MetaGame

by Sam Landstrom

  Right, the Tool was going to apprehend her, but he sure as hell isn’t going to now. I’ll scramble a sky eye on the area, Rhemus said.

  It was standard protocol when hunting someone outdoors to immediately get a satellite on the area.

  Katria cursed herself for not being more vigilant in her monitoring. It had seemed like a routine mission. The target was pretty low level, and there was a positive ID on him when entering his apartment. An angel was overkill for such a job, but since one was available nearby, it was deployed.

  Missions like that never really required human help. The onboard AI of an angel was top-tier and therefore far faster and more reliable than a human when it came to rote work like this. Humans were occasionally useful for adding an assist here or there, but for the most part, they just watched the show. Even for more complex missions it was hard to be of much help to a fully decked-out angel. Nevertheless, when Katria was on top of her game, she could get in a contribution or two. And working with premium Authority agents like angels was high-stakes grinding. Any help you gave was big points, which kept her logging in. Besides, it had taken her a long time to get the security clearances required to play these types of games, so she felt invested.

  But this had seemed like a cakewalk, so she had felt free to shoot the breeze with OffDaLeash while she casually monitored. Even when that bitch started raising the alarm with her “Todget, run!” routine, Katria didn’t bother to end the blink with her friend. A couple of ghetto demons could not stand a chance against an angel, or so she had thought six seconds ago.

  Now the unthinkable had happened, and Katria was elated-one demon out and one little bitch still on the run, but no angel to catch her. That left Katria, Rhemus, and anyone else who was willing and able to log into the game and finish the job-something they never got to do. DNA samples that the Tool found in the apartment shortly before he got fried confirmed the runner’s identity. As was protocol, Katria sent a request to the Authority, asking to upgrade the priority of the demon girl. Within a second the Authority sent back confirmation upgrading her from low priority to medium; the status change was only because, in light of recent events, the girl might know something useful, not because she was estimated to be dangerous.

  This rating was good for Katria. It meant that the stakes of the game just went up, and with it, potentially the reward. However, the priority was not so high that another angel would step in and relegate her back to the sidelines. Fortunately for Katria, the Authority was very reticent about spreading their top resources too thin.

  Okay, Rhemus, you handle the air surveillance. I’ll see if there are any nearby sniffers I can snag, Katria ordered.

  Katria’s familiar, a black Labrador puppy she called Snazz, was scanning for the closest sniffer bots available. Sniffers were Frisbee-sized robots used to ID suspects and, if necessary, detain them. Snazz found two bots within a fifty-mile radius and six more within two hundred miles.

  Katria decided to rent all the available bots. It would be expensive at ten thousand points each per hour, but she figured she would need them. This demon had a head start, and it was running in a highly populated field. There were bound to be a ton of suspects to filter through.

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she told herself.

  It would be a few minutes before her sniffers got to the scene, so she decided to take some time to do analysis. She thought about leasing some hard-core AI for the job, but she decided that would be too expensive. Every player had an expense cap (which depended on the game) to keep a single rich player from dominating every time. Having caps in place encouraged more thoughtful use of resources versus brute-force methods for solving problems, which tended to strain infrastructure. Katria had already burned well into her cap by renting eight sniffers.

  She messaged her familiar. It’s going to be just you and me, Snazz. The dog cocked his head adoringly and got to work analyzing the data the Tool had uploaded before shutting down.

  Rhemus sent another blink. I got an eye on the area. No surprise our girl is no longer in her last estimated location. By the way, there’s some heavy cloud cover. Grokking suspects is going to be a little slow.

  Satellites could still be used in heavy cloud cover, but their effective sight radius decreased due to the need of focusing in more for greater penetration.

  Get another satellite then, Katria responded.

  Soul, that’s gonna tax, Rhemus whined over the blink.

  We’ll get paid. We underestimated the first demon. Let’s not make the same mistake on this bitch, Katria shot back.

  Okay, I’ll work it out. Rhemus had learned by now to trust Katria’s instincts, which was the main reason Katria continued to play with him over the years.

  Snazz returned with an analysis of the data. Katria skimmed it and highlighted a few points she found interesting:

  • Spanker ghetto (from Cloud statistics)

  • The two demons were living together (DNA traces found on the scene)

  • Voice of demon was likely female and in distress (voice analysis done by the angel)

  Despite the fact that satellites and sniffers would arrive soon, there were thousands of potential suspects in the search radius, so Katria knew she needed to narrow down her suspect list. Of course, she would start with the most obvious, a direct match. That would be what the satellites would look for first, but it was difficult to get a positive ID from overhead. If that did not work, then they would look for female runners in the radial zone in which the demon could theoretically be. The demon already had over a minute head start and, according to her profile, was a very swift runner. This would make for a rather large search area.

  I have another sat online, Rhemus reported. How about those sniffers?

  The first one will be here in ’bout twenty secs, Katria replied. Your sats catch any candidates?

  A couple of running girls, but nothing definite. Body type on all of ’em seem a little off.

  Probably just spankers, Katria responded. But we should check them anyway. Our girl might have customized.

  The term “customized” referred to the common practice of demons changing their appearance using various illegal means, such as gene therapy or old-fashioned plastic surgery.

  It took less than a minute for the first sniffer that arrived to check the candidates, which all came back negative. Katria scowled and blinked a message to Rhemus. Have sats feed my sniffers all the women in the area, starting with the ones farthest out in the search zone. She might not be running; she might be smarter than that.

  Rhemus pinged confirmation.

  As the first sniffer widened its search to include all women, the next sniffer arrived, to which she assigned the task of picking up the girl’s trail from her estimated last location.

  You can either run or you can hide, Katria thought. If you run, we’ll see you run and get you faster. If you hide, we’ll sniff you out and find you later.

  But there was a third option, one employed by the more clever demons she had hunted. The demon could be trying to blend in. Perhaps this one thinks she can simply walk away, Katria mused.

  Only minutes later Katria started having doubts, discovering that all the women came back negative.

  Damn, maybe our demon isn’t a woman. Maybe it’s a man who used a voice disrupter. Katria felt her stomach wrench as the thought came to her. No, the DNA in the apartment could not lie. The demon is female. But maybe she’s disguised, using an illusionary veil or something.

  Yeah, I already thought of that, Rhemus chimed in. Katria was startled, as she had not realized she was broadcasting her thoughts through the blink. The sats aren’t just watching for chicks. I’m tagging anyone hauling ass out of the area.

  What if she’s disguised and just walks out? Katria countered.

  Yeah, that would suck, Rhemus replied. We need to sniff everyone who leaves. Do you have the bots for that?

  Katria inspected the foot traffic patterns. Most people were leaving the are
a using designated paths, but some went off trail.

  Looks like I’ve got enough to handle it, Katria sent. You just have the sats mark ’em, and the sniffers will check ’em.

  There was a brief pause and then Katria continued. Anyway, my bet is the bitch isn’t on the surface. She’s probably holed up in one of those mounds-that’s what rats do.

  Rats have tunnels, Rhemus sent. You see on the map?

  Rhemus displayed the subterranean map of the ghetto. This particular map was not public for some reason, but law enforcement spankers like Rhemus and Katria had access. Wherever there were nanosites, software could map surfaces. All SkinWare maps were accessible to law enforcement with a permit, an electronic permit that took Rhemus only a few seconds to request and obtain.

  Katria said, I’m seeing three subterranean tunnels out of the ghetto. Since we don’t have sats to help out under there, I’m going to have to assign a bot to guard each tunnel. Damn!

  Yeah, it’s going to cost you some resources, but securing the perimeter is priority one. Rhemus stated the obvious.

  Just then, Katria got a ping that the scent trail had been found. Finally, some good news, she thought.

  Now that the trail was picked up and the exits secured, Katria knew the noose was tightening. In less than a minute, she learned that the demon had indeed gone into one of the mounds. That explained why the satellites had not found her. No problem, she thought. The underground exits are covered.

  Still, Katria was not comfortable just sitting back and watching events unfold. Because it was still early in the morning, there was not a lot of traffic on the surface, and so only three bots were busy up top. Three more bots were covering the underground exits, which left two more with nothing to do. All this hardware was costing her points by the second, and there was no benefit in sending the idle ones home since she had already paid for the minimum rental and still had over fifteen minutes left on them. She needed to find the demon sooner rather than later if she was going to come out ahead in this game.

  Katria asked herself, How do I find the demon quickly if she’s hiding?

  A demon inside a mound could not be observed as easily as one outside. Privacy rules prohibited nanosites-the invisibly small chips used by SkinWare-to be equipped with observation instruments such as cameras; rather, they were designed to simply announce themselves, to be observed, but not to observe back. Outside one’s home was public domain, so satellites could be used on evildoers, but indoor areas were a different matter.

  Katria had obtained a search permit for the mounds and therefore could have her extra sniffers check everyone systematically, but that was woefully inefficient, even for machines as fast as these. The tunnels and chambers of the apartment mounds of Anywhere were extensive, to say the least. Worse yet, many of the chambers and tunnels were sealed by doors, hatches, or more exotic impediments, slowing down the sniffers considerably. When a flying Frisbee-shaped sniffer encountered such a portal, usually the most expedient way past was to slice a small slit in the surrounding dro-vine and slip through. If this was not feasible (for example, in classic buildings that did not use dro-vine), the sniffer would extend a set of mechanical arms and picks out from its smooth, shiny hull, but sniffers were not adept at manipulating knobs, handles, and locks designed for human use.

  All these factors added up to the fact that the simpleminded tactic of systematically sniffing every resident in Anywhere would be disastrously slow and therefore expensive. Katria decided she needed to filter candidates somehow.

  She knew the apartment mound complex was primarily populated with gamers. Certainly the demon was not a gamer since Katria had never heard of such a thing. That single fact separated their demon from just about everyone else in the area.

  Rhemus had already obtained a permit to tap into SkinWare, so Katria decided to run a query on all the active games in Anywhere, looking for anyone who was a ghost to all games-that is, a person not logged into any game. Certainly our demon will fall into this category, thought Katria.

  Her familiar connected to the games MyLife, Grokstania, Samurai on Top, Lust Bunnies, NeverWorld, Golden Age, Treasure Island, Mission Flipp’n Ridiculous, and Covert Ops V. Only 23.6 % of the population were hits, but that was still 668 people! However, when she narrowed it down to the region to which the sniffer had tracked the demon, it was less than two hundred. Katria immediately dispatched her two idle sniffers to check them.

  CHAPTER 14

  An optimized economy relies on proper incentives-incentives for innovation, incentives against corruption, incentives to share knowledge rather than hoard it, incentives for hard work, incentives to find what you love and to do it every day! The Game, the divinely inspired fabric under which players live and the bounty of the universe is being realized, bequeaths these incentives to us.

  — Excerpt from “Introducing the Game,” as it appears in the Game help documentation

  Deep under the rotting trees of Meredith Forest, within the slime-covered tunnels of the Nardar catacombs, D_Light moved quickly while Lily trailed behind him like a kitten chasing a string. D_Light was multitasking as best he could. It wasn’t easy getting directions in the catacombs while simultaneously keeping the nasties at bay. He had already spent more manna than he wanted by frying a couple of corrupted elves they had come across in play.

  A hustler opened a blink with D_Light. The Nardar catacombs, yeah, I’ve been there before…eh, a while back.

  D_Light was not impressed with the thought tone of the hustler. Given the generous amount of points D_Light was auctioning off for a guide to the apartment mounds, he expected top quality. He replied unceremoniously, Okay, well I want out of here fast, so there’ll be a bonus in it if you can keep sharp.

  The hustler, who went simply by “Bone,” asked, Right, so where you at?

  I don’t know. That’s why I need you, replied an irritated D_Light.

  D_Light stopped suddenly in his tracks, trying to get his bearings. Lily, who had thus far proven to be an excellent shadow, nearly bumped into him and then looked at him with dagger eyes. She wasn’t privy to the conversation taking place in his head, perhaps making her unsympathetic to his thoughtless movements.

  This reminded D_Light to throw a word or two of praise and encouragement at his guest, which he thought was appropriate; then again, he wasn’t sure. “Hey, nice job, by the way,” he whispered over his shoulder. “I know this is kind of crazy and uh…” D_Light thought about patting her on the arm as a comforting gesture; he raised his hand to do so, but then decided against it. His arm fell back to his side. He did not really know what to expect from a towheaded demon. He did remember her knife though, so instead of attempting any physical affection, he smiled stupidly while nodding and then promptly turned forward again.

  The witch and the warrior woman were standing in a large hall lined on both sides by statues. The pale limestone skin of the statues was blotched with dark stains. D_Light panned his eyes slowly over them and had Smorgeous upload the video to the hustler. He took his time. He chose to send the video in high definition even though it would take a little longer to upload. He wanted Bone to get a really good look.

  Oh yeah, I know where you’re at, I think, blinked Bone. Hey, pan back to your left a bit. Check that chick on the end o’ the hall. Yeah, that chick, the one with the big ol’ titties. Yeah, I know that one.

  The hustler appeared to be referring to the statue of a mythical female creature. She had deer legs bent as though ready to spring. Her upper body was that of a nude human female. Vestiges of what were once long bird wings extended out only as jagged stone stubs from her back.

  There was a moment of silence followed by another blink from Bone. All right, I’m on it. Just let me bring up some of my old maps.

  Bone sounded a bit more confident now, but D_Light was not convinced. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much choice but to give this guide a shot. None of these catacombs were auto-mapped; that would defeat the allure of the gam
e. D_Light had been wandering these apartment mounds for hours and had a pretty impressive map of his own, but since he had not yet mapped out this quadrant of the ghetto, he was already lost. He didn’t dare go back outside to get back to familiar territory, either. There they would be fully exposed to the satellites.

  “Keep an eye out,” D_Light whispered over to Lily.

  He could see that his remark was completely unnecessary. She looked like a frightened little rabbit. Of course, that was no surprise. The catacombs were skinned to look absolutely frightful. The corrupted living walls quivered and excreted a thick, slow moving, bloody slime. Even the statues were bleeding. The woman statue before him had tears of blood running down her blotched and stained cheeks, progressing downward from her nipples to her groin. These were common thematic tricks designed to hammer home a sense that you were indeed in a place of evil and in imminent danger. D_Light wished he could log them both out for a short while-just long enough to put the nOOb at ease-but that would be a poor choice. For one thing, it would waste precious time. For another, her genuine fear was bound to make her react more realistically. If she was going to blend in, she could not just casually saunter about like a non-player.

  Bone blinked again. Okay, now I know where you’re at. I’m gonna upload a map that’ll help.

  Presently, a map showing a way out appeared in D_Light’s mind. It displayed exactly one route that started in the statue hallway where he was currently located and led to one of the tunnels that exited this spanker ghetto. Because of the hive-like interconnectedness of the apartment mounds, there were obviously many other routes to the exit. However, spankers jealously guarded their maps and rarely gave more information than was required.

  Using the map and Smorgeous’s onboard compass, D_Light was able to follow the directions fairly well. He darted down this hallway and that. He mostly tried to avoid trouble, but would occasionally attack a nasty if it seemed like easy pickings. After all, it would help keep up the appearance that he was truly gaming. At one point they passed a large party of fellow spankers, maybe ten or so-several fighters, a few priests, even two wizards. They eyed D_Light and Lily carefully until D_Light put up the hand signal for his guild. It was a good-aligned guild, which apparently satisfied them. They looked like they were heading into the thick of the catacombs, which was a pity since D_Light would have liked to hitch a ride with them.