Rune Universe: A Virtual Reality novel (The RUNE UNIVERSE trilogy Book 1)

by Hugo Huesca

  “Do you know Darren’s dealer? I was hoping you’d get him to talk to The Ferals about this for me. Explain it’s all just a misunderstanding.”

  “Except the part where you set their leader on fire, you mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll post on the boards, see if the dealer lives nearby. I don’t promise you anything, us oldfags like our privacy. But, as your dealer, I’m contractually obligated to help you.” He said, with a hand over his underdeveloped chest.

  Roscoe Orville was my Script dealer. He was a real hacker, not just a kid who bought software from one. His username made him a wanted man in four small countries and I had no idea how he managed to avoid prosecution in the States. Probably because he refused to share said username with anyone he knew in real life.

  He boasted of being the best, and although he had no evidence, his skills matched the claims. In a way, the hardware store was just a front. He’d be perfectly happy if he had zero customers buying his junk. His real money was in the Scripts, and in the small cut he took from all successful hits using them.

  “I know. Still, I don’t have many options…”

  In his old-school monitor, an alarm beeped and a long streak of characters flashed down the screen.

  “What? Wait one second, Cole—” Roscoe mumbled as he jumped over the counter and pounded away at the keyboard. He cursed under his breath and looked for something under the counter until he came up with a small box with several antennae on top. He connected the device to his CPU and went back at typing. He cursed again, this time louder, and he looked to me with a scowl. He reached under the counter and threw a big, dusty, metal and wood tube on the table.

  It was a hunting rifle, probably fifty years old.

  “You sure you are not working with the government, Cole?” he told me, the rifle between me and him, an ominous implication. “Because there is a CIA drone hovering right outside my window, and it’s zoomed right in on your trace.”

  “Fucking what?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Nordic Study

  Seitaro Ogawa did not work in Nordic’s office inside the conglomerate skyscraper. He owned about seventy percent of the companies in there, including the building itself. When you have that kind of money, you have your own private office and when you want to schedule a meeting, you move everyone by helicopter.

  The helicopter’s twin motors roared as his company’s pilot landed perfectly on the heliport atop his private office, located on the edge of San Mabrada’s (over the mountains, as to avoid the unsightly poverty belt that surrounded most of the city). Seitaro Ogawa heard it come as he reclined on his favorite chair.

  It was the one in the meeting room, that overlooked every other seat in there. It was custom built for him, the rich leather arch of the backrest gave his normally scrawny frame a regal edge. Also, it was designed to make him appear taller than everyone else, but in a discrete way, with a combination of psychology and magnetic fields.

  The conference table floated in front of him. It was made of glass and it had no legs or cables to support it. It stood, fixated in the air, like telling the world, “behold, the man who owns me is not bound by petty laws like gravity.” It was mostly empty, except for a holographic screen right in front of Seitaro, and a small report, written on paper.

  Ogawa had come a long way since his days working as a government accountant. Even his days working with the Patels seemed far away when he stood in his corporate throne.

  For all he cared, he had always been rich. He deserved both the fame and the fortune. He had fought for it, killed for it, done things few men dared to do. That’s why he succeeded when everyone else failed.

  Now, one of his vassals had flown all the way from the Financial District’s office to try and justify to him why his divine will hadn’t been followed to the letter.

  Ogawa didn’t need to see the security feed to know the path Mister Ignas Girsang, chief programmer, would follow after the helicopter landed.

  “He’s leaving the helicopter now, the drone-cart is waiting a few feet nearby,” he muttered, to himself, following Girsang’s movements in his head. For someone with so little imagination, Seitaro Ogawa was very good at this mental exercise.

  “Now he’s passing the golf camp. That’s going to take a while.” Seitaro paused the appropriate number of minutes, then continued. “Now he’s by the Olympic pool. He’s passing the gardens, and the security drones must be around to scan him anytime now.” Since the alarms didn’t roar to life, Girsang’s credentials must be in order.

  Now, the doors of the office must be opening for him and the drone escorts following him. Walking through the Art Gallery would take another couple of minutes… Seitaro pushed a holographic button on the armrest of his seat and a high-tech drone brought him tea on a silver platter.

  He finished it a while before Ignas Girsang came into the conference room. The lead programmer’s face was red and covered in pearls of sweat. He was the kind of man who actively abhorred physical exercise and did his best to avoid it.

  All the better to make him walk a bit, for all Ogawa cared. He was extremely irked with Girsang.

  “You called, boss?”

  “Take a seat, Girsang,” Seitaro said. One of the chairs on the other side of the table pulled back without an obvious mean of propulsion. Girsang sat and exhaled loudly as his overworked legs caught a rest. Seitaro frowned with disgust.

  “You seen the news on Rune Universe, lately?” Seitaro asked, with a fake amiable smile.

  “Did you?” Girsang instantly responded, unable to hide his surprise. Then his mouth hung open as he realized what he just said to his boss. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”

  Seitaro Ogawa could not care less what his underling thought of him, even by accident. He dismissed it with a gesture of his hand. “Does not matter. A legendary spaceship surfaced yesterday night.”

  “Yeah. They appear all the time,” Girsang said. He took his round eyeglasses and cleaned them over his lap. Ogawa knew his top employees enough to know when one was nervous. Girsang was avoiding a conversation.

  “Yet, this one appeared to a new player,” Seitaro pressed on. “With only a couple of days of gameplay and not even a spacesuit in his inventory.”

  “Who knows? The quest system works in strange ways,” Girsang said. It was an old “in-office” joke that Seitaro never found funny. It implied Nordic had no control over the quest system. That was simply not true. They could always shut it down.

  “I did some research on my own,” Seitaro lied. Most of the research had come from his ex-CIA contact, a man called John. “The player is one ‘Cole Picard.’ Real name, Cole Dorsett. He went to the same school as the Patels’ kid.”

  “Kipp?” asked Ignas Girsang, raising his eyebrows a tad too high for a believable representation of surprise. “What a coincidence, huh?”

  “Yes, it was,” said Seitaro. He typed some instructions to his in-house AI (highly illegal to anyone not rich enough to be immune to most laws) and a window appeared in the middle of the table. The definition was so high it looked like reality had split in that specific area. “That’s why I reviewed our friend’s Kipp last appearances in Rune Universe. Would you like to see what I found?”

  Girsang went pale and Seitaro smiled triumphantly.

  The window showed Kipp’s avatar. He was on a planet near the borders of the galaxy. He was geared to the teeth with weapons and a spacesuit capable of resisting an anti-tank shell, but he didn’t use any violence to make contact with the animal life on the planet. The recording fast-forwarded as he hovered over the insect-like herds that roamed the volcanic planet. Eventually, a couple of in-game days later, he went down and made contact with the lifeforms. He offered them food, ran away when they charged him, escaped using an invisibility field, then went back at it. Many tries, and a couple close calls, later the herd was used to his presence.

  Once the horse-sized insec
ts stopped attacking him on sight, he roamed on his flying bike all across the herd’s territory, that extended for hundreds of miles. He did this for a real-time week. He was clearly searching for something, and he found it in the interior of an active volcano.

  The video showed Kipp’s attempts to carve a pathway into the volcano using heavy-duty explosives. When that failed and his nanomachines had grown his legs and lungs back, he got back on his ship, flew right above the volcano, directed all energy towards his shields, and dropped like a rock straight into it. The recording, for a moment, showed nothing. Then, a small warning informed the viewers that Kipp’s ship had been destroyed.

  His personal shields flared and then burned down.

  Then the volcano spat a single, amazing blast of lava, which spread across the sky like rain. As it splatted in every direction and started a thousand tiny fires, the video focused on the gold-and-white ship that now hovered over the volcano, its shields barely dented by the trip. It was the Apollo Wing.

  Seitaro Ogawa turned off the video-feed and the window disappeared.

  “How did he survive the volcano?” asked Girsang. Ogawa hadn’t intended for him to be amazed at Kipp’s antics. More to it, he hadn’t bothered to actually look at what happened inside the volcano.

  Ogawa was like a drug dealer. He merely provided the game to anyone who would pay. He had no interest in the product.

  “He found the ship’s location by a string of clues spread over many different quests, all over a year. No other player got the same set of clues.”

  “The system likes to do stuff like that all the time,” said Girsang.

  “We own the system, Ignas. You should remember that. It’s just strings of code and software configured by the Patels and the previous design team.”

  It had been a brilliant move in Seitaro’s part to have “fired” the first design team, which in reality didn’t exist. This allowed him to claim the Rune System had been created by Nordic.

  “Of course, of course, it’s just a team in-joke,” Girsang muttered. The man clearly hoped the conversation would not move further than this. Ogawa was happy to disappoint him.

  “I don’t care for the game’s plot, of course, as long as people keep paying the subscription. What I do care about is this. A few days after his tragic passing, Kipp Patel was able to transfer this ship and an unknown message towards an, at the time, non-existent character. There isn’t any protocol in-game for this. There isn’t any protocol, either, to allow a player to transfer his account to another person, even if it resets his character.”

  Girsang gulped.

  “Do you understand, Ignas, that if Kipp Patel had any help from someone within Nordic, we would be forced to let go of that person? It’s the company policy that every player should be treated fairly, after all. Even if he is the son of dear friends who are no longer with us.”

  “Yes, I understand,” said Girsang. The man was no longer pale, but grim and determined, a man who was resigned to his fate and ready to face it with dignity.

  Seitaro Ogawa wasn’t going to allow him to keep that dignity for long. “Great. Well then, you better get to it.”

  Girsang cocked his head in surprise and his round eyeglasses slid over his nose, like a confused Santa Claus. “Get to what?”

  “To finding our misguided employee, of course,” said Seitaro with an innocent smile. “You are our software leader, after all. It’s your job to keep track of this kind of things. Of course, I’ll set you up to work closely with Human Resources, so you don’t have to fire the employee yourself.”

  Seitaro loved being the boss. Here was his best impression of being magnanimous. He knew Girsang was the man who had transferred Kipp Patel’s permanent account. In a swift move, he had turned the brave Ignas’ last stand into a punishment of its own. Would he pick an underling and claim they were guilty? Or would he be brave —foolish— enough to claim responsibility? Seitaro found the situation hilarious.

  Whatever he chose, Ignas Girsang would be fired by the end of the month. Meanwhile, Ogawa wasn’t finished with him.

  “Also, I need you to terminate Cole Picard’s permanent account,” he said.

  “Ban him? But, he has broken no rules… the damage to our image would be…” stumbled Girsang.

  “We are just keeping the playing field even,” said Seitaro. “He has obviously received help from another player in a way which is not allowed. Legendary items are not supposed to be transferable in this manner, and neither was Kipp’s account. I allowed such a thing in deference to the Patels, as long as he kept quiet about it. Since Cole Dorsett and his inheritance lawyers are obviously in the know, this is a breach of contract.”

  He shook his head with a perfect imitation of sadness. “I feel as bad about this as you do, Ignas. But, we have a responsibility towards all our players.”

  “I see.” Girsang’s face was now a mask. He played Rune, too. If he believed that Cole’s character had cheated in any way to obtain the ship, he would have begrudgingly accepted Seitaro’s orders. But he couldn’t, in good conscience, let this matter slide without a fight. “But, why does it even matter at this point? Cole lost the ship the very same day he claimed it, as it would happen with any newbie who stumbles into such an… attention-grabbing item. And, Kipp’s account was supposed to be permanent anyways—”

  “It’s our policy, Ignas. Perhaps the rest of the team won’t like it, but that’s the way it is. You’re the boss so you can make the hard choices in a way the rest of them can’t. But, if you are not up to the task, someone else can do it for you.”

  Years ago, when he was just Seitaro Ogawa, accountant, the only reaction he’d get if he had tried that would be some laughs and a CIA agent shoving his face on the office toilet. Now, it worked like a charm.

  Oh, how the wheels turned.

  “Don’t worry, Mister Ogawa. I’ll do it,” Girsang conceded in defeat.

  “Excellent. You can return now, this meeting is over.”

  After Ignas Girsang left the room, escorted again by Seitaro’s personal squad of security drones, the CEO relaxed and sat back, enjoying the feel of real leather on his back. What’s the name of the species he got the skin from? He couldn’t even remember, but it had been expensive. And endangered.

  Later that night, a man named John called him on his private line. He explained a few interesting suspicions he had on seventeen-years-old Cole Dorsett.

  A drone of John’s had just short circuited half an hour ago, he explained. This, according to him, was great news.

  “You see, the States have a myriad laws on tech and surveillance, too many for the citizenship to follow them all,” John explained.

  Seitaro’s security system pretended the conversation being recorded right now was to a legal prostitution service. It was instructed to do so. If the press got a hold of it, they would love the news so much they wouldn’t study the video for manipulation. This technique was colloquially named bury a dead cat a feet over the ground where you just buried a man.

  This was on purpose. One of those laws clearly penalized the destruction of Government’s property, including drones and software, even if they were used to spy on its own citizens.

  Technically, Cole Dorsett could be jailed right now, and the Patel’s situation would be laid to rest.

  “Only problem is, your game has been Stefania Caputi’s little pet project for a while now. She’s blocking all my attempts at interfering with anything that has to do with Rune,” said the former CIA Director.

  Ogawa took a deep breath. For someone who had climbed so high the upper echelons of the States’ government, John could learn a thing or two about politics. He was happy to school him:

  “If you know someone will block all your attempts at a thing, that’s almost an offer to do the thing themselves,” he explained slowly. Ogawa enjoyed the annoyed silence on the other end of the line. “You still have some underground contact, don’t you? Put a kill-contract on Dorsett’s head.”
>
  “What are you talking about? Caputi will hear about a contract like that the very instant—”

  “Yes. Yes, she will. And then she’ll remove Dorsett from the equation herself —blocking, like you said, any interference with her project. She’s technically not official Government, so she can’t do something like witness protection. So…”

  The conversation only lasted a couple more exchanges after that. Ogawa hung up with a deep sense of satisfaction.

  Next thing Ogawa did was send a message to Ignas Girsang to tell the developer to cancel the impending ban on Dorsett’s account. It was no longer necessary to take the heat on social media from an unjustified ban. The problem would take care of itself.

  Seitaro Ogawa loved scenarios where he ended up winning no matter which way events unfolded.

  Oh, how the wheels turned.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Getting the band back together

  “Don’t move a muscle, my man,” Roscoe told me, as he heaved the hunting rifle over his shoulder. I decided to follow the armed man’s instructions.

  He passed me, as he moved like a shadow over his own store. He headed for the small, dirty window on the street-side wall, which was almost fully covered by ancient death metal bands.

  For one thing, he’d decided not to kill me, seeing as the rifle’s barrel wasn’t pointed at me right now. On the other hand, it was pointed at the window.

  “Uh…” I muttered, “you do know shooting down a CIA drone is illegal, right? You could get arrested for it.”

  He dismissed my concerns like they were an annoying fly. “It may be CIA, but it’s not transmitting to their headquarters. The IP address is of a person.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s still illegal, Roscoe.” I decided to ignore the fact he knew the IP address of the fricking CIA from memory.

  He stood his ground and I started to get desperate. Could the armed and eccentric hacker remain calm if, say, I were to jump him and fight him for the gun?