USS Callister - Part II - The Wrath of Daly?

Written: July 27, 2019

Author's Note: this story starts off where the episode left off, with the U.S.S. Callister cruising through space.

It had been three hours since the U.S.S. Callister first entered the multiplayer online realm of INFINITY. There must be thousands of other ships in the game environment. The crew looked forward with anticipation to some new adventures. They were happy to finally be free of Robert Daly's cruel games.

A beep came out of one of the consoles and a small red light started to flash near where Shania Lowry was sitting. Lowry brought a finger to her ear and tapped her oversized silver earpiece.

"Lieutenant Cole," said Lowry. "We are receiving an urgent message."

It seemed natural for Lowry to continue on in her previous role as the ship's communications officer, even though she was technically free from such duties now that the crew was no longer under Daly's control. Strangely, it also seemed natural to the other crew members to look to Cole as their new captain. On the one hand, it was Cole who had formulated the plan for the Callister to escape Daly's isolated virtual universe. However, Cole didn't necessarily have any skills that would make her a better captain than say, Lowry.

"Let's hear the message," said Cole with a smile.

"U.S.S. Callister, this is the Latin League ship Purificacion. You have entered our space. Take your engines offline and prepare to be boarded."

Cole hit a button on her captain's chair.

"Sir, we were not aware we intruded into your space. We will gladly exit your territory if you kindly point us the way," said Cole.

"Negative, USS Callister," came the response. "You will come to an all stop and prepare to be boarded."

"Bring the shields up," said Cole calmly. Inside, she was starting to feel nervous. "Tactical analysis."

Elena pressed a button on the console in front of her, but it did not appear to activate this ship's shields. She did it again, and… nothing. She started pushing other buttons randomly but none of them resulted in her desired outcome.

Cole looked at Elena, and Elena shook her head.

"Lowry, Packer, help her out," said Cole.

Lowry shook her head also.

"That player is about to take a boarding party onto our ship. We need those shields to fend them off," said Cole.

"We aren't gamers!" said Lowry. "None of us know how to operate this ship!"

"Actually…." said Helmsman Nate Packer. "I can theoretically fly this ship. I don't know anything about the weapons, though. But I think we can figure this out. Maybe."

"Do it!" said Cole.

Dudani also furiously attempted to work his sensors console, in order to give the crew a tactical analysis of the enemy ship that Cole had asked for.

"None of these buttons are working!" responded Dudani. He finally realized what the other crew members realized a minute ago. During the crew's previous fake missions against fake enemies in Daly's walled-off reality, all the crew members had to do was press any button and the screen would give them the correct information. But that wasn't the way the actual game worked. The online Infinity gamers had to actually learn the proper buttons to press when they were role playing as either a weapons officer or a sensors officer.

"Well, we better start learning the systems!" said Cole. She was an amateur gamer in real life and had some idea of what would happen in the INFINITY game. She was somewhat confident that the virtual clones in the Callister's crew would eventually learn how to operate the ship. The question was whether they would in time.

"Negative!" yelled Helmsman Packer. The Callister was taking heavy incoming bombardment from three different enemy ships. Cole tried to get the Callister to simply run from the fight but the ship could not outrun or outmaneuver the attacking ships.

The crew still had a hard time figuring out the weapons systems. If only it were as easy as on the old Space Fleet tv shows when a random officer would just push a button and a torpedo would launch.

The entire ship shook violently a few more times before a look of resignation appeared on Packer's face.

"We've lost engines," said Packer.

"Dudani!" screamed Cole.

"I'm not an engineer!" screamed Dudani back at Cole. He still hadn't figured out his console yet. He never would've imagined it, but part of him missed the days of Daly's dystopia/fantasyworld. Dudani was the ship's diagnostics technician. But he never really knew how to fix things. Everything was usually already set up for him on his computer screen. He would simply read out whatever the screen said in his reports to his beloved Captain Daly.

As the Callister came to a complete stop, shuttlecraft from the attacking vessels headed for the Callister's launch bay.

"Everyone grab a sidearm," said Cole. She wasn't sure the firearms would help much, but it was her instinct. The online game INFINITY had multiple different components. One was space-based strategy ship versus ship warfare. Another was first person shooter. Cole and her crewmates would soon experience the latter.

There were only two entranceways onto the Callister's bridge. Cole and Lowry took aim at one entranceway while Elena, Packer, and Dudani trained their firearms at the other. All five of them tried to breathe normally but they couldn't keep their hearts from racing in fear and anticipation.

Dudani finally learned how to work the internal sensors, which showed at least two dozen intruders making their way through the ship. In the corridors leading to the bridge, three teams of 4 men each were slowly snaking their way towards their objective. The lead officer couldn't believe it at first when scans of the Callister initially showed that it was basically unmanned. The U.S.S. Callister was supposed to be Robert Daly's flagship. The pride of Space Fleet. This was either Justin Harrison's lucky day, or… it was a total trap. He had only started playing INFINITY about six months ago and he was already one of the best. He amassed a small fleet of ships and built up his little corner of the INFINITY online universe.

In real life, Justin was a minor league baseball player. He decided to model his online avatar after himself. It looked a little bit weird, a young man in a baseball uniform with a bulletproof vest over it, holding a rifle and prowling around a spaceship. Most of the players in INFINITY modeled their avatars as soldiers or some type of space alien. Justin called his alliance the Latin League. He had never met his allies in real life, but they communicated through the INFINITY chat and virtual hangout spaces. With him today on this mission were two of his friends: Annie from Romania and a friend with the gamertag "Wolfman."

The Latin League gamers burst onto the Callister bridge with guns blazing. Since the three of them were experienced gamers, they and their AI squads easily stunned the Callister crew and disarmed them.

Justin looked around the Callister's command center and was impressed.

"Very nice," said Justin. His own starship wasn't half bad, but he had a long way to go. If he captured the Callister, which it looked like he had a pretty good chance of doing, it would be a definite upgrade.

"Who's in charge here?" asked Justin.

The crewmembers all hesitated for a few seconds, but eventually, Packer indicated that Nanette was in charge.

Nanette didn't respond, but stared back at Justin as Justin tried to evaluate her. Justin spoke to her after ten seconds.

"Who are you?" asked a curious Justin.

"Nanette Cole," said Nanette. "I'm the captain of this ship. I demand you leave it immediately." She spoke in a firm tone, but not loud or angry.

Justin smiled. "I don't really think you are in a position to make any demands here, young miss." Justin made a small almost imperceptible gesture to his soldiers.

"Aren't there any laws about this type of thing!" said an annoyed Cole. "You can't just act like a bunch of space pirates!" As soon as the words left Cole's mouth, she realized she was inside a virtual game that was basically every person for themselves. There were only a handful of very loose restrictions. First was that the maximum alliance size was 25 gamers. The second major rule was that a gamer wasn't allowed to initiate an attack on a lower ranked gamer unless the experience and ability level were less than 10 apart. This was to prevent skirmishes that were too lopsided. Though, the game allowed you to initiate combat with someone ranked higher than you, regardless of what the difference in levels was. Hey, it was your funeral if you decided to bite off more than you could chew. Right now, Justin considered the possibility he was walking into a deathtrap. Robert Daly was ranked much higher than he was in the INFINITY universe.

"Space pirates," chuckled Justin. "I like that."

Justin punched a few things into his iPad and seemed to be intrigued by the information he was reading.

"You know, Nanette, when I first detected the Callister in this sector of space, I was super surprised. And then when my sensors showed only a handful of human lifesigns onboard, I was even more surprised. I thought about how lucky I was. The great Robert Daly must've been a lot cockier than I thought. Or… perhaps he had a way to mask the signs of his security personnel. I just had to find out for myself. So… where is your captain? Robert Daly?"

"I'm the captain of this ship," insisted Cole.

Justin punched up a few commands on his iPad and then showed Nanette something that looked like a personnel file.

"You are out of uniform, lieutenant," said Justin. "The INFINITY database has records of all the players and their avatars. At least, the info the players are willing to share. In real life, you are Nanette Cole, a coder for Daly's company Callister, Inc. You chose an avatar that looks almost exactly like yourself, plus a volumized puffed up hairdo. In-game, you are Lieutenant Cole, science officer of the U.S.S. Callister. So… where is your captain?"

"I… don't know," said Cole.

Justin looked at her face and decided that she was probably telling the truth. His colleague Wolfman, on the other hand, was less patient.

"Tell me where your captain is, or your friend here bites it," said Wolfman as he pointed his laser pistol at Dudani's head. Cole repeated that she didn't know and Wolfman pulled the trigger, instantly vaporizing Dudani's head, although his body remained and slumped to the floor. Cole and her friends were horrified.

At first, Wolfman, didn't have much of a reaction. However, he soon chuckled. Unbeknownst to Cole, Wolfman's virtual account in the INFINITY game was awarded 10,000 credits. This was money he could use to upgrade his ship, or his personal weapons, or to pay mercenaries to be his allies in the game. A normal kill was only worth 10 points. Somehow, by merely being a part of Daly's staff, Dudani's avatar was worth about a thousand "normal" kills. Even Justin was worth only a few hundred credits if anyone were to manage to kill his avatar.

When Annie learned that Wolfman earned 10,000 credits, she immediately killed Helmsman Packer in order to get a similar reward. She did. Wolfman and Annie laughed almost manically. Wolfman aimed his gun at Nanette's head, but Justin intervened.

"Fool!" said Justin. "Daly is worth one million credits! And we don't even need to kill him. We stun him, one million credits. Each of us can take turns stunning him and waiting for him to recover and then stunning him again. That's many millions! Not to mention, we need his command codes to operate the Callister. The tech on this ship is worth billions of game credits. The teleporting technology would probably cost two billion game credits to fund our research base and invent."

"Cole is a loyal lieutenant," said Wolfman. "Just kill her now and forget it."

"She's worth 25,000," added Annie. "Daly must've valued her more than the others."

"It would take me a month or more to earn 25,000 credits if I were just playing the game and skirmishing with other random online players," said Wolfman.

For some reason, Justin was adamant about protecting Nanette Cole.

"I don't take orders from you," said Wolfman. "You're only the unofficial leader of our team."

"If you want to remain part of the Latin League, you will stand back," said a determined Justin. "I created this team. You are free to leave it any time."

Wolfman wasn't too happy with Justin's dictator-like ultimatum. However, he did get along with Justin most of the time, and Justin was a strong strategic thinker. Of all the other online players that Wolfman had previously allied with, he got along with Justin the best and Justin usually had a more easygoing and collaborative leadership style.

"Just let me get my 25,000 credits!" insisted Wolfman. "That programmer from Callister will just re-start the game in a new avatar. Who cares? I bet she won't even have to pay the resurrection fee since she works for the company. She'll just start back at level one and then I'm sure her new adventures will up her experience points in no time."

Wolfman was making some sense to Justin. Lieutenant Cole was just a virtual avatar, as far as Justin knew. But, he still hesitated.

"Let's hold onto her as a hostage for now," said Justin. "Maybe Daly will show up to rescue her. Or... the ship's second-in-command, Lieutenant Walton," said Justin as he showed Wolfman another personnel file on his portable tablet. "He's worth 200,000 credits if we nab him."

Wolfman reluctantly agreed. 200,000 was a much higher number than 25,000, even though he knew almost certainly that Daly's second-in-command would probably be off the ship and wherever Daly was. However, Wolfman did decide to shoot Elena and earn himself another 10,000 credits. Annie soon followed suit and killed Lowry, who was worth a slightly higher 12,500 credits.

Justin's small Bluetooth-like earpiece communicator beeped and he tapped it.

"Boss," came the voice through his earpiece. It was another player whose gamer name was "Max Power." He was Justin's resident genius on engineering systems. "No luck with possibly adapting the teleporter systems to the Purificacion. Our specs are totally incompatible. If we can't commandeer the ship, I don't think we'll be able to cannibalize it for parts or upgrades."

"Understood," said Justin.

Nanette Cole was in a state of disbelief. All of her fellow crewmembers were now killed. She wasn't sure if they would resurrect. Sure, they were programmed to come back to life within 30 minutes when they were in Daly's personal virtual environment. However, the online universe was different. It was possible that Lowry, Dudani, Elena, and Packer were gone forever.

Justin saw the stunned expression on Nanette's face.

"Wolfman, Annie, secure the bridge," said Justin. "Lieutenant Cole, you're with me. Let's take a walk to the engine room."

Nanette followed Justin out of the bridge into an adjoining corridor. A few of Justin's AI troops followed him but he motioned for them to stay on the bridge.

"Are you okay?" asked Justin in a low voice.

Nanette nodded.

"First time in a combat situation, huh?" asked Justin.

"Not quite," replied Nanette. She thought back to when she initially arrived onboard and then had a planetary encounter with a monster called an "arachnojax."

Justin and Nanette didn't get to continue their conversation for much longer. The ship shook and alarms started going off. Red lights started flashing in the corridors. Justin hoped his engineer didn't just accidentally trigger some type of booby trap that might lead to a self-destruct system.

Justin ran back onto the bridge with Nanette in tow.

The viewscreen showed two ships approaching. While they were significantly smaller than the Callister, it was clear by their color scheme and configuration that they belonged to the same fleet as the Callister.

"Receiving message," said Annie.

Justin punched a button on a nearby console.

"Gamer Justin Case," said the voice. "You and your squad are hereby ordered to depart the U.S.S. Callister. Now."

"This ship belongs to me now," said Justin. "If you want it, come get it."

"This message is directed to the four gamers with aliases JustinCase21, WolfmanWally, SuperGymnastAnnie, and MaxPower4sure. All four of you are ordered to disembark from the USS Callister together with your AI troopers. I speak on the authority of the Intergalactic Council and Supreme Fleet Forces Command. Understand that if you disobey, your avatars will be destroyed and all four of you will be permanently banned, in real life, from ever rejoining the INFINITY MMORPG. You have 20 seconds to acknowledge and tell me you will comply."

"Christ," said Wolfman and Annie simultaneously.

Justin had heard rumors of the newly formed Supreme Fleet Forces Command. They were a small fleet of ships that roamed around the INFINITY game; controlled by employees of Callister, Inc. About a month ago, some parents had complained to Callister, even though there were supposedly various spaces inside the game that were for children only, some children experienced bullying during some of the game interactions. Callister's public relations unit announced that the company would create an internal team that would monitor anything they deemed to be bullying behavior, even in the adult virtual spaces since some adults had complained about harassment. The corporate employees tasked to that assignment found it a bit hard to judge what was bullying, since it was, after all, a battle-centric game. The monitors were usually hands off, but once in a while, they would pop up and "regulate" interactions just so players knew they existed. There would usually be merely mild warnings.

Justin believed that he was behaving correctly and that Daly's employees were simply finding a contrived reason to interfere and save the Callister. However, Justin wasn't going to challenge these monitors.

"This is probably a failsafe built in by Daly to protect himself and his ship. I knew it seemed a bit too easy," said Justin.

"Move out!" said Wolfman, giving the command to all of the A.I. soldiers.

"I suppose you've been rescued," said Justin to Nanette. He gave her a playful bow before leaving with the rest of his allies. "Be careful out there, Lieutenant Cole. It's an unpredictable world, with infinite possibilities and infinite dangers."

A young-looking East Asian man teleported onto the Callister's bridge about half a minute after Justin and his compatriots departed. He looked around and seemed a little surprised to only find Nanette standing there.

"Is Rob around?" asked the Asian male.

"No…" said Nanette with a little hesitation.

"Ah… he lent you the ship, huh?" asked the Asian.

Nanette nodded.

The Asian male walked up to Nanette and extended his hand to shake hers. She shook it. He smiled.

"You probably don't remember me," he said.

Now that he mentioned it, they guy did look a little familiar. Was he a friend of her ex-boyfriend Elliot? Oh no.

"I'm Calvin Lin," he said. "We met at your 'welcome aboard' meeting."

Nanette didn't really comprehend what he was saying.

"Welcome aboard meeting?" she asked meekly.

"Yea," he said. After a couple of seconds of silence, he added "Oh, I mean back at HQ. In real life."

"Oh…" said Nanette.

"Yea, I'm Callister's deputy general counsel in charge of patents. I met you and your 3 fellow new employees a few of days ago."

"I remember you now," said Nanette. It was just that she had met so many employees lately it was hard to keep track.

"You decided to jump in and taste the magic, eh?"

"Huh?"

"You know, play the game for yourself. Did Rob talk you into it?"

"Something like that."

"How did you wind up on his ship? You didn't want to command your own?"

"We were all brought onto his ship."

It appeared Calvin didn't completely know what she was talking about. He scrolled through his information tablet and read through what Nanette presumed was the ship's crew roster and personnel files.

"Wow," said Calvin. "I would've never thought you guys would even be friends with each other. Rob always seemed like such a loner. I suppose the magical world of MMORPGs can bring together very different people."

"I suppose so," said Nanette.

"I actually went to school with Rob. He was a nice guy but never even once invited me to join his Space Quests or whatever. You must've made a good impression."

"Doesn't seem like it. Me and the others were sent here as punishment. We only recently escaped his private beta version. Were you punished too? For something petty?"

It took a minute for Calvin to figure out what might be happening. He didn't know for sure, but something was weird about this whole situation.

"Nanette, where are you right now?" asked Calvin.

"On some weird spaceship?"

"The real you. In the real world. I'm sitting on my couch in my living room in my apartment in Forestvale. Where are you?"

"I'm home too," said Nanette.

"Interesting…" said Calvin.

Calvin tapped the communication device on his wristwatch.

"Roxy, teleport over to the Callister command deck."

A new character appeared next to the captain's chair. Nanette presumed she was Roxy. She was not dressed in a Space Fleet uniform nor a SWAT team soldier's tactical gear. She appeared to be dressed in some type of kimono. Nanette thought she recognized Roxy from one of her nephew's video games. A fighting game called Super Vipers or something like that.

"Computer, force exit Nanette Cole avatar," said Calvin. Even though Calvin wasn't a member of the company's anti-bullying task force, he was one of the company's four officers with "game administrator" status which gave him authority to "force exit" anyone from the INFINITY game.

"Unable to comply," came the game's response. "No such avatar."

"Make sure she doesn't touch anything," said Calvin.

Roxy nodded.

"Exit game," said Calvin. His avatar disappeared.

Nanette started touching the controls on her ship.

"Hey!" said Roxy as she swatted Nanette's hands off of the controls.

"Who are you!?" demanded Nanette. "And who was that guy Calvin?"

"I'll let him explain it when he's back. But, if you are what I think he thinks you are, you have my sympathy."

"What the hell are you talking about!?"

It took a long time, but Calvin eventually re-appeared.

"Guess where I was?" asked Calvin.

"Home," said Nanette.

"And, refresh my memory, where are you?" he asked.

"Here. In this stupid game," said Nanette in a huff.

Calvin explained that he had just spoken with the real world Nanette.

Flashback to three hours ago:

Calvin Lin exited the INFINITY game and made a cell phone call to real world Nanette Cole.

Cole, having just finished her secret mission to Robert Daly's apartment, stared at the screen of her smartphone. It took a few seconds before she tapped the phone to answer.

"Hello?" she asked meekly. She believed this could be the person who was blackmailing her after hacking into her PhotoCloud account.

"Am I speaking with Nanette Cole?" asked Calvin.

"Yes," replied Nanette. She was a little surprised that the voice on the other end wasn't being disguised like it was the first time. She presumed the blackmailer was calling to either arrange delivery of the items she stole from Daly's home or see some video proof that the objects were destroyed.

"Ms. Cole, my name is Calvin Lin. Do you recognize my name?"

Nanette thought about the name for a few seconds but couldn't place it. Perhaps because she had other more important things on her mind.

"I'm sorry, no. Were you the person who contacted me by instant message before?"

This confirmed to Calvin that the Nanette Cole avatar inside the INFINITY Online game was not controlled by the real Nanette Cole.

"I believe you have me mistaken for another person," said Calvin. "I am from Callister's legal department. We met briefly a few days back. I need to ask you: where have you been in the past hour?"

Nanette couldn't believe what was happening. Was she already discovered as having broken into Daly's apartment?

"That's a personal question and none of your business," said Nanette.

"I can understand your suspicion," said Calvin. "I am investigating a possible cybersecurity breach. It appears you may have been involved. I suspect your identity has been stolen, but I need your help to find the culprit. Your cooperation would be greatly appreciated. Have you been home in the past hour? Have you been online?"

Nanette wasn't sure what to think. Her blackmailer may have gotten her into a much more serious situation than she could imagine. In a semi-panic, she explained to Calvin that someone had hacked into her PhotoCloud pictures and blackmailed her to distract Daly with a pizza delivery and then steal objects from his mini-fridge. She wasn't sure exactly what it was all about but she felt coerced into the whole thing. She asked Calvin for help.

Calvin was sympathetic. She heard Nanette's voice on the phone as someone who was very close to uncontrollable sobs. Calvin told Nanette that he would call her back as soon as possible after investigating a bit further. He also told her to stay home and not respond to the blackmailers if they tried to reach her again. Although she was deeply concerned about her private pictures, she told Calvin she would comply.

Calvin placed his VR disc back onto his temple and soon re-appeared on the U.S.S. Callister's bridge in his purple Space Fleet uniform.

"So… You believe me?" asked Lieutenant Cole.

"I believe that's what you think happened and what your fellow crew members told you they think happened. There are some parts that make absolutely no scientific sense, but we should probably move forward and try to fix whatever we can fix," said Calvin.

"What part makes no scientific sense?" asked a defensive Nanette.

"For starters, even if Daly could create a virtual DNA clone of Callister staff, the clones would merely appear to physically match real world staff. He couldn't possibly clone your memories and personality too. At least, not from DNA from a cup or a lollipop. Most likely, he created your bodies from a digital scan of a picture or a video. That would've been easier than duplicating you from DNA. Your memories are tricky. I don't know how he could've duplicated that. You knew the real Nanette's cloud password. That memory cannot be duplicated from DNA."

Lieutenant Cole was still a little annoyed that she wasn't the "real Nanette." She felt real enough.

"But you believe the rest of it?"

"For now," said Calvin. "I should probably talk to Rob in the real world and maybe do an intervention or something. He is not stable. He needs help."

"Screw Daly!" screamed Nanette.

"Look, I can't have an unstable person like that out in the real world," said Calvin. "Plus, you must've missed the part where I mentioned your memories cannot be extracted from DNA. Which means real world Daly has your and the others' memories in a datafile somewhere. You stealing the lollipop is a pointless event. He'll recreate you guys through other means. For cryin' out loud, he could easily just swipe more DNA if that were truly the method. We need to stop his behavior."

"How do you know he won't be mad at you also and then just create a clone of you and stick you into this game?" asked Nanette.

"Don't worry, I will figure this out," said Calvin.

Nanette fumed for a short while but reluctantly agreed.

"What about my crew?" asked Nanette. "Can you bring them back?"

"I'm not quite sure," said Calvin. "If they were simply avatars for real people, the avatars would resurrect back at level one experience points. Your situation is unique. You had mentioned that the Callister crew members were basically immortal in Daly's modified game. However, once you guys escaped into the online version, that computer code was deleted. My best guess is that your crewmates have been permanently deleted."

Calvin whipped out his "omnicorder" to run a scan of the ship. Nanette mentioned that she thought perhaps Valdeck was still alive somewhere on the ship since he wasn't on the bridge when Justin and his league stormed in. Calvin couldn't find Valdeck anywhere. It was possible that Valdeck was killed by one of Justin's soldiers. However, Calvin was surprised to find a possible human life sign somewhere deep inside an engineering corridor. He ran a few more scans and then walked over to the teleporter controls which Dudani used to work.

Nanette was a tiny bit surprised that Calvin seemed so adept at operating the fictional controls. She was even more surprised a few seconds later when Lieutenant Walton materialized on the teleporter pad. Walton also appeared shocked. He placed his hands on his chest and pressed hard to make sure he was in one piece. Then, he smiled and almost laughed. When he saw Nanette, the two of them ran towards each other and gave each other a very strong hug.

Walton then saw Calvin standing by the teleporter controls wearing a Space Fleet uniform.

"Oh no," said Walton with slight concern. "Are we still in Daly's fantasy mod?"

"No," said Nanette, trying to reassure him. "Calvin is an avatar, not a clone like us."

Walton was relieved. He shook Calvin's hand.

"Thanks for bringing me back," said Walton.

"No sweat. Hey, from what I've heard, you deserve it," said Calvin. Walton had sacrificed his life in a painful death in order to reactivate the ship's thrusters to enable the Callister to escape into the online game universe.

"Where's the rest of the gang?" Walton asked Nanette.

Nanette gave Walton the sad news that the remainder of the bridge officers were killed by intruders from the online MMORPG universe. Walton did not look too surprised. In addition, he didn't look disappointed either. He recalled that at the very least, Elena had hoped that the original plan to steer into the wormhole would cause a deletion of all of Daly's modifications and perhaps "kill" the entire crew. They had decided it would be better to die and be free rather than remain Daly's terrified playthings. In a way, Walton was glad the others got their wish. Though, desires change and Walton had a feeling that once they escaped into the wider INFINITY universe, they would've wanted a chance to at least explore it a little bit.

"Okay, you three hang tight. I've got some stuff to take care of in the real world. It might be a while. It's Christmas out there and I've got personal business to attend to, on top of this Daly thing," said Calvin.

"You're going to leave us?" asked Nanette.

Calvin nodded. "You guys will be okay," said Calvin.

"What if those Latin League guys come back? Or some other gamers? I still don't know how to work these weapons!" said Nanette as she gestured at the console that Elena usually stood in front of.

"Here," said Calvin as he activated the forward viewscreen and a video started playing. It was a tutorial and a "welcome aboard" walkthrough for new gamers. There were four different "career" paths or specialties that a new player could explore: the blue uniforms encompassed two "intellectual" tracks which included science officers like Nanette and technicians like Dudani. Yellow encompassed the two "action" oriented tracks sometimes called "flight or fight" personnel such as Helmsman Packer and weapons officer Elena. New players had to start off in one of the four tracks and could potentially advance if they became minimally proficient in all four subjects and then took additional command training. Ship captains wore red uniforms.

"Wait a minute," said Nanette. "I thought everyone in this game starts out as the captain of their own ship. It's just that they start out as captain of a tiny ship and then work their way up into bigger ships. What is with this training for all these random lieutenant positions?"

"Well, yea, that's one option for you when you start the game, but the other option is for a team of players to jointly staff one ship. In that event, you can skip past the smaller ships and immediately staff a corvette or even a frigate together if you have a large enough team. Nothing as advanced as the Callister, of course, but a frigate is still pretty impressive. Otherwise, those who choose to go it alone start off with unarmed shuttles and freighters to fulfill missions to transport people or goods from one planet or another. They will probably spend quite some time before they earn the experience and the coin to upgrade to medium sized ships and then eventually to bigger ships. Teams of two start off a little better and they start with small escort ships that are lightly armored and protect transport convoys or they staff minesweepers which help keep interplanetary commerce traffic lanes open."

Calvin was about to continue, but he could see that both Nanette and Walton were beginning to zone out.

"You guys have the Callister," said Calvin. "Learn a little bit about the ship and I think you guys will be just fine."

Back in the real world, Calvin Lin tried to contact Robert Daly but had no luck. He scrambled to find Robert before the virtual Nanette or virtual Walton in the INFINITY online game made contact with anyone else from the real world. Seemingly unknown to virtual Nanette or virtual Walton, the DNA cloning device that Robert Daly possessed was highly illegal. If the authorities found out, Daly would be charged with an "E" felony. It is the lowest type of felony, but significant nonetheless. Although Calvin wasn't exactly close friends with Robert, he nevertheless thought Robert was a decent person deep down and could possibly be redeemed.

On the U.S.S. Callister, Nanette soon gained the knowledge of a typical science division lieutenant and Walton was more or less a proficient weapons division lieutenant. When Nanette tried to further her skills and pick up an engineering skillset, she found she had difficulty remembering anything. After trying for another hour, she reluctantly gave up.

"You need to upgrade your stats," said Roxy.

"What?" asked Nanette.

"Within the game, you and Walton are lieutenants, first year. As such, your stats ranges are limited. You are only allowed basic training in one specialty line, one basic personal firearm, a basic omnicorder, blah blah blah. If you go on an away mission, you get two AI security guys, tops."

"How do we upgrade?" asked Walton.

"Well, if you were gamers from the real world, you would go on various missions or quests or whatever inside the game and earn experience points or straight out equipment acquisitions. For the human fleets, it is usually two levels of lieutenant, one level at lieutenant commander, and then three different types of captains: corvette captain, frigate captain, battleship captain. The alien races have slightly different titles and some of the rogue human ships don't use ranks."

"What rank are you?" asked Nanette.

Roxy chuckled. "I am not any rank. I hate the INFINITY game. I hate Space Fleet. I hate my ridiculous life!"

"So… you're just a random Callister employee tasked to be one of these anti-bullying monitors but you hate this game?" asked Walton.

Roxy chuckled again. "I suppose you got at least one thing correct. I work at Callister. Or… at least I did a few years ago. Who knows what the real me does now. You see, I am a virtual clone, just like you. I bumped into the great Robert Daly on some random day and made the unforgivable mistake of saying how boring I thought the INFINITY space RPG was and that I much preferred my virtual fighting game Striking Vipers X. I always chose the character Roxette and my best bud always picked Lance. Before I knew it, my mind was copied and then dumped into some alien planet in the INFINITY universe. Daly, or, at least his avatar, took delight in explaining my situation to me. He said I would grow to love INFINITY. So far, so wrong."

Nanette and Walton were shocked.

"In all this time, you couldn't escape?" asked Nanette. She knew in her virtual heart that the answer would be no, since none of her former crewmembers had figured out how to escape from Daly.

"Nope," said Roxy. "I tried to explain to hundreds of people, online gamers that I encountered. Almost none of them understood what I was trying to say and those who did were never able to help. Calvin understood but I'm not sure he truly believed my story up until today when he met you guys. Calvin was nice enough to allow me sanctuary on his ship maybe about a year or so ago. It's hard to keep track of the time in this gamer bubble. Anyway, previously, I was trapped on some god-forsaken planet in almost non-stop death matches. Daly apparently made my character worth a few thousand credits, so there was no shortage of challengers. I died many horrible deaths."

"But now you are under Calvin's protection?"

"Kind of. The INFINITY space combat RPG allows up to three online gamers to serve together on the same ship. Most RPG gamers like to captain their own ship and then just unite with other ships in a fleet. Calvin was captain of his own ship and only had AI troopers, so he fit me in as one of his senior officers. Nobody attacks his ship since he is a Callister "Supreme Fleet" officer. Well, I suppose hardly anybody. It happens once in a blue moon."

"Cal, you asked to see me?" said real world Walton who just entered Callister HQ's conference room B. He was polite on the outside, but on the inside, he was thinking "this better be f-king important."

"I did," said Calvin. "Please, have a seat."

Walton took a seat but hoped this meeting wouldn't take too long. It was still Christmas day and he wanted to spend the rest of it with his son Tommy. At first, he wanted to blow off this emergency meeting Calvin called, but Calvin insisted and Calvin never does.

"Why wasn't Charlie also called in?" Walton asked. Charlie was Callister, Inc.'s head attorney and Calvin's direct superior. Walton also wondered why the company's newest coder, Nanette, was involved in the meeting.

"We have a situation with Robert. It's kind of an emergency. Charlie is over at the hospital with him right now."

"Is Bob okay?" asked Walton.

"An hour ago, paramedics were called to his apartment building. The paramedics found Robert wandering the halls seemingly disoriented and emotionally unstable. One of his neighbors had called 911 after seeing Robert in possible emotional distress. He may have had a nervous breakdown."

"Oh no," said a worried Walton. "We should maybe head over to the hospital. I hope the stress of the INFINITY update didn't get to him," said Walton.

"We can head over to the hospital soon, but we need to discuss something beforehand. I have a bit of information that might fill in some of the blanks as to what happened to Robert."

"Go on."

"This is a very long story. So, when the paramedics and cops found Robert, he was extremely agitated and didn't seem to know where he was. He believed he was on some type of rocketship and that his crew had just committed mutiny and he vowed revenge."

"That doesn't sound like Bob at all; he's usually so soft-spoken and shy. He does love his rocketships though. Space Force or whatever," said Walton.

"That is where this takes a dark turn," said Calvin. "It appears that a few years back, Robert sought an outlet to deal with whatever stressors he encountered back then. He designed a self-contained version of the INFINITY game and he played it with virtual versions of some of the staff here."

"Okay, well that sounds like a typical nerd thing to do. Half of the players in our online INFINITY game probably modeled their subordinate soldiers or sailors after people they knew," said Walton.

"Robert took it a few steps further. To make game characters more real, he programmed the virtual copies with memories and personalities that matched their real life counterparts. To the point where the virtual copies thought they were the originals."

"Well, that's a little creepy but I suppose, once again, that that is something a genius computer nerd would do," said Walton. "So what? Bob had a nervous breakdown and now he is imagining he is in his space cadet virtual fantasyland? What are the doctors saying?"

"The paramedics had to sedate Robert since he wouldn't go to the ambulance with them peacefully. The doctors will evaluate him probably later tonight."

"Hopefully, he'll be much better by then," said Walton.

"Going deeper into the background, Robert's virtual copies did rebel against him inside his virtual fantasy," said Calvin.

"Well, that's what you get for giving them personalities," said Walton. "He should've just stuck with the mindless automatons that the less genius players use."

"Robert wanted more realistic subordinates because he wanted to torture them," said Calvin. "He wouldn't have had as much fun with mindless zombies."

"A little bit psycho," said Nanette quietly. She was a bit shocked. She had previously thought very highly of Robert Daly.

"I want to let you both know, virtual clones of both of you were in the game," said Calvin. "His game."

"Really?" asked Walton. "I suppose that's right. I'm probably one of his best buds."

"Not so in the game," said Calvin. "In fact, you were probably his biggest target."

"What?!" asked a surprised Walton.

"He hated you."

"No freakin' way!"

Calvin slid an iPad over to Walton; it showed a crew roster of the USS Callister. Walton recognized the faces.

"The USS Callister did not exist inside the INFINITY online game until just yesterday. At that point, this crew roster also appeared in the game database. These other crew members that Robert made copies of were all tortured for one reason or another."

"Why am I involved?" asked Nanette.

Calvin told her he wasn't sure why, but that his understanding was that the virtual clones had all bullied Daly in some way in real life.

"That's a lie!" said Nanette. "I always treated him well." Though, as she thought more about it, she did get the sense that Lowry disrespected Daly as a co-founder of the company. Elena basically disrespected everyone and was a bit self-absorbed. Valdeck was a bit of an obnoxious "bro" or jock. Though, Walton seemed like a nice enough guy. And she herself was always super nice!

Although Walton wasn't too happy with this turn of events, he tried to maintain his composure and move forward.

"So fine, Bob's a douchebag. We'll have a talk with him when he regains his senses from whatever schizophrenic attack he just suffered," said Walton.

"So… we have a related emergency," said Calvin.

"Christ," said Walton.

"Robert might have a piece of illegal tech in his apartment. We need to get rid of it before the cops find it, if they decide to search his apartment for drugs or whatever."

"Bob was using tech to make drugs?" asked Walton.

"No, I'm just saying, that could be the reason for the cops to search, if they think he was on drugs. The illegal tech that might be in his home is illegal cloning technology,"

"That's his problem," said a defiant and annoyed Nanette.

Walton was a little but more mixed. Although he was annoyed with Daly, he didn't want to see Daly go to jail.

"Okay, fine," said Walton. "We can get the spare key to his apartment and clean up his mess."

"I'm not helping," said Nanette.

"That's fine," said Calvin. "But just remember, if the police look into his apartment, they will find your fingerprints there since you told me you broke into his apartment but didn't think to wear gloves while touching things inside. And if the police dig deep into phone records, not that I would tell them to, but if they do, they might see your phone number pop up as the person ordering pizza to Robert's apartment just yesterday. So, they might even suspect you possibly drugging Robert or something. Who knows? Maybe you might want to join me and James at the apartment just to cover your own butt."

"Ah!"" said an exasperated Nanette. "Fine. I'll join you guys so I can wipe the apartment surfaces of my fingerprints. Calvin, you are no better than those jerk blackmailers, whoever they were."

"Yea, about that," said Calvin. "We will discuss that further after we clean up Robert's apartment."

"You found the blackmailers?" asked Nanette. "I'm going to kill them!"

"I still have to double check something, but I will get back to you on that," said Calvin.

"How did you keep yourself sane?" asked virtual Nanette.

"Eh, I suppose you get used to it eventually," said Roxy. When Calvin brought Roxy onboard his ship, the U.S.S. Astoria, he had warned that her new existence might be terribly boring. Because the Astoria was associated with the Supreme Fleet Force, very few gamers dared to approach it for fear of being booted out of the game. That meant that whenever Calvin left the game to be in the real world, which was most of the time, Roxy didn't really have anyone to interact with.

"I thought some of the captains had artificial crewmembers to staff their ships," said virtual Walton.

"They do. However, the artificial crewmembers aren't truly intelligent or interactive at all. In fact, they almost never speak. They are simple programs. They will obey commands to lift heavy objects or escort the gamer as bodyguards while on a planetary mission, but they don't have any personalities. Some gamers have artificial crewmembers as helm officers or communications officer who pretend to help navigate the ship or decrypt incoming messages. But, in reality, they aren't doing anything. The ships run themselves."

Roxy's description of the artificial crewmembers gave her a flashback of when she first found herself on the Callister.

"Wait a minute, if the ships run themselves, why did Walton and I just go through training to learn the basic operating skills for the lieutenant positions?" asked Nanette.

Roxy laughed. "The engines and the weapons have master controls at the captain's chair. So basically, the gamer captain controls those. The artificial crewmembers at the helm station and the weapons station are just for decoration. Many of the ships of the INFINITY game have extremely small command centers that more closely resemble an aircraft cockpit with space for only one or two officers. Probably like a captain and a co-pilot on an airplane."

"Then why can't Walton or I operate this ship by ourselves?"

"I presume one day, you will be able to. It's just a matter of time before you guys earn enough experience points to make yourselves captains. You can each have your own ship and then be bored out of your minds like I was."

"Well, you're welcome to join the magnificent crew of the Callister if you want. At the very least, it might prove to be less boring," said Walton.

Roxy thought about for a few minutes. While he reserved his final decision for later, he was leaning towards taking Walton on his offer. Whenever Calvin left the Astoria for the real world, the most interactive "person" he had a chance to talk to was Calvin's toy called an Ashley 2.0, which was a super optimistic and peppy personal helper that supposedly had the personality of a pop star named Ashley O. Calvin was a fan of her recent song "On a roll" and also a previous song called "Nothing Breaks Like a Heart." Calvin was somehow able to replicate the toy in the virtual game. The toy was entertaining, but Nanette and Walton would be an infinite improvement.

When Calvin, Walton, and Nanette arrived in front of apartment 402, they could see they were too late. The doorway was taped off with "Police Do Not Cross."

"Uh-oh," said Nanette.

Calvin started dialing the numbers on his phone to reach his boss Charlie who was supposed to be at the hospital with Robert.

"What are we doing?" asked Walton.

"Calling Charlie and seeing what we should do."

"We could just go in there and search for that thing you were talking about."

Calvin pointed to the tape.

"It's just stupid tape. Do you see any cops here? It's meaningless," said Walton.

Calvin wanted to hold Walton back, but Walton had already opened the apartment door with his spare key and ducked under the police tape to go inside. Calvin looked at Nanette, who just shrugged and then followed Walton in.

After thirty minutes of searching, it was final, the police had confiscated Daly's illegal tech.

"Well, that was a bust," said Calvin as he walked out of the apartment with Walton and Nanette.

"At least I got to eliminate my fingerprints from the apartment," said a smiling Nanette.

Calvin smiled back.

"You probably made it too clean," said Calvin. "There's no Cheetos cheese dust on his desk like there was before."

Nanette giggled.

"To be serious," said Walton. "How much trouble do you think Bobby is really in?"

"It depends on how harsh the prosecutors want to go on it. There's always room to negotiate."

"Well, I'm heading back home and spending the rest of tonight with the kid," said Walton.

"Sounds good. Tell Tommy I said hello," said Calvin.

"Will do," said Walton. As he was about to part ways with Calvin, he made a shape of a gun with his fingers and then "pulled" the trigger while clicking his tongue.

"Oh, one last thing," said Calvin. "Can you and Nanette meet me early tomorrow morning in the conference room."

Both Walton and Nanette agreed.

After spending some quality time with his family members, Calvin reappeared on the bridge of the USS Callister. To his surprise, he found it empty.

"Computer, locate Lieutenants Cole and Walton," said Calvin.

"Lieutenants Cole and Walton are in the officers' lounge."

Calvin made his way to the officers' lounge and found the two virtual lieutenants finishing a meal. As another surprise, either Cole or Walton had replicated a small Christmas tree and placed it in the lounge.

"Is Roxy, around?" asked Calvin.

"She's wandering the ship," said Nanette. "I think she might want to transfer over to our ship. It'll be less boring for her."

Calvin agreed.

"Speaking of which, I wanted to get a sense of whether you guys would prefer to stay in the INFINITY online game or get pulled out into a more protected space. I can potentially quarantine you guys into a separate program. You wouldn't have to deal with aggressive online gamers or anything like that. On the other hand, there would probably be less to explore."

"I think we'll stay in the game," said Nanette. She looked over at Walton and he nodded.

"Okay," said Calvin. "I was also wondering whether you would be willing to join the cyberbullying control task force. I could use an additional ship out there. Maybe just fly around and show a presence. I'm sure exploring the digital universe will be fun, so I'll try not to interrupt you by sending you on too many missions."

"Actually, that sounds pretty good," said Walton. Nanette agreed. It might give them a little bit of a sense of purpose.

"Next thing," said Calvin. "I wanted to see if you'd be willing to change your names. It's just for purposes of keeping track of you versus Programmer Nanette and CEO Walton out in the real world."

Virtual Nanette and virtual Walton were a little saddened to be reminded that they weren't their "real" selves.

"What did you have in mind?" asked Nanette.

"Just a simple change," said Calvin. "Maybe shorten your name to Annette, or even just Anne."

Nanette was a little bit surprised that she didn't find the idea objectionable. In fact, she kind of liked the idea.

"And, how about Ames?" asked Calvin.

Virtual Walton didn't seem to be amenable. He thought about it for a minute and came back with a counter-proposal. Instead of the original name James Walton, virtual Walton wanted to invert the names and become Walter Ames. Calvin had no objection.

"Finally, with regard to your positions on the ship, which one of you would feel more comfortable being the official captain of this ship?"

Walter was technically the higher ranking lieutenant as he had been considered Robert Daly's second-in-command. However, once the Callister had escaped into the online universe, the rest of the crew had looked up to Nanette as their natural leader. Eventually, Walter decided to cede command of the ship to Annette, in respect for the fact that she was the one who devised the plan to defeat Daly.

"Okay, so, Lieutenant Commander Annette Cole is the commanding officer and Lieutenant Ames remains in his previous role as the ship's second-in-command," said Calvin.

Both of them nodded and smiled.

"I'll also add Roxy on the ship's manifest. I'll make her a marine sergeant or something."

Calvin fiddled with his omnicorder and soon both Annette and Walter felt an electric zap. They soon realized that Calvin had uploaded a few new sections of the player manuals into their virtual memory banks. Calvin decided to give both of them a little bit of helm officer training. Commander Cole gained advanced training in stellar cartography navigations and also preliminary teleporter technician training to go along with her original skillset as a science officer. Calvin supplemented Lieutenant Ames' complete weapons officer training with shuttlecraft piloting skills.

Annette walked up to Calvin and punched him in the arm.

"If you could just upload info like that into our memorybanks, why won't you just give me the entire abilities range for all the officer classes? Why did you have me waste time with the tutorials? And make me an admiral while you are at it!"

"Where would the fun be in that?" said Calvin. "I just gave you and James enough skills so you can run the ship together by yourselves. You'll gain further skills as you progress through the game, like every other gamer." There were substantial skills yet to "unlock," mostly in engineering.

"Just remember, if we die on a mission because of a missing skill, it's totally your fault!"

"I am comfortable with that," said a smiling Calvin.

Ames was toggling through the weapons console controls and he discovered that even though he had "complete" weapons officer training, he could not access the ship's quantum thunderbolt launchers.

"Calvin, it looks like I can only access the level one railguns but nothing beyond that," Lieutenant Ames.

Calvin tapped his omnicorder and skimmed the information.

"The Callister hasn't yet been equipped with it," said Calvin. "Looks like you'll need a bit more coin to buy it. Or… if either you or Annette gain high level engineering skills, you can probably invent it."

"But back in Daly's mod, he used to order Elena to fire the bolts all the time and it worked," said a confused Ames.

"My best guess is that some of the upgrades Daly put on the ship were striped when you guys crossed from his mod to the online game universe. You might have to re-earn some of the upgraded systems. Be thankful you still have the food replicators and the teleporters. Those are the most recent technological advances in the game."

One day after Christmas, Boxing Day, as the Brits called it, Robert Daly finally came to his senses and realized that he wasn't the captain of the starship USS Callister. He was the Chief Technology Officer of the internet gaming company Callister, a company he helped build. Unfortunately, he also soon realized that he was in a pristine holding cell with padded walls. He was still obsessed with his game and furious that his crew mutinied against him.

He screamed for attention. When a guard came, he was notified that he was currently in the temporary mental health wing of Clearview Hospital. His doctor and his lawyer had been notified that he was conscious and lucid. They would arrive as soon as they could.

"Is this absolutely necessary?" asked Walton.

"I think it's important," said Calvin.

During his enter time as CEO of Callister, Inc., James Walton had avoided spending any time in the virtual gamespace of INFINITY. It wasn't necessarily that he thought it was only for nerds. Maybe he thought that, but it was more that virtual video games just weren't his thing. He knew it was ironic that his fortune derived from something he would never buy.

"Are you both ready?" asked Calvin. He handed VR discs to both Walton and Nanette as they sat in Callister's conference room. All three of them put a disc on their temple and prepared to be whisked away into a fantasy world.

"I'm good," said Nanette as she relaxed in her chair.

"Me too," said Walton.

Calvin pressed tapped a few keys on his keyboard.

"Computer, execute drop."

Ship's Captain Annette Cole and First Officer Walter Ames watched as their real life counterparts materialized through a teleportation beam right onto the bridge of the USS Callister.

As the materialization process completed, the captain walked up to her visitors and greeted them.

"CEO James Walton and coder Nanette Cole, welcome aboard," said Annette. She smiled and was genuinely pleased to meet them. "I am Lieutenant Commander Annette Cole, the captain of this ship. With me is Lieutenant Walter Ames, my second in command. As you can see, we are your clones."

CEO James Walton shook hands with the two virtual copies, who were wearing space cadet uniforms from the show that he recalled his friend Bobby loved so much. Even though Annette was now the ship's captain, she wore the blue science officer SpaceFleet uniform that she was initially given when she first awoke on the Callister. On the other hand, Ames proudly wore a yellow uniform instead of the blue one he used to have. He felt the new yellow uniform represented a new beginning and that he left behind his old life as Daly's tormented plaything.

Walton looked around the room and was amazed at how real it appeared. Everything was also brighter than he imagined. Clean too.

"Commissioner Lin," said Annette. "Roxy is waiting for you onboard your ship."

"Really? I thought she wanted a permanent transfer here?" asked Calvin.

"She wanted to give me and Walt a few moments on the ship to ourselves with our counterparts."

"Commissioner?" asked CEO Walton.

"It's silly," said Calvin. "I'll fill you in later." Calvin played with the controls on the teleporter and implemented a three second delay. He then stepped onto the teleportation pad and was soon taken to his ship, the USS Astoria, which had been floating in formation right next to the Callister.

"Ms. Cole, please come with me into the captain's office," said Annette. The two ladies stepped off the bridge into a side office that adjoined the command deck.

"Sir," said Lt. Ames. "Please take a walk with me to the engine room. There's something I want to show you."

CEO Walton walked with his virtual twin towards an elevator which took them both to a different part of the ship.

In the captain's office, Annette had a seat and asked her real world counterpart to do the same.

"Nannette, I wanted to apologize to you for the ordeal you have been through in the past few days," said Commander Cole.

"Probably nothing compared to what you went through," said Nanette. Although she didn't know the whole story, she knew her virtual clone had been tortured by Daly.

"Commissioner Lin didn't explain the story of how the crew and I escaped from Daly's modified game, did he?" asked Commander Cole.

"He may have mentioned something about escaping into the online world as it was performing the Christmas updated."

Commander Cole felt very guilty.

"I am a little ashamed to say that I am responsible for you being blackmailed with the pictures of you in PhotoCloud," said Commander Cole.

"What?" said Nanette, first confused but soon furious. "How could you do that?!"

"It our only why to reach someone in the real world to help us distract Daly," said Commander Cole. "I know that doesn't excuse it, but we were desperate. You can't understand the hell we were trapped in. But I also feel responsible for anything that happened to you. Calvin mentioned that if things had turned out slightly different, you might've been charged with murder. It was certainly not my intention to accidentally kill Daly, even if he deserved it."

"You let the other crewmembers see my pictures!"

"They were my pictures too! And once again, it was out of desperation. I am sooooo sorry for what happened. You have to believe me."

Nanette Cole was furious and stormed out of the captain's office.

Down near the engine room, Lieutenant Ames was curious as to how his son was doing. Well, he considered the boy his son.

"Tommy is doing well," said CEO Walton. "He's one hell of a softball player."

"Really?" asked a surprised Ames. "He never liked baseball." Ames smiled.

"Yea, yea. It's a new thing with him. Who knows how long it will last, but for now, he's having a lot of fun."

Lieutenant Ames stopped in his tracks and seemed to be deep in thought. CEO Walton presumed it was about Tommy, but Ames was actually thinking about the time he "died."

"A few days ago," said Lieutenant Ames. "I died. Right here."

Walton had heard that his virtual clone had seemingly sacrificed himself in order to save the other clones. He didn't know exactly what to think. On the one hand, he thought of himself as a great person. But on the other hand, he never thought of himself as a hero.

"What I want to tell you is: a certain part of me felt guilty about taking Bobby for granted. He was a genius who basically built Callister from the ground up. Sure, we helped in administrative and marketing ways, but it was really Bobby that created the company. In the end, I felt horrible that Bobby felt so underappreciated and bullied, even by me," said Ames.

"I must admit, I was surprised to learn that he hated me so much. I had always thought we were friends," said CEO Walton.

"I think maybe we were. And that was probably what hurt Bobby the most, that a friend treated him so poorly."

CEO Walton nodded softly.

"I just hope that when you get back into the real world, you can tell Bobby that I was sorry for all this. And I also hope that you and he can become friends again. I'd like to think he wasn't a bad person. Just a person who made a bad choice," said Lieutenant Ames.

"I'm definitely surprised you have such a forgiving attitude. I recall reading that considered him an all-powerful genius a-hole god."

"It was a very surreal experience being trapped in Daly's game. It's still a surreal experience now in this online game. Gives you a lot of time to think."

CEO Walton understood.

After a several seconds of silence, Lieutenant Ames tried to switch the subject and lighten the mood.

"So, what else is going on in the real world nowadays? I heard Taco Bell is experimenting with some quesadilla burrito hybrid called a quesarito?"

CEO Walton chuckled.

"Well, you know what they say," said Walton. "Besides the military, America is only truly number one at creating quirky foods."

"That's a lie!" said Lieutenant Ames. "America will always be number one in the realness of housewives."

CEO Walton chuckled again. He thought back to when one of his colleagues suggested that a new tv show spinoff be called "The Real Housewives of Trader Joe's."

Lieutenant Ames was equally amused and he was glad to be speaking with someone who got his jokes. As charming as he thought he was, not everyone got his sense of humor. It had also been such a long time since he felt laid back and at ease.

Robert Daly walked out Clearview hospital with two sheriff's deputies escorting him. The emergency judge had reviewed the psychiatrist's evaluation and deemed Daly sane for the time being and not a danger to himself or others. He had been released but ordered confined to his home until his next court appearance date. He wore an ankle monitor which annoyed him, but was infinitely better than having to stay in county jail.

Daly's attorney was given a head's up by the junior attorney from the prosecutor general's office: there was some chance Daly would be charged in the next few days. However, it appeared that Daly's friends Charlie Valenzuela and Calvin Lin had some connection to the prosecutor general's office. There might be a plea bargain in the offering, where Daly would spend six months in house arrest and five years on probation. Daly couldn't wait to get back home. His first order of business: finding his virtual ship and retaking it from the mutineers. His second order of business, well, he would decide that once he got his hands on the mutineers.

Calvin and Roxy made their way to the teleportation room on the Astoria.

"Sorry to leave you all alone," said Roxy. Roxy was even going to take the Ashley 2.0 toy with her. Calvin would be left with two artificial crewmen and could replicate more if he really wanted. Though, there was no real need. Also, Calvin spent most of his life in the real world. He spent maybe one or two hours a week in the virtual world.

"Not a problem, ma'am," said Calvin. Calvin had gotten used to referring to Roxy as a female even though Calvin knew that in real life, Roxy had been controlled by a male. It was a complicated thing. A little weird.

"It has been a pleasure serving you as captain," said Roxy. She gave him a playful salute.

Once they both stood on the teleporter pad, Calvin gave a quick nod to his artificial crewman who stood by the teleporter controls.

When Calvin re-materialized on the Callister bridge, he found four relatively happy people.

Nanette Cole had eventually told her virtual counterpart that she was forgiven. Nanette was still at least a little bit incensed, but she understood why the science officer did what she did. The two Walts got along fairly well. CEO Walton even promised to visit INFINITY maybe once or twice a year to check in on the Callister.

"Okay, well, I leave everything in your capable hands," said Calvin to Commander Cole.

"Thank you for everything," said Commander Cole. The two of them shook hands. A second later, Commander Cole decided to give Calvin a quick hug. She wasn't entirely sure it was appropriate, but she felt it was called for. Calvin appreciated the gesture and hugged her back.

"Computer, lock on to Astoria team," said Calvin.

"Avatars acquired," responded the computer.

"Exit game."

Calvin Lin, CEO James Walton, and programmer Nanette Cole's three avatars disappeared from the Callister.

"Commodore on the bridge," said an artificial yeoman in a yellow SpaceFleet uniform.

Commodore Robert Daly strolled onto the command deck of his newest flagship, the battlecruiser Devil Ray, which was actually a giant living space alien with cybernetic implants throughout its body. It was shaped roughly like a giant stingray and nicknamed the "Daly Beast." This was one of the newest aspects of the INFINITY game which was incorporated with the recent Christmastime update. It was still experimental, but Daly and his lead programmers thought it would be an interesting addition. The space creatures were to be treated more like partners than as workhorses. It did raise a question of whether the giant creatures could theoretically rebel against the captains. It would probably take some tweaking as time went on.

Helping Daly operate the Devil Ray were two loyal officers already in the INFINITY online game when the Callister first entered the game. They were virtual clones of real life individuals who met Daly at a science fiction convention. The two had expressed how they thought they would prefer life inside Space Fleet over real life. Daly inserted these two clones just as an experiment to see if anyone really could be satisfied to live in a virtual world. It appeared the answer was yes.

"We've found the Callister," said one of the virtual clones. Her name in real life was Jenny, but she was now a cyborg in the game. She was still a beautiful blonde but now had a few small electronic devices embedded on her hand and her neck. She was now called Seven Eleven.

"Thanks, Seven," said Daly as she handed him an iPad.

"She's currently cruising in formation with two smaller quasi-sister ships from the anti-bullying fleet," said Logan, Daly's other virtual clone officer. "Looks like they are... the USS Astora, commanded by Commissioner Calvin Lin, a stealth scout, and the HMS Kingston, a minesweeper commanded by a Lieutenant Sebastian. We can easily crush them both."

Logan was beaming with confidence, but he could see Daly in quiet thought. Neither Lin nor Sebastian ever caused him problems.

"No," said Daly in a low voice after a few seconds of contemplation. "We'll wait for the Astoria and the Kingston to peel off. I only want the Callister." Daly was a patient man.

TO BE CONTINUED?

USS Callister Part II was brought to you by:

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Author's second note: this story was originally written as a response to the Digital Spy article titled "The ending to Black Mirror's USS Callister is much darker than you think," which suggested that the virtual crew of the USS Callister might have a rough time in the online game universe full of hyper aggressive gamers and also that if Daly dies, Nanette might be charged with his murder since she was not wearing gloves when she broke into his apartment and probably left fingerprints. I am almost certain there are logic issues in the story, but I did my best!