Project Overworld

For a couple of weeks, the situation did not change that much for the Spacol members. In fact, it seemed like nothing changed at all, excepting from the fact that Keith, Leyla, Michael and Tyler were all working at the same place.

Other than that, the frequency at which they gathered inside of Project Overworld was substantially the same and their projects could progress as much as before. After only three weeks the group managed to finally complete their Moon base with ten greenhouses being connected to it.

It was a huge milestone for them since it would be giving them a lot more free time to focus on more 'industrial' projects such as the construction of their ice factory and the pipeline supposed to bring water all the way to their base.

'Things are going really smoothly as of recently.' Keith meditated. However, his complexion darkened after remembering the constraints they would be going through during their future inside this game.

Firstly, they would have to launch several times more resources towards their Moon base or essentially every project they would want to go through would require several months, nay years, to be completed. Of course, Keith's recent forum post aimed at solving this particular problem by recruiting more people into Spacol and making them produce loads of rockets for them.

However, this was not the only problem their company could be going through, in fact, their new work at the NASA could become quite troublesome in a few months. Once their job at helping NASA employees investigating Project Overworld began, they would have to go and meet with them at the World Spawnpoint. Obviously, they would only have to do so during their working hours, but they would not be able to make their way back to the 'SMB' every evening and this situation would quickly become really constraining for the four American friends.

'This is going to get quite complicated in a while... Maybe we should try and make new Project Overworld accounts for our work at the NASA?' Keith thought for a while. It seemed to be quite an acceptable solution, other than the fact they would have to buy another subscription to the game.

Other than that, Keith also had to spend some of his time filtering through the profile of the Spacol candidates. Since his job at the NASA would be quite separated from what he was currently doing with his friends, there was no way for him to 'recruit' those NASA employees into helping him on his own projects.

'I also have to take into account that this game's stability isn't guaranteed. Ever since they started having trouble with their servers, I feel like the developers of Project Overworld have had a hard time keeping everything in check.' Keith realized. The more he progressed into the game, the more he it turned out as a race before the servers shutted down.

He still had a last minute plan in case of the worst, though. If the problem was the huge amount of technological devices being produced and distributed every day throughout the world, he just had to destroy everything by himself. This kind of development was not something he was eager to make his way towards, especially after having followed the progress of Yggdrasil for so long. However, the future of humanity as a whole also depended on this game being up and running, and he could not let his own emotional attachment towards some virtual cities impacting his choices.

'Maybe I could convince the U.S governement to invest into this game or something? For the time being, though, it seems like we're about to reach some technological roadblocks and I'm really worried about it.' Keith concluded.

_______________

While extruding a piece of metal, Keith though about of impacting his work at the NASA had been on his personnal life. It has not been long, only a bit over a month in fact, but he has already gathered knowledge he was oblivious to up until now.

His technique as an engineer improved a lot since he had to take a lot more parameters into account upon constructing something from scratch, and this also made it so he had a easier time differentiating the physics of his favorite video game and those of the 'real world'. Keith was much more invested into this challenging job than he has been during his long stay at the perfume bottle factory.

His job back then mostly consisted of controling the production of machines and packing up boxes for their clients. Now, however, he was required to manually create some rocket parts and he could not be more happy about it.

He did not know if this this part of the job was only required of them because they were new recruits, but according to Horace Johnson their future job would be related to Project Overworld anyways so Keith did not worry about it for the time being.

In any case, this situation improved his motivation to work on engineering projects a lot more than before and it seemed like his friends also felt the same. The construction of their base was not really boosted by the new knowledge they gathered, in fact the way they were working up until now was mostly optimized regarding the physics of this game.

Although this was Keith's opinion on the subject since he has not been able to build a lot of things because he has been so focused on his human resource management for a few weeks. Not only did he have to think of better trials compared to the last time he organized a recruitement event, he also had to set the lower limits for a candidate to pass through each trial.

This was the hardest part of the job because he could not recruit more than a dozen players into Spacol, after which it would become pretty challenging to coordinate so many players at the same time. That was why, each trial had to be really challenging while letting at least a few people win.

Alternatively, he could select the best engineers from each batch but he did not know the global level of those players in advance. Last time he did organize such an event people accused him of being arbitrary, which was true, and he did not want this new event from backfiring as much as it did back then.

That was why, the first few phases would have clear objectives for the participants to reach in order to go through the next phase. Afterwards, Keith would be chosing the best candidates himself and have them working on the same project for the last trial.

This was how the young man viewed this competition in its globality. However, he still had to determine the details as well as building an arena to contain all those players at the same time. The last one had been vandalized after the first recruitement event, and Keith would have a lot of restoration job to accomplish to have something satisfactory.

_______________

Amber was pacing through her office, thinking of her future projects. Ever since she discovered about the technical difficulties the servers of this game were going through, every single one of her decision became really calculated.

Trying to give off soothing image to the public while to slow down the pace at which thing were currently being developed, she has had quite a complicated job to do as of recently.

'Keith is going to recruit new people, huh? Is he aware of the problems Project Overworld is currently going through? Should I try and contact him?' She meditated for a while.

The young man sure was a sly one, but the fact that he was recruiting again made her feel like he was totally unaware of the servers' limitations. In fact, having more people working on the latest technological improvement also accelerated the downfall of this game and it was really concerning to her. 

'Well, what would he do after being informed of this fact anyways? Slow down his own work?' Amber continued arguing in her head. 'Maybe I shouldn't say anything to him, after all. The goal of this simulation has always been to go as far a humanly possible, and since the servers are reaching their end I could only hope Keith manages to contribute to the History.' In fact, the woman was thinking Keith's work was the only thing worthwhile for humanity as a whole, and that was why she was deliberating whether she should be contacting him or not.

Up until now, only entertainement had been occupying her mind. However, the servers were now on a downward ramp and their own entertainement would be fairly limited during the incoming months, especially if 'Advanced Simulations' downgraded their game again for the sake of performance.

Project Overworld could always be reset, leading to some new kinds of enjoyement for the players who did not manage to make it into the first launch of this game. However, Amber was much more preoccupîed about the future than ever before. If this game was, indeed, reset, their entire progress would be going to waste.

The computers Yggrasil citizen were so proud of would only appear as gadget once they disappeared into the void, whereas the plans for the Spacol Moon Base could be used by various spacial organization in the 'real world' to study. It was nothing really impressive, but still something worth talking about.

Maybe if she did manage to slow down the progress of the various industries, dispersed throughout this game, could she be saving a few essential months for Spacol to develop new kinds of technology. She did not know that yet, but she had to try nonetheless.

'And here I was, thinking I was already quite busy. It's going to get a lot more complicated from now on, in the end.' Amber concluded.