The Core is the best thing to come out of Towerzap Gaming Systems. Ever. And that is saying something.

Towerzap was founded in the year 2018, shortly after the fall of Microsoft, and along with it, Xbox. The chairman of the company, a sinister man by the name of Derek Jacobs, had been a former low-level employee at Microsoft, and had been fascinated with gaming and virtual reality. So he jumped ship just before the company crashed and began working on his own video games.

And now, in 2032, he was the ultimate video game mogul, beyond Apple Computers (which had now taken to making video games), and Oculus (an early pioneer of VR technology).

But none of this mattered to young Lance Nester. Lance was a mid level employee at Towerzap. He was smart, and had quite an important job, but it was not important enough for him to have ever met the Derek. He was a tester. Basically, people gave him games to test, and he played them. It was an awesome job for him, although he regretted the city life and how little exercise he got.

"Hey Lance!" said his co-worker Matt, on a certain fateful Tuesday morning. It was gray out, the sky blending in quite well with the skyscrapers. "Hey Matt," responded Lance, smiling. He liked Matt. They didn't talk much. The Derek didn't let the employees talk about work, and since that was the only context in which they knew each other, they didn't talk much.

"What'cha got going on today?" asked Lance.

"Oh, nothing much," said Matt. "Just debugging the new VR bubble. What about you?"

"I don't know," said Lance. "I got an anonymous message saying something about a surprise for me today."

Lance walked into his cubicle, preparing himself for a long 8 hours of work. That was when his eyes drifted to the package on his desk. It was a plain brown package with a note attached to the top.

I can't expose my name, for fear of being punished by federal law. Please burn this letter after reading. The Derek has designed a new "game". It is titled "The Core". He says that The Core is the best thing to come out of Towerzap Gaming Systems ever, but that's all he tells us. He intends to begin distribution of this game to the public tomorrow. I only barely managed to get a hold of it. Mr. Nester, it is addictive. That I can assure you. Not the game itself. As far as I know, it is a horrible game. I've never played. The Virtual Reality bubble literally injects drugs into your skull. He plans to distribute it to all of his competition, from Silicon Valley to China. That's millions of people. If people don't leave the game, they will all die. This is a mass murder we're talking about. I urge you to try the game out for yourself, with the knowledge that you must take the bubble off as soon as you begin to feel addiction. Take this to the police and show them the truth about the Derek's real mission.

Sincerely,

A high level employee.

Lance put the letter down. His head was spinning. Someone from the high levels of a massive corporation was sending a letter directly to him. It made sense, though. He was a tester, and his job was to spot bugs in faulty programs. So if he took it to the police and said that the Derek had deliberately put a highly addictive bug in the game and was trying to kill everybody in his competition, they would try to stop him. Right?

He grabbed the space helmet and pulled it over his head, the plastic of the bubble morphing to fit his face like a wetsuit, only for a face. As he prepared to turn on the game, he just had one thought. This is definitely not a normal day.

The moment the VR flickered to life, he realized that this was definitely not the best thing to come out of Towerzap. All it appeared to be was a 3D image of the core of the Earth that moved as you turned around. The 3D wasn't spectacular, the only sound was some light background music. and it was full of bugs. The response time was half a second, an unthinkable delay in the world of video gaming. It was pixelated, and there was a spot near the ground that just wouldn't load any playback.

But the funny thing was, he didn't want to leave.

He felt sort of warm and fuzzy inside. Maybe it was the gentle heat radiating from the core. He had a boring life, but if he stayed here, he could live in the core of the Earth forever, only coming up to eat, and maybe not even that. It felt like he had just drank a warm cup of hot chocolate, and now he didn't have a care in the world.

A flicker of doubt entered his mind, and he remembered the message from the high level employee. I urge you to try the game out for yourself, with the knowledge that you must take the bubble off as soon as you begin to feel addiction.

Lance yanked the bubble off of his head, the effect disappearing as soon as it was off. He was back in the cold gray city in the cold gray office, thousands of miles from the center of the Earth. And he had experienced the game that, if not stopped by him, would cause a mass murder on a scale not been seen since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He decided to bring Matt with him. It was a risk telling Matt about the letter and the video game with the drugs, but it was better to have two people on the journey than one. Matt was reluctant at first, but knew that Lance wouldn't lie.

"You really think that letter was telling the truth?" asked Matt, once they had exited into the lobby into the busy city streets.

"Absolutely," said Lance. "I experienced it for myself."

"But you managed to escape the clutches of addiction."

"That's because I knew the threat was there. And I almost didn't make it out."

The police station was about four or five blocks away, so they chose to walk rather than drive. When they got there, they were pleased to see that there was nobody there. It was an uneventful day, and if they failed to stop the game from being distributed, maybe one of the last for a while.

"What can I help you with," said the automated policeman, which was just a microphone hanging from the ceiling.

"We'd like to talk to the real policeman today," said Lance.

A very fat policeman who had probably never seen action in his life entered the room and sat down at the police desk, or whatever it was called. "What can I help you with?"

Ten minutes later, they exited the police office, feeling dejected. Their story had been completely rejected by the policeman, dismissed as "That's a load of crap wrapped in a bundle and thrown on the sidewalk for people to step on. Go away, I have more important things to attend to."

"So what now?" asked Matt. "We just let the game be distributed and wait for the end of humanity?"

"I don't think it will be the end of humanity. But I'm still not ready to give up. We may have to destroy the assembly line."

Matt would have laughed if the stakes weren't so high. "And how the hell do you propose to do that?"

"I have no idea."

Back in the office, they began to brainstorm in Lance's cubicle. It was cramped, but what mattered was that it was safe from anybody spying on them. What they decided on was that they would go to the door of the assembly room and play it by ear from there. It was a stupid plan, but it was the only one they could come up with. Everybody knew where the assembly line was, but only Derek Jacobs himself knew the four number passcode to get in.

They passed lots of Star Trek posters on the wall. They were mostly for the original series. Maybe the Derek was a trekkie. That was kind of strange.

They made it to the passcode puncher button thingy. That's the official name. "Enter passcode," said the passcode puncher button thingy. Lance punched four numbers randomly, hoping to get it correct. The room flashed red. "You have failed," said the PPBT (passcode puncher button thingy, if you haven't figured that out yet.) "You have four more guesses."

Three guesses later, they were no farther along, and the PPBT would only give them one more chance. Lance took a deep breath and was about to type another random set of codes when Matt stopped him. "Wait a minute, the Derek's a Star Trek fan, right?"

"Right."

"You should try the code from the original Star Trek. What was it again?"

"1701! Matt, you're a genius!" He typed that code into the PPBT. There was a pause, then the room lit up green, and the walls slid open to reveal a horrifying sight.

The games were being made by the millions, being cranked out by machines, but that wasn't the really horrifying part. The worst part was that covering the walls were blueprints for non-video game devices. They weren't just trying to eliminate technology opponents, but home appliance opponents, and electronics opponents, and filmmaking opponents in Hollywood...It was horrible beyond belief.

"It's...It's just gotten a lot worse," said Lance, feeling queasy. He had always known that Towerzap wasn't the nicest company, but he didn't expect them to be evil.

And that was when he saw the dynamite. He didn't know what they would need dynamite for, maybe one of their diabolical projects. But the only thing separating him from the dynamite was a way to explode it. He ran to the pile of dynamite and brought a few sticks back. "You got a match, Matt?"

"Nope, but I got a cigarette lighter, if that'll do."

"Thanks, that'll be great," he said. He placed the dynamite upright on the slow-moving conveyor belt. Meticulously, he lit every fuse. He watched them burn down, with satisfaction at first. But then he realized a problem. The door was all the way on the other side of the room, and it was closed, so they would have to redo the password thing again. And by that time, the dynamite would have exploded.

This was not turning out like they had expected.

"Where can we hide?" asked Matt, realizing the problem. None of them had ever been in a situation like this before, where their life hung on the balance over a single decision. There was more dynamite that they could hide in, but that wouldn't work. They could hide under the conveyor belt, but that seemed a little bit close.

The best option seemed to be the bell. It was a big monastery-like bell, that might shield them from heat and shrapnel. It was a bit far away, but they could maybe make it.

They ran as fast as they could toward the bell. They poured on speed like never before. Lance regretted ever craving exercise. His heart and lungs burned, and he felt nauseous, but they had to make it. They both jumped over the bell just as the dynamite exploded. The explosion was deafening. Metal, burning rubber, and red bits of paper flew everywhere, triggering several other explosions from the dynamite pile.

After the explosions had died down, Lance turned to Matt and smiled. "Saved by the bell, I guess."