Everybody had something special enough to be called a “talent,” supposedly.

  The young man found out what his talent might be when he was in elementary school. It was the summer of 2005 and everyone around him was obsessed with this life simulation game in which they could take on various professions, explore the abundant possibilities of who they could become, and have their first taste of success while making some friends along the way. A deceptive trial run for kids before they entered reality. On his second play as a “lawyer,” he went on a spontaneous drive in the middle of a storm and found a toad stuck between the rocks at the nearby beach and set it free. The next day, the toad visited his house and invited him to a picnic in the mountains, promising unique items and rare gallery memories. He hung out with the creature for one afternoon, and when he returned, his neighborhood had undergone a societal collapse and fallen to a rural wasteland, forcing him to seek shelter and establish a new life at a temple in the woods. He was nine, but he handled that well.

  Stranger things happened when he shared the experience with his friends. How did you end up like that? They asked when they saw him banging the gong in a rain frog avatar that wasn’t among the available options. He told them, and they tried it for laughs, but for some reason none of them could trigger the same sequence.

  The same phenomenon continued to occur with the other games he touched. Regardless of their genres and mechanics, he always managed to poke the program in a specific way to generate a peculiar response. Like those people who seemed magnetic and constantly killed their electronic devices, he became “that kid who can break any game.” Some of his schoolmates accused him of being a liar desperate for attention and claimed he’d Photoshopped his so-called “evidence,” but he knew what he’d seen. Although, each time he was interrogated about the event, he became less certain about it.

  Then he got older and no longer had as much time for games because of all the more important things in the world. Then he got even older and realized games were the only thing he’d ever understood about the world. So he picked up the consoles again and started doing testing gigs on the side for some extra lunch money, and right now this guy across the mahogany desk was about to tell him that he would not get paid for the job he’d done and why that was the right thing.

  For the past month, the young man had been testing a Zelda-esque RPG, which was a classic “hero’s journey” in a fantasy world. About halfway through the game, the player would reach a village where they needed to gather some critical information to unlock the remaining plot. He’d noticed that, if he persistently approached any NPC at the village inn six times, the NPC would deviate from the script and return alternative responses, which allowed the player to skip numerous sections on the map and clear the game straight away. That alone wasn’t problematic. It might very well be a hidden route baked into the design. What made it worth noting was that the deviation was irreversible. Once a player embarked on that path, there was no means for them to return to the intended flow. Even if they loaded a save, when they got to the same point, the NPCs would direct them to the first track at the first encounter. To play the game the “correct” way, the player would have to reinstall the program and lose all their progress.

  He had triaged the finding as High in his report, then found out in the feedback that the company had downgraded it to Informative—the bug report equivalent of “hm, interesting,” for which he would only receive participation credits instead of real money.

  “Something like that should be at least Medium,” the young man argued.

  “As I said,” Mr. Biggs let out a loud sigh. “They had difficulty reproducing the bug, so they adjusted its level of priority.”

  “I have documented how to trigger the event and provided screenshots. If they follow the steps in the report—”

  “Ray, they tried, and nothing happened. Client has made the call. Your effort is noted.”

  His name wasn’t Ray, but he had corrected Biggs more than once, and the Customer Relationship and Complaints Manager did not seem like he’d appreciate another reminder, so the young man rolled with it. He could be a “Ray” within this office.

  “Well, it worked for me,” Ray muttered and hunched his shoulders.

  “I know, I know,” Biggs frowned. “I read your report. It was insightful, very insightful, but it is what it is… and why would anyone pay that much attention to NPCs in the first place?”

  “Because… they can?”

  Biggs pursed his lips and gave him a silent “What am I gonna do about you?” look.

  “Kid, I like you and I want you to thrive. You don’t whine, you get your work done, and you produce some interesting results, but to do well, you need to be more… sensible is not the word… Hell, I don’t even know what’s wrong with you. You don’t think like normal people.”

  The young man held his tongue and kept his gaze on his fingertips. This was the work ethic his first boss had taught him on his first job: Don’t argue. Don’t explain yourself. Just listen to what they want you to do, then do it.

  Biggs clapped his hands and rubbed his palms together, stirring the conversation back on an upbeat note.

  “You know what? I’ve got a gift for you.”

  He yanked his file cabin open and pulled out a binder, then tossed it across the desk as he shoved the drawer back into its frame, making a loud bang that grated on Ray’s nerves. The young man clenched his jaw, but surprise quickly replaced annoyance when he saw the logo on the cover.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Pretty much every service could be outsourced through a platform these days, and that was also how he got most of his gigs, but for lucrative and highly confidential headline projects, they were still assigned in the good ol’ knowing-the-right-person way. The young man stared at the name of one of the most prestigious studios in the industry, and a thrill throbbed his heart. Maybe this was it. He had “the next big thing” right in front of him.

  But there was something off about the file. To begin with, it was rare to see a hard-copy brief in this day and age, and that binder had a few good years behind it. Stuffed to near bursting with pages that had obvious discoloration on the edges, it looked like a freshly unearthed cold case. In the center of the cover, the name of the game was scribbled in permanent marker—

  Wysina Dreaming

  He couldn’t recall hearing any buzz about it.

  “It was one of those overly ambitious projects that were never finished due to their creators’ futile pursuit of ‘perfection’—typical,” Biggs snorted. “They forgot about it for a while but recently decided to revive it ’cause they felt the market turning. It’s been so long and they want a current state assessment to figure out where they go from here. Just do the basics, nothing fancy.”

  “What’s their budget?”

  That question gave Biggs pause as if it’d never crossed his mind. He rested his elbows on the desk and leaned forward, clasping his hands in a lecturing pose.

  “This is a relationship-building job, Raymond, so we must handle it with delicacy. Have a crack first, and if they are happy with your findings, you get to negotiate your own rates when the report is accepted—that’s a privilege. Look, these guys are major league, and they’re selective about who’s allowed to touch their babies, but once you get on their list of vendors, you can expect a steady flow of top-notch work down the track. The exposure is invaluable in the long run, and I had to put in some good words to get you this one. You’re welcome, but if you don’t feel up to it, that’s fine. I’ll tell them you’re busy.”

  Biggs pursed his lips again and looked down at the lunch menus delivered to his mailbox this morning. “Club sandwich or Margherita pizza” became the most important thing at this moment.

  Ray took a breath and opened the binder. The thumb drive containing the game was tucked in the plastic sleeve behind the cover. The rings on the right side held a stack of storyboards, maps, flowcharts, character design sketches, and printouts marked up in red pen—most of the comments were just vocalized frustration in writing.

  What does that even mean??!

  No he does NOT look like this!

  How does this make sense to you? Exactly how does it work? If it’s sci-fi, it should at least have SOME science in it—

  Unlike the usual brief, which would include the scope of work and specific instructions, this was an archived mental breakdown that someone packed away when they were sick of the project and didn’t want to look at it ever again.

  “There’s a lot of information here,” he said. “Which is definitely helpful, but do they have something more… organized?”

  “They have what’s in that binder. It’s a work in progress, after all. Some of the details may have changed, but the concept is the same. So how long do you need? A week? Two weeks?”

  “Um, let me have a quick read of the brief and get a general idea about the game—”

  “You play Animal Crossing?”

  “A little bit—”

  “It’s like that. You hang around, you do stuff and chill. Nothing complicated—mellow.”

  Biggs tapped his pen against his desk, counting the seconds Ray was taking to respond. Then he retracted the ball tip with a thump and made an executive decision.

  “I’ll ask for a week. They’ll push for three days, I tell you, but I’ll try and get you five. Again, you’re welcome.”

  He ended the conversation with a loud click of his pen and circled the meatball spaghetti on the flyer under his nose. Ray gathered the binder and got up to leave. I’ll keep you posted, he mumbled.

  Before he stepped out the door, Biggs called out to him and gave him a warm smile.

  “I know you think I’m giving you the short end of the stick, but that’s only because you’re a safe pair of hands and I trust you the most. Go have fun, and come back with your best work. I’m counting on ya.”

  The sun had come out when the young man got out of the building. The streets had picked up a mossy scent from the earlier rain. It was a twenty-minute walk back to his real job, yet it felt like a marathon he didn’t want to run. His phone made a chime and popped up a notification—

  Time for a glass of water and some steps! Motivation comes from hydration!

  A cartoon ginger tabby hijacked his screen and stretched her back in a way that said “I’m adorable and I know it.” This was an artificial companion he’d been testing, which was basically an AI-gilded lovechild of the classic Tamagotchi and any wellbeing management app. Users could customize their own plans of micro healthy habits or follow the presets, do what the cat demanded, and keep the cat happy. A happy kitten would bring you gifts like birds and mice—hopefully still in one piece—and you could use those to purchase high nutrition treats, catnip-doped toys, and home decorations so Jo Jo Remington III could live like a princess. Some had reported in Discord that, if you surpass certain scores, you’d unlock hidden features and the feline companion would behave increasingly like a human, then you got to see what the game was really about.

  He thumbed the screen and gave the kitty a head rub. The image flickered twice, then Jo Jo’s face ballooned to double the usual size, and her 3-shaped smile morphed into a Cheshire Cat grin. Against the dark backdrop, the ghost of a message glinted in cursive golden letters:

  Good Luck!

  Was it supposed to do that? As he wondered, the uncanny face disappeared and Jo Jo returned to a hovering widget before he could snap a screenshot. The thing had been a bit glitchy lately, which was exactly what he was paid to report, but this time he hesitated. He wasn’t sure if this was one of those irregularities that had more to do with him instead of the game, and if all he got from now on was “weird Ray stuff,” or if he could no longer tell the difference, it might be the end of game testing for him. He stared at the icon that was a curled up sleeping kitten. Strangely, on the brink of his short-lived beta tester career, his only thought was—

  Please don’t turn into a girl with a twenty-year age gap between her face and her body.