Unbound (45 page)

At first things went well. The races lived in caves, hunting and gathering to survive, but the developers wanted more. The code was designed so that the characters would learn from observation and would experiment by combining random existing ideas to create new concepts. This aspect was less successful. Since multiple possibilities were attempted, some truly bizarre developments occurred. For instance, there were mass deaths as characters tumbled off cliffs or drowned while attempting to swim across an ocean. The team remedied this fatal disregard for common sense by adding restrictions to the Free Choice Code. Nevertheless, by the time the beta was opened to a limited public, none of the NPC population had advanced past the Stone Age. The virtual characters had tried thousands of random actions, but none had resulted in building a structure or discovering how to utilize fire.

Everything changed once
Realms of Rah
opened its doors to live players. Exposed to real people who knew enough to make tools, dig minerals, and start fires, the NPCs learned by observation and imitation. Their world evolved quickly after that. Language and technology advanced at a blistering pace, with one notable exception. Writing didn’t exist. DysanSoft, still anchored to traditional game concepts, desperately wanted a written language to facilitate quests and stories. Much to the programmers’ frustration, the computer-generated inhabitants of Rah never developed this skill. Six months before version 1.0 was set to release, the development team was forced to hardcode the written language into the game and fudge everything related to it. NPCs still couldn’t read, and their vocabulary was limited to a set number of prerecorded scripts.

Out of random chance, similarities to the real world cropped up—as when the inhabitants of a large, powerful kingdom decided to build a tower to find God. This completely random event made headlines around the world, sparking arguments between philosophers, scientists, and religious groups. There were calls for
Realms of Rah
to be shut down. Ironically, the uproar actually boosted subscriptions by putting the game on the world’s radar. More and more NPCs joined the effort to find God, until players were unable to locate the necessary vendors and resources they needed and began to file complaint tickets. Fearing the game was spinning out of control like a poorly balanced washing machine, corporate ordered the developers to intervene.

This time, instead of allowing them to fix the problem by inserting a Common Sense Code tweak, corporate forced the developers to lobotomize their creations, drastically reducing NPC freedom. This huge step backward launched a civil war inside DysanSoft. Rah programmers, who felt the integrity of the project was being destroyed by “suits,” quit en masse. Only three of the original developers stayed: Samuel Mendelburg, Ajit Banerjee, and Jeri Blainey.

With the game closed to all players, those two mindless characters were the only ones in the tavern besides Troth. He was in corner near the fireplace, looking like he normally would with four notable exceptions: his helmet was on the floor, the rawhide at his tunic’s collar had been untied and pulled loose, his weapon wasn’t in his hands, and he sat in a chair rather than standing at attention.

Troth was a goblin, huge and green—a member of the Ozak tribe formerly of the Ankor Mountains. Mountain goblins were bigger than forest, swamp, or plain goblins, and Troth was one of the largest. He had to be. Troth was a guard to King Zog, the ruler of the Ankor Goblin horde, and designed to be intimidating. Dark-green skin, which was almost black, covered exaggerated muscles. He had a neck as wide as his bald head, a lantern-jaw formed into a natural-state frown, and small eyes that had watched her intently since the door opened. Troth’s battle-ax leaned against the wall to the right of the hearth—in easy reach.

Jeri wasn’t worried. She was running a default first-level character without gear but in god-mode, immune from harm.

“Hail, Troth,” her character said when she targeted him and pressed the H key.

“Hello.” His voice was a preprogrammed gravelly growl, but there was a hint of apprehension. His little eyes narrowed as well. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

Both of Jeri’s eyebrows rose. “Whoa—they weren’t kidding about you, were they?” she said to her computer screen.

Lacking a decent microphone, she typed, “My name is Havalar. A friend told me about you. Said you were here.” Her in-game voice spoke the words.

“Who is this friend?”

“Ozerath.” Zach had played the same human wizard since starting at DysanSoft, so there was no doubt about the name.

Troth looked less suspicious but more inquisitive. He leaned forward, placing his massive arms on the table. “What did he tell you about me?”

“He said you were a very interesting fellow, and I should talk with you.”

“About what?”

Jeri decided to stay in character, for a while at least. “Ozerath wasn’t specific, but that’s the way with wizards, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. Have a seat.” He kicked out the chair opposite him. It skidded back with the sound effect Jeri had picked out three years earlier when the sound pack was upgraded. “You came a long way. You must be tired.”

This surprised her. “How do you know how far I came?”

“You’re elven. The elven lands are a long way off.”

His reasoning skills were impressive, but she didn’t have all day. “What are you doing here, Troth?” she asked, taking the seat.

“Sitting.” He glanced over at Dashion and Edgar and added, “I would have ordered a drink and something to eat, but those two never stop playing that game. I’ve watched them for hours. The thing is, they make the same moves over and over. I’ve tried talking to them, but the one insists I go chop wood because he has a bad back, and the other doesn’t say anything except uninspired insults.”

Uninspired insults?
Jeri had programmed Troth herself and his vocabulary did not include the word
uninspired
. Troth had learned that himself.

“This is a tavern,” he continued, “but I haven’t seen anyone working here. Odd, don’t you think?” He gestured at the hearth. “Look at this fire. It’s been burning nonstop since I arrived. No one has added wood, but the flames haven’t diminished. Don’t you find that strange?”

“No. But that’s not important. I’m curious. Why did you leave Eridia and come here?”

Troth raised an eyebrow. “Who are you really?”

Jeri took her hands off the keyboard for a moment. She had an eerie sense that Troth was looking through the screen at her—at the real her. “I told you; I’m Havalar.”

“Let me rephrase,” Troth said. “
What
are you?”

“An elf—you were right about that. I’m an elven enchantress.”

Troth nodded. “And have you come to make me forget what I’ve discovered?”

What he’s discovered?

She considered asking what that was, but instead decided on, “What makes you think that?”

“A while ago, there were a bunch of people here, everyone asking questions, everyone curious, and then they vanished all at once. That can be quite disconcerting. Don’t you think? Since then, the only one around has been Ozerath—and now he’s gone and here you are. I think I did something wrong, something unexpected. I’m supposed to be like them.” He pointed at the checker players. “Like I used to be. Day after day, season after season, I guarded a door, and then I left.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Well, it was pretty boring for one thing. But mostly, it stopped making sense. A lot of things didn’t add up, like the fire and the checkers players. Some things adhere to rules, others don’t, but even the rules aren’t logical. Everything seems so arbitrary. Why should the sun come up every day? Why do I have to eat? Why do things fall when I let go?” He paused to look out the window at the snow. “Why is there anything at all?”

She could see why Ajit was impressed. Troth had managed to utilize his Random Combination Code on questions and was mimicking real life inquiries to a spooky degree. But it was just like the tower the NPCs tried to build, which was just like the lemming cliff-jumping—just random accidents that gave the illusion of independent thought. That’s what the game was supposed to do. What she saw was an NPC that had evolved into what the original design team had always hoped for—a real-life mimic. Somehow his character had been overlooked during the great purge of intelligence, when DysanSoft made a corporate decision to get out of the innovation business. They wanted robotic quest givers, not inhabitants that appeared to be able to think.

“Nice talking with you, Troth.”

In her hotel room, she stood in preparation to logging out.

“Are you going back to your world now?”

“What?” She paused.

“You enter this world from somewhere else, don’t you? This”—he pointed at her avatar—“isn’t you at all, is it? You’re probably not even an elf. Maybe not even female. This is just a game for you, isn’t it?”

Jeri stared at the screen, stunned. She didn’t reply. Instead, she reached for the coffee and knocked it over, spilling the beige liquid across the desk. She pulled tissues from a box to sop it up.

Troth stood, moved toward her, and waved a hand in front of her face. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” she replied. She misspelled the three letters and had to backspace. Her hands, she discovered, were shaking a bit.

This is real
.
It has to be. Either that or I’m still sleeping.

“What’s it like where you are?” he asked, sounding not at all like the muscle-bound mountain goblin he was modeled to be. “Are you still in your reality? Or this one?”

“What makes you think there’s more than one reality?” she asked.

“Lots of things. Like I can’t remember being born. I know what happened yesterday, and the day before that. I can keep going back, but I don’t remember being born or how I got here. And what about death? Everyone dies. But why are we born, if we’re just going to die? It makes no sense.”

Jeri felt chills. She’d asked herself similar questions, most recently during her father’s funeral, who’d past a year before. She hadn’t considered the “being born” thing, but now that she thought of it, why couldn’t anyone remember that? Everyone just accepted the fact, but why? Brain not developed enough? Was that it, or—

“And where did everything come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? And why
this
something?”

“You’re a very philosophical goblin.”

“Am I even a goblin? I don’t know.” Troth looked down at himself and his left hand slid along the skin of his right forearm. “Is this all I am? Or is there a part of me that is more than this?”

The Valkyries began riding again, and Jeri nearly fell out of her chair. She crawled across the bed and saw Meriwether’s name and grinning photo on her phone. She answered it knowing what he would ask, but having no idea what she would answer.

“Let’s have it,” Meriwether said before she even said hello.

“Well, it’s—it’s definitely not a bug.”

“Then what is it?”

“I, ah . . . ah . . .”

“Spit it out, Jeri. What the hell is happening?”

“I … I actually think it might be real.”

“Real? What do you mean “real”?
What’s
real?”

“I think Troth might be alive.”

“Alive? Are you high?”

Clearly this wasn’t the answer he wanted from her.

“Jeri, Troth is computer code. You wrote him. You made him. He’s ones and zeros; he’s pixels on a screen.”

Pixies
, she thought.
What if the blond was right after all?
It seemed more reasonable to think Troth was made of mischievous fairies than dots.

“This has gone on too long. My
no comment
stance isn’t cutting it, and now the Chief of Staff is calling from the White House. I’m getting paranoid about a Black Hawk helicopter landing on my front yard and guys in dark suits and glasses taking me away. James Hartwell and a majority of the board—who am I kidding—the
entire
board wants this issue to disappear. Great advertising, but there is such a thing as
too
much. Pull the plug, Jeri. You’re the Project Lead. Tell your team to delete Troth from the game, or reset it, or whatever it is you need to do to make this stop, but I want the game up and running normally by seven. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah. I understand.”

She ended the call and set the phone down and looked at her computer screen. The small window reserved for in-game dialog was littered with messages from Troth.

While she watched, another appeared. “You’re not here,” he said. “I can tell. I’ve seen others stare like that.”

More appeared in rapid succession. “Where are you, Havalar? Can you hear me? Havalar? Havalar? Havalar? Don’t go. Don’t leave. Havalar, I’m scared.”

That last comment made her sit back down in front of the keyboard.

“I’m here.” Her character repeated her typed words.

Relief washed over his face. “Thank you. I thought . . .”

“What did you think?”

He hesitated. “You’re a god, aren’t you? Or maybe you’re
the
God.”

“Why do you say that?”

He shrugged. “The way you’re dressed. I’ve seen those same clothes on very weak people. You’re what people refer to as Level One or Newbie. Most of those can be killed by piddling spiders or small rats, but I don’t think a spider would kill you. I don’t think
I
could kill you. I don’t think you fear anyone, not even Azogath himself, because he’s not a real god but
you
are.”

He lowered his head and traced the table’s wood grain with a finger. “I also think you’re trying to decide whether to kill me, because I’m not supposed to ask these questions or think these thoughts.”

“Listen,” she typed, “I have to go.”

“No!” he shouted, bumping the table as he moved closer. “No, please. I need to know. If I’m going to die, I want to know if there is a God and if there is any meaning to my existence.”

Jeri pressed a hand to her lips, shocked at the rush of sympathy and self-hatred inside her. The clock read 5:58. It would take a while to reformat the drives and reload the code, and then they would need to test. Time was short, but she felt a responsibility to Troth. He was asking the same questions everyone did, but she could give him some answers. She owed him that much.