The entire chamber shook, and pieces of rubble fell to the ground. Above them a shaft of light appeared. Red sunbeams hit the chamber for the first time in four thousand years, dappling the King’s headdress, which diffracted the light in the room as the majestic sound of angels filled the air. The chamber was on the move, rising through the pyramid until finally, it reached the apex.
Now Johnny was at the top of the pyramid beside the winged man, who touched his shoulder gratefully. With a great leap, Icarus launched himself into the air. He flew up to the Earth Force Field and touched a finger to it, sending a ripple that reverberated through its red expanse. The red changed to orange, the orange to yellow, cycling back through the colours of the rainbow until the field turned violet, at which point there was an almighty crunch of static electricity and a bright flash that filled the screen, leaving in its wake a deafening silence.
The Force Field has disappeared and the sky had flared into a thousand intertwined patterns that were submitted by players who had contributed to the success of the various EFF quests. The sky looked like it was being painted by an almighty celestial being, and the crowds in Giza erupted into song and dance. The various counters along the top of the screen disappeared.
“Johnny Wong, player number 55,211,801, will forever be known as the man who turned off the Earth Force Field and set into motion the events that would unlock the entire Solar System. Last week The Game changed forever. Solarversia got its space wings.”
Small spaceships were seen docking with the International Space Station. Players wearing spacesuits floated around inside it, madly scrambling to return hundreds of floating Flakeroonies to the open cereal packet in the craft’s kitchen before they ran out of air and failed the quest. Other players back on Earth were shown solving puzzles and winning bounties, which caused difficulties for the astronauts aboard the Station: making it spin out of control, depressurising it, and starting fires that needed to be extinguished.
Arty studied the reactions of the people in the room and wondered how many of them understood the deeper significance of Solarversia. He’d designed its structure to mimic the nature of the universe itself — to start in a simple manner with the game of Paper, Scissors, Stone, and to evolve from that point on, complexifying as it went, forcing players to compete and collaborate, the way life forms had done since they emerged, echoing life's journey from Alpha to Omega.
“Completion of the International Space Station quest unlocked a new set of spaceships capable of reaching the Moon. The quest that took place on the moon unlocked the Interplanetary Spaceships, creating a Solar System-wide travel infrastructure.”
The Moonbase Quest, which had involved players finding and planting flags, should have been exciting for Arty to watch, given its significance in leading to space travel. In reality, the quest had been a total ballache. A griefing clan known as the ROFL Mongers had coordinated their efforts in such a way that they managed to decommission half the Moon buggy fleet. It had only been some quick thinking by a member of Carl’s team that had averted another PR disaster.
He now realised the irony of the situation. If they hadn’t encouraged players to collaborate, perhaps the leagues of griefers wouldn’t have got together to cause mayhem and panic. As the screens faded and the lights came back up, the saying Be careful what you wish for flashed through his mind.
***
The mayor walked to the lectern on the stage at the front of the room and shook Arty’s hand before scanning her notes and addressing the crowd in a calm, confident manner.
“The amazing thing about Solarversia is its size and scope. It’s a game played by one hundred million people from every single nation in the world. If it was a country itself, it would be the thirteenth largest by size of population. It’s a game that allows and encourages its players to travel the length and breadth of not only Earth, but also the entire Solar System. The opportunities to learn in this game are endless. In the words of St Augustine, ‘The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.’ Spiralwerks have enabled people from all walks of life to travel the Earth and the Solar System for free. And it was made here in London, the creative capital of the world. Eighteen months ago my office was approached by Hannah McCreadie, the Head of Communications, to apply for planning permission for an audacious public monument, one she firmly believed would not only become a tourist attraction in its own right, but would also act as an educational beacon, attracting pupils from around the United Kingdom to the vitally important subject of space exploration and understanding. Four months ago, after a wide-ranging public consultation, that monument, Sun Two Point O, was officially unveiled.”
Arty and Hannah grinned at one another. They were proud of this project. It was Hannah’s baby, though they’d both put in dozens of hours to help make it a reality. Sun Two Point O was a yellow sphere, ten metres in diameter, in the middle of Regent’s Park and was the centrepiece of Spiralwerks’ Mini Solar System project. The sphere was a giant Tesla globe — its surface looked like the plasma walls inside the Corona Cubes. Tourists could visit the sphere, download the app onto their headsets and phones, and then scour the streets and buildings of London trying to find the virtual planets on their orbits. It was a citywide Easter egg hunt of cosmic proportions.
Arty prepared a couple of headsets for the two of them. The mayor received hers warmly, propped it on her forehead and addressed the crowd one last time. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to leave the real world for the virtual. I’m told Venus will pass by in” — she looked at her watch — “approximately two minutes.”
Arty ensured that the mayor was comfortable before putting his own headset on. Around the room others followed suit.
“It’s pitch-black in here, Artica, is that right?”
“Look this way, please, Madam Mayor.”
“My word, that’s incredible. You’re dressed like an astronaut.”
“That’s right. And so are you. Our headsets have been synced so that we can see each other. You’ll notice other astronauts come into view as people in the room join the app. Please turn to your left. There we go, now you’re looking at the Sun, which appears larger than usual because we’re forty million kilometres closer to it. And to your right — you won’t be able to see it just yet — is Venus, which will fly past in approximately thirty seconds.”
“Forgive my ignorance, Artica, but how does the app work? Are we mere spectators, or will there be something for us to do when Venus flies by?”
“No, it’s very much an interactive experience. The first thing we’ll be able to do is stop Venus in its tracks. Here it comes, I’ll show you.”
As the blistering little planet approached them, Arty heard the mayor let out a quiet whimper. It really did look like it would knock you for six if you didn’t leap out its way. Before it could reach them, he held out a hand like a traffic policeman at a busy junction and the planet came to a sudden halt. He zoomed right into its thick, cloudy atmosphere, then back out again, before placing the planet on his index finger and spinning it like a basketball, delighting in his role as a modern-day Atlas who had total control over the celestial spheres. Beside him he heard the mayor make all the right noises in all the right places. He zoomed them away from Venus one more time until it was the size of a football a metre or so from their heads.
“Now I’m going to show you another aspect of the app’s interactivity. Social: on.”
“You’ve made it look like a comet.”
“Exactly. Except the tail is made of social interactions rather than cosmic gas. As the planets orbit the Sun, the people who witness them fly past, like we’re doing now, get to upload social data: comments, photos and videos. Some people even host ‘Planet Parties’ to celebrate the fly-bys. If we zoom in a bit closer you’ll notice that particles in the tail are different colours, signifying the different types of social interaction, and if we zoom in a bit closer, you’ll even see the words, images a
nd videos themselves. The closer the social particle to the planet, the more recently it was uploaded. Look at what I’m holding. It’s a photo of us shaking hands downstairs when you arrived. I place the photo on the planet, like so, and it joins the tail.”
“It’s very impressive, I must say. I can see new particles appearing from the other groups in the room. And if we go back along the tail a bit further, I’ve noticed this. It’s a picture of my sons. ‘We hope you enjoy your visit to Spiralwerks.’ How thoughtful of them.”
“Actually, Madam Mayor, that particle’s a video. The picture of your sons is merely the thumbnail image. If you prod it with your finger, it’ll start playing.”
She did as instructed. The video particle grew in size until it appeared as a cinema-sized screen in front of them; behind them the Sun dimmed to create the optimal viewing conditions. A clip started playing of the mayor going about her official business in London, mostly stock footage. It looked rather corporate, Arty thought, not the kind of clip he would have expected to see from a couple of teenage boys. A few seconds later the backing track screeched to a halt, leaving a frozen image of the mayor on the screen. When a Sword of Sadism appeared alongside her, he knew something was wrong but had no time to react. The sword whirled through the air and decapitated her. An arm came on screen, picked up the head by a clump of its hair and used the bleeding stump to scrawl the curly swastika logo belonging to the Holy Order.
Arty tore his headset off, leapt towards the mayor and helped her remove hers. She stared at him, speechless, her lower lip trembling, the glint of a tear in her eye. It was a blow, seeing her like that, someone who was usually so confident and self-assured, standing there limp, broken. Everyone in the room — the gamers, dignitaries and staff — stared at Arty, waiting for a fix he didn’t have. The only noise came from the side of the room, where a dozen journalists eagerly filed their reports. Hannah looked at him, wide-eyed and in shock. Why hadn’t they even thought to protect themselves from something like this? Spiralwerks needed to up its game. And quickly.
Chapter Seventeen
Nova looked at the signpost and cursed. She was in Australia to see Giganja, the Grandmaster in charge of Earth’s Planetary Puzzles. Except Giganja resided on Ayers Rock, and she was in Darwin, which, as she had just discovered, was a full 1,435 km away. What a stupidly big country. She had fifty-seven teleport tokens in her inventory and this journey would cost forty. She had enough to get there, but what if she needed them later on?
The only alternative — flying there in Hawk — would take ages and she needed to be back at her books by the time her parents got back from the supermarket. It might have been a week before her first exam, but they seemed to expect her to revise all day. Too much revision frazzled the brain. That’s what Sushi always said.
She hadn’t visited her in the Soul Surfer app again. There’d been a few occasions when she’d nearly visited her, but bottled it at the last second. She wasn’t even sure what she was scared of. Perhaps that seeing her again would intensify the pain she felt. She couldn’t help but think the app was a cheap trick being played at the expense of desperate people.
Anyway, she hardly had time to spend with an algorithm based on her dead friend’s digital media history when there was endless revision to be done. And far more important than visiting a computer version of Sushi, was avenging the real Sushi’s death. Burner had come up trumps, like she’d known he would.
He’d spoken to his brother Jono, who had secured the support of Max and Maurice, a couple of tech geniuses he knew in Nottingham. They’d developed a program that was capable of performing the kind of data analysis Project Drone required. There was one hitch: Nova would need to find the money to fund it, and Burner was talking about thousands of pounds.
Without a job, and barely a hundred quid to her name, the plan was going nowhere, fast. In the meantime, she continued to labour away in the virtual room she’d created, sorting, curating and analysing the various automated feeds she’d set up to monitor online mentions of the Order.
She looked at the time, and then the signpost again. If she teleported now, she’d make the 3 p.m. puzzle in time, could tick it off May’s list and be back at her books before her parents were any the wiser. Puzzles ran on the hour, so if she didn’t visit Giganja now, she didn’t know when she’d have time. Besides, a visit to this particular Grandmaster held a special significance; completing his puzzle was the last thing Sushi had ever done.
It was a done deal.
Halfway down the signpost, enclosed in a yellow circle, was the name of her current location, Darwin, and below it, a keypad. After typing in the coordinates of her desired destination, she touched her finger to the top of the circle and dialled round it, remembering to go anticlockwise. If she’d gone clockwise, like players needed to do in the northern hemisphere, she would have been fined a token. She promised never to be so stupid.
The top half of the signpost started to rotate, the quantum teleportation jingle sounded, and Nova materialised next to a signpost near the summit of the mighty red rock, delighted to have lost her teleportation cherry and to have ticked off a Bucket List item in the process.
Giganja sat cross-legged on the ground in the centre of a circle of small rocks. As people stepped into the circle they disappeared from Nova’s view: Planetary Puzzles had to be tackled alone, so the circles were phased zones. She crossed the circle’s boundary with 90 seconds to spare.
She was excited to meet her first Grandmaster. He was an old Chinese man whose wispy white beard looked like it would flutter away if the wind blew hard enough. She’d heard that the nine Grandmasters all looked alike and that the only way to tell them apart was the colour of their robes — Giganja’s were bright orange. At precisely 3 p.m. he started talking in a croaky voice that reminded her of Burner with a hangover.
“Welcome to your Earth puzzle, Nova Negrahnu. Failure to solve it in time will mean the loss of a life, so I encourage you to pay attention to what I’m about to say. You may not accept assistance of any kind from any person or any form of artificial intelligence. You’ve given me permission to record the audio and video from your headset’s cameras and microphones. Any evidence of cheating will be reviewed by a panel of judges, and is punishable by the deduction of a life and possible suspension from The Game itself.”
Nova knew the rules of Puzzles by heart, having practised them in the Simulator for close to a hundred hours. She was endlessly fascinated by them and kept a journal of everything she learned about them. If she blitzed one, she wanted to know why. What was it about the Puzzle that she’d grasped so intuitively? Had she missed anything that might have led to a quicker time? She documented any Puzzles she screwed up even more closely, poring over their structure and content, seeking to understand the error of her ways.
She kept a note of her ideas for Puzzle scenarios in a separate diary. If she managed to defy all the odds and take Solarversia down, she wanted to be prepared for her role in helping to design the 2024 Game. Her aim was impress the people at Spiralwerks to such an extent that they offered her a job at the company.
“There are 15,880 people here to play my puzzle this hour, but only 11,116 safe spots. You will see that the number of safe spots available diminishes as other players start completing the puzzle. If the counter reaches zero before you solve it, you will die and find yourself back in your Corona Cube. Every three minutes Gorigaroo will strike his gong, signalling the appearance of a new clue somewhere within the puzzle. Good luck, and remember: the man who beats the same drum with the same stick hears the same tune. There Can Be Only One!”
As her headset counted down the seconds to the start of the game, she drew a deep breath and struck what she thought resembled a martial arts pose, readying herself for anything. That was the thing about Puzzles: they were always different. Apparently Spiralwerks had managed to generate several million of them, so although training helped, you never knew what you’d be in for.
When
the timer hit zero, Giganja, his circle and the rest of Ayers Rock disappeared, and she found herself standing in an old town square, enclosed on each side by a stone wall two storeys high. In the middle of the square was a restaurant whose undecorated awning sheltered some tables and chairs. She glanced at the walls encircling the piazza. At the top of one of them was a door with a bright green exit sign. She ran to the base of the wall and looked up. The exit was way out of her reach, yet the wall contained no hand or foot holds. She retreated a short way, charged at full speed, leapt as high as possible and bounced straight off to crash to the floor in a heap.
Her flashing display gave her the bad news: three lost health points. What the hell had she been thinking? She gritted her teeth and grumbled a few choice words under her breath. If the wall couldn’t be climbed, the solution had to be found in the restaurant. From the disarray of the chairs and the unfinished plates on the tables, it looked like it had been deserted halfway through lunch.
The blackboard in the corner read ‘Today’s Specials’ along the top, but was blank apart from that, as if the staff had forgotten to write them in. The plastic tables were laid with an odd assortment of items: bottles of beer whose labels, like the blackboard, were blank, plates of beans, and a magnifying glass. She held each up in turn, checking for hidden clues and was dismayed to find nothing.
She held the magnifying glass in one hand and slowly tapped it against her palm. Two minutes had gone by and she felt no closer to solving the puzzle. The exit was all the way up the wall, and she needed to reach it. But how were a bunch of random objects supposed to help?
Solarversia: The Year Long Game Page 13