News Report

SMACK

"Ow." I said as I was awoken by something smacking me in the face.

Opening my eyes, I could see the immortal black cat standing on my chest, clearly the culprit behind my rude awakening.

"Morning." I said, rubbing my eyes to get rid of my sleep.

"Meow." she said, hopping off my chest to let me sit up.

"Sleep well?"

"Meow."

"Good, I think. You hungry?" I asked as I got up out of my bed, to which she nodded in response.

"Alright, let's go meet the family."

With one graceful jump, the cat got onto my shoulders before I went downstairs and to the kitchen where I could hear my mother making breakfast while singing and dancing.

"Morning." I said as I opened the fridge to get myself some water.

"Morn-" said Mom, stopping mid-greeting at seeing a cat on my shoulders, "Uh, sweety. Why do you have a cat on your shoulders?"

"She showed up at my window last night. She was hungry so I fed her. Now she's attached to me. I'll take care of her, don't worry." I said, scratching the cat's chin which she enjoyed evidenced by the purring, "Oh yeah, great ribs last night, Mom. Really good. The cat liked it too."

"Matthew!" she said, lightly smacking me on the arm, "You can't feed barbecue-sauced ribs to a cat!"

"Oh, come here you little cutie! Grandma will cook you up some salmon." she said, grabbing the cat and talking to her in a baby voice while cuddling her.

"Grandma?"

"Well yeah, she's your cat which means I'm her grandma. And this grandma loves little kitties. Yes, she does." she said, babying the cat who seemed to enjoy it despite being multiple times older than Mom.

'Kitty and Grandma. That's funny. If only she knew.'

While I watched the 900-year-old cat enjoy getting its chin scratched, Dad walked into the kitchen from the backyard.

"Morning." he said gruffly.

"Morning, pops. That's my new cat." I said.

"Is that the cat you threw up on?" he asked.

"Yup."

"Okay." he said, walking off to the living room to watch TV.

"I need to go wash up, I'll be back."

"Wait, what's her name?" Mom asked.

"Don't know. Haven't really thought about it."

"Well, you have to give her a name."

"Uhh, Rib because she ate my ribs."

"Matthew."

"Fine, uhh, Bean. Like black bean."

"Bean. I like it." said Mom, "How about you, sweety? You like Bean?"

"Meow."

"Wow, you're a smart cat. Bean it is then." she said cuddling the cat while taking out some frozen salmon from the freezer to let it thaw while I went to wash up.

~

After washing up, I was crossing the living room when I heard something interesting on the TV where Dad was watching the news. Turning to see if I was correct about what I had heard, a smile appeared on my face as I saw what was on the screen.

"Dad, turn it up." I said as Dad increased the volume.

"Tinder, a dating app, has been taking universities countrywide by storm. Only released yesterday, the app has currently been downloaded over 100,000 times.

Some people might be confused as to why a dating app is getting downloaded so much in such a short time. We asked people who have been using the app, why they downloaded it.

Sydney Smith, our tech correspondent, is on location at the University of Washington." said the anchor as the feed switched to a reporter who had a pair of students next to her.

"Thank you, May. Tinder seemingly exploded overnight and people want to know why. These students here have all downloaded the app and were willing to tell us why they did." she said to the camera before turning to the students, "Firstly, how did you find out about the app?"

"A friend of mine told me about it." said a frat guy.

"Me too." said a girl.

"Okay, so word of mouth. Now, why did you download the app? Is there anything different about it that stood out to you?" asked the reporter.

"Well, like I said, my friend told me about it and he said it was cool and convenient. You don't have to go out to meet someone, you just meet them on the app and then you go out on a date. It's really easy." said the frat guy.

"Yeah, it's so easy. You just make a profile, put your likes and dislikes, upload some pictures of yourself, and then you start swiping." said the girl.

"Swiping?" asked the reporter.

"Yeah. After you make your profile it'll start showing you other profiles of people around you. If you're interested, you swipe right and if you're not interested, you swipe left. Then if they swiped right on you too, you match and you can start texting each other. It's really cool." said the girl.

"Have you ever tried online dating besides Tinder?"

"Nah, not really. It's kinda boring." said the frat guy.

"But Tinder is essentially the same thing, is it not?"

"Yeah, but it's fun." said the girl.

"Fun?"

"Yeah, I mean you swipe right or left. It's kinda like a game. And the prize is a date." said the girl.

"Well, there you have it folks. Tinder is taking the online dating scene by storm because it turns the monotony of online dating into a game. Back to you in the studio."

Seeing the report, a smile was on my face, but I was also confused.

'100,000 downloads overnight is faster than Anivia expected but it's not that crazy for it to be reported on.' I thought before making my way back upstairs to my room where I shut the door and sat at my desk.

"Anivia, anything new?"

"Yes, sir. My guesstimate of how fast the app would get 100,000 downloads was incorrect."

"Well, it was just a guess so not too surprising there. Anything else?"

"An email from a local news station asking for an interview and/or a comment came in while you were sleeping, sir."

"Did they say why they wanted a comment?"

"Yes, apparently one of the producers for the station used the app and loved it so much they wanted to run a piece on the app, and they wanted a comment from the creator, sir."

'So they had a very good night using my app and wanted to expand the pool by running a piece on it.' I thought, chuckling a bit that my app was on the news because someone may have had a very good night.

"Too late now. What's the server situation looking like?" I asked, worried that the server I had offhandedly bought wouldn't cut it.

"Everything is operational at the moment, though I must say, a server upgrade will be required at 1,000,000 users, sir."

'Ughh, I wish I had taken the servers from the CDC before it exploded. I might have to use my techno-wizardry to steal some money from some bad guy's bank accounts before washing it and using it to buy some servers since it would be much faster than offloading some gold. There's also the option of outsourcing my needs but I'd rather keep it in-house.

I could always World Travel to TWD and fly to a server farm before robbing it blind. I should check how much it'll cost to World Travel though, don't want to be wasting SP for no reason.' I thought as I opened The System and navigated to World Travel.

[World Travel]

- The Walking Dead (TV) - 50 SP

'50 SP is not bad, but not worth it. And speaking of SP, I haven't checked this week's shop yet.'

[Shop - 0 days, 13 hours, 25 minutes until Shop refreshes]

- Technopathy Skill Candy - 75,000 SP

- Gate of Babylon - Empty - (Fate) - 10,000 SP

- Tesseract (Minecraft - Thermal Expansion Mod) - 2,500,000 SP

- Cornucopia, The Horn of Plenty - 50,000 SP

- Hermes' Multivitamins (Percy Jackson) - 5,500 SP

- Unlimited and Self-Sustained Server Rack - Empty - 7,500 SP

'Okay. That's just a kick in the balls. A server rack with unlimited space for servers that doesn't need to be hooked up to an energy source is perfect and yet it eludes me. Oh well. But that Technopathy skill sounds so nice, not to mention the Tesseract. Too bad they're all just pipe dreams.'

'Ah, whatever, leave tomorrow's problems for tomorrow me.' I thought as I went back downstairs to eat breakfast.

Entering the dining room, I could see that everyone was already seated and enjoying breakfast, even Bean had a plate of her food at the table.

"There you are. I was just about to call you. Your father says you went to your room after seeing a news report about an app." said Mom as I served myself some eggs.

"Yeah, sorry. I was just checking some numbers." I said.

"Numbers? About what?"

"My app."

"Oh, okay." she said before going back to eating.

"Wait, Tinder is your app?" asked Andrew.

"Yeah. Have you used it?" I asked.

"No, but I can't believe your app is on the news."

"Apparently the news producer used it and he liked it so he decided to run a piece on it. I think he just wanted to expand the pool available to him." I explained.

"I don't understand all this new-fangled technology stuff but it sounds like you did a good job so congratulations Matthew, we're all very proud of you." said Mom with Dad and Aunt Karen nodding in agreement.

"Thanks." I said before turning to Andrew, "You busy later?"

"No, why?"

"Call Steve, let's hang out." I said.

"Okay." he said smiling, understanding what I meant by hanging out.

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AN

Was going to cop out about the server problem by using the shop but decided against it. The server item there is just to cause misery to the MC. Muahaha.

But on that note, let me know what you think about the item prices. I might change them because I feel some might be too low like the Technopathy skill.