Solarversia: The Year Long Game (31 page)

She also loved the way VR was able to transport her to places in an instant. First she’d been in a virtual games room, then whizzing around Jupiter’s Red Spot, then dashing around a stockroom cupboard, and now, a few minutes later, she was back in the real world by the lake on campus.
The real world
. The thought was an unwelcome reminder of the two chores that awaited her attention.

She stared at the cursor still blinking by the title of her essay and groaned. Then she scrolled through her contacts until she was looking at Jockey’s number on her phone. Apparently their last call had been over ten months ago, something to do with the arrangements for her Krazy Karting heat.
Come on, Nova, one or the other. Apologies or cognitive bias
. She took a deep breath and pressed the number. Today was the deadline she had set herself for the task of apologising to him, its outcome attached to that stupid penalty. Never again would she agree to the punishments with Burner when she was drunk.

It seemed to ring forever without being answered. A horrible thought presented itself. What if Jockey had changed his number? Perhaps he’d lost his phone? Jesus, it might be something as innocent as him having left it at home. As she was about to admonish herself for leaving it too late, the line clicked through.

“Miss Negrahnu. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Jockey, hi,” she said, in a quiet voice, suddenly aware that despite many months of opportunity, she still hadn’t prepared anything meaningful to say.

“Has something bad happened?” he asked, sounding worried.

“No. I’m fine. Nothing bad. All good with me. Actually, something bad
did
happen, but it was awhile ago. Something bad that I said. To you. And I’m phoning to apologise.”

He was silent for a second. “I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting you to call like this.”

“If it’s a bad time—”

“Not at all, now’s great, let’s do it. First, let’s recap the details of our conversation. You know, so we remember who said what and exactly what’s being apologised for. Correct me if I’m wrong — I often am — but I’m pretty sure that the last time we spoke, you called me a fat prick? And Fraggers a shithole? Or have I got that wrong?”

She could tell from his tone that he was enjoying himself. As difficult as it was to hear him repeat what she had said, it felt good to hear his voice again.

“No, you have that right. Like I said, that’s why I’m calling. To apologise. Really, really,
really
apologise. Not because anyone told me to or because it’s the thing you’re supposed to do. I really am sorry. I was way out of line. A total bitch.”

“And it’s only taken you half a year to realise. Not bad.”

She giggled as tears welled in her eyes.

“It’s good to see that you’re learning
something
at uni anyway. Perhaps you could say it one more time? It had a rhythm to it.”

“I, Nova Negrahnu, hereby apologise unreservedly to Mr Dettori for calling him a fat prick and his awesome gaming cafe a shithole. I was way out of line.”

“That was glorious, thank you. I was sorry to hear about the Karting final, by the way. You deserved to finish the race, if not win it.”

“Yeah. That totally sucked. I reckon I would have won if I’d raced at Fragging Hell. You know, if I hadn’t been banned.”

“What’s prompted the call then? It sounds like you’ve stopped being an entitled brat, is that right?” She wiped away the tears with the sleeve of her jacket and broke into a smile as Jockey continued. “Because I operate a strict no-brats policy these days. And I’d be happy to remove your ban if you’ve changed your ways.”

“I think so. I hope so. I’m trying anyway.”

“Are you back in the ’Stone over Christmas or what?”

The
’
Stone
. It felt good to hear someone refer to Maidstone like that again. “Definitely. I haven’t escaped for good, you know. Parents wouldn’t let me, for a start.”

“Why don’t you come down for New Year’s Eve? Everyone misses you. Including me.”

“I’d love to. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Nova ended up having the longest conversation she’d ever had with him. She told him all about her visits to Sushi and her Super Nova project. They spoke about Project Drone, about how Jockey had been right about her getting into trouble, and about how she didn’t regret it, although she did concede that she’d do things differently if given a second chance.

And he told her the latest gossip from the cafe: which regulars were still in The Game, the failed attempts to beat her darts score, and who was shagging who. She was already looking forward to New Year’s Eve, and catching up with the old crew.

As she went to put her phone away, ecstatic at the prospect of not being Burner’s servant for the week, she froze. Walking along the gravelly path was Charlie, hand in hand with Holly. She might not have been wearing her golden bikini, but she still managed to look like a total slapper. Nova made a weird guttural sound, a cocktail of burp and hiccup. She couldn’t let them see her like this, tear-stained and alone like a right Billy-no-mates. It was bad enough that she had seen them. There was nowhere to hide. The terrace in front of the cave was barren, save for a few rocks, and she was already sitting on top of the largest one.

She grabbed the front of the rock and tried to slump behind it by lowering her bum down the other side. She half-succeeded. Which meant that she half-failed. Her bum reached the ground, but her back was now wedged between the rock and the cave wall behind her. She was stuck fast. Over the top of the rock poked her feet, her shoulders and her head.

At that moment Holly looked over and caught her eye. She stared for a second as if trying to work out what she was seeing, and then began to pull at Charlie’s arm and shriek with laughter. Every spare drop of blood surged to Nova’s cheeks. She gave an uncomfortable little wave and wished for a quick and painless death.

***

The sixth floor of Spiralwerks HQ had kicked off, big time. To an outside observer it might have looked like a battle to generate the biggest racket, humans versus machines. The machines had resorted to beeps, bleeps and bells, the humans to yells and fists thumped on desks. Whatever you called it, the result was an unholy, migraine-inducing cacophony.

Loudest of the humans was Carl Stedman, Spiralwerks’ CTO, who was repeatedly slamming his palm onto his desk, turning the air around him a vulgar shade of blue. The technical team called, “Yes, Carl,” like obedient sous chefs, and hollered responses to his questions when they could, but they all lingered a way back from his desk, keeping, what looked to Arty, like a fearful distance.

Arty worried about Carl. The late nights had taken a toll on all of them, but Carl had been affected more than most. He spent such long hours at the office that he frequently didn’t go home at night and was still at his desk come the morning. Whenever something technical went wrong, he seemed to take it personally, beating himself up for weeks after the incident. Or, more recently, taking it out on one of his team. At first, Arty thought it was good, having someone so dedicated at the company. But just lately, he’d worried that Carl was working
too
hard. The bags under his eyes were so puffed he looked like he needed a month’s worth of sleep rather than the usual week’s.

“What’s up, Carl?” he asked.

“Server 451 is under attack. They’ve exploited a weakness we only discovered two days ago and were in the middle of patching. It’s left us wide open. They’ve already tunnelled through two firewalls. If they get through the third, they hit pay dirt.”

“Who’s
they
? Do we know?”

Carl shook his head. “We don’t know much. Looks like a professional job. Elite hackers. That probably narrows it down to about ten thousand people across the planet.”

“What happens if they get through the third firewall? What damage can they do?”

“Theoretically they’ve already gained access to certain processes. Read-only access, but still, not good. Graham, kick off those cron jobs we spoke about. Maria, get the inbound payloads over to security and get them scanned ASAP. God knows what’s in them.”

“What’s the worst-case scenario?”

“If they
do
get through, we’d need five minutes to isolate their bots. Failing that we’d have to reboot the server, which would log players out. Only the people on
that
server, but it would take a few hours to bring back up.”

“How many people would get logged out?”

“It’s the server that compiles the code for the planets and the spaceships. Probably in the low millions. On the plus side, it’s unlikely that anyone external has visibility of what’s going on. So far, anyway.”

It was the kind of situation that Arty deplored, a technical disturbance that he had no control over. The worst part was not understanding what was going on. It was like being back in France on the school exchange when his host family had taken him out for the day. An almighty kerfuffle had ensued in one of the back streets on the way home, some strange men shouting at the father of the family. He’d stood there, watching, not understanding what was being said or why, not knowing how serious the situation was or whether he was in any personal danger. He’d never felt so scared and alone in his life.

At least he didn’t feel scared now. Worried and confused, maybe, but not scared. He hated all the jargon involved in IT, the acronyms and abbreviations. They were all so misleading. He’d always thought pretty highly of firewalls, for instance. They sounded so cool: baddies send bots to attack you, and you react by erecting a wall of fire, blowing the fuckers sky high.
Take that, ’bots
. Totally badass. The reality couldn’t have been further from the truth. A load of gibberish displayed in an interface that Microsoft would have been ashamed of. Firewalls, schmirewalls.

Suddenly the monitors on Carl’s desk went wild, and he spasmed into rage. The veins on the side of his head looked ready to explode. “Graham, where are we with those cron jobs? They haven’t? Why the hell not? Jesus, what is it now? Maria, any news? Work with me people, not against me. Graham, update please? Well, sync them to the main screen so that we can all monitor them. Do I have to do all the thinking around here?”

Carl’s team translated his requests into computer code as fast as possible, then yelled back their answers, competing to be heard over one another. A list of planetary spaceships appeared in a table on the main screens at the front of the room. Data in the ‘Status’ column updated, one row at a time, from ‘Active’ to ‘Frozen’. Even Arty knew what that meant: spaceships at a complete standstill in deep space.

“Players will know something’s up now. Their distance counters will have stopped updating. I wouldn’t be surprised if … there you go, people have already started to tweet about it.”

“Issue the press release, and tell the teams to remain on standby,” Hannah said to one of her guys. Her team had assembled nearby and were in constant liaison with country managers from around the world. She and Arty turned to Carl, who was rocking his head from side to side like he was weighing up their options. “As soon as we repair the firewalls the spaceships will continue on their way. The hackers can’t interfere with the players themselves, not their lives or their items. All of that information is stored on a different server. Graham, what have you found? Bring it up on screen.”

An image of a bookshelf in the games room aboard one of the SS Plutos appeared. Carl zoomed in until the spines of the books were clearly visible. Everyone on the floor went quiet and stopped what they were doing. Bookshelves were programmed to contain a mix of titles that spanned the classics right the way through to recent releases. Many of them were self-published titles, written by players themselves, included because they’d won some quest or other. But this bookshelf no longer contained a literary pick ’n’ mix. Instead, Arty saw only one title on the shelf, repeated in endless identical editions. In a gold Gothic font embossed on a black leather cover, he read the words over and over:
Sacred Singularity
The Holy Order.

A dangerous, crazy enemy he’d never laid eyes on was attacking them for reasons he didn’t understand.
Now
he felt scared. This scared the crap out of him.

Chapter Thirty-One

Nova walked down the gangway with Burner to join a large group of people being hurried onto a scruffy looking fishing boat by a couple of arkwinis wearing waders and galoshes.

“All aboard the
Amritsar
,” yelled the captain. “We depart in less than two minutes. Take a life jacket from the rack, then take a seat and buckle up. There’s a storm on the way, and we don’t want anyone falling overboard. Like last Thursday. The incident delayed the tour schedule for the rest of the day. Master Arkwal was
not
happy.”

“When do you reckon Master Arkwal
is
happy?” Burner asked. “Maybe when he’s noshing off the Emperor?”

“Shush,” Nova said with a smile. “I don’t want you getting me in trouble again.”

They were here to learn about Banjax, whose story they’d accessed via the constellation that had appeared in the ceiling of their Corona Cubes that morning. Tracing its stars had caused one of the cube faces to dissolve, revealing a jetty that led to the fishing boat. The marble floor of Castalia’s Magisterial Chamber had been replaced by a swirling ocean, being whipped into a frenzy by a fierce wind.

The old boat creaked as the waves rocked it to and fro, sounding to Nova like it might break apart at any moment. The gangplank was raised and the anchor weighed. It took nine arkwinis to steer the boat, dwarfed as they were by the ship’s wheel. Three clung to the wheel’s right side, three to its left, and three stood behind it, balancing on each other’s shoulders so that the captain, the topmost arkwini, could see the route ahead.

“Nice to see that it’s coming along,” Burner said, nodding his head as he admired the artwork on the chamber walls.