. It wasn’t as big as she had when she pitched the freemium play module for the exoplanets expansion. {We know some of how that played out…Alastair quit space mining due to the number of freemium farmers who took all the lower-level resources and deflated the prices.} That had been a big enough deal to get her shifted over to the Holst experimental team, with increased responsibilities and a pittance of a pay increase. It was, honestly, not a good promotion. But she took it because she had the support of a wonderful woman who encouraged her to do so.
Curiously, the player count is so low. Sung pulled up the aggregate data and compared it to her playtest instructions. Okay, so nine players exceed the minimum eight-player threshold. Servers zero to seven are maxed at sixty-four, so this must be overflow. Did we account for overflow? She looked at her notes. Yep, overflow would be assigned to a server just like the others as long as they met the threshold, otherwise the server wouldn’t go active.
“Who are my players?” she said, talking to herself while pulling up a different interface.
Bay: 1 Paige Knochenmus, Brawler-2.
City: 2. Flor Basurto, Brawler-1; Alastair Nova, Scribe-1.
Farms: 2. Mihaela Ilie, Brawler-1; Traian Toma, Scribe-1. {Both from Romania and signed up to partner with Magdalena Liva at the Lighthouse}.
Keep: 0.
Lighthouse: 1. Magdalena Livia, Scribe-0. {Also Romanian.}
Monastery: 1. Vera Guiomar Ângela, Brawler-0. {A 50-year-old Portuguese, she lives to 80 and dies from an unspecified illness.}
Monument: 1. Ngọc Quý Bảo, Brawler-0. {Born on March 26, 1964, in Ho Chi Minh City.}
Tower: 1. Iniobong Mphatso, Scribe-0. {Living in Nigeria, Iniobong is the youngest player on the server, but not in the wider Holst enterprise.}
“Good, no one starts at the keep. Oh, crap! We have someone in the tower.” Sung pulled up that player profile and read aloud ‘Wanders the halls. Attempted logout after twelve hours. Attempt to log out after each new day.’ “That can’t be good…” She selected Monument next. ‘Player completes the adventure each morning then throws themself off the cliff before nightfall. Monastery: The player completes objectives and then gets drunk on local beer. Lighthouse: The Player has completed an objective but becomes attracted to the light like a moth. Farms: Players complete the objective and then get high on local herbs. City: Players completed objectives once. Have not proceeded past initial clearing. Bay: Player completed multiple objectives but focused on PvP; Keep: no progress.’”
Oh, no…
“Devin! Can you come make sure I’m not misreading the glyphs?”
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Devin pulled himself out of his semi-aware coma, crisps pressed into his face and drool on his chin. He thought he heard his name, but dismissed it. “Go way. Need more naps.” He rolled over and snored into his arm.
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Unreliable, as expected. He’ll come around to swoop up that credit…But Sung knew that, if he checked, he’d likely see something she had missed. It wasn’t fun, nor was her desire, to overtake his development team. He understood the nuance of this gameplay. Perhaps she understood the financial implications of microtransactions as applied to a multi-million-player game. And, therefore, Solar Cell had been greedy rather than artistic. But, they had assured her, with a soft touch. Devin hadn’t taken it as a soft encroachment. While not openly hostile, he certainly resisted helping.
Devin will say he’s hungover, as will everyone else on the dev team. Who is next in the fiasco? Ops team? Standard ops? Is there a sub-branch I don’t know about?
Sung considered just going to Mica, who oversaw the Operations Teams. This playtest was riding on their servers, certainly, and would therefore impact operations. She’d also know who to tell otherwise.
Sung->Mica: Are you available? I have a question about how the playtest is going.
Who else? Brett might be around. Sung looked around the space she sat in. Glowing monitors penetrated the otherwise darkness that would only come to light when rack maintenance was required under strict lighting guidelines. It was all due to money; the dark kept the servers cooler, and even white light raised the cost of cooling enough to be undesirable.
“Brett, are you back there?!” Sung sang out.
A moment later, a figure in black emerged wearing a red light headlamp. “Yarp?”
“Is there anything strange with server eight? Running hot or cold?”
He blew out air from his lips and then disappeared. Sung saw Brett as a server goblin happily trapped in a server farm, even though he was probably a normal man. He returned after a minute and gave his signal for no obvious issue. Her phone pulsed.
Mica->Sung: Check with Devin.
Sung->Mica: He’s resisting.
Mica->Sung: …
Sung->Mica: One of the playtests might take a full ten hours.
Mica->Sung: …
Sung->Mica: There isn’t any specific reason.
Mica->Sung: … Send me the server data file, compressed to twelfth factor.
Sung pulled up the file and stripped it to the requested factor. Sung normally only reviewed the data at level ten. Solar Cell compression and decompression software transmitted large files between servers. However, some programmers took pride in reading deeper levels of the code than that displayed by the normal display and programming systems. Mica wasn’t necessarily bragging that she was reading the code in binary, but it was a similar sentiment. Sung would have had difficulty parsing the information of a level thirteen factor without lots of practice. She considered that maybe Mica was using some parsing technology to help her sift through it.
Mica->Sung: This isn’t good. Gather everyone around you to start digging into server 8. I’ll be there soon…
Sung looked around, a bit out of her element.
Sung->Anna: This might be bigger than I anticipated. I’ll let you know.
It felt impersonal and unloving, but there was no reason to rile Anna up when maybe Mica or Devin would unravel it in a moment.