Project Overworld

Waking up pretty early into the morning, Keith stretched for a while and prepared for the long incoming day that was waiting for him. It was finally the week-end, and the recruitement event was supposed to begin on this day.

Upon leaving his room, he was greeted by the sight of Tyler waking up and preparing a coffee for himself.

- "Hey!" Keith exclaimed.

His friend only responded with a small gesture as he was having troubles keeping his eyes open.

- "How late did you go to bed?" Keith could not help but inquire.

- "Well, me and Michael joined a raid with my guild so I only got a few hours of sleep today..." The young man replied.

- "Oh, are you talking about that MMORPG we tested a few months ago?"

- "Yeah... We kinda dug into it back then."

- "That was really cool, indeed. We should play some more games with the others, from time to time." Keith commented, thinking about the other members of Spacol. "Why did you wake up so early by the way? Shouldn't you be sleeping right now?"

- "I heard Leyla prepare her lunch and couldn't go back to sleep afterwards..."

- "Ah, I see. Leyla is quite diligent in waking up around nine o'clock during the week-ends." Keith remarked. "Anyways, I'm gonna be quite busy today, see you later!"

Afterwards, he went and brushed his teeth before putting on his headgear and diving into Project Overworld. Although the event was supposed to be taking place during the earliest hours of the afternoon, Keith had to activate himself right now.

In fact, he did not store all of the materials the candidates would be using directly to the arena, in case someone decided to do a terrorist attack or something similar. Instead, he stored them inside some of his trucks and had to travel the few miles separating him from the competition place several times during the incoming few hours.

Not losing any second, Keith immediately hoped onto one of his vehicle and started his trucker job.

By the end of the morning, the last preparations were completed and Keith took a look inside the building to check whether the participants had arrived or not. Unsurprisingly, over a thousand people were already waiting inside the arena and talking to each other about the upcoming competition.

'I guess some other people set their spawnpoint in there before going AFK too.' Keith thought. However, he did not want to show himself in there so he could not test his theory as of now. Thus, he made sure to activate the turrets around the 'Employees only' area and disconnected for the time being.

Back in the 'real world', Keith went ot the kitchen and started preparing a meal for his friends and himself. They did not usually eat together on the week-ends, since everyone had their own habits, but the young man always making home-made meals and it was not that big of a deal preparing for four people instead of one. In any case, the cooking time would be relatively the same, so why not do everything at once?

In the eventuality his friends had something else to eat or simply were sleeping until late into the afternoon, he could always put their portion in the fridge and use it later on.

Anyways, today Keith was really hungry and decided to go for a 'Mac and Cheese'. It was not a complicated meal to prepare, on top of being very filling. It was perfect for the long event he was about to host. By the time he was done melting the cheese and cooking the pasta, he was joined by Leyla who started feeling hungry too.

- "We can smell you're cooking from the other side of the flat." She commented.

- "Oh? I thought I activated the kitchen hood, though." Keith replied, visibly confused.

- "Nah, I'm kidding. I only smelled it cause I was going for something in the fridge."

- "Yeah? Want to join me then?" Keith offered.

- "Well, I wouldn't say no."

The both of them shared a meal while talking about the latest improvements of Spacol and their job at the NASA. Upon seeing the hour, Keith straightened back up and excused himself : "Welp, I've got a recruitement event to host. See you this evening!"

_______________

- "You think it's gonna end the same way as last time?" Someone asked to their friend.

- "It's highly probable, especially because people would be frustrated after not being chosen by Keith." They replied.

Even though the last Space recruitment event ended up as a 'failure', Keith did try and clarify the situation over the past few years and gained back the respect he lost from the playerbase. This second session would not be possible if he did not upload some images taken from the Moon on the official forums of Project Overworld, showcasing an astonishing Moon base as well as five other astronauts working alongside him.

This really revived the interest people had for the company Spacol, while also making them realize he did chose a few winners out of the competition. On top of that, it was demonstrated that Leyla, one of the most famous space engineers of this game, participated in the first event and most certainly ended up joining Keith afterwards.

In the end, people did not hold any grudge towards Keith other than not being more talkative. They understood why he wanted to keep the privacy of his subordinates secure, but it ended up being discovered later on after going through the tweets of a 'third phase' contestant anyways. In fact, three of the participants of this last phase went totally silent after the event and could not be found throughout any continent of the Earth. Thus, it has been theorized since then that these people has been chosen to join Keith's team and the hype for Spacol surged again.

However, the real unknown variables would be the two other people who were shown on Keith's screenshots. From where did they come from? Have they always been around since the start of this game? It would make a lot more sense if Keith had been working with two of his friends ever since the launch of this server, and this theory found a lot of success among the playerbase of Project Overworld.

Suddenly, all the discussion ended within the large arena where the event was supposed to take place. Keith had finally made his appearance, and with and even more impressive pose than ever before.

- "Hello, dear Project Overworld citizen. I found out the Earth had developed quite a bit since I left, and I could not be more proud of your work." He started off. "It's been a while since I last organized such an event, and I hope it goes really smoothly during the next few weeks we're going to spend together, at least for a few of you." He winked at the assembly. "In fact, just like last time, three round are going to make up this competition. The first one is going to be quite an easy one, which goal would be to separate the real engineers from people who just wanted to show up here today. It may sound kind of harsh, but although your profile may sound interesting, I'm more interested in your capacity at building some stuff for our company."

Keith took a brief break after pronoucing those words and immediately went back to a more joyful tone.

- "So yeah, during this first phase you will be asked to repair a device which has been intentionally damaged in various ways you will have to find out. Oh, don't think about spying on your neighbours by the way. Each device will be damaged in a different way, so you may not want to reproduce the same steps as they did." Another wink from the man at lead of the Spacol industry. "Anyways, if you have any complaints about the fairness of this competition because 'you had much more complicated test than your neighbor did', you can leave at once. I don't really care, and if you're having any trouble during this first test, you are not fit to join Spacol anyways."

Keith took a look at the thousands of participants before continuing on with his explanations : "The second phase will be concerning the creation of a device, or a machine, from scratch. Basically, it should be requiring about the same knowledge as the first test did, except you'll have to show off your techniques and your organization on a test limited by time. Obviously, I don't expect all of you to know everything about every machine Humanity had ever created so you will be given a manual on which you will be able to rely to complete the construction.

Another pause from the young man, who took this time to think for himself : 'I took inspiration from the NASA for this second test, the manual may contain some intentional errors.' He smirked.

- "And finally, the third test will be revealed to you if you ever happen to pass the first two phases. It should be held in a different location, with different rules, so please try and focus on the upcoming competition for the time being." Keith affirmed. "Anyways, let the second Spacol recruitement session begin!" The young man exclaimed before opening large doors from behind the stage.