Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  Dan was silent for a little while longer then he appeared to regain some energy. ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘let’s do it.’

  Dan retrieved his laptop from the sofa and started searching through comments on our website and social networking, while I opened all the files containing the obfuscated code. It both fascinated and disturbed me. Several years of programming experience, a degree in computer science and an MSc in software engineering were nothing against the kind of mind that had written this code. They were way, way beyond me. It was hopeless.

  ‘Anything?’ Dan asked me when we were several hours and cups of coffee into the day.

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘Same.’

  Dan stopped looking at his own laptop and watched what I was doing for a while.

  ‘You understand any of it?’ he asked me.

  ‘Not really,’ I said, ‘like you said before, it’s one hell of a good job.’

  ‘So, I was thinking,’ he said, ‘do you reckon they did it because they don’t want us to know how they made the game so good?’

  ‘That’s one option. But if you can code this well, you’d just make your own game. Why hijack somebody else’s, make it completely awesome, let them take the credit for it, but- wait- it’s okay because you’ve made it so no one knows how you did it? No. It doesn’t make sense. There’s something we’re not seeing here.’

  I got up and wandered over to the kitchen. I didn’t even want any more coffee but I found myself filling the kettle anyway, as though doing something else might jog my mind and help me work it out.

  ‘So, what happens if you just...’ Dan said and I turned round in time to see that he was going to try and alter something in the code.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ I said.

  ‘I was only going to delete a couple of random-’

  ‘Seriously, Dan, I’ve been tweaking little bits of it all morning and as soon as I alter it it totally breaks the game. It’s insane. Some of the things I did really shouldn’t have had any effect but it’s like it knows I’ve touched it or something.’

  Dan moved his fingers away from the keyboard and watched me get a couple of mugs out of the cupboard.

  ‘Is this really happening, do you think?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what’s actually more likely? This version of Affrayed that’s turned up or that we’ve gone insane?’

  I laughed. ‘What, all three of us? You, me and Lily, you think we’ve just... hallucinated this?’

  ‘It makes about as much sense as anything else I’ve thought of.’

  I walked back over with the coffee and even though it was boiling hot Dan gulped down a couple of large mouthfuls without thinking and then pulled a face.

  ‘If nothing else, I think we can be pretty sure this is real,’ I said, ‘and there’ll be a reason for it, it’s just a case of finding it.’

  …

  But by the time Lily got home we still hadn’t uncovered even the tiniest clue as to who had made the new version of Affrayed and were doing little more than throwing increasingly unlikely theories around and getting more and more confused.

  ‘Has anything happened?’ Lily asked as she rushed over to us, ‘have you found out who did it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, as she wrapped her arms briefly around my neck.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she said, dropping her handbag onto the floor and plonking herself down next to me at the desk.

  ‘There’s not much to tell. I looked at the code, we’ve played the game some more, checked if anyone’s said anything online and so far there’s been nothing.’

  Lily’s eyes flicked between me and Dan.

  ‘Then what are you going to do? Are you going to release it?’

  ‘Lily, we can’t,’ I said, ‘you know we can’t.’

  Lily looked at Dan.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Nick’s right,’ Dan said after a pause, ‘we can’t, not really.’

  ‘You don’t sound completely sure.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Dan said.

  Lily looked down at her lap and I swear I saw a little of the colour drain out of her rosy cheeks.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked her.

  ‘Nothing. I was just thinking today how good it would be if you released it, you know, if you made a bit of money.’

  She reached up and started pulling at her hair until it all came undone and she shook it out over her shoulders.

  ‘Lily, you understand, don’t you?’ I said.

  ‘No. Not really. I don’t understand how somebody could come along, destroy your work and replace it with theirs and we just have to suffer for it.’

  I heard Dan’s chair scrape over the floor and he stood up.

  ‘Why don’t I give you some space?’ he suggested, ‘I can go out for a bit. I’ll grab us some food or something.’

  ‘Thanks, Dan,’ I said.

  Once he’d gone, Lily wandered into the bedroom to get changed so I followed her and sat in silence as she pulled off her work clothes and changed into a pair of jeans and a cream Fair Isle jumper. I hoped that she’d tell me what was on her mind but instead she started stroking the glossy leaves of a large peace lily on top of the chest of drawers.

  ‘Talk to me,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Lily squeezed a leaf between her finger and thumb. ‘I will,’ she said, ‘just let me get things straight in my head.’

  Finally, she sat down beside me on the bed and from the way she took a deep breath I knew she had a great deal to say.

  ‘When I was working today, all I could think about was how things would be if you released that incredible version of Affrayed, about if you made some real money so we could all move on with our lives,’ she said all in a rush. ‘You know this situation can’t carry on. Dan needs to get away from living with his mum and Robyn, it’s driving him insane. You know how angry and upset he is when he shows up here after they’ve had one of their fights. I worry about him because it can’t be healthy to live somewhere that makes you feel like that. Then I thought about us and I thought about how we could afford to live somewhere bigger and you wouldn’t have to work in the same room where we eat and relax and we’d have so much more space and I could... we could have a baby.’

  ‘Lily-’

  She held her hands up. ‘Please, just let me finish explaining. I’ve tried not to go on at you about babies and stuff because I knew nothing could happen right now, but when I started thinking about how successful this version could be it all seemed so real. Everything has been so extreme over the past few years. I think... I just want things to change. To be more like a proper family.’

  She’d worked herself up so much that at the end of her speech she started crying.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘I do understand,’ I said. ‘I know you want to get a bigger place and have a baby, I want those things too.’

  ‘But it’s never going to happen, is it?’ Lily said. ‘I mean, what are you going to do now? Start a new game? Are we going to spend another three, four years with no money and barely enough time to even speak to each other?’

  I looked at her in shock. I knew myself that I hadn’t been giving her the amount of attention she deserved or even that I wanted to give her, but I thought by working hard trying to get the game done I was doing the right thing.

  ‘Lily, why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way? I had no idea things were so bad.’

  Lily fixed her eyes on her lap and wouldn’t answer me. I nudged her leg with mine and she wiped some tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of her jumper.

  ‘How long have you been feeling like this?’ I asked her.

  ‘A while. A long time. I don’t know.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because you’re always too busy.’

  I took her hands in mine to make sur
e I had her attention. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I am never too busy for you to talk to me. Okay? Don’t ever think that. If you got ill again because you thought I didn’t have time for you I’d never forgive myself.’

  Lily nodded and looked round at me, her tears making her eyes an intense coppery- gold.

  ‘What do you want to happen, Lily?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well, what I wanted was for you and Dan to finish Affrayed yourselves and get all the success that you deserve but I can’t see how that would happen now. I know what scares you about this version and it scares me too, but I think the alternative scares me even more.’

  ‘The alternative being?’

  ‘Like I said before. You start a new game, and we spend even longer in this sort of... limbo.’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ I reassured her, ‘I won’t do that. Lily, I had no idea you were so unhappy. I don’t have to carry on with DAWN at all if that’s how you feel; I always said that if it started affecting our relationship then I’d stop. You just say the word and first thing tomorrow I’ll start looking for a job.’

  ‘But... Dan-’ Lily said.

  ‘Dan would understand. And I could earn decent money as a software engineer. If we’re prepared to maybe move somewhere else in the country I could probably find something pretty quickly too.’

  The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. There really was no way forward for DAWN that I could see. Either we released a game we hadn’t made or we limped along until every last scrap of our money, patience and quality of life had gone.

  Lily thought for a while, twisting her hands round in her lap.

  ‘You’d hate it,’ she said. ‘All you’ve ever wanted to do is make games. I couldn’t watch you go through the pain of giving it up.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to watch you going through this pain now. My dream of making games isn’t more important than you wanting to have a family and a better quality of life. I want things to improve too, but I want to do it right. Not with money from this new Affrayed. It’s not honest and I can’t do it.’

  ‘I know,’ Lily said, ‘deep down I always knew you wouldn’t release it. It’s not like I even want you to, necessarily, it was just that for a moment it seemed like an answer to everything.’

  Chapter 5

  Dan arrived back half an hour or so later, a waft of vinegary chip-shop smell around him as he came inside. We ate together in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts and although several times I thought Dan or Lily were on the verge of speaking they always seemed to decide against it.

  ‘So, what now?’ I asked when I was done with eating and the sight of all the fat, soggy chips was beginning to make me feel sick.

  Dan and Lily looked up when I spoke, but they didn’t know what we should do anymore than I did. Dan looked exhausted, purplish shadows beginning to bloom around his eyes, while Lily had retreated into herself, just a curtain of hair and a blank face.

  The thing was, the more I considered our options the less catastrophic the risk to our reputation seemed. Perhaps there would be no consequences. Perhaps all that would happen would be success; success enough that we could quickly get started on a new game, a game that would be our work, and would wipe the slate clean.

  Abruptly, Lily scrunched up the remains of the bag of chips.

  ‘I hate whoever’s done this to you,’ she said. ‘How could they? How could somebody have so little respect for another person’s work?’

  ‘We could never have made Affrayed this well,’ Dan said. ‘Compared to what they’ve done, maybe our work wasn’t worth all that much respect.’

  ‘That’s total rubbish!’ Lily said, ‘both of you are incredibly talented, I-’

  ‘I think we should release it,’ I said.

  Both of them turned to look at me in surprise.

  ‘Nick, you don’t have to do it because of what I said,’ Lily said quickly, ‘this is a big decision, you need to think it through.’

  ‘I have thought it through. I say we give it a bit longer to try and figure out who did it or to let them get in contact with us. If nothing happens, we start promoting it, and in a few months or so, we launch it. It barely needs testing, I mean, it’s flawless. We need to set the right tone for everything we say about it- play it down, let it speak for itself rather than taking too much credit. It’ll be hard but it’ll be doable. We stick it out, take the proceeds and put them into a new project. Nobody apart from us and whoever really made this thing actually knows about it. If we stay silent, all we have to hope is that they stay silent. It’s a risk, but do we really have all that much to lose?’

  Lily and Dan were listening to me intently, both looking far more at ease now I was telling them what we should do.

  ‘Dan, what do you think?’ I asked him.

  Dan thought carefully for a moment and when he spoke his voice was firm.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I say go for it. It’s our game. We didn’t ask anybody to do this. We’ll give it a week. If we haven’t figured it out and nobody comes forward, then that’s that. Other people would do the same. We were almost two thirds into making Affrayed, we laid all the groundwork, we thought it all out.’

  ‘You deserve this,’ Lily said. ‘You’ve both worked so hard, it’s about time you got something back.’

  ‘Are we all in agreement then?’ I asked and they both nodded.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘they’ve got one week. Then, as far as we’re concerned, the game’s ours.’

  2007

  Chapter 6

  I cant take this anymore Nick, please please please if you love me why cant you make it go away

  I sighed and put my phone back down on the desk in front of me. In her torment Lily often text, or phoned, or emailed me- desperate, heart-wrenching pleas for help or even just a bit of relief, but they were pleas I couldn’t answer.

  The phone vibrated again. I picked it up and opened a second message from her.

  I’ve done something bad, youre going to be angry with me.

  I slammed my phone down on the desk and took a deep breath. I wasn’t actually angry with Lily, but I hated what she was doing to herself and I couldn’t pretend otherwise. I desperately needed to get some work done on my dissertation, but Lily was clearly having a rough afternoon and now she’d started hurting herself there was little chance I was going to be able to concentrate. I replied asking where she was and when she said she was in the library too I shoved my laptop into my bag and went to find her.

  She was on the floor above me, sitting alone at a table in the far corner, hunched over a textbook. She looked up when she heard my footsteps but didn’t smile or acknowledge me, she just turned her head to stare out of the window where the light was fading and rain was beginning to hammer against the glass. I sat opposite her and followed her gaze, watching the people running around outside, wrestling with umbrellas blown inside out in the wind or huddled up into their coats.

  ‘Do you want to see what I did?’ Lily asked me.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ I said, ‘do you want to show me?’

  I saw the corner of her mouth twitch a little as if she was trying not to smile. She almost never managed to show me her self-harm without smiling, or even worse, laughing. I knew it was a nervous thing, like giggling at a funeral, but I found it acutely unnerving.

  Sure enough, by the time she’d pulled up the sleeve of her baggy grey hoodie to expose the pale skin of her arm and the angry red scratches across it her face had broken into a wide smile.

  I ignored her expression and focussed on her arm. I knew which was the new cut. It was bright and fresh, a couple of perfectly spherical beads of blood rising from it.

  ‘Oh, Lily,’ I said, ‘I wish you didn’t do this.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, ‘what do you care?’

  ‘Of course I care,’ I said. To show her that I did, I lifted her arm to my lips and kissed the place that she’d hurt herself while she looked at me as if I was slightly mad
.

  ‘You can’t kiss this better,’ she said. She snatched her arm away from me and pulled her sleeve back down again.

  ‘Where did you do it?’ I asked her, ‘you only text me a few minutes ago.’

  ‘In the toilets,’ she said.

  ‘Did it make you feel better?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding almost proud. She showed me the notebook she had in front of her and I saw that the first half of the page was covered in scrawling, chaotic handwriting dissolving gradually into scribble, while the second half- the half she was now working on- was neat and ordered. She was in the middle of copying a diagram out of the textbook and she’d made it look lovely, colouring in all the different bits with green, orange and pink pens.

  ‘It helps me concentrate,’ she said.

  I carried on looking at her notes, from the disordered to the ordered with one quick slash of her skin. I couldn’t deny that it was effective, in the short term at least.

  ‘Lily,’ I said softly, ‘you can’t hurt yourself to get through your degree. It’s not sustainable- I mean, what are you going to do, cut yourself every single day?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I might have to do it more often than that.’

  She didn’t even look at me when she spoke, she just carried on copying the diagram, the movement of the pen on the page slow and meticulous.

  I reached across the table to take her hand but she moved away from me.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said, ‘I need to get this done. You know I need to get this done. Why are you interrupting me?’

  So I sat and watched her work for a while and listened to the rain against the window. A few people came by to look for books on the tall shelves either side of us but nobody else sat down at the table and we were left in peace.

  Even as I sat with her, I saw Lily’s concentration waning. She worked slower and slower, reading the same sentence in the textbook repeatedly, tracing the words with her finger.

  ‘I think you should have a break now,’ I said.

  Lily shook her head.

  ‘You look tired,’ I said, ‘come on, come home with me. I’ll cook you something.’