BIG CAT: And Other Stories

by Gwyneth Jones

She accepted his medicine humbly. “Thanks. Now cut the dual controls and I’ll lead.”

  When she took the jewel again, she felt as if her whole body had turned to light. “That was amazing!”

  Pevay laughed. “Now you’re getting the juice!” A spring had risen from the cavity where the jewel had been. He bent to drink, grinning at her with all his silvery teeth.

  “Oh, yeah! That’s some good stuff!”

  DW had a warp system that would take you around the world map instantly, but Chloe hadn’t earned access to it. She was glad Pevay didn’t offer her a free ride. She didn’t feel at all cold as they walked down: just slightly mad; euphoria bubbling in her brain like video-game altitude sickness. The contours of this high desert, even its vast open-cast mines, seemed as rich and wonderful; as colourful and varied as any natural environment—

  “It was fantastic to watch you climb! You’re an NPC, I suppose you can see in binary, the way insects see ultraviolet? I was thinking about a myth called The Skate and the South Wind that I read about in Lévi-Strauss. He’s an ancient shaman of my trade: hard to understand, heavy on theory; kind of wild, but truly great. A skate, the fish, is thin one way, wide if you flip it another way. Dark on the top surface, light on the underside. The skate story is about binary alternation… Lévi-Strauss said so-called “primitive” peoples build mental structures, and formulate abstract ideas, such as ‘binary alternation’, from their observation of nature. All you need is a rich environment, and you can develop complex cognition from scratch—”

  “You need food, Chloe. I’d better give you another rocket fuel pill.”

  “No, I’m fine. Just babbling. Do you really come from another planet?”

  He seemed to ponder, gazing at her. His pupils were opaque black gems. Her own avatar probably looked just as uncanny-valley: but who looked out from Pevay’s unreal eyes?

  “They say you’re an anthropologist. Tell me about that, Chloe.”

  “I study aspects of human society by immersing myself in different social worlds—”

  “You collect societies? Like a beetle collector!”

  If a complex NPC can tease Pevay’s tone was mocking. But if truth be known, Chloe saw nothing wrong with being a beetle collector. People expected you to want more, to claim a big idea: but she was a hunter. She just liked finding things out and tracking things down. She’d be happy to go on doing that forever.

  “Actually I started off in Neuroscience. I was halfway through my doctorate when I changed course—”

  “The eternal student. And you finance your hobby by working for whoever will pay?”

  Chloe shrugged. “You can’t always choose your funding partners. The same goes for DW, doesn’t it? I try not to support anything harmful. Are you going to answer my question?”

  “What was your question, Chloe?”

  “Do you really come from another planet?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She sighed. “Okay, fine. You don’t want to answer, no problem.”

  “I have answered. I don’t know. I don’t remember a life outside the game. Are you here to decide whether the gamers’ belief is true or false?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Most people’s cultural beliefs aren’t fact or evidence based, anyway; even if the facts can be checked or the evidence is there. I’m interested in finding out how an extraordinary belief fits into the game house social model.”

  “Then the team should have no quarrel with you. You don’t seem fatigued. Shall we collect the second Enamel now, Chloe?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  ᴓ

  The gamers weren’t around when she returned, but she must have done something right. That evening she found she’d been given online access to transcripts, playback and neuro-data for the three sessions she’d shared. The material was somewhat redacted, but that was okay. What people consider private they have a right to withhold.

  But what mountains of this stuff the house must generate! And all of it just a fleeting reflection of the huge, fermenting mass of computation, powered by the juggernaut economic engine of the video-game industry, that underpinned the wonderful world she’d visited—

  There was no neuro-stream for Pevay, of course… But why not? she suddenly wondered. Okay, he’s a mass of tentacles or an intelligent gas cloud in his natural habitat. He’s still supposed to be interfacing with the game, some way. Shouldn’t he show up, in some kind of strange traces? She must ask Reuel how he explained this absence… He’d have an answer. People take enormous pains to justify extraordinary beliefs, they’re ready for anything you ask.

  Still, it would be worth finding out.

  If Pevay wasn’t sneakily controlled by a human gamer he was an impressive software artefact: able to simulate convincing conversation, and a convincing presence. This subjective response didn’t really prove much – other than confirming that Chloe was a normal human being. People got “natural” replies from the crudest forms of AI, by cueing boilerplate responses without realising it.

  But the detail in the neurological data was amazing. Maybe she could do some reverse engineering, and learn something that way?

  Mirror neurons, predictive neurons, decision-making cells in the anterior cingulate… Let’s find out at exactly what level I ‘took him for a real person’. She worked late into the night, running her own neuro-data through statistical filters; tapping her stylus on her smiling lips (a habit she had when the hunt was up).

  Start from the position that the gamers aren’t ‘primitives’ and they aren’t deluded. They’re trying to make sense of something.

  A Fox In The City

  Chloe was summoned to a second meeting on the beach, and told that she could stay, as long as she was pursuing her sidequest, and as long as Pevay was willing to be her guide. She could also publish her research; subject to the approval of all and any DW gamers involved – but only if she collected all 56 Enamels. While living in the house she must not communicate Darkening World’s business to outsiders, and this would be policed. Interviews and shared gameplay sessions were at the discretion of individual team members.

  Chloe was ecstatic. The Enamels quest was so labyrinthine it could last forever, and publication so distant she wasn’t even thinking about it. She eagerly signed the contract just as it was: back in Reuel’s office with a DW lawyer in digital attendance. Reuel told her she’d find the spare Battle Box in her room. She was to log on from that location in future. The team needed the Rumpus Room to themselves.

  She sent a message to friends and family, and another to her supervisor, explaining she’d be out of contact for a while. She didn’t fancy having her private life policed by Matt Warks, and nobody would be concerned. It was typical Chloe behaviour, when on the hunting trail.

  ᴓ

  Chloe had envisaged working with a team of DW gamers: observing their interaction with the “alien” in gameplay; talking to them about him in the real world. Comparing what they told her with her observations and with the neuro… She soon realised this was never going to happen. The gamers had their sessions, of which she knew nothing. She had her own sessions; with Pevay. Otherwise – except for trips to a morose little park, which she jogged around for exercise – he was alone in her room, processing such floods of data she hardly had time to sleep. Game logs; transcripts; neuro. ‘Alien sentient’ fan mail. Global-DW content. She even saw some of the house’s internal messaging.

  Nobody knocked on her door. If she ventured out, after dark (gaming outside daylight hours was against house rules) to look for company, all she found was a neglected, empty-feeling house, and blurred sounds from behind forbidding closed doors. She felt like Snow White, bewildered; waiting for the Seven Dwarves to come home.

  Only Aileen and Reuel agreed to be interviewed face to face. The others insisted on talking over a video link, and behaved like freshly captured prisoners of war: stone-faced, defiant and defensive. Needless to say they all protected the consensus belie
f in this forced examination.

  Josie evaded the topic by talking about her own career. Sol, the friendliest gamer (except for Reuel), confided that he’d pinpointed Pevay’s home system, and it was no more than 4.3 light years away. But he got anxious and retracted this statement, concerned that he’d ‘said something out of line’… Warks smugly refused to discuss Pevay, as Chloe didn’t understand Information Universe Science. Aileen, who was Reuel’s girlfriend (sad to say), believed implicitly, implicitly that Pevay came from a very distant star system. Jun, the silent one, had the most interesting response, muttering ‘the alien thing is the best explanation’, before he clammed up completely, and cut the interview short.

  Reuel was the only player, it turned out, who’d had sustained contact. Spirit Guides rarely appeared on the field of battle, there was no place for them. Not much of a warrior, Chloe’s sponsor was the acquisitions man, embarking on quests with Pevay when the team needed a piece of kit, like a map or a secret file. Or lootable artworks they could sell, like the 56 Enamels—

  Chloe had not realised she was doing Reuel’s job. She was as thrilled as an old school adventurer, allowed to decorate his own trading canoe. The ‘natives’ had awarded her a place in their social model!

  ᴓ

  She puzzled over why the team had let her into the house, and then refused her all access to their gaming lives: but examining her own interaction with Pevay was a fascinating challenge in itself. By day they went hunting. By night she worked on the data, which was now even richer. Somebody had quietly decided to give her access to the house’s NPC files: a privilege Chloe equally quietly accepted. She analysed the material obsessively, and still she wasn’t sure. Was she being played by these cunning IT freaks? Was she fooling herself? Or was what she saw real? She couldn’t decide. But she was loving the investigation.

  Apart from the one time she was detailed to join a groceries run, in Matt Warks’s van, she only encountered the gamers if she happened to be in the kitchen when someone else came foraging. Aileen met her by the coffee machine, and congratulated her on settling in so well. Chloe remembered what Sol had said about Aileen becoming her greatest fan. “It’s like you’ve always been here. You understand us, and it’s great.”

  Soon after this vestigial conversation she was invited to join a live sortie. She’d been hoping this might happen, having noticed the ‘any DW gamers’ catch-all clause in her permission to publish: but she went to the Rumpus Room feeling nervous as all hell.

  Reuel, Aileen and Sol shook her warmly by the hand.

  Warks, Jun and Josie nodded, keeping their distance.

  Then Aileen gave Chloe a hug, and presented her with the spare Box (which had disappeared from Chloe’s room the night before, when she was absent foraging for supper). It was newly embellished with a pattern of coiling leafy fronds.

  “Chloe means green shoots,” explained Aileen, shyly. “D’you like it?”

  “I love it,” said Chloe. And she truly was thrilled.

  “Be cool,” said Reuel, uneasily. “Real soldiers try to stay alive.”

  But Chloe didn’t get a chance to embarrass the team with her excess enthusiasm. The mission – which involved defending the land rights of an Indigenous People, in the Tapuya6 Basin, with a combined force called ‘The Allies’ – went horribly wrong right away. Plans had been leaked, the Allies were overwhelmed; the Empire counted enormous coup and vacated the scene. It was over inside an hour.

  Her brain still numbed by the hammer, hammer, hammer of artillery fire, Chloe blundered about in the silence after battle, without having fired a shot: and unable to make sense of the torrent of recriminations on her sidebar. She ran into a fellow-Frag, who was escorting a roped-up straggle of Indigenous People, and recognised the jousting spike with the samite sleeve. She’d been sure the helm was Reuel’s, but it was the Battle ID of Josie Nicks; or ‘Lete the Shaman’.

  “What are you doing with the Non-Coms, Lete?” asked Chloe.

  “Taking them to the Allied Commander for questioning under torture. They might know something about what happened.”

  “Don’t do that!”

  “Nah, you’re right. I can’t be bothered.” Methodically, Josie shot the non-combatants’ knees out, and walked away. Chloe stared at the screaming heap of limbs and blood. Josie’s victims all had the glowing outline. They were gamers’ avatars, and seemed to be in real agony.

  She ran after Josie. “Hey! Did you know they were real people?”

  “’Course I did. Non-Coms can be sneaky bastards, prisoners are a nuisance, and it was fun. What’s your problem?” Josie flopped down by a giant broken stump. “You know who I am, Chloe. You interviewed me. A female geek making a name in the industry is judged all the time. I need to be seen to be nasty: and this is the way I relax. Okay?”

  She took out her bag of bones and tossed them idly.

  “Was it you who convinced the team to let me stay?” asked Chloe. “I’ve been wondering. I know it wasn’t Reuel, and you’re the shaman…”

  Josie, looking so furious Chloe feared for her own kneecaps, swept up the bones and jumped to her feet. “No, it wasn’t.” she snarled. “You’re breaching etiquette, Corporate spook. Leave me alone. Find the quick way home and I hope it’s messy.”

  Chloe didn’t find the quick way home. There was nobody around to kill her, and suicide, she knew, was frowned upon. She drifted, avoiding unexploded ordnance, reeking bodies and random severed limbs, until Reuel found her. His helmet decoration was the dinosaur crest. Which made sense; sort of. Minimum effort. He offered her a fat green stogie.

  “Lete told me you were upset. Don’t be, Greenshoot. Guys who take the Non-Com option know what they want from the game, and they do us all a favour. I admire them.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Chloe. “The whole thing. Look at this, this awful place—”

  “Yeah,” sighed Reuel. “Non-fantastic war-gaming is hell. It’s kind of an expiation. Like, we play bad stuff, but we don’t sugar it.” He’d said the same in his interview. “But hey, I have incredible news. I was waiting for a chance to tell you in the map, because this is special. Pevay’s going to open a portal!”

  “A portal?”

  “Into his home world dimension. And I’m going to pass through it!”

  The Second Law

  The house felt sullen. If the team was celebrating Reuel’s news they were quiet about it, and Chloe wasn’t invited to share. Was she thought to have jinxed the Tapuya Basin event? Was she being paranoid…? She caught Jun in the kitchen and he silently made her a cup of tea, but she didn’t dare to ask the assassin what he thought. She finally asked Aileen; who had started messaging her, calling her Greenshoot.

 

  Chloe messaged back, astonished.

 

  suggested Chloe.

  A wounded silence was the only answer.

  Chloe prowled at night: no longer hoping for company, just desperate for a change from her four walls. She couldn’t leave the building, in case she missed something. But she needed to think, and the pacing helped.

  The Darkening World subculture was going completely crazy. Offers were pouring in, from fans and fruitcakes eager to take Reuel’s place. A South Korean woman insisted that her son, disabled by motor neurone disease, would be cured by a trip to another dimension, and pleaded for Reuel to make way. (And pay their air fares). DW ‘aliens among us’ sceptics jeered in glee: hoping Reuel would come back as a heap of bloody, inside-out guts. Believers who hadn’t been singled out for glory insisted their alien NPCs knew nothing about this ‘portal’, and Reuel was just a fantasising, attention-seeking loser—

&
nbsp; Chloe had no terms for comparison. She’d had no contact with any ‘alien NPC’ other than Pevay. She’d never observed him with the other gamers, or seen data from his sessions with Reuel; and the interviews were practically worthless. Her choices had been fatally limited from the start. She was partly financing herself, and couldn’t pay huge airfares. And the players had to speak either English or Spanish—

  But how would you know, anyway? How could you tell if you were talking to a ‘different’ alien? An NPC is an avatar controlled by the game: code on a server. Whoever controlled Pevay could have a whole wardrobe of DW avatars. All over the world, interacting with multiple gamers, yet all with the same, single ‘alien sentient’ source—

  It made her head spin.

  The Darkening World house was haunted: the hunter’s prey had become the hunter, leading her in circles; ancestors and elders offered no protection… She spun around and there was Pevay, cut and pasted on the shadows. He turned and led her, his footfalls making no sound, to a dark corner opposite the door to Reuel’s office.

  Fox-walking, she thought. “Why are you following me?” she asked.

  “Why do you walk around the house at night?”

  “I’m… uneasy. Someone’s betraying them, you know. Is it Josie?”

  “No, it’s Matt Warks.”

  His eyes gleamed. She thought of the eighth person on the beach. Her persistent illusion (recorded in her notes) that there were seven players, not six, living in this game house—

  “Oh, right. I decided he was too obvious.”

  “Gamers can be obtuse. They believe what they’re told, and ignore what they are not told. It’s a trait many kinds of people share, Chloe.”

  “Since we’re talking, what do players call this game, where you come from?”

  “Darkening World, of course.”

  So he’d dropped the story that he didn’t remember any other life. “But how do they understand what that means? On your alien planet?”

  “Easily, I assure you. Any sufficiently advanced technology—”

  “Is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law.”