Chapter 3 - Sleep is for the weak (1/2)

"I won? Seriously?"

Gray couldn't believe it, so Spoon dragged him over to the screen and showed him. There was Gray's name, 'Gray Wilhelm' in the shiny diamond shaped area on the screen.

Spoon started to smack Gray's arm excitedly, happy for Gray and in disbelief that he himself had not won.

"Looks like I CAN play this game after all! Hey, with your sweet setup Spoon we can even play together!"

Spoon looked down dejectedly and said "The shweet shetup wash going to be that, I can barely afford to live alone, I will jusht borrow my shishtersh when she getsh it."

Gray looked confused at Spoon, wondering how he could be so careless and bank on winning a competition open to everyone.

Also, Spoon had a sister? Gray was never informed of this, and it is every man's right to be informed when a friend of his has a sister, in order to avoid her obviously... maybe... Looking at Spoon, Gray thought it might be better to avoid her. He didn't believe in judging a book by its cover, but sometimes the cover was nice to look at!

Gray thought it would be best to return home quickly as he suddenly felt like he would become the center of attention if he stayed around in a gaming store.

Once he got home, absolutely nothing happened, he wasn't swamped with reporters or bombarded with calls and messages. Maybe it wasn't him? Maybe someone had the same name as him?

As these thoughts started to enter his mind his armlet suddenly chirped and the HUD said "Jono Randel" and he answered with a touch to his glasses.

"Hey Jo_"

"THAT'S B******T!!! COMPLETE B******T!!!" Jono screamed cutting off Gray as Gray felt his left ear start to go deaf.

"Chill out! What's b******t?"

"You! I submitted over 4 million entries using a few AIs and you, who didn't even know of the game until yesterday, steal it from me!" Jono said with indignation.

"Tell you what, you can come over and watch me play…"

"Go to Hell!"

Jono hung up after that, he is pretty sure Jono just chucked his armlet instead of actually hanging up, but back in his mind Gray tells himself Jono was just congratulating him.

__________

Online, the forums exploded with people outraged claiming that the contest was rigged. Several people even started having a competition among themselves to brag about how many times they submitted entries with AIs. It's like how college guys would each brag about having a bigger "cod piece" than the other guy, they would talk a lot of crap, but never actually whip it out to prove it true.

At the heat of it, a more level-headed person finally posted a thread that was quickly elevated and stickied to the top of the forum. The post was a screenshot of the rules of the contest with the part highlighted that said "Applicants must submit their own entries, any use of AI assistance will disqualify all of an applicant's entries." The thread was locked after the 53,040th user posted the slapping forehead emoji.

__________

After Jono called, Gray received several other calls from other "friends" that had known him through school or work. A few girls even called him which got him extremely excited, fortunately his Basic Social AI started playing an old song called "Gold Digger" in his other ear each time a female called.

When Gray's mother was finally able to get through to him, she congratulated him warmly.

"Gray! I'm so happy for you!"

"Thanks Mom! I was extremely surprised myself!"

"Just don't forget to get some sleep instead of playing all of the time, I know you tend to do that sometimes!"

"Mom, that's the beauty of the latest VR technology, I am asleep while I play!"