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Chapter 10 - Have Your Cake and Eat It

We left my room, and headed to the canteen at a good pace because I now knew the way there, despite never having left my room. I could already see the advantages to this system they’d created so I couldn’t wait to try it out some more and see what else it could do.

“Wow, whoever designed the graphics of this place inside the system did an amazing job, this canteen is exactly the same as the digital one.” I exclaimed to Julian as we entered the canteen, to which he disappointingly just made a general noise of agreement, his eyes fixed on a chocolate cake in the distance. I couldn’t help but laugh at that because his mouth was half open and if he didn’t get some of that cake soon I imagined he’d go on a mini-rampage.

We reached the food counter with only two people in front of us so Julian got his cake-fix quick enough, thankfully. I wasn’t feeling too hungry so I only ordered a small salmon and cucumber sandwich and we headed off to a table.

We sat down and I just watched Julian devour his cake in seconds – he had ordered about an eighth of the cake and just like that it was gone, blink and you missed it. Whilst taking my time kind of nibbling at my sandwich I asked him, “So what exactly does Zerco do, other than create what would probably be the best game system ever?”

He gave me a sly wink and replied “Aha! Well, you’ll just have to wait and see. Please leave all questions until after the tour sir.” I wasn’t too impressed by his answer but he just sat there laughing at his own humour whilst I finished my meal in confusion with no more answers than I had before.

After Julian somehow managed to fit another slice of cake into his unfathomable stomach we set off for the other areas of the complex I hadn’t seen in the virtual tour and our first stop was the gym. The entrance to the gym was two large imposing reinforced steel swinging doors. The doors also featured a bolt mechanism that would deadlock the doors once activated, to be even more secure than a bank vault.

On the other side of these heavy duty doors was a large indoor area half the size of a football pitch and it was full of high tech gym equipment with screens attached to them which I guessed would display exercise statistics, heart rates etc. After a quick look around I figured out that not only could these machines analyse your run or workout, they could also double up as entertainment systems; one girl was listening to headphones attached to her exercise bike and another guy was watching a program on the screen attached to his treadmill.

There was also a full sized boxing ring, accompanied by punching bags and various other martial arts equipment and off to the right was a key-coded door that I could hear muffled bangs coming from. I was going to ask Julian what was over there but before I got a chance he raised his hands in the air and shouted “HEY DAVES! Come over here and say hi to the rookie!” to the room at the top of his lungs.

Before I knew it there we two new people in front of us, presumably both called Dave. My suspicion was quickly confirmed when one of them announced “I’m Dave, and this is also Dave. Nice to meet you Rookie. I should clarify, my name is Dave Crossan and he’s Dave Price. By the way, my username is Crucio and Price’s is Ikura” This Dave was a tall athletic Caucasian with spiky black hair and grey eyes, but his most noticeable feature was his thick Scottish accent which meant it took a second or two for me to process what he’d actually said. This was a bit awkward because he’d extended his hand for a handshake and I’d just left him hanging there so I quickly laughed it off and shook his hand heartily and turned to look at Dave #2, Dave Price.

He was quite a large guy, but not in a muscular way, more like the kind of way where someone sits behind a screen for weeks and eats junk food. Thinking about it I’m surprised I don’t look like him, I mean that’s pretty much what I did every day. His wavy brown hair was almost shoulder length and was tentatively brushed behind his ears although many strands were disobedient and surrounded his face. He had startling bright green eyes but I couldn’t see much of them because his eyes looked so tired and were half closed all the time.

I think he was getting slightly uncomfortable under my appraising gaze because he blurted out all of a sudden, saying “I used to be a lot thinner you know, I’ve often wanted to be an athlete, but then I remember how much I like chips. That and Julian challenges me to cake eating contests. Even when he wins he never seems to put on any weight, but I always do.” This produced a cheesy grin on Julian’s face and a little drool escaped from the corner of his mouth, he was probably thinking about eating more cake.

“Where does all that food go?” I suddenly asked Julian.

Slyly tapping his nose and laughing he replied “Don’t tell anyone, but that’s my superpower.” After which he proudly stood there in a superman pose for a few seconds before he got bored and decided to go back to the weird world of his thoughts again.

Taking this lull in the conversation as an invitation for questions I asked “So what’s in that room that’s resonating with banging and a few shouts over there?”

Julian snapped out of his mini-daydream to answer my question “That, my friend, is the shooting range. But don’t worry about that just yet, you won’t need to go anywhere near that room until you’ve had your aptitude test.”

“There’s an aptitude test?” I exclaimed, a little startled by the sudden revelation.

“Yeah, how else do you think Zerco gets us all working at our optimum jobs? This test will tell you what job you are going to do here, and helps determine who you work with. I’ve heard that it’s actually a really complicated system designed to get the maximum results out of every team. But before any of that, we need to finish my amazing tour!” He explained, finishing his little monologue evidently in high spirits and ready to go.

We said a quick goodbye to the Dave’s and then headed off back to the canteen, which seemed to be the hub for all of the various areas of Zerco’s complex building. Julian stopped for a brief second to ask me “Which way do you want to go, swimming pool, recreational centre or library?”

“Well, seeing as I was in a library before I was brought here and I don’t have my swimming kit, I think we should head to the Rec centre, don’t you?” I said with a heavy hint of sarcasm, after all it is the highest form of wit, right?

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Sorry about the delay folks, in my defense I did start a new year of school and I've been trying to sort out my university applications, and to top it all off I've been ill for days. Anyway, enough of my complaining, tell me what you think about the new characters, I'd love to hear your opinions :D

(Personally my favourite new character is Dave, but don't tell anyone ;) )

See you next chapter :D