Massively Multiplayer (22 page)

Druin hiked back across the restored magical bridge, then motioned Malcolm and Jenna down from their pedestals. They complied, and, with one last, longing glance at the gleaming metal chest and the sunlight beyond, mutely followed him back to the mouth of the corridor.

And the universe exploded.

“Holy...did you see that?!? Do you see it? Look at that thing!”

Wolfgang Wallace did indeed see it: a vertical shaft bisecting the almost flat readout floating before him. It represented a sizeable portion of the Western Server’s bandwidth, a flood of data sufficient to convey a full video conference, in three-dimensions, of the entire board of directors. He suspected strongly that a lot of it was flak, decoy data which hid the actual message being conveyed to...

“There,” one of the computer security team said. “That’s the target. South American server port. But the signal’s being routed through the corporate bandwidth. I could turn it off from here...”

“Don’t you
dare
,” Wolfgang cautioned him. “I want all of this. We’re recording? Good. Do we know which detail zone, and which players are receiving this, yet? Good, these three? We have that window open yet? Excellent, pan it in. Down. Uh, right...there. There they are, looks like a fighter, some lady with a crossbow, and...what in the name of Bjarne Stroustrop is
that
?”

To Druin, it seemed that the universe had suddenly been replaced with an incandescent fire. He shut his eyes tightly, aware as he did so that he could feel the heat radiating from the thing which stood before him. His stomach knotted and his head swam with vertigo as he contemplated taking off the goggles which he knew were on his head, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to turn away from the spectacle before him. Somewhere in that shroud of flames was the form of a human being, blazing from within like a piece of the sun. Distantly, a chorus of ethereal voices chanted, a wash of sound that rose and fell with the waves of light coruscating off the radiant figure which filled his vision. He could feel himself sagging to his knees, when he heard the voice, a thunderous, echoing voice that threatened to drive his ears into his brain.

“A MOMENT, MORTALS” it thundered. “LET ME TURN THIS DOWN A NOTCH.”

Abruptly, the light receded, leaving behind a shape like a hole cut in the flames which still smoldered, but which no longer seemed likely to melt the stone walls. The outline was recognizably human, arguably male, but it was impossible to determine any details. The passage beyond was clearly visible through the man-shaped hole in the sheet of fire. The noise, too, ebbed, becoming a constant murmur which echoed the thankfully more moderate tones of the speaker’s voice.

“That will do,” it said in breathy tones which sounded like three or four whispered voices blended together. “I congratulate you, Druin Reaver. You have prevailed over the challenge. You shall be honored.”

Druin rose to the moment with his usual eloquence. “I, uh, what?” Vaguely, he was aware that this mysterious thing must be a catalyst, one of the game’s signature denizens, slated to advance the larger purposes of the Crucible world. Why he had been singled out for attention, however, was beyond him. “I mean, didn’t we fail? We didn’t get the chest...”

“A distraction for the unworthy,” the image rasped dismissively. “Had you been so foolish as to pursue the false exit, a further snare would have blasted you to atoms.”

Well, Druin thought uncomfortably, that was a close one. Nice of them to mention.

Jenna, who hadn’t the experience, or possibly the constitutional ability, to hold her tongue in the presence of a power that was clearly out of their league, would mention it anyway. “Wait a second! The riddle said ‘One for all.’ Wasn’t that a sacrifice of one person so all the others could leave?” Clearly, her newfound pride as a solver of riddles was on the line.

“’One for All’ is the law of compassion. The challenge was not for one to die that others might live, but for one to choose that all should live. In rejecting the false path, Druin Reaver, you have proven that you will not make the selfish choice which exploits others for easy gain. The way of compassion is the more difficult, the less obvious, but you have chosen it. And you shall be honored.”

“Oh that’s okay,” Druin said weakly, dimly aware that being “honored” by a catalyst might mean even more responsibility. He already felt inadequate to satisfy the confidence which Jenna and Malcolm placed in him, not to mention the duty he still owed to Gil. “We would like to leave this place, please. No further honor necessary.”

“You shall be honored,” the fiery vision said, as though it hadn’t heard him. “Behold, you shall make your way to the Whetstone Pass, in the Cataract Mountains. There you shall join forces with other worthies, to purge the world of a dire evil.”

“Umm, I’d really like to, but I really don’t think I’m—”

“You fear,” the figure intoned, and Druin suddenly knew, though no face was visible, that it was smiling at him. “That is wisdom too, of a kind. But you shall not go forth without aid.”

With another gesture, a larger section of the opposite wall ground aside, revealing a simple stone stairway leading up to the surface of the island.

“The Whetstone Pass, Druin Reaver,” it repeated emphatically. “In four days’ time. I shall be watching you.”

It spread its arms, and with a final burst of whispered chanting, snuffed out like a candle.

Wolfgang Wallace leaned back from the desktop, sweating. “I am going to be charitable,” he said cautiously, “and assume that we got all of that.”

“Yes sir,” the security technician at his elbow beamed. “I can’t guarantee it’ll mean anything, but we captured the whole stream, from both sides.”

“Good. Now, I want to know who that is,” he jabbed a finger at the tiny figure of Druin, receding up the tiny stairway in the display, “as well as the other two. It sure sounded like they were as clueless as we are, but let’s not take any chances with the little we know.”

“What else, sir?”

“I want a full analysis of that entire data stream. I feel pretty comfortable with the assumption that the figure in flames was our mysterious hacker. He did some pretty clever things to disguise himself – I want you to do even more clever things to remove that disguise. Vocal patterns, any background noise you can detect in the audio, any visual cues, accent, speech patterns. Get everything there is to know about the Whetstone Pass area – I think it’s Antiquan, so it’s maintained on the European server. We also know from hints he just dropped that he’s lined up several other users for whatever he has in mind. Find out who, and when.”

“I notice you keep saying ‘he,” Marybeth put in. “How certain are you of that?”

“Maybe ninety percent,” Wolfgang shrugged. “All four of the layered voices he used to make up that vocal arrangement were male, so I’m betting there’s a strong identification there. And this guy clearly does plenty of immersion work, so he’s not going to be courting CI-Schizo if he can help it.”

“Sir, I noticed he’s talking in standard quest terminology,” one programmer offered. “Could it be that this is just a hijacker, using our servers for his designs?”

“This may just be a case of someone playing out their little game-designer fantasies on our equipment,” Wolfgang admitted, “but given the skills he’s displayed, I sincerely doubt it. With his talents he could easily get a job here, or half a dozen other companies. I think this is somebody with a very peculiar axe to grind. Our job is to find out what it is.”

“Right,” Marybeth said, obviously deep in thought. “I know some people from Cal Tech who went to work at government agencies. Maybe I can borrow some of their experts.”

“Fine, just do it quietly,” Wolfgang cautioned her.

“And where will you be going,” she asked tentatively.

“Upstairs. It’s past time that we informed corporate about this mess.” Wolfgang brightened a fraction at the thought. “Bernardo Calloway and Vital Enterprises were awfully eager to get their hands on our baby. Let’s see if they can handle it.”

Chapter Eleven - Clue

Mrs. Evelyn Hernandez was busy scheduling performance reviews. The file of junior technician who had publicly declared in a departmental meeting that anyone without a programming degree was a “sub-human” was silently moved to the bottom of the queue. Two accountants who she knew had volunteered unpaid overtime during the shift to Vital Enterprises’ payroll system got shifted to the top.

Her desktop chimed softly, alerting her to new mail. Pausing only to flag the accountants’ files “urgent,” she drummed her fingers in her password sequence and accessed her messages.

Subject: Re: Urgent info. request

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

CC:[email protected]

Mr. Calloway, pursuant to your information request, I have determined that none of the transactions referenced are, or ever were, undertaken by Archimago Technologies prior to its incorporation with Vital Enterprises, and that no accounts exist within our database for the vast majority of the companies indicated (see exceptions, noted below). However, further investigation has ascertained that payments in precisely equivalent amounts were made to Vital Enterprises, Special Marketing division, during the eight months prior to the acquisition of Archimago. V-mail contacts with our counterparts in the Special Marketing Division of Vital Enterprises have revealed that said payments were apparently associated with research work undertaken by that division, cross-referenced with the acquisition of Archimago Technologies and directed to your attention (see attachment for individual project references, by client). I would be happy to pursue the matter further, at your request.

Simon Beasom, Sr. Exec. Mgr., Accounts Receivable

Ms. Hernandez’ left eyebrow rose slightly, a surefire index, for those who knew her, of acute interest. It was not a particularly friendly kind of interest. The last recipient of Ms. Hernandez’ raised eyebrow had been a Senior Investment Associate who had ordered that the secretarial pool should no longer have access to executive parking lot. He had later found his well-appointed office furniture mysteriously requisitioned by an overseas division. It still hadn’t been replaced, and he was down the hall in his office, right now, perched uncomfortably on a cardboard box.

The information from Accounts Receivable was intriguing, but incomplete. She had established that her mysterious informant was right about one thing: the odd collection of companies referenced in Bernardo’s financial reports and in her enigmatic e-mail,
had
done some kind of business with the company. Not, however, with Archimago itself, but with Vital Enterprises, before the buyout was even formalized. More frustratingly, there was no indication of just what that work had been. She had never heard of a “Special Marketing” division at Vital, and had no idea what type of work they did, and little way to find out.

A final clue, however, was provided by the fact that these accounts had all been “directed to your attention” – that is, to Bernardo Calloway himself. The Executive Manager of Accounts Receivable must have been mightily perplexed, wondering why Bernardo’s office was trying to dig up information about accounts Bernardo himself had signed off on. Maybe they’d simply chalk it down to absentmindedness. Certainly they couldn’t be more confounded than Ms. Hernandez.

Why was Bernardo Calloway, who was supposed to be heading the development of immersive technologies for Vital Enterprises, signing off on “Special Marketing” accounts?

She reached to switch off her desktop display when the unit chimed again, alerting her that another e-mail had arrived:

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

From: [email protected]...

Ms. Hernandez read Wolfgang’s message with interest, then slowly went over it again, paying particular attention to the key passage: “...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...”

Sometimes the universe fits together like a well built piece of machinery. But sometimes even well-built pieces of machinery don’t work right...particularly when there is no instruction manual.

Wolfgang’s message indicated that the mysterious “work” done for the client companies had something to do with these “texture files” and so on from the Crucible game. But there Ms. Hernandez’ chain of deduction was arrested. For all that she worked at a software firm, Ms. Hernandez’ computer skills were limited to the professional operation of her desktop. Her conception of how large programming projects such as Crucible were put together was fuzzy. It was possible, she supposed, that these companies were simply what Wolfgang’s letter mentioned, “third party” consultants who provided bits and pieces of programming to Vital Enterprises, who incorporated them into the new version of the Crucible engine. But why would they be paying Vital Enterprises for that work, instead of the other way around? And, even worse, there wasn’t a single software developer on the list. Who would ask a shoe company, or a cosmetics firm, to write their software? And what did Special Marketing projects for other Vital Enterprises companies have to do with a computer game?

Had Ms. Hernandez possessed a more robust understanding of the software development cycle, or even certain key information about the history of the Special Marketing division of Vital Enterprises, or a degree in psychology with a specialization in unconscious cognition, she might have asked these questions, and maybe even pieced together some answers. But she didn’t.

Flagging the two messages for later attention, Ms. Hernandez returned to her scheduling.

“Have you climbed to the top mast yet?”

“What?” Druin shook himself from his contemplation of the slow sweep of waves, the bob and dip of the uncharted island as it receded in the wake of the
August Rose
. “Oh, no, I haven’t. Too scared, I guess.”