Morgan

I leave this story for my parents, you did always call me your creative little muse mom, I’m so sorry.

“Alright let’s do this” I cracked my knuckles ready to start killing some orcs and spirits in the latest expansion of our game. I never thought making an online game would be as fun as playing it.

“Wow more subscriptions!”

“I can’t believe people actually pay to play this game”

“Don’t be such a downer Jade”

“Tell someone who cares Topaz”

“How’s security going Opal?”

“We’ve had some bots and some attempts at our security but I’ve dealt with them”

“Let’s get started, Quartz, have you dealt with any new bugs?”

“There haven’t been any new ones reported” I responded over the headset. I was the administrator that addressed the members of our online game in the boards. I listened to emerging problems, complaints, suggestions, I’m the people guy. I’m about the most sociable person out of our group of programmers, animators, designers and gamers. We all call each other by nicknames because, well hey, it’s the internet; we can do whatever we want. We may have a little enterprise online but we’ve only really met each other in person a few times. As social outcasts (even I have my problems) we prefer machines and really come to life when we’re talking online to each other.

The first time we came into contact was actually on a board, I was chatting up Opal and tons of other people joined the conversation because Opal was a skilled programmer (hacker technically) and was making the board change colours and post lewd jokes that were restricted which was quiet hilarious until someone flagged TastyBrownies80_05 (Opal) and Opal was promptly kicked off. I was impressed to say the least so I contacted TastyBrownies, I wasn’t the only one. Topaz opened up his own board on a website he owned so we all could talk together. We chatted and joked and got to know each other, with so many skills and like interests we decided, why let this go to waste, lets do something. So one thing leads to another and we started up a gaming site. We had to use Topaz’s site but he didn’t mind getting rid of his live journal, there are tons of social sites in the sea. Jade is our best animator, she turns out bloody gold for god’s sake. Talented but not very creative, so she works closely with Pyrite; the guys got his head in another world most of the time. Amber and Amethyst (I suspect they’re related) are a dangerous duo when they’re programming and Opal helps out as well. Mostly what Opal does though is draw in the crowd, without Opal’s work we’d probably have no clientele at all. Being a hacker ( and a very good one to boot) allowed Opal top spam random sites with advertisement without the owners of those sites finding out who or where the spam’s were coming from. That spam drew in most of our first crowd. Opal told me that it was just booting out the ads of other sites that pop up in the side bars and headers on sites and replacing it with our own ads, mostly it’s just jabber to me.

Like I said, our meetings were very seldom, there are more people I don’t really even know working underneath everyone else, all except Opal. From what I know, Opal works all alone, I met Opal once. We all met at a videogame convention before finalizing our decision on starting a gaming site (it had be a convention because no respectable gamer would leave their house otherwise) and we all met. I hadn’t been all that surprised, most of us were nerds, Jade recently moved here from Korea, Topaz was pretty emo, Amber and Amethyst were pale and greasy haired and a little on the plump side. Pyrite was a shy Latino with thick glasses and bland clothes and I myself am no picture of beauty either. What did surprise me was Opal. She was a shy, slender, platinum blond with deep blue eyes. I think that Opal was partly alienated in our group; she was beautiful, I admit, even I was a little jealous of her, but had a crush for her all the same. The girls immediately treated her with indifference (well Jade does that to everyone) and the guys eyed her warily, like she didn’t fit in with us. Back online though everything was different, we were all the same on the net.

You were beautiful

We were all a team but the two I was closest with were Opal and Topaz. As it turned out Topaz and I live lived in the same city so it was like a weird kind of kinship. And Opal, (well I’d never admit this out loud but I had feelings for her, being one of the few females not to reject me except for my sister and mother), we were pretty close, always chatting and joking; she eventually made going on the internet to talk to her even more worthwhile than games( crazy I know). So when she started to act oddly I was the only one to notice.

“Ha ha, yeah I know, you should’ve seen the size of it too” I laughed.

“Yeah…. hey Quartz….”

"Hmm?"

"What are you afraid of?"

“Heh, that’s an odd question? Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious….” I stopped to think about it for a moment, sifting through a variety of real fears and silly phobias. I decided to go with the manly answer.

“Well I’m not afraid of anything really” I laughed, (there’s some guy rule that you’re not supposed to show weakness, I think) I wonder why she asked.

I got my answer.