Solarversia: The Year Long Game

by Mr Toby Downton

  The first part of the evening’s mission had been the trickiest. He’d got into the stadium OK. The guards had pulled him to one side when the machine had detected his arm and noticed his box. But once they’d realised that the arm was a prosthetic, that the box contained nothing more than a load of Solarversia-themed confectionary, and Casey had offered them one of his simpleton expressions — a half-witted smile and a shrug — they’d immediately relinquished him with something of an apologetic tone and wished him a pleasant evening. And the special ceramic darts — the ones tipped with nanoengineered blood cells and hidden in the heel of his shoe — hadn’t even been noticed.

  His early arrival and VIP ticket — secured at great cost on eBay — had allowed him to stash the harmless box under Nova’s parents’ seats before he’d made his way to his other seat for the rest of the evening. Having loaded the special darts into his hand during a visit to the washroom — one for each of Nova and Artica, and a spare should either of them miss — he’d been primed to carry out his mission, to fulfil his destiny. Except destiny had taken a funny turn about fifteen minutes ago.

  A rush had gone down Casey’s spine the moment he spied Nova Negrahnu on the giant screens. Wearing the black bodysuit with her hair swept back like that, she was no longer a cartoonish avatar who lived in a giant block of squares on a floating palace. She was a real girl made of flesh and blood. More real than he was. As real as Mary-Ann had been. Flawed and fallen, but human.

  The realisation had caused time to stop functioning normally. Everything going on around him at the stadium had melted away into nothingness while he’d stared at her image. Nova was someone else’s Mary-Ann. People somewhere loved her as their own.

  Seeing her out there, alone in her rig, valiantly battling the crazy old man, he’d seen the truth about himself for the first time in a long while. Casey Brown wasn’t a killer. His soul hadn’t left him after all. Electric shocks be damned — Theodore could fry him on the spot for all he cared. He’d rather die than commit murder. He didn't care what the pain could do to his body. Bring it on, he thought. And this time he knew he meant it.

  All thoughts of completing his mission had evaporated at that point. He couldn’t have cared less if Theodore had won, but he knew he didn't want anyone else to die. Wallace and Ivan, the victims of the various attacks, the two guys who had failed the initiation … enough was enough. No more deaths.

  He’d spent the next fifteen minutes cheering with the crowd. Cheering from the bottom of his heart — and meaning it. He’d even got involved in trying to solve the puzzles — had clapped harder and whooped louder than anyone each time one was solved. He knew Theodore would be as good as his word, however insane. If the puzzles were solved, the bombs wouldn’t go off.

  As the float pulled round the corner into the home straight he knew it was game over for Theodore and the Order. The darts might have incorporated the latest self-directing military technology, but they weren’t that good. If Casey pointed his arm at the ground, it wasn’t like they could fly where they wanted. He’d learned that at the shooting range. A series of test shots had exposed their limitations. The darts could only self-correct themselves ten percent or so. They weren’t infused with magic.

  The only thing concerning him now was why he was still alive. Why hadn’t he been shocked? The shocks still worked here in the UK. His brain was still wired into the Epicenter. He’d received a shock forty minutes earlier, on the hour, like clockwork. Perhaps Theodore had killed himself when Banjax had been defeated. Perhaps the Compound had been found and raided like the first one had. He decided to find out.

  If you can hear me, old man, this is my message. Fuck you. Fuck you sideways. You don’t own me. You hear that? You don’t own me and you never did. You lost, in front of the world, you crazy old bastard. Wanna shock me? Go ahead. I don’t care any more. Fry me to death. There’s nothing left for me here. The one thing I won’t do is your bidding.

  As the float pulled closer he caught sight of Nova. She looked radiant, beautiful even. Artica stood next to her, waving at the crowd. Casey smiled and clapped, ecstatic to have made the right decision. Then he noticed something. At first he thought it was coming from one of the drones overhead, or maybe even one of the lasers — a beam of red light. It took him a couple of seconds to realise that he was the source of the light. His knuckle had popped open.

  Perhaps it was all the clapping. Theodore had mentioned something about the calibration of the targeting mechanism back at the range. It sounded like a sensitive piece of technology, and he’d probably shaken it loose in all the excitement. He clasped his other hand over his fist and shook his hands together while he cheered.

  But as the truck pulled in front of him, he felt an almighty spasm ripple through his body from the top of his skull to the tips of his toes. It felt different to the previous shocks he’d received. His temples still felt like they were on fire, and it had robbed him of all breath, but this attack was moulding his body into a particular form, extending his arm outward, bolting his eyelids wide open and clamping his jaw shut. It felt like a powerful being shaping his anatomy from the inside.

  Everyone around him stood up at once to cheer the victor. Another seizure coursed through his body, making him join them. The pain in his jaw was so fierce he couldn’t make a sound, not even a whimper. He watched as the little red dot of his laser beam performed a drunken dance, jerking from place to place. He struggled to regain control of his bodily functions, but it was useless, his body was as good as frozen in place.

  People around him stopped clapping and started pointing. Questions were being asked. Was he alright? Did he need assistance of some description? What was the red light coming out of his knuckle? Whispered questions became shouts and screams. One of the drones swooped closer, and then a couple more. He watched the red dot sober up and settle down. It was aimed directly at Nova’s heart. He felt an electrochemical impulse travel from his brain to his arm, and a soft recoil as the dart left its chamber. A split second later his arm jerked to the left and fired again.

  ***

  For a brief moment Nova thought that her dad had become mentally unhinged by his synaesthetic meanderings. He thrust his head in her direction and stammered a few unintelligible words. Before she could ask him if everything was alright, he’d leapt through the air and smashed her into Arty. The three of them tumbled to the floor in a heap, and for a few seconds her world went black.

  The float jerked to standstill. She gasped for breath and tasted the coppery blood of a bitten tongue. Above her the cloudy sky was dappled with light from the lasers that continued to beam, seemingly ignorant of her plight. There were drones everywhere, hovering in a diamond formation as one. Was synchronised floating to become a new Olympic sport?

  A couple of Charlies appeared in her blurred vision. Had someone flicked a switch and de-augmented her perception of reality? Perhaps someone had DoppelGanger Scannered him. Charlie helped her to her feet, and Arty to his, while an MI6 agent fired off dozens of commands to the people around him. People kept asking if she was alright. She held her fingers to her tongue, showed them the blood. Apart from that, the winding, and the double vision, she supposed that she was just about alright.

  And then she noticed her dad lying unmoving on the floor, a team of medics attending to him. Others comforted her mum, who looked like she might collapse at any second. She just said, “Derek, Derek,” over and over and dabbed at her eyes with a hanky. Nova grabbed her tight and didn’t want to let go. She still had no idea what any of this meant.

  Had she really survived all of the attacks — on New Year’s Eve, in The Game, and here tonight — just to see her dad taken down? From the worried expression on the faces of the medics, there looked to be something seriously wrong with him. For the first time in her life, she wished she'd never heard of Solarversia, never even worn a headset. Had her obsession just killed her own father?

  Burner pointed to the stands where a section of crowd
had been evacuated. A young woman spoke into a journalist’s mic, but did half the talking with her hands. She kept pointing, first at her own knuckle, then at Nova. A dozen policemen lined the route where a man in handcuffs was being escorted out of the stadium. Nova caught a glimpse of his face, half expecting to see Raymond. It was nobody she recognised, a lone stalker perhaps.

  “What’s that on the headset?” The headset had fallen off Mr Negrahnu’s head and was lying beside him on the ground. Charlie retrieved it and handed it to Artica. Embedded in the rim was a tiny ceramic missile, a centimetre long.

  Arty peered into the headset’s display. Handling it with care, he held the visor up to his face and used his eyes to navigate through a series of menus and selected to watch a replay of the last few minutes. A small crowd gathered around him and waited in silence.

  Through the display he saw a shot of the spectators as the float drove round the track — people cheering, waving, boxes of popcorn and huge foam hands, objects here and there augmented with text and animation. The banners and posters had 3D letters that danced in time to the beat. Mr Negrahnu must have turned to read some lyrics emanating from the sound system, because the words of We Are the Champions filled the display. Then an alert popped into view, its letters red, its box flashing. Gogmagog, critical alert. The Gogmagog system pulled focus to a man in the crowd, shining a red laser at the float. The view switched to a cam on a drone showing that the red beam of light had settled on Nova’s jacket. The alert upped a gear: Take immediate action.

  Arty handed the headset to a waiting agent and turned to Nova with a grim expression. “Your dad knew we were in danger. That’s why he launched himself at us. He threw himself in the line of that dart.”

  As her dad was carried past her on a stretcher, Nova felt her legs give way a little. A thin line of blood was trickling down his neck, where another of the tiny darts had pierced his skin.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Arty leant back in his chair and watched Hannah as she navigated her way through one of Nakk-oo’s many maze-like suburbs. Usually so prim and proper, he loved how she turned into an excited little kid who squealed and shrieked the second she put a headset on.

  “What am I looking at exactly? Don’t tell me it’s going to come to life like that picnic table did earlier.”

  “We haven’t given them a proper name yet. They’re called ‘terminals’ for now. The design will probably change too. Go up to it and type in your player number. It’s safe, I promise.”

  “If something jumps out at me again, you’re in serious trouble Arty, you understand? OK, that’s my number typed in. Woah, this is really weird. Where did Nakk-oo go?”

  “You just left it. You’re now in a world within a world, nested one level deep.”

  “This is screwing with my head. My movements are all back to front, like one of those trick cycles at the fair. I feel like I’ve necked a glass of wine and been spun on the spot.”

  She held on to the real-world desk in front of her and continued to squeal as she investigated the alien landscape in front of her. Arty smiled. They’d received some great feedback on the concept of ‘worlds within worlds’. They weren’t sub-games as such, like Krazy Karting had been, but represented entirely new Gameworlds, with their own set of rules and their own objectives.

  Along with the introduction of two new vehicles — submarines and private spaceships — these new features were part of the drive to create a Game in 2024 that represented a genuine stride forward in terms of the complexity of the overall experience. Given the number of competitors that had sprung up in the world of VR in the last couple of years, maintaining a creative edge had become vital to Spiralwerks’ success.

  He swivelled round in his chair to face the giant screen at the front of the room. It had been configured to display the closing credits, which were designed to be a piece of art in their own right. They’d started the second the closing ceremony had finished and were scheduled to run until midnight on the 28th February 2024, the starting time of the next Game.

  Unlike standard motion picture credits, which scrolled vertically, the credits of Solarversia spiralled their way out from square number one of the Player’s Grid, using the original set of player numbers, rather than the new ones. Solos had been asked to provide a ‘credits clip’ — a few seconds of animation that showed their avatar waving, cheering or goofing around.

  The broadcast schedule was known in advance, and Solos all over the world had planned parties for the few seconds their avatar was in focus. Some were taking the event seriously and treating it like their very own film premiere.

  A woman in Sweden had bought a red carpet, rolled it out from her front door and hired a ton of paparazzi to greet guests in style. She made everyone watch her highlights reel before having the party of her life — and now Solos everywhere were concocting ever more extravagant events in a bid to outdo one another.

  Arty glanced from the endless procession of waving avatars to Carl’s empty seat and once again, he felt sad. Although it had been generally agreed — by Solos and those in the gaming industry — that Solarversia had been a huge success, it had also been agreed that the way in which it had ended had been close to a disaster.

  The investigation into how Markowsky had managed to hack his way into the back end was both time-consuming and extremely stressful. Carl, who as Chief Technical Officer was ultimately responsible for security, had had a nervous breakdown and was on leave. And there were times when Arty thought he wasn’t close behind.

  He swivelled back round to face Hannah, put his mug of tea down on the desk and picked up an Electropet Gorigaroo. As he gently squeezed its stomach, Arty reflected on the teamwork that had got Spiralwerks through the year. It wasn’t just about the incredible amount of hard work that had been put in by Spiralheads, as invaluable as that had been.

  In large part their success rested on the numerous partnerships they’d developed in the previous few years. A lot of the technology was provided by outside companies, many of them based in London. He shuddered to think what would have happened at the closing ceremony if they hadn’t partnered with Max and Maurice, the creators of Gogmagog, not to mention the companies that supplied the drones and the cameras.

  The increased size and complexity of the next Game would mean having to strengthen those existing partnerships and forge plenty of new ones. Only yesterday he’d been on the phone to Nova Negrahnu, discussing her ideas ahead of her visit to the office. He was very interested in one of her suggestions: to let Souls play the next Game.

  The notion of visiting a computerised version of a departed loved one had become commonplace for many people. It sounded like many of them wanted to take those relationships to the next level. The technology to create an avatar from photos and video footage alone was already in place; it was the small matter of implementing it in a respectful, considerate way.

  He took a sip a tea and pondered the thought. On paper the idea sounded ludicrous. Though the craziest part to Arty was that the idea no longer seemed so crazy. What next? he wondered.

  ***

  Once Nova had finally built up the courage to revisit Soul Surfer a few weeks after the Grand Final, she was amazed at the speed in which she was able to reconfigure Computer Sushi. Partly it was due to the algorithms that made Souls appear human — they’d been greatly improved since Nova first used the app. But it was also due to her familiarity with seeing her friend in a computerised state and her previous experience in tweaking Sushi’s settings to make her the person Nova remembered and loved.

  What Nova had specifically chosen not to do during the configuration process was provide Sushi with access to real-world news sources beyond the date of the terrorist attack that had killed her. Soul Surfer had gone to great lengths to provide users with such functionality so they could reintroduce events to their loved ones when they felt ready to do so.

  In Nova’s case, it was nothing to do with not feeling ready — it was that she wan
ted the two of them to watch her highlights reel together so that she could experience the excitement of it as if for the first time. For the past three hours they had been watching clips from her reel. Sushi had hundreds of questions about each one and the two of them obsessed over every last one of the decisions she’d made.

  Sushi had just spent the last minute screaming with joy and running around her bench, having watched Nova correctly answer the last question in Arty’s Answers to knock out Holly and send Nova through to the penultimate round. Finally, Sushi slumped back onto the bench, shaking with excitement and out of breath.

  “Oh. My. God. This is getting ridiculously redonculous. Every time I think you’re going to crash out, you end up smashing it for six. I love the way you knocked Holly out, but this is getting too much. I honestly don’t know what might happen to my algorithm if you end up winning. I think I might go into meltdown or something. Tell me right now. Do you end up winning?”

  “That’s the bazillionth time you’ve asked. You’re going to have to wait to find out.”

  “The ninth time actually. But who’s counting? Other than me, I mean.”

  Nova giggled. It felt great to have her friend back. She wasn’t identical to the original Computer Sushi, at least not yet, but she was about 90% of the way there. And seeing how Nova had thought the original Computer Sushi was about 70% identical to the real one, she figured Computer Sushi 2 — the name the girls had settled on for the time being — was about 63% identical to the real one. Which was 63% better than not having her friend there at all.

  “Download everything up to 7 p.m. on Saturday 20th February. This round was called the Sixty Second Solicitation. What an absolute nightmare. As if the Show and Tell round didn’t stress me out enough. For this one I had to record a minute-long video that persuaded people to vote me through. It was terrifying.”