by Terry Schott
“Thank you for the compliment.”
The old man hummed, picking up the tune where the younger man had left off. After a moment, the younger man tilted his head back and began to whistle. The harmony they produced was beautiful. People walking by stopped in their tracks and listened with rapt attention.
Time seemed to halt as the old man’s voice coaxed the young man’s whistle to break into building and complementary melodies. The birds stopped moving as they listened. The song went on for both eternity and only a brief moment at the same time. Both men ended the song at the exact same instant. The silence that followed was as crisp and awesome as the melody that had been present a moment before.
The old man smiled and reached to pat the younger on the shoulder. “I miss that.”
“Me too.”
People and animals slowly began to move away, and the birds resumed pecking at bread.
“George has some problems that I don’t think he is aware of.”
“His name isn’t George anymore.”
The young man shrugged. “So he says.”
The old man frowned. “You talked to him?”
“Yeah.”
The old man removed his hand from the bag of bread and set the bag on the bench beside him, brushing the crumbs from his gloves. They did not make a sound. “Seeing you will confuse him.”
“I doubt it.”
“Careful.” His growl resembled the sound that an old grizzly bear would make. “This is not your game to play.”
“I’m aware of that. I was careful. Besides, you’re the one that put me into play here in the first place.”
“This is a very sensitive moment.”
“I found them.”
The old man exhaled in relief. “Where are they?”
“Cooper is in the Dream.”
“What?”
“Thirteen is here.”
“On Tygon?”
“The one and only.”
“Way to punch an old man twice in the face.”
“Can ya feel the exhilaration?”
“Is that what you call it?”
The young man laughed. “It is.”
“Then I feel it. Any idea what they are up to?”
“Thirteen has no clue what’s going on. He didn’t even know this place existed, but he’s landed on his feet and is trying to make his way to Trew.”
“That’s fine.”
“Cooper is a wild card.”
The old man clapped his hands together causing the bottle caps to sing loudly. “Cooper is our wildest card, and he continues to surprise, shock, and delight. What do you think he’s up to?”
“I don’t know, why don’t you tell me.”
“I have no clue.”
“What?” The surprise was obvious on the young man’s face.
“I told you he was a wild card. Don’t worry, we will figure it out.”
‘You’ve got jumpers in different realities—”
“Just one. Cooper belongs in the Dream.”
“You’ve got two Coopers inside the Dream,” the singing man corrected. “which is a very different problem.”
“Only if the comatose one wakes up, and that is impossible.”
“It’s a mess.”
“It’s a tiny spill, and one which we will keep an eye on.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I never said this game would be dull.”
“That’s true. But you didn’t say it would be this dangerous.”
The old man reached into the bag and threw a handful of bread to the birds. “It was always implied.”
49
Brandon opened his eyes and yawned. After the doctor removed the IV and electrodes from his body, he sat up and climbed off the table, rolling his neck from side to side as he stretched.
Danielle and Trew sat on the nearby couch and smiled as he moved to stand in front of them.
“Hello Momma and Papa.”
“Stop calling us that.” Danni laughed. “You’re a grown man now. Again.”
“That’s true.” Brandon had re-entered Tygon as a thirteen-year-old boy, but ten years had passed and his body had continued to grow.
“I wish I knew how you were able to enter and exit the Game without dying,” Trew said.
“Me too. I thought when this avatar turned eighteen it would die if I entered the Game again, like every other older person that we tried.” He paused. “Have any of the players who entered Sojourn or Atonement managed to stay alive?”
“No. The results were the same as it always is for adults. Their bodies live, but their brain patterns indicate death.”
“How about mine?”
“Yours are the same as a regular kid, active and functional despite your age.”
“Hmm, okay.” Brandon moved for the door. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat. I’ve got an announcement to make but not on an empty stomach.”
Danni and Trew followed Brandon to the cafeteria where they ate and made small talk, discussing some of the major developments both inside the Game and on Tygon since he had last been here.
“Cooper has disappeared,” Trew said.
“How long ago?”
“Couple weeks.”
“Anyone tried to kill you yet?”
“No. The last attempt was a couple of years ago.”
Brandon raised his eyebrows. “If Cooper is gone, there will be attempts on your life. If he’s really gone.”
“He is.” Danielle adjusted her robes. “I confirmed it with Him.”
“Purple God?”
“That’s not a proper way to refer to Him.”
“Maybe not for you, but I’m sure I can get away with it. If he doesn’t like it then he can pull me in for a visit.”
“Yes,” Trew said. “Tygon’s deity has confirmed that Cooper is not in this reality.”
Brandon leaned back in the booth and crossed his arms. “What did you do to make him leave?”
“I told him to get me a meeting with Lohkam.”
“Did you also question his loyalty to you?”
“The discussion was overdue.”
“I agree.” Brandon tapped his upper lip.
“Who would try to kill Trew?” Danni asked. “Lohkam?”
“With Cooper gone, absolutely.”
“I am certain I could deal with him.” Trew scooped a spoonful of pudding and ate it.
“It wouldn’t be him. Not for the first few attempts.”
“First few attempts?”
“Oh yeah,” Brandon said. “He has a lot of resources available to him. Maybe I should have eliminated him before I left the place to you, but with Cooper here I knew he wouldn’t come after you.”
“Cooper has been meeting with him for years,” Trew said.
“I know.”
“Both are the General’s men.”
Brandon scowled. “What makes you say that?”
“Thorn showed me your life story and Cooper was in that story.”
“Cooper is more complicated than that. There was a very small chance that he would do as the General asked when he entered this reality. Before Danni finished her final play, I was certain he would not be a threat to you.”
“Would have been nice if I’d known,” Trew said. “I’ve spent the last decade being very careful around him.”
“Nothing wrong with that. You can be certain, but never positive. In your position, I would expect you to be vigilant against betrayal. It didn’t hurt you to keep close tabs on him. I could have been wrong.”
“Where do you think he went?” Danni asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
Brandon ignored the question. “What does matter is the timing. It makes my decision more firm, too.”
“What decision?” Trew asked.
“The Game is at a boring stage. At least, it is for me. It will be a few thousand years before the Game technology and era matches ours. I know there are a ton of
fans who love watching civilization build and grow, technology develop, and tribes move closer together and war for dominance, but I find it tedious.”
“Because it always seems to end up along the same lines?” Danni asked.
“Exactly. The first few times I hoped it would result in different outcomes, but it appears that history tends to repeat itself. To that end, I have decided to leave the Game for a few years and reside on Tygon.”
“In what capacity?” Trew asked.
“Anonymously. I have no desire to run this place, but I could use a vacation. I will live out here for the next eight or nine years. When the Game approaches our time and technology level, I’ll go back in. Until then, the Timeless can take care of things. They don’t need me getting in the way.”
“I agree,” Danni said. “You could use a vacation.”
“It looks like that won’t happen.”
“Why?” Trew asked.
“With Cooper gone, Lohkam will come for you.”
“We can handle him,” Trew said and Danni nodded.
“Likely, at first, but there are too many for you to handle. Plus, they have advantages over you.”
“How many are there?” Trew asked.
“Likely around a hundred and fifty.”
“What?” Danni looked at Trew and he shook his head. “And what do you mean by advantages?”
“This world, this system, does its very best to maintain the original parameters set out by Thorn when he created the program. When an event occurs that expands the laws of physics, your purple god— or the mainframe that runs this place, if the two are not the same thing— works to correct the anomaly. Over time, it does, and things return to normal. Some things do change, like both of you and the handful of others coming out of the Game able to fly on Tygon, but for the most part, an average Tygon native does not have access to the impossible.”
“You’ve explained this to us before.”
“It doesn’t work that way for me. I can do some crazy things in this reality. I still have to be careful because it causes problems down the road, but if I did not care about a future here, I could literally pull the sky down on top of us all.”
“Damn,” Danni said.
“Yeah. There is an explanation, but it’s boring and I don’t want to bother with it. The point is this: Lohkam and the others from the Dream are not as powerful as I am, but they are when compared to you and the rest. This gives them a serious advantage, no matter how skilled you are.”
“A hundred and fifty others?” Trew asked.
“Roughly,” Brandon agreed.
“Why would he want me dead?”
Brandon shrugged. “That’s what he does. If I’m the kid that builds things, Lohkam is the little bastard that walks into the sandbox and kicks it all down. The two of us had an agreement while I worked to fix the issue in the Dream. He knows that it has been solved, and likely expects to be pulled out of the sim and returned home. He never enjoyed or asked to be here.”
“He won’t go without doing his best to destroy what you’ve built.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s a serious problem for us.” Danni reached out to put a hand on Trew’s neck.
“It was a serious problem.” Brandon smiled, a mischievous expression even for his twenty-three-year-old avatar. “I’m here again and I will take care of him and his.”
“Thought you wanted a vacation.”
Brandon laughed. “I play games better than anyone I know. For me, this will be a vacation.”
50
Melissa sat alone at one end of a long metal table. The General and Sam Thorn sat at the opposite end, each reading copies of the report she had submitted. She looked down at her hands, occasionally glancing up to see if their faces betrayed anything. Both of them are cut from the same cloth. Or should I say, same block of stone. Can’t tell if they are concerned or not.
They would be concerned, each for different reasons. Melissa felt the urge to rub the spot on her hand where the chip resided, but she resisted. The action had quickly turned into an annoying habit and she had spent considerable time to break it. The urge was still there, but her hand rarely moved to touch the area anymore.
Both men placed the last page face down on the table at the same time and
looked at her. The General spoke first. “We have a Gamer movement on
this planet?”
“That’s right,” Melissa said.
“Is the surveillance system down? It would have to be for the numbers you are reporting to be accurate.”
“The surveillance system is operational,” Thorn said.
“Then how could there be so many of these people without us seeing them on the cameras?”
Thorn placed a hand on top of the report. “I understand that on the surface this appears to be neither possible nor of serious consequence, General, but if this report is accurate, it is a development which should be given top priority. You are not fully up to speed on the trials and tribulations that these people have endured.”
“Endured?” The General shook his head. “They’ve been back for only a few weeks. Before that, they were comatose and dying.”
“Their bodies were, but their minds were very much engaged and living completely active lives inside the Sim. I don’t need to remind you how real the Sim can be.”
The General paled. “Of course I know how real it can be. I know better than anyone, Thorn. How dare you bring this up in front of—”
“Then understand”—Thorn raised his hand—“that these people were part of a very powerful movement which involved hiding and fighting for their lives. For the lives of their families and way of life. They have much more than a few weeks’ experience living like this; they have decades of it. Beings with what we would consider supernatural powers hunted normal people and they not only evaded discovery, they successfully fought back.”
The General turned the report over and fanned through the pages. He found the page he was searching for and jabbed his finger against the paper. “This says that over half of our population is involved in the Gamer movement.”
“That’s correct,” Melissa said.
“None of this information makes any sense. Aside from a few isolated gatherings, which we dealt with quickly, there have been no reports of large-scale assemblies or violent opposition to our military actions. We find some and bring them in. Why don’t they protect each other?”
Melissa burst out laughing but quickly regained her composure. “I’m sorry.”
The General’s expression became stern. Thorn spoke. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, Melissa.” He looked at the General. “For the majority of the Sim crisis, you were indisposed, General. I can assure you that the Gamers were a significant force. Without their existence and involvement, humanity would have likely perished.”
“I see. Then you are saying addressing this issue should be one of our top priorities?”
“Absolutely,” Thorn said.
The General looked at Melissa. “Begin forming teams and programs to root out these dissidents as soon as possible. Assemble my Hand teams and bring them up to speed on the severity of the issue. I want this Gamer movement crushed, and quickly.”
Melissa stared at the General and Thorn cleared his throat. “I wasn’t thinking along those lines, General.”
“What do you mean?” The General appeared confused.
“We are not prepared for this type of a confrontation. I advise finding out what they are most concerned with achieving, and then giving it to them.”
“Impossible!” The General slammed his hand on the table. “They want things which should never be desired. To allow them anything is to deal with terrorists. They undermine the very foundation of our society.”
“Of our old society.”
“What are you saying, Thorn?”
“Things have changed, General. To assume different is absurd. You are trying to build—”
“We.
We are doing this, Thorn, and we are not trying to build. We are attempting to rebuild. To restore order and society to how it was before the mess that you caused almost destroyed us all.”
Silence enveloped the room. Thorn watched the General with a calm expression as he struggled to contain his rage.
The General watched him with an amused expression on his face.
Thorn blinked and nodded. He spoke without taking his eyes off the General. “You heard the General’s orders, Melissa. Please let us know how your mission proceeds.”
Melissa stood and saluted, holding it for a moment until it was obvious that both men were ignoring her while they maintained their stare. She cleared her throat and exited the room. This can’t be good.
51
“Susanne?”
Susanne continued reading her newspaper. “You must have me mistaken for someone else.”
“My apologies,” the man said. “I thought I recognized you and didn’t want to be rude by walking by without making a pause.”
She raised an eyebrow at the use of the secret phrase ‘without making a pause’. He was a Gamer. Without looking up, she spoke again. “That’s very thoughtful, but my name is not Susanne.”
“Oh, okay. Sorry to have bothered you.” The man walked away. Susanne finished reading the article, then stood. She folded her paper and walked away, in the opposite direction of the man. She strolled, stopping occasionally to gaze into window displays of stores before moving on. It took her fifteen minutes to circle the block and enter a small café. She selected a table on the left side of the restaurant in the darkest corner and sat down.
A waitress stood at a table, taking an order, but looked over and spoke to Susanne. “Coffee and a glass of pulp-free juice?”
“Yes, please.”
The waitress finished taking the order from the other table and went behind the counter where she poured a cup of coffee and brought it to Susanne. There was no juice. That phrase told her that the single surveillance camera mounted to the wall was on a loop. This was a safe place to talk.
The front door opened and a man entered. Susanne looked at his shoes. They belonged to the man who had spoken to her in the park. She studied him as he approached. Middle-aged with salt-and-pepper hair and an unshaven face, he wore a casual business suit with no tie. Good looking. I wonder who he was on Earth.