A strange call

You've sort of settled into a routine. You're hacking your body by working out in the park and your mind by studying at the library and on your computer. Still, you've got to get your streaming business moving forward.

Clearly just you talking isn't going to be enough--Jeremy's reaction proved that.

You could work on animating some babes as background eye candy like he suggested. You've seen those Daz Studio figures and a lot of them are hot and realistic. With the Blender Bridge, you could import them and animate them in sexy dance moves. But is that the right approach? It would be great to rent an old church and get some actual human babes (although if the simulation theory is correct, are human babes any more real than those Daz Studio babes?), but that sounds expensive.

But maybe it's not... after all, you've read that young people are abandoning organized religion. Maybe there are a bunch of church properties out there just begging for someone to take them over. You run a Google search and... uh, not happening. There's a really nice church available in Oakland... which would work perfectly except for the price tag of $2.3 million. An equally beautiful church in Buffalo New York would run you only a few hundred thousand... but you can't afford that either and besides, the commute from Jeremy's couch would be brutal. So, that's out. Still, you could stream from outdoors. One advantage of California, and the reason the movie industry got its start there is that the weather is always great for being outdoors.

You're still pondering this when your phone rings.

You pick it up and swipe answer before bothering to check who it is.

"Mike, are you crazy?"

You recognize the not-so-sweet tone of your ex's voice.

"Hi, Amber. What did I do this time?"

"Oh, let me think... how about offending every Christian in the world."

"I'm more talented than I thought. Guess the Muslims are going to love me, right?"

"Asshole. No, they'll hate you even more."

"Uh, no offense, Amber, but why the hell do you care? I mean, so what if, according to you, I go to Hell. Almost everyone is, according to your religion, right?"

"Uh, you'll go to Hell all right. But you can't go on with this hacking thing."

You hear a noise in the background of Amber's phone. Is someone coaching her? Why?

"I'll think about it," you lie.

"I... I can get you a job at MicroStuff. Not as good as what you had but a junior programmer."

What the hell? You were walked out of there by security and told never to come back. Now they're going to hire you to keep you from working on a stream? That doesn't make sense at all.

"Like I said, I'll think about it."

"Don't think too long. Because there are worse things that can happen than losing your job."

She hangs up and you're left staring at the phone.

Well, shit. Do you take the job or not?