Massively Multiplayer (17 page)

“Third-person isometric, nothing closer than a group view. Most of our work is done on the heads-up display instead of immersed in a virlo,” the programmer added for Janet’s benefit. “There are too many distractions otherwise. Besides which, we’ve been too busy cataloging instances to really examine them on a case-by-case basis.”

“No time like the present. Suit up and give us a closer look.”

“Yes sir.” The programmer slipped on goggles and wireless wrist and ankle cuffs, then leaned back in her chair, which obligingly settled into the familiar shape of a standard virtualounger. The virlo hummed as the desktop display cleared and refilled with a representation approximating the programmer’s point of view.

“What’s up now?” Janet asked.

“We use standardized avatars for error-checking, testing, other routine tasks,” one of the crowd told her. “We call them ‘angels.’ It’s not like the ones gamers or catalysts use – it’s transparent to the program, invisible, immaterial, and indestructible. That way we can tweak stuff in-game without bothering the users. She’ll use one to take a look around inside this mysterious zone while we look over her shoulder.”

“I’m opening up the last one I accessed,” the programmer said softly. The crowd quieted in order to hear her more clearly. The desktop display changed to show the house on the promontory once more. It looked gloomy, an impressive mansion of sturdy timbers now much weathered, its gaping windows boarded over, and its rotting door hanging off its hinges. “I’m inserting a standard avatar. I’ll give you a chase cam.” The display zoomed out slightly to take in the whole cliff-top, and a silver-robed figure appeared without fuss a dozen yards from the mansion. “Looks like typical scenery for the area. This is on the European server. Should I go inside?”

“Yes,” Wolfgang affirmed. “Let’s see what we’re really up against here.”

“Yes sir.” The programmer’s hand twitched, as if in sleep, and the silver-robed figure in the display raised its arm in a jaunty salute. Several of the observers grinned, feeling the natural cockiness of problem-solvers throughout history who think they’ve finally got a handle on a crisis. The robed avatar turned back towards the mansion and stepped confidently over the threshold.

And burst into flames. To the assembled viewers, it seemed a column of incandescent light simply burst from the sky, bathing the porch of the house in yellow-orange light. The structure seemed entirely unaffected, but the “angel” avatar was consumed in seconds, melting away into a tiny pile of ashes before the display went totally dark.

The programmer twitched spastically on her virlo, then jerked herself upright, ripping off goggles and wrist-cuffs before she was even upright. “What the hell was
that
?!?” she demanded.

“That,” Wolfgang Wallace mused, contemplating the blank display before him, “was interesting.”

Chapter Nine - War

“You are sure?”

“Of course I am sure. There are at least three new quest zones within the Bleaktooth Range, and one at the source of the River Swift, above Sapphire Lake. That last one I saw with my own eyes, and I have directions to the others here.”

The speaker reached out and a thin green rectangle snapped into existence at her fingertips. She handed it to Gregor and watched as he cross-checked the information encoded there with the map which lay on the table before him.

“So it seems. There can be no further doubt: Archimago has just reversed years of stated policy, and one of the crucial elements behind their game design. I have now confirmed over forty new locations which opened up within the existing architecture, all dating to the rollout of version four.” He leaned back and sighed. “This is giving me a headache. Nevertheless, thank you for coming to me with this information. I know you could have gotten cash for this at one of the commercial gaming nets.”

The young woman across from him smirked. “Better you than me. I trust your maps and information more than I do most other sources, so I figured I owed it to you. Besides, you have promised me a trip to the new caves once you’ve finished updating. When will your character make it back from the Westerly?”

“Not soon, I’m afraid,” Gregor mused. “I owe a friend some support, and I’ll need to distribute this—“ he tapped the map “—to my regular subscribers as soon as possible. I should be able to charter a boat by Tuesday, and could meet you at the port in MidSea by Thursday morning. Okay?”

“No,” she pouted, “but if we have to do without Wisefellow’s help for another week, I suppose we must. Have fun playing with the Americans.” She blew him a kiss and faded from existence.

If only I had time to play anymore, Gregor thought in annoyance. Ah well, I was never as good at that part of it as I was at the technical side anyway. Nor as interested, he admitted, peering closely at the map of Crucible spread out before him.

Archimago had either brilliantly extended their appeal, or made a colossal marketing error. It all depended on how their user base reacted to the change in the accepted, and well beloved, system. Gamers could be agonizingly protective of their favorites, and players of the unusually immersive Crucible more so than most.

To find out, he should distribute the new information as soon as possible and gauge the results, and he would start with Andrew, his American friend. With Druin out running errands for Gil de Wraithmorte, it would be impossible for Gregor’s alter-ego, Wisefellow, to make contact, but luckily Gregor knew Andrew’s RL net address and would send the information there. He shut the map, compressing the file it represented and sent it back to his home computer in Greece, and was ready to log out when a sharp pinging alerted him to another guest. Sighing with irritation, he waved his hand to allow the unknown visitor access to his online workspace.

His “caller” was a recorded v-mail, from a fellow student from the university in Athens. The image of a thin, bearded man of thirty materialized before him. “Gregor? I have something odd here. I got it from an undergraduate in my section on digital marketing, and I recalled that you had an interest in these things.” The figure offered a small shining cube, representing a block of data. “I seem to remember you mentioning this product in our netvironmental design class, and thought you might be interested. See you on campus.” The form faded away.

Curious, Gregor touched the cube, accessing the files within. Several small images spat out, fragmentary colors and textures. Text and video notes were appended to each one.

Curious, he turned one over, a square of smooth purple texture, like a fabric sample. It floated in midair a few inches above his hand, a strange, flat jellyfish. He brushed it with a finger, and it rippled. Cloth?

He reached for another of the little data blacks. This one was a solid cube of some unfamiliar metal. Each side was decorated with a complex pattern of incisions. Peering closely at the texture, he could see that it was made up of tiny overlapping shapes that looked oddly familiar. He could swear he’d seen the little detail pattern before, but he wasn’t quite certain where.

He spent a few moments puzzling over the fragments, and then studied the notes which had been attached.

After five minutes, his curiosity had become fascination.

After ten, it became anger. Andrew’s problems would have to wait; what he had here was going to be very, very important.

Andrew, frankly, wasn’t in a receptive mood. Another day of bleak half-existence in that fuzzy time between the end of summer and the beginning of school had been interrupted by an unexpected visit of a different sort.

An hour after lunch, he had been browsing the sites of a music retailer, and wondering whether enough money would be leftover from tuition for some shopping, when his father knocked on the door of his bedroom.

“Mind if I come in?” Andrew was almost surprised by the question. Usually, the assumption in this family was that his parents had the unlimited right to check up on their offspring. His youth had been punctuated by snap inspections of his homework, his computer files, the cleanliness of his room and the backgrounds of his friends and any potential dates. He had always figured it was a natural, if irritating, consequence of their generational insistence on “responsible parenting,” a term which to Andrew seemed associated equally with security that one was doing “the right thing” for one’s children and guilt about too little direct contact.

His father’s profession, as an editor of distance-education materials, didn’t help. It might also have contributed to his parents’ timidity when faced with the real-life breathing reality of their oldest child.

Andrew motioned to the bed as the cleanest place to take a seat, thinking absurdly that his father looked as if it were he that was about to be grilled. He wore a smile, which he no doubt thought was of the appropriately “chipper” sort to put his only son at ease, but Andrew wasn’t having any of it.

Instead, he flung himself onto the virlo. “Yes? What’s up?”

“Hey there, Anders, I was just walking by, saw your light on...”

Andrew winced at the childhood nickname. “I’m kind of busy, dad.”

“Oh.” His father was silent for a moment. “Busy with?”

“Stuff.”

“Ah yes, stuff. I remember stuff. I remember I could do ‘stuff’ for hours on end, and my mom would ask me ‘what are you doing?’ and I’d say ‘stuff.’ I was always amazed she couldn’t understand what I meant. This must be what they call karma.”

Andrew rubbed his eyes, too tired to appreciate the bantering tone, which he was certain hid some subtle barb or other. “Yeah, karma. So I’ll just get back to...”

“Funny you should mention being busy,” his father broke in, a bit desperately. “Your mother and I were talking about your schoolwork. We’re very happy with your grades, of course...”

Here it comes, Andrew thought. When they start by buttering you up, you know there’s a hammer in it.

“...you just seem so, well, idle these days, that we—“

“I don’t think so,” Andrew interjected. “I have about six weeks left before school starts, and I’m already registered for classes. I have enough saved up to cover my part of tuition, and I’ve arranged housing.”

“That’s not quite it,” his father said with a pained expression. “We’re talking more generally, about what you’re going to do
after
graduation next year.”

“What did you have in mind,” Andrew said in a chilly voice.

His father rattled on, oblivious in his nervousness. “I have a friend on the board at Millerey Publishing, and we thought maybe that—“

“No thank you,” Andrew said decisively. “I don’t have time for an internship during the school year.”

“We were thinking about a short-term introduction, maybe during the next two weeks, before school starts. It might not be what you want to do with your life, but it hurts to see you spending all your time so...” his father gestured helplessly at the room, the unmade bed, the computer, “...so bored.”

“Bored?” This was a new twist on his parents’ insistence on a more structured lifestyle. “But I’m not bored. I have plenty of things to keep me occupied.”

“Online things, computer games, chat zones, we know that,” his father acknowledged. “But that’s got to be getting a little, well, distant, right? I mean, it’s not like having real growth, real experiences, real friends.” Now it was his turn to wince, aware too late that he had gone too far.

“What? You don’t think my friends are real now?” Andrew could hear the aggravation seeping into his voice, but felt powerless to stop it. “Should I call someone up so you can confirm I’m not just muttering to myself all day?”

“Your mother is worried about you, she thinks you must be lonely.”

“Lonely?” Andrew fumed. “Why would she think that? I mean there’s you and mom, there all the time to talk to...oh, wait, silly me, you’re locked away in your office five days of the week, working! On computers!”

“That’s not the same thing at all!” said his father defensively. “We’re doing practical things, work! You know, so we can afford all these computers and things?”

“Fine, I’m getting lots of use out of it. You should be thrilled.”

“Hey, you don’t have to take that tone of voice with—“

“What are you going to do, send me to my room? Ground me? That’s all I want! That’s all I need out of you. That’s certainly all I’m getting from you, isn’t it?”

His father, his face a mask of hurt, stalked away towards the open door.

“Don’t worry, dad,” Andrew called out after him, agonizingly unable to bottle up his own anger. “I’ll stay right here. I’ll get good grades. I’ll pay my own tuition. You’ll make back your investment, I promise. Tell mom.”

The door slammed.

The senior executive for accounts receivable at Archimago Technologies (a Vital Enterprises corporation) wrinkled his lip with distaste. His morning e-mail had contained the usual batch of reports and requests, but one missive, flagged with a bright red border and blinking insistently in a manner which suggested highest priority, had pre-empted his regular workload.

It was a tracking request, which should have been easy enough to execute, except that the author had omitted information crucial to a proper computer search. The e-mail mentioned a significant number of transactions, some several dozen in all, and requested full invoice accountings for each one. However, while the list provided the customer, date, and the amount in each case, there were no invoice numbers to accompany them.

Worse, when he consulted Archimago records for those dates, there were no records of payments on any of them which matched the figures he’d been given. Several of the companies had never had any dealings with Archimago that he could trace. While the Archimago company often did consulting and piecework for digital entertainment, technology, and engineering groups, they had never contracted with, say, a shoe company or a restaurant chain. Archimago didn’t do advertising. It never had. The very idea was absurd.

He might have filed the request away to contemplate later, but the return address indicated that his report was intended for Evelyn Hernandez, Administrative Assistant to the new President of Archimago, Bernardo Calloway. Clearly it was another of the junior Calloway’s bizarre requests, like the ones which had plagued the financial division for over a week now. Every day there were requests for stock reports and earnings figures from a mad variety of companies, competitors and otherwise, many of them graphically compared to Archimago stock’s trading price, to new user signup requests, usage statistics, and other equally incomprehensible statistics.