by Drew Seren
His words seemed to hit a nerve and for almost a minute, none of them said a word.
Rick spoke first. “I agree with Alan…Mr. Gosling. We need to get folks out, then we can spend time going over the AI’s code with a fine-tooth comb.”
Punjabi frowned and then turned as if talking to someone just off the camera. “Right. I’m going to get my team working on finding a way to override the AI without bringing down the game. If we can do that, we can get everyone out safely, then bring the system down.”
“Okay.” Rick nodded sagely. “While you do that, I’m going to get my team working to find ways to get the members of Horc’s party strong enough to storm the dragon’s lair. Maybe if you can’t bypass the AI, we can defeat it. If it’s been programmed with lots of fantasy knowledge and has taken a dragon as its avatar, then if we defeat it, maybe we can win.”
“I’ll help you with that,” Goldstein said. “Maybe some of what we’ve programmed the NPCs with can be useful in this.”
“Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated.” Rick made a note on a pad next to his keyboard.
“Good.” Rivers tapped on a pad on his desk. “Sounds like we’ve got a plan. Everyone check in with me as we make progress. Remington, since you’re in contact with your husband in the game, you can be our go-between for Mr. Gosling’s party.”
“I can do that,” Rick agreed.
“Good. You and Bordeaux get Gosling back in the game as quickly as possible, but as strong as possible.” Rivers looked toward Alan’s window. “Remington, see if you can boost the rest of Gosling’s party too. Let’s get this thing shut down. Also, Gosling, make sure your party understands that none of this gets out to the public. News of a rogue game AI could shut us down faster than a politician can lie.”
Alan wondered how dedicated his friends were to Total Immersion Systems. If any of them weren’t willing to toe the corporate line, there wasn’t much he could do about that. He just nodded to Rivers, not wanting to rock the boat. He was going to be able to get back in the game, and that was all that mattered at that point.
2
Alan stretched and yawned. The pillow didn’t feel right. Then as consciousness hit him full force, he remembered he wasn’t in his bed, but a bed in the pod lab. He jerked up and looked around. No one was in the room. There weren’t any windows, clocks or monitors, so he had no idea how long he’d been asleep. He’d only lain down because Rick had asked for a little time to get things set up before he went back into the game.
All he had on were the scrubs Miranda had given him. It hit him that with his house destroyed, he didn’t have any clothes of his own. The borrowed pants were the closest thing he had to anything in life, other than his pod. He wondered if there were other things that survived in the rubble of his home. Once he had everyone out of the game, he was going to need to take time and see what he could find. After that, he was going to have to file a report with his insurance company and wait for them to get back to him.
With a sigh, he put his head in his hands. There was so much he needed to do, but it could all wait until he made sure everyone was safely out of the game. Sure, there were other people who might be able to do the job, but he had a connection with Slasher in the game. IRL he was just another corporate bigwig at Total Immersion Systems whom Alan had never met, but that didn’t matter.
“Hey, the monitor said you were awake.” The man who assisted Miranda walked in with a tray that had a couple of brightly colored bottles on it. “Miranda said your electrolytes were a bit low according to your blood work, so she wants you to have a couple of sports drinks before you go back in.”
Alan frowned. He wasn’t a big enough gamer or jock to enjoy energy drinks, but he figured they couldn’t hurt if his body was short of important nutrients. “Any word from Rick?”
The man looked confused for a moment. “Rick? Oh, you mean Mr. Remington. I’m Fred by the way. Yeah, he called a few minutes ago and said he had things set up when you were ready to go back in.”
“And you guys didn’t wake me?” Alan tried not to glare, it was probably not Fred’s fault he hadn’t been woken. The energy drink didn’t taste as syrupy as the drink the previous night had.
“Was working on that. I had the drinks out of the fridge when Miranda told me your monitor showed you awake.” Fred set the tray down on the bedside table. “Honestly, I can’t believe you’re going back in. They’re saying they’ve got most of the players out at this point, only a couple of dozen or so left in, and over half of those can’t log out.”
Alan finished of the first drink and reached for the second one. He really hoped Miranda wasn’t going to make him eat something before he went back in the pod. The pods were designed to keep the players alive with a nutrient feed if they were in there too long. He was probably just thirsty because his pod had been running low on supplies or something like that.
“I know some of those who can’t log out. That’s all the reason I need for going back in. If I can rescue them, we’ll all get out and the AI can be shut down and reprogramed.” The second drink was almost refreshing. Alan wished Fred had brought another in.
“Sounds fair.”
Before Fred could say more, the door opened again, and Miranda walked in. She wasn’t moving as angrily as she had the previous night, but there was still a heaviness in her footfalls that was more than a woman her size should have.
“I’m still against this, but Remington assures me he’s going to equip you the best he can. We’ve also made some modifications to one of our newer model pods that should at least protect you from having the AI attack the pod controls.” She stopped a few feet away from Alan and put her hands behind her back. The move looked more like she was trying to do something with them to hide her anger.
“So I won’t be using my pod?” Alan finished off the second bottle and handed it to Fred.
Miranda shook her head. “We’re still analyzing your pod, trying to figure out what went wrong. It’s not safe at this point.”
“But I will get it back?” If he lost his pod too, everything really would be gone.
“The company may issue you an upgraded model as a replacement.” She sighed. “The final decision hasn’t been made on that.”
“Okay, so when can I go back in?” Alan stood, feeling stronger than before he had gone to sleep.
Miranda looked like she really wanted to argue with him. “Remington wants to talk to you first. You can vidcall him from my monitor in the other room.”
Alan walked to the door, trying to remember the way to Miranda’s lab. “Thanks.” The tile floor was so cold that he was a little surprised they hadn’t provided him with some socks, or paper booties, or something. The AC was more than a little brisk as he walked down the hall toward the lab. The lack of other people in the area made him wonder if it was night, or with the threats about going to the media, if that area of the building had been cut off to everyone but Miranda and her team.
“Mr. Gosling, if you would slow down, I can open the doors for you.” Miranda hustled to keep up with Alan’s longer legs.
“Thank you, Miranda.” Alan slowed down just a little. He didn’t want to show too much compliance to her.
“I know we can’t totally stop you… okay, we could, but corporate management wants you to try to get folks out. It’ll look a lot better for them if we’ve just had a few people lost in a game for a couple of days, rather than people dying in the game.”
Alan nodded as they approached the door to Miranda’s lab. “Having people die would be a major nightmare for the marketing folks. It might also cause the stocks to crash and the company to go under. I like my job enough that I don’t want to be finding another one.”
Miranda held her ID badge to the reader on the side of the door. There was a soft click, and the door opened. “That’s probably the reason they’re sending you back in.”
“Right.” Alan walked over to the desk where the monitor was up and a com window was open
, Rick sat in view of the camera on the other end.
“Ah, Alan.” Rick flashed a warm welcoming smile. “I heard you’d woken up. Good timing, I had just finished the adjustments to the player interface to be able to give you a bumped up character and send you in with the weapons and armor to help the rest of the party.”
Alan frowned as the words sank in. “Bumped up character? Won’t we be able to just increase Horc to the point we need him to be?” Although Alan had started his toon using completely random character generation, he was comfortable with what Horc could do. There wasn’t anything he really wanted to change in the character other than making him strong enough to stand up to the dragon.
Rick shook his head. “It’s like the folks who were able to get out of the arena by dying and logging out in those couple of seconds before the AI could take control of them again. The AI knows Horc. If you go back in, it will instantly recognize you. We need to make some changes.”
Alan leaned back in the chair. He really didn’t want to make changes. “What are you thinking?”
“There’s a couple of possibilities…a Half Troll, for example. Still powerful, still dangerous, if you go with any kind of caster.”
Alan shook his head. “I’d rather not go in with a caster. From what Mike and David have said, casters can be fairly complex. I need the character to be fairly simple and direct. That’s why I like the Ranger. Not big on tanking characters either.”
Rick let out a long breath. “Ranger limits us a bit. How do you feel about a Half Elf?”
“Helf the Ranger? Sounds odd. Horc is a better name.”
“You wouldn’t have to name it Helf, you could go with just about anything at this point on this server.”
“What if we just changed the name and the level, would that confuse the AI enough?” Alan had an idea come to him.
“Horc2.0…” Rick rubbed the bridge of his nose, then shrugged. “Maybe. So far we don’t have any characters with numbers in their names; that will come as the server gets more crowded.”
Horc2.0 sounded a little silly, and clinical to Alan. He was going in as a corporate lackey, a spy of sorts, but it was a rescue mission. “Horc007, it’s more digits in the name and a dot in a name might give it away as something special, so I’d rather not use one.”
Rick thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “It might work. But you’re going to stick with your race and class?”
“You’re changing my level, so let’s hope two changes will be sufficient to confuse it.” Alan wasn’t familiar enough with AIs to know what it was going to take to make it hard for the thing to not spot him when he re-entered the game.
“Depends on how much it’s learned over the past ten days.”
“Wait…what? It’s been ten days?” Alan asked. Miranda had been fairly pushy about not telling him how long he’d been in the pod, and he wasn’t about to admit to her that he’d lost track of time in the game. He glanced to the side where Miranda had pulled up a chair next to him.
She glared at the monitor. “Remington, you weren’t supposed to tell him that.”
Rick shrugged. “Someone needed to. But at this point, that’s neither here nor there. Okay, we’re also going to change up some of your specializations. You’ve been using sword or axe, you’re now going to use pole arms.”
“Okay.” Alan wasn’t sure what that would do. “But I still get my bow?”
“Yeah. We’ve had problems with crossbows and guns as far as programming go. The guns are as apt to blow up as shoot and crossbows tend to be difficult to master, so we’re keeping you with a bow. I’m thinking we can get you a tiger, or lion for a companion.”
Alan shook his head. He still couldn’t explain it, but he’d bonded to Wolf. He didn’t want a different companion. “No. I’m keeping my wolf.”
“I was afraid you’d say that, and David said you wouldn’t agree to that, so I have an idea on how to upgrade Wolf and keep him a wolf.” Rick pursed his lips. “It’ll take me a couple of hours after you log back in to get him to you, but I’ll make it happen.”
That made Alan feel a little better. “Thanks.”
“Okay, now your armor is going to upgrade to chainmail with a resistance to dragon fire.”
“Wait… the AI has figured out how to breathe fire?” A fire-breathing AI dragon sounded really scary, but with what Alan had found out about the programming of the AI, it made sense that the thing would have some kind of breath weapon.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Rick replied. “It might spit acid or use noxious clouds. Hard to say what it’s doing. We’re only able to track the thing through the players it’s grabbed, and then only on a limited basis. We can’t tell if they’re in a cave, a dungeon, a citadel, or what; we just know where they are on the map.”
Alan shrugged. “Sort of like when we tracked them to the arena.”
“A little worse.” Rick picked up a stylus and tapped it on the table. “It looks like the AI’s separating the people. They are scattered over the northern half of the continent.”
A sinking feeling hit Alan. “That’s going to make it really hard to break in and rescue everyone at one time.”
“We know. I think a concentrated attack on the AI might be the answer. I’m working with Rivers, Punjabi, and Goldstein on coming up with a real plan for the assault. By the time you get there, things should be sorted out.”
A soft, sarcastic smile crept across Alan’s face. “And most plans fall apart as soon as the enemy’s engaged. When I get back with the others, we’ll work on something too. David can keep you informed on what we come up with.”
“That’s a good plan.” Rick gave him a huge grin. “Okay. One other thing we’re recommending you do as a group; go beyond being a party and form a guild. You’ll have to go to one of the starting zone cities for that, the party’s nearly back to Tragiczan, so Red Wind Terrace isn’t far away. You and the other Orc Neutrals go in, set it up and when you get back to the rest of the party get them to join.”
After what had happened the last time they split the party, Alan didn’t like that idea. “If you’re going to be giving everyone level boost to help bypass the AI, can you also go in and make everyone neutral? It would make things easier to stay together.”
Rick’s stylus tapping increased, then he nodded. “That makes sense. We’ll add that to the upgrade package we force down on everyone. To be honest, we’re not sure how the upgrade is going to impact the people in-game.”
“Impact? In what way?” Alan knew from personal experience how some of the toying with things while players were running their toons could hurt.
“Pain, short periods of disorientation, black outs.” Rick counted things off on his fingers.
“If they’re somewhere safe when it happens, it shouldn’t be a problem.” Alan sighed. “But if they happen to be in combat at the time, it could be disastrous.”
Rick nodded. “Since we’ve been pulling players from the game, we haven’t had anyone die in combat after the arena, but there’s a chance it might give the AI more prisoners.”
The door to the lab burst open, and Fred rushed in with the woman who’d been with him earlier trailing him.
“Miranda, we’ve got a problem.” He thrust a pad at her. “We just got notification of someone dying in one of the pods.”
Miranda yanked the pad out of his hands and as she scanned the screen, the color faded from her face.
For several seconds no one said a word. Miranda closed her eyes and took a heavy breath.
She opened her eyes. “It was one of the people whose player profile was locked by the AI. Accounts are it was a heart attack. Odds are the AI did something. We’re out of time.”
“I’ll let the others know.” Rick started to turn away, then looked back at the camera. “Alan, you don’t have to do this. It’s too risky.”
Alan shook his head. “Riiiight. So from here on out, nobody dies.” Knowing that all of his party had died at least once, an
d he’d come really close several times, that sounded like the game was going to be a lot harder than it had been. Alan realized the stakes were higher than ever. When he got back in the game, not only was he going to need to rescue people, he was going to have to make sure his party stayed alive through the whole thing, or they were going to need to be rescued too before they died in their pods at the hands of the rogue AI. Yeah, the shit just got real.
3
The slight bit of disorientation Alan felt as he re-entered Halfworld vanished as Horc looked around. The familiar tents of Tragiczan filled his view. The vendors were there, but things were a lot quieter than they had been previously. There weren’t any calls to sell wares. For the most part the NPCs were standing around as if they were waiting for instructions.
“Kinda creepy, isn’t it?” Baladara walked up to Horc and grinned. “Although we can still interact with the NPCs, buy things, sell things, get rooms, that sort of things, they’ve stopped soliciting interactions.”
The text over Baladara’s head read Baladara, Human, Mage, Level 48. It brought a little smile to Horc. Rick had been able to give everyone a boost.
Bigdaddybear, Tufkakes, Stanoran, and Theodore were all there, also raised to level forty eight. The weapons and armor everyone had looked shiny and new. There were several other people standing around whom Horc didn’t recognize.
“I wonder what the AI’s done to them to cause this.” Horc walked up to a fruit vendor who was staring straight ahead with a vacant look. “Hello.”
She blinked. “Hi, what kind of fruit would you like today?”
Horc shook his head. “Nothing for me, thanks.”
“Yeah, and then we get responses like that,” Tufkakes said as the fruit vendor again fell silent and stared into the distance.
“It started about halfway across the ocean,” Bigdaddybear said. “Captain Calamity stopped talking our ears off, just grabbed hold of his steering wheel and didn’t say anything until we reached the pier at Dustbinnia, then it was just shouting to get off his boat.”