" In those hours where he'd planned for the [possible future] demise of his family's fortune, he'd settled quickly on the easiest job he could step into: Mechanical Turk.
The Turks were an army of workers in gamespace. All you had to do was prove that you were a decent player - the game had the stats to know it - and sign up, and then log in whenever you wanted a shift. The game would ping you any time a player did something the game didn't know how to interpret - talked too intensely to a non-player character, stuck a sword where it didn't belong, climbed a tree that no one had bothered to add any details to - and you'd have to play spot referee. You'd play the non-player character, choose a behavior for the stabbed object, or make a decision from a menu of possible things you might find in a tree.
It didn't pay much, but it didn't take much time, either. Wei-Dong had calculated that if he played two computers - something he was sure he could keep up - and did a new job every twenty seconds each, he could make as much as the senior managers at his father's company. He'd have to do it for ten hours a day, but he'd spent plenty of weekends playing for twelve or even fourteen hours a day, so hell, it was practically money in the bank. "
Image for Quotes