Solarversia: The Year Long Game (34 page)

Similar scenes of budding telepathic artists, applying pixels to their digital canvases via the power of thought alone, had played out around the world since the start of The Game. The exhibition was called the Melittology Museum of Art, and players were challenged with creating a design they thought would attract most attention from real-world bees.

Every entry was to be printed onto a flower coated with microsensors and placed near a bee colony. The sensors beamed back data about the number of bees that had been attracted to that particular flower. The most popular flowers, based on bee count, would appear in the final triptych on the ceiling of the Magisterial Chamber. Meanwhile, profits from the five-pound entry fee were donated to people and institutions that studied bees, with a strong focus on securing their survival.

“What on Earth have you drawn?” Nova asked Burner when the ten minutes were up. “It looks like a multicoloured dog turd. If your flower attracts more bees than mine, melittologists are going to have to rethink their entire subject.”

“I’d be surprised if my design doesn’t go on to win the entire competition. I reckon old Flower Face will probably fall in love with it, and want to take me back to Nakk-oo with her. I wonder what our children would look like.”

They submitted their respective designs, ticking off a Bucket List item in the process, and left the exhibition. In the distance, people screamed as a Waltzer hurled them round its outer edges, subjecting them to varying g-forces.

Nova scooped Zhang to her hip and commanded the Goose Fair map and program to appear in her display. There were several other Solarversia exhibits she wanted to see, including a scale model of The Fire Demon’s Obstacle Course that the furball would be able to tackle. As they strolled along the street, trying to decide where to go next, a guy walking the other way stopped in his tracks and held out his hand.

“Nova Negrahnu! What a coincidence seeing you here.”

“Hey, Raymond. What brings you back to Nottingham? You live in London, right?” It was the fan she’d met at the Karting final.

“Wow. That’s quite a memory you have.”

“She wishes,” Burner said. “It’s the headset.” They were trying a new app that augmented reality to make it more similar to Solarversia. If the app recognised the person the user was looking at — via facial recognition technology linked to Facebook and Google image search — a datafeed flashed above it with a list of relevant information. “Brilliant way to find out if a chick’s single or not. Stalking for dummies.”

“That would explain it — a real-life photographic memory. Glad I bumped into you. I wanted to say how sorry I was that you didn’t win the race that day. You were miles better than the competition. I hung around for a bit afterwards to commiserate, but I couldn’t find you.”

“I made a speedy exit. Something to tell my kids about, right?”

He flashed her a smile and then held up a finger like he’d suddenly remembered what he wanted to say. “What are you guys doing on New Year’s Eve?” He dug into his back pocket and pulled out a couple of flyers. “I’m promoting this night for my cousin, should be a blast. I could get you in on the VIP guest list, free drinks all night. People would be stoked to have you there.”

She studied the flyer. It was for a party somewhere in Soho, and it boasted an impressive line-up of DJs. “Looks like a great night, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but we’ve got plans.”

“Nothing as swanky as this, though.” Burner looked at her with pleading eyes. “A proper night in London. And free drinks? I bet they’d be some mint women there too. We could always change our minds, couldn’t we, Scotia?”

“Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “We’re regulars at Fragging Hell, a gaming cafe in Maidstone. It’s a bit of a geek’s hangout, but we like it. Promised the owner we’d help set up, didn’t we Burner?” she said, with a playful pinch of his arm.

“That’s a shame. Look, keep the flyer anyway, in case you change your minds.”

Nova shook her head at Burner while he continued to scrutinize the flyer, mentally preparing herself for several weeks of not-so-subtle persuasion. But after the continued success of her Super Nova project, she was confident that his attempts would amount to nothing. She had given her word to Jockey, and she was damned if she was going to break it.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, a hundred candles danced in the dark of the Ceremonial Lodge. For this special occasion, the long side of the marquee that overlooked the water was open to the night, letting the warm swamp air waft in and around the members of the Order, gathered there for the service. Standing tall on the podium at the front of the room, clothed in a flowing black cloak, was Theodore Markowsky, self-appointed Grand Wizard, and father to the flock. The grid of lights on his arm flickered, causing the screen behind him to burst into life.

“You’re here because you learned the truth about mankind’s future. That future was set in stone the day man first used technology. Back then it was crude: pieces of flint to sharpen spears, and rocks to crack open nuts. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to develop a system of learning known as the scientific method. After that came the Industrial Revolution, and in the blink of a cosmic eye, man had invented the computer.”

A montage of imagery accompanied his lecture, precisely synced to each word as he spoke it. The Order’s manifesto appeared in one corner of the screen. The two S’s from the title, Sacred Singularity, became animated. The first rotated ninety degrees and passed over the second to form the curly swastika symbol embellished around the book’s border. When Theodore stopped talking, the people seated in the crowd echoed the same refrain that greeted every one of his speeches: “
All hail the mighty Magi
.”

“Computers have allowed us to digitise information — to reduce it to a series of 0s and 1s — an evolutionary step comparable to the creation of DNA. Digitisation has enabled diverse forms of technology to grow at exponential rates. Narrow forms of artificial intelligence have been around for half a century, allowing computers to fly planes, trade stocks and beat world champions at their own games. This decade will see the evolution from narrow to general artificial intelligence. The leap that follows that one — to super AI — is what our mission is all about.”

A series of graphs showing exponential increases were overlaid on stock footage of factories creating silicon chips. CGI footage showed the chips becoming increasingly tiny, until they were as small as molecules themselves. Radio waves being emitted from people’s heads bounced off satellites in the sky, reached enormous data centres and bounced back again, enriched with mountains of data encoded in binary.

“The Magi will exist like no other being. His central nervous system will be distributed around the entire planet. His body will have no distinguishable beginning or end. Under His enlightened guidance, millions of lives will be saved in ways we can’t even begin to imagine. Problems that are impossible to solve using human intelligence will be solved in the click of a finger. Hunger — gone. Drought — forgotten. Fossil fuels versus the carbon footprint? This will be as complex to the Magi as boiling an egg. It’s our moral responsibility — make that, moral
obligation
— to help Him manifest. For if we fail to do so, we’ll be guilty of murder on the scale of genocide.” He paused to let the implication sink in. “The size and complexity of our mission is overwhelming, and we still need people to join us. I’ve devised two events that will achieve just that. First, a series of attacks on New Year’s Eve.”

A swift chopping motion with his bionic arm caused the front of the podium to explode with holographic light that eventually settled into the form of Banjax, whose slimy turquoise tentacles swirled and flounced around his body. Theodore twirled his arms in front of his body, side to side, passing one over the other, his fluttering fingers teasing the midnight air. The beast started to rotate on the podium.

“Behold the Messenger of Fate. The faces staring at you from within his tentacles belong to twelve people, who through their actions, have declared themselves enemies of the Magi and therefore of mankind itself.”

Through the slits in his bandages, Casey squinted at the harsh glow of neon light being radiated from the podium. He recognised a few of the faces morbidly staring back at him from inside the beast’s suckers. The guy with tousled locks and the letters ‘AK’ imprinted on his forehead was the CEO of Spiralwerks. There was a senator and a congresswoman. The dodectapus continued its rotation until the face of the girl came into view. She seemed to look right at him, as if she knew she was there because of him.

Casey shivered at the thought. A young woman with the rest of her life in front of her, part of this gruesome spectacle,
there because of him
. She would die, and it would be his fault. Around him people were hailing the mighty Magi, a refrain that now sounded as ridiculous as it did meaningless. On the stage, Theodore described the New Year’s Eve attacks in more detail, praising in turn the individuals who would be involved.

Heads turned to Judith, the woman sitting in front of Casey. She’d had a bionic leg fitted and would have the honour of ridding the planet of the congresswoman. People smiled and clapped.
Brave Judith
. Soon enough Theodore would move on to describe the second event, the one that
he
, Casey, would be involved in. An event destined to be more monumental than anything that had come before it.

Given all Casey had been through to attain his starring role, he felt oddly detached from the ceremony going on around him. Theodore’s passionate rhetoric was nothing but a series of disconnected words tumbling through the desolation of his mind. Perhaps he’d lost the ability to care or to love. Perhaps his emotions had been carved out and disposed of, along with his arm and his face.

His face
. He wondered where it was. In the incinerator probably, along with Elmer’s ashes. Father had insisted upon the face-swap procedure. Following the discovery of the training ground there was a chance that the FBI had seized intelligence relating to the membership of the Order. If that was the case, it would make an appearance at Solarversia’s closing ceremony too risky, especially for a fugitive like Casey.

He took a harsh, dry gulp and wondered what he was doing, sitting there with his so-called comrades.
My family
, he reminded himself. They
were
the closest thing he had to something that went by that name. They cooked for him, cared for him, loved him like one of their own. They were all he had. If he didn’t go through with Theodore’s plan, what options did he have? Where else could he go?

As the hologram changed to an aerial view of the Olympic Stadium in London, his Brothers and Sisters turned to him and chanted the refrain one more time. “
All hail the mighty Magi
.” Glad that his face — Elmer’s face — was hidden from view by his bandages, he sat there and suddenly realised he’d become an empty shell of a man. He was a ghost, a hollow. Casey Brown had lost his soul.

***

Nova wafted the smoke out of her eyes and checked the time: Burner was
still
giggling. She’d just solved Grandmaster Exanja’s puzzle on Saturn in such a quick time that she’d earned herself a free teleport back to Earth. It was a great start to December, saving herself the three-day travel time, and on a high, she’d gone to Burner’s room, wanting to play some more, only to find him on a high of his own.

He and Jono had downloaded a new app to their headsets that turned anyone they looked at into some kind of caricature. From Burner’s reaction, the dragon was the funniest one yet. He and Jono sat facing one another on the bed and took it in turns to take a drag on the spliff, breathing the smoke out of their nostrils. They’d been giggling like little girls since Nova had got there.

“Come on then, Burner. I only teleported to Panama City because you’re there. And now you’re taking ages.”

“Yeah, sure, in a minute. This is too freaky, you have to try it. Actually, before I do anything, I need to eat. Jono, are you going to order that pizza? I’m starving.”

“You’ve said ‘in a minute’ the last three times I’ve asked you. There are loads of items to tick off this month—”

She broke off as they erupted into another fit of laughter.

“Nova, you’ve got to try this,” Jono said, clutching his sides. “This mode swaps your faces. Burner, I’ve never seen you look better, mate. You should think about trying my face on permanently.”

“So it’s a bit like looking at yourself in the mirror then? I get to do that in the bathroom every day, thanks. I know you haven’t cared about Solarversia since you went out, but Burner and I are still in with a chance of making the Final Million. Talking of which, Burner, it’s been another minute.”

He volleyed an eye back to the room. “Here’s an idea for you. Ludi Bioski’s constellation appeared in Corona Cubes this morning. We need to watch his story for December’s Bucket List, but I can do that later, on my own. Why don’t you order a pizza, watch the story on your lonesome, and then we can tick off some more items together once we’ve eaten?”

“Because I’m not hungry, and I’m not your manservant. If I complete my Super Nova goals in the next few weeks, it’ll be
you
ordering pizza for
me
. But yeah, I’ll watch the story on my own. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

She cosied herself in Burner’s armchair, entered Solarversia, found the new constellation on the ceiling of her Corona Cube and traced it with her finger. The rear wall of the cube disappeared to reveal a branch that led to a large tree house. Inside it, players were sitting in rows of seats facing an Orbitini. A tree, much like the one she had just climbed through, came into view on its screen. An owl, half-hidden in a hollow of the trunk, gazed directly at the audience with his great yellow eyes and spoke.

“Once upon a time, in the forests of Nakk-oo, a sorcerer called Ludi Bioski came across a gremlin that was hunched over a strange machine, crying.