Mastermind

by Steven Kelliher

  This was what I’d been waiting for. Once an origin story trigger was actualized, the AI would deposit players into the live game world. The “drop” was a thrilling experience for any number of reasons.

  For starters, it felt an awful lot like what I imagined diving out of a plane felt like, with the game world rushing up to meet your dangling tier-six feet. Second, your alias auto-populated as soon as your feet touched the ground, and with it, your stats roll and, most important, your superpower breakdown.

  In fact, the “drop” was so exhilarating an experience for some that they went through origin stories every day just to experience it.

  No matter how cynical I got, and no matter how disappointing I expected my latest origin to be, I couldn’t suppress the unbridled joy – the wonder, even – I felt at seeing the world of Titan Online open up beneath me as I passed through the thick white clouds above.

  The silver jewel that was Titan City flashed below, with its gleaming towers and raised bridges, its needle spires and its sprawling green parks beset with their glittering blue opals for ponds. I was still too high up to make out details on the streets, but I could see the sun glinting off the hoods of cars that were only slightly out of sync with their real-world counterparts. A little sleeker, here. A little less real. In all, Titan City was like an idealized version of what Americans thought the future would be like. No smog. No pollution. No crime but for the dastardly type. The type that made you thankful that evil was evil and good was good, and there was no in-between. It was a comforting thought, and it lent me the stinging epiphany that it was less evil that men feared and more choice.

  I saw the white quartz courtyard beneath Gallant Tower and my heart swelled as I thought of all the bright colors and dimpled chins of the players and even the NPCs that filled Heroes’ Square, each waiting for the next siren to go off, or the next building to catch fire, or the next signal to be beamed into the sky emblazoned with their symbol, directing them to a questline that might involve coming face to face with an enemy villain player, granting them the opportunity to either start a new rivalry or nurture an existing one.

  Black viewer bots zoomed by, darting over the bay and swooping down into the streets to find players engaged in activity fans might find exciting enough to glance at for more than a ten-minute session. One of the bots paused and angled its lens up at me, but turned away and continued on its path quickly enough. No time to waste on a new tier-six drop-in.

  To the south, across a bay that passed from glittering to muted, was a series of smoke stacks and power plants, factories and run-down warehouses. This was the beginnings of Warrentown, which players and viewers alike had taken to calling ‘War Town.’ It was where the AI dropped players who had villainous leanings, both in terms of their social algorithms and their in-game actions of the past. I seemed to be drifting a bit closer to the War Town than I’d have liked, and even tried to flap my arms a bit and lean forward, guiding myself toward Heroes’ Square.

  It didn’t seem to do the trick. But then, I was here for a specific purpose, and I supposed it wasn’t all that heroic.

  Soon enough, I wasn’t just falling toward the bay, but gliding right over it, sinking with certainty and spinning toward War Town. The muted gray water of the southern side of the bay gave way to a series of breakers that acted as a maze, separating the silt from the sludge. It certainly added detail to the surroundings and went a long way toward making War Town feel as ramshackle and slimy as its inhabitants. On the other side, separating the outer cement docks from the seedier, rotted planks on the interior, was a river that looked more brown than black.

  “Shit.”

  That’s how I felt and that’s what I fell into, in a manner of speaking.

  I hit the water of a coastal canal hard, sinking fast until I hit what I hoped to be sand at the bottom, though the sucking sensation that greeted my ankles as I extricated myself told me otherwise.

  I dragged myself toward the surface, suddenly encumbered by whatever getup the AI had dressed me with. Yes, the AI dressed you in Titan Online. You could always make changes, but the devs had learned early on that it broke the immersion having plain-clothes high school kids and bespectacled professors falling from the skies. They wanted supers already prepared for their close-ups.

  I didn’t know what I was wearing, but it was heavy, and billowy, and it made it damn hard to scramble my way toward the surface like a bloated, drunk jellyfish.

  I broke the surface and spit out the contents of the river – I told myself it was a river – then shot toward shore. I couldn’t see well, and only realized after a few strokes that I had a mask on. Water was coming in under the surface and getting trapped between the lip of the mask. When my gloved hands touched semi-solid ground, I pulled myself out of the river and crawled up onto a steep-sloped bank, turning and plopping down with a heavy sigh.

  I looked around, anxious to see if I’d been sighted on my descent. Dropping into Titan City was safe. Few villain NPCs around, and even fewer players. War Town was another matter entirely. New drops were seen as potential victims, and I didn’t want to owe any favors so soon into my build.

  The ground was sodden, the sand a mix of rock and dirt and bits of lichen-coated wood broken off from the docks. One such dock rose out of the sludge to my right, propped up over the swampy, lapping shallows on wooden pegs. It cast a shadow over me, and I noted my reflection in the clearer, inch-deep water beneath the planks.

  “What the hell?”

  I leaned onto my hands and knees and tried to make out the image staring back at me. I was dressed all in black, with a long trenchcoat and matching gloves. I had a hood, though it had fallen back, and covering my face was a white mask with red markings, like Japanese kabuki get-up. The designs split the moon-white porcelain like scythes of blood, giving me a somewhat unsettling appearance. I could still see the dark eyes beneath that had been present in my origin story.

  Fame or Infamy, hero or villain. Truth be told, it didn’t really matter which path I was on. To me, it was a moot point. I was here with one goal. One purpose. How I accomplished it didn’t matter. Perhaps the AI had guessed at my intentions and guided me along the path toward becoming the next great villain rival for good ol’ Levi.

  At last, the notification text appeared before me, informing me of my new build.

  Here we go, I thought. Watching your basic stats populate was one of the most exciting and telling times for any new player to Titan Online. I gripped the sludge in my hands and leaned forward, waiting for the next blinking text to materialize.

  Alias…

  I sighed and shook my head.

  Alias…

  “Ah, come on already,” I said. I’d say I didn’t care, but I did.

  Alias… Despot

  “Despot,” I said. “Real original.”

  Tier: 6

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “Get on with it.”

  Stats Adjusting…

  Another pause.

  Mind Roll: 15

  I nodded. Mind was a stat tied to mental abilities, but the definition could stretch far. Fifteen wasn’t a prime roll, but it was solid. In fact, I hadn’t heard of too many rolls higher than fifteen for a non-prime stat. That would likely scale nicely. Of course, it all depended on what my superpower was.

  The thought brought with it a panicked sensation as I remembered the alien core that I assumed was tied directly to my superpower. I cast about, splashing like a toddler or a drowning cat. It was only when I stilled enough to feel a buzzing sensation against my chest that I reached into an inner pocket of my coat and pulled out the still-glowing gemstone.

  I smiled.

  “Okay, then.” I pressed the emerald into the damp sand to my right, farther up the beach, and coaxed the AI to continue with its display.

  Brawn Roll: 5

  “Weak,” I said. “Very weak.” Oh well. The mind stat could make up for that – again, given the right superpower.

  Agility Roll: 10
>
  “Not too bad.” I shrugged. “Some spring in the step, assuming I drop this soaked burial shroud.”

  Armor Roll: 5

  I didn’t have much to say to that. Went hand-in-hand with the brawn roll. What was I to do?

  Charisma Roll: 30 (Prime Roll)

  I frowned, though I couldn’t see it in my reflection, covered as I was by the mask. It wasn’t so much that charisma was a bad stat; more that I wasn’t familiar with many high-threat players with superpowers tied to it. Still, Titan Online was a vast game, and powers came in all sorts of styles and persuasions. I tried to keep the faith as I leaned closer to the surface of the thin film of water, waiting for the most important text of all.

  Superpower: Influence

  “Influence,” I said, testing the word and its possible meanings. “Influence.”

  I came up wanting. What sort of a comic book archetype was the AI setting me up for? Charisma as a prime stat and a superpower consisting of ‘Influence’? Some sort of mind control was the most likely guess, but it could just as easily be a buffer or a debuffer. I didn’t want to be a support character. Not at all.

  It wasn’t that I was against the discovery phase of VR gaming. After all, there was a time when I’d have jumped for joy at the prospect of figuring out exactly what I was capable of, sort of like taking a new car for a spin. But… influence? I just didn’t know where to start with that. Give me something I can work with. Give me something like ‘Speed Blitz’ or ‘Heat Vision’ or even ‘Enhanced Physicality.’ Something I could puzzle out in generalities and test out in detail.

  I stared at the pulsing green alien core as if it was personally responsible for my current predicament, and as I lifted it from the sucking sand and brushed it off, I wondered if I was caught in some sort of bizarre glitch in the game.

  “Slipping through the cracks, you and I,” I said, turning the stone over and watching the supernatural light slide beneath the surface. I focused on it, but no notifications populated for the stone as should happen for useable items. No item stats. Nothing. “Maybe you’re not tied to my superpower after all. Maybe you are just a hunk of rock.”

  I didn’t believe it, not truly, but at that moment I had nothing more to go on. All I had was a stat sheet skewed in the wrong direction, a superpower that seemed more akin to a politician than a comic book hero, and a glowing hunk of rock with no discernible value.

  “What’ve you got there?”

  A shiver went up my spine as a shadow stole over the surface of the shallow water, obscuring my own reflection. I looked up at the dock and saw a broad-shouldered figure leaning over it, hands crossed and propped on one knee. There were other shadows arrayed on either side of him, and I wondered with mounting dread if a villains’ guild had happened upon me and my shiny rock on the shore. I glanced halfheartedly to the north, peering through the smog and past the breakers, over the bay to where Titan City loomed like a silver fortress. Tantalizingly close and agonizingly far.

  I turned back toward the dock and squinted against the gray light, and the image came clearer. My heart slowed a bit as I waited for player information to populate. When it didn’t, I recognized the speaker and his merry band as NPCs.

  “Hey,” the leader said, standing up taller. “I asked you a question.” His fellows brandished cudgels and crowbars – the sorts of things nobody in the real world carried around as readily as roving bands of dock workers did in comic books and movies.

  I stood slowly, thinking as I went. I placed the green gem back in its pocket beneath my shirt. The thugs barely reacted, further confirming their artifice.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  The leader stepped forward, letting himself drop from the dock. He landed with a splash and a thud in the packed sand, ignoring the wet, and I took a step backward in spite of my usual bravado around NPCs. Normally, I wouldn’t have been worried about losing my head against a pack of low-level dock thugs. But I had yet to discover how my superpower worked, and this seemed like a tense enough situation.

  “Nothing, you say?” He placed his hands on his hips, leaning back. The other thugs arranged themselves along the dock, with a pair dropping down behind the leader. “Why don’t you let us be the judge of that?” He extended a hand, palm up, his glassy eyes watching me, ready to react to a sudden shift in motion.

  “Masks.” One of his gang members – a woman – spat into the water. “Hard enough to make a living around here without you lot messing—"

  “Yes, yes,” I said, waving a hand at them. “I’m sure your dialogue wheel is robust, chock-full of tasty morsels to give players a sense of the meta narrative at work in good ol’ War Town. Thing is, I don’t have the time for it. Not today.”

  The speaker stopped her yammering, but the leader frowned. “You’re gonna have to make time for us today, friend. Ain’t no other supers in the area can do a thing about it.”

  I tensed out of instinct, settling low as if I was bracing against the starting blocks. It was the stance I had used as Streak, but Speed Blitz was his power, not mine.

  A blue flash lit the sky to the north and had me turning, half expecting to see another player riding the electric currents down to intervene on my behalf, or to finish what the thugs were intent on starting.

  I should have known by the way the thugs reacted. Or rather, by the way they didn’t react. It wasn’t a player, nor a random streak of effect lightning, but a quest marker. It was roughly in the shape of a jagged bolt, and though the flash had been close, the marker looked to be a ways off, bouncing excitedly beneath the gloomier skies to the west. It was a shocking shade of electric green, and it seemed to pulse in time with the buzzing of the gemstone resting against my chest.

  “Hey,” the lead thug said. “You ignoring us?”

  “Yes.”

  I straightened and scratched the back of my head. Whatever the marker was, I assumed it was there to provide me with some answers, especially regarding my superpower.

  Speaking of which…

  “Hey,” I said, turning back to the lead thug, who had inched toward me with his most menacing face on. “I implore the lot of you to turn around and slink back to the portholes and dockyards you came from.” I even waggled my fingers at them for effect.

  The lead thug looked confused. His fellows took a minute to suss it out, but once they did, they bent into howling peals of laughter.

  “So…” I started, inching backward. “Not feeling the least bit influenced?”

  He ignored me, and came on steadier, with the two men at his back brandishing their cudgels and crowbars, slapping them expectantly against their palms.

  Guess I’ll be putting those dismal physical stats to the test sooner than I thought.

  I considered blocking the first punch, but remembered that the only half-decent physical stat I had was tied to agility. I ducked under the passing swipe instead and watched the brute spin himself around like a top. That dodge brought me right into the range of the crowbar. The strike took me in my stomach, blowing the air from me and depositing me firmly onto my ass. My vision blurred as the game simulated another of those fun little buzzes.

  Despot: 90% HP

  A 10% loss from one hit from a low-tier thug. That was a five armor rating for you.

  “Oi!”

  We all paused like children caught roughhousing in the schoolyard. The thugs on the dock above looked toward the shore first, and the rest of us followed their lead. I considered diving into the brackish water, but the thug closest to me still had her eye on me, and I was curious as to the newest member of our kerfuffle.

  “What did I tell you lot about messing with players in my neck of the woods?”

  The speaker was a lizardman. I mean that literally. He was tall and well-muscled, clad in ugly brown slacks and leather shoes that had either been ripped or cut at the ends to reveal jagged black toenails on the ends of green-scaled feet. He wore a white button-up that was semi-translucent. The sleeves had been rolled up to exp
ose burly scaled arms that bore a yellowish hue, and his face was a mess of ridges and miniature white spurs, like boney protrusions. His lips were cracked, and when he smiled, his yellow teeth matched his yellow eyes.

  He was a player, undoubtedly. Judging by his appearance and his location, his stats leaned heavily into brawn and armor, though he was likely quicker than he looked. His superpower was anyone’s guess, but given the surrounding environs, I didn’t think it likely that I’d beat a hasty retreat taking the waterway.

  Encounter Imminent

  Scale

  Tier 6 Villain

  Threat Index: Minor

  “This one’s been snooping around the docks, Croc,” one of the thugs on the dock said.

  I had to laugh, which drew the attention of the player more fully. He didn’t seem amused.

  “What’s funny?” he asked. “You’re out of their hands, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of mine.”

  So, I was dealing with a role-player, then.

  “Docks, Croc,” I said with a shrug. I took a small step backward as I lowered my shoulders, trying to affect the ease and calm of one confident in his surroundings even as I inched closer to the river’s maw. “Reminds me of an old comic book villain.”

  “Yeah,” he said. His voice was gravelly and slimy at the same time, like a snail sliding over barnacles. “I can see how that might be funny.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. He was either a good actor, or a real creep. Still, he didn’t seem to be in an area overly populated by other players, which either meant he was a loner, or he wasn’t nearly as confident as he looked.