Chapter 4: The Interviews Begin, and Kevin Has Concerns. Team Reforged Becomes Real

Once word had spread that Reforged were forming a team, their inbox was flooded with potential candidates. Not all of them were good candidates. But all of them had to be reviewed.

For an hour or two each day, Elias, Amy, Adrian and Kevin would go through the resumes and brag-video clips folks sent in. Having a competently produced highlight clip would not necessarily be a bonus to the application. A couple of them actually worked against their creator, like the man who had gone on a fifteen-second vulgar celebration after downing an Arena opponent, telling the opponent to perform sexual acts on themselves and to go back to playing “Sweet Plunder Land.”

Kevin quipped, “The only reason I would consider him for a position in Reforged is if Kelto made teabagging a Champion’s Challenge. WarMACs don’t even have the parts in question, but that’s never stopped anyone before.”

Everyone agreed.

They had set up a system where two “no” votes would doom an application on the spot, and if someone had very specific objections but didn’t get a second immediate no vote, it would be set aside to give the objector a chance to convince the others if they thought it still needed to be explained.

Although in most cases, the second someone said no, others chimed in. No one really wanted to be the first to say, “This person doesn’t look to have the skills or temperament to work with us,” but once someone else voiced the concern, the others felt freer to admit they had reservations too.

Sometimes, the applications did their best to eliminate themselves before the highlight reel was played.

One applicant, who went by the nickname Tommyrocker, had a pretty decent resume. A very good Arena ranking, and even several stints with well-known Universe At War guilds that had all ended without much acrimony. Enough that the guilds in question could provide references if Reforged wanted to follow up.

Then they got to the last line of his guild tenure, and that all changed. He had been a member of Ten Million Blades for the last eight months. Worse than that, his affiliation with them was marked as “Current.”

Adrian said it for all of them. “Either he didn’t care enough to update his affiliation after the Crusade, which means that he’s lazy enough to let a disqualifying feature be known on his resume, or he knew the standard terms we told folks was the bare minimum, that is, drop the guild tag and go away, and decided to apply anyway. Either would be enough for an automatic no from me. Should I wait for the second no, or should we...”

Everyone just shook their heads. Tommyrocker’s application joined several others in the rejection pile.

That pile kept growing, while the pile of applications that survived the first stage of the elimination process grew at a much slower pace.

Those who survived the first cut would then be invited to a brief video-call interview or, if the candidate was local, given a chance to visit Reforged. They never did more than a brief look around the facilities and a general “This is Reforged” introduction, mostly to see what the applicant thought of them and what they thought of the applicant.

The first one who visited nearly made them reconsider inviting ANYBODY into Reforged headquarters.

The biography looked good. He had only one Universe-at-War affiliation, the Iron Masons, and had kept it for nearly two and a half years, which was a sign that the applicant was loyal to a guild, or at least didn’t swap guilds on a whim.

Sure, the username was one of those that gamers invariably choose when they’re younger and think putting extra X’s in their username made it edgy, special, and more likely to stand out at a casual glance. Reforged could also understand why the candidate might have chosen to hold on to it. One’s username, or tag, or whatever it was from system to system, became the handle that everyone knew them by. It was their form of social credit. Changing it weakened that continuity, because everyone who already knew them had to make the mental correction between the new tag and the old one.

So “xxrootcuzxx” wasn’t a red flag, or even a powerful yellow flag. Just a bit of a furrowed brow and a “hmm.”

He had been fairly professional in the video interview, and they invited him to Reforged since he lived a couple of cities away. He was willing to come in for a visit.

All through the visit, things seemed normal, but something seemed off to Adrian. He saw Rick (xxrootcuzxx’s real name, apparently) sneakily unplug a mouse from a computer that no one was using when he walked by, but while it was concerning, that also didn’t raise a red flag. More like a yellow flag, because Adrian thought to himself, God knows Kevin’s done crazier stuff. He just may be like Kevin.

He tried to shy away from the thought of a second Kevin, but one couldn’t help but acknowledge that the Kevin they had turned out to be a great person to have around.

They did a quick tour of the facilities, and while the uneasy feeling remained, there wasn’t anything outwardly wrong. They were about to invite Rick to sit down and play a round of Arena with them, to see how he played.

However, Kevin saw something that he didn’t like and decided to speak up.

“Hey, Adrian? I just got a text about some guild stuff that needs two officers to look at. Something regarding guild permissions. Time-sensitive, but if handled quickly, it shouldn’t be an issue. Could I speak to you in the kitchen about it?”

While Adrian hadn’t seen Kevin raise his phone to receive a text, he had no problem taking Kevin at his word.

He followed Kevin into the kitchen, and his eyebrows rose when Kevin didn’t stop at the edge of it, but literally went all the way to the kitchen wall, as if he was starting to make a coffee.

Kevin hissed quietly. “Adrian, I know we don’t have single vetoes without explaining to the others, but something’s wrong here, and I feel like I have to speak up. You saw that thing with the mouse, right? That’s not the only thing I noticed. Did you see that water bottle right on the corner of the table? I’m pretty damn sure that wasn’t there when Rick came in, and while I can’t confirm that the cap is loose or that someone deliberately did it, it looks like it’s not secured to the top of the bottle. And the spot is NOT where you want a bottle with an open cap on top of it. There are several power strips and extension cords out the wazoo there on the ground. Someone knocks that water onto them, we have at LEAST ruined equipment, maybe shorted-out computers, and a non-zero chance of something catching fire. I can’t prove that yet, and I can’t prove he did it, but I’m seeing a pattern here, Adrian, and I. Do NOT. Like it.”

“I mean, this is not a court of law, and I’m not a prosecutor, but we have a pattern here. A disconnected mouse multiple people saw. A water bottle in a very suspicious place. And the username? Again, not proof, nothing concrete, but it’s highly suggestive. rootcuz is way too close to ‘Root Cause,’ as in ‘the root cause’ of something going horribly wrong. I mean, if it was just the username, then I could tell myself it was just something funny ha-ha instead of funny uh-oh. But we are deep in funny uh-oh territory, and I’d like to scout out the territory to make sure we don’t get ambushed.”

Adrian nodded. “Yeah. Something about him was off. But you’re right, we can’t prove it, and confronting him won’t do anything, and frog-marching Rick out actually might piss off Elias and Amy, as they’ve got a say in this too. Can we do something to at least give us something to firm up our suspicions, even if we can’t prove it? Something we can tell the others if we decide to move him on...”

Kevin considered. “I got an idea. Let me grab some water bottles from the fridge, I’ll hand them out and clean up the ones that are out. Watch Rick’s reaction when I get to that one.”