Project Overworld

The day following the end of the Moon race, Keith went back to his real life work. Although he could not really take any day off of work yet because he started working at the factory only recently, he had still pretended an illness so he would be able to play Project Overworld the exact day the Starise group was about to reach that celestial body orbiting around the Earth.

Still, this kind of fraudulent behaviour should be avoided as much as possible and Keith could not afford losing this job for now. He was still searching for offers online but could not come across anything that could interest him.

For now, he could only mourn for the repetitive tasks which were assigned to him.

He got back home for the lunch break, as usual, to prepare himself an homemade dish. Albeit he could take some sandwiches with him and lunch over his jobplace, he always felt relaxed after taking a break at his flat.

'Today shall be...' Keith started while looking through his food supplies. 'Oh! Looks like I should be able to make mushroom risotto.' He decided.

While cooking the ingredients, Keith took his cell phone out his pocket and realized the amount of notification that showed up on its screen.

'Holy, who texted me this much?!'

Although he did not have enough time to look through all of them because he was cooking, he finally understood what this was all about.

It seemed like most of the messages came from Michael who spammed questions at him about the recent event in Project Overworld. Some of his others friends playing this game also found out about his winning the 'Moon race' and congratulated him in that regard.

Finally there were a few messages coming from Amber, telling him about the parternship she had formed with the Starise group. Basically, she warned him about the future plans of Midgard which could come into conflict with his own plans.

'Well, I can't really do anything about it, though, the Earth doesn't belong to me after all. Anyways, as long as I notify them about the location of my satellites, there should not be any problems whatsoever.' Keith concluded.

After having a restful lunch break, Keith went back to his workplace for the rest of the afternoon.

'Ah... Finally back in this game.' He expired after spending a tiring day at work. As he paced through his space station, he felt boredom evaporate and slowly being replaced by tranquility. The sight from up there might even soothe an angry bull.

'Oh yeah, I should reply to Michael or he might make my phone explode with hundreds of messages.' Keith suddenly remembered. He disconnected from the game and wrote a simple sentence : "What do you want?"

The reply came instantly and Michael repeated one of his previous messages : "Dude! When you told me you were hiding your base, you didn't tell me that you were THAT developed!"

- "Well... You didn't ask."

- "Ahah, what a lame answer man."

- "Have you cleaned your base from all those debris by the way? Should I come and visit?"

- "Nah, we established within Niflheim in the end."

- "Yeah, the call of adventure right?"

- "Well, we did become crew members of a popular exploration ship. Anyways, why don't we start playing together?"

- "I wondered when you'd ask... I don't see any problem about that, but I don't think you'd be understanding a lot about what I'm doing. I'll send you the exact coordinates in a moment."

With that being said, Keith replied to all of the other messages he did receive while he was at work, including those he received from Amber. He simply replied to her that he would not mind having to share the Earth's skies and that he was working on other projects at the moment anyways.

He wanted to make sure his intentions would be correctly understood by the mayor of Midgard. The way she told him about the whole situation obviously meant she wanted him to work alongside the Starise group to help their community develop better technologies.

However, although the social aspect of this matter could be quite interesting to him, he could not really afford to lose all of his current progress just to recreate the Internet within Project Overworld. There were so many things he could accomplish in this game, and working for a community project was not part of his dreams.

What about space colonization? What about spacecrafts, terraformation and all those challenges regarding of space travels' optimization? Obviously, all those players back on Earth would eventually start working towards these goals, but in how many months, nay years?

He had the opportunity to do so right now, and there was no reason for him to stop working on his own projects.

'Getting help from my friends was be a good idea, in the end.' Keith thought. 'Wait, that shouldn't be limited to my friends, though! What about competent people who have the same goals as me?' Soon after realizing that, Keith decided to write an official post on Project Overworld's forums regarding his future plans.

Since he had thought of a company name as well as a logo for the purpose of the Moon race, he decided to take advantage of it. He officially introduced his company to the public and left a form at the end of his post to preselect the applications.

'Alright, it's time to create a company actually involved in the future of Humanity. No more complacency, no more community projects. It's time to turn towards space.' Keith convinced himself.

Since the official forums were using the same account as the game did, there was no way people could doubt about the likelihood of him being the actual Keith who conquered the Moon.

'Okay, let's go back to actual work then.' Keith decided after making sure his post had been correctly created.

_______________

'That's so pointless.' Leyla despaired. Since Eric accepted to join the municipal team of Midgard in developing satellites and other devices that would be useful for communication, she felt like she was not accomplishing anything.

Obviously, she was having quite a bit of fun developing and optimizing new engines to launch those satellites into space, but the thrill she felt when going for the Moon was not present anymore. The fact was, there was no point in communicating between each other within Project Overworld as they could already to that in real life. Although it was quite inconveniant to disconnect from the game and open a tab on one's cell phone or one's computer, it did not take more than a few minutes.

She felt like they were all trying to reproduce what was being done outside of this game, and this was not really interesting to her.

'It's a game, try to use your imagination.' She thought.

By the end of the day, Leyla disconnected from the game, as desperate as ever. Since they lost that Moon race, she felt complacency settling within their ranks. The 'Starise' group was not meaningful anymore, and only 'Star' remained in its name.

In the meantime, Leyla received a notification on her phone which pulled her out of her lethargy. 'Popular post on r/Project Overworld : Spacol is recruiting.' She read the notification in her mind. 'Huh? Spacol... Isn't it the name of Keith's company?'

She quickly unlocked her phone and pressed the notification. A moment later, she was rendered speechless.

'He really is recruiting!' Without giving it much of a second thought, she immediately filled the form in hope Keith would actually be reading all of the applications. 'I may be a bit late, but those goals are exactly what I wanted to work towards.' She thought will reading the post again.

If Keith's management skills were as good as his engineering skills, they might actually be accomplishing a lot for Humanity as a whole.

_______________

'Okay, this should be enough.' Keith considered. After connecting back into the game, he transfered the fuel remaining in his space shuttle's tanks back into his station's own tanks.

Since he had no more materials left in this spatial base to be able to work on his projects, he decided that he should be going back on Earth. This would also give him the opportunity to welcome his friends as well as the future applicants of his company and start giving them something to work towards.

Not to mention the fact that he still needed to test a few new programs on his land base and make sure everything would be working as intended. As a matter of fact, there were many more reasons for him to get back on Earth instead of staying all alone up there in space.

Fortunately, he kept the last stage of one of his rockets attached to his space station so he would eventually be able to land back on the planet. He simply filled up its only fuel tank remaining and climbed onto its c.o.c.kpit, ready to decouple from the station.

'Well, let's get back where it all started!'