by James Hunter
She nodded and offered me a soft smile, dimples blooming in her cheeks. Those dimples were certainly the same. “It’ good to see you, Jack. Otto”—she turned toward the armor-clad warrior—“you can let him go.” The warrior grunted noncommittally, then removed his blade and gave Cutter a little shove, opening up some distance between the two. “Otto, why don’t you and the thief—”
“Name’s Cutter, not thief,” Cutter interjected.
Abby offered him a tightlipped smile. “Okay. Otto, why don’t you and Cutter get to know each other while Jack and I have a word. Just catch up a bit, then we’ll all be on our way.”
“Of course,” the gruff warrior, Otto, replied, before promptly grabbing Cutter by one arm and dragging him away. “This way, thief.”
Abby came over and pulled me into a tight hug. “It’s so good to see you,” she said, pulling back and regarding me from arm’s length.
“You too, Abby. You too. I can’t believe this place,” I said as an awkward ice breaker. “V.G.O. is seriously incredible—I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Oh, it’s definitely incredible,” she replied, though she didn’t look nearly as happy as I would’ve imagined. If I’d helped to create something as awesome and groundbreaking as V.G.O—even in a small way—I would’ve been through-the-roof ecstatic. “Will you walk with me a bit?” she asked.
I nodded and offered her my arm, a small grin pulling up one corner of my mouth. Back in college, we used to walk between classes like that, linked arm in arm. Those were the days when I thought we might turn into something; though, for whatever reason—timing, romantic complications, geography, career paths—that had never panned out.
“You look good,” I mentioned offhandedly. “Are you a human?”
She nodded. “A Wode. I wanted to actually look like myself, and the human races were the only ones that offered my natural skin tone.” We kept walking, but she gave me a quick once-over from the corner of her eye. “Personally, I’m sort of surprised you went with a Murk Elf. Not that I mind, exactly—you just look so different. I sort of expected you to be human, too.”
“The Murk Elves had some cool racial bonuses,” I offered. We trotted on in uncomfortable silence, feet carving a path through the vibrant green grass. “So, how’s stuff been back IRL? I mean aside from the world ending,” I added weakly. Moron. What kind of question was that? Who would want to talk about real life, what with real life teetering on the verge of total destruction?
She offered me a halfhearted smile and punched me lightly in the shoulder. “Good to see you haven’t changed too much. Still the same old, awkward Jack I remember.” She paused, glancing down, shuffling along. “Truthfully, I’m tired. It’s been a long year for me. A tough year. I lost my dad about six months ago. Large cell lung cancer. Ugly stuff. And with the schedule Osmark had us on, I didn’t even get time off for the funeral.”
“Wow, Abby, I’m so sorry to hear about your dad.”
She shrugged and waved off my comment. “It’s the end of the world, Jack, everyone’s going to lose loved ones. Everyone. But, to really top things off, despite my best efforts, my mom won’t make the leap to Viridian. She says she’s too old to start over, even though she’s only sixty-five. So, I guess it’s been a pretty shitty year, all things considered. How ’bout you?”
“Yep. Pretty much the same,” I said, red rising into my cheeks. “By the way, I never properly thanked you for the capsule. But, you know, thank you—you saved my life, after all.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, “but maybe you should wait to thank me until you’ve fully transitioned. I’ve seen what happens to people who don’t live through the process, and it’s worse than watching someone die from cancer. I know from personal experience.”
Well, that was certainly off-putting and terrifying. I puckered my lips, trying to think of anything I could say that might salvage this train-wreck of a conversation. I floundered completely. How could I possibly follow up with anything appropriate after a downer like “it’s worse than watching someone die from cancer”? Tough to recover from that. “So, what’s the deal with the tank?” I finally asked just to break the terrible silence, jerking a thumb toward the retreating Risi.
“Otto? Oh, he’s my starting NPC,” she said dismissively, “the one who walked me through my intro to the world. A lot of players end up forming pretty strong bonds with their paired NPC. Is Cutter your starting NPC?”
“Well, he was in prison with me, if that’s what you mean.” I faltered. “Wait, so are you saying everyone starts with their own NPC?”
She nodded, her gaze averted, still deep in thought. “Every player has a completely unique starting scenario with a custom NPC to lead them into the world of V.G.O. The seven Master AI controllers—the Overminds—analyze each user based on that specific user’s internet profile and personal history. Then, the Overminds create a starting NPC guide and a specialized initialization sequence which acts as a sort of hyper-advanced Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The way each player reacts during the sequence and interacts with their NPC tells the Overmind what type of character class they’ll most likely meld well with.”
“Wow,” I replied, feeling dumb. “That’s incredible. Intense. But it’s also kind of creepy. How does Osmark Tech get away with profiling people like that? Seems like a massive invasion of privacy—aren’t there laws against that kind of thing?”
“Oh, it’s definitely a breach of privacy”—she stole a look at me and bobbed her head—“and yeah, there are totally laws against it, but Osmark Tech gets away with it because players sign an information release in the user agreement. Naturally, the release is written in legalese so dense a team of Harvard lawyers couldn’t figure it out, and then it’s tucked away in print so fine, you’d need an electron microscope to find it. But it’s there, and when you agree to play, you accept Osmark’s terms of service, profiling and all.”
“Man, if players found out, they’d be pissed. Why even go through the hassle anyway?” I asked. “Seems like it’d be a lot easier to just let players choose their class like in every other MMO in the world.”
She shook her head and shrugged. “That’s not my area of expertise, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because the VR game play is so intense and personal, that if you played a class outside of your personality tolerance it could have adverse side effects. Or”—she paused, arching an eyebrow—“it could be a marketing gimmick. I don’t know. But then, there’s a lot I don’t know about V.G.O.”
“Hey, out of curiosity, do you know if the NPCs are actually self-aware or not?” I voiced the question since it’d been lingering on my mind ever since meeting Cutter in prison. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say my starting NPC’s a real person. Sort of a jerk, but a fully fleshed out jerk. He certainly seems to think he’s real—but it’s weird, because from what I’ve gathered, he also genuinely believes V.G.O. isn’t a game. It’s really tripping me out, actually.”
“Honestly …” She frowned, hesitated. Trying to decide what to tell me. “Honestly, I’m not sure. No one is. We rushed the testing to get the game online, so I can’t give you a straight answer one way or the other. The NPCs are procedurally generated by drawing on information from all over the internet—history, Facebook profiles, fiction novels, movies, games—which gives them their uncanny realism. I’ve never met an NPC that failed to pass the Turing Test, but whether they’re actually aware?” She shrugged one shoulder. “Time will tell I guess.”
Once more, we lapsed into tense quiet as we edged nearer and nearer the ruins. The more and more I learned about V.G.O., the more I began to wonder what exactly I’d gotten myself into. It was too late to second-guess myself at this point, but it was still disconcerting. Maybe Abby was feeling the same way—it’d certainly explain her attitude. “Well, would you like to tell me about this big secret mission you’ve got for us?” I asked, trying to find any topic that would be a little less heavy. A little less depressin
g.
She stopped, pulled her arm from mine, and took a step away as she folded her arms across her chest. “Jack, maybe you should just go. It might’ve been a mistake to drag you into this mess.” A tear leaked from her eye and ran down her cheek. She reached up and swiped at it with the back of her hand.
“Abby, what in the hell is going on?” I reached out and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You’re not a weepy damsel in distress. I’ve never seen you cry, not in all the years I’ve know you. So why don’t you tell me what’s eating at you? Just get it off your chest.”
“It’s bad, Jack,” she said with a slight sniffle. “Bad for everyone. Maybe as bad as the asteroid. Even telling you could land you in a lot of trouble.” She paused, chewing on her lip. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Abby, tell me,” I replied, much more confidently than I felt. What could possibly be as bad as the asteroid?
SIXTEEN: Bad to Worse
Abby and I sat on a toppled log twenty or thirty feet from the ruins.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I prompted her again.
“It’s hard to know where to even begin,” she said, looking away. “Jack, there’s just so much crazy shit going on. Like mind-blowing, world shaking, secret conspiracy, Illuminati shit. Tin-foil hat shit. And I haven’t shared this with anyone else because I don’t know who’d believe me or who I could trust. Most of my ‘friends’”—she used air quotes—“work for Osmark Tech, and I sure don’t trust anyone there. Not anymore.
“It all started a few months ago,” she continued. “It was a typical day—I was checking a line of code when I ran across an oddity. Someone had added an unauthorized, locked quest, accessible only by special players. There’d been all kinds of other crazy stuff leading up to this, so when this popped up, I decided to take a peek. Thought it might offer some clue about what in the hell was going on around the company. That’s when I discovered there were hundreds of these locked areas scattered all around V.G.O., inserted by Robert Osmark’s inner circle.”
“Are they supposed to be some kind of content for future patches or expansions?” I asked, trying to think of the most reasonable explanation.
“At first, I thought so too, but I kept looking. Digging. Hacking.” She shook her head, her gaze distant. “These areas were never meant for the general player population. These areas were built into the game as rewards for some of the big financial backers of V.G.O.—people with lots of money and lots of power. Here’s the thing, Osmark Tech knew about the asteroid long before the general public ever did. The government didn’t release the info to the masses because they didn’t want to cause premature panic, but my boss, Robert Osmark, knew. I’m sure of it.
“He didn’t tell us peons, obviously, but in hindsight it’s clear. He had us working around the clock, paying out overtime through the nose, rushing through beta trials to get things up and running ahead of schedule. And then his inner circle started adding in all of these extra features last minute. To top things off, a few weeks before the media started to carry the story about the asteroid, Osmark himself dropped the news on us worker bees—sort of an extra work-your-asses-off incentive.
“Now, based on a series of hacked emails I uncovered,” she continued, “I think he had these special areas installed in order to help certain individuals game the system. I personally believe Osmark realized that V.G.O. wasn’t just a video game—not with that asteroid inbound. He realized V.G.O. was the birth of a new world. A new dimension. Initially, the game was set up to put all starting players at the same disadvantages, to level the playing field for everyone. But the mega-wealthy, the politicians, the banksters, people in organized crime, they don’t want a level playing field. They want an edge.
“And all of these new areas were expressly added to give those people that edge. In a couple of weeks, after the asteroid hits and it’s too late for anyone IRL to do anything about it, V.G.O is going to turn into a new feudal dark age, and everyone is going to be scrambling to carve out a piece of this empire for themselves. And the little guys, people like us, are going to get crushed in the mix. People like us are going to end up being the serfs, Jack. The unwashed masses for uber players to lord over. Unless … Unless we fight dirty.”
She fell silent for a time, the distant thrum of birdcalls warbling through the air. I certainly didn’t know what to say.
“This zone right here”—she gestured toward the meadow—“has already been bought and paid for by a South American dictator named Aleixo Carrera. I don’t know what’s buried in these ruins, but I know Carrera paid twenty million for it. Twenty million, Jack. That’s a lot of money for a few strings of digital code, so I’ve got to think whatever’s here is powerful. These entitled assholes are going to have an advantage none of us regular folk get, and in the long run it’s going to turn ugly. And all the chaos coming down the pipeline only accounts for the human elements.
“The AI controllers running this system are cutting-edge beyond belief. None of the Overminds are really conscious, thinking beings—they’re more like forces of nature that maintain the world’s integrity, spawn creatures, create quests—but they’re still dangerous. Really dangerous. I mean, the Overmind responsible for overseeing Serth-Rog and his personal army is run by a repurposed military AI unit. Osmark acquired it from the Chinese military last minute to save time with development. Who knows what that thing might do?” She shook her head.
“Wait,” I said, rubbing at my temples as I mentally waded through the tsunami of info I’d heard so far. “Okay, I can believe Osmark Tech might have the ethics code of a Banana Republic Dictatorship, but here’s what I don’t get. Why sell off V.G.O. real estate for IRL money in the first place? The world’s going to end in less than nine days. So, what’s the point?”
“Well, Carrera didn’t actually pay cash,” she replied urgently, almost fervently. Needing for me to believe her. “Nope, maybe six months before news of the asteroid broke, Carrera selflessly “donated” twenty million worth of essential tech components to help get V.G.O. operational in time. He supplied Osmark Tech with colossal amounts of refined indium, gold, silver, copper, platinum, palladium—all essential components in the physical machinery powering V.G.O. He also supplied cheap labor to help at the NextGenVR capsule facility, churning out capsules at a crazy rate. And Carrera’s not the only one, either.
“US politicians railroaded laws allowing Osmark Tech to bypass testing requirements, they rubber-stamped the import of dangerous and restricted materials, plus about a hundred other illegal things. Osmark even got help from NASA to launch his satellite into orbit. And that repurposed AI I told you about? Another ‘donation’ from Chinese military leaders. The amount of supplies and materials to get V.G.O. up and running ahead of schedule were staggering, I’m sure. And I bet my completely worthless life savings there were people lining up around the block, willing to help in return for future kickbacks.
“I think he’s repaying favors to the powerful people who made V.G.O. possible. Now, I want to give my boss the benefit of the doubt and assume he isn’t actually a monstrous asshole—I like to believe he was just doing what he needed to do to save a lot of people, but he made some really shady deals to do it. And even if he isn’t a monster, I can’t imagine people like Carrera or the CIA or the KGB are going to be beneficent masters. They’re going to amass power for themselves and be colossal dick heads just like they were in the real world, except there’s not going to be a Constitution or police force to keep them in check.”
“But why go through the quest system?” I asked, turning the information over and over in my mind, examining it from every conceivable angle. “Why not just turn these players into in-world gods right out of the gate? Just program it into the system?”
“It’s complicated,” she said, glancing around nervously as though someone might be listening. “After we brought all of the Overminds on line,” she whispered, an edge of fear in her voice, “they closed the system to m
ajor changes—they’re calling the shots now. The Devs can only tweak things that’re already consistent with the Overmind directives. Hence using the quest system as a back door.”
I was stunned into silence for a long while, my stomach churning with uncertainty. I bent over, leaning against my thighs as I hyperventilated. Abby had been right, this was some mind-blowing, world shaking, secret conspiracy, Illuminati shit. I knew transitioning into V.G.O. was going to be a humongous, life-altering challenge, but I’d never expected anything like this. I was a thirty-two-year-old EMT from the west coast. I lived in a crappy apartment and made less than the typical burger flipper. I wasn’t the kind of person embroiled in international politics or multi-million-dollar conspiracies, which was definitionally what we were talking about here.
“You okay?” she asked, rubbing a hand along my back.
“Nope, not even a little,” I replied, still hyperventilating a little. “V.G.O. was supposed to be a safe haven,” I said finally, “but if this is true, dying back on Earth might actually be the better option.”
She didn’t answer—probably because she knew I was right. Instead, she sat there, tracing a hand along my shoulders until I could breathe normally again.
“So what are you suggesting?” I asked eventually, pushing myself upright. “We’re nobodies, Abby. We don’t have money or connections or powerful friends. What exactly do you think we can do about this?”
Her face hardened with resolve—gone was the weepy damsel from a few moments ago. “We aren’t nobodies, Jack. We know MMOs better than most of the assholes entering this world, and knowledge is power, too. What I’m suggesting is that we get ahead of this shitstorm while we still can. What I’m suggesting is you and I form our own clan—one that actually has a chance of standing up against the rising powers in this new world. One that can give people like us hope. And we start by stealing whatever’s inside this restricted zone. Whatever Carrera paid twenty million to get his hands on.”