Across the country, Ian and Doug watched the feed of Occupant 0656’s correction in the sleek, dimly lit office of WannaBeWayneTech.

  Ian and Doug watched the video feed of AGICT001’s interaction with Occupant 0656, one man with quiet satisfaction, the other with a deepening frown.

  “Ian,” Doug began, glancing at the dark-haired man hunched over the keyboard beside him. “First… congratulations. Seriously. I knew you were chasing true AGI capability, but I didn’t think we were this damn close. This is beyond impressive. Your blend of adaptive hardware and behavioral architecture, this is exactly what the division needed.”

  He paused, scrubbing a hand through his perpetually chaotic hair, the universal sign of Doug’s frustration. “But when we took this contract, when we opened the AGI division, I thought we were building the first smart-community overseer. I didn’t think we were building a warden for a correctional township. I wouldn’t have agreed to this if you had pitched it that way from the start.”

  “Well, my friend, that’s why I didn’t.” Ian stood with a smirk, clapping Doug’s shoulder as he passed him on the way to the small coffee bar. He peered into an empty supply basket, muttered something irritated under his breath, then turned back.

  “Doug, come on. This contract is the reason we even get to follow our dreams. The advanced VR development, gaming systems, the whole future of interactive tech, this pays for all of it… and the Northern Territories want four more of these townships. That’s a cash cow. Not just a correctional experiment, they’re the model for the new smart communities NT wants built.”

  Tom, quiet, brisk, always two steps ahead, materialized like smoke with a fresh box of StarPeet’s espresso pods. He loaded the machine, brewed two cups, dropped two sugars into Ian’s, one into Doug’s. He handed them off, received nods of thanks, and vanished with the empty box as if the air swallowed him.

  Doug took a sip, turned back to the feed. Occupant 0656 rode his bike down the street, soaked in shame and physical discomfort. Doug winced at the sight. “But Ian… a correctional township? I see the merits, sure. Rehabilitation potential, social reintegration. But I don’t want WannaBeWayneTech associated with this.”

  “Why the fuck not, Doug?” Ian’s voice sharpened, irritation flaring instantly. “We just developed the first real-world application of a full AGI management system. What better proving ground than a correctional township? An experimental environment where our AGI can actually cut its teeth?”

  Ian dropped back into his chair, his small frame barely shifting its position as Doug patted his shoulder to try and ease the tension mounting between them. “That’s exactly my problem, Ian, the cutting of teeth.” Doug sat down across from him, leveling the field. “This isn’t a sandbox. If we screw up, there's no safety net, no infrastructure to catch them. These aren’t test subjects, they’re people. Real people. And this shouldn’t be a beta test. Listen, man, I…”

  Ian sliced through the air with an angry gesture and tapped the keyboard hard enough to rattle the desk. The main display fractured into thousands of thumbnail feeds, occupants eating, working, sweeping, arguing, doing therapy, gardening, exercising in a word, living.

  “Cutting what fucking teeth, Doug?” Ian’s voice rose. “These are criminals. Criminals who need monitoring, criminals who need containment, and criminals who can actually be rehabilitated. Look at this guy.”

  He clicked a square. It expanded to fill the screen: a man cooking dinner, chatting with another occupant at his counter. “You remember him?” Ian asked, eyes bright with heat. “The radical who burned down that church a few years back, the one with the daycare attached? Nearly killed three kids staying late. Remember that shitshow?”

  Doug grimaced. “Yeah. I remember.”

  “Well guess what? He ran back into the flames to save those kids, risked his life and that’s why he’s here instead of rotting in the desert. And now? He’s working with the uncle of one of those same kids, the guy in the feed, to build a virtual outreach program about common humanity instead of racial division and renouncing his beliefs in supremacy, .”

  Ian jabbed a finger at the screen. “Without our AGI creating a safe environment, those two would have murdered each other months ago. Cutting teeth? Creating bridges? Pick your fucking language and get off my ass.”

  He spun back toward Doug, face flushed, eyes burning. “What I also see,” Ian continued, stabbing the air with one accusing finger, “is a raise in our profit margin. A stable revenue stream. The foundation to dominate correctional AGI management and smart-community AGI management. You think we’re set forever because of our successes? No. You’ve got too many philanthropic and charity streams bleeding our reservoirs dry.”

  He leaned in, voice sharpening to a razor-edge. “This contract is one stream that feeds the river. If you want to keep playing Robin Hood and Santa Claus’s love child, fine. But if you can’t see why we need this?” He sat back, sullen, sipping his espresso, “then fuck you.”

  Doug exhaled slowly, letting the heat of the words dissipate between them. He turned toward his own terminal, logged into the NTCT001 file, and pulled up projected rehabilitation outcomes. They’d danced this argument many, many times. Pushing now would only feed the fire. Better to let Ian stew… let the storm settle… and once the air cleared, Doug could pitch the idea that actually excited him, the one he’d been saving. Total immersion reality gaming, his true dream.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Doug and Ian had been friends since their late teens, a partnership built less on similarity than on function. Doug was a natural, brilliant, intuitive, able to see systems whole and finished before most people found the first piece. Ian had forged his edge differently, through discipline, iteration, and refusal to quit. Where Doug leapt, Ian constructed. Where Doug improvised, Ian refined. Over time, those opposing instincts locked together into something neither could’ve built alone.

  Their friendship solidified during the cultural resurgence of the early 2030s, a period later dubbed the Surge. It began with film, classic titles reimagined with modern effects, new sensibilities, and unapologetic nostalgia but quickly spread outward.

  Streaming followed, then books and music. Entire creative industries looked backward, remixed the past with contemporary tools, and found an audience hungry for it. Doug and Ian were fully caught in that wave, especially when it came to action cinema, spending nights tearing apart old favorites, celebrating the remakes that worked, and arguing loudly about the ones that didn’t.

  Games, however, disappointed them. The industry leaned hard into remasters and safe revivals, technically impressive, creatively hollow. Indie studios still took risks, but success only made them acquisition targets. Frustration turned into resolve.

  While working post-college, Doug and Ian built WannaBeWayneTech out of a cramped apartment, the name born from old pulp-hero mythology, the idea that if no one else was willing to build the tools, then someone had to. Ian became the architect, developing adaptive AI that learned players instead of reacting to them. Doug built the worlds. Systems, levels, and challenges that forced those AIs to evolve. Their first major release proved the model worked. The ones that followed never repeated themselves, never coasted, and never stopped pushing. The industry noticed. The players stayed and the partnership held.

  Doug had recently learned through Mordecai, their in-house AI hardware engineer, that Ian had quietly shifted focus. He was no longer chasing incremental advances in AGI. He was reaching beyond it, toward artificial general super intelligence: an AGSI capable of overseeing an entire game world at once, NPCs, mobs, environments, systems, and emergent events, all managed as a coherent whole.

  It explained why WannaBeWayneTech had never tackled MMORPGs before. Ian had always said the AI challenge was too great for a massive, persistent world. If he was right, and Doug suspected he was, then only an AGSI could make it viable.

  Doug knew that part of Ian had always resented how easily things came to him. But he also knew the resentment cut both ways, sharpening Ian, driving him harder, pushing him further than he might’ve gone alone. They had clashed over it more than once, hard enough to leave scars, but the truth was simpler: Ian pushed because he cared, and Doug trusted him because he was almost never wrong.

  That was why Doug now sat reviewing reports on the correctional township and its occupants, closing the file with a quiet certainty. ‘Ian was right. Only their new AGI could manage a system like this, helping people walk a real path toward redemption.’ He opened a fresh set of notes and turned his attention forward.

  Virtual reality, for all its promise, had never truly caught up with gaming. Even sleek glasses and advanced haptic suits with multidirectional terminals failed to deliver total immersion, the sense of being there. Doug smiled, thinking of Ernest Cline. ‘When he wrote Ready Player One, he must’ve seen the future,’ Doug thought. ‘It just never arrived.’

  At least the Surge-era remake had honored the book, something Doug still quietly appreciated after years of wondering why Steven Spielberg had ever thought perfection needed improvement. With Ian’s AGSI and his own long held dream of a total immersion MMO, Doug realized they might finally be ready to build what players had been waiting for all along, not just a game, but an experience.

  “Okay, listen,” Ian began, turning toward Doug. “I shouldn’t have sprung this contract on you, but I knew you’d balk. We need the income if you want to keep supporting your bleeding-heart projects. You follow me?”

  “Yeah, Ian. I get it,” Doug said, a small smile flickering before it faded. “I know you’ve got a better pulse on our finances, and I appreciate it. I just want to make sure we don’t turn into some kind of military contractor or a hardware factory.”

  “One of my bleeding-heart projects is helping the people caught in these pointless wars,” Doug continued. “I’d be a hypocrite if I let our company support that. But if these contracts mean managing smart communities, maybe more? I’m in. Cool?”

  Ian leaned back, that familiar ache tightening in his chest. ‘You make it look so easy,’ he thought. ‘Believing. Trusting. Pushing forward like the ground will always be there.’ Doug was infuriating that way and essential. Ian swallowed the sharper words, the ones that always landed wrong, the ones that could still push Doug away. He steepled his fingers and closed his eyes for a beat.

  “Cool,” Ian said, leaning forward again. “So what crazy idea do you have now?”

  Doug drew a square in the air between them and flicked his fingers outward. A holo-screen bloomed to life, hovering cleanly between their HUDs.

  Eclipse Nexus

  Three Worlds. One Character. Infinite Possibilities.

  “Oh, fuck, Doug. VRMMORPG again?” Ian groaned. “I’ve said it before, I don’t think we have the computi…” He stopped, staring at the projection, a grin spreading across his face like a chess player cornered, but still winning. “You motherfucker. You knew, didn’t you? Who was it, Arthur, no, he’s no… fucking Mordicai!”

  “Well maybe.” Doug neither admitted nor denied. “I had an inkling you were close to AGSI, yes. Not sure what you planned, but I figured it was time to start developing this. Between this and what you just showed me with Dr. Olivia’s work at the correctional township, I think we can do something no one’s done before.” Doug smiled like a kid caught with his hand in the candy jar, and completely fine with it.

  “Total immersion?” Ian whispered, almost afraid to say it out loud. Doug nodded solemnly.

  “Oh shit, really? I mean, really?” Ian sat stunned for a heartbeat, then barked a laugh. “Well played. Well played indeed.” He leaned forward, eyes bright. “Give me your notes. Let’s get cracking, Tzu.”

  “You got it, Oryx,” Doug shot back. With a casual flick, the title screen collapsed, replaced by layered schematics and rolling system notes. Two workspaces spun up side by side. Ideas began to fly fast, unstable, incandescent, like particles breaking free of a star.