Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  Dan leant over and read it, shaking his head, and quoting the choicest bits. ‘DAWN Industries is a money-grabbing bunch of cunts... cashing in on... what does the rest of that say?’

  ‘I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think it’s supposed to say; cashing in on the sexual frustrations of people who can’t get a fuck in real life.’

  Dan laughed, ‘classic,’ he said, ‘because of course none of the thousands of people playing Affrayed could possibly be getting laid, right?’

  ‘Well, of course not,’ I said, ‘that’s crazy talk.’

  ‘What does it say?’ I heard Lily’s voice and we stopped laughing immediately, looking round at her in surprise. She was standing in the doorway, eyes puffy and red, face bare of any makeup and her hair in a loose, messy plait. For the last couple of hours we hadn’t seen her and I’d assumed she’d fallen asleep.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, ‘it’s just somebody being stupid.’

  I tried to put her off but she walked over to the desk and read the comment over my shoulder. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said, and I could tell she was on the verge of crying.

  ‘Lily, it’s okay,’ I said, ‘don’t get upset over it, that’s what people like this want.’

  ‘Look what they called the two of you,’ she said, ‘look what they said about DAWN. And you were laughing about it.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to admit it’s kind of funny,’ I said, ‘it’s just total nonsense, I mean-’

  Lily stared at us both like we were crazy, her cheeks flushed bright red. ‘Are you not seeing the same thing I’m seeing?’ she said, ‘They’re saying you’re deliberately trying to profit from this controversy, that the only thing you care about is the money!’

  I read it again, eyebrow raised. ‘I think exactly what they’re saying is up for debate,’ I said, ‘It’s probably the most poorly written sentence I’ve ever seen.’

  By my side Dan sniggered, and Lily just exploded. ‘This isn’t funny!’ she cried, ‘who cares how it’s written or what exactly they meant. Everybody’s saying the same, they all think you’re either just completely insensitive and disgusting people, or that you’ve done it as some sort of publicity stunt. Or both. That’s what everybody thinks about you now, Nick, and you and Dan are laughing about it!’

  I stood up and put my arm round her shoulders, ‘it wasn’t like that,’ I said, ‘I promise you, me and Dan don’t think this is funny at all, we’re both really upset. But when we saw that just then, it’s like, well, you either have to laugh or you cry.’

  ‘I hate it,’ Lily said, ‘I hate all of this, I can’t stand it...’ with this she let out a strangled cry of pain and frustration. ‘I want it to stop,’ she said, ‘I want it to stop, I want it to stop.’

  She buried her head in her hands and sank to her knees on the floor, and seeing what a state she was in Dan got up as well and came to join me where I sat beside her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Lily,’ I said, ‘I know this is really horrible.’

  ‘We had a journalist come to our flat earlier,’ Lily said. ‘This is where we live, Nick, and people are turning up at our door asking why you made a game about gang rape.’

  ‘I know, Lily, I know. It’s awful.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she said, ‘you didn’t do this. You’re not the sort of people they all say you are.’

  Suddenly, Dan’s phone started ringing on the desk and he got up to turn it off. But before he sat back down on the floor beside Lily he looked at the computer again, pausing for a moment to read some of the newer posts further down and I couldn’t fail to notice the way he froze for a second , then quickly closed the page.

  ‘Dan?’ I said, but he gave me a warning look and made a point of flicking his eyes down at Lily’s bowed head.

  ‘You need to apologise or something,’ Lily said, oblivious. ‘You have to make them understand that you don’t think this new stuff in Affrayed is okay.’

  ‘No,’ I said softly. ‘We can’t do that. If we apologise or make any kind of reparation we’re admitting responsibility. You understand that, don’t you? We can’t act like we put that content in and then a few days, weeks, or months down the line discover what Interface is and then change our story and say we didn’t put it in. It’s more honest to say nothing.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel honest.’

  I looked at Dan over the top of Lily’s head and the look on his face did nothing to make me feel any better. But I hugged Lily tightly, determined to at least make her think the two of us were strong. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘this will be alright. I’ve told you before when everything seemed hopeless that things would sort themselves out in the end. And I wasn’t wrong.’

  ‘You mean when I was ill?’ Lily said, ‘because right now I wonder whether it was even worth me getting better if this is what our life has become.’

  …

  Lily stayed with us for a little while, but she couldn’t settle and before long went back to the bedroom again, though I doubted she was sleeping.

  ‘That was intense,’ Dan said when she’d gone.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, looking at me closely.

  I sighed. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m really worried about her. I’m not sure she can handle this much stress.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dan said, ‘it’s tough on her. But it’s tough on all of us.’

  ‘What did you see just then,’ I asked him, ‘when Lily was upset and you got up to turn your phone off?’

  Dan looked uncomfortable. ‘Ah... look, mate, I don’t think you should read it,’ he said.

  He didn’t stop me though and it didn’t take long to find what he was talking about.

  Nick winterbourne and dan avery- I hope your wives/girlfs get attacked for real see how you like it

  I took a deep breath. I knew I had to expect stuff like this. I knew people felt like we’d done wrong and I could sympathise with them wanting answers. But this.

  ‘Nick, I really wouldn’t read too much into it,’ Dan said quickly, ‘they’re just trying to stir it up that’s all. I mean, we’ve had people coming on and saying they think the new changes are hilarious just to try and piss everyone off. The whole thing is totally out of control.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I don’t care what people say about me. They can say whatever they want. But for people to threaten Lily-’

  ‘Nobody is threatening Lily,’ he said, ‘they have no idea if we even have other halves, I mean, I don’t, do I? For all they know possibly neither of us do.’

  ‘What if she sees it?’ I said, ‘what if she thought people out there believe she deserves to be hurt?’

  ‘She won’t see it,’ Dan said, ‘it’s on our forum, we’ll take it down. But Nick, I think we do have to do something. People... proper people I mean, not the people writing that kind of shit, they want us to at least give some sort of explanation for all this. It’s not unreasonable of them to want some answers.’

  ‘I know that. But what the hell are we supposed to tell them? That Interface did it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dan said, ‘I think that’s exactly what we have to say.’

  Chapter 24

  I was far from convinced.

  ‘Dan, nobody is going to believe us.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘It’ll make them hate us even more.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got any choice.’

  We fell silent for a while, weighing up the potential consequences of speaking out, and then my eye came to rest on a present Lily had given me back in the early days when I was making DreamChase; a large shiny black pot with two cacti in it- one like strange, writhing fingers fuzzy with yellow spines, another a pale green column entirely obscured by long white hairs. She’d given me the plants when I’d been having a tough few weeks and my confidence was wobbling. She’d written a note to go with it, and I still had it tucked underneath the pot. I knew what it said practically by heart, but I found myself taking
it out and reading it.

  Nick, I know you’re struggling right now, and I know it’s hard sometimes when you work by yourself and everything gets out of perspective. But I promise you, DreamChase is a great idea. Other people think it’s a great idea. Dan thinks it’s a great idea. You know it’s a great idea really, deep down, so don’t give up. Just think, one day it will be finished, and the whole world will see how wonderful it is too. I know you can do it. I believe in you, and I’m already so proud of you. Lily xxx

  ‘What’s that?’ Dan asked.

  ‘It’s something Lily gave me ages ago,’ I said, ‘read it if you want.’

  I handed it to him and he read it quickly, his eyes darting over Lily’s big, swirly handwriting. She’d drawn hearts and funny big-eyed creatures all round the outside as well, reminding me of all the little beetles she’d created for Cactustrophe.

  ‘It’s sweet,’ Dan said. He folded it up and gave it back to me.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She was always writing little things like this. She’d leave them on my desk before she went to work in the morning so I’d see them when I got up.’ I slipped the note back underneath the pot of cacti. ‘I can’t see her writing me anything like that again now.’

  Dan thought about this for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was hard, filled with barely suppressed anger. ‘You know what gets me?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How much this scandal has made people buy Affrayed. It’s like you don’t need to make something good to get a ton of sales. Stuff doesn’t get in the news because it’s good. We could have made a piece of shit game, whacked a load of controversial content in it and everyone would go on and on and on about it and people would buy it just to see what all the fuss was about.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. But not necessarily. And in any case, that’s not what we want to be known for.’

  Dan laughed bitterly. ‘That’s a shame, because it kind of is what we’re known for now.’

  ‘Affrayed isn’t a shit game though. People bought it because it was good, at least originally. Perhaps now people are buying it because it’s all over the news but it didn’t start out that way.’

  Dan rested his head in his hand and stared down at the desk. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  He didn’t look up. ‘It’s just... with the way things are at the moment, I don’t even feel like I want to make games anymore.’

  ‘Because of Affrayed?’ I said.

  Instead of answering he slid a book towards him from a pile at the end of the desk. It was one of Lily’s, about the meanings of different plants and flowers, which I was pretty sure was not his cup of tea.

  ‘Dan?’ I said.

  I watched him flick through the book in a blur of brightly coloured photographs, his eyes fixed resolutely on the pages. For a while I was puzzled, but then I realised that saying he didn’t want to make games anymore had upset him far more than he wanted to let on, and he was looking at the book because he didn’t want me to see his face. Eventually, though, he paused on a page about the significance of different coloured roses and glanced round at me.

  ‘I just want things to go back to how they used to be,’ he said. ‘I know it was a nightmare back then at times, but I just want to be working on Affrayed again, our version of Affrayed. I want things to be normal.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘so do I.’

  Abruptly, he closed the book and threw it back on top of the pile. ‘I don’t like feeling that I don’t want to make games anymore or carry on with DAWN,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do anything else either. I feel sort of... paralysed. Like I can’t go forward and I can’t go back.’

  Reluctantly, I had to acknowledge that I knew what he meant. I’d barely thought about making any more games since the whole mess started, but now I did, I found I didn’t like the idea much at all, though I liked the thought of doing anything else even less.

  ‘Do you think we’d feel any differently if we told people the truth?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. But how much worse can things actually get?’

  …

  An explanation...

  In light of the latest controversy over Affrayed, we feel we cannot remain silent any longer. I know many of you want us to explain our reasoning behind including certain content in Affrayed, but that is difficult for us to answer. Many of you also want to know how it is possible for a company consisting of only two people to create and run an online game as complex and ambitious as Affrayed. That we can answer, and I think the answer is what many of you have long suspected: DAWN Industries did not make the version of Affrayed that you are all playing.

  We wish we’d come clean right from the start, and never let things get this far, but we were concerned that nobody would believe our story, especially as we still don’t really understand ourselves. But for what it’s worth, here is everything we know about where Affrayed came from:

  For the past couple of years we really have been working on a game called Affrayed. On 16th February 2013 we were working on it late into the night, until suddenly all our work disappeared- not just what we’d done that night but all the work we’d ever done on the game, and every single one of our backups was similarly blank. Then all our files returned, but more besides, and we realised that we’d somehow been given a completed version of our game that followed our original idea but was better than we could ever hoped to have made it ourselves. We know how unlikely that sounds. We don’t understand it either, but two years into development and with all our original work gone, we made the decision to release the version of the game we had been given.

  We had no idea that Affrayed would then evolve into an MMO, or that it would be updated to contain new features such as sex, or the most recent addition of rape. Dan and I have always had a pretty simple aim really- to make games that give people an enjoyable, and hopefully an exciting, experience, and every element we include is supposed to further that aim. For that reason, we would never make a game that included something like sexual violence, because we just want to give people simple, fun escapism. Yes, there was some violence in our original version of Affrayed, but it fell firmly within the boundaries of what would be considered normal for a game, and was nowhere near as explicit as many. A few of you have said why not include sexual violence in a game and have even defended us, while others have been upset and offended. The point is, we never meant to cause a reaction like this. We didn’t want to start a debate. We don’t want to make games that might upset, disturb or anger our players, we just want to make games that people enjoy.

  But while we have sympathy for anybody who has found the content of Affrayed distressing, and we accept full responsibility for releasing the game in the first place, we cannot give any justification of why this content is included because we didn’t make it ourselves. If we had known what the game would become, we would never have released it. We deeply regret what has happened and we offer our sincerest apologies for our dishonesty and for all the harm that has resulted from what was a thoughtless, selfish decision. We don’t want to make excuses or try to make you feel sorry for us, but to give some context to our choice to release Affrayed let us just say that our situation was difficult- money was tight, we were exhausted, our work was affecting our families, and the thought of starting again from scratch on Affrayed after we lost our work was simply incomprehensible. The choice we made was the wrong one, we were just too tired and under too much pressure to realise it at the time.

  The questions you’re asking now are all questions we’ve asked over and over. We couldn’t understand why anybody would go to the effort of making a game then let us take all the money and the credit for it, though believe me, neither has brought us any joy. However, since the evolution of Affrayed into an MMO we have been contacted by somebody representing the organisation that actually made the game. We have very few details about them apart from that the game is apparently being used for research. We
don’t even have any names, though the person we have spoken to claims to represent something called the “Network”. Honestly, we are as sceptical as you and we know it sounds unbelievable. We are desperately trying to find out more, but having very little luck, and if anybody reading this knows anything, please, get in touch with us.

  We’re so grateful for all the support everybody has given us over the years and I know many of you must feel betrayed and disappointed in us. We really hope that you can forgive us, and we promise that we are trying as hard as we can to make things right.

  Nick Winterbourne & Daniel Avery

  DAWN Industries Ltd.

  Chapter 25

  ‘Interface will take it down again when he realises,’ Dan said when I’d finished uploading the statement onto the homepage of our website.

  ‘Yeah, I know. But he won’t find it before at least some people have read it. And we can email it to people as well, or phone them up, or tell them face to face. He can’t stop us doing that.’

  But yet again, I’d underestimated Interface, because as soon as I opened up our website to check our statement was on there, it already seemed to be gone. All I was looking at was the stuff we’d put on there to promote Affrayed, stuff which now made me feel sick.

  ‘Where is it?’ Dan said, ‘did you definitely put it on-’

  His words were cut short as the screen turned black.

  INTERFACE: I cannot allow you to say that.

  DAWN: Fine. Then I won’t tell our story online. I’ll go straight to the press. I’ll answer their calls. I’ll tell it to the next reporter that comes to our door.

  INTERFACE: You’re frustrated. I understand. But it will affect my research if people know about it. I have removed rape from the game in any case. It cannot happen any longer.

  DAWN: I couldn’t give a shit about your research. Tomorrow Dan and I are going to tell anyone who will listen about it.