As we approach the table, Misa waves at us. We take a few chairs from nearby and sit down at the table. As soon as Brutus sits down, he brings up the topic of our visit.

  "How would you go about fitting fifty computers into an apartment?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean fifty computers is a lot. How would you fit them all inside a small apartment space?"

  Misa pauses for a moment, then starts motioning with her hands.

  "So as in, you put three computers next to eachother in a row, then put another two rows of three behind them, right?"

  "That would be nine."

  "Yes. Then you stack another two yers ontop of that, making a three-by-three-by-three cube of computers, and thats twenty-seven."

  "Mhm."

  "That's still not enough, so you make it five-high instead of three, and then thats forty-five computers. It should be a bit below ceiling height, still, so you can rest the other five computers horizontally on top of those. And that's fifty computers!" Misa pauses to take a breath. "You mean something like that?"

  "Exactly! But preferably a bit more practical than stacking them all ontop of eachother."

  "I mean, you could put them all around the edges of a room. If you packed them tightly, you could probably fit all fifty in like that. I think the main problem would be plugging them into the wall, since you would need fifty plug holes minimum. That would be a lot of extension leads."

  Its lunchtime. I'm hungry.

  I interupt Misa and Brutus' verbal exchange, and gesture to Kyte and Brutus.

  "I'll grab some food for us. What do you want?"

  Brutus and Kyte reply.

  "Chicken Curry."

  "Anything will do, thanks."

  "Got it."

  Misa and her friends already have food, so I head over to the kitchen counters with just those two orders. There are chefs hired by SIT that handle the meals, so I order one pte of chicken curry, and two ptes of beef ribs. A man in chef attire behind a counter recieves my orders, and starts piling food on empty ptes.

  "Two whole cows and a spicy chickenbird coming right up."

  "Thank you!"

  As three fat ptes of meaty goodness are pced on a tray and handed to me, I once again thank the higher beings for the farming subsystems that make all this possible.

  Look at those thick sbs of meat! All that juicy sauce!

  Is "juicy" actually used to describe sauce? It doesn't really feel like the right word, but it feels fitting to describe it like that anyway. I thank the chef, pick up the tray, then head back.

  I return to the table where Kyte and Misa are, and I deal out the dishes accordingly. Listening in, It sounds like no progress has been made towards a solution. Actually, hasn't the conversation went sideways?

  "Most people don't know this, But if a rge number of computers are in close proximity to one another, they are more likely to crash. They have to be really close together in order to see it, though. It's sort of like a domino effect that occurs in modern computers."

  "Really?"

  "Yea. Lets say you stack up all the computers in a rge cuboid structure, right? Then if one crashes, it's likely the ones nearby will also crash. It's like the crashing is contagious!"

  "How does that work?"

  "If you knock into one of them, all of them will fall and crash to the floor!"

  I don't get it. What does computers crashing into the floor have to do with... Oh. Misa, that was terrible. In fact, you could say that joke fell ft itself.

  Misa continues her terrible pun spree.

  "What about running the program on a bunch of virtual machines?"

  I have no idea what virtual machines are. Kyte also doesn't seem to know what they are, either.

  "I have heard of those before, but I'm not sure what the advantage of using them is."

  "Well, how do I expin this? If a computer tries to handle too much, it crashes. In terms of the probability of the programs running properly, using the virtual machines, umm..."

  "Yes?"

  "Well, it's virtually a guaranteed success!"

  No. Stop, please! My ears!

  "Pfft, hahahaha! Ah, ok, I'll stop now."

  Perhaps noticing our pained expressions, Misa stops making puns and starts giving real suggestions, wiping a tear from her eye that had formed while she was ughing.

  "Anyway, you don't actually need virtual machines, but is there a reason you can't just run multiple instances of the program on a single computer?"

  "Well, I could, but that would require running the program ten times on each computer, so I thought that would be too much."

  "Ah. You can actually run a lot more than you think on one computer. The main reason people use multiple is to hide the fact they're botting. As long as you don't care about that, you should be fine running a bot program many times on a single computer. Speaking of, isn't botting banned in most MMOs? I'm surprised at you!"

  Kyte scratched his head then ughed in monotone.

  "Ha ha ha. I had a long discussion about it with a moderator, and somehow managed to get approval under some limited conditions."

  Misa and Kyte continue discussing in earnest how to potentially run fifty MMO accounts at once. Most of the conversation went over my head. Eventually, pns were made and Misa offered to come over to our apartment on Saturday morning to help Kyte setup the whole thing.

  The rest of the day goes by with nothing particurly interesting happening.

  At about 10 am on Saturday, Misa arrives at our apartment as scheduled.

  Kyte opens the door while I finish eating breakfast. Misa steps into the apartment and greets us. I offer her some of the leftover breakfast.

  "Good morning to the both of you?"

  "Hi Misa. Want some toast? Eggs?"

  "I uhhh, am fine, thanks."

  "Ok."

  I put two eggs between two pieces of toast and make a sandwich. More food for me, I guess.

  after finishing breakfast, I grab a shopping bag and fill it up with foodstuffs. I have something to do this morning, so I can't stay around and watch.

  "Right. I'm going out now, see you all ter."

  After I finish packing the bag, I put on my shoes and coat, bid Kyte and Misa farewell, and leave the apartment room with my bag in hand.

  I like to walk around Trigon city on the weekends. As well as that, I make it a habit to try and visit someone every saturday. As I approach the park, I hear a rustling sound from somewhere.

  Hmmm?

  I stop and look around, but I don't see anyone nearby. The rustling sound comes again, and I look towards its direction, at the base of a tree.

  "Mew."

  "Cookie!"

  An orange and brown cat appears from it's camoufge among the fallen leaves, and walks over to my legs, rubbing her cheeks on them. As I bend down to stroke her though, she suddenly appears to lose interest, and starts walking away. I sigh.

  Typical Cookie.

  The person who I was visiting was Mrs Grace, who owns the cat. This exchange between me and Cookie was a very standard exchange between Cookie and I that happens almost every week when I go to visit her. I continue walking to Mrs Grace's house, letting Cookie lead the way forward.

  Mrs Grace was a well-known elderly woman in the neighborhood. In fact, Kyte and I met Mrs Grace before we met Misa. After talking to her for a bit we somehow were both invited over for dinner one day, and eventually I started coming round weekly. Not to eat dinner, though. Sometimes It's just to talk, but I often do odd jobs for her, like weeding or repairwork. She pays me as well, but It feels more like receiving pocketmoney than getting pay.

  I think back to the st few times she handed me money.

  Yea, It really feels like receiving pocketmoney.

  We arrive in front of a small, grey house in the middle of the street. The front of the house was very bare, with a small paved patio connecting the door to the pavement. There were no fences or walls surrounding the patio, nor any furniture. The only items of decoration that could be found were four hanging baskets, two on either side of the door, which were currently flowerless, due to it currently being september.

  Oh, and there's an artificial wreath with red berries, that had been hung over the door since st christmas. I would know, because I helped pce it there.

  Mrs Grace is far from a grouchy person, it's just that her front garden is too small to properly decorate, so she chose to keep her front garden simple and focus mostly on her back garden.

  "Mew!"

  Cookie walks through the catfp nailed onto the door and starts mewing loudly. A short while ter, the door opens and Cookie reappears, along with Mrs Grace. How do I describe Mrs Grace? She's a normal old dy, who wears normal old dy clothing in normal old dy colours. She has a big scarf wrapped round her neck, and often carries a big, pink handbag when she goes out. I guess the only thing strange about her is how healthy she is for her age. You could easily mistake her for te fifties, but I'm pretty sure she's actually early seventies.

  The arrival of the system didn't give immortality, but it definitely gave people longer lifespans.

  "I see that Cookie brought a guest. Come in, dear!"

  "Thank you."

  Mrs Grace pulls pulls off her hood and beams at me with a smile. I smile back and step into the house, taking off my shoes by the mat.

  "I brought the items you asked for!"

  "Excellent!"

  I walk over to the worktop in her kitchen and start unloading the bag. Mrs grace pulls out her phone from her jeans pocket and starts checking items off her list.

  Hmm? Somethings strange? What, are you one of those creeps who don't take their shoes off by the door?

  Huh? It's something else that's strange, you say?

  "Thats everything."

  Mrs Grace tucks her mobile phone into her hoodie pockets and nods at me.

  Yes, hoodie. And jeans. Is something wrong? What? Jeans and hoodies are normal old dy clothes! Eww, no! Of course young people don't wear them. Those went out of fashion ages ago! Seriously, have you been living under a rock or something?