“Yup. They’ve been getting players to grow totally addicted to The Game,” Robin says.
“And they show the ads at highpoints — like when the player has just scored bonus points, or won a round, or taken down a repbot,” Quinn says. “So they’re piggybacking the message on that emotional high.”
“It’s classical conditioning, that’s what it is,” Beth says, clearly disgusted. “That’s basically how we learn — by linking something with a pleasurable sensation. So if you’re feeling great when you see an advertisement for a product, then your brain connects that product to the feel-good sensation, and you’re more likely to buy it.”
“It’s mind-control. Bottom line, it’s brainwashing.” Quinn shakes his head and gives a bitter bark of laughter. “When I think of the ASTA slogan now — Inform, Protect, Improve — it’s like an inside joke. They inform on potential cadets, protect their interests, improve their profits.”
Quinn must be feeling mighty vindicated right now. He’s always said that ASTA was up to something more, something sinister, and now he’s helped discover and prove what it is.
“And get this — it’s illegal!” he says.
He paces up and down while he explains that subliminal messages are powerful and dangerous because they sidestep our critical thinking. We don’t know what messages we’re taking in, so we can’t consciously decide whether we believe them or not. We’re being manipulated into thinking and feeling certain things, without our knowledge, permission or control.
“So ASTA and PlayState are showing adverts for all these products, and getting paid by the companies that manufacture them? This is all about money?” I ask, pointing at a screenshot for Hygeiney-Rides, and the next one for ImmunyChews.
“Always follow the money trail,” Evyan mutters.
“It’s more than that,” Sofia says, tapping the screen in front of her. “When Quinn and I researched the list of advertised products to look for patterns and commonalities, we found —”
At that moment Neil rushes into the room, his face more animated than I’ve ever seen it.
“I’ve cracked it!” he declares.
Chapter 18
Outsmart
“That other section of code? It’s also subliminal messages,” Neil says.
“More advertising?” Quinn asks.
“Yeah, but with a very different product.”
“Spill it, man.” Bruce looks like he has no more patience for all the suspense.
Come to that, neither do I.
“They’re subliminal ads for the United Nationalist Party in general, and President Alex Hawke in particular!”
There’s an explosion of outrage at Neil’s announcement. Sofia and Robin’s mouths fall open in shock. Bruce leaps to his feet and bellows a string of curses. Evyan demands to know what the hell is going on. Cameron shakes his head — more, apparently, in disappointment than surprise at this latest example of devious activities by the government. My mind is racing ahead to why Hawke would want to put political messages into a computer game.
“Do you mean they’ve been manipulating voters to support their party?” Beth asks.
“Yes! It’s more proof of the government’s perfidy,” says Neil, looking delighted.
“God knows where else they’ve been planting these messages — on T.V.? Radio? The internet?” says Quinn. His lips have thinned, and his eyes have paled to silver — a sure sign that he’s livid. “But it’s worse than that. The Game is played by kids, not adults who vote.”
“Yeah, so what’s that about?” I ask.
“He’s growing a whole new generation of supporters brainwashed to vote for him one day,” Quinn says.
“Last night, on the news, there was an item,” I say, struggling to remember exactly what was said before the rat attack put all thoughts of it out of my mind. “Something about a bill to lower the voting age to sixteen.”
“It’s a coup,” says Cameron.
“Faith, you’re right! It’s a virtual coup d’état,” Quinn says. His hair is sticking up in all directions because he keeps running furious fingers through it. “Hawke is seizing future control of the government without anyone even being aware of it. Hell, kids may already be pressuring their parents to vote UNP.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” says Neil. “Apart from the blatant ‘Vote Hawke’ messages, there are loads which present him as lovable and fatherly — photos of him holding kittens and puppies, and playing baseball and soccer with little kids. Plus, there are messages: ‘Trust Hawke’, “Hawke is good’, ‘Hawke is honest’” — Evyan makes a gagging noise at this and then explodes in a fit of coughing — “and ‘Hawke knows best’.”
I think about how I was always very fond of President Hawke, how I told my mother I figured him for a strong, honorable, trustworthy guy. Had that merely been the result of brainwashing? Mom had never liked him. She’d said he was too smooth, a typical slick politician. Tallulah hadn’t cared for him either — she’d called him a smarmy son of a bitch and marveled at the fact that all the kids in the shelter seemed to like him so much. She’d been on to something.
The reason kids favored him was because they were all playing The Game, being regularly exposed to his sick mind-games. The reason that adults like Tallulah, my mom, Neil and his sister didn’t was that they never played it. It was simple when you analyzed it.
Once I was in ASTA and then with the rebels, no longer playing The Game myself, my feelings for Hawke had waned. But they’d still been strong enough to make me refuse point blank to assassinate him when Zonia and Connor insisted I do so. Or was that just me? Would I have refused to shoot any president, any person, in cold blood like that?
“Connor was right,” Quinn mutters furiously beside me. “Hawke is evil and corrupt. The reason he’s so powerful is that he cheats and manipulates and controls. We’ve got to get a message to Connor and Zonia and all the other rebels across the country. For all we know, they could be doing this in the other sectors, too. We’ve got to expose this to the nation. To the whole world!”
“Hang on a sec,” Robin interrupts. “Neil, are you certain this code, about Hawke and the UNP, was inserted first, before the product advertising?”
“From what I’ve been able to determine, it looks like it was there from the inception.”
“You think he got The Game built just as a vehicle for this?” Quinn asks.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Robin says.
This brings on a fresh round of cursing from Bruce. If Hawke was here in this room right now, I reckon Bruce’s hands would be wrapped around his throat and squeezing tight.
“What I’d like to know,” says Sofia, “is whether Hawke even knows about the other advertising, or whether he still thinks he’s the only one benefitting from the secret strategy.”
“That’s a very good question,” Quinn says.
“You mean Hawke commissioned PlayState to create this game, and when it seemed to be working well and no one had picked up on the ulterior agenda, they simply added more advertising to make even more profit?” Robin says.
“And don’t forget the recruiting,” I remind them all. “The Game identifies kids with talent for shooting and coding and intel and stuff, and then hands their names to ASTA, who recruit and train them —”
“— and ultimately sell them back to the government as ready-trained soldiers, spies and other specialists to fight the war,” Quinn finishes my thought.
“And they’d be eager and willing to do it, because they’ve been brainwashed into believing Hawke is such a great guy.”
“It’s brilliant!” Neil says.
“Neil, it’s despicable!” his sister chides him.
Neil shrugs. “I only meant that as a business model, it’s pure genius. They’ve been engineering a generation of super-consumers and political supporters.”
I remember, back at ASTA, Quinn told me he thought the government was socially engineering our society. At the time I’d thought
that was far-fetched to the point of paranoia, but it turns out my pirate was more right than even he knew.
“I seriously do not like this, dude. I’ve been playing that game for years. And they’ve been pushing me around all that time, telling me what to buy and who to like?” Bruce says, cracking his knuckles.
“What about the advertising?” Evyan asks Sofia. “Before Neil told us about Hawke, you said you’d found out more about the products being advertised.”
“Oh, right. Can you bring the spreadsheet up?” Robin asks Sofia.
She taps a few keys, and then we’re all squinting down at a series of columns, populated with clusters of names.
Robin points to the left-hand column. “These are the advertised products. And in this column next to them are the companies that manufacture them.”
“Sofia and I did some digging on the companies,” Quinn says. “And we discovered that most of them were owned by holding companies, who in turn were nested inside other holding companies.”
Robin traces his finger horizontally across the screen, and I see that there are fewer and fewer names in the columns to the right.
“It’s like a pyramid which narrows as you get to the top,” Robin says. “Ultimately, all the producers of these products and services trail back to just a handful of organizations: PlayState, which obviously manufactures The Game; Tasty Plate which manufactures snack foods, candy, sodas — the kinds of food kids go for; SpaLyte — they produce hand sanitizers, UV lights, hot-boxes and decon units; and Style Tapa, which makes kids’ and teen fashions, as well as disposable protection suits, latex gloves, shoe-covering booties, respirators, that sort of thing.”
“Those names,” I say, frowning down at the spreadsheet. “PlayState, SpaLyte, Tasty Plate, Style Tapa — they’re all kinda the same.”
“Jinxy gets a gold star!” Robin says, beaming proudly at me.
“They’re anagrams of each other — not exact in every case, but close enough,” says Sofia.
“So … They’re all the same company?” I ask.
Quinn nods. “As far as we can trace the connections, they’re all ultimately held by an outfit called A Play Test. Who also own ASTA plus an outfit called Stapla who do medical research and manufacture pharmaceuticals, though those two aren’t advertising on The Game — not their target market, I guess. Most of the companies at the bottom of the pyramid were businesses that were in trouble or near bankruptcy three years ago. They were snapped up over the last few years, at bargain-basement prices, by these holding companies in the middle.”
“Huh,” says Bruce. “So this Play Test crowd buy up businesses that make goods for kids, and then advertise them in The Game and make huge profits when their sales go up?”
“That’s the scam,” Quinn confirms.
“They must be making a mint off manipulating young minds,” says Neil.
“It’s obscene,” says Beth, frowning at her brother, who still seems more impressed by the technological sophistication of the program than outraged at the moral offensiveness of it.
“Hang on,” I say, because one of the names Quinn rattled off seems familiar to me. “Did you say ‘Stapla’?”
Quinn nods. “Yeah, why?”
I bend over to peer at Sofia’s spreadsheet. Seeing it typed and on a computer screen like that brings the memory back. In my mind’s eye, I see again the computer screen describing my medical treatment and showing the record of my interrogation and “interventions,” back when I was detained after I helped Quinn escape. At the top of the screen was the name Stapla Inc., I’m sure of it.
“That’s where Connor and I were taken for interrogation. ‘Medical research’ must be the new name for torture,” I say.
I can almost taste the bitterness on my tongue. It tastes like fresh blood and acrid sweat and helpless tears. It tastes like the pain of that room. I rub a hand across my face, as if I could wipe underneath my skin and bone, as if I could erase the flashbacks from my mind.
“Test place, too,” Cameron says.
“What?” asks Evyan, who’s had less practice decoding Cameron’s cryptic utterances than Bruce and I have.
“Yeah, man, you’re right,” Bruce says to Cameron. “That’s the place they took us, where we had the brain scans and fitness tests done. I told you about it, Blue, remember?”
“That was at Stapla?” I ask.
It’s hard to get my head around there being both torture rooms and cadet examination facilities under that one roof.
“That’s where all the units eventually go to be tested,” Sofia says. “So they must be doing at least some medical research.”
“Maybe they consider human rights violations to be medical research,” Beth says. “Sad to say, it wouldn’t be the first time doctors had experimented on prisoners and patients.”
Neil returns to his chair and begins sketching circles and arrows on a piece of paper. Another flowchart?
“But how would interrogations help with advertising and profit margins?” Quinn asks. It sounds like he’s thinking aloud more than expecting an answer from any of us.
“They probably just get paid to do it,” I say. “When Roth had me there, she said they’d been authorized by the Southern Sector government to question ‘subversives’.”
“They’re sub-contracting the dirty stuff,” Quinn concludes.
“Maximum deniability if anything ever gets out,” Evyan says, nodding.
“So Play Test owns PlayState, who recruit kids for ASTA’s cadet program, who then train and get examined at Stapla, along with alleged rebel dissidents,” Quinn says.
“And suspected terrorists,” I remind him.
“And the good, obedient specialists volunteer for the Southern Sector’s military, civil surveillance and control programs, who in turn advertise on PlayState. It’s a great big self-sustaining and hugely profitable cycle,” says Quinn, sketching a circle in the air.
“And all roads lead to Rome!” Neil says, holding up his diagram. It shows an outer ring of rectangles with names written inside — ASTA, PlayState, Southern Sector Government, A Play Test — all with arrows connecting them to a circle in the center, which is labeled Stapla.
“Then that’s where we begin, yeah?” says Quinn, looking around at everyone.
My stomach clenches. I would go anywhere, do anything, rather than return to the place where I was held and hurt, where I was yanked out of myself, permanently changed, and only partly returned — a damaged, weak and fearful version of my past self.
When Quinn’s gaze finally comes to rest on me, I swallow hard and speak in a voice which sounds anything but certain.
“Okay, yeah. That’s where we begin. Let’s do it. Sure.”
Part Three
Chapter 19
Flat-out no
October 17
“So who’s calling this mission? Who’s our team leader?” Bruce asks, looking from Quinn to me to Sofia.
“Not you, if that’s what you’re angling for,” Evyan says over her shoulder.
She’s our driver again, this time behind the wheel of Neil’s black SUV, which is similar enough to one of ASTA’s transports, we hope, not to raise immediate suspicions. Large magnetic decals adorn the sides and back of the vehicle, proclaiming it to belong to “Trojan Supplies” — “Because we’re going in like the wooden horse carrying the Greeks into Troy,” Neil had explained when we gave him funny looks.
Cameron, who turns out to have a gift for drawing, designed the logo of a horsehead, and Neil printed it off on the massive 3D printer in his basement, along with the large decals bearing the ASTA logo that we’ve also brought along.
Quinn, Evyan, Sofia, Neil, Cameron, Bruce and I are all on this mission. Robin stayed back at Neil’s place. He wanted to come, but no way did I want him exposed to danger again. When he argued that he’d make a better fake intel candidate than I would, I went for a low blow.
“Even if your arm didn’t make you a liability, I think we’ve establish
ed that you’re no good when it comes to action,” I’d said, giving him a hard stare and ignoring the hurt expression my words brought to his face.
Beth also stayed behind. She reluctantly supplied us with what we needed, but drew the line at actually joining the mission.
“I’m too old for shenanigans like that. But I’ll be ready in case any of you gets injured,” she said ominously. She also advised us to pack and take bug-out bags stuffed with the essentials we’d need if we had to make a sudden run for it, and had added, “Neil, you should probably pack a bug-out vehicle, and park it out back, too.”
Sofia’s unit is scheduled to come to Stapla for their testing at 9.30 am today. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because our whole plan hinges on that not having changed. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the chaos of our rescue raid at ASTA, we’ve spent the last three days doing everything we can to prepare for this mission and to anticipate every potential problem.
Quinn, Sofia and I are all wearing the royal-blue jumpsuits we ordered off the internet. Neil scanned the silver intel unit pin and embroidered ASTA badge from the jumpsuit Sofia was wearing when we took her “hostage” and printed one of each for the three of us. They’re made of plastic and glued to our jumpsuits, but I think we look enough like ASTA intel cadets to pass casual inspection. Which is a good thing, because we plan to intercept the intel unit and replace their members with our own.
Without Quinn and Sofia, the ASTA intel unit of graduated specialists will be two short. That leaves four members — two male and two female. Sofia will take the place of Dasha, the heavily tattooed girl who used to sell bootleg cash cards to her fellow cadets at the training compound. I’ll pretend to be Natalie — a girl who also has blond hair, though she’s a couple of years older than me — and Quinn will substitute for a guy called Alejandro. But we don’t have anyone to take the place of the other male in the unit, Tyrone, because Neil is clearly too old to be an ASTA cadet, and Bruce and Cameron were examined at the center just a few weeks ago, so we can’t take the risk that they or their brainwaves will be recognized. We’re all hoping like mad that there’s no one at Stapla who will recognize either Sofia, with the distinctive henna-colored tattoo around her eyes, or Quinn.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 57