by Isaac Stone
The men raised their guns, aimed them at Bob and his family. Bob brought up his gun, his visage returned to that of a Nazi Zombie, but he wasn’t fast enough.
It was a horrifying sound in a closed office space. The guns fired for a good thirty seconds until the men felt the job was done. Ares tried to show metal parts flying off them as the family was torn apart from the combined firepower. Kurt was supposed to think these were mere mechanical bots, clockwork figures built in some technicians shop.
However, Kurt knew otherwise. Not zombies. Not bots. People.
He stood silent as they stopped firing and placed their guns down. Two of the men checked their weapons to see how much ammunition they still had left. The third one turned his head and staggered out of the room. He’d seen something out of place too.
Kurt was silent. There was still the possibility he’d not seen what he thought. Ares could change the appearances of a lot in this place.
“Alright,” Simon announced. “Now that we have this problem out of the way, you need to know something else. Rashid is on his way here.” Simon pulled out his watch and looked at it, as no cell phones were allowed into the tournament. “He’ll be here in five minutes. Excuse us, but we need to go out and be on hand to greet the boss man when he arrives. Rashid doesn’t like it when we’re late.”
“I’m sure it adversely messed with your live coverage,” Kurt sneered.
“Not an issue,” Simon tossed back. “We let Ares handle a lot for us on the broadcast end while the tournament is in play, it can edit faster than a hundred season human professionals. Solves all kinds of problems with the viewers. It’s in the terms of the ticket sales if you look closely. You’d be surprised how many people don’t bother to read these things.”
Chapter 19
Another new man came in and stuck his head in the door. “Simon,” he shouted. “Rashid radioed us a few minutes ago. He’s on the way. Should touch down in five minutes.” He walked back out the door.
“Right on time,” Simon spoke as he touched the bandage on his head. “I suppose we should be out there to greet him.” He turned to the man next to him. “Make sure that thing doesn’t go anywhere. We’ve had enough problems with this operation, I don’t want another screw-up. Anything goes wrong and we’ll all have to answer for it. You think you can do that or do I need to find someone else?” He glared at the man.
“I got this,” the man replied. Kurt noticed him sweat.
“We’ll be right back,” he announced to the gamers in the office. “The rest of you wait until we return. I’m sure Rashid has plenty he wants to say.” Simon turned to Kurt. “You might as well come with us and be part of the welcoming committee. I’m sure the big man will want to talk to you.”
“You want me to leave my rifle?” Kurt asked, although he had no intention to do so.
“No, take it with you. Why do we have to worry? The place outside is filled with my people. You make the slightest wrong move and they’ll shoot you.”
Kurt left with Simon and his people. They walked out through the center of the warehouse, which swarmed with men dressed in the same outfits as Simon and the new men who entered the room with him. Kurt glanced at their uniforms and saw the name of an industrial security company. Rashid contracted out to get the protection he wanted. This was a special group, as he’d seen none of them around the Deathmatch compound when he was flown in with the rest of the Top Hundred. He had a feeling that if he could see without the Aries system's illusions, he'd see the security men mingling with the gamer bots.
Most of the game players, who were obvious by their choice of weapons and cameo, stood off to the side and talked among themselves. This hadn’t gone down quite as they wanted. It hadn’t gone down as anyone wanted. Right now, all they could do was wait for the outcome. The men from the security company formed a line on two sides of the warehouse, ready for the arrival of Rashid.
The executive drone was on its way down when they stepped outside the warehouse. Kurt heard it as the rotors whined over his head. He looked up to see a huge drone with eight rotors working to take it down to the ground. From what he could tell, this one had a human pilot and could carry ten people. It was the perfect transport for an upper level corporate executive. Such as Rashid.
The legs popped out of the bottom as it was 20 feet from the ground and the drone slowed its approach. When the pilot was given the signal by the security guards on the ground, he brought it all the way level to the entrance of the warehouse. Now the drone rested on the pads of its feet and the rotors began to slow down. In a few minutes, the rotors were at a stop. The side door opened and a ramp was deployed to the ground. Kurt noted the drone had two levels.
A security guard helped the first man leave, who carried a briefcase. He paused and waved to someone still inside the drone. The first man walked down to the ramp and stood to one side at attention. Then a second man emerged from the drone.
This was Rashid.
Kurt could tell by the way that everyone straightened up the moment that he left the drone. A woman in a dark dress followed him who wore sunglasses. Two more men followed her, one with a computer tablet.
Rashid was tall and thin. He wore a suit tailored by an exclusive Mainline Philadelphia tailor. A silk handkerchief was neatly folded in his breast pocket. He took off his expensive sunglasses and handed them to the woman behind him, who transferred them to one of the men behind her. As he walked off the ramp, he stopped in front of Simon, his entourage still in the rear. The man with the briefcase continued to follow him at the side.
“Is everything under control?” Rashid asked Simon in perfect English. This was a new Rashid, not at all like the one who’d addressed the game players days earlier. Kurt found the transformation eerie.
“Under control, sir,” Simon replied. He pointed to Kurt. “This is the man you wanted to meet.”
Rashid shoved his face at Kurt. “You came very close to causing great damage to my plans Mr. Silva. I want you to know that. However, I have decided to let this all go, as you couldn’t possibly know what you were doing. It showed me the limits of what Ares can do. Not that any of it will matter in a few minutes.” The last statement puzzled Kurt, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Rashid turned back to Simon. “You have him in this building?”
“Yes, sir,” Simon replied again. “Do you want to see him now?”
Rashid nodded. “I wish to see him right away. Take me to him.”
Simon turned and walked into the warehouse with the entourage following Rashid.
Rashid stopped and pointed to Kurt. “I want him to join us.” Kurt hurried to catch up with the rest.
Soon, they were all in the office where Bob and his family were shot. The walls were riddled from the bullets and it smelled of smoke and burnt gunpowder. There was another smell that Kurt couldn’t identify, which he assumed had to do with virtual process.
Rashid walked in and looked in the corner where Bob and his family had stood. “What is this?” he asked Simon.
“You said only the one was to survive,” Simon explained.
“Indeed.”
Rashid scanned the room with his steel eyes. He didn’t appear to like the way it looked. Things were damaged and out of place. The walls were either punctured or pitted. It seemed to offend his sense of order. Worst of all, things flipped in an out in shape as Ares worked overtime to make it appear the way he wanted.
Rashid turned to the man who held the briefcase. “I need what we brought,” he said to him.
Briefcase man held the case level and snapped it open. He opened it so that the contents were available for inspection. Kurt couldn’t see the interior in the low light, but he suspected what might be inside. Rashid reached in and withdrew something. The briefcase was closed and returned to the side of the man who brought it in with him.
Rashid carried a Walther P38 pistol in his hand. It was one of the classical models built in Germany during the Second World
War that had a fine cast on the metal. Rashid examined it with care and turned to Briefcase Man.
“This is fully loaded?” he asked him.
“Yes, sir,” Briefcase Man said to him. “I inspected and loaded it myself.” He looked solemn and proud of his work.
“Good,” Rashid said to him.
He walked to the corner where one of the security guards stood watch over the faceless leader. Kurt noticed the man stayed close enough to watch the creature, but not so close he had to stare at it. Rashid stopped about five feet from them.
He turned to the security guard. “You may join the others behind me,” Rashid spoke to him. “Please remove yourself.” A little puzzled, the security guard walked to the back of the room where the others were congregated.
Kurt found this to be dramatic for the termination of a mechanical bot, provided that was behind the Ares visual wrap.
Rashid breathed deep. “Ares,” he called into the air, “do you know who I am?”
“You are Rashid Al-Sayed,” a very inhuman voice called from everywhere at once. Kurt was impressed with the way it projected.
“Please remove the visual enhancement from every aspect of this location and go into stand-by mode,” Rashid told it.
“Are you certain you wish to do this?” the voice asked.
“I am certain.”
Kurt noticed a shimmer in the room, but nothing really changed. The security guards stayed the same. Other than the game players that turned into large metal robots, all of which looked the same. In some ways, the visual wrap made good sense. He didn’t bother to look down to see what he resembled, as Kurt was enthralled by the events around him.
The faceless one, however, turned into a normal human being in a uniform of some type. Kurt couldn’t identify the nationality. It appeared to have writing in Arabic on it. The man who wore it was bald and had a beard. He appeared to be fifty years old or thereabouts.
Rashid walked up to him, extended his gun hand to the man and aimed the P38 directly at his face. “Salam Alaikum,” he said to him in the traditional way. “Send my greetings to the rest of yours in the seven hells.”
Then he pulled the trigger.
The man fell to the floor, blood spurting from his face. He hit the ground in one motion. Rashid walked closer, stood over him and fired three more shots that the noise control deafened. Satisfied, he walked back over to Briefcase Man, who already had the case open. Rashid returned the gun to it. Briefcase Man closed it and moved to one side of the room.
“The tournament is now over,” he announced to the mechanical bots that the gamers still controlled. “You may now use your exit button to leave the game scenario and network with your bodies inside the chambers. Please report to the hall where the introductions were given to receive your pay. I intend to see that all of you are to be compensated for the help you unknowingly gave me. Please port out immediately; as we will have to do it from the Command Center ourselves if you don’t and that will not be pleasant.”
Rashid walked out of the room with the entourage behind him. After he departed, the security guards left. All that remained were the mechanical bots used by the gamers. One at a time, Kurt watched them become still as the gamers who rode them disconnected their network. Finally, only Kurt remained.
Guess I better go too, he said to himself.
Before he jacked out, Kurt decided to have one final look at the corner of the room where Bob and his strange family stood before the security guards gunned them down. Looking was a mistake.
He hit the emergency exit button.
By the time, he regained consciousness in the skinsuit and helmet, Kurt was screaming.
He found himself standing in the chamber alone and struggling with the harness that kept his VR suit in place. Kurt managed to get the helmet off after some difficulty. His hands didn’t function the way they were supposed to. Once he worked the snap loose, the helmet fell to the ground and rolled away.
Still trembling from neural transfer to the room, Kurt managed to get the zipper down of his skinsuit. He fell on the ground, not able to maintain his balance after the long induction into the game. Kurt couldn’t remember his real name for a few minutes and crawled along the floor.
There were two women in this part of the game center when he entered it days ago, Kurt seemed to remember. He knew they had names to go along with the faces he remembered, but he couldn’t get a visual lock on who they were. As he laid on the floor and hugged himself, Kurt tried hard to remember where he was and how he got there.
Slowly it came back to him. He remembered who he was and what the name of the place happened to be at the moment. It wasn’t easy; he’d been in deep, far deeper than any online game. This was not the same as starring at a blank screen for hours and playing with a Heads up Display. He could feel his nerves burn from the induction with the system. Nothing prepared him for what he endured. Kurt staggered up after an hour and placed one hand on the wall.
“Hello?” he called out. “Is anyone there?” He remembered that he was deep inside a game center in the middle of the desert. Yes, that was it; he came here to play in a tournament because he was one of the top players of Deathmatch in the country. He had two parents and needed to get back to them because they would want to know what happened. He remembered the entire game was supposed to be transmitted to the screens so everyone who wanted to could watch it.
Kurt found the shower after a few minutes search. It was built into the chamber and was supposed to be used by a game player who was there for an extended period of time. He managed to turn the water on and find a temperature that was comfortable. The numbness decreasing in his feet, he pulled himself into it and washed off the accumulated days of dead skin cells. As he stood there, Kurt wondered how long he’d stayed inside that chamber. It still bothered him there was no one else there.
He found a towel and dried himself off after a few minutes of the hot shower. He took a deep breath again and remembered more of what he’d endured. After a half hour in the chair, Kurt remembered it all. He stood up and found a robe in the closet. Where were his clothes?
At which point he remembered what he saw in the spot where Bob and his family was executed. This time he crawled to the toilet next to the shower and retched what little food remained in his stomach.
As he explored the chamber, Kurt found a locker with some of his clothes in it. Grateful, he went through the locker and put on a set of casual clothes. He took another deep breath and stood up. This time, he didn’t feel so wobbly. He found a water bottle, had a sip and looked for the door.
One push opened the door and he entered the connecting corridor.
The corridor was filled with people in the same state. Some of the greeters he’d met on the first day were busy helping people, but Kurt could see they were struggling to keep up. There were too many people who were in the process of coming down from what they’d experienced. There were only a few greeters and many scores of game players who were on their way down from the extended interaction of the game.
“What the hell happened to us?” Kurt managed to ask a man in a white doctor’s coat who ran all over the place. He looked horrified at the task in front of him.
“Over stimulation of the senses,” he yelled at Kurt as he ran past him. “I think. Sorry, I was on temporary duty here and didn’t expect any of this. Don’t worry; we have some experts on the way from a research hospital. Might be too much stimulation from the tournament. We’re still in the process of finding out what happened.”
A young woman managed to grab him by the shirt. “Take a drink of this, sir,” she told him. “It may help you out.”
Kurt looked down at the glass. “What is it?” he asked her.
“Beef broth,” she explained. “Unless you’re a vegetarian, it will help. If you are a vegan, I’ll find something else. We think the tournament pushed your physiology to the brink.”
Kurt took the glass and swallowed. It tasted good and put some strengt
h back in his body. “Thank you,” he told her. “What about the rest of the gamers? What happened to the ones who were killed off in the game earlier?”
“We didn’t see any of this the first day,” she told him. “It wasn’t until the second that it showed up on the people who left the chambers. It got worse every day. When you all jacked out just now, we were overwhelmed. Honestly, no one saw this coming.”
“Where is Rashid?” Kurt demanded. “What has he got to say about this?” Kurt had a lot to say to him right now.
“We can’t find him,” the girl told him. “He’s left us a detailed list as to what supposed to be done and who was supposed to be paid, but no one knows where he is right now.” She took the glass back from Kurt.
“What?” Kurt managed to gasp out. “When was the last time anyone saw him?”
“What are you talking about?” Kurt continued. “He was in the same room as me just a little bit ago. I mean the same room that the bot mechanical thing I rode was located. I mean, oh hell, where was this game supposed to take place. They never did tell us.”
“We don’t know that either.”
“Are you serious? You worked for him and don’t even know where the tournament was held?”
“Different people had different levels of clearance. The best we can figure out so far is somewhere in Mesopotamia. I’m sorry, that’s the best we can do at the present. We have more people jacking out soon and we need to be ready for them. I’m hoping we’ll know more as time permits, but are doing the best we can with what we have to work with.”
Chapter 20
Kurt finished signing for the deposit of his pay into his private account when the security guards came for him. The guards wore the same uniform Kurt saw on the men who accompanied Simon back in the game land, so he knew it wasn’t anyone who worked for Deathmatch. All of them wore casual clothes, but had ID badges.
“He wants to see you,” the guards told Kurt. The guns slung under their arms made it unnecessary to ask whom or about what.