Project Overworld

Coming back to his flat, Keith started going through the messages he had received while he was at work.

'Oh, Horace tried to call me.' He realized. Fortunately, he did leave a vocal message that Keith quickly read. Apparently, the NASA human resources manager had some news to talk about and seemed pretty keen about sharing them with him.

'Well, I should call him back before connecting into Project Overworld.' Keith concluded. He did not have to wait long, though, as his call got picked up in a matter of seconds.

- "Oh, hello Keith! How have you been doing recently?"

- "Fine, we've made some advancements regarding the Moon base."

- "Really nice. So, I've been talking to some of my superiors and they ended up trusting my judgement at hiring you and your three American friends. As for the other two you've told me about, this will mostly depend on the results your team is able to produce before they are able to join the NASA."

Horace let the news sink in before pursuing : "Basically, you four will be joining some of our new recruits and you will have to work on a small project for a while. Only after these few weeks of intense work would we be certain if you'd be joining us or not. Afterwards, it should only depend on your abilities as engineers and astronauts to climb the ranks within the NASA." He explained. "However, I'm pretty certain the four of you will be able to accomplish great things for America. Don't sweat too much about this for now, I'll be coming back to you to announce when the test would be organized. Any question?"

- "Not really, except maybe what should this 'small project' be all about? But I don't think it should already be established so..."

Horace cleared his throat in agreement before Keith continued the conversation : "Anyways, I really wanted to thank you for the time and effort you've put for my and my friends' applications. I'm really eager to meeting you at the NASA HQ!"

- "Ahah! No big deal. The fact that the Spacol company was able to establish on the Moon so early after that simulation started is a much more impressive feat."

After some formal goodbyes, Keith was left alone in his flat. He wanted to jump into Project Overworld at once and announce the good news to his friends.

'This should be the appropriate time to talk to them about all of this. After all, their future is engaged about this whole situation.'

Thus, after recovering his clothes from the laundry machine he had started during lunch time, Keith laid down on his bed and put on his Simulated Reality headgear and dove into his favorite game. He was greeted by the almost infinite sight of moon dust and craters, and could not help but realized how unique this landscape was.

'Working on the Moon is such a weird feeling. I feel so alone and away from all civilization, and at the same time my friends are here to joke around with me while establishing our home.' He meditated. Turning back towards the Spacol Moon Base, Keith joined his friends who were currently erecting the fourth hallway destined to connect their first greenhouse to the rest of the structure. Since they already had five dwellings completely finished, they would be able to install a few oxygen reservoirs and finally begin with the farming job.

In fact, they did not really need to finish the entirety of their base to do so and they would, instead, be expanding it all little by little. In any case, after he got close to his friends, Leyla noticed him and commented : "Well, well, well... Aren't you a little late? Could it have been that you felt bad for your old workplace and you did some extra hours before officially joining the NASA?"

- "Ahahah! That'd be impossible" Keith replied jokingly.

- "What? Doing some extra hours?" She feigned ignorance.

- "No, feeling bad for a large company exploiting hundreds of workers for a couple of bucks per hours."

Leyla giggled at this remark and focused back on her work.

'Things are progressing quite fast, in fact.' Keith realized. The fourth hallway should be around fifty percent finished according to his calculations and they only started working on it near the end of the previous week. Though, just like they did with their pipeline, they would certainly have to reinforce everything using burlap bags full of moon dust because of the constant raining of micrometeorites on this satellite.

In any case, their base would never really be finished and Keith had a lot of ideas to improve upon its structure as well as a few important modules he wanted to add in the future.

- "By the way, I wanted to talk to the four of you about the incoming weeks. Find me inside the entrance room when you're finished with your current tasks." Keith broadcasted using his radio-wave emitter.

Basically, their advanced radio system allowed them to have private conversation between each other using a unique radio frequence for each member. If someone wanted to talk to Keith, for example, they would be using a specific frequence around the twenty-thousand kilohertz whereas Leyla had a different one around the same frequency.

However, every single one of their talkie-walkies were also connected to the general broadcast which allowed them to talk to each other as a whole. Keith did not have to wait for long, and the fout members of Spacol who were still connected to the game met inside the first dwellings that has been finished by their contruction machines.

- "Hey, Michael, Tyler." Keith nodded at his friends. "So, I've been pretty elusive about how my recruitement at the NASA was going recently but things finally settled. Basically, I've been negotiating for the entire Spacol company to be recruited at once. Of course, Jim and Xena are out of this for now because they currently have to finish their studies but I've managed to convince the human resources manager that the four of us may be joining the NASA." Keith explained.

While Leyla was not surprised about this fact at all, his two make friends seemed to be quite confused about what Keith had just told them.

- "Wait, so you're saying we'll also be part of the NASA?" Michael inquired.

- "Yes! Isn't that wonderful? From a simple game we've managed to join one of the most popular space agencies in the world! Well, actually things aren't that easy. There'll be a test period during which we'll have to prove ourselves capable of doing real-life engineering. However, for that purpose, I've decided we would be having meeting with the goal of making an engine, and maybe play around with it to make a funny vehicle. We have several weeks before us anyways, so let's try and take advantage of it!" Keith proclaimed before sending them back to work. Michael and Tyler seemed pretty hyped up while Leyla was slightly smirking.

Their behaviour was exactly the same as Keith expected them to be. Leyla had, in fact, already guessed about what he had been hiding from them, and Michael and Tyler were like children that had been promised a trip to their favorite fast-food chain. In any case, it was time for them to get ready for the upcoming test period, because their actual future would be on the line.

_______________

After that last inventopia she had organized, Amber felt like every conversation subject revolved around the latest revelation.

In fact most of the forum posts, if not all of them, were discussing about the new possibilities that communicating across continents would be opening to them. Not only that, personal computers were going through huge technological improvements and everyone now wanted their own.

For the first mayor to be elected in this game, this situation was heavenly. She has been going through successes aftyer successes and it seemed like she could keep up the pace for as long as she wanted. Though, she was actually quite worried about the numbers she has recently been able to witness. Asgard was dropping in popularity since it was not a new things anymore and only people really interested in this project would keep up to date, whereas 'Project : Vanilla' was only flourishing because of the recent improvements that had been made to the arena.

Amber did not know when or whether the popularty of this game would be going down, but she was pretty certain she needed to keep up with the constant technological improvements. Fortunately, Starise has been doing quite a wonderful job since they partenered with Yggdrasil's municipal team and the whole planet was now surrounded by useful communication satellites. Wherever you were on this planet, you would be able to access the World Wide Web as long as its infrastructure would hold off the gigantic amount of user.

Afterwards, it would be a smooth ride to improving everyone lives. People would be able to create simplified online games and all, while the rest of the civilization would be turning towards space exploration.

'I hope this game's popularity stays the same for the incoming couple of years, because I've got quite the amount of project under my sleeves.' Amber meditated. 'Project Overworld essentially allows to build things that would take years to reproduce in the real life. It's only a matter of time before we surpass what humanity has been capable of until now.' She concluded before focusing back on her imposing load of papers she had to complete by the end of the week.