The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Rashid Li liked talking about the things he loved.

He'd gotten hooked into the VR world early in life, his older brother Anand being part of the team that developed Halfworld.

After  a tour of the company Anand worked in, he realized his interests were different from his programmer brother, being more attracted to the hum of a perfectly put-together machine than the flow of elegantly-written code on a monitor.

He pursued VR engineering with enthusiasm and joy.

The job market for VR-tech engineers was competitive; even multiple degrees would not help that much, and he didn't want to depend on the strings his brother pulled.

He needed an edge, something he could show to his name. He started designing a VR rig for extra-terrestrial mining.

Anand told him it was too ambitious in the same breath that he offered his programming assistance. Space mining had been one of the most dangerous jobs in the solar system before people interfaced VR to control precision robotics.

The care needed to mine the delicate material that was so useful in processor cubes and the solar panels that powered half the Earth and most of the nearer colonies in the solar system was immense.

And yet, it had been years since the mining interface was updated.

It was to be an undertaking of years.

In the meantime, his love of talking about his favorite things transitioned into teaching about his favorite things. He joined a VR awareness group to lecture on the subject to schools, businesses, and more.

Teaching was calming in ways he didn't expect, as he designed his VR mining rig.

It was Anand who brought Redlands Craftmasters to his attention.

"I already work with my hands," he protested. "How could this be interesting?"

"It's VR. You like VR!" His brother insisted. "You should see their programming!"

He didn't expect to fall in love.

Redlands Craftmasters was exquisite. It was truly another world, an artisan's dreamworld.

Everything from pottery, to sculpting, woodworking, blacksmithing, weaving, baking, glassmaking and more – ancient crafts that were in the current era entirely done with machines.

It wasn't a popular game, but playing Craftmasters became his favorite was to recharge.

Over the years, the crafting systems got better and better. Fantasy crafting was introduced and attracted more players. Rashid had many friends in the game. The world became even more detailed as new monsters and materials entered the lives of the craftmasters.

Then RSI bought the game.

There was unrest among the players for a while.

RSI started as a security company, then branched out into AI research and  medical technologies. What would they want with Craftmasters?

But then the NPCs changed, became more dynamic, more meaningful in their interactions.

The world changed.

Rashid didn't know what to think. It was a better game, of course, but was it ethical? He watched as his game friends turned off the indicators that differentiated player from NPC, as players integrated more into the virtual world of Craftmasters, as his friends started introducing NPCs to him as if they were real people when they never had before, spending more and more time in the unreal world of VR.

It was disquieting.

This world of Craftmasters was exquisite, but it wasn't reality.

To act as if it were, as if the NPC AIs were living beings…he couldn't help but be apprehensive.

One year after RSI bought Craftmasters, Rashid finished a working prototype of his design, five years after he started and several hundred thousand ecru spend from the money his grandparents left him.

"It's not yet ready," he stated to Anand, who'd become just as invested in the project."

"Little brother, it doesn't have to be perfect."

"I'm not looking for perfect. It doesn't feel ready."

Anand shrugged. "I have to check the code again, anyway. The reaction times are off."

Rashid resigned from the VR awareness tour to concentrate on the prototype. It was only part-time, but he was reluctant. His hours in Craftmasters fell from eight to four per day. As a full-fledged high master in the game, he didn't need a lot of time to conduct the business of his workshop.

Six months later, a friend from the tour concernedly brought up the dark circles under his eyes and the gauntness of his frame.

The co-worker messaged him an offer to do a series of tutorial videos on Craftmasters.

He couldn't refuse.

That's when he learned that they weren't tutorials for Craftmasters, but a new expansion. Masters of War.

He was dazed. The expansion was against all he knew of the maker of Craftmasters. Surely Orven Norge wouldn't allow it?

But he did.

When news of the expansion trickled out, and craftmasters exploded in outrage, he even made a speech. Progress, building on what came before, a leap into a greater future.

Rashid had reservations, but he'd already signed the contract.

He made the tutorials, testing out the new system.

It was a great game, he felt. It just wasn't Craftmasters.

RSI announced the expansion three months before its release, a surprise to many.

Rashid finished his prototype to satisfaction.

He had it tested immediately.

The R&D tech he'd contacted from Hareon Interplanetary instantly forwarded a recommendation to the company's R&D director.

There were demonstrations, meetings, contract negotiations, and finally a job offer.

It was exhausting. It was exhilarating.

Entering HI was a dream come true for any engineer. Their VR department was second to none. This was what he was meant to do, he felt. This was what he had studied for years to do. It felt like flying.

He met Arcazy Ventre after their interview, tasked with showing new hires around R&D.

They were of similar age, hired into the company at nearly the same time. It wasn't bad to have friends who understood when he talked about VR.

Arcazy had immediately challenged his views on portable reality tech the first day they met, able to converse for hours upon hours.

This was better.

He made new friends.

He worked.

He kept busy.

Craftmasters had fallen to the wayside, so he was a bit surprised when RSI contacted him to say that instead of the remaining videos he still had to do, they wanted him to conduct introductory lectures on a VR tourist feature for the game that was still in beta development.

It was a sudden jolt of unpleasantness.

He wanted nothing more than to break the contract. But he preferred to go above and beyond, to end his contracts on the perfect note.

VR tourism?

In a game as exquisite as Craftmasters, he could see why it could be marketed. But it was another mark against the game company.

Serious players would rail against the feature, seeing it as a sellout move.

The hardware for most VR tourism was shit.

The headgear only needed to render excellent visuals. It didn't have the aggressive processing power that VR battles required, because it must be cheap enough for the average person to buy.

And what then of him, who had to play tour guide to people who would not know, and likely preferred not to know, what it was like to truly immerse oneself into another world.

With his worries, he'd honestly never thought twice of Eli Crewan until they met in a dark alley when on his way to Arcazy's apartment.

Even if his prediction of a crafting resurgence came about, Craftmasters was already too different from the world of before.

Evolution.

Rashid was intelligent. In the upper percentiles of recorded intelligence on Earth, even. His work had already changed the world of extra-terrestrial mining. But that was a quantifiable change - he'd seen it happen. He'd worked for it.

The VR world was too malleable.

Meeting Eli Crewan for a third time gave him something of a cognitive dissonance. Certain of Zee's friends had ranted of sullen silences, brooding resentments, of unwarranted arrogance.

The man now leading a group of elderly tourists through the virtual resort was laughing with his aunt, keeping them entertained with stories about the moons, the lands of the game, the architecture of different races.

Rashid could appreciate someone who did quality research.

He watched as with a comment here and there tied to various things in the resort, the group immersed into the world of Craftmasters more quickly than anticipated or expected.

Cenree, beside him, was staring too.

"I guess he's getting over his mother's death?" she mumbled with a curious grin.

Rashid considered.

It was the last seminar on his contract, and he'd noted how fast each test group assimilated in previous sessions.

That a group of elderly people who had gone through most of their lives without VR tech had one of the fastest immersion times of all was significant.

That Eli Crewan appeared at the end of his contract was almost like fate.

This was the end of his contract, he decided. This was the note that was above and beyond.

The director of the VR tourism department had made noises about extending his contract. If he gave him Eli Crewan, the man would probably concede to Rashid terminating his contract peaceably.

He approached the man after the seminar was over.

"Eli, right? Would you like a job?"

Rashid liked teaching about his favorite things.. But he loved making them more.