Massively Multiplayer (18 page)

In fact, many of the companies Bernardo Calloway had shown an interest in were listed in this new inquiry. It seemed likely that this represented another of the mysterious new President’s mysterious new requests. Was Calloway intending that Archimago branch out?

Thinking of Bernardo made the senior executive’s head ache, but it also gave him an idea. Perhaps these figures didn’t represent payments to Archimago at all, but to Archimago’s new parent company, Vital Enterprises. Certainly Vital, with its far-reaching grasp and broad investment strategy, might have had dealings with any of the companies on this list. That would also explain the lack of regular invoice numbers for these transactions. It would require some calls to his peers at other Vital Enterprises companies to get the information he needed, and a good deal of time to track each transaction by hand. The more he thought of it, though, the more he thought that figuring out the relationship between these companies and Vital Enterprises might provide the key to the new President’s baffling demands. Already composing the v-mail in his head, he called up a directory and got to work.

“So, you finally had it out with him?” Patrick Kettridge – known universally as “Trick” – shook his head sadly.

“With both of them,” Andrew sighed. The dull gray metal surfaces of his friend’s netspace suited his mood. “As soon as dad left, my mom came in. He’s the one with the temper, though. She’s just like ice – really cold. Sat there on the edge of my bed, looking...I don’t know,
wounded
or something.”

“Rough. Inevitable, but rough. Everybody has it out with their parents some time or other. If you don’t, you go septic. Or you’re some kind of robot.”

“Did you?”

“Oh yeah, the day after I moved to the college. I decided I needed the face time in class more than with my family, and my mom blew her coolant. Unslick. Very. But hey, what was I gonna’ do, keep shuttling back and forth to their place in the sticks? You have it easier – you live in this town, so you can do the time at school without paying rent.”

“Uh, yeah,” Andrew hesitated. “About that. I kind of implied to my parents I’d be moving out.”

Trick cupped a hand to an ear, a purely theatrical gesture in the artificial netspace. “Did I hear that right? Are you thick?”

“Hey, aren’t you the one that said everybody has to have it out with their parents?”

“Well yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to go postal on ‘em. Where are you going to live, man?”

“I don’t know yet. I made enough for a term’s rent on an apartment, and I can get housing assistance from the university, if I go on work study. But I need to find a place temporarily...” he looked up hopefully.

Trick, a theater major and wise in the ways of body language, got the hint right away. “Oh man. I don’t know. It would be a really tight fit in my quad.”

“It’s only a few weeks until school starts. And I’ll bring my computer too,” Andrew promised, “to sweeten the deal. I know you don’t have a virlo, and you can use mine as soon as I’m done with this project I’m working on.”

Trick considered the offer for a moment. “There’s an audition for a net production of Macbeth next Thursday. Could I have it for that?”

“Of course.”

“Then bring your sleeping bag. You’re bunking on the floor.”

“Do we tell Bernardo?”

“What do you think?”

“Okay, let me rephrase that.
When
do we tell Bernardo?”

“Not until I have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“Alright, we’ll turn up the security scans, and let you know if we find anything. I expect the same from you, though.”

Wolfgang Wallace turned away as the chief hardware engineer for Archimago’s system servers made for the elevators. The very fact that someone had suggested keeping this breach of the system from the President of the company spoke volumes about the damage which Kipling and his cronies had done to relations between the management and programming divisions of the company.

Marc Tenser had once told him there would be days he’d regret his promotion to head of systems. “People think ‘systems’ is only a reference to computer systems,” Tenser had warned him, “when it’s the human systems that will require most of your attention. And they break more often.”

It was bad enough that he was having to run interference between the programming divisions, which should have been the administration’s job, but he longed to return to the main server in order to see if any progress had been made. There were probably more comfortable facilities in the conference rooms, but given their experiences so far, Wallace wanted as close a connection to the central server as he could manage, and that meant the workstations on the eighth floor.

First, though, he’d have to answer the e-mail which was blinking insistently over his desktop.

Subject: [Fwd:] Urgent info. request

From: [email protected]

Forwarded To: [email protected]

----- Original Message -----

Subject: Urgent info. request

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Din Collier, Exec. Admin. Special Projects, Archimago Technologies. Mr. Collier, I am reviewing some material related to the recent turnover of administrative function, and have come across the following references which were separated from their proper project heading. I would be grateful if you would please identify the references. Please reply to this address.

E. Hernandez for B. Calloway

----- ----- -----

Wolf, can you believe these people? Are they more incompetent, or more irritating? Anyway, here’s their list, from the attachment. It looks like your stuff, but feel free to pass it along to the server admins. if it’s not familiar. I don’t have time to look this stuff up for them.

-- Din

Wolfgang scanned the appended list briefly, wondering why Din thought he had more time to babysit Bernardo Calloway than anyone else. Luckily, the material looked familiar, though he checked several references, just to be sure.

“gh_1257_lf” The “lf would be “left foot.” “umFctCa12_r7.” Well “Fct” was clearly “facial” and “Ca” denoted “caucasian.” “AzSS_env_wd_gen13” was “Antiquan Zone, SoundScape, environmental, woodland, generic number 13.” Yes. Didn’t the Calloways do any homework before they bought this company? At least this particular bit of daily administrative headache was easily dealt with.

He made a quick note of the first four codes in the series. Accessing the house-wide intranet, Wolfgang made a quick search for any mentions of this grouping of codes and discovered several, mostly where he had suspected they would be. Charts detailing the rollover of files, a few notes from accounting on payments for services, a few mentions in the marketing division of all places. Despite the anomalies, he had no trouble confirming his first guess:

Subject: Re: [Fwd:] Urgent info. request

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

CC:[email protected]

Mr. Calloway, I have reviewed the list of unfamiliar project references which you sent to Din Collier of Special Projects. They were forwarded to my attention because they are not referring to the Special Projects division or any of its operations. Instead, they are a list of filenames, all related to the Crucible game product. Specifically, the files referenced in your attachment are all textures, audio clips, effects files, and other minor features of the new version 4.0 of the Crucible game engine, almost all of them provided by third-party programming teams retained by Vital Enterprises for that purpose. If you need specific details on each item, or if I can be of any further assistance, please let me know.

Wolfgang Wallace, Exec. Admin., Systems Architecture.

In a dark room, fingers tapped away on a keyboard. Three separate holographic displays now hummed quietly in the corners, each one tracking the movements of a particular figure.

In one scene, an old woman knelt in a cramped tent with a half dozen men. While the men were all heavily armored warriors, they deferred silently to the wizened old crone as she pointed out targets on a map. Someone dared to ask a question. The woman glared silently for a time, then drew her finger across her throat.

In another display, a young man in burnished golden armor practiced marksmanship on a distant straw target seated on a chair. Every once in a while, he paused to study a precise diagram of a throne room. He stepped a few paces back, adjusted the sights on his crossbow, and fired again.

In the third, a village was burning. In the middle of the carnage, a man waving an axe in one hand and a torch in the other was laughing. A screaming peasant fled across a field. The laughing man cut her down.

The fingers tap-tap-tapped, and the displays paused. “Ruthless, committed, and power-hungry.” said the owner of the fingers. “Almost perfect.”

The tapping fingers paused to reach into the air and pluck down several orange blocks. “Expand five, seven, and nine,” a voice whispered. Obligingly, the blocks blew up, and he compared their contents. “Too flighty,” he muttered, discarding one. It snapped back into the nearest holographic display. “Too...preachy,” he decided of another, and replaced it as well.

The third he opened further, unfolding pictures, video of a tiny figure running through sea caves, pursued by trolls, arguing with a fat man in a blood-red tabard, leading a small band through a path in the woods, protecting them from an ambush by wood sprites. The long fingers shuffled the pictures, then paused over a smiling profile. The picture snapped wide: a young man, grinning at his companions, most of them clearly wounded but in good spirits, releasing their tensions as the young man issued some self-deprecating joke.

“Druin Reaver,” said the voice. “Trustworthy, cooperative, a little naive.”

The fingers lifted the orange block and snapped it into place between the old woman and the laughing man.

“Perfect.”

Druin opened his eyes to a cramped, unfamiliar room, and panicked until the insistent creaking noises reminded him that he was on Tom Thunder’s ship, the August Rose. This was a small cabin below-decks, in the forward part of the ship. Opening the door, he dimly spied the expanse of a lower deck, most of the space consumed by what looked like large drums laying on their sides, which he recognized after a moment’s scrutiny as some crude form of cannon. Each black metal barrel was circumscribed by incised runes which had been lined with melted brass. Shaking his head, he made his way to a plain wooden ladder and climbed up to the main deck.

The sun was a bright yellow glow, low on a horizon studded with the green and gray of the archipelago which characterized this part of the Inner Sea. Overhead and near him on deck, crewmen bustled about, pulling ropes, making notes on charts, and performing other, less comprehensible, tasks. Observing their colorful clothing, he made his way back to the high quarterdeck, where Captain Thunder was in conversation with Jenna.

“...so no, lass, I can’t say as I’ve ever really “pillaged” anybody. Don’t mean I wouldn’t relish the prospect.” The Captain had a grin like a bearded shark. “Ah, here’s our passenger. Slept well, I trust?”

“Captain Thunder,” Druin nodded a greeting. “I couldn’t help but notice that your crew are all players, not NPCs. Doesn’t hauling ropes get, well, boring?”

Thunder frowned at him. “Aboard ship, we try to maintain an
icy
calm,” he said quietly, “and not get too excited about anything. Boredom, at sea, is usually preferable to the alternative.”

The Captain’s emphasis wasn’t lost on Druin, who kicked himself mentally for the blunder. Of course most players preferred to remain “icy” – in character – particularly when dealing with unfamiliar people.

“Er, sorry. I meant to say, most of your crew look, um, experienced. Don’t they sometimes want more, uh, challenge?”

Thunder laughed, “what do you think could be more challenging than fighting a hurricane, knowing that if you fail it’s your life, your ship, your cargo, and everyone you’ve known at stake? Or trying to make port with a needed cargo, getting all you can out of the sails, racing time and tides, knowing that folk will die if you don’t bring them the weapons, or the medicine, or the mage, or whatever it is they desperately need? Or facing the broadside of a Southron pirate, battling for your life to send him, and not you, to the bottom of the sea?”

“You fight pirates a lot?” Jenna asked uncomfortably.

“Not so’s often as we’d like,” Thunder grinned. The
August
is too well armed, and too well known to be much of a target. More often we see action against naval vessels from Southron, or Antiquan revenue cutters. Downright testy about paying their tolls, your Antiquans.”

Druin didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “I thought the war with Southron was over a year ago. And this doesn’t look like our regular navy.” Most of Westerly’s naval vessels, he knew, were manned by small cadres of player “officers,” commanding hordes of NPC crew who did most of the actual fighting and dying.

“We’re what you’d call ‘irregular,’” Thunder acknowledged with a bow. “It’s valuable to have a vessel or two what know how to actually
sail
the Inner Sea, truce or no truce. And I have, umm, an
understanding
with our current Heptarch.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Truth to tell, Tansy’s an old stick in the mud, and the city councilors have her wrapped up in politics, but I knowed her when she was a wild one. Ah, she used to scorch the tables for dancing on ‘em.”

Druin carefully filed this information away in the part of his brain devoted to valuable facts he would probably never be in a position to use.

“As for Southron,” Thunder continued, “a peace treaty is one thing, and enforcing it is another. Whose going to make a fuss over a lone ship or two lost in a little scuffle out in the middle of the sea, far from witnesses? Particularly when there ain’t no survivors to make trouble?”

Jenna looked a little ill. “Am I getting this right? You guys actually had a
war
? In here? Over what?”