Dagmar looked at him.
“How big is a packet? ” she asked.
“No smaller than twenty bytes, no bigger than sixty.”
“The routing information might be larger than the message.”
“Yes.” Charlie nodded. “It would. But the routing information could be a part of the puzzle. If you include the IP layer, it would include the originating IP address, which could be crucial to finding out who sent the messages.”
Slowly, Dagmar lifted her drink and took a contemplative sip.
“One big problem,” she said, “is that a lot of our players don’t actually play, they just lurk.”
“So make the number of messages smaller and build in a lot of redundancy.”
“Okay. So we break the message into, say, three thousand packets, and we send out multiple copies of each packet until everybody gets one. Then they have to decode the thing, right? ”
“Yeah.”
“And reassemble it.”
“Which won’t be hard, because each message will contain a sequence number as part of the routing information.”
“We’ll have to create some kind of engine that reassembles it. We can’t expect them to do it by hand.”
Charlie shrugged. “Whatever.”
“And the result could be a graphic or a photo, which would be more cool than a text message. And more unanticipated.”
Nodding. “That’s good.”
“Okay.” Dagmar lifted her Coke bottle and offered Charlie an ironic toast. “I don’t actually hate this idea. Especially since it won’t require a lot of rewriting, and I can shift most of the work onto Helmuth and his staff.”
Charlie smiled.
“Excellent,” he said. “Now, the cipher I want you to use is called Portcullis.”
She looked at him. “Why Portcullis? I never heard of it.”
He shrugged. “Portcullis is a start-up out of Dallas. They have a good product, and they also offer support in case the players run into trouble.”
A feeling of unease seeped like a cool mist into Dagmar’s brain.
“This is a private company?” she asked. “They sell their product?”
“Yeah. They sell the cipher fairly cheaply and plan to make most of their money selling support.”
Mentally, Dagmar probed this idea and realized she didn’t like it.
“Why not use freeware?” she asked. “You can find military-grade encryption on the Web and use it for free.”
Charlie straightened in his chair and looked down at her. “Firstly,” he said, “because Portcullis offers support, and a lot of the players haven’t necessarily used decryption programs before.”
Dagmar did not find this argument convincing.
“And secondly…? ” she said.
He gazed down at her expressionlessly.
“Secondly,” he said, “because Portcullis is the program I want you to use.”
Anger flashed through Dagmar, but it faded quickly, to be replaced by an anticipation of oncoming wretchedness-that there was some horrible truth about to emerge, something that would send her spiraling into misery. A sense that she was on a ship running before the storm, only vaguely aware of the reefs looming ahead.
“How much,” she asked, “will Portcullis cost the players? ”
“Basic service is something like thirty bucks and comes with half a year’s free support.”
She looked at him and folded her arms across her chest.
“Charlie,” she said, “that’s going to make the players berserk. Traditionally, ARGs are free Internet entertainment. Players aren’t used to paying for them, and they won’t. ARGs that expected their players to pay for something have all… struggled, to put it as kindly as I can.”
Charlie nodded at her words, but only to dismiss them.
“Enough of them will buy Portcullis to make this work,” he said.
A sudden urgency possessed her. She had to make herself understood.
“Charlie,” she said, “we’re on our way to more than three million players. This game is already an enormous success. Why are we risking that success? ”
He looked down at her. “I do not have to explain my decision.”
She spread her hands helplessly.
“Give me something to work with, okay?” she asked. “Make believe this is a rational act.”
Charlie said nothing.
“Are you invested in Portcullis in some way? ”
Charlie shook his head slightly, a few millimeters left and right. “No. Absolutely not. This decision does not benefit me in any way.”
“Is Austin ’s company involved? ”
“No,” Charlie said. “Portcullis came to him for funding originally, but Austin turned them down.”
“Could that be,” Dagmar said, her voice rising in heat, “because they’re competing with stuff that cryptoware geeks give away for free? Could that be because their business model totally sucks? ”
Charlie inclined his head, an absolute monarch conceding a minor matter to a loyal councillor.
“Last month they did have a disappointing IPO,” he said.
In frustration, Dagmar raised clawed hands and slashed at an invisible barrier. “So why are we- ”
“Let’s just say,” Charlie said, “that I believe in their product.”
Dagmar gave up. She sagged back on the couch in utter capitulation.
Charlie was screwing again with the shape of Dagmar’s game. The inclusion of Austin’s death and the search for Litvinov had unbalanced the structure, but she had hopes that if she skated fast enough, she could beat it into shape again.
Now they were set to anger millions of players. Millions upon whom Dagmar depended for goodwill. Millions who could have stayed in Planet Nine and made Charlie’s new acquisition wildly profitable.
She looked at him, the Type One Geek she’d known all her adult life, and wondered if he knew the havoc he was wreaking upon his own potential bottom line.
“Charlie,” she said, “Litvinov was found in Santa Monica.”
“Yeah.” His face remained expressionless.
“I’ve seen the Seahorse. It’s less than a mile from where you live.”
“Right.”
“Is it more than a coincidence that Litvinov is first seen hanging around your business, and next he turns up right in your neighborhood? ” What if it really was you he’s gunning for? ”
Dagmar saw a twitch in a corner of Charlie’s mouth.
“I don’t know who he was after, Dagmar,” he said.
“And now you’re running your company from a hotel room,” Dagmar said. “It’s like you’re afraid to go home or to the office. Plus you’re involved in a scheme that will bring Portcullis a huge wave of unexpected income, which will drive up their stock price. Which”-she leaned toward him-“looks just like a classic pump-and-dump stock fraud, the kind the Russian Maffya does all the time.”
Again Charlie gave that brief, taut shake of the head.
“You’re wrong, Dagmar,” he said. “You’re way off base.”
She reached a hand toward him but fell short. She let the hand hang in the air.
“Charlie,” she said, “are you in trouble? ”
“If you want to save me trouble,” he said in a flat, controlled voice, “you will follow my damn instructions.”
Dagmar withdrew the hand.
“Right,” she said, and stood.
She carried her drink to the door.
“Don’t forget your peanuts,” said Charlie.
FROM: Jack
Can I ask a question? What’s this “destegging” I keep reading about?
FROM: 16nHorny
Yeh. That one has me pussled to. And what is teh PM’s besides the
afternoon ha.
FROM: LadyDayFan
Our bulletin board welcomes all of the thousands of new players
that have been showing up in the past few days, but we urge
them to check the F
AQ List and Player Tutorial before asking
questions.
FROM: 16nHorny
Ok thats cool ha. Is there a way to meet briana cuz she is teh hawt.
Austin’s memorial service was held at Katanyan Associates in a mahogany-paneled boardroom, the guests seated in padded brown leather chairs with brass accents, the whole a California simulation of a New York bastion of Old Money. The illusion was spoiled by the large LCD screens used for teleconferencing, and by the long smart table with the intelligent, touch-responsive screens, all of which demonstrated that the room belonged not to nineteenth-century robber barons but to those of the twenty-first.
The largest of the LCD screens now showed a large studio portrait of Austin, the one used on his company’s home page, smiling out from between tall, brilliant flower arrangements placed on a table below the screen. Austin’s parents sat in the brown overstuffed chairs, and Dagmar went to say hello and then signed the memorial book.
Dagmar had dressed for the memorial in hose, Blahnik satin shoes, a Marc Jacobs skirt, and a navy Chanel jacket, the last three items of which she’d picked up in a Beverly Hills secondhand store, the sort of place where Orange County trophy wives dumped the previous year’s fashions. Dagmar, whose usual tastes ran to khakis and freebie game-convention T-shirts, didn’t care if her clothes were eighteen months out of date-and the Chanel jacket, in any case, was timeless.
Style sense had always been something she’d planned to acquire, if she ever had the time to think about such things.
Most of the people in the room were Austin’s partners and employees, and though she knew a few faces from Austin’s parties, they were mostly strangers. Charlie either hadn’t arrived or was off organizing something. Dagmar helped herself to some coffee from a brushed-aluminum urn and took a seat.
Half a minute later, BJ dropped into the seat next to her.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi, yourself.” She felt suddenly more cheerful.
He wore gray polyester slacks and a brown twill jacket. Hours spent eating junk food while squinting at low-end monitors had added about thirty pounds to BJ’s stocky frame, but the arms and shoulders were still powerful. His fair hair hung over his ears, and he’d added a set of muttonchop whiskers to his mustache. There were fine lines around his eyes, and he wore a pair of rimless spectacles that made him look like a down-at-the-heels grad student.
She put her coffee on the table, slid her chair closer to his, and reached out to give him a hug. He patted her bemusedly on the back.
“Good to see you,” he said.
He looked around the room. Mischief sparkled in his blue eyes.
“Where’s Charlie? ” he said. “Hiding? ”
The question made Dagmar uneasy. She had not ceased wondering if Charlie was in truth hiding, not from BJ, but from Litvinov or what he represented.
“He’s probably organizing something,” Dagmar said.
“I’ve been looking at your game,” BJ said. “Nice, devious stuff.”
“Thanks.”
Charlie entered at that point, with a man and a woman who were slightly familiar to Dagmar and who she assumed were more of Austin’s business associates. He spared BJ a glance, but nothing more than that. He said hello to Austin ’s parents and introduced the two people he was with, then took a seat at the far end of the table.
BJ stared at him throughout, his blue eyes hard. Charlie’s face was mild.
One of Austin’s associates stood and introduced himself as Stephen. He introduced Austin’s parents to the group and then suggested that if people would like to talk about Austin, they should feel free to do so.
Then he sat down, an expression of satisfaction on his face.
Oh great, Dagmar thought. It’s like a Quaker Meeting. No one is in charge.
She would have preferred a little more direction in this enterprise. Or at least some warning, so that she could have had something prepared.
Or, failing any of that, she could have used the Spirit of God descending on her, as it was alleged to for the Quakers.
A silence followed. Dagmar feigned sipping at her coffee while she ransacked her brain for anecdotes of Austin that would make sense to everyone here, including the parents.
BJ bounced up from his chair. Dagmar looked at him in surprise.
“Hi,” BJ said. He spoke directly to Austin’s parents. “My name is Boris Bustretski, and I’ve known Austin since freshman year at college. We were in the same gaming group-and since he mentioned that you were gamers, you know what that’s like.”
The Katanyans listened with interest. The mention of gaming had touched something that the impersonal world of business and crime and investigation had not.
“Austin was a detail-oriented gamer,” BJ said, “like he was in his other life, I guess-you don’t do as well as Austin did without paying attention to the fine print.”
Dagmar saw Austin’s father nod-he understood business as well as gaming.
“Austin’s games,” BJ went on, “were full of interesting technicalities that told you a lot about his game worlds and that told you a lot about Austin. He always did his research. I remember there was one game where the plot point hinged on metallurgy-it depended on the details of how people with a low tech level counterfeit gold and silver coins, which were used by an enemy to destabilize a kingdom. That’s just an example of Austin’s interest in detail, and how markets work, and how you tell good money from bad.”
BJ offered the Katanyans a wistful smile. “When he came west, he brought your old games with him-that original D &D rule set, and Empire of the Petal Throne, and those others. He ran those games for us, and I think sharing his parents’ games with us was maybe his way of honoring you.” For the first time he looked over the room, and then he looked back at the Katanyans. “Thank you,” he said, and sat.
Mrs. Katanyan was weeping silently. The anger that had simmered in Mr. Katanyan had gone, and he was looking at BJ with gratitude.
Somehow BJ had hit exactly the right note.
Others spoke-for the most part they were Austin’s partners or employees, and their focus was toward the business: Austin’s traits as a boss, Austin’s uncanny knack for finding successful start-ups.
Charlie spoke, mentioning that he, too, had met Austin as a result of gaming in college, and that he’d subsequently had the opportunity to help Austin set up his company.
“I knew he would be a success,” Charlie said. “With that mind of his, there was no way he wouldn’t be.”
As he spoke, he very carefully did not look in BJ’s direction.
When Dagmar spoke, she mentioned that she, too, was an old friend from the college gaming group, and that as a result of that group, she now wrote games for a living.
She knew she couldn’t top BJ’s anecdote about gaming, and everyone else had covered Austin’s professional life, so she told the story of how she’d gotten herself and Austin thrown out of the restaurant. She changed the story a bit, to make it better-she made the restaurant Austin’s favorite, and she avoided mentioning that this had happened on the day when Austin had been murdered.
Her anecdote faded out rather than came to an end, and she sat down in silence. Her stories were really much better when she wrote them down than when she had to tell them aloud.
Afterward there was a buffet in the company dining room. Dagmar noticed that the Katanyans sought out BJ and spent an hour talking to him.
For someone whom Austin had barely seen in the past six or seven years, he had certainly made an impression.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN This Is Not a Whim
FROM: Hanseatic
Is Great Big Idea seriously expecting us to spend US dollars for this cryptography program?
FROM: Chatsworth Osborne Jr.
Apparently, yes.
FROM: Vikram
Have we found a hidden sponsor?
FROM: Chatsworth Osborne Jr.
A remarkably unsubtle one, if so.
&n
bsp; FROM: Desi
I’m not spending any money on this!
FROM: Chatsworth Osborne Jr.
That’s your privilege. But I ask myself if my entertainment is worth a special introductory price of $31.99 for some software that may have applications outside the game, and I have to conclude the answer is yes.
FROM: Corporal Carrot
So says the spook!
FROM: Vikram
It’s not whether the game is worth the money, but whether they
should be making us spend it at all.
FROM: Desi
Yeah! This is really pissing me off.
FROM: Hanseatic
With the euro under attack, I very soon may not HAVE $31.99.
FROM: Desi
I think I’m going to drop this game. There are plenty of cheaper
entertainments out in the datasphere.
FROM: Hanseatic
I’m not dropping out. But I’m not doing anything that requires me
to spend $$$.
Dagmar looked at the bulletin board and felt another surge of bitter anger, one in a long series. Her prediction about the players’ reaction to Portcullis was absolutely on the money.
It wasn’t so much the players who were posting on Our Reality Network. It was the players who weren’t posting, who were simply absent.
She couldn’t prove it, but she suspected that players were deserting her game in droves. Millions of them, possibly. And the damage extended beyond a single game: she was losing credibility with her audience. They were going to be much less likely to trust her when it came to the next Big Idea game.
The game had entered its third week. Neither the players nor the police nor Interpol had been able to find Litvinov. Murdoch had given up trying to find him in the States and was hoping the Germans would pick him up when he returned to his old Hamburg haunts. Austin had been in a grave in Connecticut for six days. Dagmar’s apartment’s owners had not yet sacked their underwear-sniffing manager. And Charlie had gone crazy-he hardly ever appeared in the office, and instead migrated from one hotel to another. Currently he was renting a cabana at the Roosevelt in Hollywood. He called Dagmar at strange hours and demanded constant updates on the progress of the game.
This Is Not a Game Page 16