Solarversia: The Year Long Game (46 page)

“Run,” shouted Burner. “No wonder everybody’s heading here. That’s an unexploded teleporter, with its keypad intact. Bloody genius.”

Nova was only thirty metres from the machine when the boys yelled at her to stop. A Huntropellimus had followed her through the cube and was charging at full speed. At least she was prepared this time. A lengthy analysis of every circus animal had revealed their strengths and weaknesses. Most importantly, she now knew which of her items would work best given the situation. In this case, the Sword of Sadism, bequeathed to her on New Year’s Eve.

It was one of the few items that enabled a solitary player to defeat a Huntropellimus — if they could perform the complex combination of moves correctly. Fortunately, that included any Solo worth their salt. As soon as her thumb left the dark blue sapphire encrusted in the sword’s grip, the weapon came alive. As the boys looked on, she spun her arms round her head in an intricate series of moves that was designed to turn the Sword into a genuine weapon of mass destruction.

She completed the kata of moves and sent her avatar spinning through the air like a whirlwind. It was payback time, and the Huntropellimous didn’t stand a chance. She ripped into it and sliced its armour plating to shreds while Burner and Charlie whooped in delight. As soon as she’d dispatched the beast, she used the weapon to whirl up a personal tornado that whizzed her towards the machine.

Behind her, a small platoon of Petrifiers spilled into the Dome, eager for a kill. For them it was too late. Finding the machine free of TeleTrixis devices, she dialled the coordinates of the grid’s Origin and held on tight. The jingle sounded and Hu Stu erupted into spontaneous applause. She had done it. Nova Negrahnu had raced to the Origin.

Chapter Forty-One

Everyone around him was watching the gameplay unfold on the giant screens at the front of the office, but Arty couldn’t concentrate on work. It was the third of the final rounds, and he knew it ought to matter to him, but somehow, it didn’t. Holding the replacement Grid Runner trophy in his hands, he kept tracing his finger over the two figurines running along its top. It had been 3D-printed a few days after the original had been broken in the SWAT team raid, an attempt by his colleagues to return some level of normality to the workplace.

An informal vote had decreed that the odd-numbered Bomb Jacks would have won the game and deserved to keep the trophy for the year. It was a nice touch, a genuine attempt to make him feel better. But it wasn’t enough to keep his mind on the present. He couldn’t help but think that the figurines represented him and Hannah, running away from the Holy Order toward the safety and protection of a safe house.

He’d been preoccupied with thoughts like it ever since a call had come through late the previous evening requesting that the two of them clear their morning diaries. The call was from MI6, and he’d been given the distinct impression that it wasn’t the kind of meeting you declined to attend if you wanted to stay on side of Queen and Country.

The meeting had taken place at Legoland, as the headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service was known. The level of precaution they took in the building had been impressive: government secrecy and non-disclosure forms to sign, passport checks, retinal scans, thermal imaging, and CCTV wherever you went.

You couldn’t walk more than ten metres in the building without having to undergo some form of security check, which had made Arty wonder how the people who worked there every day managed to maintain their grip on reality. They’d been met at reception by Deborah — he’d doubted that was her real name — who had apologized for the exacting security measures and the short notice they’d been given, almost as if she meant it.

They eventually arrived at a meeting room on the fourth floor. After another round of retinal scans, the machine beeped, the door whooshed and ‘Deborah’ ushered them into the quiet beige meeting room where her colleague, a slim man with a balding pate, introduced himself as Andrew and invited them to take a seat at the table.

“Deborah and I are assigned to the Holy Order’s case. Following the events of New Year’s Eve, we detained several of their members and have been working with National Security Operatives from around the globe to ascertain anything that may lead us to the group’s HQ. As a result of extensive questioning since then, we’ve made a number of intelligence breakthroughs.”

Arty glanced at the pair of them. In their light grey suits and crisp white shirts that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a trading floor in the city, they looked every part the nondescript, upper-middle class couple. Thirty-something, attractive in a plain kind of way, he couldn’t help but wonder whether either of them had ever killed anyone. And if so, how. What had Andrew meant exactly by putting so much emphasis on the phrase ‘extensive questioning’?

“We need you to take a look at the photos in this file. It’s crucial that you tell us everything you know about this man and his time at Spiralwerks.”

Arty exchanged a startled look with Hannah. His time at
Spiralwerks
? While Deborah maintained her flight attendant’s demeanour, Andrew slid an unmarked leather folder across the desk. Arty reached for it and opened the cover slowly, afraid of what he might see. In a pouch were several photos of the same man, which, from his ever-wizened look and the growth of his beard, appeared to have been taken years apart. Arty and Hannah spread them out on the glass-topped table, and looked intently at each one until the name of the man staring back at them clicked into place.

“Isaac Markowsky,” they said in unison, after a short pause.

“But he didn’t work here in London, he was based in Palo Alto in the United States.”

“In Santa Clara County,” Hannah added. “I think I only recognise his face from the grid. I don’t think I ever met him in person.”

“We have an Employee’s Grid at Spiralwerks,” Arty continued, suddenly aware of his apologetic tone. “We use it as an org chart.”

“Have you met him in person, Artica, or do you just know him from this ‘grid’?” Andrew said, motioning with his hands as if grappling with an invisible structure.

“I met him a few times. But it was years ago. He worked in Puzzles. The department, I mean. He became the top AI programmer in that division.”

“Artificial intelligence?”

“Yes. It became obvious early on that Solarversia would need tens of millions of unique puzzles so that people couldn’t cheat. The Grandmaster Puzzles on each of the planets, for instance. That’s what Isaac worked on — AI to create unique puzzles.”

“How does artificial intelligence work in that context?”

Arty had to stop himself from giving his default answer, the one he gave to nosy journalists or prying competitors, the one that usually included phrases like ‘trade secrets’ and ‘Spiralwerks’ Special Sauce’.

“Early on we figured that puzzles could be reverse-engineered, the same way that checkers and chess have been. For each type of puzzle you have a certain number of inputs, a list of rules that the inputs need to follow and the goals the player is trying to reach. Turns out that most puzzles can be reduced to lines of code. Isaac was very good at writing programs that created puzzles people really enjoyed playing. You know, clever puzzles, the kind that make you sit back and smile once you’ve finally solved them, the kind whose brilliance you can’t help admiring. Aesthetically pleasing puzzles, if you will.”

“What were his reasons for leaving the company?” Deborah asked. “I mean, you say he was very good at what he did. Then he was made redundant.”

Arty started, and then stopped, speaking several times. Was any of this — the attacks, the deaths —
his
fault? Had he made a decision, innocent enough at the time, that had had a domino-like effect, cascading outward, into the company and then the wider world?

“He
was
very good at what he did. His main objective was to write a program that could automatically generate the kind of puzzles we’re talking about. He achieved it, and I’m not sure we had any further use …” Arty tailed off, aware of how callous it sounded out loud.

“Your Isaac Markowsky now goes by the name of Theodore Lucas Markowsky. It appears that his redundancy and the events immediately following it had a cathartic effect on his life. He became a man on a mission. It didn’t take long for him to gain a following of like-minded people. He’s the person we’re after — he’s the leader of the Holy Order.” Deborah glanced to Andrew as if handing him the interrogation baton while Arty shifted about in his chair, unable to stay comfortable.

“You’ve read his manifesto? He’s obsessed with creating a superintelligent being — the ‘Magi’ — who he reckons has the ability to cure Earth of its ills. According to him, AI is a zero-sum game where the winner takes all, and he’s paranoid that corporations like yours might beat him to it. That, and the grudge he bears toward you for the way your company treated him, explains why your company was the top of their list,” Andrew said. “The Order have members dispersed around the globe, they have serious funding and they have a charismatic lunatic at their helm. They’re very dangerous. We need you to do everything you can to help us stop them.”

“Of course. But what can we do?”

“We need you to send us everything you have on him. I’d also like you to reach out to the people who worked closely with him, find out as much as you can. Agents in the US will contact your colleagues out there, but if you hear anything in the meantime, please let us know. ”

Hannah raised a finger, a gesture that said she’d take the task. If anything, Arty was glad to see that she looked as out of her depth as he was. Raising his hand like a schoolchild meek before authority, Arty chose his words carefully.

“There’s something I don’t understand about the Order, something that doesn’t make sense. Why not do it the easy way?”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Andrew said. “Do what the easy way?”

“Well, any of it. They scan a load of homeless people to create avatars so they can carry out a griefing attack. They sabotage the mayor’s visit with a video nasty. They hack us, not to steal data, but to display their manifesto on the bookshelves of a few virtual spaceships for twenty minutes or however long it took Carl to fix. Not to mention the elaborate attacks on New Year’s Eve. They train people to be clowns and magicians. Ceramic knives are smuggled past metal detectors. I’m a middle-aged, out-of-shape scaredy-cat. Why not just break into my house and smother me in my sleep? The same with the other attacks. The girl who helped find the training ground in the first place, they devise a convoluted plan to stuff her Electropet full of explosives. Wouldn’t it have been easier to run her over or stab her or something? Like I said, I don’t get it.”

Now it was Andrew’s turn to speak slowly and deliberately. “We haven’t pieced it all together yet. The people we captured only know part of the story. Under Markowsky’s leadership, the Order is something of a quasi-religious organisation — a cult. He worships this Magi being like it’s a deity, even if it doesn’t actually exist yet. A lot of the symbolism and mythology they use derives from his time at Spiralwerks. I believe Solarversia utilises a number of non-player characters within its world — Emperor Mandelbrot and his merry men. Visitors from a far-off galaxy. Is that right?”

Arty sat back in his chair, wide-eyed, thrown by the question. What did the Emperor have to do with anything?

“Yes, Emperor Mandelbrot is like the host of The Game. And his entourage interact with real players within the virtual world. We built an entire mythology around these characters.”

“It would appear that they resonated with Markowsky. He’s obsessed with the idea of communicating his vision through the interpretative lens of Solarversia. We believe he sees himself as the Emperor, with an entourage at his disposal — the members of the Order. From what we’ve been told, it seems that the randomness of the first wave of attacks were an homage to Ludi Bioski. The attacks on New Year’s Eve were planned to usher in the New Year in the same way that Gorigaroo strikes his gong to signal the start of a game or to signal changes to the rules during it. The attacks themselves were designed to be works of art, just like your—”

“Spee-Akka Dey Bollarkoo, the telepathic artist from Nakk-oo. What about Banjax and Arkwal, do they come in to it?”

“We’re unsure about Arkwal. We understand that he’s a bit like the Emperor’s right-hand man, his chief of staff. There are suggestions that Markowsky may have something planned for one of his senior lieutenants. And as for Banjax, according to one of the guys we’ve spoken to, Markowsky has a special place in his heart for him. Apparently this all started when the creature appeared to him in a vision on the 12th of December in the year of his redundancy. He took that as a sign — a twelve-armed creature appearing on the twelfth day of the twelfth month. Hence the twelve-paged manifesto where each page contained a verse with twelve lines. The short answer to your question, Mr Kronkite, is that Markowsky doesn’t do things the easy way. Apparently, that’s not how one heralds the arrival of a superintelligent being.”

As soon as they returned from the meeting, Hannah secured a copy of Markowsky’s work history from HR. They read it together, hunched over her desk, turning the pages only when both were finished.

It made for compelling reading. Originally Spiralwerks had employed around four hundred people in the Puzzles department, before some projections were made that forecasted a need to expand that team to many thousands of employees. But then Isaac Markowsky, a puzzle engineer, had gone to the Director’s office one day to pitch a program he’d written.

Arty almost fell out of his chair when he read a transcript of the emails. There it was, staring back at him from the screen. Markowsky had originally called his program
Machine Automated Gaming Intelligence
, or M.A.G.I., for short. Arty had liked the idea, but not the name, and over the course of a few weeks, it had become known as AIPuM, the
Artificially Intelligent Puzzle Machine
, the name he, Hannah and everyone else recognised it as.