Project Overworld

Keith was tinkering a large pendulum in the main lobby of his base.

After being surrounded by clocks in the small watchmaking shop he worked into, he soon realised he did not have a convenient way to check time inside of Project Overworld. In fact, up until now, he would only be aware of the time of the day by bringing up the main menu of the game.

As it was a pretty annoying thing to do everytime he wanted to check time, he got the idea of making a clock. It was not that big of a project so he would not lose too much time by working on such a mechanical system. Yet, it would allow him to put his watchmaking experience into work while reinforcing his knowledge by making such a system from start to finish

'By the way, isn't Inventopia supposed to take place today? I should stop for now and watch the event through the municipal team's stream.'

Keith found it pretty ironic to have to disconnect for such a matter while being surrounded by computers and all those different types of machinery. He still had a lot to do, but a small break every now and then should not hinder his progress that much.

The stream obviously served another purpose, that of promoting Midgard to the exterior. The team toured around the city for a while, showing off the best places to go to. The tour finished in front of the new pride of Amber and her team, the colosseum where the event would be taking place. By this point, the number of viewers in the stream had reached the six digits and the chat showed their surprise with various emotes.

It was a gem of a construction, true to one of those ancient roman colosseum. The building was already almost entirely filled up, but the team took place in some reserved and well-placed seats.

Amber took a conical shaped object and started an introductional speech. Not everyone in the stadium could hear what she said as there were no speakers or anything like that, but it was not really important to the rest of the event regardless.

Keith adjusted his seat and watched at his screen with a renewed focus.

'It's funny to see this person of all people at the head of Midgard's management team. I wonder what happened to Alan since I left him with a little surprise.'

Lots of participants presented themselves up at the colosseum's center area. They then all regained backstage and Amber declared the event open.

The contestants followed one after the other to showcase their best creations. Most of them were plain and not that original, but some were thought to be gems by the audience.

To Keith, however, those were all but useless inventions. He realised these inventors did not have the same goal as himself. In fact, most of the product aimed to impress the people rather than bring something useful for the future development of the city.

He was really disappointed by such a terrible display and was about to leave the stream to continue working on his own projects when one of the challenger brought a really big piece of metal with his team of four players.

Keith's eyes grew wide as he exclaimed : "What is this?!"

Amber was feeling rather conflicted by this entire event. Some people did brought amazing inventions, but being open to everyone led to the showcase of unfinished or pointless products. Someone even introduced a wheel to the public, which was already widely spread inside Midgard.

'I should remember it for the next time, I will select the candidates myself.'

It has been going for almsot an hour and she was hardly holding back a yawn. However, when the next contestant showed up, she recognized him immediately.

'Oh! I think it's that guy who showcased a motor during the last event!'

She straightened up on her seat as she witnessed a big piece of metal with wheels being pushed through the sandy soil by several players at once. The inventor of this machine then pulled some sort of a string and a loud buzzing resonated around the building. It was clearly more powerful than the first one and people were cheering up for him.

When everyone was already feeling quite hyped up for this improved design of the generator, the man climbed up onto the big piece of metal. Through the amazed eyes of the public, the whole contraption started moving forward and the cheerings intensified.

'He has finished working on his vehicle's prototype!' Amber exclaimed.

The man then showcased the steering wheels of the vehicle by turning around towards the center. This was the kind of inventions everyone was longing for. Amber was finally pleased by the way the event was folding out.

'This is the kind of future I want for Midgard, I can already see everyone traveling inside cars. I can't wait to decorate this inventor anew.'

'What is this?' Keith repeated to himself before exploding out with an honest laugh after witnessing the vehicle turning around.

'It's so slow, hahaha! This is what he's been working on with his team for over a month?'

He was aware of the forum posts discussing this man's inventions since he showcased a motor during the first event organized by the municipal team of Midgard. Keith has, however, expected something a bit more developed for a machine with that much time being invested upon.

Unfortunately, the vehicle was as far to a car as it could really be. It was really slow, around ten miles per hour, and had no body whatsoever. Just the raw structure that would allow it to run properly. As far as Keith could tell, it did not have any gear switch nor did it have a good steering system. As for the motor in itself, it was really not made for a vehicle. No chamber separation or smoke evacuation system, not even a good energy supply because they had not refined any petrol up until now.

Although he was laughting about it, Keith thought this result was quite sad. As an inventor himself, he expected some sort of a big breakthrough at the end of Inventopia that would allow Midgard to expand upon itself and start modernizing their technology.

'I shouldn't really follow this kind of event and rather look at some interesting forum posts about the latest discoveries.' was his last thought before quitting the stream.

He had an entire day left in the week-end and still had a few things he wanted to finish out before going back to his watchmaking job. That was pretty ironical because one his current projects was about making a pendulum inside Project Overworld.

With a slight smile on his face, Keith equipped his virtual reality headset and connected back into his favorite game.