The Greystone Chronicles: Book One: Io Online

by Dave Willmarth

  To their left as they faced the main building was a small garden with a fountain that looked as if it was intended to imitate the gardens in the inner bailey of the palace. A stone pathway led through the garden and around the side of the main house. The garden was overgrown, and clearly had had no tending since the former residents left. To their right was a two floor utility looking structure that may have been a storehouse or guard/servant quarters, or both. Between that structure and the main house there was a 20 ft wide cobbled driveway that wound around the western corner of the house.

  Moving across the courtyard and up the three steps to the covered entrance, Sasha located the front door keys and opened them. The friends walked into a grand vestibule with soaring ceilings and marble tiled floors. Ahead of them to their right was a wide stairway with a polished mahogany bannister that curved away up to the second floor far above. To the left of the stairway was a hall that ran straight back toward the rear of the house. The companions took in their surroundings, alternating staring with their mouths open in wonder and looking at one another is if to get confirmation that it was all real.

  “It’s so… big,” said Sasha, twirling slowly around, arms out to the sides.

  “That’s what she said! Ha!” Brick just couldn’t resist the opening. He nimbly jumped to the side as Sasha made to smack him.

  “Lets check the rest of the house,” Max said, moving toward a set of open double doors to their left as they faced the stairs. The rest followed him through into what looked like a drawing room. There were overstuffed upholstered chairs and sofas arranged in groups with small side tables and a long mahogany coffee table in each group. In one corner to the left of a window was a well stocked bar with glass or crystal decanters. Apparently the prior residents had been forced to leave much behind. And the king’s men must have secured the home immediately to keep out looters. On the opposite wall was a massive fireplace with a carved stone mantle.

  “Awwww yeah!” Brick smiled and patted his bag. “We know just what’s goin up there!” Even Sasha smiled at his enthusiasm as she turned and crossed the room toward another set of doors heading in the direction of the back of the house. Opening these doors, she found a formal dining room with a long table. There were ten chairs along each side, and one at each end. There were sideboards along the right hand wall and another, smaller fireplace on the left. Two separate single doors led out the back of the room. One on the left, one on the right. Sasha once again led the way, taking the left hand door. This one led through a short butler’s pantry into a massive kitchen, which seemed to occupy nearly the entire back side of the residence. Directly in front of them were massive wooden prep tables where meals would be plated before being taken to the dining room. Beyond the prep tables was a door that led to the south out the back of the house. The kitchen extended to the right, where there were three wide sinks and faucets and a middle island with chopping blocks. Past those were two large stone ovens, each with enough space for two grown men to sit inside. Then there were three oversized magic stovetops with racks of pots and pans hanging above them. Across the room from those were what appeared to be two large cold storage rooms. And at the far end of the room was a door that led into a deep pantry, with another door leading out to the west side of the house. Likely a delivery entrance.

  “Ten people could work in here and never bump into each other” Sasha said mostly to herself. “We could feed a whole garrison from this kitchen!”

  “Aye, lass, or half a garrison of dwarves! Ha!” Brick happily chimed in. “Speakin’ of dwarves, the king mentioned a cellar by the kitchen…” he drifted off as he headed toward the delivery door exit. The others followed. Sure enough, outside was the driveway that led from the main courtyard around the west side of the house. There were two ramps, a small one that led up to the pantry door, and a longer one that sloped down to a cellar entrance. “There she be!” Brick exclaimed as he headed down. Not much interested in a cellar, Sasha called to the dwarf and tossed him the keys. He unlocked the door and tossed them back up to her. While he explored his new ale storage facility, the others moved on to the rest of the property. At the end of the drive, at the southwest corner of the property, were the stables. A long, stone barn with wide doors that stood open, and a second floor hay loft. Max immediately headed off in that direction. The walls around the east, west, and south sides were all solid, with no entry gates. Only a small door in the middle of the south wall with a very heavy bar across it. Against the east wall, opposite the stables was another small two storey utility looking building with a single door. Likely a workshop and storage area. But what caught Sasha’s attention was the attached greenhouse. Maybe 50 foot squared, the building’s glass was too dirty for the friends to see in from the outside. Sasha ran to the door of the workshop and found it unlocked. Stepping inside she immediately headed toward the end of the building and the door that must lead to the greenhouse. While she explored that, Alexander entered the workshop and looked around. The ground floor was basically one large room, with a kitchen in one corner, and several work benches set up along the walls below the windows. To his left was a very small room that was either a closet or a restroom. There was a stairway in the back corner that led upstairs, and another below it that must lead to some type of cellar. Alexander proceeded up to the second floor where he found four small rooms along a central hallway, and a bathroom with a shower. Glancing out the window, he noticed Max and Brick walking his direction. He headed back down to meet them in the main room.

  “Four small rooms and a bathroom upstairs,” he said to them as they came through the door. Sasha’s in the greenhouse.” He headed that direction.

  “Where else would she be?” Max asked as he and the dwarf followed. The greenhouse was as overgrown as the garden out front. So much so that none of them could see Sasha, or the other end of the room.

  “Be there a druid in the house!?” Brick shouted, smiling. Then he jumped slightly as Sasha came bursting through some vegetation behind him. “Dammit lass! Nearly stopped me heart, sneakin’ up like that!”

  “This place is AMAZING!” Sasha gushed. “There’s every kind of herb and vegetable I know, and some that I don’t. There are even a couple of fruit trees in the back! I have to show this to Lydia right away!” She was practically bursting at the seams with enthusiasm.

  “How bout we check out the rest of the house, first? Then we need to log off, remember? We have an appointment.” Alexander said.

  “Oh. Right,” Sasha agreed, looking disappointed.

  “Aye, I have some real world business to take care of meself today,” Brick said.

  “Let’s check out the rest of the main house, then we’ll all log off and meet back here tomorrow?” Max ventured. They all nodded and headed back outside.

  They found a large library and another sitting area in the other side of the ground floor of the main house. Along with two bathrooms. The second floor contained what looked be a couple of offices, a salon, and a few guest suites that included sitting areas, a single bedroom with a large bed, wardrobes, and bathrooms with showers and large tubs in each. There was also a very small windowless room off each one near the hallway door, presumably for the valet or servants of visiting dignitaries.

  A large part of the third floor was taken up by a master suite, and there were three smaller suites that were similar to those on the second floor. Brick, sensing an opportunity for some brownie points, bowed to Sasha and said, “Me Lady should o’course take the master suite. Us gentleman slobs will settle for the smaller ones.” Sasha beamed at him, and was moving with hands raised to give him a hug when he added, “everyone knows you females need the space for yer many shoes and clothes and such girly things!” Brick beamed at her. Sasha smile disappeared and her hands dropped. She looked at Brick, shook her head, and just logged out.

  Brick looked confused while Alexander and Max laughed heartily. “You were SO close, my diminutive friend,” Max said as he patted the scowling dwarf on
the shoulder. “I’ll see you gents tomorrow?”

  “Yep, bright and early,” Alexander confirmed. He and Max both logged off, leaving the forlorn dwarf alone in the hallway.

  Chapter Five

  Home Is Where the Hearth Is

  Alexander removed his headset and unbuckled himself. “Any messages, Alfred?” he asked, headed slowly but steadily for the bathroom to freshen up.

  “Just one, young sir. Your father called to remind you that a car would be here at 2:00 to pick you up. He left instructions for Lady Elaine to rouse you from the game if you didn’t exit on your own.”

  “Let the record reflect that I did remember, and logged out with plenty of time to spare!” Alexander teased his AI.

  “Very good, young sir,” was the only reply.

  After a short shower, Alexander donned office-appropriate dockers, a button-down shirt and a pair of boat shoes. He headed out to the living room and sat on the sofa to wait for Lainey. He was a bit early, but he was curious about what Odin wanted to show him. He’d never actually been called to the office by Odin before, and the possibilities were exciting!

  ****

  Alexander’s father, Richard Greystone, was the CEO and one of the founders of Jupiter Technologies, a multinational conglomerate. Just a year before Alexander was born, Richard started the company in his basement, working with his then girlfriend and a college buddy to design and code simple online games for mobile devices. Not having the money to purchase or maintain the servers and other hardware needed to operate the games themselves, the trio sold their first half dozen creations to established game corporations. Their first one, called “Gophers of Ganymede”, was an update to the classic “whack-a-mole” type game in which purple space gophers with 3 eyes randomly popped out of small craters in the moon’s surface. Players had to bop them on the head without being hit by space rocks thrown by the gophers, or the ones falling from above. They’d sold the game to MobiGames Corp for a whopping $10,000.00 and a design credit, just to keep the lights on and food on their table. The game was a huge hit, downloaded by half the kids (and no small number of adults) in the world, and making more than twenty million dollars for MobiGames in its first year. This created a bidding war on their 2nd offering, which earned them a quarter million dollars. It wasn’t nearly as popular as the gopher game, but still did very well. After the sale of their 6th mobile-based game design they had earned enough money to purchase a small office building and establish Jupiter Games, Inc.

  Richard’s girlfriend (and by that time, Alexander’s mother) Angela was a software engineer that had minored in Classic Literature, and was a huge fan of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology. Several of their games and the critters within them were named after or based upon mythological beings and beasts. She convinced them to name the company after Jupiter, the God of Thunder, King of the Roman gods, and namesake of the largest planet in our solar system.

  With enough money to live on for several years, and to hire a half dozen extra programmers and techs, they rolled the dice on another mobile-based game. This time, though, they decided to purchase the necessary servers and other hardware, market, and operate the game themselves. They used what they considered their best concept, one they’d held back just for this purpose. After a year of work, and a total investment of more than a million dollars (which was most of their leftover earnings from the previous game sales after purchasing their office building) they released their game. They’d paid a semi-professional production group to make them a 15 second web-mercial that began with “FROM THE DESIGNERS THAT BROUGHT YOU GOPHERS OF GANYMEDE...” and place it on a few hundred strategic social media sites. The name recognition paid off, and the game was a tremendous success. After just 3 months they’d had to expand their small server farm to handle the traffic. At 6 months, after recouping their entire investment and earning an additional net $4 million dollars, they had reached a point where they were going to have to expand again to handle the traffic. At that time, they were contacted by their old friends at MobiGames, and offered a flat $10 million cash, plus 10% of the net proceeds over 2 years for their game. Richard called a meeting of the senior staff, which at that point consisted of himself, Angela, and his college buddy Michael. The question at hand was whether to take the $10 million and walk away. Or to turn down the offer and expand themselves again.

  Angela took the lead, reminding them they’d never really wanted to be in the mobile games business. She wanted to design the world’s best MMORPG. Mobile games were just the means to grow enough to make that next step. They had all three been avid players of RPG’s from childhood; that was what had brought them together at the university.

  The business discussion took all of about 4 minutes before they agreed to sell, and spent the rest of the night celebrating.

  They closed the deal on Alexander’s 2nd birthday. With a good bit of money in the bank, they paid each of their staff a $100,000 bonus and told them to take a month off. Two weeks later, Richard and Angela got married, and took little Alexander with them on their honeymoon trip to Hawaii.

  When the three of them got back to work, they found themselves with a half empty office building, a small server farm (MobiGames had their own servers, and didn’t need Jupiter’s), a total staff of 10 including themselves, and nothing to do. They sent someone out for pizza. Michael opened a bottle of rum, passed out plastic cups, and said, “We’re going to design the best game EVER!”

  They gathered in their conference room, which had no table, only the chairs that everyone wheeled in from their desks, and began to spitball ideas for their first MMORPG.

  Over the next week, they stole a couple digital artists and programmers who had worked on a few of their favorite RPG’s, bought more desks and laptops, and a conference table, and got down to it.

  Three years later they were up to a staff of 30: programmers; developers; artists; accountants; and reception. They had burned through most of their initial capital in salaries and operating expenses. They had collected another $3 million in game residuals from MobiGames for the agreed upon 2 year period. They had done two beta tests over a 6 month period, discovering and working out a litany of bugs. It was time to release their new baby.

  It was named Europa Online.

  They’d hired a professional marketing agency, offering them a percentage of the game profits as payment. They made a similar agreement with TechMage, a company who manufactured the latest generation of VR helmets and suits, that allowed the game to operate on their platform. The game and the gear would be marketed together. Jupiter would pay TechMage 5% of proceeds if sales of their gear packed with the game did not reach $100 million within the first year. The software/gear game package was priced at $1,500 per player, and included a single 3 month subscription to the game. After that it was $50/month to play. The division of proceeds went like this: $1,000 of the package purchase price went to the hardware guys, the other $500 to Jupiter. During the second beta test, they’d launched a website with links to all social media, and encouraged testers to post their thoughts, good or bad. Their marketing team posted a 2 minute video of actual game play on the site. An A-list celebrity who was a gamer himself and whose kids had been huge fans of the gopher game, volunteered to do a voiceover cameo on the video with his kids, then released it on his own social media site. Within the first week it had gone viral, with more than 100 million hits. Then they’d opened up a one month window for pre-orders that would be guaranteed delivered by launch day.

  Their guaranteed delivery pre-orders from the one month beta window tallied up to more than 2 million units. And they had pre-orders for almost 4 million more that had their gear supplier scrambling to try and fill before launch day. They used $10 million of their pre-order receipts to buy a full 2 minute commercial showing their video during Superbowl 100, cleverly placing it following a Victoria’s Secret commercial to ensure they had everyone’s full attention.

  They set launch day for Alexander’s 5th birthday. The
game went online at 9:00am EST. By noon there were 5 million players online. By the end of the week, there were more than 8 million players. By the end of its first year, over 100 million players had purchased and were playing Europa Online on a daily basis worldwide. Just the initial sales to all those players grossed $150 billion. Needless to say Jupiter did not have to pay the 5% to their gear partner, TechMage. Instead they used half of their first year sale proceeds to buy a controlling interest in the company. They didn’t have a better use for the cash and didn’t need to worry about savings, as the monthly subscription income was almost pure profit. And $50/month times 100 million players was a lot of cash. Since Jupiter Games, Inc. was a privately held company, the three founders who each owned 30%, were suddenly multi-billionaires. And their staff, who had each taken small stock options as pre-launch bonuses, were all multi-hundred-millionaires.

  By the time 11 year old Alexander took that spill in the park five years later, over 600 million players had purchased the game/gear package. Nearly 400 million of them were still actively playing the game and paying the monthly subscription, which had eventually been lowered to $20/month. With a total sales income since launch of more than $300 billion, and a subscription income over 6 years of more than a trillion dollars, Jupiter Games, Inc. was quickly becoming one of the most successful corporations on the planet. They were the absolute leader in online gaming. More people were playing Europa than any other 3 games combined. The trio purchased the remainder of the gear supplier and formed a new umbrella corporation named Jupiter Technologies. They had manufacturing and distribution facilities, customer service centers, and massive server farms scattered across the globe, on every continent. They had an army of programmers, developers, artists, and consultants working on another game design. And their own in-house legal and marketing departments.