Chapter 7


"Sir, Stream 1 at 98%."

The voice came from a man working at a station, in a control room in Tokyo. The room in question was home to one of the servers of the newly released Super Smash Bros: Online Edition. It was during the first tournament that work had begun to pile up for the technicians there, a plethora of bugs that passed through testing had shown up and needed to be sorted as quick as possible. Also multiple accounts of hacking had been reported before the tournament and the GM's were quickly trying to locate the players and ban their IP addresses, using an advanced monitoring system that worked with ISP's to help catch the same user successfully.

The room was split into three sections. The first area held a huge monitor that took up most of the north wall, there were various computers and machines underneath that acted as a storage mainframe for the taskforce and investigation teams. The second part of the room was made up of three rows of computer workstations. Each row seated 20 highly qualified and trained employees, who worked on the complications behind the glamorous and simple look of the online world.

Half of the people in the room were watching the ongoing tournament matches in case a hacker or problem suddenly occurred. One of these people was Tomohito Matsuda. As one of the initial developers of the project, he was selected by a panel of Neural-Net engineers to start development on the next big development in gaming technology. As a condition for his promotion, he was also assigned to the Quantum Network Task Force, the newly created group assigned with keeping order in the network that the online game ran on.

The last section of the room was slightly elevated. A single, shorter workstation was there, one that housed five people. Behind that, a lone man stood, observing everything that was going on. The left most side of the short workstation was the place where the director of operations was stationed. His name was Chiba Momiji, a scientist that was also part of the Neural Network Committee.

"Sir, servers are at half capacity." He spoke to the man behind him.

The man that was standing was holding a tablet like device with which he used to oversee the Quantum Network Task Force. He didn't reply to the announcement made by his subordinate and continued to tap away at an application on the device. The program was specially made by the chief to work with the quantum network and modify its performance capabilities. The chief's name wasn't known by the majority of the Task Force, however Chiba knew Hideyoshi Ichiro on a personal level but rarely ever called him by his name rather being more respectful in front of the others.

Hideyoshi was the sort of person who grew with his whole life planned for him. He was born into a respectable and traditional family that wanted him to take over the family business when the time came for it. However during his years in High School, Hideyoshi was introduced to a person by one of his friends who showed him that there was more to life than what his family wanted of him. This turn of events sparked life into the teenager for the first time and prompted him into furthering his studies. Quickly picking up quantum mechanics, Hideyoshi became an exceptional student and was formally invited into the University of Tokyo after a thesis of his made its way into a professor's hand.

His family were initially hesitant at the speed Hideyoshi was advancing, however they soon supported his success when the young man started bringing more attention to the family business, even creating ties that were never thought to be possible.

Almost two years into his time at the University of Tokyo, Hideyoshi along with a student called Yuji Iesada, created what was soon to become the Quantum Network. Using protocols that mimic neural activity in the brain, the Quantum Network was able to act with zero latency conditions for movement recognition and input controls. This development also sparked the idea of the Neural-Net Device, an instrument used for precise connectivity from the brain to the Quantum Network. Yuji Iesada was put in charge of the project and development had been steadily increasing until the release of Super Smash Bros: Online Edition, where the first fully functional prototype was complete and had passed all precautionary testing.

"Sir, the quantum network is in optimal condition."

There are many ways to speak of development for video games, such as engine choice and physics algorithms used. However with this particular project, everything was different. Having been built on the Quantum Network itself, the game relied on true logic to correctly differentiate between cause and reaction. It used a process known as the Synapse Relocation System or the SR System to link objects in the way the players would unconsciously link ideas and thoughts. With communication between the different 'nodes' or system files, the SR system was able to react faster than any previously made gaming engine in the world. It was also made to accommodate billions of micro dynamic image calculations every second; being able to produce visuals that were immersive to look into, if the output was a high enough quality screen. In fact the only thing that could hold it back was the equipment that consumers used to view the game, whether their computers were not powerful enough or their internet couldn't handle such speeds. This was the primary reason why the game's servers occasionally lagged, a factor that would be removed in the future.

Because at its current stage, Super Smash Bros: Online Edition was just at phase one.

The plan was to initially wait until the Neural-Net Device was finished and ready for consumer use. Then a new autonomous AI called the immersion system would be installed into the devices ready to be used with the game. As the device was similar in concept to a past virtual reality system, the publishers failed device, development got extended to ensure it was perfected.

The immersion system was a living resident of the Quantum Network, it acted as a portion of the SR System which monitored player inputs, sound and if given, visual input. Based on these, it is able to adjust how the SR System reacts to the player, providing a more reasonable environment to attract the player. The SR System was developed by another subordinate of Hideyoshi who was on watch next to Chiba.

The developer of the immersion system was a free thinker called Ina Tanigawa. She had always been a big gaming fan and loved to plough through RPG style games. However her attention to detail often left her disappointed as she was never fully immersed into the setting of the games she played. Some of them were really close, but she often felt let down by certain aspects such as textures that suddenly flickered or characters that acted non-human like. This would lead her to start working on the system that would land her a job on the team she was currently with.

"Sir, the player immersion system is at maximum output." She said, sending a message to the central computer so that several backup machines could start converting into immersion system links.

To her right, another woman was seated, going through a backlog of text on her screen. This woman was placed in charge of security at the facility they were in and in the Quantum Network. Being a capable developer herself, Satu Takara produced the S.O.D.N.A system or the Structured Open Dual Nerve Amplifier. This was a program that was critical to the use of the Neural-Net Device and without it, development would have ceased years ago. Because of its nature, it needed to run on the Quantum Network as the calculations required needed to be exact and simultaneous to the other tasks it performed whilst active.

The S.O.D.N.A system was capable of reading the internal nerve fluctuations in a targets cellular brain mass, meaning if used with the Neural-Net Device and connected to a human being, it could create a virtual clone of a person with its own thought processes and memories. However, Satu was in a bad mood. Virtualisations of the targets would degrade faster than expected and would succumb to madness. It was only recently that they were able to stabilise this effect with virtual suspension, a technique that replicated the effects of a coma to its targets. Also the task force had been using the system for cloning of targets she didn't approve of, away from her attention. For some reason they thought it was best that she wasn't as involved because her sincere nature would get in the way of her judgement. In all the test subjects not one had shown a change in their mental or physical health, in fact all patients had woken up feeling more refreshed than usual.

She looked to Ina on her left and smiled at her ability to work so hard. The two had been friends since their days in Middle School and were inseparable, to think they would be working with each other was truly one of the universes great wonders. The two had made accounts on the game they were helping to monitor, often playing it during breaks and in their own time. As they developed core mechanics for the system rather than game content, they could still find enjoyment out of something they were proud to call their own creation.

Satu's online avatar was simply called Hei, mostly because she always feigned that she didn't hear when someone was speaking to her. The female Hylian was heavily customised with Hazel-Gold eyes and fire red hair that seemed to glow in the dark. In contrast to those colours, her skin was extremely pale. The combination produced an avatar that could be considered quite beautiful for certain people, almost to the extreme where a player once thought Hei was an NPC of the Zelda goddess Din. Ina on the other hand was always cloaked and never revealed her characters face around her. She even found a way to mask her name. When asked about it, she would simply say it's for security reasons.

"Sir, we've lost a further 3 OS targets in the last 15 minutes." Satu Takara had announced, reading a message that just appeared on her screen.

The OS' she had been talking about where redirection servers that appeared to be hosting the Smash Bros game, however due to the nature of this game and it's specific requirements the world wasn't ready to know what technology was being used to support this project. There were 15 "fake" servers in total. Although 3 had been taken down, they were ones with weak security used to attract hackers and break attention away from the ones used to direct the majority of players. Satu sighed, knowing she would see the same servers taken down multiple times throughout the day.

The last two people sitting at the table of five had recently been playing the game since launch, they had already beaten a few quests and partied with random players. The two were in charge of the information network between players, making sure sensitive or dangerously misleading information couldn't be spread by players. They were also on watch for the 51 people who had signed up for the Smasher bonus. As at that moment, there were 50 of them online, which is the highest it had been since launch. The two had planned the major tournament in the hopes of attracting all Smasher players quickly, rather than monitoring and keeping track of the players all the time until they got lucky.

However everything didn't go completely as planned.

There always has to be one. Having not moved since the game launch, Rikako and Oharu Suzuki were stressed, with bags starting to form under their eyes. Several polystyrene cups were on the floor, around their monitors, stains from coffee evident on them. Something happened and a notification pooped up, it almost went unnoticed by the two, but it caused all feelings of drowsiness to disappear instantly.

"Sir, we have all targets online."