by Matt Ruff
“Why didn’t the government shut the markets down after the famine ended?” I ask.
“Shutting them down completely would be impossible at this point,” Mr. Park says. “Most of the true believers in communism starved to death in the famine, while the people who survived became very adept at circumventing the rules. The local authorities and border guards have been corrupted by bribes. As for the central government, they don’t really care if people have money to buy refrigerators or nicer clothes. They concentrate their enforcement efforts on select classes of goods. For example, one of the most popular things on the black market is foreign media: books, movies, music, TV series. Like the internet, these are forbidden to ordinary citizens, because they contradict the government’s claims about the outside world. But enforcing the ban is extraordinarily difficult, because digital media are so easy to smuggle, and despite severe penalties for trafficking and possession, people are willing to take the risk.”
“What about video games? Are there—”
I stop, suddenly aware of another figure in the room. It’s the white guy from the plaza. He’s materialized off to our left and is staring out the window, pretending to ignore us.
This time I don’t bother to hide my lips. “Take me somewhere else.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Surprise me.”
Another blur of motion, and I am staring at a rack of metal shelves. The shelves hold rows of large octagonal cases. Each case is labeled in Korean, and most are labeled in a second language as well. DAS BOOT, reads one. Another says: FRIDAY THE 13TH PT. II.
I crane my head around. I am inside what looks like a large, windowless warehouse. There are many rows of shelves, holding what must be tens of thousands of octagonal cases.
“This is the Kim family’s private film vault,” Mr. Park says. “It—”
“Hold up a second. Do you have any idea who that guy was?”
“What guy?”
“Just now, back in the hotel, there was another guy in the room with us. You didn’t see him?”
“I’m a software construct,” Mr. Park reminds me. “My awareness, such as it is, is focused on the user or users I’m currently interacting with.”
“Is there any way for you to look up information on other users accessing the Factbook right now? Like the IP addresses they’re logged in from?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Do you know if the CIA keeps records of visits to this site?”
“I have no direct knowledge of that,” Mr. Park says. “But the site’s privacy policy, which you declined to read, does contain language suggesting that is the case.”
“OK, thanks . . . So, you were saying? This is the Kims’ movie vault?”
Mr. Park nods. “It’s believed to be one of the largest film collections in private hands. Much of it was amassed by Kim Jong-il while he was head of the DPRK’s Propaganda and Agitation Department.”
“And it’s actual film? These cases, they’re for old-style celluloid reels, right?”
“Yes. What you see here is a reconstruction based on a decades-old eyewitness description. The collection may have been digitized in the interim—but perhaps not. Again, all forms of foreign media are considered classified material, and celluloid, being harder to copy than digital files, is more secure.”
“Friday the 13th is classified?”
“I’m unfamiliar with that title,” Mr. Park says, “but, for example, if it contained scenes showing ordinary Westerners driving cars, living in beautiful houses, or eating more or better food than DPRK citizens do, then of course it would be seen as problematic by the regime.”
“How did they get the films?”
“Most are bootleg copies. Kim Jong-il had professional duplicating equipment installed in all of the DPRK’s foreign embassies. The diplomatic staff would bribe local theater owners and borrow their film reels for copying. An elaborate security protocol was devised for dubbing the films into Korean: To minimize the risk of ideological contamination, the films’ audio tracks would be recorded separately, without images, and broken up into short segments, each of which was given to a different translation team for processing. Whenever possible, the teams were made up of foreigners who had already been exposed to the outside world—either defectors who had come to the DPRK willingly, or people abducted specifically for that purpose.”
“Kim Jong-il kidnapped people to translate movie dialog?”
“Kim Jong-il kidnapped people for all kinds of reasons,” Mr. Park says. “So did Kim Il-sung. And Kim Jong-un—”
I put up a hand. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
It sounded like a cough, a couple rows over. “Hello?” I call out. “Is somebody else in here?”
No answer.
“Would you like to hear a story about the time Kim Jong-il kidnapped a film director from the Republic of Korea?” Mr. Park asks me.
“Sure. But not here. Take me somewhere else.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Someplace indoors,” I say, “but smaller than this, with a corner where I can sit and watch the whole room while you’re talking.”
Chapter 9
* * *
G.G.R. — “Gonna get raped,” a popular video-gamers’ utterance meaning either “We are about to inflict a humiliating defeat on those other players” or “Those other players are about to inflict a humiliating defeat on us.” The abbreviation, originally coined to bypass speech filters, has since become common even in gaming environments where explicit, humorous references to sexual assault are considered perfectly acceptable. In environments with very strict speech codes, on the other hand, even the abbreviation is bowdlerized, becoming G.G.P., “Gonna get pwned,” or G.G.F., “Gonna get fucked” (which, despite containing an obscenity, is viewed by many censors as inoffensive).
—The New Devil’s Dictionary
* * *
In Alpha Sector near the galactic core, the big boys are getting ready to rumble.
Today’s MMORPG is The Fermi Paradox, a game of interstellar conquest. There are no character classes, just money, testosterone, and big things blowing up in space. The game’s economy runs on space ducats, which can be acquired through honest trade, piracy, or—the most popular option—via direct purchase from Fermigames LLC. The player base skews libertarian, but the in-game ethos is more corporate than rugged individualist: The ship control AI is notoriously lame, so even if you’re rich enough to buy your own battlefleet, you still need friends, or lackeys, to help crew it. Players form guilds with hundreds or even thousands of members, pool their resources, and try to take over the galaxy.
There is no official code of conduct. Backstabbing and betrayal are common; even certain forms of cheating are allowed. So are profanity and hate speech: If you want to name your guild The Alte Kämpfer, or Bitch, Make Me a Sandwich, customer service won’t hassle you about it. Consequently, The Fermi Paradox is also popular with bigots and people who like to kick the shit out of bigots.
In one famous incident, an Israeli guild, Rainbow Pride, got into a spat with a Russian skinhead group, Jews to the Ovens. The Rainbows bought one of their members an Aeroflot ticket and sent him to the St. Petersburg housing projects where J.T.T.O.’s members all lived. Right before Rainbow Pride launched its in-game assault, the projects lost internet access; by the time it was restored, J.T.T.O.’s space fleet had been wiped out and its territory was being divvied up between the Rainbows and the Ukrainian guild Putin Fucked My Cat. Though the victory was sweet, the real winner was Fermigames, which saw a huge uptick in ducat sales as other space Nazis lined up to avenge their fallen comrades.
Today’s title fight involves a different sort of rivalry. In one corner is the Los Angeles–based G.R.U. Syndicate, whose leader and chief financial backer is one of Tempest’s founders. In the other is a South Korean guild whose members all work for the video-game company GangnamSoft; their guild name is a play on
words whose meaning in English would be something like “Penis Swarm.” These are the two most powerful guilds in the galaxy right now, which by the logic of The Fermi Paradox means genocidal war is inevitable.
Three hours ago, a friend of mine in G.R.U. emailed to tell me that the Mother of All Battles is about to kick off. I messaged Mr. Jones and asked if he’d like to watch two superpowers duke it out in cyberspace.
We arrive just before the shooting starts. The battleground is Penis Swarm’s home system. Their capital planet is protected by a ring of heavily armed space stations and three dozen star cruisers. It’s an impressive amount of firepower, but to an experienced eye it’s obvious that the cruisers are operating on autopilot, which means that they will suck in combat.
We lurk in a conveniently located asteroid field. Our ship is a Wasp, a small vessel with a powerful cloaking device. Ray, at the helm, keeps one eye on the proximity alarm. In addition to dodging asteroids, we need to watch out for the other ships that are sure to be hiding here; the cloaking device will keep them from shooting at us, but the Wasp’s lack of shields means that even a minor collision could be fatal.
Anja is in charge of the Wasp’s spy drones. Her avatar occupies a chair next to Ray’s, but her POV is outside, zooming untethered through space, peeking around the far sides of the rocks. From the sound of her voice as she describes what she sees, she is loving every second of it.
Jolene is back in the engine compartment. The antimatter drive is running smoothly and nothing else on the ship needs fixing, so she’s using the downtime to catch up on some work from her real-life job.
Mr. Jones sits in the captain’s chair. I stand beside him, playing Spock to his Kirk, or maybe Vader to his Emperor Palpatine. I explain the fundamentals of the game and lay out what is about to happen. I make a point of referring to the Swarm as Korean, not South Korean, and stress that it is the American G.R.U. who are the aggressors here.
The attack begins on schedule. “Warp signatures,” Ray announces. “A lot of warp signatures.” He brings up a long-range view on the main screen and we watch the American battle fleet drop out of hyperspace.
Because space ducats can be bought for cash, it’s possible to put a real-world value on the game’s spaceships. Dreadnought battlecruisers, the largest standard class of attack ship, run about four hundred dollars U.S. apiece; the Americans have brought at least fifty of them. But the serious money is in bespoke ships, custom vessels whose size and firepower is limited only by the purchaser’s budget. A pair of enormous warp signatures heralds the arrival of two bronze-tinted Death Stars whose coloring is no doubt intended as a visual pun: Big Brass Balls. You’d need to look at the schematics to calculate an exact price tag, but these are easily worth ten thousand bucks. Each. Add in the star cruisers, destroyers, frigates, carriers, fighter and bomber wings, and support ships, and the Americans are fielding at least eighty grand’s worth of virtual hardware—much of which is likely to be destroyed in the next hour.
But first the South Koreans will take a beating. The defense fleet reacts immediately to the incursion, but the response is uncoordinated, with each star cruiser pursuing a different target. The Americans keep their ships in formation and concentrate their fire. One by one, the Korean star cruisers lose their shields and explode.
Mr. Jones is appalled. “Who is in charge of that fleet?” he says. “A blind man?”
“No one.” The Americans have timed their attack very deliberately, I explain: It’s morning in Los Angeles, which means it is the middle of the night in Korea. For employees of GSoft, it is also crunch time, as the company puts the finishing touches on its own MMORPG, due to roll out next month. The Americans are hoping that the Swarm are all either asleep or too busy to respond.
“A real fight would be more interesting,” Mr. Jones suggests. “What can we do to help the Koreans?”
“Nothing. Those star cruisers aren’t going to take orders from us.”
“What if we fight alongside them? Show them—”
“Wouldn’t help. Anyway, we don’t have any weapons.”
“What?”
“This ship is designed for spec ops. Espionage.”
“You should have gotten us one of those!” Mr. Jones says, jabbing a finger at the Big Brass Balls.
“If you want one of those, you’re going to need to talk to Smith about sending me more money . . . But listen, this ship isn’t useless. We will get a chance to do something. You just need to be patient.”
“I do not enjoy being patient.”
More than half the Korean star cruisers have been destroyed. The Americans have lost a frigate and suffered minor damage to one of their carriers. Soon they will begin to attack the space stations. The stations have much tougher shields and will take longer to kill, but without human controllers to issue them orders, their target selection will be as haphazard as the cruisers’.
“We must contact the Korean high command,” Mr. Jones says. “Warn them about what is happening here, before it is too late.”
“No need. The cavalry is already on its way. Look.”
More warp signatures are blooming on the tactical display. In a matter of seconds, the amount of money in play more than doubles: The South Koreans have brought their own fleet of Dreadnoughts and their own custom Death Stars. Bigger ones.
As the reinforcements come out of hyperspace, the surviving star cruisers abruptly smarten up. They fire a combined salvo at the damaged American carrier, turning it to plasma, then fall back towards the space stations, which begin launching waves of long-range nukes from hidden missile batteries.
A caution light flashes on Ray’s control panel. “The Koreans just turned on a bunch of warp inhibitors. The whole system is locked down.”
“Warp inhibitors prevent ships from using their hyperdrives to escape the battle,” I explain to Mr. Jones.
He brightens instantly at the news. “This is a trap?”
“Of course it’s a trap. I’m not the only one with a friend in the G.R.U. Syndicate. The Koreans knew this attack was coming.”
“But the Americans must have spies as well,” says Mr. Jones.
“Oh, sure. And yes, they’ve probably got a counter trap lined up. That’s the game.”
The Koreans aren’t done springing surprises: As the two fleets begin slugging it out in earnest, one of the American Dreadnoughts turns traitor. It blows up another carrier, then launches a kamikaze attack on one of the Big Brass Balls.
“A mutiny?” Mr. Jones says.
“More likely a cyberattack,” I say. “They’re generally careful to let only the most trusted guild members crew the big ships. Although with a fleet this size, it’s possible that a sleeper agent or two got through. Look there.” One of the Korean space stations has just dropped its shields; its last missile salvo pulls a one-eighty and slams into the station’s command deck, crippling it.
“I wish to participate in this battle,” Mr. Jones says. “What can we—”
The proximity alarm sounds. Ray kicks in the subspace thrusters and boosts us hard to starboard. A small ship resembling a silver teardrop flits past with just meters to spare. The alarm keeps wailing and Ray dodges again as two more teardrops race by.
“Gleaners,” I explain to Mr. Jones. “When the big ships blow up, they’re like piñatas—they spew space ducats equal to a tenth of their construction cost. Any ship with a tractor beam can collect the money. The Gleaners go in while the battle is under way and try to steal as much loose change as they can.”
“They are not allied with either side?”
“No, they’re opportunists with good spy networks. They go wherever they hear a fight is about to break out.”
“I hope this is not what you intend us to do,” Mr. Jones says. “I have no interest in scavenging.”
“I had something a little more ambitious in mind. Gleaners are optimized for speed, but they’re short-range vessels, with no hyperdrive. There’s got to be a base ship back in the r
ocks here somewhere, that they launched from. We can use the Wasp to capture that, then threaten to strand the Gleaners unless they give us their ducats.”
Mr. Jones does not seem enthused about this plan, either. “How can we capture a ship if we have no weapons?”
“The Wasp has a device called a cybertronic ovipositor that lets us hack into a larger ship’s computer and seize control of it.”
“We can perform a cyberattack? Why didn’t you say so? We should capture an American ship!”
“We could try that,” I say. “But you understand, even if we capture a Dreadnought—which is a very difficult thing to do—we won’t last long against the rest of that fleet. If we take the Gleaner base ship, we have a good chance of making it out of here with enough money to—”
“I don’t want the stupid base ship!” Mr. Jones says. He points at the Big Brass Balls again. “I want one of those!”
“That would be extremely difficult.” An understatement. “To even attempt it, we’d need to land on the hull without being detected, which—”
“Hey guys!” Anja breaks in. “I think I found something! Ray, bring up the POV from drone number four.”
The main screen switches from the view of the battle to the feed from the drone’s camera.
“Huh,” Ray says.
“‘Huh,’ what?” says Mr. Jones. “There is nothing there.”
“Exactly,” I say. The drone is hovering in what should be one of the densest parts of the asteroid field. But a void has developed among the asteroids—a long, narrow, open space. And it’s moving. Picture an invisible submarine nosing its way through a rock slurry: That’s what it looks like.
A gigantic invisible submarine.
“It’s got to be five hundred meters long,” Ray says. “With a top-end cloaking device, and a shitload of tractor beams to move the asteroids out of the way. I don’t even want to know how much that cost.”