Side Quest

by Christopher Kerns

  A metallic ping rang from inside. Mitch could see the screen from where he stood, the message reading:

  NEW DIARY ENTRY

  MEETING REQUEST: 930AM, KARMA HQ

  FROM: MCDOUGALL

  He walked back in and accepted the meeting, deleting the next few messages, all from an impressive assortment of vendors asking about late payments. They can wait. As the sun fell below the horizon, he kept the lights dark for a while, watching the waves push their last breath of light towards the shore.

  THE SKIRMISH MANUAL:

  A TEAM-BASED APPROACH

  By Mitch Mantock

  Welcome to the world of Skirmish. Some of you may be reading this book to understand more about the game everyone is talking about; others are looking for a way to get better at a game you already know and love. A few of you may even want to get into the arena yourselves, and go to sleep at night dreaming of packed stadiums and blaster sponsorships. Well, no matter who you are, this is the book for you.

  Let’s start with the basics. The rules of the game clearly state:

  Each official Skirmish team will be made up of five players on a side. Their mission is simple: to eliminate the opposing force (whether in campaign mode or against a human-operated team) before they are eliminated themselves.

  Building your team the right way is your key to victory. Each team member must understand their role and balance the others to form a complete unit. In this manual, we’ll dive into the essential pieces that make up a successful Skirmish team. These roles aren’t just based on opinion, but on years of experience from the front lines at top levels of the game. Before you know it, each of the roles—Demolitions, Bulldozer, Rover, Sniper, and Leader—will become second nature to you. You’ll understand how to spot a good teammate, and how to be a good teammate.

  Let’s get to it.

  FOUR

  Really Hoping You’d Say Yes

  “BEEN A WHILE, old man. Place looks downright fantastic.” Mitch shook McDougall’s hand and slumped down, sinking deep into the chair’s leather, staring back across the desk at his old friend.

  “Only a year,” McDougall said, pulling a tired but genuine smile across his face. “Just like the year before. And the year before that. You’re welcome to stop by more, but I feel like I tell you that every time I see you.”

  “And I always say I will.”

  Mac had grown older since Mitch had last seen him—older than the year that had passed. Mitch respected anyone that hadn’t changed the settings on their Karma Systems avatar to do a nip or tuck here or there. A user who reflected his real-life look, wrinkles and all in this case, was everything that was right in the world. It was a shred of humanity in a life that was growing more and more virtual by the day. One last pinch of welcomed truth for anyone spending eighteen hours a day crammed in a plastic helmet.

  You can tell a lot about someone from their settings.

  Behind McDougall’s desk was a wall of glass serving as a window to the soul of the inner workings of Karma Systems Headquarters. The complex was a virtual world built for its employees, rarely seen by regular users. Open-air catwalks filled with designers and programmers, a living, breathing virtual hive of activity. Karma had grown at an exponential rate over the years, which certainly added to the weight now sitting on Mac’s shoulders. But if you didn’t know Mac, you’d probably never notice. The old man sat calm and still, keeping a watchful eye from above on the world he’d created, like a bird on a wire. You’d never know the impact he’d had on so many lives by building the most popular game in the history of the world.

  The key to the Karma virtual world was simplicity constructed on a complex infrastructure, one that accounted for every scenario and consequence a player might encounter. Daily tasks. Marketplaces. Social hubs. Virtual neighborhoods and bars and gymnasiums. But when it came to Karma’s most popular offering, McDougall and his leadership were careful not to screw up a good thing. The gameplay in Skirmish had been carefully guarded over the years, its heart and soul intact from when the game had launched. Sure, there were expansion packs now and then—new maps and new weapons every few weeks—but the core remained, and that’s what kept the game so damn addictive, with the most logged user hours in the world, thirty years running.

  “Once a year works best for my busy social calendar,” Mitch said with a hint of a smile. “Ribbon cuttings, PTA meetings, you know how crazy life can get. Plus, I don’t want you getting too used to me being around. What’s new with you?”

  “More of the same, really,” McDougall said. “Trying my best to keep everything together. Our unique user growth has stalled, which has the board running in ten different directions.”

  “Of course user growth has stalled. There are only so many people on Earth.”

  “That’s ... that’s what I keep telling them,” McDougall said. “It’s a good problem to have, yes? But advertisers, investors—everyone wants growth.”

  “Growth without screwing up what’s already working.”

  “Well said. And harder than it sounds. But we’ve got a few other things in the works, hoping to get lucky here and there.”

  “Skirmish is still a solid game,” Mitch said. “And it didn’t get that way by accident.”

  “Sometimes I feel luck had a lot to do with it,” McDougall said with a shake of his head. “And now I’m getting pushed from every direction for more. More, they all say. More levels, more downloadable content. Premium tiers and micro-transactions. It feels like too much to me. I’m trying to find the right balance. Some days, I just want to leave it the way it is.”

  “A lot of people depend on this world,” Mitch said. “Work here. Play here.”

  “People like you,” McDougall laughed. “Last I heard you were leading new users through tour groups. Level walkthroughs, that sort of thing.”

  “Nothing that violates the terms and conditions.”

  “That’s not what I was getting at.”

  “It pays the bills.”

  “I’m sure it does, and I think it’s great,” McDougall said. “Good for you.”

  Mitch laughed off the lie. “It’s a living.”

  “And hell, looks like you even wrote the book on Skirmish,” McDougall said, activating a Karma Bazaar screen, with the cover of The Skirmish Manual: A Team-Based Approach now hovering over his desk. “I have to admit I haven’t had a chance to read it quite yet—”

  “You’re not alone,” Mitch said. “Don’t bother.”

  “So, now’s the time in this meeting when I ask you to come back,” McDougall said. “We could do a whole marketing blitz. The board would love that—the return of Spitfire, the greatest Skirmish player to ever—”

  “No chance, old man.”

  “You’re still at the top of the leaderboard.”

  “I don’t pay attention to that stuff anymore,” Mitch said.

  “I doubt that,” McDougall laughed. “You’re still the closest, you know. My engineers won’t leave me alone about that. We’ve never actually seen what a player with a billion can do in the game environment. We put it out there as a brass ring but never thought anyone would get close. And then you up and leave when you’re so—”

  A knock at the door broke Mac’s train of thought. The door cracked open as a young man—one Mitch didn’t recognize—poked his head through. With his glasses and half-long lab coat, he looked out of place, even for a virtual world.

  “Carl,” McDougall said, his eyes signaling for Carl to get the hell out of the room. “Can we help you?”

  “The progress report you asked for, sir,” Carl replied. “No news to speak of, but you asked for updates every ten minutes until—”

  “Yes, of course,” McDougall broke him off mid-sentence. “Thanks so much.”

  Carl’s eyes grew to saucers as they met with Mitch’s. He froze in the doorway, unable to move. “Is that ... ” Carl stammered, a finger now pointing through the door and straight at Mitch. “Are you ... ”


  “Very good, Carl,” McDougall said, gesturing a second time for him to exit. Carl obliged, backing away while keeping his eyes locked as long as humanly possible before sliding back out.

  McDougall nodded over to the door. “People always loved how you played the game.”

  “Nice try. You already know the answer.”

  “Then why do you keep coming back here every year?”

  “I can’t say no to a meeting with the founder,” Mitch said. “You know that.”

  “Oh, I see. It’s not that you miss seeing an old friend?”

  “We’ll go with your angle, sounds better,” Mitch muttered as he stretched his hands into the air.

  “It’s just ... ” McDougall said, his voice fading softly as he turned his back to Mitch, his gaze drifting off through the glass. “This year is different. This year ... I was really hoping you’d say yes.”

  “What’s going on, Mac?”

  “Nothing,” McDougall insisted. “It’s the work—it’s getting to me. Just in one of my moods.”

  “Don’t tip toe around me. It’s different today. You’re different. Two weeks early … updates every ten minutes about something you don’t want me to hear about. Something’s up.”

  McDougall stared back at Mitch, his face fading to worry. He took a few careful breaths before finding the right words. “What if an old friend were to ask a favor?”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “Just a quick bit of help. We’re in a bit of a bind, I’m afraid, and I’m—”

  “I’m not coming back,” Mitch said. “No more spotlights, no more stadiums, no more trading cards. I’m done with all that shit.”

  “And normally I wouldn’t ask you to. But ... something’s happened. I’m sure it’s nothing, but we need an ... expert ... a specialist ... someone who knows the system inside and out.”

  “An expert?” Mitch asked. “Mac—what are you talking about?”

  McDougall stood, turning towards the window, watching the world he had created move around him in perfect lockstep. “It’s your old team,” he said. “The Nefarious Five.”

  “Nope,” Mitch stood, backing away from the desk. “Don’t want anything to do with them.”

  “They’re in trouble, Mitch.”

  Mitch froze.

  What does he mean, trouble?

  “I sent them out on a mission,” Mac continued. “It’s my fault, I know that now. Asked them to head into something without knowing what I was dealing with.” He turned back to face Mitch. “We haven’t heard from them. Odds are it’s nothing, just a glitch. A problem with the comm link in the new virtual space. But people are starting to ask questions.”

  Mitch fell back into his chair.

  “We’ve tried everything,” McDougall said. “Considerable resources. They’ve all come up empty. You’re the last option I could think of.”

  Mitch watched the catwalks behind Mac’s silhouette, flowing with activity, like blood through arteries. He didn’t understand what was happening, but had a feeling he was about to find out.

  “I need your help, Mitch. Please.”

  FIVE

  What Do You Mean, Missing?

  MITCH WAS a firm believer that there was a special place in hell for people that didn’t get right to the point. Mac had never been in that camp—he’d always been a straight shooter, someone who would put everything on the table and work through problems with logic and transparency. But today, he was taking his time.

  This must be bad. Really bad.

  “Start from the beginning,” Mitch said. “Just walk me through it.”

  McDougall cradled his hands together, placing them on the desk, avoiding eye contact. He pursed his lips, took a deep breath, and finally spoke. “Like I was saying before—the board of directors—the pressure to get more profit out of Karma. We’ve been making investments to diversify our platform.”

  “Throwing a lot of big words my way,” Mitch said with his best calming tone. “Let’s take it down a notch. C’mon, Mac, just you and me here.”

  Nodding, McDougall continued. “Two years ago, I commissioned a special unit to build new worlds on the Karma System platform. Franchise-level games. Virtual meeting places and lifestyle environments. New spaces for users to play, spend time. Reinventing our brand, expanding our world from Skirmish. Our goal was to reset expectations, to fundamentally change what users expect out of Karma.”

  “That’s great. Everyone’s been saying you should do that for years.”

  “But I wanted to do it differently—I wanted a scalable solution. These games, you couldn’t imagine how expensive they are to conceive, design, build, and test. Entire virtual worlds, with every detail and every if-then and what-if. Brick behind plaster, insects crawling up trees. Normally, companies will just throw people at the problem—more people to design every detail. But I wanted to use technology in ways that had never been considered before.”

  He’s stalling.

  “And honestly,” McDougall said with a chuckle, “reinventing the game design process makes a damn good story for the press. Anyway, the board green-lit the program. For the first few months things went pretty much according to plan, but now, well … we’re beginning to realize our results aren’t quite what we anticipated.”

  Mitch shuffled in his chair, leaning in towards McDougall. “I’ve got a tour group to run in about ten minutes, how about we move this train along?”

  “What we ended up with was a new artificial intelligence design system, one that provided the chance to pull us years—maybe decades—ahead of any company on the planet. A system with one purpose: to design and build game worlds independently, without steering or input. Can you imagine? A central system with deep knowledge of game genres, sales figures, user behavioral analytics, story and character tropes—everything it would need to build not just the perfect game, but thousands of them, all with minimal human interference.” McDougall’s emphasis on the last two words sliced Mitch like a razor.

  “How’d that work out for you?” Mitch jabbed.

  “You joke, but the theory is solid. The first few passes were a resounding success. Armies of simulated users weeded out bad games before humans even laid eyes on them, and the system was able to learn from each miss. No repeating mistakes. We even had a few games that made it through to the next level. Alpha testers began raving about game elements—storylines and puzzles and opponents they’d never even imagined. All designed and built through trial and error, just code building code.”

  “What about my old team ... what does this have to do with them?”

  McDougall sunk back. “We’re not quite sure. A known flaw of the system is that we’re left with little to no visibility into the worlds as they are being developed. Last week, an anomaly showed up on our service panel. I figured it was nothing, a glitch, you know? In fact, the last time we saw a similar error was the night of your last battle with the team. The ... ” Mac held the words back.

  “The Red Battle,” Mitch said, letting Mac off the hook. “It’s okay, you can say it.”

  “Yes, the Red Battle. The difference is, last time the error corrected itself, somehow, we’re still not sure how. But with the new occurrence, we saw something we hadn’t anticipated—performance impacts to Skirmish.”

  Mitch sat up straight. “Wait a minute,” Mitch said. “I thought you said the glitch was in a new game world. How can that impact Skirmish?”

  “Not world, Mitch. Game worlds. The AI isn’t just building one game, it’s built hundreds already, upping our chances of a success. But yes, the systems seem to have leeched over into Skirmish, crossing over to existing servers. Dragging the system down, we’re not sure how. In some cases, it’s going as far as to delete user data. We’ve lost a few maps here and there—nothing serious.”

  Mitch felt his throat tighten. He’d known Skirmish for so long, he’d never thought about a life without it. Sure, living in a trailer wasn’t exactly how he’d drawn it all up, but withou
t the game, he wouldn’t even have that. Everything and everyone he knew lived in that world. The thought of some random bug deleting users and levels didn’t sit well.

  “Our engineers think this may just be the beginning,” McDougall said, “that if we can’t control the AI’s impact, it could do more damage.” He straightened his jacket, forcing a smile that wasn’t very reassuring. “But that, of course, is why I’ve asked you here today. I sent the best Skirmish players in to try and find out what was going on.”

  “The Nefarious Five,” Mitch breathed. “You sent them in and they never came back. How long have they been in there?”

  “Twenty-four hours. Maybe twenty-five now. They’re safe—we made sure they were hooked up to biosuits in their gaming rigs. They have enough food, water, and other needs, but as you know, the environment has limits.”

  “Their fail-safes will kick in once they get close to the break point. We’ve all been there once or twice.”

  “Fail-safes have been disabled by the new system, somehow. It’s a bug—it’s why we do these types of tests.”

  “Hell of a bug.”

  Seventy-two hours. That’s how long the human brain can function inside of virtual reality without a few hours offline. Every VR shop in the world had tried to up that limit, but always hit a wall at three days straight. Push your session beyond that point, and your brain starts to turn to oatmeal.

  “Just go find them,” Mitch said, pushing himself up from his chair. “In reality. Knock on their doors, wake ‘em up. Hand ‘em a cup of coffee and ask them about what happened. You don’t need me for any of that. Like I said, I’ve got a tour group—”

  “We don’t know where to look,” McDougall said, with more than a hint of embarrassment. “Things have changed since you left, Mitch. Skirmish teams like Nefarious are megastars, even bigger than before. We had a few privacy leaks last year, teenage fans showing up at player doors, more than a few death threats. All the top players have moved their physical locations, and we don’t keep new records to avoid further problems. The only place we can find them is inside the system.”