Multiplayer

by John C. Brewer

  They began by going over everything Hector knew, starting with his first encounter with Mal-X and how he had cheated to get Vera. Sabrah listened quietly until he was finished. “So how do you think they found out Rada was Chaz’s? MegaSoft says Omega Wars is totally secure.”

  Hector shrugged. He didn’t know how they did it. But he did have a theory. “My guess is when MegaSoft processes the kill, there is some kind of security hole the bad guys use to download personal information. Some kind of hack. Like their slipgate.”

  “That would be a pretty big hack,” said Sabrah.

  Hector had to laugh. “Look at Windows Panorama. I heard it’s called that because your personal files are a panorama. I get an update to plug a security hole about three times a week. And Omega Wars was built on Panorama.”

  Sabrah nodded. “You got a point. But that doesn’t prove anything.”

  “And there’s one other thing,” Hector suddenly said, then stopped.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Forget it.”

  “Just tell me,” said Sabrah, shaking him. “You have to tell your lawyer everything. And you have to tell her the truth so she can lie about it later.”

  Hector laughed and relaxed more. “Okay, then. These three guys were at Chaz’s funeral. They kind of creeped me out. Like they were… studying us.”

  “So?” she said, probing for more information.

  Hector dropped his eyes, and told her they looked like Muslims. Sabrah shook her head. “You can’t hate everyone the U.S. fought in a war, Hector, because that’s pretty much everyone. You should cut people a little slack, especially Sanjar.”

  “He was praising the guys who blew up my dad! Do you know what it’s like to have your dad blown up. Not shot, Sabrah. Not stabbed. Blown up! To know they won’t open the coffin because it’s full of chunks in a plastic bag? If he thinks that’s okay, he’s the same as they are!”

  “I’m sorry I asked,” Sabrah said, throwing up her hands. “So, you think these Arabs – I’m sorry, these terrorists since they looked Arab – were doing something wrong at Chaz’s funeral? Or maybe, just maybe, they were friends of the family that didn’t bother to tell you they were coming.” She sat back and glared.

  Hector raised a fist and lifted fingers as he doled out the facts. “We got Muslim terrorists planning to kidnap the President. Chaz gets killed after he finds out about it. These Muslim guys show up at his funeral. Probably trying to see who Chaz’s friends are. They saw me. They saw you! They saw all of us, Sabrah!”

  “We weren’t wearing nametags, Hector. There were a lot of kids there.”

  “But they’ve seen our faces. They knew we were his friends.”

  The answer seemed clear to Sabrah. “So, call the cops.”

  Hector exploded. “They’ll throw me in a rubber room!”

  Sabrah nodded. “So, I guess that’s a ‘no’ on calling the cops?”

  Frustration began to set in. He’d lost Sabrah now. She’d believed him before, and now she didn’t. He cut to the chase. “So, are you going to help me or not?”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. Just stared into space. She had the biggest, roundest, brown eyes and when she was thinking, she twitched her nose in the cutest way.

  “I’m not convinced on your whole death-in-the game/replication-chamber/personal-information-theory,” she said slowly. “But you’re saying we need to find something – some evidence – we can take to the police or FBI to prove Islamic terrorists are using Omega Wars to plan an assassination attempt on the President. Is that basically it?”

  Hector nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll help. But on one condition.”

  “What is it?”

  “If I do this, whether we find something or not, you’ll delete your dad’s avatar.”

  Hector’s heart hammered and his mouth went dry, as he battled with himself. That was what he had left of his dad. It made him real to Hector. It made him alive. But… he wasn’t alive, and the character in the replication tank would never be him.

  “I think it isn’t good for you to keep him around Hector,” she said softly and took his hand. It was soft and warm; alive. “That’s why we bury our dead.” We have to let them go. He could feel her fingers linking with his, reminding him of what was real, and that the character he held onto in the replication tank wasn’t his dad, no matter how much he wanted it to be.

  Hector sighed, and agreed with a heavy nod.

  Sabrah squeezed his hand before letting go. “So what are we waiting for?” She slipped on the headset that monitored her alpha brainwaves and together they entered Alanya.

  Ω

  Veyron was stunned when she reached the roof of their base. “It’s huge!” she exclaimed, watching as Uber Pwn floated slowly over the east side of the peninsula where the terrain was flatter. “Uber Pwn, huh? GoreFiendHell’s real creative, isn’t he?”

  Hector breathed a sigh of relief that the Reavers were heading eastward to clean out any competition in the area. But eventually, they’d run up against the mountains where they hooked back around to the sea, and then, the Reavers would turn their attention to the west. To their base.

  “I wonder what that is?” Izaak said, pointing at the object on the top of the hill above their base. A ladder-like gantry lying on its side, that hadn’t been there before. The tunnel through the hill beneath it also showed signs of work. “Let’s go check it out.”

  A highway tunnel pierced the hill and they stopped at its base to examine Alkindi’s work. Apparently he was attaching huge doors to close it off. Maybe to make some kind of garage for storing vehicles.

  Once atop the hill, they examined the square-frame antenna tower on its side, at least a hundred feet long, with one end elevated atop a short tower. The other end sat on a curved length of railroad track so it could swivel around the elevated end. On a large, flat piece of steel welded to one side was written ‘V-2’.

  “Alkindi,” said Izaak, staring at it. “I don’t know what it does, but that guy’s really something.” They headed back to their base where the submarine lay waiting. It was time to head to the citadel.

  Ω

  “So Pappous discovered this?” said Veyron, emerging from the sub into the inky blackness under the peninsula.

  “In real life,” Izaak confirmed. “First man to set foot in here in over a thousand years. And I was the first one to ever come in here in Omega. Kind of weird, huh?”

  “Fitting, I think.”

  They tied the sub off and crept up the long, dark stair. When they got to the gate, Izaak moved it aside. “Any new powers?” he asked while they were crawling out. “Invisibility? Sight? Teleport? Fusion? Anything that would help us here?”

  “No,” said Veyron dejectedly. “I keep trying. And Thry –” She stopped suddenly and coughed.

  “Thry what?” asked Izaak.

  Veyron cleared her throat. “Sorry. Had a frog in my throat. Always just get scarobs. So why are you taking me with you if I’m so useless?”

  “In case we get attacked, there’ll be half as many bullets coming at me.” Which he didn’t mean. He’d stand in front of her and die without an instant’s hesitation in either universe.

  “I love you, too,” Veyron replied glibly, and they crawled out into the empty courtyard.

  “We need to head over to the resort,” Izaak said, pointing beyond the wall where they could see the dome of the mosque beside it. “The night Rada got killed, it didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but I saw a bunch of diagrams and lists on the wall of al-Nib’s room.”

  “Lists?”

  “Names. And maybe a diagram of the plan.”

  Veyron sounded doubtful. “Wouldn’t that be a little foolish to keep that sort of thing just laying around in the open?”

  “That’s the beauty of how they’re doing this,” Izaak replied. “Terrorists have to keep lists. And plans. They have to be organized or it’s just a couple of guys running around with guns. My
dad told me the best way to break up their networks was to raid a cell, get their laptops, follow the leads. These guys have lists, too, but if someone got their computers, all they get is a copy of Omega Wars. They’d have to search the whole world in OW to find their lists – and that’s if they knew they were here.”

  “Wow.” Sabrah set her controller down. He saw in her eyes she was finally beginning to understand. “I hadn’t thought about that. So, what would you do with it if you got it? It’s just names.”

  “It might be more. And what’s the FBI going to think when some suburban kid gives them a list of terrorist names? That sort of stuff is like, top secret.”

  Izaak led her up on the wall, where they crouched low and scurried to a spot to look down on the resort. A half dozen mercs were now standing out front and several more were tromping around the hillside.

  “Dang! I was afraid of that,” he muttered.

  Veyron looked, too. “Reavers. What about your refractive armor?”

  “Trust me. I used to be one of them. We’re not getting in that way.”

  “What are you going to do? You can’t just give up!”

  “I didn’t say I was giving up,” Hector snapped, then felt bad. Sabrah believed him and was willing to help. She’d even been willing to use her credit card to keep Izaak in the game. “Sorry. There are always alternatives. I need to talk to Alkindi.”

  Ch. 25

  “A mass driver,” said Alkindi, dwarfed by the size of V-2 as he stood beside the machine.

  “You mean like a MAC gun?” Izaak replied. “A magnetic accelerator cannon?”

  “You’ve heard of it?” Alkindi seemed surprised.

  “HALO,” said Izaak. “I read all the books.”

  “Look where it’s pointed,” Alkindi said. Izaak sighted along the bore, looking straight toward the peninsula. “We can bombard the inner citadel from here. It should only take a few salvos to reduce the walls.” Alkindi pointed to a pile of engines nearby. “Ammo.”

  “Pretty cool, huh?” said Darxhan, returning from a junk collecting mission with a barrel full of fusion cells. “But it’s going to be real power hungry. Drains ten fusion cells with each shot.”

  “So how do you build this stuff,” said Izaak, awestruck.

  “Math.”

  “Math?” Izaak questioned. “Your secret is math?”

  “Omega Wars has a very sophisticated physics engine,” said Alkindi. “Second-order, real-world physics.”

  “Second what?” Izaak and Veyron said together.

  “Real physics, but simpler. If you want to build something more complicated than a sword you have to design using actual engineering principles.”

  “You didn’t learn that in school,” said Veyron. “At least, not the school I go to. Whenever I ask Mrs. Reynolds what I’m going to use the math for, she just says, ‘You’ll use it everyday.’’’

  “I know, I hate that,” Alkindi laughed. “My dad’s an engineer. But he doesn’t do that anymore. He helps me figure out the physics and math so we can make a good design.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to show me some time,” said Hector, thinking about his own father. “Because I’m not convinced math is good for anything yet. I’m going to have to see it.”

  Alkindi whipped out a pad and started to write down symbols and equations, right there in the virtual world.

  “Not now,” Izaak laughed, and then wondered how Alkindi could write on something in the game. This was not the time to ask. “Right now, I need to get on top of that resort.”

  “Resort?” Darxhan and Alkindi said in unison.

  “The hotel up on the peninsula.”

  “Why?” Darxhan and Alkindi said in unison again.

  “What are you guys, joined at the brain? Because there are Reavers guarding it.”

  “I thought you said there weren’t any Reavers up there,” said Darxhan.

  “Well, there are now. And I got to get inside.”

  “And you’re not going to tell us why,” said Darxhan. “Are you?”

  “The slipgate’s up there. And some other cool stuff. Until then, just stay away from those Reavers. We can’t have any of you guys getting killed.”

  “Oh, this is about that crazy theory,” said Darxhan, doubtfully.

  “What theory?” Alkindi asked excitedly.

  “Can we just drop this!” exclaimed Izaak. “Deion, just shut up? You got me into a butt-load of trouble at the funeral.” Part of him wanted to pull out his arc sword and drive it straight into Darxhan’s chest.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

  “Look, I’ll tell you everything when it’s all over. Until then, don’t get killed. Promise me.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Darxhan. “Jeeze, you don’t have to get all weepy about it. I promise I won’t get killed by Reavers or those other dudes.”

  “Good,” said Izaak.

  “Now, show me where you need to go,” said Alkindi, and they marched together to the top of the hill and stared across the water toward the towering peninsula. Alkindi stood looking for a long time.

  “Can you do it?” Izaak finally asked.

  Alkindi nodded slowly. “Of course. With the quadratic equation …”

  “The quadratic equation?”

  “For gravity.” He paused. “And figure out a way to get you out after you’ve gotten in.” He stopped talking and stared a while longer, then said suddenly, “It will take a few days to get everything together. And I’m still working on my garage.”

  “We’ve got less than a week.” What had happened to the time? Hector suddenly wondered.

  “What’s the hurry?” asked Alkindi.

  “I just need to get it done.” Less than a week. Would there be enough time?

  “Well, it won’t take that long,” Alkindi assured him.

  Izaak looked up at the side of the mass driver. “Why do you call it V-2?”

  “Your sniper rifle, wasn’t it Vera? This is the world’s biggest sniper rifle: Vera-2.”

  But Hector hadn’t told Alkindi about Vera… God, Deion had a big mouth.

  Ch. 26

  The summit of world leaders began in Alanya in four days. Two weeks had magically turned into four days seemingly over night. Four days! Hector didn’t even know if Alkindi had found a way into the resort hotel because he wasn’t allowed to play Omega Wars. And none of his friends were playing because they were all working on their history reports. As he walked into class, Hector wondered if he’d be able to talk about Alanya at all or if he’d just babble incoherently and have a heart attack in front of everyone.

  Hector heard little of his classmates’ presentation. He worried about his own, instead. Worried about the summit. Worried about the Reavers finding their base and killing them all. And when it was finally his turn, he spent most of his time showing photographs he had taken while in Alanya. It wasn’t his best work. He delved briefly into the see-saw history of the area and presented his grandfather’s findings. And he gave an overview of the President’s visit, but he predicted failure of the summit, saying most of the people in that part of the world were not at all interested in peace. When he sat down, he knew he’d done a crappy job.

  Sanjar, with the last name of Zahedi, went right after him, the last report. He went to the front of the class, inserted a flash-drive into the computer, and began his slide show.

  “When the Western Roman Empire fell in 476,” he began, “Europe descended into anarchy.” What followed, he went on to explain, was known in the West as the ‘Dark Ages’. But the knowledge of Rome didn’t die everywhere, for even as the once vast empire fell into ruin, a new power was rising.

  At the center of this new power, he went on, was the city of Baghdad, where wise men from all over the world came to study, and learn, and share ideas. Baghdad, under the Islamic caliphs not only kept the flame of knowledge burning, but added to it. And were it not for these scientists, Sanjar claimed, the European Renaissance could not have happened, n
or the industrial revolution.

  Hector tried to ignore the presentation but it was the best of the day with lots of colorful pictures and graphics and even animation. Sanjar clearly knew the material and delivered it with a passion none of the other students could match.

  Mathematics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Law, Ethics, Literature, Philosophy, Sanjar continued with his well-practiced delivery, had all flourished under Islamic caliphs who respected knowledge and learning every bit as much as treasure. Algebra, the basis of modern mathematics, he told them, was an Arabic word. The very symbols used by the West, and the rules for using them, came from Arabia and even today were called Arabic numerals. The modern world, he pointed out, could not exist built upon Roman numerals and their clunky arithmetic. Certainly not computers.

  “And there is no reason,” Sanjar went on to say, “that Avicenna, Abu al-Qasim, al-Khwarzimi, Ishaq al-Kindi, and others, aren’t held in the same esteem as Isaac Newton, Nicholas Copernicus, and Galileo. Only the bias of western scholars prevents it.”

  Bias? Hector scoffed. If anyone was biased it was Sanjar! If these men had been so important, he was sure he would have heard of them. But Sanjar just kept going, launching into his “Very favorite!” Ya’qūb ibn Ishāq al-Kindī. What kind of name was that? Hector wondered. He was born in 801 AD in southern Iraq. Known simply as ‘The Arab Philosopher,’ he made important contributions to virtually every field of science and philosophy, including the invention of algebra. The Arabic word al-jabr, which later became algebra, was one of his methods for solving a quadratic equation. “Were it not for al-Kindi,” Sanjar claimed, “there would have been no Renaissance. No Industrial Revolution. And no iPods.”

  And were it not for Muslims, Hector said to himself, there’d be no terrorists, no 9/11, no IEDs, and his father would still be alive.

  “The very myth of the magical wizard,” Sanjar continued, as Hector rolled his eyes, “the Medieval sorcerer, comes from these men. The pointed hat and the robes aren’t European. And the wand –” He produced a long, sharp stick and motioned as he spoke. “A stick used to stir concoctions. A sharp tool to probe a dissection. A stylus to write in the sand.” He stuck it into the candle, let it char, and then drew a line on a piece of paper. “Even a pencil. The wand was to the Muslim scholar what the computer is to the scientist today.”