The NPC And Me

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been into computer science. I love programming, I love making my own video games, and I certainly love playing video games. Of course, my career path in university is about becoming some type of programmer. My latest side job is messing with a game that’s currently out. It’s a simple RPG game that became very popular very fast. The game is a full dive virtual reality RPG complete with suits designed to feel what is happening to your virtual body. This has its ups and downs but all in all everybody loves it. In fact, most people spend a lot of their time in the RPG rather than in the real world, other than school and work activities. The gamemakers hired me to essentially hack into their databases and see how easy it is to get through their firewall. They also want me to sort out any bugs once I’m in if I get in. I’ve been working on this hacking job for a few days after my university. It’s not as easy as I’m used to, which means they have decent protection for when players other than myself try to hack, but I can already tell I’m almost through their firewalls. I lean back in my chair and take the final sip of my matcha green tea. I drink a cup a day as it tastes good and helps calm my nerves. I check the time, realizing I only have about an hour left before I have to hit the hay for my classes tomorrow. I set the timer, and begin typing away again. Their firewall is no joke, they really did want to prevent normal hackers from gaining access. Finally, I source the last input code. 26-05-02-18-01. Access: Granted. I fist bump the air and text the man who hired me that I broke through the firewall. I alert him that their firewall was amazingly put together and that it took me several hours a day for 3 or 4 days to finally crack all the input codes. The last one really threw me off. He suggests I take some time to go through and sort through the bugs and see if there is anything more to add or deny. I ask for an extra day extension as I need to head to bed for my classes in the morning. A simple yes is given and I switch my computer to rest mode, never off because otherwise my job wouldn’t be saved. The shower I take is warm and very calming. Cleansing myself takes very few minutes before it’s time for me to get out. After brushing my hair and teeth, I take my night medications and head to bed. My dreams are mostly of success and my future. Waking up always seems to hit my heart in the hardest ways. I do my basic personal care before heading to my classes. Luckily, it doesn’t take my entire day in order for me to be able to head back to my dorm room. I want to sort out the bugs and everything so I can just get my paycheck and get some chinese food. I won’t really have any student loans or anything since I’m on scholarship so I am saving up, I’m currently at about 35k in my savings, so I can have decent money set aside for after I graduate. Of course, I’m building up my credit, but with this paycheck I’m about to get I can pay off my credit card for the next three months and use my credit card to get chinese food tonight without touching any of my savings money! I make my cup of matcha green tea and sit down to open the programming task. As with every video game, of course there are bugs. Just a few things immediately come to my attention but I have to really sort through the code in order to fix all the bugs and correct game play. I also add in some code to help fix some of the glitches in the game, but not all of them. I do use some of the glitches to my advantage when I play. They’re mostly hiding places, though. The gamemakers identified my RPG name as the hacker that goes through and fixes things, so I often get a lot of people coming up to me while I’m online. I like these specific hiding places because they also hide the name of the player. NPCs also lose you when you go into them, so if an NPC is programmed to follow you for a while, you can hide out there and the NPC will go back to where they came from. On the last line, there is a warning. It’s in bright and bold letters that make my heart stop for a second. NPC Mode MUST be activated at all times for ALL NPC PERSONNEL, but especially for NPC 8. There are thousands of NPC followed by numbers just above the warning. I text my boss regarding that situation. He immediately calls me. “Hello?” I answer hesitantly. “I understand this might come as a confusion to you, but NPC 8 is special. They were put under the care of one specific game maker who has not released NPC 8s code to anyone, not even myself. The game maker insisted upon this warning for NPC 8 but the rest was just added to stop people from questioning the game maker. For this time only, because I have to know what is happening that my own employee won’t tell me, deactivate NPC Mode for NPC 8. I will pay you an extra 50% of what we agreed upon.” “Yes sir!” I happily agree and deactivate NPC 8s NPC Mode. My screen flickers for a second but remains on. I save the code and exit the program, uploading the programming to the RPG servers. Within seconds, the servers are refreshed with my changes. “Now, find out what NPC 8 does!” With that, a click sounds on the other end of the line followed by silence. My boss hung up on me. To do my next task: Locate NPC 8.