Worse Larks Online 11

A modern epistolary article, by Mushyrulez.

Dr. Christian F. Clean
Argus Entertainment
666 Gr Ave.
Hell’s Gate, BC

April 1st, 2022

Mr. Mackenzie U. S. H. Zdrojkowski
555 Park St.
Vancouver, BC

Dear End-User Customer:

I am pleased to inform you that your application to be a Beta Tester for Sword Art Online has been approved by our customer services department. This letter summarizes your responsibilities in the implementation of this Beta Test. Attached please find the detailed Terms and Conditions of this Agreement. By creating an account for Sword Art Online, you accept these Terms and Conditions.

As a Beta Tester for Sword Art Online, you will:

1. Participate in Sword Art Online for a minimum of twenty (20) hours every week;
2. Agree to submit all physical/emotional usage statistics to Argus Entertainment, Inc.;
3. Actively search for ‘bugs’ existing in the Beta implementation of Sword Art Online;
4. Swear complete secrecy on all aspects of the Beta Implementation of Sword Art Online;

Argus Entertainment, Inc. waives responsibility for all nervous damage caused by the Beta Implementation of Argus Entertainment, Inc.’s revolutionary NerveGear™ product. By accepting the Terms and Conditions attached, you permanently suspend all prospective emotional damage lawsuits that may be caused by your imminent death by electromagnetic combustion. Argus Entertainment, Inc. permanently reserves all rights related to this Beta Implementation of Sword Art Online.

Sincerely yours,

Christian Felix Clean

[BUG REPORT #000023]

SUBMITTER: mzdrojkowski1
DATE: 20220402204022
VERSION: SAO0.000.092b
SUMMARY: Sword Art Online is not letting me be a moè girl with only one eyeball.
DESCRIPTION: I really want to be a moè girl with only one eyeball.
STATUS: WONTFIX
REPLY: You are a fucking retard.

[BUG REPORT #000025]

SUBMITTER: mzdrojkowski1
DATE: 20220402220402
VERSION: SAO0.000.092b
SUMMARY: I only have one ball.
DESCRIPTION: I saw this really cute moè girl with really one eyeball that I wanted to be but Sword Art Online only let me choose a male avatar. So I stripped in front of her to show her my goods and then realized that I only had one ball. This is physically disturbing.
STATUS: PENDING
REPLY: Balls shouldn’t have been implemented yet. You shouldn’t be able to take off your pants either. Can you reproduce the result?

[BUG REPORT #000026]

SUBMITTER: mzdrojkowski1
DATE: 20220402222204
VERSION: SAO0.000.092b
SUMMARY: I thought I only had one ball.
DESCRIPTION: Turns out I just accidentally equipped my +1 AGI Rounded Fabric Pelvis Guard over my pants.
STATUS: DELETED
REPLY: –

[BUG REPORT #000531]

SUBMITTER: MaryThePirate
DATE: 20220422040222
VERSION: SAO0.017.258
SUMMARY: I caught a bug!
DESCRIPTION: My husband and I were just walking in the forest like any normal twelve-year-olds when suddenly, I saw a bug! It flew in my face but I caught it with a tree branch just in time. It has a black body and red wings. I think it might be a lady bug.
STATUS: DELETED
REPLY: –

Plaintiff, Mackenzie Ulysses Svetlana Harjot Zdrojkowski, by and through his undersigned attorney, Oné W. Bloggs, brings suit against Defendant Argus Entertainment, Ltd. and states as follows:

1. Plaintiff is a Beta Tester for Sword Art Online.
2. Defendant Argus Entertainment, Ltd. is the sole administrative entity responsible for the creation and maintenance of the Beta Implementation of Sword Art Online.
3. On May 2nd, 2022 at 22:04 p.m., at 555 Park Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Plaintiff suffered fatal nervous shock as the result of a targeted electromagnetic burst that occurred from his NerveGear™ device.
4. The electromagnetic burst permanently fried Plantiff’s brain, causing his immediate and painful death.
5. Defendant participated in sale and maintenance of a product.
6. Defendant maintained, installed and assembled the product which contained a defective condition because the design was defective and unsafe.
7. This design defect made the product unreasonably dangerous.
8. The system as assembled by Argus Entertainment, Ltd. remained unchanged and was in the same condition at the time of the injury hereafter alleged.
9. As a direct and proximate cause of Defendant’s installation and maintenance of the defectively designed product, Plaintiff sustained fatal injury.
10. Defendant built and/maintained a virtual reality interface system that had a defective design or was defectively maintained. Accordingly, Defendant owed a duty to Plaintiff that the system was designed and maintained in such a way that made the system safe for its intended purpose.
11. Defendant knew or should have known when building and maintaining this electrical system that it was designed defectively or maintained, creating a unreasonable risk of injury for to Plaintiff.
12. Plaintiff was negligent in failing to properly design, manufacture, install, maintain, and communicate the defect in the system to Plaintiff, creating a clear and immediate risk of serious injury. As a direct and proximate result, Plaintiff sustained fatal injury.
13. Defendant’s conduct in maintaining a virtual reality interface system within direct proximity to Plantiff’s nervous organs constituted an abnormally dangerous activity which exposed Plaintiff to an unreasonable risk of harm.
14. At all relevant times, Defendant had control over the abnormally dangerous activity of maintaining the virtual reality interface system.
15. As set forth above, Plaintiff sustained fatal injury as a direct and proximate cause of this unreasonably dangerous activity.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiff demands judgment against Defendant in the amount of TWENTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS ($25,000,000.00), plus interest, costs and any other relief this court deems appropriate.

Respectfully submitted,
Oné W. Bloggs,
Empire State Building, Suite 555
350 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10118

From: clean@argus.net
To: kayaba@argus.net
Date: May 5th, 2022 15:19:23 PST (UTC-08:00)
Subject: WHAT THE FUCK

Message: I mean just as a precaution I wrote that we waive responsibility for all nervous damage caused by nervegear but that doesn’t protect us against the hundreds of incoming lawsuits what were you thinking when you made this

besides anyways how did you manage to get this device that FRIES PEOPLES’ BRAINS past the CPSC? did you go ‘oh yeah, this gamma ray discharger ignites brains on fire for a more interactive experience’? or did you say ‘that? oh, that’s just a neck warmer… FOR THE BRAIN’

seriously who the FUCK told you that this would be a good idea? who MADE these nervegears for you anyways? did the manufacturers just slam a MICROWAVE into a HELMET just because they thought it’d be cool? and NOBODY FOUND OUT until now?

what the fuck.

From: kayaba@argus.net
To: clean@argus.net
Date: May 6th, 2022 08:24:19 JST (UTC+09:00)
Subject: RE: WHAT THE FUCK

Message: It is easier than it is that you think. With money that I have and power and friends. Many things is become possible. You do not understand yet that is the beauty that I am create. A second real, it is as real as the now. I was dreaming for this paracosm throughout the upbringing. Soon, it is come.

From clean@argus.net
To: kayaba@argus.net
Date: May 5th, 2022 15:33:21 PST (UTC-08:00)
Subject: RE: RE: WHAT THE FUCK

Message: You’re insane. I quit.

[BUG REPORT #002625]

SUBMITTER: stew_of_gary
DATE: 20220624082444
VERSION: SAO0.127.3
SUMMARY: I saw an underage girl in SAO.
DESCRIPTION: I saw a girl that appears to be approximately 6 years old near the Town of Beginnings’s East End ten minutes ago. I didn’t think much of it at first until I realized that you specifically prevented my daughter from registering for SAO because she was under the age of consent as stated in the Statute for the Lawful Regulation of Virtual Reality Video Games, and then realized that this might be a bug. Unfortunately, I could not spot any wings or compound eyes on her. What do you advise I do?
STATUS: PENDING
REPLY: We will look further into this situation.

2022 August 04

Akihiko Kayaba
Argus Entertainment
107 Tokyo-to, Minato-ku, Akasaka 1-chome, 10-ban, 5-go

Dear Players:

We sighted the strange girls that appear to be many places. You know no girls we allow in Sword Art Online for sexism. So we please with you to eradicate girls.

If you see the girls, then you eradicate they. Him that eradicates the more girls will become a girl him choosing. They is bugs in our server and they should be not there. Please thank for cooperation.

Kindly,
Akihiko Kayaba

[BUG REPORT #192799]

SUBMITTER: MaryThePirate
DATE: 20220828142008
VERSION: SAO0.256c
SUMMARY: Caught another one.
DESCRIPTION: That’s like the seventy-second bug/girl we caught within the past two weeks. When are they going to end?
STATUS: FIXED
REPLY: Not any time soon. Catch ’em all.

to: mr. black
msg: we’ve infiltrated saobeta

to: fragrant sidewalk
msg: how did you do it

to: mr. black
msg: flaw in their avatar systems. our agents are currently little girls

to: fragrant sidewalk
msg: argus is cracking down on girls right now!! the plan is suicidal, since little girls can’t register for saobeta

to: mr. black
msg: don’t worry, we’ve released bug details to the public. hordes of obese neckbeards are swarming to become the next moè girl with only one eyeball

to: fragrant sidewalk
msg: so then all the little girls are either fat men or fbi agents?

to: mr. black
msg: precisely

Evening News Transcript: September 9th, 2024, 7:21PM
Anchor: “In a surprising turn of events, Argus Entertainment’s massive virtual reality game, ‘Sword Art Online’, has been infiltrated by the FBI.”
Anchor: “The crackdown revealed Argus Entertainment’s latest scandal, after the furor of the controversial Zdrojkowski decision.”
Anchor: “We’ll turn to Reporter Oné W. Bloggs for the latest situation.”
Bloggs: “Thank you. As you can see, police are swarming around Kayaba Akihiko’s mansion to arrest him for numerous crimes and assorted misdemeanours, including the first-degree murder of seven hundred and twenty-two Sword Art Online beta testers and the non-consensual assault of over one hundred and thirty-nine prepubescent one-eyed girls, forty-two of whom were revealed to be FBI agents, and ninety-seven of whom were morbidly obese males.”
Bloggs: “The forty-year-old programming prodigy designed Sword Art Online on his own over the span of thirty-odd yea-oh! Here he comes! The man himself, Kayaba Akihiko, is being escorted out his front door by the police.
Reporter: “What do you have to say for yourself!”
Kayaba: [indistinct noises]
Bloggs: “Why did you force so many to play your death game?”
Kayaba: “It was not by my hand that-” [muffled] “They were called here by-” [muffled]
Bloggs: “Tribute!?! Sword Art Online steals men’s souls and make them its slaves!”
Kayaba: “Perhaps the same could be said of all religions…”
Bloggs: “Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a saviour such as you!”
Kayaba: “What is a man? A miserable little pile-” [muffled] “-and if they want to played another game, they do not needed to play the SAO Beta! There are better distractions online, though there are also Worse Larks Online.”

tl;dr: breaking news, the ALF are actually all NPCs. ALL OF THEM. (That’s why they’re all clones of each other and they never die.)

P.S. You can’t physically coerce people in an inner-city area… can you? Because ‘stripping off people’s armour’ is much more serious than ‘being able to injure people’…

P.P.S. Until now there’s never been a bug in the system… don’t get all .hack// on us, please.

P.P.P.S. must’ve taken :effort: for kayaba to code those television screens spinning around his head at the very start. c’mon honestly were none of the programmers working on a program that causes television screens to spin around kayaba’s head suspicious that, y’know, maybe television screens spinning around kayaba’s head isn’t supposed to be part of the game