The Game
Page 40
Chapter 42
Some say that we’ve lost what little control we ever had over the Game. The belief is that the Mainframe has become so powerful and intelligent that she plays her own game inside her system, manipulating and shaping players’ experiences for her own goals. Game Masters and developers assure us that this can never happen, but if you look in the right places, evidence suggests that she is doing things we can’t begin to understand. If Mainframe is playing at something, what could it be? Will it affect just the Game, or perhaps leak over into reality to change all of our lives on Tygon, too?
Excerpt from article titled “The games within the Game”
“Good morning, ladies.” Brandon walked into the room and sat down at the head of the desk. “What is so important that you needed to call me in super early to meet with just the two of you?”
Angelica and Michelle sat on the other side of the desk. Neither looked happy at all. Brandon’s demeanour changed from calm to alert. “How serious a problem are we looking at?”
Michelle looked at Angelica and nodded her head. Angelica pushed a sheet of paper across the desk at Brandon. He looked at it for a minute, not certain what he was seeing. Then his eyebrows raised, alertness turning to concern. This report contained information that, despite his extensive experience of the Game, had never surfaced before. He looked up at Angelica, then over to Michelle. “This doesn’t make sense, ladies. What you’re reporting on this paper is impossible.”
Angelica nodded. “It might have been at one point. But it’s very possible. Both of us have witnessed it, as well as others on the team.”
“How long has this been going on?” Brandon asked.
“As far as we can tell, about three days.” Michelle answered.
“Since they were twenty.” It wasn’t a question; Brandon always knew how old his players were when they were in the Game. The two women nodded. “And they are 22 at the moment, correct?” again the women nodded.
Brandon pulled out his phone and dialled a number. A brief pause, and then he spoke, “This line is secure. We’ve been losing signal on both Trew and Danielle for the past three days. Unscrambled loss of signal. I know, it’s impossible. Yes, I understand that the rules of the Game clearly allow sponsors full and constant access to video feed of our sponsored players for their entire play. Exactly; no scramblers were used, so we know there was no Eternal/Infernal presence. They simply disappear while the Game continues around them. I’m sending over the exact times in two minutes. I need you to watch the recordings from the main viewer. Yes, that’s fine. Get back to me ASAP.”
Brandon hung up the phone and looked back towards the women. The shock he saw on their faces was expected; they’d just learned a secret shared by only seven other people on the planet. “Go ahead and ask,” he invited.
“It’s impossible to record events as they occur inside the Game.” Michelle recited what everyone knew to be true.
“That’s a statement, not a question,” Brandon said. He took a picture of the report with his tablet and transmitted it over his phone. “Angelica. You want to try?”
“Sure, Brandon. What else have you been holding back from us all these decades?” Angelica asked.
“Yes,” he ignored her question and answered the one that should have been asked. “We’ve been recording the entire history of the Game since the first day it went live and archiving it digitally.”
“Damn,” Michelle said.
“Okay,” Angelica said. “So you can view the events again, and then what?”
“If it happens on just our monitors in the Game centre, it’s one issue. A big issue, but one that I take up with the Gaming commission. If it’s occurring on the master feed, which almost no one knows about, then we have a more serious problem.”
“What problem is that?” Michelle asked.
“I don’t want to consider that. Yet. Let’s just wait patiently for the results. I should hear back in less than fifteen minutes. Is there any common time that this is happening?”
“Yes, there is,” Michelle answered. “It’s occurring when no one seems to be watching the monitors.”
“Is that even possible?” Brandon asked. “We have a team of over 50 people living on that floor for the next few weeks. Is it possible that there are times when no one is watching the monitors?”
Angelica grabbed the paper back and looked at it. “It looks like during the past three days there were… thirteen times when no one was watching the monitor. So my guess would be that, yes, it’s as possible as losing signal on our players and secretly recording the Game in its entirety these past thirty years.”
Brandon looked sourly at Angelica, who smiled innocently back at her boss. “All right, I get the point. And were they doing anything specific in the Game at those times? Something that would seem boring, and tempt our large team to stop watching them?”
Michelle nodded. “Whenever they meditate or pray we usually don’t bother to watch them. They are sitting in one spot, safe and sound, and we can’t hear their thoughts at those times. They were meditating all thirteen times.”
“Of course they were.” Inside, Brandon was seething. His attempts to communicate with Trew seemed to be going horribly wrong, and getting worse by the minute. Raphael had been working with Trew to help him meditate, with no success, after three years inside the Game. Brandon’s gut was telling him to give up on this strategy, to cut his losses and leave Trew on his own. Brandon couldn’t stop, though; he had never been so close. He would pursue this goal until he succeeded.
Brandon’s phone rang and he answered it. He spoke briefly to the person on the other end and then hung up. “Well ladies, they disappeared on the Game’s master viewer as well.”
“What’s that mean?” Michelle asked.
“I don’t know,” Brandon said with a tired look on his face. “But there’s no way it can be anything good for us. And the longer it takes to find out, the more we run the risk of losing everything we’ve worked to accomplish.”