Project Overworld

'Quite the change in pace, huh?' Leyla thought. Keith had just explained the rules of the second test to all of them and she realized it would not be quite as easy as she had initially expected it to be.

Two days were far from enough to build the type rocket Keith had presented without ignoring at least a few core features.

'I guess that's the real challenge he's given to us. He wants to see what compromises we'd make to achieve a specific goal.' She concluded. However, she was not really sure how she would be doing it.

'I don't really have to time waste on electronics. Just a simple deployement system for the parachute should suffice.' While Leyla made up her plans, Keith went around the arena with his truck to distibute the various materials to all the participants.

Once he was done with his tour, the second test officially started. Leyla was used to build rocket engines due to the work she has been doing for her friends. Without giving it much of a second thought, she gathered all the necessary materials and mechanically started assembling the various parts.

Everyone had to go over to the front of the stage in order to forge the various metal parts they had at their disposal. There were many more tools available there to help them in their deeds. It was quite a constraining situation, but also an actual social experiment. There were people who did not give a damn about the others and occupied several furnaces for dozens of minutes straight. Others were losing in efficiency by only taking care of one part after the other.

As for Leyla, she understood all of this was but a test. She knew Keith would also be taking notes regarding people's reaction to the competition. Thus, she made sure she would not be occupying a slot for longer than she had to, while optimizing her movements around the arena.

For the first eight hours separating her from the end of the day, she managed to finish the engine of her rocket as well as the tank supplying it. She also built a large portion of its structure, and estimated that she was already quite advanced with her design.

'I just have to finish that parachute system Keith wanted, as well as making a few more adjustments...' She realized. With the engine being done, the rocket could already launch quite up into the skies, according to her calculations. However, Keith did specify that the rocket should be able to land back on Earth unscatted. Since she had no time to build a computer or something like that, she was actually struggling to find a way to automatically deploy the parachute.

The next day, she unfortunately had to go to work since it was Monday. She could not take a day off because this second test has been such a surprise to all of them. When she came back into the game, around two hundred players were already connected and working on their own rocket.

'I wasted quite a bit of time, I guess.' However, it seemed like nobody had really finished their design yet. Leyla was quite confident in her abilities to finish the launcher and its landing system by tomorrow.

Keith connected into the game just a few minutes later. He greeted back all the participants and went around the arena just like he usually did. He also had a job to attend to every day, and understood that this whole competition was being quite unfair for the candidates who could not be connected all day to Project Overworld.

'Let's see how the disparity instill within this group.' He thought with a mischievous smile. This had also been a part of his plan. He could have waited another week to organize the second part of the recruitement event, and let people have their week-end to work on their rocket. However, since he would have to share his daily life with some of those people, this test was actually made to test their mental first.

As for their engineering capabilities, they were already being tested every day while he was navigating between the various turfs assigned to them. He noticed around thirty players who have had interesting ideas and were quite proefficient in building rockets. However, from those, only about ten were being retained because the others did not have the necessary mental to be part of his company.

For the rest of the evening, Leyla smelted and assembled the last parts of the rocket's structure before focusing all of her attention onto the parachute system. In the end, she decided that the parachute should be released from the get go. However, because the rocket would be flying straight up in the air, it would actually be prevented from expanding and only deploy itself once the rocket was falling down. It was quite a risky solution, especially if the rocket flipped over, but the only solution she could think of.

Next day's morning, Leyla was actually done with her design and spent the remaining of her time optimizing the engine of the rocket. Since she went to her jobplace yesterday, she managed to take a day off of work to actually be there once Keith announced the results.

'Am I not being too obsessed with rocket science?' She laughed at her decision to put more efforts into the game than she did in real life. 'No more day off of work for a couple of months.' She decided. It has been too recurrent lately with that Moon race and now Keith's recruitement competition.

At noon, several clock rang within the arena and Keith went onto the stage yet again to announce the end of the competition. People immediately stopped what they were doing and all turned towards him. This result was to be expected since a lot of people got ejected out of the competition after Keith exposed their unfair behaviour.

- "I'm just gonna say, good job everyone! This competition has been a lot of fun for me to host and it made me realize a lot regarding the future of Spacol. Though, I may have lied a bit about the true criterias of this second phase. Your engineering skills have already been tested during the first phase, and I'm already pretty sure most people present her today would be able to adapt perfectly to my working environment."

Keith proclaimed.

- "However, throughout the two days that you have been working on this grandiose project, I have been able to determine your teamwork as well as your tenacity. As you may already know, a few dozen players left the competition after the first day and some did not even connect back. Various reasons could explain this behaviour, and I can't really judge them. What I can critize, however, is the fact that some people thought that being selfish would a good idea in this competition. Obviously, this is a competition, after all. However, just because you could come out ahead of it does not mean you should sabotage other people's work."

Keith paused in his speech while the audience was gasping in shock.

- "Yeah, I know, quite surreal isn't it? Some of you actively sabotaged rockets to gain that extra edge over the others. Not only was this a total display of your lack of skill, you even made other people sad. There is not place within Spacol for such irrespectful players." Keith's tone hardened. He then raised his hand and a volley of bullets shot several player dead. "I want you all to remember the names of those players, and think about what they've done in the future. Regardless, this was not the only behaviour I should condemn off this competition. Sabotage is just an extreme display of one's selfishness, but some people also showed this kind of behaviour in various ways. Be it camping over the crafting slots, or picking up as much materials as possible so other participants won't have it, those are also reprimandable actions. I'm not gonna shoot you dead, there's already been too much blood being spilled over the arena. However, if you have even an ounce of shame left within you, please leave at once."

Keith waited for a bit and saw some players leaving the building through its main entrance.

'This is wrong.' He thought while frowning. The number of people leaving the arena was actually not quite as large as he has noted it to be in his journal.

- "Anyways, with those matters being taken care of, let me announce the winners of this competition." He proclaimed.

This time, everyone expressed their surprise.

- "Isn't he going to review our work?" Someone asked to their neighbors.

- "What is going on?!" Another player exclaimed.

- "Did we do all of this for nothing?"

Keith raised his hand yet again, bringing fear within the heart of those ungrateful players. This was the result he had expected for so long. This was exactly why he has been organizing this event and adding unnecessary drama into the competition.

He was, in fact, not even sure about which people he should go with. However, with those final words, he would finally be sealing the fate of Spacol for the incoming years : "There are none."