Project Overworld

After spending another coupe of weeks overseeing the new recruits, Keith made sure to plan out a precise schedule for the team. First things first, he established who should be the leader of this second Spacol team he himself and his friends would be focused on expanding their Moon base.

Thus, after closely monitoring the candidates, he quickly designated one of them as the leader and decided to teach them about team management. Alternatively, he could have stayed down there and monitor them himself but it would not really be that efficient. In any case, he grew a bit tired during the few months he has been on this planet and was eager to return to his normal occupations.

'I should be visiting them regularly, though.' Keith determined. He was not really confident in letting these new recruits do everything by themselves and ultimately settled that he should be coming back down the Earth at least once per month. Thanks to this presence, he should be able to maintain the motivation of his subordinates as is.

During this small lapse where he has been teaching them tips and tricks, the 'Team B' of Spacol progressed quite a lot. At first, they needed quite a lot of pointers from Keith to carry out the construction and the assembly of a rocket. Now, however, they were able to complete this process all by themselves and even started splitting the tasks among themselves without his intervention.

This further improved their efficiency and the young man was reassured about his decisions.

'Seven new recruits... This seems more than enough for the time being. In fact, they appear to be familiarizing with each other quite well.' Keith voiced in his mind. The members of 'Team B' had already launched four rockets in direction of the Spacol Space Station. Although, the first one they ever launched by themselves crashed on land some time after reaching the mesosphere and the second one nearly fell apart during the launching phase.

For now, it seemed like they were ready to take on their duty and launch one to two rockets a week. Eventually, Keith could also be tasking them with upgrading the 'Rocket assembler', but for the time being he was really satisfied by this recruitement.

- "Alright, on your marks... Ready... Go!" Keith exclaimed. Just like when he welcomed Leyla, Jim and Xena into Spacol, Keith decided to organize fun event with the new members to get to know each other better. It also served as a way to relax them and making sure they would not be quitting this adventurer yet.

He still was not certain about everyone's personality and he did not know whether they would be interested in staying within Spacol for the long term or not. Thus, he had to appear as friendly as possible while teaching them everything he knew about rocketry.

On this Sunday, the young man decided to let them use the karting circuit he had built with Michael a long time ago. Sometimes participating in the race, sometimes monitoring from afar, Keith was maintaining his role of a leader while giving off an image of an entertainer to his recruits.

From time to time, the young man would also take news from Yggdrasil and the rest of the world through Amber. She seemed a bit worried about the future but managed to slow down the technological improvements significantly without raising much suspicion. She has been the main instigator of such developments up until now so she did not have to sabotage her own work to reach this result, instead becoming sort of 'lazy'. People were certainly raising some questions from such a change in pace but they also knew Amber had a life besides Project Overworld and would not dare to criticize her after what she has done for their community.

Other than that, the popularity of the game dropped down by quite the margin and a lot of newer players lost interest in this simulation since there were not that many ways to entertain oneself in there. This, in turn, alleviated the load on Project Overworld servers and improved surreptitiously everyone's performance in the game.

'You should have gained another few months of delay to complete your projects, so do make sure and revolutionize the future of humanity.' She said during their last conversation. She also meant to include the NASA, as she knew about Keith's new work at this company and the importance of Project Overworld for their future projects.

Regarding Horace's idea of using the simulation as a testing ground for their rocket designs, Keith had talked with the human resource manager some more and they both determined it would be a good idea to start the operation during the following month. Amber also helped on that end by ordering the construction of a large Space related building throughout the desolated lands of Yggdrasil.

They could have used the Spacol Earth Base for that purpose, but Keith determined it would be quite the hassle of transporting every NASA employee all the way to Shyram and the base was already quite filled with various machines. It would always be a good idea to make them visit his installations in the future so they may gain some inspiration from his creations but for the time being they just needed a peaceful place to familiarize with this simulation.

On top of that, this would some topic to talk over on the official forums of Project Overworld and people were really interested in what was being built there. Obviously, access to this area would be strictly forbidden and defensive measures would be taken by Amber to protect these installations from the curious. She already affected some of members of the police there and put some of the officers she most trusted in in the confidence about this whole situation.

Obviously, it would not be that big of a deal if the information of the NASA investigating this game happened to be known but it would certainly be subject of the front cover of every newspaper in the world for a few days. That was why everyone was being so secretive about this.

Along the construction of the installations in some desert of Yggdrasil, however, the curiosity of the playerbase rose to quite the extent. Some of the most popular posts on the forums were exposing their theories over these installations and it eventually became known as 'Area 51'. This place was so heavily defended that people could not even approach the area from several miles away. Everytime someone tried and to sneak in, they immediately got shot by either a policeman or an automated turret posted everywhere throughout the area.

Keith was quite amused by this designation as it could not be more accurate than that. The 'Area 51' was supposed to be an heavily guarded research facility in America and these NASA installations within Project Overworld were pretty much supposed to be the same.

'I can't wait to introduce my colleagues to this game, they would certainly be surprised by how deep the physics of Project Overworld really are. Also, I am beginning to distinguish the differences between the real world and the simulation. Alright, let's get back to work!' Keith motivated himself before putting an end to his lunch break at the NASA headquarters.

_______________

A few weeks later, Keith was finally back on the Moon and joined his friends on the extension of their Moon base. It has been quite a while since he went there, and things had developed quite well.

All the greenhouses were now thriving and the automated water sprinklers dispersed water at optimized intervals. The base was fully fit for them to live in and they even got a few rooms to relax while observing the lunar landscape or the luxurious plants of their greenhouses.

'This base is even more comfy our flat...' Keith realized. Hhe could not really live there since it was but a game, but it was still possible for them to sleep inside Project Overworld and have the same restful sleep than they would have in the real world. The young man had yet to try and though it would be a good idea for the week-end.

In any case, there was still a lot of work to accomplish up there and the increased amount of rockets being launched there really helped on that end. They went from one rocket per week to a whopping three. It was a really significant increase and the construction of their pipeline almost became a full-time job.

As for the 'Rocket resupplier' they left on the Spacol Space Station, it could launch a rocket only a day after they arrived on the station meaning that they could reach a rate of about six rockets per week. Once the 'Team B' became more efficient and built another 'Rocket Assembler', such a rate would not be impossible to reach. By that point, Keith even thought they would be needing more members on the Moon to use all the materials that would be sent to them.

'We should be set for the following years with such an organization...' Keith meditated. 'However, the real troubles lies in the external sources, and I don't know whether we would be getting this much time or not. Let's hope so anyways.' He concluded before going back to work.