Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  ‘I didn’t make Affrayed,’ I said.

  Across the table, Lily made a little noise like a sob but my dad just picked his glasses up from where they’d been laying by his plate and put them back on. ‘I thought as much,’ he said.

  ‘It happened four or so months ago,’ I said, ‘all our work on Affrayed disappeared and some new code came in its place.’

  I carried on explaining, feeling desperately uncomfortable. Mum kept interrupting me with questions and dad kept saying, ‘Sandra, let him speak,’ which for some reason made it even worse because it kept reminding me that they were listening to my sorry tale.

  ‘Have they contacted you?’ Dad asked when my words stumbled to a halt, ‘the people who really made the game. Do you know who they are?’

  Lily looked at me meaningfully, her eyes scared, her fingers twisting round in the ends of her hair.

  ‘No,’ I said, and I saw Lily flinch at my lie, ‘I have no idea. That’s the problem, I just don’t understand who would do this at all.’

  Dad narrowed his eyes and looked at me curiously, until I had to clench my fists under the table to stop myself just giving in and talking about Interface. I would not talk about him. He was frightening, unknown. Better they had no idea who did it at all than have the merest whiff of his existence. My mum had stopped watching me though, and instead turned her attention to Lily, who was completely overwhelmed by the conversation.

  ‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ mum asked her.

  ‘No,’ Lily said, her voice breaking, and she pushed her chair back and ran out of the room.

  ‘Is she alright?’ Mum asked me immediately, ‘she doesn’t seem right when she’s at work, she’s very tired and distracted.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ I said, ‘just stressed out about this. We all are. I should probably go and talk to her.’

  Lily hadn’t done it deliberately, of course, but I was so grateful to her as I slipped out of the room, able to escape for a moment from the questions. When I found her she was sitting on the stairs in the hallway, leaning her head against the wooden banister. The stairs had a crazy old-fashioned red, yellow and green patterned carpet which ordinarily I would have found disgusting, but it worked with the uneven whitewashed walls, framed prints of country scenes, and the huge vase of dried flowers halfway up. I’d asked Lily to name all the different plants that were in the vase once, but I couldn’t remember what she’d said now, except that one of them was called “honesty”.

  ‘This is horrible,’ Lily said.

  ‘I know,’ I agreed. I sat down next to her and she started gently banging her head against the banister.

  ‘You have to stay strong,’ I said, ‘we’ll figure everything out; it might just take a little time.’

  ‘It’s hard to be strong. I feel like all I’m doing at the moment is trying to stay strong and I’m tired, Nick. It’s still there in me, you know. When things get hard I can feel it wanting to take over me again and I keep having to fight and fight and fight. Sometimes it seems like it would almost be easier just to...’ she stopped banging her head and squeezed her eyes closed.

  ‘Just stop fighting?’ I said, ‘to let it take over again?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Kind of. I don’t know. Just to not have to try so hard to keep myself in the right way of thinking, the healthy way of thinking.’

  ‘I know it’s tough,’ I said, ‘and I know you still feel down occasionally, but it’s less, isn’t it? You’re under so much stress right now. So am I. So is Dan. But we can get through it.’ I put my arm round her and she snuggled up to me.

  ‘You’re so loved, Lily. You don’t have to deal with anything on your own. I know your parents aren’t great for talking to, but you’ve got my mum, you’ve got me. You’ve got Dan as well, he cares about you.’

  Lily sat up straight and dragged her fingers through her hair. I could see she was trying to compose herself, though she couldn’t quite pull it off.

  ‘You’re alright though?’ I asked her, ‘I mean, really alright? You don’t feel like it’s coming back?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s not coming back. I won’t let it come back. I just have these moments sometimes.’

  She smoothed down her top and took a deep breath. ‘I’m okay now,’ she said.

  ‘Good.’ I hugged her tightly. ‘I’m so proud of you, Lily.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you keep on fighting it. And you’re winning.’

  With Lily feeling better we rejoined my parents in the kitchen and they didn’t say anything about her little meltdown. They had always seemed to understand her in a way that her own parents just couldn’t; realising that what she needed was space, acceptance and normality, whereas her own parents suffocated her with their interference and criticism. My parents never judged her. The only time they’d ever even acknowledged that her depression could be a problem for anyone was one night when they’d sat me down and basically just asked me, straight out, if I was happy with Lily and if being with her was really what I wanted. That answered, it was settled. If she was good enough for me, she was good enough for them. I just wish Lily’s parents could apply the same principle to me.

  ‘What are you going to do, then?’ dad asked as we sat back down.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He tutted and adjusted his glasses, his habitual response to people giving him answers he found peculiar or unsatisfying. ‘You’ve got to do something,’ he said, ‘have you got some legal advice? Affrayed was your idea after all-’

  ‘Don’t go on at him,’ mum said, ‘he’s upset.’

  Dad looked at her in genuine surprise. ‘How can we expect to get to the bottom of this if you won’t let me ask him anything?’ he said.

  ‘It’s alright,’ I said to mum, then I turned back to dad and said, ‘I haven’t really looked into it, so I don’t know where I stand legally-’

  ‘Shouldn’t you find out?’ Dad said, ‘do you want me to look into it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I appreciate it, I really do, but I want to handle this myself.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Dad said, ‘but I really would get some advice if I was you.’

  We talked for a long while, mum working herself up into a panic and Lily looking increasingly exhausted and distraught, until I suggested that since the talk was going round and round in circles perhaps we should call it a night. My parents followed us out to the car and Mum hugged Lily tightly and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Just you look after yourself,’ she said, ‘get some rest, and I’ll see you next week.’

  I tried to get straight into the car with Lily to avoid any further conversation, but mum caught my arm.

  ‘Are you okay, Nick?’ she asked me.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve got to be,’ I said.

  ‘Is there really nothing you can do? Nothing we can do? I mean, surely you could just try explaining the truth about your game, just tell everyone what you told us tonight?’

  ‘I would, but, I don’t think anyone would believe us. You and Dad know me- you know I wouldn’t make it up- but these other people...’

  ‘You and Daniel really need to take some action and get this sorted out,’ Dad said. ‘You can’t bury your heads in the sand and wait for it to go away, you’ve got to find out where you stand with Affrayed and try to protect your business.’

  ‘I know,’ I said vaguely, ‘we’ll think of something.’ I glanced at Lily waiting in the car.

  ‘Look, I’d better...’ I said, gesturing towards her.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ mum said, before giving me a big hug as well.

  ‘Take care,’ she said.

  We got back to the flat around eleven thirty, and unsurprisingly, found Dan sitting on the sofa playing Affrayed. We generally played as a three, but there were lots of minor tasks that only took one or two of us, so I had no doubt that Dan would have had a pretty good evening just playing on his own. It certainly didn’t look like he’d bothered having much in the
way of dinner in our absence. There was an open and half-eaten can of tuna in the kitchen, and on the floor by his feet was a two litre bottle of coke that he’d made good progress on.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked him.

  He stretched and then turned round to look at us. I could see straight away that something had happened.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding his head as if remembering something particularly fascinating, ‘it’s been an interesting night.’

  I waited for him to continue. He was enjoying keeping us in suspense.

  ‘There have been a few more changes to Affrayed,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’

  He grinned. ‘You’ll see.’

  Chapter 15

  I listened closely as Dan explained to me what had happened and by the end of it I could see why he was amused, though I had to admit the direction of the new development unsettled me a little.

  Lily, however, was immediately captivated, and while I carried on mulling over the difficult evening with my parents and what the new changes might mean for us, she rushed over to Dan and said, ‘is that what you’ve been doing all night, then?’

  He shrugged. ‘Some of the time,’ he said, ‘I mean, the novelty kind of wears off...’

  ‘Show me!’ she said, ‘no, even better, why don’t you try it on me? Both of you. Come on, Nick!’

  Lily grabbed my laptop and sat next to Dan, while I sat down at my computer and listened as Lily chattered away to him, her excitement over the changes almost palpable. I’d noticed before that while I found videogames that allowed you to pursue love interests little more than an amusing diversion, Lily was fascinated by it. Whenever a game gave her half a chance she would make characters have a string of love affairs worthy of a soap opera, so I could see why she found the fact that Affrayed now allowed sex between characters so exciting. She was funny though; what seemed to delight her most about sex in games was opportunities to play a male character and make him a total bastard who ditched his love interests the second he’d managed to get them into bed, or cheated on them mercilessly- exactly the kind of behaviour that she found so awful to contemplate in real life. I’d asked her once what it was about doing this that she so enjoyed, and she said it was liberating and cathartic, that it helped her get out any frustration, any stress, or even just any thoughts, and lose herself in a world where you could just do what you wanted for a while.

  In her enthusiasm she logged in to Affrayed much faster than me, so once all three of us were finally in the game together she couldn’t wait a second longer and she beamed at us in excitement as she said, ‘so, are you both going to do me, or what?’

  Although initially I was still distracted by the evening with my parents it took only a few minutes of being in Affrayed before all thoughts of them disappeared from my mind, and as I watched the sexual exploits between the three of us unfold I ended up being more amused by the way Lily clapped her hands together in a delighted, childish glee than by what was actually happening in the game.

  The sex wasn’t explicit or anything, just a tasteful and stylishly done little animation that you could trigger by approaching other characters at the right time, in the right way. In fact, as with the violence in the game, I admired the way it followed mine and Dan’s vision for the original Affrayed, in that atmosphere and suggestion were used liberally, and graphic images only occasionally, as we were more interested in creating a mood of tension and fear rather than give players constant opportunities to paint the screen red.

  Once it was over, I found the whole episode something and nothing. It was entertaining, and I could see that some people would probably enjoy it, but to me the new developments seemed like a bit of meaningless titillation, with nothing to contribute to the narrative or the gameplay. So before long I forgot about it as we all moved on to the more serious business of playing the game proper. The sex had just been a distraction, a little bit of fun. As far as we were concerned, it had no bearing on anything.

  As always, Affrayed wrapped itself around us, lost us in the fabric of its reality. Over the week, we’d gradually ingratiated ourselves with one of the large gangs, a group calling themselves Outbreak, who focussed largely on amassing food and medical supplies, and controlling and restricting access to these resources by other groups or individuals.

  In the rundown industrial area we’d chosen to spend most of our time in, Outbreak was in charge, but closely rivalled by another gang, Renegade Shadows, who’d managed to stockpile large amounts of weapons in a row of disused factories, so despite being a generally smaller, weaker group, launching attacks on them always ended in disaster. Consequently, Outbreak and Renegade Shadows now hated each other with a passion.

  As part of Outbreak we no longer just did whatever the three of us wanted or needed to do, we took on roles that would be in the best interests of the larger group, and as newer members, this meant starting with menial tasks- gathering more supplies, keeping tabs on the movements of the Renegades, guarding buildings.

  It shouldn’t really have been as enjoyable as it was, but it really, really was. Because we cared. When Outbreak did well, it felt really good. When we worked with other members of the group, it was like they were right there beside us, like whatever we were doing- be it securing some new empty building to store stuff in, or trying steal weapons from the Renegades or exploring the map to find new sources of supplies, was the most important thing in the whole world. Members of Outbreak protected each other and cared about each other, like a huge, close-knit family.

  We played long into Saturday night, and as time sped by, I felt an increasing sense of both control and freedom. It seemed like my character was doing things almost before I touched any keys, or moved the mouse, until my hands fell still, because I didn’t need them. There was no need for any physical input from me, no need for any messing around with menus or controls, no time even for things like that.

  My character did what I wanted him to do as I thought it, as I willed it, until there really was no distinction between the character and me, because we were no longer separate. There was never any opportunity for error to be introduced in the stages between thinking what I wanted to do, and ability to actually make my character do it. Everything was as fluid and easy as moving my own limbs. The character could still only perform actions that were within the set rules of the game, but that was no barrier to my immersion. After all, it’s not like I could make my own body do literally anything I wanted, even in reality I was bound by rules, restricted by my own physiology.

  My absorption in the game was so intense that even though what was happening was clearly the most remarkable advance in technology that I was ever likely to witness, I didn’t even stop to consider it, barely even registered that anything unusual was going on, because it just felt so natural, as if it would be bizarre not to be able to do these astonishing things.

  Then I started to feel the most extraordinary warmth, and clarity. There was something in my mind, an outside thing, an alien presence, but it didn’t matter. I had no fear, just a feeling somehow of being taken in hand, being guided, but with the kindest possible intentions. My thoughts seemed fluid and transparent, and I felt so loved. I knew on some level that I could turn my back on the presence. I knew I could close my mind to it, if I wanted, but I didn’t want to. The game began to fade a little, become less significant, as instead I let the presence reach in further.

  My mind jumped around as it spread. I saw fragments of images, memories, sounds, smells- strange and unconnected things- the apple tree at the bottom of the garden at my parents’ house, heavy with fruit and buzzing with wasps that were clamouring for the windfalls split open in the long grass; the smell of rain hitting sun-warmed tarmac, the faces of old school friends, snatches of music and voices, the taste of aniseed, then bacon, then the coppery taste of blood. For a moment the world went black even though my eyes were open, and I felt my heart race, my breath grow short, as fear created bursts of adrenalin that alm
ost threatened to break me out of my trance, but the presence cooled them and my sight returned.

  I grew aware that my mind was larger than it used to be, which didn’t frighten me, but it was interesting and I liked it because it was interesting. The presence never rushed me. It wouldn’t rush me, because it cared about me, and it wanted me to want what it was doing. Not that I’d ever really thought about what my mind felt like before, but I guess if I’d had to say anything I’d say it had felt like a sort of contained mass- full of information, but turned inwards, not outwards. Now it seemed like it was ironed out flat, without any walls or edges. And there was more content, different content, that I could reach out for if I wanted. There were three presences-two that I knew instinctively were Lily and Dan, and the one who was guiding me- the one that filled me with awe because it was infinitely powerful, and wise, and massive. I tried to reach towards this one, to touch the unimaginably vast amount of information I knew it contained, but the Presence didn’t want me to do that, and it took me in a different direction.

  I began to have thoughts about Lily, and about Dan. Just general thoughts- I saw their faces, heard their voices, experienced what I had felt or thought about them at various different times. Gradually, the Presence waned. It’s strength dissipated, gently, but surely, until there seemed to be nothing left of it, and I felt a little empty and sad without it. But the way the Presence had directed my thoughts so firmly towards Lily and Dan made my first action inevitable. I turned around to look at them.

  Chapter 16

  The first thing that registered was that they weren’t playing anymore, that their laptops were discarded on the floor and they had started doing something else- something else entirely.

  I was so confused and shocked by what I saw that I couldn’t really acknowledge it- it was so far outside of anything I could understand about my world that somehow I thought I was wrong, that I had gone mad, that I was hallucinating, or even that it was some sort of joke.