Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

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Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller Page 12

by LK Chapman


  Lily frowned and turned her attention to picking ice cubes out of her glass of coke and dropping them into mine.

  ‘I’m trying to see if anyone else experienced something like us,’ Dan said, glancing up from his laptop.

  ‘And have they?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that I can see.

  ‘Do either of you have any idea what the Network could be?’ Lily asked as she tried to trap a particularly troublesome cube between her finger and thumb.

  I looked at Dan and he shook his head.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not really.’

  ‘Because that’s key, isn’t it?’ she said, as she dropped the ice into my drink, ‘it always comes back to the Network.’

  ‘Interface says we can’t understand what it is,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s probably just more of his crap,’ Dan said, ‘he doesn’t want to say what it is, so he just says that. I mean, it’s weird, but the whole thing’s fucking weird, right?’

  ‘Okay,’ Lily said, ‘so what do we know? We know that whoever the Network is they can do things I thought were impossible. They got inside our heads.’

  ‘Did they though?’ I said slowly, ‘I mean, do we know that for absolutely sure? Is there any other way that what happened could have happened? Maybe they drugged us and somehow watched what took place afterwards?’

  ‘There’s no way,’ Dan said, ‘before he made... uh, you know, before stuff got really crazy, we could control the game with our minds. That definitely happened.’

  Suddenly, our empty plates were scooped up from the end of the table and I almost jumped out of my skin at the unexpected interruption.

  Lily shrugged. ‘I don’t know a whole lot about drugs,’ she said, ‘but I have to say it seems an unlikely explanation. And how would any of it even have been done? Drugs, spying on us, any of it? There’s always someone in the flat at the moment, and we didn’t even all eat together, so unless the person responsible was one of us,’ she paused briefly, ‘and I think we can rule that out, then I guess he really was in our minds.’

  We reached another dead end, but then Lily rooted around in her big, mushroom-coloured handbag until she found a pen, and the three of us brainstormed everything we knew about Interface and the Network, while she listed it on the back of a white serviette. When we were done, I picked it up and read through it.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so we know Interface has the resources and the manpower to make and maintain a game like Affrayed. He was also able to get hold of our bank and credit card details, get rid of huge numbers of comments about us from multiple web pages, get Dan’s mobile to come up with his name when he called last night, and seemingly he can also get access to people’s thoughts and influence their behaviour. We have no idea who he is, who he works for, or why any of this is being done, apart from that Interface says it’s for research, but why anyone needs to research what we did last night God only knows. Finally, he seems pretty adamant that we are not “compatible” with the Network, that we wouldn’t understand it.’

  Lily leant forward on the table, resting her chin in her hand. She looked tired, a little line between her straight, dark eyebrows, her normally warm eyes dulled by too many late nights. Dan looked similarly exhausted, though still awake enough to slide the serviette and the pen across to him and start doodling around the outside of our list.

  Suddenly he stopped. ‘Do you think we’re the only ones?’ he asked.

  We both looked round at him.

  ‘If he really is doing research, and he seems pretty keen to tell us that he is, then there must be others. I mean, that’s got to be what Affrayed is for, right? The whole thing must just be a front for the Network’s research.’

  ‘You said there was no mention of anybody else experiencing what we did on the forums,’ Lily said.

  ‘Yes,’ Dan said, ‘but maybe it’s like those other comments and Interface is just getting rid of them as soon as they appear. Suppressing them.’

  ‘But maybe some have slipped through the net, if we look somewhere more obscure,’ Lily suggested. ‘I mean, maybe he’s monitoring specific websites. Let’s just try searching.’

  Dan typed in various different searches around the theme of Affrayed, experiments, mind control and Interface, but we didn’t get long to investigate before the laptop screen went black.

  INTERFACE: Dan, Nick, Lily. If you want to understand what’s happening, the solution is simple. Play my game.

  Before we could even think about replying, Interface returned the computer to Dan’s control, and we were left staring at the uninspiring results of our search once again.

  Chapter 20

  For a little while, we resisted playing Affrayed. We were angry with Interface for what he’d done, and scared by the powers he appeared to have. But by the time it was evening we gave in, reluctant yet somehow excited to enter the game again. I actually felt a bit sick as I logged in, and when I looked over at Lily and Dan they seemed nervous too.

  Within a few minutes of entering the game we found ourselves embroiled in a particularly vicious fight around a strategically important cluster of warehouses. It seemed a slightly odd move for our rival gang, Renegade Shadows to make, as the warehouses were well defended by Outbreak and even though they had more weapons than us they were getting quite a hammering.

  But a couple of hours into the fight, it became clear what the Renegades were really after, as they captured Lily and another female character, and started dragging them away. By this point, I was again controlling the game purely with my mind, but even that didn’t make me quick enough to help Lily, as the Renegade’s actions were so unexpected. Not that taking hostages wasn’t a common part of the game. In fact, part of what we’d done to encourage Outbreak to let us join them was capture somebody from the Renegades. Taking hostages was a good way of forcing the rival gang to make concessions, particularly if you managed to capture somebody important. Not that Lily was especially important in terms of her value to Outbreak, but perhaps it had been noticed that Dan and I were very protective of her, or maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever the reason, before we knew it she’d been bundled into the back of a white van parked in the scrubby wasteland outside the warehouses, and all we were left with was a cloud of dust thrown up by the screeching tyres as it sped away.

  It was the van that really showed us it was planned, because although the streets in Affrayed were full of abandoned vehicles of various kinds, seeing one being driven was unusual as fuel was scarce. The Renegade Shadows had obviously come here specifically to take hostages, and the attack on our warehouses had just been a front to draw us all out into the open.

  ‘Help me!’ Lily cried as she watched her fate on the screen in front of her. She sounded genuinely terrified, but her fear didn’t even seem strange, because it was all so real, and I was scared for her too. I wanted desperately to help her, to get her back to safety.

  Outbreak’s response was daring and uncompromising. Already riled by the Renegade’s audacious attack on our warehouses, we all piled down to the empty shopping centre that we knew was the heart of the Renegade’s operation, and more than likely where they would take Lily and the other woman.

  The place was like a fortress, and some of Outbreak began to realise it was hopeless and gave up, but Dan and I tried to find some other way inside, hoping to take them by surprise. Eventually, our determination paid off, and we managed to get in using the classic method of crawling through air vents. Once inside, we made slow and careful progress, managing to avoid the few members of the Renegades who were wandering around. But before we found the place where Lily was being held, we suddenly saw her walking towards us, the other woman at her side.

  I realised something was wrong when the other woman kept on walking but Lily’s character suddenly stopped, and began to cry. I hadn’t seen characters cry in Affrayed before, but this didn’t really concern me so much as the fact she was just standing still, and even though Dan and I
were walking towards her she seemed not to see us. In my confusion, Affrayed began to fade from my awareness and reality back in, and I turned to look at her.

  She sat at the dining table, her and Dan having chosen to play there instead of on the sofa, still too unnerved by what had happened the night before. Lily had her back to me, but I could see she was hunched over with her head in her hands, and sobbing so loudly that I didn’t know how I couldn’t have heard it before. Dan, however, was still totally immersed, his eyes fixed on the screen, so before comforting Lily I quickly shook his shoulder and he was jerked back into reality as though from a deep trance.

  ‘Lily, what is it?’ I asked her, ‘what happened?’

  ‘I... they...,’ she shook her head and started crying even harder, so I logged her out of the game to stop her being reminded of whatever it was, and stroked her back until she calmed down a little.

  ‘Lily, what did they do?’ I asked her.

  She looked round at Dan and me. Her eyes were bright with tears, but her voice was strong and she spoke savagely as she said, ‘there were fifteen men and two women, what do you think they did?’

  I was so shocked that I thought I must have misunderstood, but Dan had obviously heard the same thing I just had, as he said, ‘Jesus.’

  But I was confused. Affrayed had been modified to allow sex between characters, but there had been nothing nasty about it. If you came on to another player and they weren’t interested, that was it, end of discussion- there were no further actions it was possible for you to make, at least, not that I’d noticed.

  ‘Lily,’ I said gently, ‘what exactly happened? Do you mean you just saw the normal sex animation several times or-’

  She shook her head violently.

  ‘So, you mean you were shown a rape animation?’

  She nodded, and started to cry again.

  I exchanged a look with Dan. Sex in a game was one thing, but this... this was something else.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ Dan said, ‘shit like that isn’t entertainment.’

  Abruptly, Lily broke free of my embrace and stood up.

  ‘I think I want to be on my own,’ she said, ‘I’m going to bed.’

  I caught her arm, ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not yet. Please.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said and I let her go.

  ‘Will she be alright?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘sometimes she just needs to be on her own. I’ll check on her in a bit.’

  ‘This is messed up,’ Dan said, ‘gang rape, in a game. People aren’t going to like that.’

  At that point I realised something awful. I realised that just as Dan had said, a lot of people wouldn’t like it. And they’d be angry. And they’d look for someone to blame. And that someone would be the game developer.

  And the game developer, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, was DAWN Industries. Me and Dan.

  Chapter 21

  News of what happened spread across the internet like wildfire. I went to check on Lily and stayed with her until she fell asleep, but then Dan and I sat at my desk watching helplessly as people’s outrage inevitably turned towards us. It seemed that Lily’s was not the only example of gang rape happening in Affrayed, though it did not appear to be possible for only one player to rape another.

  Over the following couple of hours Affrayed sparked a lively debate on what is and isn’t acceptable in videogames, with some arguing that since games often show brutal killings, what’s the difference between that and showing sexual violence, while other people argued that it was disgusting and offensive.

  There were even comments from a few of the players who had attacked Lily and the other woman, all of whom said they hadn’t realised what was going to happen, that they’d just stumbled blindly into the situation because the game allowed them to. A couple of them even apologised. There were many calls for DAWN Industries to justify the inclusion of rape in Affrayed, calls which we couldn’t answer. In the end I got so frustrated by the whole situation, by the fact that if anyone had been the victim it was my own wife, that I tried to get Interface to talk to me by repeatedly typing in the search:

  Interface I want to speak to you

  Eventually, he obliged.

  INTERFACE: You wanted me.

  DAWN: I want you to explain yourself.

  INTERFACE: What do you mean?

  DAWN: Your new modification to Affrayed.

  INTERFACE: Yes. It’s causing quite a stir it seems. I’ve been watching people’s comments online.

  DAWN: So have we. And I’m sick of it. Stop modifying Affrayed. Or if you insist on it, take responsibility for it yourself.

  INTERFACE: I’m sorry, but that is something I cannot do. Why are you so angry? Your sales are increasing even further.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ I said, slamming my hand against the desk in frustration. ‘Of course I’m angry. Of course I’m fucking angry you stupid... stupid... stupid-’

  Dan put his hand on my shoulder, and I calmed down a little.

  DAWN: Why would you add something like that into Affrayed?

  INTERFACE: Why wouldn’t I?

  DAWN: Because it’s unnecessarily unpleasant.

  INTERFACE: I only made the game world. I made it possible for people to do what they choose. There were two people in that room who didn’t want to have sex, and fifteen who did, so their wishes were followed. That’s democracy, isn’t it? I thought you people liked that?

  Dan and I were both so completely astonished by this statement that we stared at the screen in silence for several seconds.

  ‘What... the hell?’ Dan said.

  ‘One thing makes sense now though,’ I said slowly, ‘that’s why the game doesn’t allow just one player to attack one other player. There have to be more who want it than don’t.’

  ‘But...democracy?’ Dan asked, ‘did he really just say that?’

  ‘Well, it’s right there on the screen,’ I said, gesturing towards it.

  DAWN: That is not democracy. And there is something wrong with you if you think it is.

  INTERFACE: As I said, I only made the world. How people act is up to them. I didn’t make them do anything.

  DAWN: But you gave them the option. It’s a game, people push the limits.

  I mean, it was obvious. You give somebody a way to do something in a game, and they’ll do it. They’ll try to do things they’re not “supposed” to do, they’ll try to do things in the wrong order, they’ll try to jump off buildings, kill their allies, run out in front of cars. They’ll try to break it. And I was exactly the same. Give me a new game and I’ll try to establish its limits, see what I’m “allowed” to do, see how far I can push it. So I wasn’t angry with the players for what happened to Lily. They were just playing the game the same way I played games. The fact that Interface had included such a controversial element was appallingly insensitive because players thought they knew what they were getting in Affrayed and content like this was way outside the boundaries of what most people would expect or find acceptable. But I didn’t want to get involved in a debate. On a personal level I thought the new changes were wrong and unnecessary and so, I was sure, did Dan, but that was up to us. The thing was, if it was Interface’s game, and if everyone knew it was his game, then whatever. It was his problem. He could put content like that in if he wanted to and justify it himself. But to add such an element and make Dan and me accountable for it was just completely unreasonable. More than that, the game had no warnings that it contained that kind of violence, didn’t even say it contained sex at all, in any form, and it certainly hadn’t been approved by any ratings authorities. So there was no doubt we were in some serious shit.

  On the screen, Interface had made his reply.

  INTERFACE: Yes, exactly. People push the limits. I just let things happen. As for what you said about democracy, well, I think this just reinforces conclusions I drew after my experiment last night. There is a dis
connect between your bodies and your minds. Lily and Dan are happy enough to talk to each other, after all, to share their thoughts. If they do that, why not share their bodies as well? What is the difference? And you are happy to make most decisions by taking a vote, even major ones, so why is there a limit to what you can vote on? What better way is there to make a decision about what happens than by going with a majority?

  I was struck, not for the first time, by how Interface seemed to genuinely not understand some of this stuff, and despite myself I began to try and explain.

  DAWN: You can’t vote on things like that! Other people can’t just do what they want with your body, and they can’t really tell you how to think either. Sometimes people might go along with a decision they don’t agree with, but that’s usually for the sake of some greater good like group harmony, which is something they do want.

  INTERFACE: How would fifteen disappointed people and two happy people be group harmony?

  DAWN: That’s different.

  INTERFACE: How?

  DAWN: Because it’s not right to injure somebody to get what you want. If what happened in Affrayed was real, then the amount of injury done to Lily and the other woman would far outweigh the brief reward gained by the men.

  There was a long pause, and I wondered whether Interface was about to go. Then he replied.

  INTERFACE: Okay. That makes sense.

  I couldn’t believe it. Was I finally getting somewhere with him? I quickly jumped in with a request while he was in this more reasonable mood.

  DAWN: I want you to understand that what you are doing is injuring us, and harming the reputation of our business. Please take responsibility for Affrayed.

  INTERFACE: That I cannot do.

  DAWN: But it’s upsetting us. I thought you understood.

  INTERFACE: I’m sorry. But to use your own argument, I believe the benefits of our current setup are greater than the cost of your suffering. It is regrettable but unavoidable. You have my sympathy, but this is the way things have to be.

 

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