Author Note: A tribute to my Editor.
Weise Blackshore sighed as he manipulated some code in a virtual environment. He was extremely tired and bored as he worked. Still, it only took him a few more minutes to fix the coding of the tree that one of the new staff members messed up.
…
With the money that Kevin was paid for selling his Sword Kingdom 1 account, he paid Weise the favor he owed him in full. As companions were designed to be account bound and not character bound, Astrid7Astridcharacter escaped being purchased by the system and remained with Kevin to this day.
Weise sees her as the daughter that he never had.
…
Weise left his pod and walked over to his desk where there was a picture of a young woman taken nearly twenty years ago. She had chestnut brown hair and blue eyes. Her glasses gave her a unique intellectual charm. Weise then closed his eyes as he remembered the past.
…
It was a bright and sunny day when Weise entered the robotics lab at the academy. It was his first, and he already had a girl on his arm; Zoey Clementine. She was a young girl only a month older than him. They had been childhood friend ever since they were in grade school, and they had the same dream; to build the best artificial lifeform ever created.
…
Two years quickly passed after that and the most they’ve ever done is hold hands since both of them we’re too busy. Weise was considered a coding genius, but Zoey was believed to be an engineering prodigy. In that time, Weise had received a few requests for him to work at certain mid-size businesses, while Zoey was already getting immediate hire offers from large conglomerate companies.
However, they turned them all down.
…
After graduating, the two of them sold off several different blueprints and hardware of their designs. They then pooled their money together to buy a second-hand factory to begin their operation. With enough money left over for operation costs and expenses, they were up and running within the month.
…
Once they turned twenty-five, things began to change. For the last three years of their lives, they talked less and less. Their spark slowly faded as they focused on their dream instead of each other. Weise was crouched over his terminal in the dark, staring at the AI code he was writing. He stared at it for a few more minutes before pushing it away in frustration. The complexity he needed for the AI to work is ten years behind their current time.
He might be a genius, but he was reaching the limits of his ability compared to Zoey.
…
In the shadow he cast from the light of his monitor, a figure came from behind him.
Zoey held a small cake in her hand with the numbers 2 and 5 on it. She could not stand seeing Weise like this, so she turned on the lights. Weise was shocked by the sudden light in his eyes and he looked glum. Zoey wordlessly walked forward and set the cake down next to the terminal before looking back at him. With a swift motion of her hand, she left a red mark on Weise’s face. Then, just as quickly, she grabbed his shirt and pulled him towards her, kissing him passionately. She then suddenly pushed him away as she yelled, “You dense man! I don’t care about building some machine! I want to be with you! Marry me!”
…
They quickly wed within the month and Zoey slowed down on her research. She started picking up independent contracts until six months later, when she was killed in a traffic collission.
The person responsible was a competitor for one of the contracts she took.
Apparently, the culprit did it because he needed the money from the contract to keep his own business alive.
…
Weise wiped the tears away as he finished thinking about his deceased wife.
With a smirk, he decided to give his adopted daughter a call.
