Joe Keery Imagines

Antwan's Assistant-Keys

"He's dead! You hear me? The guy, put him up here. Put him up here on the screen. Put him on the screen. Make me see him. There he is."

I glanced over a Keys as he glanced at me. He shrugged, with a small smirk before looking back at our furious boss.

I've worked here since it was a start-up. Keys and I met when he started working for Soonami in the complaint department. I never understood why he was there. He's an incredible coder with a degree from MIT. What Keys didn't know, or anyone we work with for that matter, was that I graduated from Stanford with a master's in coding.

"Yes," Antwan practically growled. "There he is, the little do-gooder."

"I thought you liked Blue Shirt," Mouser said hesitantly.

"Don't say words to me!" Antwan yelled. "People are so busy watching this loser on Twitch and YouTube. You know what they're not doing, guys? Buying Free City 2. Pre-sales are down 16%."

"60," Jonathan, Antwan's personal assistant corrected.

"60," Antwan whispered. "That's bad. Oh, we are 48 hours from launch."

"Yeah, he's gone viral."

My head snapped towards Keys. I started chewing on the inside of my cheek, nervous. You never spoke out against Antwan. He hated being proven wrong or embarrassed.

"Yeah," Antwan mocked, "a virus that's giving me ass and ball cancer at the same time!"

I internally groaned. Man, I hated this guy.

"Inoperable!" Antwan yelled. He sighed as he glared at Blue Shirt Guy. "You know, this whole good guy routine. . . it is a bad influence, and is bad for the franchise. I want him gone. I don't care who it is, boot him."

"You can't."

"Keys," I whispered even though I knew he couldn't hear me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, what?"

"You can't," Keys repeated.

"Why not?"

"Because he's not a hacker, Antwan. He's an NPC."

"You're tryin' to tell me that all this shit about a self-aware NPC is real?"

"Yeah. I don't know how or why, but he's real."

I rolled my eyes as Antwan started pacing around and, suddenly, sat down on the ground. Keys and I shared a look as Antwan struggled to get up off the ground.

"So we can't kick him out of the game. How do we reset his AI? Ideas, people. Come on. Hit me. Ideas."

"You could just reboot the server."

"Mouser," I said through my teeth. He looked over at me and shrugged.

"Keep talking," Antwan ordered.

"If we reboot the server, then he's just gonna revert back to a regular non-player guy."

"Solution," Antwan smirked.

"Antwan," Keys sighed. "you're talking about terminating the first confirmed artificially intelligent life-form right now, okay?"

"Honey, honey. Shush." I found myself getting angry when he disrespectfully shushed Keys. "He's losing me money. So, I don't care if he's Arnold-Frickin'-Schwarzen-Vader. Terminate him. Reboot."

"On it," Mouser said as he walked back to his desk.

"Mouser," I stopped him. "I know how much you idolize Antwan, but you can't do this."