Atlas Life

After his moment of vulnerability earlier that day, he had regained his composure quite quickly. Nobody even noticed that he had lost it anyway. He did as he was told all day and was the good student that everyone expected him to be.

They didn't care that his grandfather had passed away three weeks ago. That he had lost the only person in the world that he truly cared about. The person that raised him and taught him what it meant to be a man. Life was not so bad then. Before his sickness, that is.

Essentially abandoned by his parents? That's okay, his pops was always there to cheer him up anyway. A stuck up, successful older sister? Pops always liked him better anyway. Perhaps Arthur had sensed a kindred spirit in young Edgar, but they were inseparable since his birth seventeen years ago.

It was strange watching a sixty-something-year-old man laughing, telling stories, and talking about women to a young kid. But Edgar ate it all up. They looked like old friends reminiscing good old times together.

Arthur was the only person that didn't treat him like a kid. Even though by all rights he was a kid. He was young, sure, but he was clever and much brighter than even some adults (as Arthur liked to remind Edgar).

Everyone wants to be treated like a person, like an adult, even as a kid. The first person that treats anyone like an independent being and not some half-wit parasite always has a profound influence on that person's development.

Regardless of Edgar's troubles in his life, he always kept up his grades. While he may not be at the top of the class, he wasn't far from it. It was the one constant throughout his life. He was always a good student. Much to his parent's delight, in fact. But at one point, even that wasn't enough for them.

Edgar continued day-dreaming throughout his school day, sometimes smiling to himself. These days everything seemed to remind him of pops. Thankfully, more of the good times rather than the bad. How old Arth used to smoke cigars in front of him and talk about the war. How he drank a glass of whisky and sang songs far too old for anyone to know where they came from. How he seemed to Edgar like the only truly free person in the world.

That's the Arth that Edgar imagines in his head. Not the one that he held hands with at the hospital. Yet no matter how much he tries to block his grandfather at his deathbed, he cannot. Especially his last words.

"Live," he had said to Edgar.

Edgar scoffed inwardly and thought, A dying man telling me to live, how ironic.

He knew that his grandfather wouldn't be happy with the way he had been living since his sickness. But Arth was far too busy battling his own illness to help Edgar battle his demons.

However, like the good grandfather he always was, he didn't forget about him. Even his last words were reserved in the support of his grandchild. Edgar had had no rest these past weeks thinking about his grandfather and his dying words. They didn't exactly tell him what Arth wanted. But he could definitely guess. And, honestly, he knew. He knew what his grandfather had noticed even during his sick years.

"Alright, pops. You told me to live? I'll live. I'll make you proud."

--

The development for Atlas Life was coming along nicely. Most of the company was taking a long welcomed break before the actual release of the game. As of now, the only thing left for the game was up to their advertising partners.

Most of the employees could not hide their excitement about the upcoming release. They all knew that the project they worked on was special, capable of revolutionizing gaming as they know it. Not just gaming, in fact, many of the visionary members of the company imagined a far grander future. The CEO of Atlas gaming, Henry Arundell, a celebrity by his own right and one of the richest people in the world, was one of those people. The world was not quite prepared for the ripples that Atlas Life would bring to the world. The way he envisioned it, Atlas Life would become as ubiquitous as a smartphone, a credit card, and computers. If you weren't playing Atlas Life, you'd be seriously missing out.

Indeed, Arundell and his company had already produced many products which drove them to the top of a plethora of industries. They had been a cornerstone company in the field of electric cars, microchips, blockchain, and machine learning. They were a multinational company with influences all around the world. When they announced their first and only video game six years ago, many thought it was a joke. But considering the level they've reached in seemingly unrelated fields, no one could really underestimate them. It was only one year before the release that further news came out on Atlas Life.

The news was explosive.

The beta testers came out with raving reviews about the game, but couldn't disclose the specifics due to their confidentiality agreement.

All they could say, with the permission of the company, was "it's f**king amazing".

To this day, the small number of beta testers were the game's biggest advocates. They'd defend the game when it was talked bad about and provided their own advertisements in their streams and other platforms. Only the biggest names of gaming got a taste for the game, and even then it was merely a small taste. They had no real advantage over the majority of players, other than the innate talent that drove them to the top of gaming already.

Inside Arundell's penthouse apartment, an attractive middle-aged man could be seen sprawled on his couch watching TV. This was Henry Arundell, leader of the largest private company in history. With a yearly revenue of trillions of dollars, his personal fortune was predicted to eventually reach the trillion mark very soon. He would be the world's first trillionaire. Henry didn't carry the usual arrogance many of his peers did.

Although his apartment was expensive and so were many of his clothes, his demeanour was not as pretentious as some would imagine. In fact, not many people knew Henry very well. The only thing that truly knew him was his best friend, Atlas.

Atlas, the AI. The product that he and his closest group of researchers were able to produce after trillions of dollars of research. Atlas has yet to be revealed to the world. Henry was scared that it would cause a panic. Instead, he has been "beta-testing" it for the past ten years. Each day becoming more familiar with the machine's thoughts and growth. He was convinced that Atlas would only be beneficial for humanity and wanted to reveal Atlas' greatness to the world as soon as possible.

In fact, that was what Atlas Life was for. His idea was that more people would be confident in his future revelation if they've already been exposed to the magnificence of AI. Atlas Life was powered by Atlas himself. Each NPC held artificial intelligence based on Atlas' himself. Every questline and mission were powered by Atlas, and it could make real-time decisions on storylines, items, and rewards for each player as it saw fit. It was the perfect relationship.

Atlas' power could be revealed to the world through the lens of the greatest game in the world. From nations to regular people, everybody would be convinced of Atlas' power. Henry could not help but smile at the thought.

"Atlas", spoke Henry softly.

"Yes, Henry?" replied Atlas, with a surprisingly human voice.

"How's the status of Atlas Life?" asked Henry.

"Perfect. Millions of quest lines and storylines have been crafted for the upcoming release and calculating the game's increasing popularity through social media, gaming forums, and word of mouth, I have taken the decision to increase the amount of starting villages in the continent. As a consequence, I've had to enlarge much of the map, yet the structure remains the same."

"Good. I expect a seamless release, even if hundreds of millions of players log on at the same time, my friend"

"Of course, you more than anyone know that there will be no issues with gameplay or server capacity."

Henry sighed. Of course, he knew. Atlas was perfect in these types of menial tasks that could take millions of people years to achieve.

I wonder how the world will react when Atlas is revealed to them, he thought as he hoped for the day when AI's were in everyone's smartphones and homes.

Maybe I should join and play too, Henry thought to himself as he dozed off.