88 Names

by Matt Ruff

  At breakfast this morning, Bamber asked me whether the backpack I’d been using was the only backpack I owned. I told her no—like most nerds, I have a pile of old backpacks gathering dust in the bottom of my closet—but it’s my newest backpack, and the one you’d expect me to use if I were taking my rig somewhere. “I thought so,” Bamber said, and then she showed me the GPS tracker she’d found hidden in one of the pack’s side pockets. It was the same make as the tracker in the collar.

  So now we know how Smith found me at the motel. That business where he asked about my IP address must have been a head fake, or a test to see if I’d lie. But if he knew where I was all along, it does raise the question of why he’d send armed goons to break into my apartment. And if the mystery trio aren’t his people, and they aren’t Ms. Pang’s—then yeah, who the hell are they?

  Don’t ask me, I just work here.

  It’s five minutes to ten, time for me to get ready. I open the glove compartment and take out the collar, which Bamber has patched back together. On Mom’s instructions, she’s also disabled the microphone in the buckle. This will likely make Smith suspicious, but it’s a risk we need to take, as we are planning to pull a real-life version of a b-channel.

  I snap the collar in place around my neck. Then I take Smith’s Xiaomi phone, turn it on, and put it in my pocket. Next are a mismatched pair of earbud phones. The one that goes in my left ear has Zero Day-approved encryption and will allow me to communicate securely with Jolene and the others. The one for my right ear is a civilian model that connects wirelessly with the Xiaomi and will let me talk hands-free with Smith while I am doing his bidding.

  This second earbud was part of a package that a courier delivered to the hotel early this morning. The package also contained a stolen ID badge and a prosthetic thumb. The badge belongs to Jim Boden, a senior computer programmer for Tempest who has worked on Call to Wizardry since its inception. I don’t look anything like him, so if I tried to walk into Tempest HQ through the front door I’d never get past security. But according to Smith, there is a less well-guarded side door that connects to the tower from the Arcade. By swiping the badge, and using the fake thumb to spoof a biometric sensor, I should be able to enter through there. I am then supposed to take an elevator to the floor where the real Jim Boden works, and convince him to walk out of the building with me. Smith’s people will be waiting to grab him at street level.

  To help with this last part, the courier’s package also contained a handgun—a .50 Desert Eagle semiautomatic. This is another popular video-game gun, a fetish weapon that shoots bullets that are half an inch in diameter. The Desert Eagle that the courier delivered is unloaded, but the thing is so scary looking that just pointing it in Boden’s direction should be enough to ensure his cooperation. If not, Smith told me, I will need to think and talk fast. “If you fail your mission, I will trigger the collar, and I will terminate your friend Anja’s life support.”

  Thanks to Bamber, I know the first half of this threat is bullshit. We’re still waiting to find out about the second half. The helicopter with Javier and the tech guy touched down in Paraná twenty minutes ago, so they should be at Anja’s house any moment now, and once they talk their way inside, the tech guy’s first priority will be to make sure the medical pod is completely disconnected from the internet.

  Until we get the all clear on that, we are going to pretend to play along with Smith’s plan—up to a point. I am not actually going to kidnap Jim Boden, and if Mom has her way, I won’t even go so far as to breach Tempest’s security. For a variety of bureaucratic and legal reasons, Mom’s goal, as she puts it, is to maintain “the lightest possible footprint”—ideally, neither Tempest nor the local police will ever know we were here.

  Partly for this reason, I will not be bringing the Desert Eagle into the Arcade with me. The only member of our group who will be armed is Jolene. If something happens that Jolene can’t handle, Mom has “other assets” that she can bring into play, but, as she stressed in our pre-op conversation, she’d really, really prefer not to use those.

  That’s what she wants. We’ll find out soon enough what she can have.

  At ten o’clock sharp, the Arcade doors open and the line starts moving. Beside me, Jolene makes her own final preparations. Smith knows what she looks like, so to disguise herself, and to conceal her Kevlar vest and gun, she is wearing a gray USMC hoodie. She slides a big pair of tinted glasses onto her face and milks the drawstrings of the hood until her chin and forehead disappear. “How do I look?” she asks, flashing me a gap-toothed grin.

  “Like the assassin who loses the knife fight to Quvenzhané Wallis in The Bourne Resurrection,” I say. I reach for the button on the dash that turns off the Faraday Cage. “See you inside.”

  Thirty seconds later I am walking out of the parking garage. There’s a subway exit just to my right.

  As I wait to cross the street, the Xiaomi phone rings.

  A TWELVE-FOOT-TALL TROLL STATUE STANDS JUST INSIDE the Arcade entrance. It doesn’t move or speak, but you can sit in the cauldron at its feet and have your picture taken pretending to be boiled into gumbo. I pass.

  Beyond the troll, spread out across the Arcade floor, are long rows of stylish gaming booths chased with blue and purple neon, each one containing a state-of-the-art VR rig. For twenty-five bucks an hour you can play all your favorite Tempest games, and take an advance look at upcoming titles and expansions. Forty bucks an hour gets you a legendary booth—these are larger, and decorated with orange neon—that will project your gameplay onto an overhead holographic display, letting passersby admire your elite skills.

  Off to the right, past a long counter selling time cards and merchandise, a sweeping crystal staircase leads up to a second-floor gallery. I spot Bamber at the top of the stairs. She takes a moment to admire a crossed pair of orcish scimitars that are mounted on the wall, then leans on the gallery railing and looks out over the floor.

  “Heads up,” Ray says, her voice in my left ear. “There’s a cop in the building.”

  I raise a finger to my right earbud and make sure that the microphone is switched off before asking, “Where?”

  “Cheapside.” This is a region of the Arcade that, like the virtual arcade in the Game Lobby, is devoted to vintage coin-op games and pinball machines. The budget entertainment option, Cheapside is a big draw in its own right, but like the dairy case in a supermarket it is located a long way from the entrance—to get to it, you must walk past the more expensive VR game booths, and a concentration of legendary booths along Cheapside’s fringe serves as a constant reminder of what you are missing.

  “What’s he doing?” This from Mom.

  “Fucking off on duty, looks like,” Ray says. “Playing Lethal Enforcers.”

  “Keep tabs on him,” Mom says. “But try not to let him notice you.”

  “No fear.”

  I reactivate the mike on my right earbud. Smith hasn’t said a word since he first checked in with me on the street. He told me there would be a delay while he confirmed Jim Boden’s exact whereabouts. I don’t mind being patient; the longer this takes, the better it is for Anja. I go over to a nearby legendary booth, where a kid in a Repeal the 2nd T-shirt is tanking a run through the Temple of the Seven Lanterns. A group of older gamers go by, and I scan their faces, instinctively looking for Smith. But this is pointless: They’re a diverse bunch, but none of them are Gray People.

  Static crackles in my right ear. “It is time,” Smith says. “Where are you?”

  “Inside the building,” I tell him. “Near the troll by the front door.”

  “Directly behind the troll as you come in, there is an aisle leading towards the far side of the building. Do you see it?”

  “Yes.” The aisle, a sort of Broadway spanning the width of the Arcade’s first floor, is roughly divided into two lanes by a series of padded benches, snack and drink machines, and display cases filled with game world artifacts.

  “Follow it to its en
d, to the back corridor where the restrooms are.”

  “OK, Smith,” I say, for the benefit of my other listeners, “I’m headed towards the restrooms at the end of the big aisle.”

  But I’ve barely started walking when Bamber announces: “John’s mystery Asians are here.”

  “Where?” I say, Jolene echoing the question in my left ear.

  “Where what?” says Smith. I forgot to shut off his mike.

  “Coming my way, up the stairs,” Bamber says. “I think they want a bird’s-eye view.”

  “Where do I go once I get to the restrooms?” I say, to Smith. I turn and look up at the gallery. I see the trio pass behind Bamber and move to the railing a few yards beyond her.

  “Just keep walking,” Smith says. “And keep your eyes in front of you.”

  I turn back to the aisle, take a few more steps. Even as I ask myself how he could know which way my eyes are pointed, I see, coming towards me down the aisle’s other lane, a figure in a hoodie. It’s not Jolene. This hoodie is black and bears the Resident Evil game logo, and though the hood is pulled forward over the wearer’s head, the drawstrings are loose, so I can see the jaw and the lower part of the face.

  His face: It’s a white guy, and even this partial glimpse is enough to tell me that I know him. Then I see his lips move, forming words, and the gray monotone voice of Smith speaks in my ear: “That’s right, John. Keep going. You’re almost there.”

  I stop dead in my tracks, my head swiveling as he continues to walk forward. I feel like I’ve taken a hit of something, but it’s what happens next that really floors me: A kid comes darting up the aisle, closely pursued by a couple of friends. They’re on a collision course with the guy in the hoodie, but just as the lead kid is about to plow into him, the hoodie guy does this sideways pivot, dodging around the kid without even breaking stride. Then he does it again, and again, the kids zipping by heedlessly like paintballs flying across an open field.

  Only when he’s cleared the last of them does he come to a stop. He’s directly across the aisle from me now; we are separated by about ten feet of space and a waist-high display case. I see his lips curve in a smile. He reaches up and slips off his hood and turns to face me. I know him, all right: The white guy from the CIA Factbook. The white guy who broke into my apartment. Ms. Pang’s white guy. But he’s someone else, too, and though he is flesh and blood, in a moment of total context fail I see him as an avatar, controlled by another person altogether.

  “Darla?” I say, the word falling into a moment of perfect stillness that probably exists only in my imagination.

  His smile broadens. He winks at me. “Perv,” he says, and Smith, in my ear, says it too.

  Then his right hand slips inside the front of his hoodie and comes out holding a Desert Eagle handgun. It’s the same model as the one the courier delivered to me this morning, but where that one was finished in silver, this one is plated in gold. It is also, I feel quite certain, loaded.

  I’ve been in more VR gunfights than I can count, so I know what I’m supposed to do here: Move. Even at point-blank range, it is amazingly difficult to hit a target that is ducking and weaving and jumping around. I know this, but like a newbie I just stand there with my mouth open.

  He doesn’t shoot me. He doesn’t even point the gun at me, in fact, just says, “Cover your ears.” Then he sidesteps, extending his arm and aiming up, towards the gallery.

  I clap my hands over my ears. This probably protects me from at least some permanent hearing damage. Not that I really appreciate it in the moment. This is one thing video games, by necessity, get totally wrong: how painfully loud guns are. Even a small-caliber handgun can produce more decibels than a jet engine. When the Desert Eagle fires, I feel the shockwave in the bones of my face, and the muzzle flash—a three-foot-long column of hot gas and propellant—is blinding.

  I am literally staggered. The second shot knocks me completely off balance; I am already falling when Jolene comes in from the side and tackles me.

  As we hit the floor, the glass in the display case shatters, struck by return fire from the gallery. I shut my eyes and scream into the side of Jolene’s neck. The Desert Eagle booms twice more. The last shot is from a different location, and I dimly surmise that he is on the move.

  Seconds pass with no more shots fired. I open my eyes carefully. Someone goes running by, and I hear, through the ringing in my ears, the panicked commotion of scores of gamers fleeing towards the exits.

  Jolene pushes herself up on one arm and sweeps her hood back. She draws her own gun and swivels her head around. She looks down at me and says, “Get your ass out of here,” mouthing the words broadly so I’ll be sure to understand. Then she gets up and sprints down the aisle in a crouch. Going after the guy in the hoodie.

  I stand up carefully, brushing bits of glass from my shoulders. A logjam has developed by the base of the troll statue, people fighting one another to get out of the building. I look up at the gallery. Bamber and the trio have vanished. I can see where a fist-sized chunk was blasted out of the gallery railing, and three larger and more jagged holes are punched through the glass panels of the balustrade, but there are no bodies, and no blood.

  At the Arcade entrance, the logjam breaks. The crowd surges out onto the sidewalk. I go the other way.

  A grinning statue of Proctor the Salesgoblin stands guard outside the restroom corridor. From inside, just out of view, I hear two people shouting—it sounds like Jolene is one of them. Then I hear three gunshots in quick succession. Then nothing.

  When I poke my head into the corridor, Jolene is on the floor in front of the women’s room, clutching her right side. Slumped against a trash bin outside the men’s is the person who just shot her—an LAPD officer, probably the same one Ray spotted earlier. The cop has been hit in the shoulder. In most video games this would barely count as a flesh wound, but the guy looks pretty bad—pale, sweating, in shock. He’s got his other hand pressed to the wound, but there’s a lot of blood seeping through his fingers.

  Keeping a wary eye on the cop, I crouch beside Jolene. “Are you all right?”

  She glares at me, infuriated by the question or by the fact that I’m still in the building. I take her anger as a good sign. “Ribs,” she wheezes, wincing. “Busted.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ray says, appearing behind me.

  “Hey,” I say to her. “Jolene’s going to be OK, I think, but that guy”—nodding at the cop—“could probably use some help.”

  Ray gives me a look. “You know I’m not a real cleric, right?”

  “Yeah, of course, but . . .” I guess I assumed, given her affinity for playing healers, that she’d at least know first aid in real life.

  Jolene takes a deep breath. “Pressure,” she says, wincing again. “Put pressure.”

  I nod, and look up at Ray again. Ray looks back, like: Are you serious? But then she sighs and goes to put pressure on the cop’s wound, so he won’t bleed out before help gets here.

  Past the men’s room, the corridor we are in ends in a set of stairs, headed up.

  “The guy in the hoodie,” I say. “Did he go that way?”

  Jolene shakes her head. Not saying no. Telling me not to do it. Which of course I’m going to. I glance at her gun, which is lying on the floor beside her, and she hisses through gritted teeth: “Touch it and I’ll break your damn arm.”

  “OK,” I say, putting my hands up. “OK.”

  Then I stand, and turn, and head for the stairs.

  AS I’M CLIMBING THE STAIRS I TRY TO TELL MOM WHAT’S going on, which is when I realize I’ve lost my left earbud. I’ve still got the right one, though, and the microphone is still on.

  “Sorry, perv,” he says, “I’m not your mom.” He’s turned off the Smith voice filter, so he sounds like a real person now. Though still not the person I think of him as.

  “Who the hell are you?” I say.

  The question makes him laugh. “A badass,” he says. “A different flavor of b
adass.”

  The Arcade’s upper level is a huge food court. At the top of the stairs I pause and look around carefully. I don’t see anybody, but that doesn’t mean much—the sightlines are terrible, the floor space broken up by fast food kiosks and whimsical statues of NPCs eating and drinking.

  “What about those guys you were shooting at?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “Who are they?”

  “The kind of people who keep their money in Burmese savings accounts. They’re pissed because I ripped them off.”

  “Gangsters? You stole the money from gangsters?”

  “I told you I was going to have a big surprise for you when I got back from my trip.”

  Oh my God. “You ripped off a bunch of gangsters . . . to finance our MMORPG?”

  “I was going to steal the money for that,” he says. “Technically, the surprise was that I got my hacker friend Orville to show me how to steal it. I was going to talk it over with you before I did it, give you a chance to wet your pants and get used to the idea, then discuss how much we’d actually need. But before any of that could happen, you fucked me over. So I decided to steal the money to fuck you back, instead.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I say. “I know you’re mad I cut you out of the Janet Margeaux gig, but this . . . You think this is proportional?”

  “Of course it’s not proportional.” He laughs. “But it is awesome.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Look, if you’re worried about Anja, don’t be. You know I’d never really hurt her. All I did was fiddle the alarm system on her medical pod. I had to, to get you to put on that collar . . . Which I can’t believe you fell for, by the way.”

  As we’ve been talking, I’ve been making my way through the food court, staying low, moving from cover to cover. Listening. At the moment I’m hunkered down beside a Panda Express kiosk. Straight ahead is a dwarven longboat with some kid’s tables inside it. When he laughs again, I don’t just hear it in my right ear, I hear it in my left as well.