Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4)

by Janet Edwards

  He smiled. “It was only when I asked how the installation team had dealt with the difficulty of the unit’s northern emergency exit, that Megan discovered they’d buried it.”

  “What? Why did they bury the emergency exit?”

  “They didn’t do it deliberately,” said Lucas. “The installation team are setting up the expansion area to match our unit park, with one level of soil for tree roots and a far higher ceiling than standard rooms. When they added the soil in the expansion section, it buried the ramp at one entrance and the flight of steps at the other. With the higher ground level, we didn’t need those any longer, but …”

  “We did need the emergency exit,” I finished Lucas’s sentence for him. “How are they fixing the problem?”

  Lucas laughed. “The northern emergency exit leads down to Industry 2, so the installation team are digging a huge trench and installing a tunnel. They can still bring most things in through the park entrance while that’s happening, but not the larger trees.”

  “That explains the trees having to be moved along this corridor to reach the other entrance,” I said, “but not why my Strike team members are the ones moving them.”

  “Adika wouldn’t want unknown delivery people marching past his telepath’s apartment door.”

  I groaned. “So he’s making his Strike team drag the trees. I’ll have to apologize to them.”

  “There’s no need for you to apologize,” said Lucas. “I’m sure the Strike team members were eagerly fighting for the chance to show off their muscles. Eli probably used the fact his uncle is a park keeper to get himself put in charge of the tree shifting squad.”

  We went down the corridor, skirted another tree that was lying in front of the freight lift, and headed through the security doors towards the single cavernous room that was the Tactical office.

  The Tactical team had their office set up with desks at one end and an array of comfortable chairs and couches at the other. Lucas and I settled ourselves on one of the couches, and all but one of the Tactical team pulled up chairs to sit in a semicircle facing us. The exception was Beckett, who remained at his new desk, carefully adjusting the position of a strange blue object in front of him.

  “Beckett has done an incredible job completing the final integration of the timeline pattern analysis so quickly,” said Lucas. “We’re now going to review how Blue Upway has developed over time.”

  He turned to me. “Most Teen Games run for one Hive year. I’m not talking about the calendar year that will change at the New Year festival. That’s just a global common date used for administrative purposes and trading with other Hives. What I’m talking about is the Lottery year that’s the driving force behind the whole rhythm of life in our Hive.”

  He paused. “The Lottery year is in the identity code that every citizen is given at birth, and it rules our lives, deciding when we’ll leave home to live as independent teens, and when we’ll go through Lottery testing and become adult. Its effects are most powerful on Teen Level.”

  This introductory speech was obviously solely for my benefit, so I nodded to show I was following his explanation.

  “The oldest teens are the natural leaders on Teen Level,” continued Lucas. “They do all the organizing of festival celebrations and running the Teen Games. Each year, all the teens who’ve turned eighteen during the last twelve months enter Lottery. Their transition period begins in the weeks before Carnival, when they start attending special events for Lottery candidates. They lose interest in Teen Level issues and focus on their future instead. At this point, they start shutting down their game master stacks.”

  “This is when the seventeen-year-olds step forward to take over organizing festival celebrations,” I said. “That doesn’t happen with Teen Games though?”

  “The leaving festival organizers hand over things like their stores of decorations to their successors,” said Lucas. “In theory, the leaving Game Commanders could hand over their game master stack of anonymous dataviews to a successor as well, but that rarely happens. The players depend on the game master stack to relay messages to each other. Once the Game Commander shuts it down, they have no way to communicate with each other, so the game comes to an abrupt end.”

  “Why don’t the Game Commanders hand on the game master stacks to successors?” I asked. “Is it because they’re possessive of their games?”

  “Partly, but they’re also thinking about their future careers,” said Lucas. “Running Teen Games is officially illegal, and the game master stack inevitably holds a host of incriminating evidence about the identity of the Game Commander. They don’t want to risk handing all that evidence over to a successor.”

  “I can understand that,” I said.

  “So the Game Commanders lose interest in their Teen Games in the weeks leading up to Carnival,” said Lucas. “Many keep the game master stack running during those weeks to allow the game groups to make plans to join new games. It’s obvious the Game Commander is planning to shut down the game though, because there aren’t any new challenges. Points are no longer awarded. Promotions aren’t given.”

  He shrugged. “On the day after Carnival, the last of the game master stacks shut down, and the Game Commanders leave Teen Level to go into Lottery. The old games are gone forever, but by this time new Game Commanders have started running replacement games.”

  Lucas clapped his hands. “Now let’s go through the timeline pattern analysis of Blue Upway, and compare it to the normal lifecycle of a Teen Game, to work out what’s been happening.”

  “From the start?” asked Beckett.

  “From the start,” said Lucas.

  Beckett tapped at his desk, and a holo appeared in the centre of the circle of Tactical team members. It was some sort of multicoloured diagram, rotating in mid air. The Tactical team studied it intently, but it meant absolutely nothing to me. I was too tired to try chasing the express thoughts of Lucas to find an explanation of the lines and colours, so I just waited for him to begin speaking again.

  “Blue Upway starts soon before the last but one Carnival,” said Lucas. “Our pattern is sparse at this point, because Blue Upway is one of over a dozen fledgling games springing up in Blue Zone, and Game Control isn’t bothering to collect much information on any of them. They know that most new games will die within their first two months for a variety of reasons, such as the Game Commander getting overwhelmed by the amount of work.”

  “Or the players getting bored by the challenges,” said Gideon gloomily.

  Lucas laughed. “Let’s move on to two months after Carnival.”

  Beckett tapped at his desk again, and the holo diagram scrolled upwards, revealing more incomprehensible lines and colours at the bottom.

  “There are now only three Teen Games left running in Blue Zone,” said Lucas, “so Game Control is actively collecting information on them. We can see that Blue Upway has expanded to about four hundred players. That makes it the smallest of the three Teen Games in Blue Zone, but look at the solid organization backbone of that timeline.”

  Kareem leaned forward in his seat. “Blue Upway isn’t the most exciting of games, it’s not bringing in that many players, but it’s brilliantly run.”

  “Yes,” said Lucas. “The second biggest Teen Game in Blue Zone crashed at this point. The challenges had been getting too dangerous, a player was badly hurt, and Game Control got hold of the injured player’s anonymous dataview and sent the Game Commander a standard threatening message. That tactic doesn’t always work, but the Game Commander was probably already feeling guilty about the player injury, and reacted by closing down their game entirely. The orphaned players moved to the other two Teen Games in Blue Zone. You can see that Blue Upway doubles in size to eight hundred players.”

  “The Game Commander copes with the size increase remarkably well,” commented Emili.

  Lucas nodded. “Blue Upway continued to be stable and methodically run until a few weeks before the last Carnival.”

&nb
sp; He glanced expectantly at Beckett, and the holo moved up again. “At this point, we see the classic signs of a Game Commander preparing to abandon their Teen Game and go into Lottery,” said Lucas. “Player challenges have stopped being set, and points aren’t being awarded. During the Carnival celebrations and the following week of Lottery testing, we can see a total break in the activity of Blue Upway. The game master stack must have been shut down, which took out all the game communications.”

  Even I could see the break in the diagram that Lucas was talking about. There was a blank line cutting across all the colours.

  “Up until this point, Blue Upway had been following the normal lifecycle of a Teen Game,” said Lucas. “This is where it began breaking all the rules. Just as the Blue Upway players were assuming it had been shut down forever, and were moving on to try new games, Blue Upway suddenly came back to life. The game master stack was back on, and messages were being sent out about new challenges. All the Blue Upway players who hadn’t left Teen Level to go through Lottery returned. About five hundred of them.”

  He paused. “I assumed this was one of the rare cases where the original Game Commander went into Lottery and handed their game master stack to a new Game Commander. However, Beckett has established the Game Commander didn’t change at Carnival.”

  “I’d love to see your evidence for that, Beckett,” said Kareem.

  Beckett tapped at his desk, and some of the lines and colours separated out and moved sharply sideways.

  Kareem made a dubious noise. “I’m still not seeing an overlay match.”

  “You need to compensate for the drop in the game population before going for the overlay,” said Beckett.

  He lifted one finger to give a theatrical tap at his desk. The new lines above and below the join in the holo changed dramatically, then shifted to superimpose one on top of the other.

  Kareem lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m convinced. I can see why Lottery imprinted you as a pattern specialist.”

  Gideon was still staring at the main holo diagram. “The most successful Teen Games are usually run by the oldest teens. Blue Upway could have been one of the exceptions though, where the Game Commander was a year younger and not due to go into Lottery.”

  Emili shook her head. “If the Game Commander wasn’t due to go into Lottery, why are we looking at that characteristic activity break?”

  “I’ve absolutely no idea,” said Gideon.

  “I can only think of one answer that fits the facts,” said Lucas. “The Blue Upway Game Commander went into Lottery, but then came back to Teen Level.”

  Chapter Thirty

  I blinked. “Surely it’s impossible for someone to go into Lottery and then return to Teen Level.”

  “Lottery could have allocated the Blue Upway Game Commander work on Teen Level,” said Hallie. “They then decided to resume running their old Teen Game as a hobby.”

  “Running even a small Teen Game takes a huge amount of time,” said Kareem. “The Game Commander would have had to be allocated very undemanding work to leave them enough free hours in the day to do it.”

  “Very true,” said Lucas. “Let’s advance the timeline a little further, and look at what happened after Carnival.”

  The holo diagram rolled upwards again.

  “At this point, Blue Upway was the only Teen Game in the Hive that had survived past Carnival,” said Lucas. “Every other game was brand new and suffering periods of confusion as their Game Commanders made the typical learners’ mistakes. All the orphaned players in Blue Zone rushed to join Blue Upway, so it grew from its five hundred surviving players to three thousand at startling speed. Now look at what happens to the pattern of Blue Upway. What does it tell us about the Game Commander?”

  “There are hiccups in the pattern,” said Gideon. “That’s a person under pressure. They’re highly intelligent, responsible, and organized. They could handle running a Teen Game with eight hundred players. Now they’ve got three thousand, and they can’t cope with the workload.”

  “You can see the Game Commander is struggling before they even reach fifteen hundred players,” said Telyn critically. “That isn’t the pattern of a future Tactical Commander or any other member of a Tactical team. Don’t you agree, Beckett?”

  Beckett gave her a wary look. “I do patterns, not people.”

  “The hiccups in the pattern are a classic warning sign that the Teen Game is about to collapse,” said Emili, “but it keeps going and the hiccups gradually fade away. How? Why? What did the Game Commander do to solve the problem?”

  “I think they started delegating routine tasks like points allocation to selected higher-ranked players,” said Lucas. “That tactic worked. The Game Commander got Blue Upway running smoothly again. Let’s advance the timeline further.”

  The holo diagram rolled up some more.

  “Within a few weeks, the news about Blue Upway had spread to the orphaned game players in the neighbouring Turquoise and Navy Zones,” said Lucas. “They began joining too, and by Valentine the Blue Upway game had gone Hivewide. There are some more bursts of hiccups as it grows from three thousand to thirty thousand players, but the Game Commander successfully repeats their tactic of doing more delegating to get the game running smoothly again.”

  Hallie gave a disbelieving shake of her head. “You can’t be right about the delegating, Lucas. It’s just about believable with three thousand players, but think about the sheer scale of tasks to be done with thirty thousand of them. The Game Commander would have to be delegating decisions to hundreds of people. It would be far easier to automate the decision process.”

  Lucas laughed. “Not everyone is as good as you at automating decision processes, Hallie.”

  “Well, this Game Commander must have been good at them,” said Kareem. “If they’d been delegating decisions to hundreds of players, then some of them would inevitably be making different judgements in similar situations. You’d see the pattern blurring, and it’s still sharply defined.”

  “The Game Commander could give the players a set of guidelines about how to award the points,” said Emili.

  “Some of them would still be swayed by their personal opinions and make different judgements,” said Kareem.

  “The blurring is there,” said Beckett. “It’s so minimal that you need to study a tiny section to see it, but it’s there.”

  Gideon waved his hands in a gesture of bewilderment. “Then Lucas is right. The Game Commander has to be delegating decisions because there wouldn’t be any blurring at all with automated decisions, but how are they managing it?”

  “The Game Commander of Blue Upway wasn’t just intelligent, organized, and responsible,” said Lucas. “They must have been a natural leader as well, incredibly gifted at persuading people to obey guidelines.”

  He paused. “I’m surprised that anyone so skilled in dealing with people chose to spend their time running a Teen Game. I’d have expected them to be organizing the festival celebrations for their area. I really can’t believe that Lottery would assign a person like that to do tedious work on Teen Level that left them with huge amounts of free time each day.”

  “I can’t believe it either,” said Kareem. “In which case, we need to think of alternative reasons that the original Blue Upway Game Commander would go into Lottery and then come back to Teen Level.”

  “They could have gone into Lottery and come back because of an injury or illness,” said Telyn eagerly. “Something similar happened to me because of my leg injury. At the last New Year festival, I had what I thought was my last reconstructive operation. After that, I went into Lottery on schedule, but the physical tests revealed a lingering problem that could potentially cause spinal issues in the future. I ended up being imprinted for Tactical team member, but needed another long period of medical treatment before starting work.”

  She turned to Lucas. “I knew that Lottery had found a new telepath, but thought that having to spend a long period in the Blue Z
one Trauma Casualty Centre had robbed me of any chance of joining her Tactical team. I was stunned to discover that Lucas was holding the attack specialist position for me.”

  Lucas smiled. “Of course I was holding it for you, Telyn. You were the only available candidate who I knew could outperform me in the attack role.”

  “I’m so grateful,” said Telyn.

  “I could believe the Game Commander was having ongoing medical treatment for an injury,” said Kareem. “That would explain why they weren’t involved in things like festival celebrations. They could have started running a Teen Game to ease their boredom. I’m amazed that you didn’t run one yourself, Telyn.”

  “I expect Telyn was too busy playing competition chess matches to run a Teen Game.” Lucas pulled a rueful face. “She was playing in both the teen and adult leagues, and totally slaughtering me every time we were drawn against each other.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t know that you played competition chess, Lucas.”

  “I gave it up after the last Carnival.” Lucas grinned mischievously at me. “Playing competition chess was a welcome diversion when I worked for Keith, but I don’t have time for it now that I’m a Tactical Commander with a demanding telepathic girlfriend.”

  I considered sticking my tongue out at him, but took the marginally more dignified approach of wrinkling my nose instead.

  “Telyn’s theory would certainly explain the sequence of events,” Lucas continued. “The Game Commander shut down their game master stack of anonymous dataviews before they went into Lottery, but they hit a problem during the testing process.”

  He paused. “Telyn’s tests revealed a need for further medical treatment, but she was still able to finish her personalized sequence of Lottery tests and be imprinted. What happened with this Game Commander was crucially different. Their problem prevented them from completing their tests. That meant they weren’t imprinted, but told to return to Teen Level for further medical treatment before going through Lottery again.”