Taking SPACE

PROLOGUE

"Wahooo!" Michael yelled as he leaned back in his chair.

Daniel pushed away his virtual controls, "Wooot."

"Good job everybody," Steven said as he clicked through some statistic charts.

"That's the sixth Galactic Empire tournament we've won now, isn't it?" Catherine asked.

Stephanie put her hand over her eyes, letting them rest. "Yes, though the competition in this one was a lot harder than the last five."

"Yeah, but we creamed them!" Daniel happily proclaimed.

Catherine stood up and walked over to where Daniel was sitting. "Only because of your amazing piloting and gunning skills."

Daniel blushed a bit. "Nah, you're the one that knew exactly what to do. I would've got all our ships destroyed in the first quarter without you."

Catherine lovingly touched the back of Daniel's head, "honey, I'm a 'who', not a 'that'. And, even though I'd like to take the credit, it was Michael's strategy and Steven's engineering ability that enabled me to give you the right tactics."

Daniel swiveled his head to look at Steven, "talking about that, that thing you did with the dynovamator directly connected to the beam cannon was pretty awesome. I'm surprised the game actually let you do it."

Steven smiled. "It wouldn't normally, but Stephanie found Duralumin almost at the very beginning so I didn't have to spend a long time working around with the default construction systems enabling me to spend most of my time in the game development matrix."

Stephanie turned off her monitor and stretched, "That was actually pretty easy, because the game's last update made it closer to reality, enabling me to do things a lot easier. In fact, it's so easy now, I'm surprised so many people are having trouble with it."

Michael finished looking at the end game statistics, "that's because most people are not professional miners like we are," Michael looked down at the time in the bottom left corner of the screen, "we have quite some time left before the next pickup. What do you guys want to do?"

Daniel clenched his fingers. With a very eager smile, he said, "Let's jump into a random match."

Catherine shook her head, "No, the last game was quite stressful on me. I'm out for a while."

Daniel spun around in his chair, "that's because they were the best of the best. If we jump into a random match, we'll have fun creaming some noob's butts."

Catherine sighed. "I guess. Mike?"

Michael shrugged, "sounds kind of fun to me. How about you Steven?"

Steven pushed away from his desk and stood up, "Nah, I'm out. The game's fun but its development matrix is too limiting."

Daniel gave a quiet laugh, "of course it is to YOU. The stuff you do with our mining equipment is years beyond anything on the commercial market."

Steven rolled his eyes as he walked over to a table that had hundreds of little odds and ends which belonged to his engineering experiments, "so you keep saying but I don't care if it is. I just like the thrill of discovering new possibilities. The game doesn't really have that for me so I'm out this time."

This time it was Daniel who sighed, "I guess. How about you Stephanie? We can still do it with only four people."

"No. This game is fun for you guys, but it's exactly like work for me. The only difference is that things happen faster in the game than they do in real life. Speaking of which, you guys need to start helping me out more!"