Her mouth works. Eventually she settles on: “Anything else? You want us to dig out our implants while we’re at it? Burn off our fingerprints, maybe?” With this weird pasted-on grin that’s not fooling anyone. She’s shaken.
The woman smiles. Gets up off the bench. Throws me a wink. “I thought you were supposed to be the uptight one,” she tells me. “This way. Do me a favor and don’t follow too close.” She takes off, out of the park and down the sidewalk.
Jessa and I exchange a look, then follow, talking to each other in low tones like somebody’s listening. This no-lenses thing has got me paranoid. Who takes out their lenses? Why?
“No real names,” I whisper, not that it’ll really end up mattering. If we’re walking into something shady, our in-game handles will tie us to it just as effectively. To say nothing of the twenty surveillance cameras that probably have eyes on us right now.
Jessa nods, a compressed gesture that could have been a twitch.
“She say anything last night about the no-lenses thing? I swear, if this turns out to be creeper shit—”
“I’ve got my taser,” she says.
“Me too.”
“We could just put our lenses back in,” she says, nodding to where the woman’s orange knit hat is bobbing in and out of the crowd ahead. Still whispering, like we’re within anything resembling earshot to anything short of a SecOps operative. Whoever this woman is, she is definitely not that. “She’s way up there.”
“Don’t you even think about it,” I tell her. “You wanted to do this, we’re doing this. You dragged me out here. I’m out here. Now we see how it plays out.”
How it plays out is the woman leads us to a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop wedged in between a lens outfitters and a hair-and-nails place, so tiny it doesn’t even have a proper sign, just an old-school chalkboard out front that says, imaginatively, COFFEE.
Inside it smells amazing. Real coffee, or maybe just better dispenser coffee than what I’m used to. I’m not exactly an expert. All I know is that I want to get a bucket of it and stick my windburned face directly inside.
By the time my eyes adjust to the cozy lighting, the woman has seated herself at a far table, back in a corner but with a clear view of the door. That uptight part of me I keep getting called out on wonders dimly if that’s relevant, but I shrug and head over to the table with Jessa.
The woman stares at us each in turn, like she’s reading some kind of deep meaning in our faces. “QueenOfTheRaids,” she says. “Nycorix.”
“Morning,” I say with forced casualness. “And you are?”
“Call me B,” the woman says, and I have no idea if she’s saying Bea or Bee or that her code name handle is B, the way we don’t know anything about the SecOps operatives’ names, if they even have names, just the numbers they were assigned when they passed quality control and were declared fit for duty.
“Please,” B says. “Order anything you like.”
I’m still running on my crappy coffee and my energy bar, and I don’t need to be told twice.
I swipe the table to bring up a menu, and Jessa and I spend a few minutes perusing it before settling on triple hot chocolate with soywhip and rainbow sprinkles (Jessa), extra-large dark roast coffee with soy creamer (me), and cookies the size of our faces for both of us (chocolate chunk for Jessa, oatmeal raisin for me). I also throw in an orange juice, because I don’t think I’ve had a real one since I was a kid. Jessa makes a little ooo sound when she sees me doing this, so I tap the icon again.
I gesture like I’m going to spin the menu around to B, but she waves it off. “They know me here,” she says, and right on cue the server hovers over with a coffee and muffin on its little tray.
So I hit send on the menu, then swipe it away. Jessa and I sit and try not to look awkward while B goes through some kind of breakfast ritual of situating her muffin precisely in front of her, sweetening her coffee one fraction of a teaspoon at a time, and so on.
Jessa’s foot nudges mine under the table. If we had our lenses in, she’d be screaming at me in messages right now. I nudge back, as if to say I have no frigging idea. Just ride it out. As if I’m the one who wanted this.
B takes a calculated sip of coffee, a measured bite of muffin, while we try not to stare. Our order arrives. I apply myself to my coffee, counting seconds in my head. I get to thirty-five before, without so much as an I apologize for being less than forthcoming in messages or a sorry for making you take your lenses out with no warning or a my regrets about making you sit here waiting for answers while I take the longest amount of time humanly possible to arrive at some kind of point, B says, out of nowhere: “How much do you know about Stellaxis’s SecOps operatives?”
Jessa nearly spit-takes her soywhip. Usually, spouting SecOps operative trivia ends with pillows being thrown at her head. Clearly, this is her time to shine. I don’t even bother opening my mouth.
“Oh,” she says. “Well. Where to even begin. It’s probably fastest if you tell me what kind of stats you’re after. I can give you height, weight, rank, blood type, hours in the field, notable engagements, favorite food, date of death—for the ones that applies to, obviously—preferred fighting style, date of deployment, favorite pastime…”
B is staring at her with open fascination. She cuts a glance at me, and I shrug, helpless. “She’s the expert.”
“Oh, don’t sell yourself short,” Jessa says. “I know for a fact that you—”
“Or did you mean the in-game versions?” I ask B. Not loudly enough to draw attention, I hope, but loud enough to cut Jessa off midsentence. “I mean, it’s our stream you’re sponsoring.” I pause fractionally, waiting for her to contradict this. She doesn’t. Which does little to take the edge off my confusion. “Right?”
“Of course,” B says. “And I suppose the most accurate answer to your question is both. Both the real and the in-game versions. As the one is so firmly based on the other.”
“Well,” Jessa says, and you can pretty much see the fangirl dynamo reignite behind her eyes, “the in-game versions are high-level NPCs whose personalities are patterned after the actual operatives. They update them periodically as the operatives get older—well, older isn’t exactly—never mind—so they stay accurate for a more immersive experience!” This last in a breathless voice that could have fallen out of an ad. I know her well enough to know this tone was aimed at irony, but sounds more like irony that’s crawled far enough up its own ass to come out the other end as sincerity. “It’s all from some huge database Stellaxis keeps on the whole SecOps program. I guess they get the info from the operatives’ implants or surveillance cameras or something? Nobody really knows. Anyway, wherever they get it, they have it, and it all goes into the in-game ones. Dialogue, mannerisms, fighting style, all of it. Some of it, like the blood type, they have to make that up, of course, but when it’s all put together like that it makes, like, a story? All the way down to what they do when nobody’s interacting with them and they’re just, like, minding their own business walking around or whatever. Really intricately detailed stuff.”
She pauses for air. B makes a go-on face. Jessa runs with it.
“Really intricately detailed. Super sophisticated. One time me and Nyx found 17 just sitting on the edge of that statue out there, you know, the one in the park we just came from? He had this whole bag of donuts he’d gotten somewhere, and he was just stuffing them into his mouth one by one, whole, like he’d never had donuts before and he was never gonna have them again. And there were all these pigeons, just coming out of nowhere, and he was throwing pieces to them, even though you could see in his face he really didn’t want to share…” Another pause. “I mean. Maybe the real 17 never got to have donuts, not in real life, you know? He was so young when he died.” She looks down at her cookie and hot chocolate, the rainbow sprinkles bleeding into the melty soywhip. “He probably would have loved this stuff.”
The silence stretches.
“Like when we found 28 last n
ight,” I cut in. “Nobody was using her, so she was just wandering around reading, killing time.”
The phrase sounds weird even as it’s leaving my mouth. Killing time. Especially when you consider how the 28 we found is nothing but information coded into a game, and how the real 28 is dead. And was never even really alive to begin with. Dead is just shorthand that feeds the same narrative as blood type and favorite food. Damaged beyond repair, I guess. Destroyed.
“And what she said to me when she saw me, that’s different from what 17 would have said if we’d found him instead, or 02 or 33 or any of them.”
“33 tried to chase us off that one time,” Jessa says, brightening again. “With a sword.”
“That happens,” I agree, and sip my coffee gratefully while she takes the conversation back over.
“So,” Jessa says. “Whoever has the top position in the day’s leaderboard can recruit one SecOps NPC of their choice to be, like, an ally? And that NPC stays with their player until someone knocks that player off the top of the leaderboard and gets to choose their own operative NPC instead. That—the real high-level stuff—is the bread and butter of a lot of top-tier streamers because whoever’s got the operative is scrambling to keep him or her, and everyone else is trying to knock that player off the boards, and there’s millions of people watching this play out. Having an operative on your side makes a huge difference, of course, but it paints a giant target on your back at the same time. It’s like a whole other game inside the game.”
“They don’t just use the operatives to fight, though,” I say between sips. This coffee really is very good.
Jessa pulls a face. “No. You earn the favor of one of the NPCs, you get them all to yourself until you lose them, but there’s nothing saying what you can or can’t do with them during that time. Some people get… creative.”
“Sex stuff,” I say, nodding at my coffee.
“Don’t listen to her,” Jessa tells B. “I mean, yeah, okay, sometimes? But it’s not allowed with any of the operatives who are underage. Or whatever the equivalent of that is for them. Or whether you even count as underage if you’re dead. But okay. Sex stuff aside. Though those streams are exactly as popular as you’d expect when they do happen, they don’t happen often.”
I snort. “I think you’d be surpri—”
“Most of it is intended-use gaming. You get your fighting buddy, go fight, rack up a zillion points, try to stay on top of the heap. Good clean fun.” She eyes me pointedly, then rolls her gaze back to fix on B. “Sometimes it’s just random stuff that’s supposed to be funny. One time I saw someone put 38 in a frilly pink dress and set up this little-kid tea party with her and some stuffed animals and dolls they found in some bombed-out building somewhere. She was so confused. It lasted about two hours, and it’s all anyone was watching that afternoon. It was absolutely massive. 38 just kept saying, ‘I really don’t think this is authorized.’ Nyx, remember that? It turned into this huge meme for like a week, nobody could shut up about…” Jessa trails off. “Where was I going with that?”
I spread my hands at her expansively.
“Anyway. I forget who did that, the thing with 38, but whoever it was, they’re set for a while. I’ve seen streamers go from zero to superfame just by getting their hands on these guys, even if they only keep them for five minutes.”
“But first you have to get on the boards,” I say.
Jessa nods. “First you have to get on the boards. In case you don’t know,” she tells B, “you get on the boards by killing a thousand mobs—um, nonplayer enemies—in a given day. That gives you access to try to climb the leaderboard for the next twenty-four hours. You make your thousand every day, you keep that chance every day. You don’t, you fall behind. It’s really time-consuming and really hard to actually climb the board once you get on it. Nycorix here could tell you all about that part.”
I busy myself with a bite of my cookie, because it’s either that or I kick her under the table. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“Anyway, in terms of keeping a SecOps NPC away from other players, the standing record is still from ’31, when GeneralRei managed to hold on to 11 for nine and a half days, and she—”
Left to her own devices, Jessa would plummet straight down this rabbit hole and drag us both with her. Her enthusiasm is one of the things I like best about her—I find it baffling and admirable in pretty much equal measure—but once she gets really spun up, it can be hard to shut her down. I can’t tell if B is too polite or too awkward to interrupt this force-of-nature monologue, so I do us all a favor.
“She knows all this,” I tell Jessa. Then, sliding my gaze over to B: “You must know all this. If we’re not here because of the footage we got of 28 last night, then—”
B has no trouble cutting me off, at least. “I saw. Impressive driving.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But we’re not here because I trashed the bike to get like three seconds of dark footage of 28 on a nature walk.”
“No,” B says. “You’re not.”
Jessa looks up from her hot chocolate.
“Okay,” I say. “Then why?”
“Because you fit all of our criteria,” B says.
“Criteria for wh—”
“You’re solid middle-of-the-road streamers. You have a following, but a modest one. You’re capable enough, but not star players. You’re not famous enough to draw attention, but that means you have more potential for an upward trajectory. With the right sponsor, of course.” She smiles. I’m trying to squash down my cynicism long enough to fail to translate all this as You’re small enough to buy. “And you were local enough to meet up with in person. I always prefer that.”
“Wait,” I say. “Our criteria?”
“Is that why you had us take out our lenses?” Jessa asks over top of me.
B’s pause is almost imperceptible. “Call me old-school, I guess.” Then, to me: “My family and I are sponsoring you jointly. My brother’s account fronts your payment, but it comes from all of us. This is my sister’s place we’re sitting in. She helped me set up this meeting.”
I don’t know anyone with that much surviving family. Not by a long shot. I assume she must mean dead sister, inherited coffee shop, but B is pointing toward one of the baristas behind the counter. She’s got a MANAGER pin on her apron. They don’t look much alike, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe one of them’s adopted. Maybe they both are. They look to be wearing matching earrings, and at the moment that’s good enough for me. The moronic notion takes sudden root in me that the sister’s name might be A.
“Okay, but this list of criteria of yours must describe a thousand streamers just like us in a five-mile radius. Why us? Specifically.”
For a long moment B says nothing, just holds my gaze. Under the table, Jessa is grinding her heel into my instep. I pull my foot away and kick her.
“Well,” B says. “You did find 28. If I recall correctly, 28 doesn’t really tend to make herself available to be found. She avoids interaction.”
Beside me Jessa is nodding furiously. “Almost as much as 22 does, which is saying something. We picked up another couple hundred followers for last night’s session,” she says. “Might even be more by now. I’d know if I had my lenses in.”
“Why don’t you play?” I ask B. “It’s not like we find 28 on a daily basis. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her close up. She’s a real asshole, too, by the way. Who knows, maybe you’d make the boards and get her all to yourself for a while. Do whatever the hell you want with her.”
Another long silence. On the one hand I’m starting to regret continuing to dig this hole. FIVE GALLONS A WEEK is blaring through my head in neon two-hundred-point font. Jessa will murder me in cold blood if I blow this, as she should.
But on the other hand, I’ve always been crap at letting go of things I don’t understand, and that doesn’t seem to be suddenly changing today.
“I would if I could,” B admits eventually. “If I didn�
�t still have three-plus years on my interface lockout, you wouldn’t be sitting here. Anyway it’s not 28 I’m after. Specifically.” This last comes out with obvious mockery, but mild enough, and no more than I probably deserve.
“Three-plus years?” I sputter. “What’d you do?”
“Domestic terrorism,” she says. “I was collecting rainwater on my roof and purifying it. Giving the extra away in the camps. I didn’t last two weeks before they caught me.” She catches the look on my face and is hasty to clarify: “That’s not where we got the water we sent to your accounts. We pooled our money and bought that. This is all aboveboard, I promise.”
“Nyx was wondering why you didn’t pay cash,” Jessa pipes up.
B grins. “I was hoping to get your attention. I assume it worked.”
Jessa raises her cup a little in acknowledgment, then gives me a double take when she sees I’m not doing the same. I don’t know. It feels a little too much like we’re being handled.
B notices. “Don’t worry. Future payments can be made in cash or company credit, if you prefer, and after today, there’s no need for us to see each other again, if that concerns you, which I can tell from your face that it does. After today, I will happily sponsor you at an anonymous distance. I just wanted to see who I was working with. Whether you seemed reliable. For the record, you make a good first impression.”
Jessa nods sympathetically. “There’s someone upstairs of us who’s serving a one-year lockout for something like what happened to you,” she says. “He stole a bottle of water from the company store. Just stuck it in his pocket and walked. Nothing in his account for the scanner to take.”
“No wonder they hit you so hard,” I add. “Processing your own potable water, that’s a hardcore offense.” I hear a note of admiration in my own voice that I don’t fully understand. I change the subject. “So, what? You watched our stream on a public computer somewhere?”
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