Darling!

After returning home, Gray rummaged through the box of stuff Carly gave him and was very surprised to see that it was a lot of the gadgets and toys that he had shown interest in over the past 2 years but never was able to afford... some of it was no longer for sale even and had been out of stock for months.

"Wow, she did this for me? I don't know if I should be touched that she likes me or worried that she's stalking me..." Gray mused.

Taking out the gaming accessories, Gray put them with his old PC. He was actually looking forward to trying out the 214 button immersive controller that was an accessory for Super Steel Battalion: Vintage Edition and meant to be like you're piloting one of the earliest mechs from well before Gray was born. As for the rest of the accessories, they ranged from a surround headset, forced air recirculating back rest, a few tshirts (which were eerily Gray's exact fit), and a few figurines of some of his favorite game characters. At the bottom of the box were two sleek black boxes tied neatly with a ribbon.

"I don't remember seeing these in the store..." said Gray.

He opened up one of them and his eyes went wide with excitement.

"Is... is... is that... YES!! YES IT IS!" Gray stuttered with excitement as he pulled out a cylindrical metal object with a switch on the handle as he recognized it as a beam saber, and not one of the cheap ones. This is one of the ones that the beam isn't up all the time causing it to be more than just a piece of plastic that lights up, this one actually emitted a physical beam. Although it wasn't dangerous and the beam broke easily if it struck something hard enough, the technology in these was impractical and useless, but it looked cool as hell!

Gray flicked the switch on the saber and a dark blue beam extended from handle, Gray twirled it around a little bit with glee and accidentally smacked it against a table breaking the beam. Gray thumbed it off quickly and then thumbed it back on to restore the beam.

"This is so cool!" thought Gray. He suddenly remembered there was another box that was identical to the one with the beam saber and quickly opened it up while picturing himself holding dual beam sabers like a J**i from S*** ***s. Sadly, this one only contained an envelope.

Gray saw the front of the envelope had the words "If you haven't opened the other box, open it first butt head, then open this card!"

Cards were rarely made out of paper but instead were just 3D Micro Codes that contained the information within the code itself. This allowed one to scan it with their armlet or another device that could read it and then display the card.

Having already opened the first box, Gray took the Micro Code from the envelope and scanned it with his armlet and a holographic card was projected in front of him that he could interact with. He opened the card and saw that she put a simple poem in it.

"Roses are red"

"Violets are blue"

"I have a beam saber"

"And now so do you"

Gray chuckled at it since it is cheesy just the way he liked it. He flipped to the next page and Carly had put a picture of her wearing a cosplay of a female J**i from S*** ***s while holding the handle of the lit up beam saber in her mouth and posing flirtatiously. The caption below said "Come duel with me sometime, I won't let you stab me so easily."

Gray thought that it would actually be very attractive if he didn't hear her voice and know her personality, that and the thought of her swinging anything in his direction with her amazonian strength would be enough to frighten most people. "I wonder how Spoon would react if I showed him this picture." Gray thought to himself.

After playing with his new beam saber for a bit, and breaking a glass jar, Gray remembered why he had gone to see Spoon and Carly suddenly. "Guess I'll just call Spoon directly" Gray thought, then tapped his armlet to bring up his phone book and called Spoon.

After 3 tones it connected and Gray heard Spoon's voice coming from what sounded like a truck and Gray thought he was in the cabin of the truck on his way to wherever Alterra Corporation told them to go.

"Hey Spoon, it sounds like you're already on your way to Alterra Corp's shop or wherever."

"Gray, schweet, good thiming! I wash getting bored!"

Gray was a little curious and asked "How can you be bored driving a truck with some of your coworkers, especially if Carly is in the same one as you? Speaking of which, I don't hear her."

"I'm shtill in the box!" exclaimed Spoon. "It shucked at firsht, then I realizshed I didn't need to work in here! Now I'm packed up and on my way!"

Gray didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the thought of Spoon being packed up in a box and shipped out like cargo, but he kinda got it since he got out of work by choosing not to escape. Of course Gray also considered that maybe Spoon couldn't actually get out of the box.

"Well, it sounds like you got some time then, can I run something by you real quick?" asked Gray.

"Sure!"

"So, it's about Alterra Online..." Gray began to talk about how an NPC in game asked him to sign an NDA if he wanted to continue as a Diamond-Tier and all of the other things he felt were off about Alterra Online. Spoon was surprisingly a good listener and even had his own speculations about Alterra Online. Public forums were always removed discussing Alterra Online and Gray thought that maybe the NDA had something to do with that. Private groups could still speculate together about Alterra Online as long as it was out of public view never stored any logs. Spoon apparently had partook in a few of these gatherings.

Spoon summed up the key points for Gray from these discussions from other nerd... I mean, other experts around the city. City to city discussions never took place due to it being a public channel to access another city. Although opinions varied, several were very consistent:

1. Alterra Online will cause Alterra Corporation to go bankrupt. Maintaining a virtual world of that size with the amount of NPCs estimated in the game would cost millions of credits a month in just computing power and storage alone, not to mention bandwidth. The game's one-time payment option without any sort of subscription cost would essentially only make them any money in the first month.

2. Alterra Online was developed in record time and has no known bugs which is unheard of for a game that was just launched. Considering the lack of public testing and unknown amount of private testing, how could this be accomplished? People could only speculate on this with the most popular speculation being that it is actually a much older game with all of the kinks worked out and graphics updated to modern standards. Other reasons vary from it being jointly developed in secret with other major developers and some even claiming that full dive VR technology doesn't exist yet and we're actually being controlled by aliens when we use it.

3. Lastly, Alterra Corporation wants you to play Alterra Online, even more than what a developer normally would. This can be seen from the ridiculous amount of advertising, the amount of contests, and even several cases where Alterra would just donate VR beds for people to play when the game releases tomorrow. While it is normal for a company wanting you to use your product, never has there ever been a case where a company has ignored losses to give it away.

The last reason made Gray remember that he won it too and he suddenly didn't feel so special. Spoon reminded him that Alterra Corporation only gave away 1 Diamond-Tier per city, so he was still special.

Gray finally had to ask Spoon. "What does all of that have to do with me signing a NDA in a game?"

"Dood, jusht shign the thing. You will undershtand after." said Spoon

"Did you have to sign one?" asked Gray thinking that Spoon might know the secret and couldn't tell him.

"Duh, ish for my new job, they shaid it wash shtandard company policy." said Spoon

Gray thought that it did make sense for them to do that since he would be closer to Alterra Online since he would now be an employee for them.

The sound of brakes could be heard and the engine noise in the background stopped, Spoon said he had to go suddenly as the truck reached it and he couldn't make a sound since he wanted to get out of unloading the truck too. Gray laughed thinking about how lazy this guy was.

The sun was still out, although it would be dark soon, but Gray didn't feel like playing any games for once so he decided to take a walk around town. Although most entertainment was done virtually these days, sometimes actually seeing real people felt good. Gray passed a few small shops that were all in the middle of closing up and saw a small run-down bar that was still open for a business. It was strange to see a bar with a human bartender anymore since AIs were much cheaper and reliable than a human, but you couldn't talk to an AI bartender unless you were asking it about the bar or drinks.

The sign above the door said "Deunan's" and had a cartoonish mug of beer on both sides. The bay windows on both sides showed a dimly lit bar with old-fashioned wooden furniture and bar stools. Considering the scarcity of wood, Gray figured the furniture was just high strength plastic textured to look like wood. Several vintage holosigns were lined on the bar walls with everything from old World War 3 memorabilia to modern drink advertisements. A few people could be seen sitting and talking at a few tables making the place look fairly busy, but not packed. Only a handful of people were sitting at the bar, Gray could make out a guy talking to a woman but could only see the back of the woman and the man. Suddenly the guy got up though and left with his head hung low and walked to another table where the other guys sitting at it were laughing at him.

"Poor guy just got shot down." Gray thought to himself. "I bet she's not even that good looking if she came to a bar by herself."

Gray turned to look at the woman who was no visible after the guy moved and was shocked with whom he saw.

"Is... Yes! That's Verona Peters!"

Gray had stopped walking when he saw her as he never expected to see the office goddess outside of the office. As if Verona had spider-sense, she turned to notice Gray looking at her, then rolled her eyes and went back to playing with her drink. Suddenly she shook her head and then looked again at Gray and motioned with her finger for him to come in.

"I knew she wanted me!" Gray thought to himself while trying to not smile like a complete idiot as he had to contain himself from skipping towards the door.

When Gray walked inside, Verona got up and hugged Gray's arm then said in an oddly loud voice "Darling! So GLAD you could make it!"