by Rachel Ford
Bugs and Loopholes
Beta Tester, Book 3
By Rachel Ford
Chapter One
Jack Owens stared at the digital sky overhead, and felt the simulated breeze pass over his virtual skin. He was thinking about what it would feel like to be in the game forever.
The game was Dagger of Doom: Iaxiabor’s Revenge, the latest and greatest virtual reality world from Marshfield Studio. But Jack wasn’t thinking about how great the game was. He wasn’t admiring the lifelike feel of the world, or the breathtaking graphics.
He was thinking of William Xi, the first tester who had found himself stuck in a Marshfield Studio world – the way he was stuck right now, and for the same reason. Both men had been locked into the game when the studio had rolled out an update. In William’s case, it had been a driver for the virtual reality apparatus plugged into one’s brain. In Jack’s, it had been a bug fix for the game itself.
William’s consciousness had somehow disconnected from his body, trapping him in the virtual world like some kind of specter. His body had been put on ice indefinitely, while the studio tried to solve the problem.
Jack got the impression they weren’t trying very hard. William’s accident had happened years ago. Marshfield Studio had gone on producing new games in the meantime. Like Iaxiabor’s Revenge, which they’d then hired him to beta test.
And now Jack was stuck too.
“You alright?” Migli asked. It wasn’t really his dwarven companion. Migli doubled as the beta test supervisor in-game interface. When the team needed to speak to Jack, they’d take over the dwarf’s avatar, and communicate through him – complete with a voice altering filter, so that it sounded and looked like the blocky dwarf.
Right now, beta test supervisor Jordan Knight had control of the dwarf. She’d been the one to uncover what really happened to William. She’d just gotten done breaking the news. “Not really.”
She – and in-game, the dwarf – nodded. “Yeah. Me either.”
“When you say William’s still in the game…is he stuck in whatever he was testing years ago?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It sounds like he can get into any game running on the Marshfield Studio server farm. It’s all connected, and he’s basically – well, living in server memory, essentially.”
“So if they restart the computer, what? He’s dead?”
“No. They’ve done that. He lives in the cluster memory. If they have to bounce one server in the cluster, or replace one, he just moves to another server. Like any piece of code that’s running at the time.”
Jack shivered. Piece of code. What once had been a flesh and blood man was now just a piece of code on a server cluster somewhere. “What if that happens to me, Jordan?”
“It’s not going to, Jack.”
“What if it does?”
“We’re not going to let it.”
He snorted. “And how are we going to stop it?”
“You know what we have to do: you gotta finish the game. As soon as you’re done, it’s going to spit you out to your body.”
“So they say.”
“So it is. And look: you’re already building your team. That puts you that much closer to the end.”
He glanced forlornly at the orc to his right. Jordan had paused the game, and the young man had frozen in place – mid-yawn. “And what a team,” he snorted. “A child orc and a worthless dwarf.”
“The game builds your team around your playing style.”
He frowned at her. “What the heather is that supposed to mean?”
She laughed, either at the profanity filter’s senseless substitution for hell, or at his indignance. He couldn’t be sure which. “I just mean, the game will fill the gaps in your team strengths. So it assigned you Er’c because you’re lacking what he brings.”
“Which is…?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. That would be a spoiler, and it would impact your play style, and compromise the integrity of your test.” He scowled at her, and she laughed again. “Fine, fine. He’s a mage, with a subspecialty in cooking.”
“Wait, what about me? I’ve been honing my fire magic, and my healing magic. And learning to cook.”
“Yeah, but you’re a tank half the time.”
“Only because Migli is so useless.” Which was true: the dwarf was probably the worst companion Jack had ever encountered in a videogame. And he’d played just about every major videogame made during his lifetime certainly, and most of the ones before it too.
“Did you ever think that maybe you’re expecting the wrong things from Migli? Maybe he’s not the run-in-and-fight kind of character?”
He snorted. “Well he’s also not the stand-back-and-fight character. Or the haul-your-stuff-for-you character. He’s not a mage or a healer.”
“I didn’t say he was.”
“He’s useless.”
Jordan shrugged. “If you say so.”
“I do. I’ve spent the last – well, how many days has it been that I’ve been stuck in this videogame with him?”
She hemmed and hawed, and wouldn’t tell him, except to note that they’ve moved past the point where measuring his time in days made sense, and into measuring in weeks territory. “Your sense of time is skewed in the game. And the longer you’re in, the worse it seems to get. What seems like a day or two to you is days.
“I didn’t want to say anything earlier, since you – well, already have a lot on your plate. But it seems like your connection to your real body, and the real world, is slipping. Which is concerning.”
“You think?”
She ignored his sarcasm. “So we really need to get you to the end of the game as soon as possible.”
He nodded, and tried to push aside the rising panic he felt. “Right. Well, the child orc there said our next stop is some place called Kaldstein.”
“He’s not a child. Orcs have extended lifespans, but he’s still an adult. He just looks so much younger than the others because they’ve all spent decades aging.”
He didn’t really care. Orcs weren’t real, so he wasn’t going to debate her on the lifespans of orcs or the apparent age of his babyface companion. “It would have been nice if the game gave me some kind of warrior. Since I sure as heck can’t count on Migli to help in a fight.” He was thinking of the town he’d just left, full of great, hulking orcs – the kind of creatures who could split stones just by looking at them. Meanwhile, Iaxiabor’s Revenge had saddled him with a green skinned, pencil necked geek with tusks.
“How about you stop complaining, and wait and see what’s in store for you next?”
That, of course, piqued his interest. “Am I going to find another companion in Kaldstein?”
She shrugged. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
Jack’s mom wasn’t the most emotive of people, and she’d never been particularly close to him. But if she’d taught him one thing, it was how to lay on a damned good guilt trip. Sure, he didn’t have labor pains and weight gain to blame on Jordan, and he couldn’t lament the loss of his hourglass figure and perky boobs. But he could remind her that he was stuck in a videogame, and had been for so long she’d started to count the time in weeks. He could remind her that the last guy in his situation never got out, and was still haunting the Marshfield Studio servers somewhere. And he did, or at least he started to. He got to the time in weeks bit – the approximate equivalent of his mother’s pushing a nine pound baby out of my vagina line – when Jordan broke. It was about the same spot where he’d usually break, too.
“Alright, alright. Yes, you’re
going to pick up companions soon.”
“Companions? As in, more than one?”
“I can’t tell you –”
“How many weeks have I been in here?”
“Fine. Yes, more than one companion.”
“How many more than one?”
“Less than a hundred.”
“Come on, Jordan.”
But she cut out before he could move on in the planned guilt trip. “Listen, Callaghan’s on his way over to talk to me. I got to go.”
Avery Callaghan was the CEO of Marshfield Studio, and Jordan’s boss – several layers of middle management removed. So delaying the meeting wouldn’t be an option. So Jack decided he’d let her get on with that joy, and he’d resume the game and take a nap.
Jack did sleep, in-game and in real life, for what felt like several hours. Knowing what he knew about his perception of time, though, he couldn’t be sure. In game, he woke in the early morning.
Migli was back to his normal AI self, singing about dragon gold and heroes bold. Er’c had made a fire, and was cooking breakfast on it. “I found a brace of pheasants, Sir Jack, and eggs besides. I’m making an omelet.”
Jack didn’t know what a pheasant egg omelet would taste like. In truth, he was a little wary of the idea. But he was so surprised by the idea of a useful companion that he determined he would eat the food whatever it tasted like.
It tasted alright, which was another pleasant surprise. And Er’c kept his conversation to a minimum, and seemed to break in and out of faux old English less than Migli too. All in all, Jack was feeling pretty good about his new companion when they set out.
The countryside looked something like the Scottish Highlands – rugged and rocky, with greens and browns everywhere. They passed great stones standing presumably as some kind of way marker along the road. They saw patches of purple-flowered heather, and giant thistles that stood two or three heads taller than Migli, and clusters of bog myrtle that smelled like honey. They ran across Scottish bluebells, and common gorse, and red deer and golden eagles and wild cats. It looked like the kind of ecosystem someone who had spent fifteen minutes on Wikipedia or Google searching for Scottish Highlands might throw together. And that worried him.
If he knew anything about the game so far, building a highlands-esque world would have been all the inspiration the designers needed to introduce another terrible accent. And he’d just fled the horrible Scottish brogue of the orc village. He hoped he wouldn’t have to endure it in Kaldstein too.
Still, the day was warm, and as well as being a damned fine cook, Er’c proved to be an excellent hunter too. The young orc felled a great stag that yielded three pounds of venison and a rack of antlers, and two does that yielded one pound each. Jack liked a lot about videogame physics. He liked that he could jump over Migli’s head, and drop distances that – in real life – would have put him in a full body cast, or a casket. On the opposite column in the pluses and minuses chart were things like this, where a five hundred pound deer would yield a measly three pounds of usable meat.
But there was nothing he could do about it – and it did come with perks, like not having to butcher the animal, or deal with blood and entrails. On balance, maybe it was worth giving up meat in order to just hover over the dead animal and grab its bounty.
And, anyway, Er’c seemed content to do all the hunting. So it was no skin off Jack’s back one way or the other.
Migli sang as they went, usually about gold. But he added a new composition to his standard repertoire, about a young orc lad of stout heart and sure shot. And though Jack couldn’t recall hearing Migli sing his praises, he didn’t much mind – until he got to the line,
And to a madman’s cause he pledged his troth
His life to risk to face a demon’s wroth.
This, of course, didn’t sit well with Jack. Certainly, he’d been a little annoyed that Migli had immediately commemorated Er’c’s deeds in song, without a word about his own feats so far. But better to be ignored entirely than relegated to the role of ‘madman.’
Jack turned over his memories of all the games he’d played, and the companion systems with which he was familiar. Many of them, he knew, put a limit on how many companions a hero could have in tow at any given time. Maybe Iaxiabor’s Revenge would too. Jordan had implied that he would meet multiple new companions soon. Maybe – if he was lucky – he’d get the chance to send Migli back to wherever the hell he’d come from. Maybe he could trade him in for someone useful. Wouldn’t that be a novelty?
In this way, the rest of the journey passed – with Er’c storing away provisions, Migli singing about Er’c storing away provisions, and Jack plotting to be rid of the dwarf once and for all. They reached Kaldstein by late afternoon.
At the center of the city sat an ancient fortress that had been carved out of the gray stone of the hillside. All around it lay buildings of varying degrees of workmanship: some tall and straight and solid, and others looking more like a pile of matchsticks waiting to go up in smoke. The streets likewise ran the gamut from well-maintained cobblestone to rutted and pitted mud trails.
But before they could reach any of this, they had to pass the city walls. The walls were built of stone as they faced the road coming and going, but were little more than palisades along the sides of the city. There was a gate in the center of each of the four walls – two set in stone, and two set in the wood. They reached the southern gate first – a great, aged portcullis, under which the main road passed.
Four guards patrolled the ramparts hereabouts, and one of them called, “Oi, what’s yer business ‘ere?”
Jack groaned. He couldn’t quite place the accent. It didn’t seem Scottish, not even by the game’s rather abysmal standards. But it was definitely an accent. Still, he answered politely. “Good evening to you, Watcher. We’re seeking intel, and believe someone in your fair city may have it.”
“Who would that be, then?”
Jack paused. That, of course, was a good question – and one for which he didn’t have an answer. Er’c had told him there was a man in the city who would know where to find Iaxiabor. But the young orc hadn’t dropped a name. “Well, I’m not sure actually.”
The guard mumbled something to one of his colleagues. “A man, an orc and a dwtty bearded feller who can’t tell us where they’re going or why? Now why should I let you in, then?”
Jack gathered from the context that the comment had been one about Migli’s height. He was the only one of the trio who sported a beard, and he was considerably shorter than the others; the beard and height were his most noteworthy features. So he figured the man on the wall was saying something about a little bearded fellow. The problem wasn’t with translating the dialect, although the slurred consonants and almost sing-song delivery of the accent did take a few milliseconds longer to translate.
Still, he followed. And he realized he didn’t have a good answer. Luckily, the game offered him a few predetermined response options.
We are on a quest to save all life, good sir – man, dwarf and orc-kind alike. Let us pass, I pray thee.
Our business is our own.
And,
I have no time for your irrelevant inquiries. Open the gate, lest you rue the day your fool of a mother birthed you.
They were the standard polite, neutral and rude responses he’d come to expect of the game. Sometimes, depending on the context, he’d have more or fewer options. But these seemed to be the standard categories.
And normally, Jack would have chosen the first option – the polite option. But the second one brought his mind to the gates of Bree, to Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin as they fled the Black Riders on a quest of their own. That’s what Frodo had said to the watchman there, wasn’t it?
If Jack had a true love in life, it was probably the Lord of the Rings – movie and book version, extended and theatrical.
So he chose the second option. If it was good enough for Frodo, well, it was good enough for Jack.
And the watchman scowled at him. “Well, fair enough, I suppose. But you can go about your own business at someone else’s gate, my lad. You’ll get no admittance here.”
Chapter Two
Jack tried everything he could think of to cajole the guard to open the gate – sweet talking, bribes, even threats. None prevailed. The watcher laughed at him, and taunted him once or twice, but mostly ignored them.
“There are three other gates,” Er’c reminded him. “Let us try our luck at one of the others, Sir Jack.”
The sun was starting to set now, and the howl of wolves and shriek of wild cats rolled over the desolate landscape. Jack decided the young orc was right. They set off following the perimeter of the great city eastward.
The eastern gate was little more than a large, wooden door, watched by a single man. He surveyed the trio skeptically. “Yer not delivery drivers,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Jack found he had two options, this time.
We have wandered off road, it seems. I pray thee, let us in, good watcher.
And,
Our business is our own. Open the door, knave.
This time, he chose the polite option. Sorry, Frodo.
The man considered. “Aye, well, it is getting dark. Alright, I won’t make you trudge back. But don’t tell anyone, you understand?”
They agreed that they’d keep the secret, and the guard opened the rickety gate. It swung inward on whining hinges, and they stepped inside.
The eastern road was a poorly maintained, swampy stretch of dirt. Jack had barely taken fifteen steps before his boots were covered in mud. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed all around, the former drawn to the ample piles of horse droppings along the way, and the latter, unfortunately, drawn to them.
The three men grunted and grumbled and swatted the insects as they went. Jack didn’t have much of a destination in mind. At the moment, his primary thought was outrunning the insects.