It was subtle at first, the way they were eyeing me, with just a few mics unmuting, a few screens blinking as people leaned closer, the way a classroom does right after the teacher drifted away from his or her curriculum and started telling life stories.

They didn't dismiss me, strangely, have I just been victimizing myself all this time?

"I'll start testing." Someone said, which kickstarted more chatters.

"Check the relics still floating in untouched inventories, anything unsold for their unique data."

"Do items have unique data?"

"Do items ha- Of course they do, Barry! You worked on it last May! Didn't I tell you to run tests?"

"Ah yeah I remember."

"I'll be on that."

A few people screenshared as they work on different things at the same time, on the projector we were looking at the guy who would take on the task of checking inventories.

Those said inventories popped up one after another on the projector, he was mainly checking out newbie accounts, low-level players, and confused first-timers who was probably caught in the crossfire and got given free items to sell without even knowing its worth.

It felt wrong to peek into people's inventories like this, but at the same time, I couldn't look away.

Rows and rows of the same sea relic, oxidized 'til green glowed on the interface. Stacks of them, x99 piles piles got my widening my eyes… Just how much did Ann duped in such a short time?

"Okay…" One of the devs muttered, probably to himself with the mics still on by accident, "Cross-referencing unique item seeds… timestamps… recipients… traffic…"

Damn these buzzwords.

My ears echoed some more clicking, even by Eirlys herself across the table. When when the first conclusion dropped.

"Guys, peep this," an Indian-esque accent came through, "Every single relic came from the same source."

I diverted my eyes from the screen and took a sip of coffee.

Of course they did, they'll eventually find out… I'm just surprised that a leading tech company can be this inefficient, though.

Every duping bug would need the starter, as is every pile of rabbit came from two. If she was the Ann I know, she'll totally have wiped off all her fingerprints, i.e: Made sure the guy that had the egg when the duping happened didn't dupe near Bastet, and there was no Ann Murphray around, hell, she might not even be online.

The devs began tracing its path backward through the logs. A digital breadcrumb trail. Every trade, every handoff, every sale, every moment it swapped between players.

While they were searching for their arrest warrant, my mind started spiraling into thoughts, just mental exercises, trying to remember what item duping method Ann could've used… Since we technically have two.

She'd probably use the more reliable one.

Item duping, one of those terms that sounds like technical jargon, like "aerial" "package" "buffer" "data", but honestly, if you just try it out, you'll understand how it behaves quite fast compared to reading theory.

Duping happens when the server and client fall out of sync, just like a lot of the exploits I got on hand that fucks with the information sent between the server computer and clients' VR pods.

Like, if the client thinks it still has the item, and the server thinks it successfully transferred it to another, both sides end up holding a copy. And because Assimov didn't specify that computers must support a healthy, fair and square market; they don't question it.

Games normally prevent this with server-side authority. The server has the final say, the client is like a child with safety scissors to play pretend and run around without knives up their noseholes. You can look like you have 1551316314134 items in your inventory, but you can't do anything if they realize you're a filthy little fraud.

UNLESS!

If the server forgets to confirm something… Or if the network hiccups… Or if data gets saved twice… Or if some weird interaction interrupts the process at the exact wrong moment…

Then you could duplicate items during a trade, gold, anything you wanted.

But I wasn't going to overthink it, no way in hell. If I suddenly got startled and confessed while deep in my train of thoughts, I'll probably strapped up in some kind of weird sex dungeon with a few whips marks worse than what Anshur gave me.

I kept my mouth shut so tight my jaw ached.

"While we search for the source," one dev said, "we should also figure out how the dupe works."

Agreement murmured through a dozen little squares on the projector.

But then, and then, of course, of-fucking-course, someone just have to speak up.

"Ms. Sonder? I think your assistant can help us, she identified the problem, right?"

My soul left my body.

"Oh yeah!" Someone else spoke.

Half the call was silent, while the other half of it turned to look at the camera, nodding or saying "uh huh" "what about her".

I choked on my own breath, literally coughed. I tugged on my dress with one hand and slapped my chest with the other, which made it worse since I now feel an immesurable amount of aching pain that might send me into a self-induced coma.

But I held on, because if I fell down now, the doctors and nurses might look under my dress and see my shorts… That's one of my biggest fear, being caught dead wearing stuff that I was too lazy to wash regularly and that will be my obitruary… And I still have that fear, mind you! It's just less prevelant now that I got maid(s) cleaning after me.

Rich people's life must be so cool…

I digress, time to address the elephant in the room.

"I… uh? I, what- me? You're talking to, ahem, me?" My voice cracked like a teenager's. "I don't… I mean like- I only… Like, uh-"

I could feel heat blooming under my cheeks, spreading like someone had poured hot water on my face. Why the fuck was I blushing? No one asked anything embarrassing! They just asked if I have any suggestion on tracking down the guy who started the dupe (hey Ann) and asked if I may know how the dupe works!

My thigh bounced uncontrollably, my hands were shaking, I couldn't even look at the screen.

Stage fright stage fright stage fright stage fright stage fright FUCKING stage fright oh god.

I didn't seem to have this problem during the New Destiny court, neither was whenever I decided to post something racist and random on the forum.

Just as I almost shred a tear, I heard a warm voice right next to me as a hand came patting on my back.

"My assistant needs a minute."

Eirlys said, perhaps sensing I was about to either faint or scream, she rolled her wheeled chair over to be beside me and gave me a few taps, before casually getting back to the laptop and work.

Assistant… Right, that was me, yeah, I'm the boss… Apparently at least.

But I shook my head gently, swallowing my panic with something bitter.

"No… no, um it's fine." I tried to smile but it felt like I was just being smug or stretching my muscles weirdly, "I just… I don't know, um, I just got nervous all of a sudden! I don't know anything about how to dupe in Darkmoon Adventure VR. I just heard of duping before. In other games, mostly sandboxes."

Several devs nodded, disappointed but not suspicious. One even muttered something along the lines of, "Yeah, makes sense, duping is a common problem."

I breathed, a long, shaky, painful breath that made my ribs tighten. I survived. Barely.

The conversation shifted again, devs returning to their screens, I could finally get back to my quiet state, yet… Something felt wrong, very wrong.

So I slowly looked up, and saw that Eirlys was staring at me.

Her eyes sharp, focused on me, searching for something. Perhaps she was already on to my lies.

But she got back to the laptop.

"Well now," A guy with a Scottish accent spoke up, "Finding the culprit should be easy, right? There's only 31 players who had finished the quest and Hal's already tracing the instances of items moving across their inventory, now, should we talk about how to patch this?"

"Even if we patch it now, it won't fix the economy." Someone else added.

"Let it be, consider it inflation, what's the worst thing that could happen?"

"Maybe the gold supply runs out?"

"Then gold will be useless, let it be useless. It happens with all metal, they'll soon find something else to exchange stuff with. It's all supply and demand."

"The economy's still ruined and everyone's having items they should not have. And an economy with too many zeros for a currency would be off-putting to anyone with half a brain."

"Leave that to the writers! What do we have to care? Just leave the fix 90% finish and get back tomorrow evening after the writers decided what to do!"

"So another 12 hours of this game being unplayable?"

I stood up, and quietly walked over to Eirlys, whispering into her ears.

"I got an idea, um… How about you guys patch it up, and then just rollback the game?"

Her eyebrows furrowed.

"Rollback the game?"

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