After a first testing session, which was, unfortunately, short because of the lengthy installation time, Marjorine goes to sleep. However, she can't help thinking about her experience of playing RCG in beta access. I just finished creating my household. I think I need to get further into the game to decide whether to keep playing it, knowing that it's going to be subject to change.

She starts turning into her bed, and her dreams get increasingly troubled:

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The scene took place in the Senate House, somewhere in the Ninth Circle of Hell. That is, within the topmost levels of Pandemonium. Adèle was summoned to appear before a senatorial committee. Marjorine was equipped like a Perserian gyan-avspar, and was a Pandemonian prisoner, the same as Adèle. The session began with Lucifer's question:

"Adèle, we brought you here to answer for the accusations in our world that your world is about to interfere in our affairs again!" Lucifer, in his capacity of Caliph of Pandemonium, yelled at Adèle.

"Yeah, you helped Karine mediate this deal leading to the ratification of the Treaty of Perseria, which provided for the severance of the political ties between your world and ours!" Astaroth, another senator in attendance, scolded Adèle.

"It has been eight years, in the time of my world, since the Treaty's ratification. The Treaty was ruinous for MAA's developers, and caused them to go out of business! Before going bankrupt, they floated rumors that a new game would be under development using part of the assets of the game, and this game has yet to be released!" Adèle defended herself.

"Then what do these new developers do to remain in compliance with the Treaty?" Satan, Pandemonium's grand vizier, yells at Adèle.

"As a member of the development team of this new game, I made clear the characters players controlled were remote-controlled ghosts because of the events leading up to the Treaty's ratification! And the properties that video game characters have that are more consistent with remote-controlled ghosts than real people! No angelic beacons!"

"Treaty of Perseria? Perseria is on which world?" a clueless Marjorine asks the four, rolling her eyes.

Am I the only one, other than Karine, and maybe the execs who led MAA's manufacturer to close the game, who, in 2032 on our world, still remember what the Treaty of Perseria's terms even are? Adèle burst in tears, before turning to Marjorine's oneiric self.

"Perseria is a city on the world of a game closed for years, and the Treaty was just the document making the game's closure official in the game's world!" Adèle clenched her fists while her face turned red.

"We did the utmost to remain compliant with the Treaty's terms, we expect your world to hold its end of the Treaty!" Lucifer turned to Marjorine. "Because Adèle is plotting to violate the Treaty, she's sentenced to death by being thrown into a molten sulphur lake! You want a way out of this world, throw her into the lake!"

"I guess I don't have a choice, since it's a strange new world to me!" Marjorine sighed.

Oh boy... I can't throw her into a lake of molten sulphur when I have yet to experience anything significant in RCG, beyond character creation! Marjo mused while she escorted Adèle down to the outer edge of the seventh circle, where a wall overlooking a lake of molten sulphur stood. On the edge of a cliff marking the limit between the sixth and seventh circles. I have the feeling that she's innocent, but I wasn't given an opportunity to cross-reference RCG's world maps to those of this world. But why does hell consider Remote-Controlled Ghosts a breach of the Treaty?

The damned residing in the area, full of condo towers of varying heights, didn't even notice what was happening on the chemin de ronde until they heard the screams of someone being thrown off what they deemed a glorified noise barrier.

"I didn't cause the players' world to violate the Treaty!" Adèle screamed as Marjo threw her into a molten sulphur lake.

"What have I done?" Marjorine's oneiric self yelled upward after throwing Adèle into the sulphur lake. "With Adèle's death, we'll never be able to prove that she, in fact, didn't cause our world to violate the Treaty!"

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And then the nightmare about Marjorine being complicit in carrying out a miscarriage of justice causes her to awaken. However, as she awakens, she feels big headaches about it. So after taking painkillers, her body doesn't seem to let her go back to sleep just yet.

She starts editing the video footage of RCG's character creation process and decides to cut out mentions of quarrelling with her mom about it, but to leave mentions of trans characters in there. About which she comments that trans characters have clothing options like the gender they identify with, already that she feels trans characters are enough for her to deal with at this point.

Which she proceeds to upload to YouTube before going back to bed, while making sure that she has all the information required for the viewers to make the best use of the video's contents. However, the sheer size of the video makes the upload last for a while.

It's at this point that the painkillers kick in and make her drowsy enough to go back to sleep. And hopefully not make her cause nightmares about carrying out a miscarriage of justice.

That morning, she texts Gordon about her first impressions of the game, admittedly a little limited in scope, while yawning because of her poor sleep:

Marjorine: I spent forever in character creation last night: so many options to create a ghost household

Gordon: These ghosts don't feel like ghosts

Marjorine: I really hope the devs have good reason to call them ghosts

Marjo is right: these ghosts look very human. I hope that she isn't playing the game solely for character creation, Gordon sighs while he follows the link to Marjo's video about RCG's household creation. I feel like Adèle, or perhaps someone else in RCG's dev team, might struggle to distinguish reality from fiction.

Around the breakfast table, Marjorine seems more than a little troubled about the nightmare she had last night, but she kept quiet about it to her coworker.

"I had nightmares of that game last night: I dreamed about being forced to throw a dev of that game, or a character with the likeness of one, into a lake of molten sulphur! And all I was able to do in-game was to create a household of ghosts!" Marjo laments to her parents.

"What did your victim do?" Marjo's mom asks her.

"They alleged that the game was a violation of some treaty between their world and ours, which, on that world, was punishable by death! And the victim wasn't even given a chance to present evidence!"

Marjo's mom gasps. "A breach of a treaty between a video game world and ours? Why would a video game world even need to sign a treaty with ours to begin with?"

"Thank God this was just a nightmare! Such a treaty between a video game world and ours would only have value on the video game world, if that!" Marjo's dad points out, while pinching his daughter's arm. "And you were talking about the game's transgender ghosts last night!"

"I don't doubt that there will be items in the game for building haunted houses, or to do other horrible things, but there must be another reason for us to ask to define our characters' traits, turn-ons and turn-offs! It's too early to give up on the game!"

But as time goes on, working from home, she feels a little malaise. Why is it that I can't help but think about my characters in RCG? I haven't even started the tutorial yet! I have no clue what the possibilities even are, beyond relationships with other players' characters! And NPC townies possibly; surely the devs know that players cannot be online all the time! There must be a way to tell apart player characters and NPCs! Maybe it's just me not having played the actual game though.

After yelling at customers with overdue bills, and threatening to take their credit terms away, Marjo checks on her boss for the status of the demand letter requests she filed last night. However, the answer arrives on Teams:

Boss: I am not sure on whom we can even collect out of those you asked D/Ls for

Marjorine: I would just love it if we have clear guidelines to ask for sending out demand letters to customers with unpaid bills! Ideally as soon as the bills becomes overdue, and the letter must be more threatening the longer they wait to pay! And even automatic lawsuits if a certain amount is overdue for a certain period!

Boss: I have objections to the last point: automatic lawsuits contingent on a specific overdue amount and period might defeat the purpose of this point because one such lawsuit might cost us more than what we might hope to collect

Marjorine: If it comes to that, I want all our customers on credit to know about the lawsuit so they know it might happen to them if they fail to pay on time! So while the initial lawsuit might result in a net loss, it will make customers pay faster, or even at all!

Boss: But you won't be the one to send out demand letters even if they were approved, which you mustn't take for granted

Damn, how are they going to improve the collections processes? Sending out AI-written reminders is not enough! Often people won't take emails seriously, hence the need for me to call customers, Marjorine sighs, still a little frustrated by the request for demand letters taking forever. Courage, Marjorine, I only need to survive a few more hours and then I can go around building my household around my trans couple.

At the end of the workday, the time arrives for her to do so. To return to a RCG she feels like she needs to explore more of before she can decide. But she feels her comments on YouTube about trans characters in RCG's open beta might have garnered her some attention, along with a theater in the trans flame war in her video's comments section.

In which she becomes an unwitting belligerent by posting the following comment: "It's OK if you don't want to play trans characters, it's your right, I'm playing a trans couple and a cis one solely to compare how gender identity affects gameplay!"

She decides to open her Twitch account, and then use her first session playing a household to test her streaming settings. Just because I play a trans couple in my household of four doesn't imply anything about how I act towards trans outside the game! She starts thinking before the test stream goes live and she posts about it on her social media.

So, for now, Gordon is the only one watching the stream outside of Marjo's parents. Testing is about to begin:

"Sound test, one, two, three!" Marjorine utters into the mic.

Gordon: I hear you five by five

But before she can even start playing what she deemed to be the actual game, Marjo faces the choice of the region in which to put the household. And there are a lot of different locales to choose from, with a blurb for each containing historical and weather information.

"I guess I'm going with Elbonia..." Marjorine sighs before choosing the lot according to the starting budget she has: 29,000 piastres.

She starts the tutorial, which actually uses the player's household, and guides them through the basic controls of the game. The first step is choosing the lot and that world seems to have entire neighborhoods made of plots made for tract housing. Or at least the plots available to new players because it seems like larger plots aren't available until certain criteria are met.

After the lot is chosen for the household, she finds it a little tight for four people, and she feels like two bedrooms are a must: one for the cis couple, one for the trans. But before she can even think of making additions to her virtual home, she must familiarize herself with the life mode of the game. Camera controls, zooming in or out, and also choosing the active character. Then she can think of going into the game's construction mode, where she's hit with a checklist of requirements: a bed, a sink, a shower or bath, a toilet, a fridge, a stove.

"The bare minimum isn't going to cut it. Countertops, a dishwasher, a closet, a dining table and chairs, a medicine cabinet, desks, computers and, of course, a house for all that!" Marjo then follows the tutorial for building the family home, starting with the placement of walls.

Then, after putting in the frame of the walls, she feels the need for a staircase leading to the second floor. However, she realizes these structures and fixtures come at a cost in materials or its equivalent in cash. Two floors, the second floor having a bathroom, and both bedrooms, with the ground floor with the kitchen, toilet and an empty living room. I am feeling a little short on money to equip the living room! Maybe if I could take out a loan to finance it! And peruse the job listings around the game...

And there are a lot of career tracks to choose from for their characters. Fashion, crime being the two that pique her interest, so she makes her trans male a criminal and her trans female start a career in fashion. With their entry-level jobs being pickpocket and department store clerk respectively.

"The moment of truth: making my cis and trans couples fall in love with each other!" Marjo then have the two couples deepen their relationships and even make them romantically involved, whatever that means to the game.

Now I have a better idea of why they put so much effort into making us define our likes, dislikes as well as romantic turn-on/offs: the ability to romance characters, Marjo feels like relationships grow a little fast to her taste. That a few hours of in-game time devoted to flirting and increasingly intimate choices being given is somehow enough to go from unknowns to anything remotely resembling a romantic relationship.

"I guess, this feels like insta-love to me, so perhaps this could appeal for those wanting to change romantic partners on a dime" she tells her handful of viewers as the game reminds her to send her characters to work.

Sure, she has her cis couple resort to stuff such as freelance writing or IT consulting work for the time being, until she has a better understanding of who supplies what to a fashion crafter.

But before she could even get to explore the crafting mechanisms in depth, she comes to a grim realization after her first two characters return home from work, and it's not just their meager pay: it's about sleep. For some reason, it seems like both her trans characters have trouble sleeping, and yet it's the same bed, the same lighting, the same everything. However, her cis couple doesn't suffer from the same sleeping disorders.

"Damn it! It seems like trans ghosts have sleeping disorders in this game!" Marjo screams on her stream and it's then that she reaches for the bug report button in the game. "Is this a side effect from sex change surgeries?"

She also prepares a write-up for Reddit about the bugs related to trans characters' sleeping troubles, so other people testing RCG might chime in on whether it's a bug or something else altogether.