The Shadow Maker (22 page)

‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’ he asked.

She pretended to think about it, before saying casually, ‘If you like.’

As they crossed the bridge over the river, Huxley slung his suit jacket over his shoulder and loosened his tie. ‘If you need any further help with the smartcard, don’t hesitate to call me,’ he offered.

‘Thanks, I might take you up on that.’

They picked their way through pedestrians and skateboarders zigzagging around the theatre complex, then strolled past the moated gallery hung with posters for the
Art of Bollywood
exhibition.

‘Do people call you Rita?’ he asked.

‘My friends do,’ she answered. ‘So can you.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, pleased. ‘I’m afraid “Byron” doesn’t shorten very well, so that’s what I’m stuck with.’

‘Your parents must be romantics.’

‘It’s worse than that. Apparently I was conceived in Venice at a palazzo once graced by Lord Byron.’

Rita laughed. ‘Unusual programming for a computer scientist.’

‘“How little do we know that which we are!”’ recited Huxley, quoting the poet. ‘“How less what we may be!”’

‘Now that’s my territory,’ she said.

As they continued strolling along the shaded avenue, with trams clanking past and homeward-bound commuter traffic getting heavier, Rita realised they were edging towards something deeper than friendly conversation. But where it would lead, she didn’t want to guess.

‘Psychology and behavioural science are total mysteries to me,’

admitted Huxley. ‘And as for profiling, it sounds like probability theory mixed with voodoo.’

‘The majority of cops would agree with you. But you’re right, the intuitive element is essential.’

‘Anyway, your visit last week fascinated me,’ he said as they stopped at traffic lights. ‘It still does.’

When he smiled at her, Rita noticed something intriguing in his eyes, something more than natural enthusiasm - a Byronic quality, perhaps. It drew her in, made her wonder what his passions were, apart from cybernetics.

They resumed walking and she asked, ‘What exactly fascinated you?’

‘A number of things,’ he said evasively, before he stopped again and bowed his head. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m not usually indirect, so I’ll tell you straight out. What fascinated me was you. That’s really why I phoned today, but if I’m making an arsehole of myself, tell me and I’ll shut up.’

She couldn’t help laughing, not just from amusement but with relief that their mutual attraction was out in the open.

He looked embarrassed until she put a hand on his arm and told him, ‘You don’t have to shut up. I’m flattered, really.’

‘Thank God for that.’

They were standing outside the dark stone fortress of Victoria Barracks, fronted by regimented palm trees and antique cannons.

‘So I wouldn’t be pushing it if I phoned you again and asked you out to dinner?’

‘That would be great,’ she said. ‘But for now I’ve got to get back to work.’

‘Me too. I was supposed to go straight back to campus and chair a faculty meeting instead of acting like a love-sick adolescent.’

‘You got your priorities right. Lord Byron would be proud of you.’

Before she went to bed that night, Rita phoned Lola and told her what had happened.

‘I knew it!’ said Lola. ‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you.’

Rita grunted. ‘Despite your best efforts.’

‘Don’t be a bitch, I was just testing his resolve. You two are seriously made for each other.’

‘That’s unlikely. We haven’t even been out on a date.’

‘Don’t be so formal,’ Lola complained. ‘What do you think this afternoon was - research?’

As she lay in bed, Rita recalled the encounters of the day with a sense of bemusement. The warm attention of one academic, Byron Huxley, stood in stark contrast to the hostility of another, Dr Phillip Roxby. Their personalities, along with their characters, were poles apart. Then there was Josh Barrett, computer whiz and pot-head, in a category all of his own. Unfortunately for him, he’d be working through the night again in the paranoid company of his colleagues at Xanthus. Rita had added to Josh’s stress levels, of course - but at least she’d cooked him an omelette.

It was five a.m., but the fluorescent strip lighting still gleamed along the first floor of the Xanthus building. The three members of the core team pulled off their visors and gloves and looked at each other with tense, caffeine-fuelled stares. The work was almost done.

They’d been button-mashing non-stop through the night, hardly pausing to eat, stretch or urinate, as they ran the final diagnostics on the complex programming and subroutines of the game. The visuals, sound design and artificial intelligence all stood up to the test, whether it was played on a PC, a game console or virtual accessories. From a technical point of view it was a state-of-the-art package - high performance, interactive and fully explorable. On top of that - like an algorithmic gateway - it opened up another dimension in video gaming. Wired into the product was a Xanthus-designed system of autostereographics - in effect a new generation of realism. When hooked up to VR it delivered natural 3-D

perspectives and rich, fully fleshed-out imagery, immersing the player in an alternative world. Context became environment. Storyline turned into experience. In other words, the game felt real.

All three knew they’d created something special. Reams of printout surrounded them after a last trace for bugs - but the logic, syntax and run-time were all sufficiently error-free. The software was ready to be released.

Josh Barrett clicked the bones in his neck and got up.

‘It’s done,’ he said flatly.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Flynn. As system administrator the final call was his, and he wasn’t ready to make it.

‘I’ve had enough!’ said Maynard, throwing down his visor and kicking petulantly at the piles of paper. ‘I don’t care what you say.

My brain’s fried and I’m going home.’

Flynn scowled at him. ‘That’s right. Go back to your teddy bears and comics. Run home to Mummy.’

Maynard snatched up a handful of discs and hurled them at Flynn, who ducked just in time as they went scything through the air to clatter across the office.

‘Drongo,’ Flynn commented, straightening up.

‘Go piss up a rope,’ said Maynard, pulling on his jacket and getting tangled in the sleeves as he did so. ‘And don’t expect me back today. I’m having a sleepin.’

He stomped off without a backward glance, still wrestling with his sleeves. For good measure he kicked over a chair. A moment later the door banged behind him.

‘He’s got a point,’ said Josh. ‘We should be celebrating, not fighting. The job’s done. We’ve cracked it.’

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Flynn snapped, sitting hunched on a swivel chair. ‘But the buck stops with me on this. I want to do a final walk-through in the lab. Gonna join me?’

Josh shook his head. ‘Give it a rest. You’ll burn yourself out.

We’re overtired already.’ He picked up his canvas bag and slung it over his shoulder. ‘I’m going to smoke a joint, crash out and forget the game. You ought to do the same.’

Unlike his two colleagues, Flynn couldn’t stop working. Although egocentric and volatile, professionally he was a perfectionist, as brilliant and creative with software design as he was emotionally erratic. Through willpower, ability and an intolerance of failure, he’d advanced through university and postgraduate research to become a bit player in a global industry. That’s where he was now - in charge of Barbie’s wet software dream. Game on.

Though Barbie was obviously a flake when it came to technology, he had stumbled onto something unique when he’d bought Xanthus Software. The struggling firm had devised an innovation that increased the sensory impact of virtual reality. Technologically it was a breakthrough. In marketing terms, it was a potential goldmine. It was new and it was hot. All it needed was a game to be designed around it. The challenge was one reason why Flynn had agreed to develop it - the other being the extremely high salary. There was also the kudos. While Barbie stood to reap huge financial rewards, Flynn would make his name in the hi-tech marketplace. The success of the game would launch his reputation. His future would be guaranteed and he would be able to pick and choose between offers from international corporations. The possibilities were stunning.

So too, of course, were the penalties of failure. And with competition so intense, one miscalculation could make all the difference.

In this city alone there were ten other video gaming outfits. Some of the biggest had set up shop in Melbourne - Atari, Infinite Interactive, THQ. The prize was a slice of a worldwide business worth $30 billion the previous year - over $10 billion more than the box office total pulled in by the whole of the movie industry around the planet. When the stakes were so high, just one error -

software, timing, contractual - could sink a deal. Then someone else would snatch the breakthrough, and Barbie’s dreams of hitting the jackpot would be flushed down the commercial toilet, along with Flynn’s shot at personal glory and a hefty success bonus. He could kiss goodbye to his job, his salary, his expensive apartment.

It would be back to postgrad research at the university - a prospect that made him shudder. That’s why he went on working - alone, determined, beyond tiredness, his brain wired on ambition.

He went down to the basement, let himself into the VR lab and stood for a moment on the concrete floor amid a jumble of cables, piping, screens and computer decks. It was like an electronic dungeon, a dim, subterranean level - very appropriate considering the game’s content. When he’d powered up the studio, he loaded the latest version of the program, stripped off his clothes and pulled on a lightweight bodysuit studded with sensors. Then he strapped himself into a metal frame, slipped on a pair of gloves, adjusted his headset and logged on to the game.

For a moment he stood in total blackness, suspended between two universes - the real and the hyper-real. In a strange way, the more Flynn visited the latter, the less respect he felt for the former.

It was like taking a psychedelic drug. The real world began to look dull and clumsy while the virtual realm became more vivid and addictive. The effect didn’t bother him. After all, this was the future, the new frontier. As the twenty-first century unfolded, more and more people would choose to inhabit virtual reality as they escaped the drudgery of daily existence. The buzz of gameplay would become the stimulant of the masses.

In the pure blackness a control pad illuminated in front of him.

He reached out with a virtual finger and touched a virtual button.

The audiovisuals clicked into life. It was intense and it was exhilarating.

Flynn could congratulate himself. The end result of so much hard work was worth the effort.

He could take much of the credit for the logic and architecture of the game, but he’d been ably assisted by Maynard and Josh, and a whole team of software engineers, 3-D graphics artists, background modellers, visual FX programmers, audio mixers, AI specialists and virtual environment designers. Barbie himself had also played a key role in the overall construction. He’d come up with the original idea and insisted on viewing each stage of its development like an overseer. More often than not his presence was irritating, but he knew what he wanted. And here, at last, they’d delivered it - a game of gods, heroes and monsters - Barbie’s hard-core vision of the Underworld.

That’s where you started - deep underground in the Kingdom of Hades. The aim was to climb to freedom. You did that by slaying monsters at each level, acquiring new powers, recruiting allies from among the damned or the deities, and - if you made it all the way - attaining divinity on the slopes of Mount Olympus. Barbie seemed to see it as a personal metaphor. To Flynn and his colleagues the interpretation was more basic. In single-player mode it was an epic quest in the sword and sorcery genre, combining mythic themes, gladiator sports and primal fantasies. When played against others online it turned into a team-combat race. On top of the startling realism of the experience, there were other selling points. It was a first-person shooter fully explorable in real-time 3-D, where players could follow branching storylines, enhance their fighting skills and create customised avatars to help in the ascent. There was also its freedom of choice. Gamers could tackle each new challenge in any way they wanted because there was no single or right tactic to get results. With its glossy visuals and realistic death animations, it was destined to join the top rank of hack’n’slash adventures, automatically getting an adult rating for its blood, violence and erotic imagery.

Flynn took a deep breath to prime himself for action.

He was ready to enter the Underworld.

He reached out to the virtual control pad and pressed Start.

With a vertiginous rush he was transported into the wild, alien landscape of the game. He found himself on a narrow ledge deep below the surface of the earth, where naked nymphs were shackled to rocks. Against the cliff face moved the shadows of demonic guards. Overhead towered a precipice, criss-crossed by steep paths leading to the Palace of Hades. The jagged surfaces were lit by the crimson glow of lava and burning sulphur. At his feet yawned the dark chasm of the abyss.

Wielding his sword, he upended a guard and cut his head off, black blood oozing from the convulsing torso, then he turned in time to face clusters of spawning demons. He hacked through them as he fought his way along the ledge - limbs, wings, claws and entrails spraying in all directions. When he reached an upward path cut in the rock he escaped to the next level.

He pressed the Oracle button. It triggered the voice of a god:

‘I am Ares, god of war. To see the light, you must destroy your enemies.’

Each level produced confrontations with hideous creatures -

Gorgons, Harpies, Minotaurs, Furies wreathed in snakes. By sum mon ing heroes to his cause the beasts were dismembered in a flurry of swipes and bone-cracking duels. More insidious were the seductive enemies who plugged directly into the pleasure node -