Brian was completely taken by surprise. He hadn’t expected this! He removed his glasses and blinking against the light slightly, began polishing them on his T shirt. Cheeseman pressed a button on a phone on the desk and asked the group to be brought in. Brian watched eagerly as three adults - obviously parents - filed in accompanying three teenagers of between what Brian assessed to be between fifteen and nineteen or so at the oldest. Ignoring the slightly overwhelmed looking parents Brian concentrated on the three youths. There were two boys and one girl. The youngest male was obviously going through a somewhat fierce battle with acne, and the second male had difficulty sitting down in the chairs set one side off to the left. He was huge, and with it sufficiently self-conscious. He blushed as the chair creaked beneath his weight as he settled in to it. The girl was tall-ish and plain, but had very little other distinction.
“Thank you for coming.” said Cheeseman and then he passed the floor over to the public relations executive who for the next five minutes solely addressed the families, expressing the company’s regrets and offers of free game access for life for the three of them, which seemed to brighten their faces somewhat. Brian said nothing, and although the three teenagers cast him a glance from time to time they seemed almost to be embarrassed to catch his eye. Brian simply smiled back at them as the public relations executive continued with his apology. Eventually he drew to a halt. “Now, we need to ensure that the characters you played are fully restored back to life and of course ensure your subscriptions are free from now on an on-going basis.” The public relations man turned to face the large teenager who was sitting perspiring on the front row, the chair continuing to creak below him. “Now then.” he consulted his notes. “Ah yes. Paul.” The teenager shuffled in his seat and began to turn red as all eyes fell upon him. “You played a character named Varesh, I believe.”
Brian snorted quietly to himself. Varesh! A character made of stealth and shadow. The only thing this guy had ever hidden in was most likely to be a hamburger wagon. The public relations man continued, and passing a form to one of the men the form was brought over to Paul and he signed it. “I want the bow of storms too.” he said sullenly, and Brian was delighted how squeaky his voice was. “Indeed.” nodded the executive, attempting not to sound patronising and failing completely. “Ah yes. The bow of storms it is.” Paul signed the piece of paper and failing to make eye contact with the other boy and girl there left the room with his parents.
“Now. Cynthia.” The public relations man focused on the young girl. “You played a character called Rizan, I believe?” The young man sitting a few chairs across from her shot to his feet in indignation. Brian grinned as he had anticipated something like this when she had first come in.
“Rizan?” shouted the acne covered youth. “This is me. Gethane!” The willowy young girl remained seated and nodded her head slightly, but failed completely to meet the other players eye. “Rizan!” he shouted almost as if in indignation. “God damn it you’re a girl!” He paused slightly as if running through a multitude of scenarios in his mind. “Rizan!” he repeated almost as if he could not believe it. “I thought you were a man.” he paused slightly and started to turn a deep shade of red. “Jesus, Rizan. I thought you were a man! I told you stuff...” and his voice trailed away as if his mind was attempting to come to terms with the enormity of it all. Brian giggled almost silently to himself and eventually the other two forms were signed and the players and their parents left the room. Brian felt the five men’s attention once more fall upon him.
Cheeseman closed the folders and folded his hands in front of him, taking the floor once more. “Brian.” he said, and it was almost an accusation. “That is the mess you have made more or less cleaned up, though I suspect the bad publicity surrounding this may take a little bit longer to disperse. Now to you. I really cannot understand either your attitude in this meeting today or indeed during the in game” he coughed slightly as if unsure which word to use, “”Event”. As a company we take this matter extremely seriously and you have not helped yourself here today at all. However, I would like you to leave the room for five minutes so I can consult with my colleagues on the course of action we are going to undertake.” Cheeseman unknotted his hands and pointed to the door. “We shall call you back shortly. I fear I cannot help but warn you however that I shall be recommending instant dismissal to my colleagues regarding this matter.
Brian stood and walked to the door, grinning as he went. “Whatever.” he muttered just loud enough for all of them to hear as he left the office and slammed the door behind him. Cheeseman tutted as silence returned to the room. The next five minutes were spent discussing Brian’s actions and attitude, and the general consensus of opinion seemed to be one of getting Brian out of the company as soon as they possibly could. After five minutes Cheeseman moved to bring their discussion to a close. “So I move for instant dismissal” He said, “Loss of pay from the time of the incident and no reference. All agreed?” Cheeseman and three of the other four men raised their hands. It took a couple of seconds to realise that the fifth man, whose hand stayed resolutely folded on the desk in front of him was not in agreement. Cheeseman bristled slightly, but it was still nevertheless a majority vote. Sniffing loudly he proceeded. “By a majority of four to one then, I move that...”
The fifth man interrupted him. “I’m afraid it is not quite as simple as that.” he said, and the other four men looked at him in disdain. Cheeseman began to colour once again. Brian had considered all five men on the top table to be public relations, customer support or HR representatives, but in case of any technicalities arising during the review, the four executives had taken the precaution of inviting the fifth man, Professor Ben Watts, who was head of the IT department to the meeting. Ben’s hand stayed firmly on the desk in front of him.
“Of course it is!” yelled Cheeseman, rising to his feet. “You saw the scruffy little jerk sitting there. He took it upon himself to destroy eight paying customers’ accounts simply because they annoyed him, causing unknown damage to our good name in the online games field, and then he sits there as if he owns the damned place. It couldn’t be simpler than that. I want him gone now!”
Ben waited for a second. “I agree with you of course. Brian’s actions are reprehensible. Of that there can be no doubt. But before we go any further there are a few things about this...ah... “Incident” that I feel that you ought to know.” The four men settled down as Cheeseman returned to his seat.
“Go on then. Let’s have it.” he grumbled, and the other three men nodded their heads.
Ben pulled a slip of paper from inside his jacket and unfolded it on the desk in front of him. “First of all the event happened on the ninth level of the dungeon of Tharg from what we can piece together, because Brian isn’t being very forthcoming on the subject. From what we can gather from the data back-ups however is that Brian designed and placed a dragon on the ninth level that destroyed eight player accounts with relative ease. That much we are in agreement with, I imagine?” Cheeseman nodded his head and the other suits followed his lead. “One problem with that.” continued Ben. “There is no ninth level of the dungeon of Tharg in the game. It ends on level eight.”
The four executives looked puzzled. “What does that mean?” said Cheeseman. Like most of the management who ran the online game, they never played it. That was for customers. They had however picked up some of the terminology, more by sublimation than anything.
“Quite simple.” said Ben. “The cavern that we saw when we ran the video from the backup before is not in the game. In fact, it can’t be. The textures on the wall. The way the darkness and shadows worked in that place do not fit with the way the game works. Believe you me; we tried to achieve such realism. But we couldn’t manage it. Cheeseman looked confused and went to interrupt but Ben held up his hand. “I’m not done yet. Then there’s the dragon. The way that the vertices’ on its wing worked, the sheer damned size of it. The design is way beyond anything we have
with our current in-house design tools. Add to that the simple fact the player level of it was potentially sky high.”
“What does that mean?” gasped Cheeseman, a sinking feeling forming at the base of his stomach. Ben nodded as if acknowledging their lack of in depth knowledge of how the game worked. He continued.
“Some of this you know. Our players complete quests, kill monsters etc. to gain levels which gives them access to higher spells, new areas so on and so forth. The highest level a player in the game can reach is level fifty. No higher than that. For higher level players we have several epic monsters that will take lots of such advanced players to kill. For example, the Kraken from the sunken pit of Na’turin is level two hundred. It is the highest level monster in the game. Traditionally it takes around about approximately one hundred and fifty players to kill.” Cheeseman was beginning to lose patience with all this technical mumbo jumbo. In his mind he felt that the objective of the meeting, which was undoubtedly to fire Brian, was in danger of losing its focus.
“Yes yes.” he said, “But where are you taking us with this, Ben?” he asked.
The head of IT had an uneasy frown about him. Cheeseman began to get a very definite feeling that this did not bode well for his overall objective. Ben continued. “We approximate, and I use the word approximate very accurately because we have no real way of measuring this, that the level of the ice Wyrm Vandrakarn on the ninth level of the dungeon of Tharg that was placed there by Brian was round about level twenty to possibly thirty thousand. Putting it simply If all ten thousand players on that server had attacked it simultaneously they would have failed. It would be impossible.”
Cheeseman went pale. “That leaves us with one question then, Ben.” He said. “Which is your area of expertise and not ours. In short: how the hell did he do it?”
Ben folded the piece of paper away, returning it to his inside jacket pocket. “In short we have no idea, and Brian of course, is not telling.” The four executives all looked at Cheeseman but the HR director seemed to have entered a state of shock. “But that is not the real question that you have to consider.” Continued Ben. Cheeseman paled across the desk from him. “The real question is, if he did all that then what else did he do that is just sitting around waiting to be discovered? Who is to say that this is a one off?” Ben paused as Cheeseman’s world came crashing down about him. “That is the real question.”
***
Brian rode the glass elevator up to his executive office on the top floor of the impressively high building. Exiting into the plush foyer he nodded a good morning to his secretary and entered his office. Behind him the city skyline stretched off into the distance as far as he could see. Sitting down he powered up his computer and then placed his feet on the desk, trainers wagging slightly as he waited for the desktop to appear on his screen.
As executive design consultant he had a pretty easy life of it now. He knew of course that he had to do hardly anything at all. they were simply keeping a very close eye on him to see if there were any repeats of the dungeon of Tharg incident. He smiled to himself. He could keep them waiting for a very long time on that one. Patience was one of his greatest virtues. They could count on that. Cheeseman had been almost incandescent with rage at Brian’s sudden promotion, and was currently away from work with stress. Brian smiled to himself. Cheeseman really ought to learn to ask the right questions. The obvious things. For example, he had never asked Brian why he hated role players so much. The answer was simply that Brian considered that they were so very bad at it, and Brian thought of himself as the best role player of all of them. He took amateur role playing very badly indeed.
Drawing the blinds behind him Brian plunged his office into semi darkness. He preferred it that way. Removing his glasses, which were completely unnecessary - he could see fine, he logged on to his computer and loaded up Google Maps. Typing in the zip code for the office for where he was now sat he zoomed in to a satellite view of the office itself. Clicking on to the zoomed in map of the office building he typed in a few lines of text, tagging the office with a label anybody in the world viewing the map could see. If they cared to look, of course.
He toyed with his glasses on the desk, and as he replaced them his eyes glinted once, softly, a dark blue colour; reminiscent of ice and cold. Laughing deeply to himself he stared back at the screen as the tag on the map blinked quietly in the semi darkness. In small blue text the words flashed brightly,
“Here Be Dragons”.
Paul McCartney's Coat Page 45