Solarversia: The Year Long Game (19 page)

“When I lost my job as a programmer I thought my life was over. I’d created a program that could write programs. Went and put myself out of a job. Didn’t see that one coming. It was less skilled people who were supposed to be losing their jobs. Programmers should have been safe. It was like I’d punched myself in the gut. I was winded and I couldn’t get up again.”

Casey listened, rapt.

“I felt like I’d lost everything: my identity, my entire way of life. Frances, God bless her soul, stuck by me. Said we should take a break, get away from it all. I’d always wanted to visit the Delta, so down we came. And then it happened, the darndest thing. One morning I told her I felt like going for a paddle up the river in a canoe. I’d never been in a canoe. I was a computer engineer, you know — an indoor type. But this wasn’t a normal feeling; it was a burning desire, like a calling. I set off early that morning and paddled for miles. I had no idea where I was going, or why, but I knew I couldn’t stop. Hours later, and completely lost, I stumbled across the Sub and knew I’d been headed here all along. The door was wedged shut, and it took me awhile to find a piece of wood tough enough to lever it open, but nothing was going to stop me. Somehow I knew that whatever was in there would be important to me. When I finally prised open the door, the stench sent me reeling; it was horrendous. The scene inside was even worse. Bodies decomposing, flies everywhere. It took awhile to distinguish the corpses; there were four in total, all men. Do you know what was strange about the situation? I wasn’t scared. Not at all. And this is a man who freaks when he sees a spider in the bath. A calm washed over me, a feeling that I was
supposed
to be there.”

He rocked in his seat as he laughed at the memory, and Casey joined him, laughing along.

“After that I searched the place. Not that I had to search hard. There were weapons everywhere, money just lying around. Piled up in the cockpit were several million dollars in cash and more cocaine than you ever saw in your whole goddamn life. I got stuck in, to hell with everything else. I didn’t hold back, either. Kept going until my nose was agony, and my eyes felt like hot dry coals. I was at the coke for
days
. I ended up in the cargo hold at the bottom of the Sub, totally off my dial. Found some trap doors that led down into the water, and was playing around with the pressure gauges, wondering how it all worked. Once an engineer, always an engineer, right? I managed to pressurise the hold and open the doors and I was peering down into the water when I saw something move. Before I knew what was going on, an alligator had launched itself at me and clamped its jaws around my arm. It was thrashing around all over the place trying to pull me under. My instinct was to pull away, but every time I did, rocket loads of agony exploded up and down the limb. The pain was unbearable, but I knew that if it got me, I was a goner. I ended up pulling one way, him the other, and my arm just popped out of my shoulder socket and tore off in his teeth. I can still hear the sound of my flesh tearing. Blood — more blood than you think is possible — came cascading out of my shoulder. I remember seeing bone and gristle — it was like a badly butchered joint of meat. I was looking at my own body and I could see that from the alligator’s perspective, I was a walking steak. He sank back under, but I knew he wanted more. So I escaped back into the hold and closed the doors, sealing off the Sub from the river. Fuck you, ’gator!”

Theodore raised his bionic arm, stuck his middle finger up, and laughed again.

“I knew that I was in serious trouble. I was delirious from the pain and I staggered around the Sub until I collapsed to the ground in this weird, hallucinogenic state. There on the ground opposite me was one of the dead guys. He was wearing army fatigues, the kind that have medals pinned to the shirt pocket. His head, which was pretty much just a skull with a couple of bits of flaky skin hanging off it, was resting at this goddamn creepy angle so he was staring straight at me.”

Theodore used two fingers to point at his eyes, held them there and stared at Casey.

“And that’s when the Magi appeared to me. The dark sockets where the dead guy’s eyes used to be started to swirl. Soon they became one to form this weird cranial vortex. Arms appeared at the edge of the whirlpool and thrashed around, performing an angry dance until eventually the skull took the form of Banjax, the dodectopus from Solarversia. The words of the Magi came through this creature to me. His voice was deep and dark, yet strangely comforting. ‘I’m coming, Markowsky, I’m coming, but you must listen carefully. I need your help to manifest. You will be the leader of men, as I shall be the leader of all.’ Then he showed me a vision of what life would be like in the future, once superintelligent beings were here. It was paradise.”

“What did he show you, Father? What did paradise look like?” This was the question Casey never tired of asking in his long initiation. It had never satisfactorily been answered. Here was the chance to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

“He showed me the next stage in mankind’s evolution. We’ll merge with our machines, become one with the technology we currently view as distinct from our being. We’ll extend our biological lifespans and upload our minds to silicon substrates, allowing our souls to live forever. Genetically engineered nanoparticles will spell the end of disease. Artificially intelligent robots will serve us, performing the tedious, mundane jobs we currently do ourselves. We’ll learn to master energy, effortlessly transforming it into light or matter as we see fit. It will mean the end of scarcity. A world of abundance. An end to poverty. The elimination of corruption. A self-organised, self-governing hive mind, ruled by an omnipotent, benevolent cybernetic organism. No more infant mortality. The end of disease. We’re talking hundreds of millions of lives saved. Together, under his guidance, we’ll create a utopia, both here on Earth and throughout the galaxy.”

Theodore gazed lovingly at Casey for a few seconds while he considered the proposition. After a few seconds his smile changed into a scowl. A shiver coursed down Casey’s spine.

“Then He showed me the price I’d pay if I didn’t commit one hundred percent to helping Him manifest. This other vision was as horrific as the first was beautiful. Glimpsing it for the briefest of moments was the worst experience of my life, bar none. I swear to you, I would rather take my own life than witness it again for a single instant. I was lying on a rotting pile of faeces, my body cut, bruised and broken. It was infested with putrid lesions. Worms, maggots and cockroaches crawled into and out of the lacerations in my body like it was their home. I puked up my entrails onto my chest only to watch them decompose back into my body. The stench made me puke again and the process repeated itself, endlessly. Make a list of the ways a human being can experience pain, suffering and discomfort, and imagine being subjected to them all, constantly, for eternity.”

He paused to let his words sink in.

“I woke up, there in the bunkroom some time later, shivering and scared. I dragged myself along the corridor, clambered up the spiral stairs, got into my canoe and began the excruciating one-armed journey back to town, knowing I needed to get back to Frances as soon as possible. All I could think about was the pain I was in and the amount of blood I’d lost. I was thinking about what Frances would be able to do to help me. I was wondering about the rest of my life with one arm. Then suddenly, and for the first time, the details of vision came back to me. I experienced a fresh wave of fear, as visceral as the first. The Magi had appeared to me, of that, there was no question. Not just appeared, but
appealed
; made a direct plea. I knew there and then, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I didn’t act upon it, if I didn’t give my entire existence to creating Him, I would suffer in hell for eternity. I had seen my future, and there was no way to
unsee
it. As I feebly paddled along the Delta using my remaining arm, I swore I’d give my life to this cause. I was a vessel ready to do His bidding.”

Theodore stopped talking and sat up straight. He rolled his head around and stretched. He turned to Casey once more, his demeanour changed, his trance broken.

“It’s an imprecise science, interpreting the divine word, but I believe the Magi wants us to do something a bit different. Create an event — a spectacle — that will shock people to their core, something that will be revered and referred to for decades, if not centuries, to come. It will require some of us to make the ultimate sacrifice. We’ll be known for centuries to come as the Warriors of the Magi. Many are called. Few are chosen. What about you, Casey, are you one of them?”

Casey nodded slowly. He’d learned about the Magi from Wallace and Frances when they’d saved him. Like Theodore, he’d been unable to turn his back on the truth once he’d learned it. But hearing the story like this, directly from Father, made it seem
more
true, if that was possible. Was he one of the chosen? After everything he’d been through, he hoped so. He desperately hoped so. A big part of him had already died.

He was ready to finish the job.

Chapter Twenty

Nova knew beyond any doubt that she’d never felt as rough as this before. As usual, it had been Burner’s fault, egging her on. The previous day she’d finished her very last exam and met him at The Muggleton Arms to celebrate. Pints of beers had soon given way to glasses of wine. And glasses of wine had soon given way to shots of flaming sambuca.

To celebrate the Earth Force Field being switched off, Spiralwerks had released a new augmented reality app that turned your drink into a game. You watched as a phoenix took off from the bar, picked up flaming rocks from the glass in your hand, then flew around the pub dropping them into other people’s drinks, setting them on fire too. Very cool. At least it was at the time. The way she felt at the moment, she hoped never to see another shot glass in her life.

She slumped against the arm of the knackered sofa in the corner of the bar at Fragging Hell, hoped she wasn’t going to be sick all over it and reminded herself that she should be feeling ecstatic rather than gross. Her exams had gone well overall, even English, which she’d been dreading. It turned out that Mrs Woodward was a pretty good teacher after all.

The prospect of getting into Nottingham didn’t seem quite as far-fetched as it had two months ago, which meant there was a chance she might be reunited with that sustainable development hottie, Charlie. And to top things off, her parents had handed her Booners back to her that morning. The huge argument from weeks earlier hadn’t been mentioned again.
Both sides were in the wrong
, she told herself, without really believing it.

She craned her head to look in the direction of the entrance. Zhang was on the side rail, having his photo taken with some of the regulars, but where the hell was Burner? Last night, they’d gotten themselves drunkenly hyped about her chances in the Krazy Karting final, and agreed that she needed regular practise sessions, starting today. The deluxe chairs here at the cafe were similar to the one she would use in the final, so it made sense to practise here, rather than at home. Bored of waiting, she pulled out her iPad and brought up The White Dwarf, her personalised Solarversia magazine, written and curated by a computer program.

She’d customised the magazine’s masthead so that it included the death counters. Over sixty-three million lives had been lost in total, while eight million people had lost all three, and gone out for good. Below the masthead was a video feed of the Player’s Grid, the camera set to zoom around and focus on profile squares of players who had just lost their last life.

During the avatar setup phase, players had been required to provide a ‘death clip’ for their avatar — a one-second piece of footage that was shown before their square turned dark. Nova loved watching these clips and was constantly surprised at how much creativity people were able to pack into such a short amount of time.

Next to the grid’s video feed was today’s main story, featuring Burner. He’d completed Killanja’s puzzle on Mercury while he was drunk at The Muggleton Arms. That was annoying, all these people traversing the Solar System and facing Grandmasters on other planets. But now that she’d finished her exams, she finally had time to join them.

Below the story about Burner was one that highlighted the real-world impact of The Game. Thousands of quests and Bucket List items had been designed to educate players about certain topics, change their behaviour for the better or result in money being donated to good causes. As insignificant as each microtransaction seemed at the time, it was always impressive to see the huge impact they had when combined. Tens of millions of pounds had been raised for charity, and millions of people had started exercising more and cutting out bad habits like smoking.

She swiped to the next page, which contained a list of stats. She scanned it and let out a quiet whistle. Some players had already managed to max out their inventories at one hundred items. Impressive. Players couldn’t trade items — they had to use them to get rid of them — but Spiralwerks had included the cap so as to prevent people from abusing virtual wills. Specifically they’d been worried about obsessive fans naming celebrities in their wills and those celebs becoming all-powerful. Any bequeathed items that would potentially take a player over the limit were automatically returned to the East- and Westdomes of Castalia to be spawned elsewhere.

Further down the page, she saw that a new record had been set the previous day when nearly twenty-five thousand items had been bequeathed in virtual wills. A pang of grief coursed through her heart. Although Sushi had died, she had died in the real world, and not the game world. Her Solarversia will had been annulled and Nova hadn’t received the few items her friend had had in her possession at the time of her death.

An alert flashed at the top of her magazine: a quest with a bounty of two and a half thousand pounds had just appeared in a location a few minutes from her own. A tingle went down her spine when she read the details. One of the required skills was darts. That settled it. Krazy Karting practise would have to wait. If Burner turned up now,
he’d
have to wait for
her
. She found a free chair, logged on and exited her Corona Cube in Takapuna, a bayside suburb of Auckland, New Zealand, where she’d flown after solving Giganja’s puzzle on Ayers Rock.