00:00:30
00:00:29
00:00:28
…
00:00:03
Adam watched the countdown with a morbid fascination. They were ready. They had to be ready. But everything was now it the hands of fate.
00:00:02
All the crew was there, even Paul, although he had been banned from approaching the phone any closer than nine feet. Everybody had a legal pad and a pen. And spare pad just in case. And a spare pen. And a backup pencil. The boxes full of cassettes were nicely piled up, marked with the name of the system they were made for. The coffee was brewing and a set of tape recorders was humming quietly making even more copies.
00:00:01
Adam's heart was racing. The deadline was upon him. The seconds stretched into hours, as he desperately prayed for more time, or accused himself of laziness. He was sure that if he had foresworn the sleep completely, he would have enough time to make it a success.
He took one last look around to identify anything amiss. Did he make any mistakes? Would he fail now? Would he have to request a rewind and resign himself to pushing a broom for the rest of his career?
Yes, there was something wrong! Nooo…
00:00:00
Absolutely nothing happened.
No prompt. No visit from the original Joel. Nothing.
Adam realised he was close to faining and finally released the breath he was holding for the last minute or so. Then he slowly stood up and nonchalantly corrected the grave error he noticed at the last second. Lee had two spare pens, while Luke had two pencils.
And then he started laughing.
A minute or so later, he was finally able to answer the quizzical looks of his friends. "I got so fixated with this mornings deadline, I haven't considered that it wasn't a deadline at all. The magazines just got on the shelves. It will be hours before we get the first call, provided we get any and it might be days before the first orders. I'll stay here and man the phone and all of you can go to practice. Well, except Luke. I have a special job for you. Who's up for a breakfast pizza?"
An hour later Luke returned with three huge boxes and an even larger shit-eating grin on his face.
"Did you eat a canary or something?" Asked Adam.
"When I was waiting for the pizza, I went to the store and got a copy of the magazines." He barely stopped himself from laughing. "And something tells me you had something to do with this one." He deftly retrieved an advertising insert from inside the cover of 'Bit' magazine and placed it on the table.
"Hmmm… first time I see it." Replied Adam stone-faced. "Although it looks even better than I imagined."
By then the rest of the crew roused by the enticing smell returned to the living-room cum operations centre, and they shared a laugh about the unconventional leaflet. Which in big, bold letters offered the reader:
Free SEX
No strings attached.
But the most striking feature was two lewd fantasy women at each side of the leaflet, who due to some bizarre artistic decision decided to cover their nakedness with computer floppies. All in all, it was more a suggestion of nakedness than pure smut, but it was still much more daring than anything one could see in a regular magazine. And the curves contrasted very nicely against the blocky, angular hardware the rest of the pages were full of.
Below, a much smaller text proclaimed:
Now that we have your attention the Free Software EXchange invites you to share any games or software you feel may be useful to other computer users.
And to start, just send a cassette and a stamped, addressed envelope to the P.O. box below and you will receive it back full of games such as:
- Lunar Lander
- Tennis
- Craps
- Poker
- Roulette
- American History Quiz: Bicentennial Edition
And many many more, our collection is growing daily!
Below that, there was a P.O. box address and another set of large letters:
Our Guarantee
SEX is an will remain Free!
"And pray tell, what are you going to accomplish with this piece of… advertising?" Asked Art. "It will only detract our potential customers from our own product!"
"I had no idea you were such a prude, Arthur." Chuckled Adam. "And it will detract people from every other ad as well. But every customer of the SEX will in addition to the tape full of games with exactly the same topics as our competition, receive a printed ad for our games."
"But do you think spending time working on the other games was worth it? You could have invested this time into your own game." Art wouldn't let go.
"Oh, I made those games while learning and trying out ideas, so not much time was lost. And most of them are exceedingly simple, just to draw people away from the competition. And I must admit I took a little gamble here. I still don't have enough games, but I surmised, that the first tapes would arrive about five days after publication, and then it would be reasonable to expect processing time, maybe another week. So that would give me ten days to finish up." Adam laid out his secret plan.
"What's done, is done. We just have to wait and see the results." Art still wasn't convinced.
They were almost done with the pizza an beer when the phone finally rang. They all jumped up, but it was a false alert. But then the phone started to ring almost constantly. Apparently, while the $250 offered shouldn't be enough to attract serious hackers, simple-minded scammers and ordinary nut jobs had no such minimum. After the twentieth call, Artur broke his own rules and started to pass every fraudulent call to Paul, whose personality made him uniquely suited to deal with the swindlers. After that, the volume of the calls steadily dropped until there were only religious nut-jobs repeatedly calling to inform Paul that God or Jesus personally told them that they both needed and deserved the money.
It would take them two days of painfully screening the calls eliminating all the frauds, pranksters and competitors trying to gather intelligence on the company before they received the first order. And even that was was done the old-fashioned way. A single envelope containing an order form and a twenty bucks bill.
Adam jumped for joy when Luke brought it from the post office, and sent him right back out to grab a frame to put both items in. Only after a couple of minutes, he called his friend back just as his car was leaving the driveway and gave him a small parcel to deliver to the mailbox post-haste.
The system took its sweet time before begrudgingly accepting that the quest was indeed finished.
Congratulations You have successfully finished the mandatory quest: Develop and publish at least one game within 33 days.
Quest reward: You have published a game. Isn't that a reward in itself?
Bonus conditions:
System rating above 60% achieved (actual 97%).
Game published on two hardware platforms.
Bonus rewards: All system ratings will be now 30% harder to achieve. Didn't the participant know that a reward for digging deep holes is a bigger shovel?
Please wait for the evaluation of other bonus conditions.
Skill unlocked: Leadership. Current level 5.
Skill increase due to good utilization of human resources: Leadership +15.
Adam was about to swear but concluded that was exactly what the system wanted to achieve. It was probably just some kind of a twisted personality test anyway. And frankly 97% rating? He would never expect rating that high. Now, if only the people shared system's opinion. But one could always dream, right?
There was a steady trickle of orders, but it paled in comparison to the requests for SEX, to Art's grim satisfaction. Adam could bet that Art felt like the mythical Cassandra right now, but he was just satisfied to build his brand. And was partially vindicated when the first orders from the satisfied customers of Free SEX started coming in. The demand wasn't much, but they received a few furious letters from the competition dismayed about the lack of sales and accusing the SEX workers of spoiling the nascent market.
And there were a lot of calls with complaints about the simplicity of the game, just as predicted. Adam's prediction was grossly overestimated, but the sale of the hints was a steady trickle, at least until somebody spilt the beans on a radio show. It was a mixed blessing, however, because the orders started coming much quicker after the game gained some notoriety. There were some busy days, but usually, Adam managed with just some minimal help.
Days passed and yet nobody managed to claim the money. There were the usuals but after some time real hackers started applying. Most were fooled by the first or second layer of protection, but when a few defeated the penultimate third layer Adam got really worried. He sought a way to at least delay them, so whenever somebody gave him the third-layer code he would congratulate the person, dutifully note all the details and assure them the cheque would be sent at the end of the month. In reality, their names and addresses were cross-referenced with purchases and pinned to a 'cheater board' already full of names banned from this and all future competitions.
And then there was the call he was waiting for. A deep male voice gave a long string of letters and digits, which Adam verified using a decoder. His answers have been answered! He could dance and jump with elation, that is until he realised the call came on his home phone and not on the company line. He was always extremely careful to separate the two and protect his parents from all the wackos calling.
And yet the stranger somehow got this number and Adam was frightened.
"And the last question. Where did you get this number, it is not one we give out in our materials." He asked casually.
"Took you long enough, my young padawan." The voice changed instantly.
"The Original Joel!" Adam exclaimed in surprise "I should have known something was amiss."
"May I enter?"
"Do you even have to ask? Those are your memories after all."
"Not really, but it's a matter of propriety. I take that as a yes." The door to the house opened, admitting the older man, who held a small, black device about the size of a compact cassette to his ear. Adam noticed the thing had a Durian logo on it and vowed to buy some shares in the company.
Skill increse: Industrial espionage: general +1.
"We need to talk." Original Joel's face had not a hint of humour.
"Did I fail the challenge?" Worried Adam. "Do I need to initiate a rewind?"
"No, you don't." He waited for Adam to catch on, but continued when Adam disappointed him "However at least five of your colleagues will."
"I don't see how that's my fault." Adam went on a defensive.
"It isn't. At least not here. After all, all is fair in war and job interviews." The Original Joel laughed, but his eyes remained like steel. "But on the outside, those people will be your friends and colleagues. And believe me, they will remember."
Adam got lost in thoughts for a while. "So I have a choice, either to succeed and get a better position but face envy or fail and have workplace friends?"
"You seem to forget that this is a personality test, and your success doesn't translate to your future position within the organization." Original Joel explained patiently. "So there's no need…"
"I beg to differ," Adam interrupted "I need to show that I'm willing to be ruthless in business. Otherwise what chance do I have for a management position?"
"Do you? I had no idea." The old man quipped. "This doesn't match your profile. Not at all. It is almost as if you were sabotaging your own chances. What is the problem."
Adam was silent for a long time, waging whether to open himself in front of his future boss.
"Don't get me wrong. This simulation is great. It is a challenge, and most of the time I completely forget that this is not the real world. But this is the longest I have been apart from my little girl. Every day I toy with the logout button, but every time I remind myself I'm doing it for them. And every day I remind myself that for them the time flows much slower, so they don't miss me as much."
"It's just as I thought. You are at heart a family man. And you might want to reconsider your ambitions. They tend to cost too much. But I'm going to offer you a deal. Are you interested."
"Shoot."
"You have finished the challenge high. I can't tell you exactly how hight, but there will be a significant boost from the system. What I'm proposing is, you give up this prize to save those from your colleagues whose businesses can still be salvaged."
"And in return?"
"Isn't doing good a reward in its own right?" It was painfully obvious whom the system tried to imitate. "But besides the satisfaction, you will get a unique boon. You will be able to contact your family. I have to warn you though, it will be limited due to time dilation, but at least you wouldn't be so lonely."
"How would it work exactly?"
"I was thinking of mail. You snap a polaroid, mail it and it gets delivered instantly to Mary's phone. She sends you a message back and the system delivers it in a similar way. Is this acceptable?"
"What about a phone call?"
"Too disruptive I'm afraid. It would slow down the simulation for everyone. I can give you one call, during each maintenance window. It will be limited to fifteen, max twenty minutes."
"All right. Do it. And what would my prize be if I rejected the offer?"
"That is not to be known." The old man smiled mischievously and handed Adam a yellow post-it. "Here's Mary's address. Don't lose it. And remember to stay true to your own self."
And then he vanished.
Adam immediately got to work. He snapped pictures of everything he could and wrote Mary a heartfelt letter. Then he interrupted the band practice again to send Lee to post his letter immediately, and as he watched Lee's car disappearing in the distance he felt as if a dark cloud was lifting from his mind. Yes, that trick definitely wasn't in his style.
This evening he finally unlocked the Machine Code skill, and although it remained at one he felt he was making real progress. He went to bed truly happy, for the first time since the ordeal started.
In the morning a loud knock on the door woke him up, it was a postman with a signed-for letter. Mary had replied!
Inside the envelope, there was a polaroid picture and a short letter, obviously converted from a text message, the emojis and abbreviations creating a funny juxtaposition with beautiful handwriting.
'Hi Adam! Long-time no see. Not rly. For us it was 2 days max. Eva misses you at breakfast. TTYL. XXX. M'
There were also a few polaroid's of Eva and a selfie of Mary with walrus teeth made out of french fries. Adam laughed merrily, as despite the short message he felt finally at home.
He worked diligently all day long and completely forgot about the troubles with the prize. Then the first phone of the day rung in the late afternoon.
"Office of the President of the United States, please hold." A voice in the receiver surprised Adam.
But he was even more surprised when the next voice he heard wasn't President Ford's but Mary's.
"Hi, sweetie." She chirped "I heard you missed us."
"I did. Badly. What's up?"
"Nothing much, remember, you have been gone for less than two days. How long was it for you?" Concern was evident in her voice.
"Over a month. Forty-five horrible, lonely days." He felt like crying, but recovered and changed the subject. "But are you the first female president now?"
"Oh, that? The technicians asked how shall they introduce me and it was the first thing that came to mind."
They talked for a few more minutes, then Mary gave the phone to Eva, who didn't understand why her daddy was missing her for several days but was happy to hear him nonetheless. And then Mary asked "That guy in the background of the photo, the one with a guitar. Is that Lee from Goblin Scourge?"
"And what if it is?" Adam answered looking at the indubitably green monster painted on the side of his Volkswagen.
"Oh my God! You are impossible! He is just like the greatest musician, like ever!" Mary was excited, as evidenced by her reversal to teenage speech pattern. "I thought I told you when I was little, I made my dad take me all the way to London for their concert. We were waiting in the arena, and then that mane came and told us that the concert was cancelled and that Lee has died, and I never had a chance to listen to him live." Mary was on the verge of tears. "You tell him right away, no alcohol and no fatty foods. And definitely no drugs."
"Oh my god, tell him yourself. I'm not his mother! And remember he isn't real."
But Mary only heard the first part. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! He's there? You are the greatest husband like ever! I love you, call him now!" She squealed like a little girl.
Adam called Lee from the garage and passed the receiver to him, observing with slight dismay as the allotted minutes ticked away. Finally, Lee gave him the receiver back, but he could hear only the dial tone.
"Who was that girl? She was nice but seemed obsessed with a healthy lifestyle." Lee inquired.
"That was my… sister." Adam quickly invented a lie.
"I had no idea you had a sister. I thought you were the only son." Lee seemed quite surprised.
"She's actually my half-sister. From dad's first marriage. And yes, she gets obsessed sometimes. I sent her our picture and she must have gotten into her head that you were at risk of a heart attack or something." The lies kept flowing like water.
"To be honest she might be onto something, both my great-grandpa and grandpa died of a heart attack before they were forty. And dad had two already. Funny how she could see that from a picture though. Is she going to visit?"
"She lives across the country, so I doubt it very much." Adam cut the topic.
He wasn't sure when the next scheduled maintenance was, but it couldn't be soon enough.