“Back on camera!” Oscar said, holding the door open. “Contract signing time. Now, just to be clear, here is what you are agreeing to. There’s some details but the big deals are this… you give the team six hours of play time, Monday through Friday. We may have an occasional event on Saturday, but mainly just Monday through Friday. And you each give me two hours a week for meetings and interviews. Frank will owe me four hours. Any questions?”
“Can I have a lawyer look at this before I sign?” Seth asked.
“You don’t need to,” Oscar said. “Look at the last clause.”
Seth, indeed everyone, turned to the back. “Oh, so I have three days to back out.”
“That’s right, and if you or anyone backs out, the contact is void for everyone.”
“Well, that sounds safe enough,” Frank said, after Oscar gave him a significant look. He picked up o ne of the pens and signed. The other followed suit.
“Keep the pens,” Oscar urged them. “And you are always welcome to come here. I will know when you hit the waiting room, and let you in when I am off air. And by always I mean from seven thirty in the morning till six o’clock in the eveening. I have a wife and four kids and I don’t step on their time. They get up later than I do, but dinner is at six fifteen precise, and after that we read story and do baths and all.”
“Now, here is the site you can sign on to once the three days are up,” he said, handing out cards. “You lot will be first on, and then I will open it to the general public. They will get to see the team… The Lightning Chargers…” he said, and pointed at the big screen, which shifted to a scene of the four of them. George taking up the center with his bright armor, Frank to his left with single sticks out, Seth behind George and to his right. And Sue, in the distance behind Frank, in her gown. With bolts of lightning ripping down behind them.
“And, that’s a wrap. Thank you gentlemen, lady,” Oscar said. “We will have our next meeting, Lord willing, in three days, after these contracts go live. And then I will give you the equipment and we will plan our launch.”
He stood up and held out his hand, “Thank you all for coming, I’m looking forward to working with you.”
The four players stood up, still looking a bit bemused, shook his hand, and walked out. Oscar followed them on his cameras until they were out of the door, and then pushed a button. A number dialed, and a voice answered. “Well?”
“I think we have them,” Oscar said. “We go live in four days.”
“Sounds good. I’ll have my people start to establish a routine to watch out for them.”
“And my family.”
“With the security you have, your family is fine. And I know you are armed.”
“I’m armed, my wife is armed, and my security suite is armed. But you still will have people on call?”
“They’ll be moving in across the street tomorrow, as we discussed.”
“Sounds good. Here’s to success.”
“Here’s to success.”
—
Sue ate her ice cream slowly. She loved ice cream but she didn’t want to get fat. No boy would like her if she got fat.
“What do you think, man?” Frank asked Seth. “Did I tell you?”
“It seems way too good to be true,” Seth admitted. “If my lawyer checks this out and gives it the green light…”
“You have a lawyer?” George asked.
“Nah, man, but there’s lawyers in town. I think I have enough saved to have one of them look at it.”
“I’ll chip in fourty bucks,” Frank said, pulling it out of his wallet. Sue and George both did the same, although Sue watched the money go sadly. She didn’t have money to throw around.
“I’ll give this back to you when we get paid,” Seth said. “It was my idea.”
“If this is true, we won’t even notice fourty bucks,” Frank said.
“If it works out,” George said. “It sounds like we won’t get much until six months go by.”
“That’s not what I thought he said,” Seth said, looking at the contract. “Oh, well, I can’t read this. Even if that’s true, it will still be great. Can everyone do the six hours a day?”
They all nodded. “I get good enough grades, I’ll just tell my folks it’s a job,” Sue said. “They will be happy I’m working.”
And happy she was working with others. Especially her mom, especially because it was three boys. Her mother was big on marriage, and always figured that the only way to marry was to hang around boys.
“It is a job!” Frank said. “We have a contract and everything. But, what time?”
“Well, he said six hours a day,” Sue said, “and it is the summer, and I think it would be good if we were on, at least at first, at the same time as he’s working. So… eight to two? Can everybody do that?”
She looked around and everyone was nodding, so she went back to her ice cream and let the boys talk about how cool the game was going to be, and how much they enjoyed the roles they had, and wondering how many thousand views they would be getting.
She didn’t want to get any views. Not with her own face on the screen. But… but probably none of the local girls would ever watch it…
“Hey, guys, a rule.”
The guys all stopped talking. “What rule?”
“No telling anyone. No telling any of our friends.”
“Oh! Yeah, like, not till we hit… what do you say… one hundred thousand views?”
The guys all agreed with that and Sue sighed and went back to her ice cream. Oh, well, a hundred thousand views… that was almost being a movie star. Or video star or whatever. She could live with that. And there was no way she could stop them.
—
“So, here we are, back with the Lightning Chargers!” Oscar said, from his studio. George figured the cameras must just on them. They were sitting in the studio, on the couches, surrounded by boxes. “Their contracts are now live and they’ve got their new equipment! Unboxing time, guys! I put a box cutter on top of the pile near you, George.”
George figured that that was his cue, so he got up and picked up the cutters. The box even had his name on it, so he carefully cut off the tape from the cardboard, opened the top… and stared at a metal box with a handle. No, not quite metal. It was that shiny plastic that they made suitcases out of.
“Well, let’s see it!” Oscar said, and George started to lift out the suitcase. The cardboard started to come with it, and Frank grabbed it, and George soon had the suitcase, it was very much like a suitcase, out and put it on the ground and opened the snaps on the top.
Then he reached in and pulled out… it looked like a wet suit!
“And that’s your suit!” Oscar said. “We won’t try it out here, this is not an R rated show, but they are made exactly to your specifications. Frank, grab the rest of it.”
Frank looked into the suitcase and pulled out a metal cube, and then two cords. “One of those cords attaches to the suit, and one to the wall,” Oscar said. “After that, you will need to read the instructions as to how to put it on. And then we’re good to go.”
“We are planning our first session for Monday at 7:15, unless anyone has any problems with that?”
He looked around, “Good. Now, a couple of announcements. Our streams are all free so far and I am pleased to announce we already have 1000 followers, and they have watched 100 hours of video so far. That’s a decent start but, of course, I’m sure it will ramp up by the time we get started.”
“I am NOT going to be giving you daily updates… let alone while you are in the game. I want you lot to be focusing on how you are doing in the game, and not whether your girlfriend is watching.”
“I thought we weren’t going to tell our friends about this?” Sue asked, quickly.
“Oh! I hadn’t heard about that,” Oscar said. Which was a flat out lie, but, then, this was entertainment, not some court of law.
Sue blushed and Frank said, “We’ve decided we want to get a bit of a reputation, and few sessions under out belt, before we announce to our friend and parents and all. Or, rather, give them the address of the website where they can log in and watch us. Those first few sessions are likely to be pretty awkward… George learning to swing his sword and all. No one wants their first video to be death by guinea pig or something. Not without a bunch more videos already lined up.”
“Well, that’s good news for me,” Oscar said. “That means that the viewers we already have are organic, not your family and friends. I’m encouraged already.”
AI can be kind of nasty to people. I mean, the one boy getting to eat with two spoons, and the other one getting nothing! I didn’t even try for everyone’s physical features, so don’t spend time memorising the image :)
Party System:
A famous gaming producer offers four teenagers fame, fortune, and skill training through an elite gaming team. It seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Seth gets a beautiful girl. Frank becomes the leader. George develops strength and discipline. Sue gets to hang around with boys, including one she secretly loves.
But as they train with real weapons, compete in tournaments, and execute increasingly dangerous in-game missions, the line between gameplay and operational reality blurs.
In a world where a legitimate game conceals criminal enterprises, and adolescent ambition meets organized crime, four teenagers must confront the reality of their situation: they aren’t just playing a game.
—
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Von