Follow the money

After logging off of the game, Caleb exited his custom VR bed. As he spent almost all of his wealth on gaming his VR bed was naturally one of the best and would allow him to have extremely prolonged gaming sessions within full dive VR without degrading his physical body. Caleb's personal laboratory and server farm were kept in the third basement secured with advanced biometric interfaces, voice prints, retinal scanners, software security tokens, and lastly a simple number pad.

The number pad seemed very low tech compared to everything else, but he figured this way if he were killed and his body used to get past all the first security, they'd be stuck behind a number code. Originally he had it set so that if someone typed the wrong code in it would destroy everything in the room, but after a few too many drinks and people that loved to push buttons he had lost everything in the lab on three separate occasions.

To Caleb, Alterra Corporation's new game, Alterra Online, didn't make sense to him as it seemed like the company would lose money on the game after a few months. With the company purchasing in game merits from the players to be exchanged for real world credits, Caleb felt that if everyone did this and wondered what could be the reason.

Caleb had Alterra Corporation purchase a single merit from him for 10 credits. While each credit may be digital, each one is also backed up by software based encryption that acts as a registration number of sorts preventing forgery. It was still possible to forge credits, but the cost of the computing power needed to do so outweighed the benefits. Still, Caleb thought that maybe Alterra Corporation might be doing it to keep themselves afloat amid the massive costs it would take to host a game of this scale.

Breaking the encryption on each credit isn't hard if one just wants to look at the uncompressed and raw data, but this seemed pointless as it couldn't be faked and copying it would ruin both credits as it was decided that if a duplicate credit was ever detected the procedure would be to remove both.

"Celeste, what virtual mint did the 10 credits acquired from Alterra Corporation come from?" Caleb said to his monitor.

A female AI appeared on his screen, she had long blonde hair, blue eyes, pale white skin, a green leotard and white long cape along with what appeared to be a thin ornamental sword at her waist. (Think Celes from FF6)

"My lord, we have only been able to match up the registrations of 8 of the credits to known mints, but the remaining two come from a single mint with the virtual mint abbreviation of AP. It is not known which mint this is as of the 50 known mints, we've only been able to match up 30 of their identifiers." Replied Celeste

"How much additional time do you require?"

"With just team 1, we will need 71 hours and 32 minutes" said Celeste

"Hmm… assign the other teams to this task as well, I want to get this figured out before Alterra Online launches!" said Caleb.

"Understood my Lord"

__________

Gray and Geoff crossed what appeared to be a murky river, a rusty sign still stood near the start of the bridge with the words "Fiume Brenta" on it.

"Fiume Brenta?" said Geoff

"River Brenta, it's Italian" said Gray

"You speak Italian?!?"

"Of course not, but the wavy blue lines on the sign and the fact that we're going to a city called New Venice makes me think we're in Italy. I wish we could've been close to our real world city because I want to see how it could've looked before the Earth flooded in the real world." Replied Gray wistfully.

"Maybe, but it's still just a game so nobody really knows how accurate this map is. Still, even just this simple sign shows how much attention they're paying to detail!" remarked Geoff.

After crossing the bridge they followed what was left of the road further north. The larger road that looked like a former highway was blocked by some derailed train cars forcing them to take the path on the right.

"Must've been one heck of an explosion to blast a train about 100 feet off the tracks!" commented Gray

The ruins of various buildings and homes littered both sides of the road after the river and they started to get a little nervous as it was going to be dark soon.

"Uh Gray? Why are nervous of the dark in a game?" asked Geoff.

"I'm… I'm not nervous at all!" said Gray shakily.

Geoff looked ahead, then looked back at Gray and then widened his eyes, pointed over Gray and yelled "OH CRAP LOOK OUT GRAY!"

Gray jerked the steering wheel to the right in a panic and smashed through a generic wooden fence that just happened to be there as he turned his head quickly to look at what Geoff was pointing at.

Nothing… Absolutely nothing.

Gray was fuming. "DUDE! I almost peed my pants thinking we were about to be attacked by something!"

"BAAA HAHAHAHA" Geoff laughed hysterically while pointing at Gray "Not nervous my ass!"

"Ok, I do admit, I would've done the same to you if given the opportunity." Said Gray.

__________

Fortunately the last bit of the journey was uneventful and they were able to reach the city just before dark and park the truck near the entrance of the city.

"Just made it before dark, so uhhh… what should we do?" asked Gray.

"Well, this is a game, so of course we have to check out the pub, or bar, or whatever place it is that people like to gather at for fun!" said Geoff.

"Good idea, if we're lucky maybe we can pick up some quests from NPCs to earn some merits or other rewards!"

The city itself wasn't very large, in fact, calling it a city would be a stretch. The small peninsula the city resided on was blocked off on one side from by a tall metal wall made of varying sizes of metal scraps welded to a heavy iron frame with barbed wire along the top of it. The entrance was opened for them when a guard was able to verify Gray and Geoff's identity as being part of the military. When the guard noticed that Gray and Geoff were players, the guard seemed to switch his personality and suddenly became very helpful.

"Good evening players! Welcome to our humble New Venice! We don't have much to offer but if you would like a map of this town or to arrange for a place to spend the night please proceed north past the old roundabout to the military HQ that is stationed near the old Hospital! If you want entertainment or shopping, our entertainment district is north past the military HQ and smaller various shops and restaurants can be located along the main corrider to the east and west of this entrance."

Gray thought for a moment then asked "Where is the most popular place in town this time of night?"

"Hmmm, I'd have to say that would be the casa di tolleranza" said the Guard.

"The what?" said Geoff.

"According to the translator in my armlet it means 'House of tolerance', weird name for a bar or whatever it is, but let's check it out after getting the map from the military HQ, oh can we bring the truck in?" asked Gray

"Yes, not sure why you didn't in the first place, it's a pain to walk everywhere and the military HQ will let you recharge your energy cells for free for their own vehicles."

"Won't it get crowded once more players come with cars and trucks?" said Geoff.

The guard laughed and said "Yeah, it probably will! Hope you all don't come at the same time!"

Gray and Geoff went out to the truck again and brought it to the military HQ to get a map and let it recharge for a bit.

After Gray and Geoff left, the guard muttered something to himself, and carried on with his duty of watching the front gate. A pair of eyes were watching Geoff and Gray from some building remains as they entered the military HQ. Neither Gray nor Geoff noticed this person watching them as this small framed person in a dirty hooded cloak hopped in to the bed of the truck and pulled the bed cover over themselves without saying a word.