by Matt Ruff
Smith’s avatar has taken on a jittery quality, almost like he’s lagging. But it’s not a latency issue. He’s trembling with rage. “This,” he sputters, “this is . . . this is . . .”
“Immoral? Psychologically unhealthy? An example of the toxic masculinity endemic to rape culture?”
“Decadent!” Smith roars. The cone of silence keeps his voice from carrying, but She-Hulk finally notices the way he’s looking at her. She gives us both the finger, mouths “Dead to me,” and vanishes. Superman goes with her. Smith, still trembling, logs out.
I am left with the dregs of my nostalgia. And a question.
Lots of people think bullets are gross. But it’s rare to encounter someone online who has no idea what they are. And Smith is an IT guy—or an IT girl. But Smith being female would make this sort of ignorance even more remarkable. Raise your hand if you’re a woman in tech who’s never had some creep ask you to email him a hummer.
Where did you get your computer training, Smith? I wonder. On the moon?
I summon Googlebot. “Hello, John Chu,” she greets me. “How can I help you?”
“I’m an American tourist interested in experiencing severe culture shock. Can you give me a list of travel destinations that might satisfy me? I’m looking for places that are commonly described as ‘like going to the moon’ or ‘like being on a different planet.’”
“There are a number of countries that remain culturally isolated from the West, such that an American with your travel history would probably find them very strange,” Googlebot says.
“Is there one country that stands out as being more culturally isolated from the West than any other?”
“Yes,” says Googlebot, and names it. But I’ve already guessed.
Chapter 7
* * *
grinding — Engaging in a repetitive and often mindless task. In a video-game context, grinding may refer either to (a) actions performed to reach the parts of the game that are fun, or (b) the same actions performed out of habit after the game ceases to be fun.
See also: behaviorism, Skinner box
—The New Devil’s Dictionary
* * *
I look for Jolene at her favorite fishing spot.
Mom has given me permission to take Jolene into our confidence, but I need to be careful how I do it. As I log into Call to Wizardry, a telltale icon of an eye at the top of my visual field warns me that Smith is monitoring my POV. The telltale should be invisible to him, but he can see and hear everything else that I do.
I play it cool. I teleport to the Hinterlands of Goth and head for the coast, carrying my Krakenmaster 3000 and a Bottomless Creel of Holding.
Among all the secondary professions that a Call to Wizardry character can learn, fishing is the most tedious. The mechanics of it are simple enough: Equip a fishing pole. Find a body of water. Cast your line and wait three to fifteen seconds, as determined by the server’s random number generator, for your fishing bobber to signal that you’ve hooked something. Reel it in and see what you’ve got. Repeat ad nauseam.
As with other crafting and gathering skills, your proficiency is measured in levels, but fishing is unique in having no maximum proficiency. Instead, leveling up just gets progressively more difficult. To go from level 1 to level 2 requires a single successful cast, but at level 100, you might fish for half an hour before advancing. By level 500, the estimated mean fishing time between level increases is eight hours.
If it’s so boring and such a time sink, why do it? A comprehensive answer would require an explanation of dopamine’s role in the brain’s reward system, as well as a sidebar about the unusually high incidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder among MMORPG players. But the short version is, you do it for the same reason you do everything in Call to Wizardry: to get imaginary stuff. Newbie fishermen catch fish and the occasional tin can; at higher levels, the loot tables get more interesting, and there are rumors of truly exotic, even game-breaking treasures just waiting for someone skillful enough to draw them up.
The current record holder is Ahmet Mirza, a French Call to Wizardry player who briefly achieved fishing level 999. Just as Ahmet was about to crack the four-digit barrier, EULA took a look at his game logs and discovered a series of marathon sessions during which he had fished literally nonstop for days—strong circumstantial evidence of bot use. On the gaming forums, Ahmet swore up and down that he hadn’t cheated—he was just an insomniac with epic bladder control—but Tempest banned him anyway. When customer service denied his final appeal, he weighted his backpack with the pieces of his smashed computer and jumped into the Seine. As you would.
People who fish in the Hinterlands usually go to Martin’s Beach, but the site’s popularity attracts griefers as well, so I know Jolene won’t be there. Instead I climb Dead Man’s Bluff and enter the Emerald Sea Caves. The caves are infested with bloodthirsty nagas; I know a way to sneak past them, but if Smith has an in-game spy following me, there’s a good chance they’ll blunder into a fight and reveal themselves.
I emerge onto a narrow cobblestone beach at the base of the bluff. I listen for sounds of melee behind me, but there’s only the faint hiss and slither of the nagas. I walk south over the cobblestones, my footsteps echoing beneath the overhanging cliff.
A few hundred yards on, the beach bends sharply to the right, out of sight. I pause and look up, focusing on a distinctive knob of stone projecting from the cliff face. Off in the real world, I flip a control toggle. The telltale eye closes and blinks out; it is replaced by an icon of a spinning tape reel. Playback mode: Smith, or whoever he’s got minding my POV, is now viewing a recording of a previous visit I made to this spot.
I continue around the bend. Jolene is standing on a spit of sand. She’s just reeled in a barnacle-encrusted crate. I watch her pry it open, revealing a dozen bolts of enchanted silk. These vanish into her inventory and she quickly casts her hook into the water again. I step up beside her and deploy my Krakenmaster 3000.
“So,” Jolene says, “you going to tell me about that weird guy from the other day?”
“Even better,” I reply. “I’m going to tell you twice.”
I’ve only got twenty minutes before the playback loops, so I lay out the situation as quickly as I can: Smith. Mr. Jones. The job offer. The Chinese woman at the bar. And last but not least, Mom, who I describe as a generic “federal agent,” because this already sounds way too much like a spy movie plot and I don’t want Jolene to think I’m bullshitting. But it turns out skepticism isn’t a problem.
“Which agency?” Jolene asks. “FBI? Homeland Security?”
“It’s a part of Cyber Command. A special task force called—”
“Zero Day? For real?” Sounding seriously impressed, like I’ve just told her Mom’s a rock star.
“You know about Zero Day?”
“Hell yeah. I’d have tried to join, if they’d had it back when I was in the service.”
“You were Navy?”
“Marines. Six years. Where I got my IT training.” Jolene’s fishing bobber twitches, and she reels in another crate. Gold doubloons. “So who is this Mr. Jones, that Zero Day would care about him?”
“We don’t know yet,” I say. “But I have this crazy theory that he might be North Korean.”
Now Jolene looks skeptical. “Do North Koreans even have internet access?”
“I need to do some research about that. But I assume the guys running the country have whatever they want.”
“Why would a North Korean bigwig want to study MMORPGs?”
“No idea. But game theory has plenty of applications outside entertainment.” I reel in a magic halibut and toss it into my creel. Make another cast. “Psy ops. Economics. Military strategy.”
“And what makes you think he’s North Korean in the first place? The bank in Burma?”
“Partly that. But also . . .” I tell her about my last meeting with Smith.
She’s laughing by the time I finish. “Man,” J
olene says. “And you busted my chops for reading too much into Ray’s IP address . . . Have you told your mother about this yet? Because if not, I would like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.”
“Ha ha,” I say. “So are you in?”
“On a Zero Day op? Sure. Do I get a new computer, too?”
“That’s part of the plan,” I tell her. “That way you and I can b-channel right under Smith’s nose, without having to do this again.”
“And the money? I get a cut, right?”
“Of course.” Then, just to get it out of the way: “I’m going to need you to fill out a W-9 form, too.”
“Why, so you can claim my share as a business expense?”
I shrug. “It’s a lot of money.”
“You do know the IRS likes you to declare all your income, right? Not just the individual payments that are big enough to make you nervous.”
“Are you saying you report all the money you make as a sherpa?”
“Are you saying you don’t?”
A tug on my fishing line saves me from making a potentially incriminating statement. I reel in a vanity license plate: YTWHALE.
“What about the split?” Jolene asks. “Fifty-fifty seems fair, especially if you’re claiming me as a deduction.”
“The split will be fair,” I promise. “But it’s four ways, not two, so it can’t be fifty-fifty.”
“You’re bringing Ray and Anja in on this, too?” She sounds like she doesn’t approve.
“Sure, why not? We’re going to need them.”
“I’ll bet you Ray’s not going to be happy about someone poking around in his system, even if you do give him a clean machine first.”
“Ray’s not getting a new computer.” Mom’s orders are explicit, I explain: Ray is not to be told about Zero Day’s involvement in this. “As far as he’s concerned, Mr. Jones is just another client.”
“So your mom doesn’t trust Ray either,” Jolene says. “That’s interesting. She say why?”
“No, and I didn’t ask. I don’t think you’re right about Ray, but if you are, I don’t want to know.”
“You don’t, huh?”
“Why would I want to know a thing like that? I’ve still got to work with the guy.”
“That’s right, I forgot you don’t have a choice who you work with. What about Anja?”
“What about her? You don’t think . . . Come on, she’s nineteen years old. And Ray’s never shown any kind of interest in—”
“That’s not what I’m asking. Are you allowed to tell Anja what’s really going on?”
I shake my head. “She’s a foreign national. There are strict recruiting rules that apply to those, and U.S. and Argentine intelligence aren’t getting along right now.”
“Well, if you don’t tell Anja what’s up, how are you supposed to satisfy Smith’s security requirements?” From the way Jolene says this I can tell she’s already worked out the answer, and she really doesn’t approve.
“There’s a malware package,” I say. “Smith sent it to me. Mom’s people are decompiling it right now—we’re going to need to infect your computer, too, so they want to make sure they know exactly what the malware does and how to control it.”
Out on the water, Jolene’s fishing bobber is jumping again, but she ignores it and focuses her full attention on me. “How many lines of code are we talking about?”
“I’m not sure. The file was a few hundred megabytes.”
“A few hundred . . . And they’re going to work out exactly what it does in a day or two?”
“It’s a big team. And they’re really good at what they do.”
“Uh-huh.” Jolene frowns. “Look, John, I don’t really give a shit if Ray’s computer accidentally gets bricked—or mine either, for that matter. But Anja—”
“I know,” I say. “But it’s OK. Anja’s VR rig and her life support are completely independent systems. Corrupting one won’t affect the other. I Googled it to be sure.”
“Oh, you Googled it, did you?” Her expression says: There is not enough side-eye in the world for some things. “Before we go any further with this plan, I need to have a serious conversation with your mother.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll have her get in touch with you.”
We are almost out of time. Jolene makes herself scarce. I stare at my right foot as my computer counts down the last five seconds in playback mode. Then I look up, cast my hook, and fish for another hour.
A couple hours after that, Jolene and I bump into each other in the Game Lobby. The telltale eye observes as I tell her about Mr. Jones again, this time sticking to Smith’s preferred script: Jones is a secretive rich guy offering a lot of money, up front, for a sherpa crew willing to work long hours on short notice and not blab about it.
Jolene doesn’t have her new computer yet, so we cannot b-channel. But one of the benefits of being as outspoken as Jolene usually is is that even when you’re unable to speak freely, people who know you can guess what you’re thinking.
I tell Jolene that Mr. Jones is offering us a weekly salary of ten thousand dollars per crew member, and she says, “Ten thousand? Each?” To anyone eavesdropping, it must sound as if she is impressed by—and a little suspicious of—Mr. Jones’s generosity. But what I hear, loud and clear, is: “Ten thousand each? That’s what you call a fair split?” The ensuing discussion about what Mr. Jones is going to expect for his money is edged with a subtext of what an incredibly greedy bastard I am. And when Jolene asks whether I’ve talked to Ray and Anja yet, I can tell that she’s gone from being concerned for Anja’s safety to being actively pissed off at me for endangering it: Not only am I selfish, I am reckless.
I can’t see what my own face is doing. But my VR rig needs to be able to read my expression in order to render my avatar, which means Smith can read my expression too, if he wants to. So I do my best to not react to any of this.
It’s not as if I could argue with Jolene, anyway. On the charge that I am a selfish and reckless person, I can only plead guilty.
DARLA’S FIRST OUTING AS A MEMBER OF SHERPA, INC. was a level grind. The client was a junior executive at Amazon who was scheduled to go adventuring with his coworkers as part of a corporate team-building exercise. He had a high-level elf paladin he wanted maxed out in time for the run, and rather than pull an all-nighter he decided to pay us to do it for him. He also gave us a shopping list of magic items and crafting materials he wanted; our deal stipulated that in addition to our fee, we got to keep any treasure that wasn’t on the list.
It was Ray who’d found the client, so it was Ray’s gig. He’d mapped out a conservative strategy for getting the job done with a minimum of fuss and a maximum return on time invested. I would tank, as the client’s paladin; Anja and “the new girl” would dps; Ray, of course, would heal. That left one open dps spot, but the dungeons Ray wanted to run were easy enough that he thought we could manage with a smaller party—and a four-way split on experience points meant the leveling process would go faster.
When I told Darla about the job, she insisted that I should let her tank. “Come on,” she said, when I hesitated. “You wanted to know whether I can do it, let me show you.” Of course, this meant giving her access to the client’s account. But I made a snap decision to trust her, telling myself, on the basis of nothing more than intuition, that if Darla were going to screw me over it wouldn’t be anything as pedestrian as stealing a customer’s credit card information. Yes, I am aware of how ridiculous that sounds.
I gave Darla the client’s password and told her where in the game world to meet up with the rest of us.
She was late. When I showed up at the meeting spot as one of my own characters—a plainswalker shaman named Dances With Hooves—Ray immediately wanted to know what was going on, and he wasn’t happy with the answer. He became even less happy once Darla finally arrived. It took me a moment to recognize what the problem was: Darla looked like herself. That is to say, the paladin avatar had her f
ace and skin tone, and a female body. This would have been fine if it was her paladin, but it wasn’t, it was the client’s, and the client was (a) male, (b) Hispanic, and (c) not into crossgender play.
Every city in Asgarth has a transmogrification parlor where you can map a new face or hairstyle onto your avatar, swap genders, and even change races. But all of this costs gold, and sex changes are expensive, so unless Darla had been thoughtful enough to transfer the funds from one of her own accounts, she’d just spent a bunch of treasure that wasn’t hers.
No, Ray was not happy.
I tried to smooth things over by making introductions: “Ray and Anja, this is Darla. Darla, this is Ray Nelson and Anja Kirchner . . .”
“The girl in the iron lung,” Darla said. Anja froze up and her expression turned brittle, but then Darla continued: “I saw the video of your floor routine at the Pan American Championships. You were badass.” Which thawed Anja out again, but left her looking more off-balance than flattered.
“So,” Darla said. “Where are we going first?”
“Before we go anywhere,” Ray said, “I want to know—”
“The Barbican,” I said.
“The Barbican?” Darla gave herself a once-over, double-checking the quality of her gear. “We can do a lot better than the fucking Barbican, with this. What about the Temple of the Seven Lanterns? If we four-man that on heroic mode, I’ll be maxed out in no time.”
“The client wants three hundred ingots of orcish steel. That’s a common loot drop in the Barbican.”
“Why not just buy steel off the auction house?”
“Because then we have to pay gold for it,” Ray said. “If we farm it, it’s free.” He gave me a look, like: Did you forget to explain who’s in charge here?
Darla took the hint. “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We’ll run the Barbican . . . And just so you don’t wet your panties: I saved the original avatar configuration when I did the transmog, so I can switch back when we’re done. Your client will never know he had tits.”