Hugh logged in to his home cloud and checked his email, using the replies from all three restaurant owners to distract Frankie. Two said they'd have someone logged in within a few days, but the third claimed he'd had his son log in the previous night and would be waiting at the storefront until Hugh arrived. Attached was a picture of the contact and a copy of his World Council Registration Card, so Hugh wouldn't accidentally sell to the wrong person.
"Hope you don't mind if we have lunch around where we met, Doc," Hugh said. "I should check to see if the guy is already down there waiting on me."
"No problem," Frankie murmured, then waited patiently as Hugh searched through the rest of his emails, hunting of some contact from his friends. There was nothing. His inbox was full of people asking for interviews and offers of representation, but there was no word from his friends.
Frankie stopped him before he could mass delete all of it, his face filling with mischief. "May I?" he asked.
Hugh conceded the terminal to Frankie and watched as he hit 'Reply All' and composed a message.
"Thank you for your interest, but all inquiries should go through my sponsor 'VB5I Medical Group'. If you ask nicely, I'm certain they'll be willing to part with a few clips from the conference I recently held concerning gameplay within Thrive. I'm sorry I'm not able to personally respond to each and every person who has tried to contact me, but as you can imagine I'm neck deep in meeting my sponsor's demands. I have already acquired the means for changing player race to 'Vampire' and have provided them with the means to remove burn scars via magic. As you can imagine, there are many new faucets to cosmetic surgery available within Thrive. It is my goal to ensure VB5I remains at the forefront of what is possible in regards to manifesting every player's inner reflection and I am taking steps to ensure I'm the first to find the ways Thrive has provided to bring them to the surface. Signed, EXP Honey."
"Nice," Hugh said as he read over Frankie's shoulder. "Now maybe they'll leave me alone and bug your Medical Group's PR department instead. Go ahead and hit send."
When they were done, they headed for the closest subway station to get on the train. It wasn't a very novel experience for Hugh, who'd been riding them his entire life. The only odd parts to him were the lack of turnstiles and RFID scanners for his subway pass, and how the train had two sections. If you were wanting to go up a level, you got onto the rear two train cars. If you were wanting to go to another place on the same level, you got on a front car.
They were given fifteen seconds to board and another fifteen to disembark, which was plenty since each car had a max capacity of a hundred people. Hugh couldn't imagine them getting overcrowded, either, since new trains pulled up nearly twice every minute. If one got too full, they could wait on the next.
They stayed on the rear cars until after they reached the top level and it carried them down an underground tunnel connecting to the bottom-most level. From there, they moved to a front car on the train and let it carry them around the city until they reached the area holding Hugh's rental properties.
"I don't think I'll ever get used to that," Frankie said as they climbed the stairs out of the station. "I was raised in a part of New Reece where they're still relying on buses for public transit. When I moved to New York, I thought the subways were really impressive, but that was like one of those open air monorails they have overseas."
"You don't only have them overseas," Hugh said. "I'm from Roanoke Colony. It's one of the fabricated landmasses they built off the coast near Virginia Beach. All we have is open air monorails."
"You're right! I went there for a conference on nanite treaments for depressed acne scars and they did have a monorail threading through the city. I remember it was a very beautiful island, although I don't think I could live there. It was too much of a high brow college town. I could practically feel the new money elitism flowing out into the streets—no offense."
Hugh laughed. "None taken. That's exactly what it's like. I swear they built the island just to gather up all the rich and famous who couldn't get a place in a greater metropolis. My parents are those, by the way. That's the only reason I lived there. Dad struck it rich by selling a Net startup when I was small and mom got hooked on the idea we were suddenly Elite with a capital 'E'. It's probably the main reason I retreated into video games at a young age. While mom was schmoozing people, I got stuck entertaining our guest's kids. If I could rope them into a game, I wouldn't have to talk to them and pretend to know what the hell they were talking about when they started bragging about random shit. Eventually, I think some of them figured out what I was doing, because the kids who didn't like games stopped showing up with their parents."
"I don't know if that's sad or impressive," Frankie replied as they weaved through a sea of cafe tables. Only a handful were actually occupied by lone players wearing some variation of the three starting gear sets—basic, elite, or guild—while they scarfed down burgers and fries. Of them, only one other player looked as prepared to explore the game as Hugh, but only because he was wearing a bandolier of capsules across his chest in the design of Time War Negative: Undoing the Undone. Otherwise, he wore Robes of Infamy like a lot of the other loitering players.
Once they cleared the tables, Hugh and Frankie walked down the cleared strip of boardwalk in front of the restaurants and discussed what to have for lunch themselves. It took a little prodding to get the Doctor to admit what he really wanted if he could have anything at all—jerk chicken.
"There was a Jamaican food truck that used to come by the main clinic twice a week during lunch," he explained. "I was addicted to their jerk chicken and rice. It always gave me heartburn, but I could never say no."
"Want to go to Nexus Jamaica?" Hugh asked. "The Gateway Hub isn't far and it should be pretty easy to set one for Jamaica through our Books. I think it's page seventy-four or seventy-five."
Frankie laughed and shook his head. "No, I'm not quite that adventurous yet. I think I'll stick to something American for now. Maybe once things settle down, though, if you're still interested?"
The question in his tone should have clued Hugh in to what he was really asking, but his brain went somewhere else entirely. "I kind of miss my cell phone."
"What? Why?"
"If I had one, I could call every night and bug you to see if things are settled. You have me craving jerk chicken, but it doesn't seem right to get it without you now."
Frankie laughed. "Sorry, but I really need to get to work on the clinic after this. I have to go through my Master Scan List and pick out which ones to use with my corporate privileges, then spawn the damn things and get as much set up as possible. Idealistically, they want me to be taking patients by tomorrow or the day after at the latest."
"What other privileges do you get?" he asked curiously. "Dex didn't give me all the details, only that the corporate contracts existed."
"Not as much as you might expect. Other than the hundred items, building fees are completely waived or reduced. In the case of our specific contract, buying the clinic space was free and I was able to upgrade at a seventy percent discount. We also receive free advertising space one week each year to be used at a time of our choosing. That includes billboards, commercials on Thrive Broadcasting channels, Net advertising, and mailers delivered to every in-game home. The last thing we get is a larger shop warehouse. I haven't looked at it yet, but it's supposed to be big enough to stock an entire department store. For a clinic like ours, we won't have to worry about supplies for an entire year if we manage to fill it. I just have to be very careful about which items I choose to use the unlimited privileges on."
"That's a lot of perks," Hugh replied in awe, but Frankie immediately shook his head.
"Not really. It's only four things—cheaper pricing, a week of advertising, unlimited spawns for a month, and the warehouse. When you consider the contract cost our group over twenty million dollars, we're actually taking a very large leap of faith. With that much money, we could have opened another surgery clinic in the real world, hired new doctors, and still have had money left over for new research. The really mind-boggling thing for me is we didn't even get the middle tier of the available contracts. Ours was closer to the bottom. I had a chance to glance over what was offered if we were willing to pay a hundred million and those benefits were insane."
"How so?"
"You get company vehicles with private garages, free uniforms for crew, a free swag kit in the mailers, and you automatically get a float in every holiday parade. I didn't bother looking at the billion dollar tier contract, but now I wish I had. For all I know, once a year they're allowed to take over Nexus entirely with banners on every building and an air show in their honor."
"I think too many players would object to that," Hugh replied. "The stuff you mentioned aren't things average players would notice or complain about since they wouldn't know the company was using privileges to get them unless they were told. For all they know, the company just has a good support base. No, more than likely, the higher tiers are full of upgrades to existing perks. For example, maybe their free spawn period happens once a year instead of one time only. Their warehouses could include free equipment like forklifts and cherry pickers, which would let them use the space more efficiently.
I could see someone wanting to upgrade their garages to have food trucks, mobile clinics, or delivery vans instead of sedans. That'd be worth a billion dollars if it was used right. Over a hundred years, they'd easily make their money back because they could spread their presence over the entire game a lot faster than other people. Think about it. If you sent a clinic to every player world with a half-decent civilization, it wouldn't matter if the players themselves used your services or bought your stuff. The NPCs would, giving you world tokens you could trade on the investment market."
"That makes a scary amount of sense, but how would you staff so many worlds and keep track of the employees?"
Hugh blinked in surprise. He'd thought it was obvious, but maybe not. "That's easy. Contract with the NPCs and give them a cut of whatever profits they make. It's like a, uh, whatchamacallit. Fast food places do it all the time."
"You're talking about franchising," Frankie said breathlessly. "Of course. That makes total sense. I don't think it's something the Board would be interested in doing, but I never thought about using NPCs as that sort of resource."
"I did, but only because it's been rolling around in the back of my head since I sold my buildings yesterday. It's, well, you'll see in a second. There's my buyer's contact. I promise I'll try to make this fast, then we'll eat."