As I walked into the lab in the distant suburbs of Shanghai, I gazed around at the strange objects that was strewn around the lab. The young man working at a desk looked up, and smiled brightly, ‘You must be Moonlight Dagger, I have been looking forward to meeting you! Sit, Sit!’ he gestured towards a chair opposite his desk, after sitting, he continued, ‘I cannot thank you enough for taking this position. I, after all am an inventor, I don’t know the first thing about managing people.’

This man was Hua Chung, head of Research and Development for the Crimson Moon Conglomerate. The chief mind behind the system. After pleasantries, he took me for a tour of the lab, ‘The system is what drive our entire process. The system is made up of three pieces of over-technology, or technomancy as the boss likes to call it. That is, the receiver, which allows us to monitor the isekai despite them residing in a different reality; the soul catcher, which allows us to capture the soul at a certain period of time and the dimensional corridor, which allows certain objects to travel between dimensions.’

I picked up a strange cylindrical object with a trigger on the top, looking at it with interest, before replying, ‘So the system refers to the receiver, and monitors the effects of the soul transfers. But then why do we monitor them consistently and write have authors write stories about them?’

‘There are two reasons. The first is to test different aspects of the system to make sure they work correctly. The second is that the over-technology our client has ordered eats up a lot of resources; especially as it is payment on delivery, and releasing these novels is a way to recoup some of our losses.’ he gestured to the object in my hands, ‘You should put that down. That is a prototype of the product we will be delivering to our client. Instead of the generated realities that our current system implements, it intends to push a person into an actual reality. While the model you hold has some features installed, many of the powerful features that make up the majority of our systems, such as the luck generator, the soul reaper and the world scanner have not been installed as the testing on these items has not been completed, its simply a test of the basic over-technology.

‘But it still works, if you pull the trigger at the top at the moment of your death, you will be pulled into an actual reality, which best suits the desire you are thinking of at the time of your death. For example, if you wanted to be the greatest mage in existence, you would be put in the body of the person with the greatest potential to become the greatest mage in existence. The features of the system are to help that individual achieve that potential.

‘Why you have been called here is because the deadline on delivering this project is approaching. This is a hard deadline, as our intelligence indicates that the loophole we are using to transfer souls to other worlds is about to be closed, and I must focus all my attention on creating the perfect system to attach to this project. I need someone to manage the lab while I focus on completing the product. Someone we could trust. Someone who could not return to normal life and knows many of our secrets already. That is why we chose you. The KPI’s from the North American Talent Acquisition branch have been amazing and has really helped the publishing arm in penetrating the North American market. The test in Korea was to see if you could manage normies, people who are not cold-blooded murders.’

I put the device down and decided to leverage that so-called trust I had earned and asked a question that had been stuck in my mind since Korea, ‘The amount of interaction the talent have towards their systems is different depending on the story, how is this controlled?’

Director Hua laughed as we sat on a sofa, an assistant bringing in coffee, ‘Every talent has the same System, its just different features are locked behind different walls. Some may get full access, others may get limited access, it all depends on what aspects and combinations of the system we want to test.

‘In this regard, the system can manifest itself as different aspects. In some cases, its an old man in a ring, in others, its some sort of space. The system could be disguised as another system, such as a scheming system, an ultimate system or my favourite joke, a gourmet system or it could just activate the luck generator and otherwise leave the person alone. However! My most impressive work is the system world, or the game as which people like to call it. This is when the system encapsulates the entire created reality and creates a system of levels and skills and the like.’

‘Then there is a way to override control of the system if a talent gets out of control?’ I fished for answers.

‘Of course. We need to have back-doors in place in case one of the talent becomes too powerful and turns against us. There are several fail-safes which allow us to eliminate a target both here and in proximity. This is all hidden behind the actual system itself, and requires a password to access.’

‘Oh? What's the password?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know. Only the boss knows. He said it was his greatest regret’ Director Hua shrugged, 'while it would be useful for us to know, I doubt he wants his subordinates to know his greatest regret.'

My eyes glimmered as I noted this, sipping my coffee as I mentally decided to do some deep background research on the boss. I easily slipped back into the investigative journalist role I had locked behind three years of murder easily and continued, ‘So how did you develop this over-technology?’

‘Develop? Oh no no no. The over-technology is well beyond me. I don’t get how the physics work, how it creates realities, how it communicates with the master computer. I was simply given the technology. My job is to develop the software that runs over-top of this over-technology, the features that make up the system. I don’t know where the boss got this technology from, I think the client helped with some of the theory, but I don’t know.’ Director Hua gazed out the window, ‘not knowing how the over-technology works is perhaps the biggest regret in my life. I hope once the project is finished and the product is shipped to the client I can have a chance to study these items.’ his gaze looked distant, hopeful.

What he said was interesting. I would need to investigate further as to how Crimson Moon acquired this over-technology. I suspect it has something to do with their mysterious boss. He calls it over-technology while his boss calls it technomancy; magic of technology. I was reminded of that Arthur C. Clark quote, “significantly advanced technology is akin to magic” but the ability to capture and force a soul through dimensions and monitor it remotely seems far beyond any advanced technology we have today. It made me think, is it aliens, is it someone from the future? Was this technomancy supplied by this mysterious client? Somehow I doubted it, or else they would have done all the work themselves.

Finishing his coffee, he stood and gestured, ‘lets tour the facilities and introduce you to the team.’

I nodded and followed him out to a room that resembled a control room. Monitors covered the walls as workers typed at their computers, and he explained, ‘The team here monitors the various aspects of the master computer and the fate engine,’ he saw my look of blankness and explained, ‘You worked in the talent acquisition area. Did you ever wonder why the timing was such an important aspect of the acquisition? The fate engine calculates who should be targeted and the precise local time as to when and most importantly where they should be targeted that will both capture their soul and provide the most opportune chance for escape for the talent acquisition officer.’

‘This is another piece of over-technology?’ I asked.

He shook his head, ‘While it is a type of over-technology, it is not a type of technomancy according to the boss. This is another piece of tech I would like to crack open and have a look at how its run. To be able to predict to such a high degree the fate of a person...’ he shrugged and continued, ‘When a soul is captured and placed in a new reality, the fate engine calculates a title and a synopsis for the story. These synopses can be pretty prophetic or very vague, which is why the synopsis of many stories on our website are pretty bad. That's what you get for machine generated titles.’

He laughed, ‘Come let me introduce you to the team!’