Dave was quickly processed into the hospital system and a.s.signed to the nano-med ward. And yes, he had to fill out another small mountain of hospital forms and releases. Including forms for the fees and charges, much higher than the first ones since his surgery was going to cost so much more than Ms. Clementine"s treatment and hospital stay.
Unknown to him the facilities for the hospital"s cutting edge nano-med technology that would be used to heal his hands were actually under-used. The hospital administrators were concerned they may have made a poor investment and would not make a profit from the investment.
The new technology itself was superlative and very effective. But, it was prohibitively expensive and most of the cases it was used for could be treated with older less expensive methods and procedures.
For those reasons the hospital administration was exceptionally happy and eager to get any patient that truly needed the new facilities into the system and started on treatment and therapy right away.
The members of the nano-med surgery team were paged and contacted to give them notice about a new stat surgery on the schedule; giving them a few hours notice to be ready for a long procedure.
So it was in the very early morning hours, only a few hours after being admitted to the hospital, that Dave was wheeled into the nano-med surgery suites and sedated.
While Dave was unconscious for the 12 hour long procedure to fix his old injuries, the world, or at least the gaming-world outside the hospital was in an uproar.
That morning the network entertainment company, CCN, had announced it would be streaming completely new Conquest video content. The announcement stated the subject of the video was the battle for the second raid zone and it would showcase two never-before-seen monsters that lived in the underworld.
The announcement of the upcoming video didn"t truly create a stir until the company released another announcement a few hours later that the two new creatures had the highest levels ever seen in the game. That little bit of information generated a buzz on gamer sites, social media and the news boards.
Then CCN announced they would release a teaser at noon. The teaser showed only a few moments of the Underworld from Mr. Skeletal"s point of view, but the media and the public reacted wildly. It seemed like the short clips of the Underworld were all anyone anywhere was talking about for the rest of the day. At work, on the news, at home, or on social media the topic of conversation was the new Conquest video. Within hours the in-game footage from the teaser was dissected and a.n.a.lyzed by every media pundit and Conquest "expert" and by hundreds more who could not claim even those questionable t.i.tles.
The first scene of the teaser was of Dave facing the Sworn Stalwart, where it shot an intense laser beam at his face. The teaser cut away from the scene before the attack reached Dave.
Then Dave was facing off against the immense Earth t.i.tan.
The teaser cut away again, this time showing the Abyssal Knight Dagla using his Song of Death. summoning waves of dark matter to buff his undead-allies and help them against the tide of incoming Demon-Knights
After that the viewers got to see a few moments of Dave riding on the back of a dunlord, charging like heavy cavalry at the Demonic soldiers.
The Dunlords" sacrifice to let Dave move forward, and him turning and cursing back at the demons who killed his underlings made the viewers" blood boil.
The final video clip showed Dave at the top of a volcano clearly about to do something momentous, but the scene cut away, leaving what he was about to do to the viewers imaginations. A true "tease".
The screen then simply displayed a large CCN logo while a smooth-voiced announcer spoke: "Tune in to see the latest adventures of Mr. Skeletal." A caption appeared "Watch it Today on CCN! Airs at 8:00 P.M. EST. Only on CCN!"
The CCN logo was replaced by the smirking face of Dave"s draugr character, Mr. Skeletal, with the same caption.
The final image was strangely disturbing, so disturbing it became a "thing." Surveys and opinion polls showed nearly every viewer thought it was a particularly creepy image. But at the same time, for some inexplicable reason, the "creepy factor" only made viewers want to see the video even more.