1 Chapter 0001 - WHAT THE FROHK!

The Class, Digital Engineering at an offshore Training Facility, was focusing on the 'Future of MMO' Games. The Students came from all across the globe, some were more mysterious than others and some were simply agoraphobic. However, the one thing they all shared was a deep passion for the development of new games.

There were few facilities in the world that could adequately house such a monumental place. A place where students could freely hold themselves up in a perpetually cared for facility. Many, if not most were hooked directly into the VRC [Virtual Reality Construct.] If anyone saw them, they'd surely be confused if they didn't understand the specifics; Equipment found at the FROHK, Foundation for Reconstruction of Humankind had cutting edge equipment that was not given to the public. As such, only personalized security were allowed aboard the private, offshore facility. Sovereignty was a big deal especially when considering how many billions of people in the planet actually played games online, the cost never outpaced the profit. So billions, became trillions of dollars annually.

Professor Quanli Jigui had been creating games since they were in 2D, he was considered one of the best animators of his time and when he finally decided to stop making games himself, he decided he should pass his Art down and became a Teacher; A Very Strict Teacher.

"How would you build an MMO?" A perky and attentive Student asked at the last moments of class. She was wearing a cat skin over her avatar but her name was clearly posted.

The Teachers Aid butted in, "Neobelle, there are many people who would consider AI as the peak of MMO development, but Its only a single step. In fact there are far too many ways to improve what we already know. Imagination is always the key."

"There won't be any more Class this week, Prepare for an Exam based on what we've learned over the last few months. While this won't be necessary for some to pass, it will make a great portion of your grade, especially if you're falling behind." The Professor interrupted and said while he stared intently at his less productive Students.

"And to answer your question, if I were to build an MMO I'd start from the bottom. Its better in any way you can think of. Go take a look at some of the recent works that came from the dev's down on the sixth floor. They are busy, so visitation will have be scheduled and approved if you're truly interested. Get with Ms. Sheril if you want to know more." The Professor put his files into the recycling bin and got ready to log off once he was finished with his work.

"Professor, We have another program to take a look at." One of Professor Quanli's regular students tried to show off his latest work before he was shoved out the door by his friend that cursing all the way.

As a teacher Jigui could only laugh as Xuan Kim Li was dragged away swiftly by another of his classmates, Peter really wanted to avoid extra assignments.

After all the students had left, not much remained in the Classroom. There were a bunch of empty computer terminals, the Professor still had a few things to do in the VRC so he had not logged out.

Xuan Kim Li came back into the terminal access classroom to confront his, he had been adamant the last few years about developing his own platform, one of absolute supremacy or as he repeatedly stated, it was 'to be rivaled by none'.

That was the saying that had kept Jigui's interest and patience with the whole matter. Quickly storing the data into his personal file bank for review later, he said, "Enough, I am thrilled that it has finally come out of your hands. I expected you to drop the matter and continue with more orthodox methods of development so that others can both follow your work and aide you in your own projects one day, in the distant future. I will review your work and let you know, I do have a lot of things on my plate but don't want to leave you feeling unappreciated and this project meant a lot to you, so I will review it. However, if you fail to meet my minimum standards for this Class I will be forced to reject any future works and insist that you spend more time on you Classwork and Teamwork."

"Is that clear?" Professor Quanli closed his File System and turned to leave. He had forgotten several things during his exchange and now he was already short on time. It would really be disadvantageous if the Professor couldn't log out in time for his favorite Anime.

He had always been a Lollicon. Once while on a date, his older sister had seen him and asked who's kid he was babysitting.. that led to a lot of confused and often angry looks from passersby. The appeal for larger endowments of tissue never meant anything to Jigui, he was always far from attractive as a child with his uneven hair and chubby cheeks. It wasn't until he was in College that he finally lost his virginity, albeit drunken and dissatisfying in the end.

One of the door handles on the VRC classroom started jiggling, and Jigui quickly logged out of his Virtual Machine.

Red lights flashed in the small living space. A small slit slowly formed on the sealed capsule and Jigui took off the vitals machine that he and all of his students were required to use during immersion. He took a deep breath and then a few steps towards his personal computer. Flipping the switch to turn on the PC, the Professor sat down and opened his favorite streaming site and dropped his pants.

Noticing his shiny skin, he sighed deeply and took a shower knowing full and well he was going to miss his show live.

After a fulfilling tug in the shower Professor Quanli sat down in a towel on his computer chair and opened the files that his student had given him earlier. He didn't want such things looming over him and decided to take care of it sooner rather than later. He was surprised, it wasn't as big as he had thought but the compression levels were off the charts.

"No wonder he wanted me to see this" Jigui thought.

"Lets see what he's written!" he outstretched his fingers across the analog keyboard and seemed a bit cheerful as he read. He hadn't been excited about 'basically anything' his students had written in some time. Their works, although developed felt more or less like derivatives of earlier works, some that he even worked on. With a few glances Quanli Jigui understood a few problems that had been annoying him over the years, it was like he could see a bit more clearly.

"This is brilliant" Jigui fingered the mouse a bit and began scrolling down.

"A+. Oh, FML, is this real?" Quanli Jigui felt he had clearly lost his mind. "No! I cannot accept this. But its correct.."

"These Equations didn't even have a way to be programmed and it would take dozens of developers years on a super computer to do this one.." He held his breath for a moment, got up and walked around his room naked. "This cannot be." Stammering to himself, he sat down on his chair.. the towel long since missing had rolled under the chair wheels. Bending down to retrieve the towel, a sharp sound resounded in his room.

Breaking glass startled Jigui, and his PC was smoking.. It had a hole in it.

"Ahh!" Jigui screamed like a girl. "What the Fuck?!"

"Is that a bullet hole?" Milliseconds passed.

"No, No, No, No... What the fuck!" Jigui's mind started to spin.

Suddenly more thunderous sounds filled the area, as his exterior walls were riddled with holes. Crawling to safety, trying to 'not' shit himself, Professor Quanli kept his cool and remembered the rules of gaming. When pinned under-fire, look for cover. He crawled down his hallway across the debris and into his tub.

Someone down the hallway was using the intercom to call for Emergency help.

A few Minutes later, the sounds came to an end and he could hear the sound of footsteps on glass, mixed with rubber boots and scattered clanking of loose metal pipes. As the FROHK was a mobile offshore fortress, its battle armaments were not cheap. The entrepreneur who had bought it had bribed the Korean Military for its installation of several banned weapons, it was very defensible.

"How on earth could something like this happen here?" One of the first responders noted.

"A breach of security, here, of all places, is a very BAD thing. Hey new guy, take this man to medical and have him checked out." The Squad Leader called out to another Soldier and gave the order. "You there, come with me. We'll go see if more are around. I want a full sweep of the area, Move! Now." After shouting they all pushed to secure the area and figure out if more enemies are in the area.

There wasn't much blood on the floor, only a small team had broken in. What's worse is they had computers with them, if it was just a simple assassination, then a photo would be enough, even some specialty tools would be acceptable. However, a digital interface was found among the dead.

"Take this down to Sciences." Captain Mercer located the bodies and examined them closely before taking the Interface off the corpse and shoving it into a Soldiers hand.

Without any hesitation or further word, he secured the tech into a safe case and ran at full speed to the Sciences deck. Large servers housing a basic compendium of all human knowledge took up a majority of the floor with a few access paths and tiny rooms within.

Upon arrival, Sheril, a woman in her 40's looked at the Hardware. Flabbergasted, she hooked it up to a firewalled terminal and checked its contents. Even though she had retrieved data, it didn't look like anything was actually there. Confused, she used the turned toward Jigui.

"Jigui." Sheril would flirt with Jigui for information on his latest project even though it was never reciprocate. When her voice came across the room, he wanted to throw up. "Can you help me figure out what this is?" She directed her finger at a certain line and then Jigui dropped to his knees.

'This? this is what they are after?' the Professor thought about having to crawl naked across glass just a bit earlier and felt seriously annoyed. He said, "This is a compression program.. one of my students wrote it, why is it in the tech?"

"Its not the tech, its stored on the tech." Sheril flipped through some of the syntax. "Looks like they wanted a copy but they were stopped before they could escape." Confused, she still asked on, "How do you know it's that?"

"Easy, I just saw it.. Right before they opened fire on my room. I had just finished opening the file and started looking at it." Jigui was beside himself, if he had not stopped to put his towel on his ass he'd be dead.

"Call him over here immediately." Sheril pulled out a chair for Professor Quanli to sit down. They were both going to take a look at the remnant code.

She grabbed Jigui's hand and asked "Do you have any copies?"

He shirked it away, Sheril was lonely but he wasn't desperate. "Yes, on my VRC Chest Interface there should be a backup of all the data I picked up earlier. Even if they wiped the computers and have taken the data from the servers we will still have a copy of the code."

At that moment, a Youth in his late 20s stroked his chin and looked at a monitor in front of him.

"Professor, can I ask why you sent for me?" Xuan Kim Li was sweating bullets. "I see my code on the screen, but I didn't do anything wrong and I didn't plagiarize so please don't scold me."

Sulking in the background for a bit longer, Xuan Kim Li thought for sure he was going to be expelled. Such a big commotion had taken place and he was sitting in front of officials with 'his' data up on the main screen. Screaming from annoyance, someone finally stopped him by handing him a cup of water and a crisp slap to the face.

"You're not going to be expelled or punished, answer the question." Sheril snapped. Her face twitched while he slapped at the keyboards.

"Hey, there is a strange program already running in the background, I'm going to pull it now." Xuan Kim Li smacked the side of the screen, he was hopeful that it would speed the Computer along.

It failed.

A few minutes later, he had finally isolated the entrance access program in full and accessed its root, they were waiting and then the images began to display themselves.

"What is this?" A White room had appeared, a virtual space hidden among the files. "It was obviously built to run on the 'Creation Drive' but hadn't been tested because the program wasn't finished." Kim Li put a stable running version up on the Digital Monitors. "Go see what access you find from inside the construct." He had a good idea but was busy with deciphering the code, since he had written it, he was the best suited to unravel its function.

Professor Quanli stood at the clean room door with his VRC loaded and ready. The sprayers had finished and he entered the clean room. When he laid on a table and was viewing the optical switch assembly through the virtual trigger he felt excited, it had been a long time since he felt so alive.

A Small strange character blinked in the bottom of the screen, it looked like the entrance to the program. Instinct came over the Professor, he reached out, touched the symbol and his heart stopped.

Professor Quanli died in that instant.

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Opening his eyes, a white room was sitting there idle. The Professor could tell that the room was indeed a room and not a white space, he could see a corner in the distance; a frequent imaging issue in VR gear. It was subtle, but it was there.

He wasn't sure what functions existed but he kept dialog by talking and talking and talking.

Jigui realized that no one had responded, he was getting motion sickness, a feeling of weightlessness and a lack of a floor made him feel queasy.

It happened just like that, a floor came from no where.

Professor Quanli figured that Kim Li had finally patched something in, he started conveying his thanks and noticed the long pause had not ended. Unsure of what to think he waited, he expected a night cycle, none came.

'UGGH! this is so boring!' Standing still in the white space, Jigui thought about a carnival he had once been to, it came into view. It was startling and came all at once. A lot of things were happening, blanks were being filled in.

Suddenly, the Professor found himself standing in the carnival. Though, nothing was moving and everything seemed lifeless.

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