Going back to the end of the meal right around when Jason logged off, Courtney was doing the same thing. Except of course she didn’t have time to waste on the real world. Instead, she was back in her personal space, where she did all of her research. What she had just learned from their conversation broke a lot of assumptions of hers. Just the concept that NeoRealm natives could go beyond the System upended many things.

Given her position and relationship with Rachel, she could dig out a number of secrets. The reality of all the other games that came before and after NeoRealm and how they connected to pre-existing dimensions was not new to her. The idea that there would be more to NeoRealm than the System controlled areas however is shocking. While it was a dimension of its own, the NeoRealm dimension should have been created specifically through the development of the NeoRealm game.

Every crumb of information that Courtney had found points towards the System being the underpinning of the entire dimension. There should be nowhere free of it. Yet here she is, stumbling upon this information, pointing towards that not being the truth. And Peter, with his artifacts, helped prove it.

The thing is, Courtney knows she isn’t the only one who has this kind of information. While few in number, there are people who broke through the ninth bottleneck. Those people will know for certain one way or another as they get shoved out of the star system that the planet NeoRealm resides in. Besides that though, Peter and Gregor can’t be the only npcs who discovered stuff like that. Others, both players and npcs will have found hints towards there being more beyond the System.

And Courtney knows exactly why she has found no clues about this yet. Just like there is a restriction on the information you can look up online before you hit level ten. There must be other similar restrictions for more sensitive information. This of course makes exploring this lead so much harder.

Her personal network and the one she has access to through Rachel’s family will be useless to her. For something like this, Courtney won’t be able to even query others about it without it being blocked and her being punished. Before she could even chat with someone about the topic, she would have to know that the person already knows about it. A little hard to do when you can’t even poke around at the edges.

Frustrated, Courtney gestures all her current research windows away and creates a new screen. On it she writes out everything she has learned about what lies beyond NeoRealm. She even includes the recording of the entire conversation as well as a transcription to which she applies a heavy layer of highlighting.

From there she pulls apart individual facts that have built up this crazy assumption. Things like duplicate artifacts and the limited elemental planes. These are all things that, while related, are not in fact restricted information. Each thread of information is teased apart by her to find out what she can confirm. With each new safe question, she sends out requests to her information gatherers. Though she makes sure to spread the questions out among various organizations and under many pseudonyms. While individually the questions might be fine, she doesn’t want to tempt fate and assume that asking them all together would be fine.

She takes most of the night to finish up her frenzy, leaving little time to sleep. Not that she isn’t used to all nighters. While Courtney makes sure to be in top shape to serve Rachel, being able to stay up a night or two was drilled into her since young. So, like any other skill, it was trained until she could do it at the drop of a hat.

Pulling back from the many screens that had piled up, she takes a glance around the room at all the other islands of information screens before sighing. Still more work to do before returning to NeoRealm. While not obvious at the moment, there might be connections between this new piece of information and any of the other things she is keeping track of. With that in mind, she focuses in again and sifts through the other things to try and connect them.

A fruitless task, though. Even if there are connections, she isn’t able to see them. Though it does reveal a strange occurrence with Jason. For some reason, the information she had been receiving about his location and house had stopped updating. Something should have happened where he lived that the government wants to keep under wraps. Since he didn’t mention having to move or anything, it didn’t directly affect him.

A strange occurrence, to be sure, but not the first time Courtney had seen something like this. Sometimes, from what she can tell, there isn’t even an actual reason. Rather, the government will set up information embargos just to misdirect people and make sure they don’t only do it when something really important is happening. After all, sometimes a lack of updates is just as much of a clue as whatever the updates might have told someone.

But none of that really matters at the moment. She fires off a quick message to her sources in the area for an update before returning to NeoRealm. There is less than an hour before she needs to be up and about, which provides just enough time for a quick nap. Courtney might not have ever mastered the ability to fall asleep at a moment’s notice, but she had trained herself to wake up on the first ring of an alarm.

When she wakes up a quick note from her contacts will inform her about the lack of information from the entire arcology. Something that Courtney finds highly annoying as she and Rachel currently live in said arcology, but once again, not a new thing to her. Still, this makes it harder for her to keep track of any potential trouble herself. The government does a decent job of holding down the fort when they do this kind of thing. Though it makes Courtney nervous when she can’t keep her finger on the pulse. If it wouldn’t take so long and alert others, she would consider getting Rachel to move to another arcology.

Akhier

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