Multiplayer

by John C. Brewer

“He’s dead,” said Deion. “bin Laden’s dead! They killed him!”

  “Dead?” Hector and Sanjar said together. Hector went on. “No body. No pictures. Nothing.”

  Then Deion frowned. “Are you trying to tell me Osama bin Laden is alive and playing video games?”

  “I don’t think it’s just a game anymore,” squeaked Sanjar.

  “Don’t you see,” Hector added, suddenly convinced he had been right all along. “None of these guys even have to be in the same country. He can control his whole terrorist network, planning, training, communication, and never have to show his face outside a hole! No telephone calls to trace. No emails. It’s completely secret even though it’s being played in public. Hiding in plain view. It doesn’t even have to be bin Laden. Just his character.”

  Deion turned slowly to Hector, his rich brown skin suddenly pale. “What have you got us into, Hector?”

  “I tried to tell you! I tried to tell you guys!”

  “Then why’d you kill Alkindi?” Sanjar asked.

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Hector said painfully. He pulled the list of names down and moved to the next one, a plan with diagrams and writing.

  “It’s the whole blasted thing!” hissed Deion. “Their whole plan!”

  Izaak took all the documents and slipped back out of the room. But when he reached the hallway, he heard voices. His motion detector showed someone was coming his way from down the hall. There was only one way to go: back into the room. Izaak shuffled into one of the side rooms and stood in the shadows with his refractive camouflage activated.

  “A diversion would be helpful right about now,” said Hector.

  “Vera-2!” said Sanjar. “That’s what we built her for. And we’re already here!” He and Deion grabbed their controllers with relish.

  From the side room, Izaak watched al-Nib, Mal-X, and a figure clad totally in black, enter the room. Was it possible Osama bin Laden was still living and on the other end? The mastermind of nine-eleven. Responsible for thousands of deaths. Responsible for Chaz’s murder. Was he still alive? Or was someone using his name? It hardly mattered.

  They stopped and looked around the room in shock.

  “Where are the plans?” bin Laden said. They all stared at the wall for an eternal second.

  “Did you take them down?” questioned Mal-X, Vera slung across his back.

  “Of course not!” bin Laden shot back. “They are the key to everything!”

  “We were only gone a few minutes,” said the other figure. “Whoever took them must be close by.”

  “It’s that infidel, Ersatz,” growled the terrorist leader. “He knows. Find him. Bring him to me. I will cut his balls off and feed them to him! The whole world will see what happens to those who cross me.”

  “Guys,” said Hector, feeling sick and instinctively moving his hand to cover himself. “Diversion. Now!”

  Next to V-2 lay a pile of engine blocks Darxhan had collected from the junkyard. G0dd4rd lifted one up and loaded it into the breach, then calculated a new trajectory. It took a moment for the weapon to charge, and then there was a distinctive whump. The engine block tumbled out of the muzzle and disappeared in the distance.

  The black clad character was just about to enter the room where Izaak was hidden when a loud crunch rocked the hotel. Hector’s controller buzzed angrily.

  “What was that?” snapped the black clad figure.

  “Mal-X! “ barked bin Laden. “Alaqsa, search the hotel. I want that little bastard!”

  Sanjar and Deion stared at Hector in horror. “It’s what I’ve been saying all along!” Hector cried.

  “Hey guys, what’s up,” said Shah.

  They all whirled around to find Shah and Helen watching them.

  “You’re not supposed to be playing that,” Helen said bossily, to Hector.

  “And weren’t you guys were fighting a few hours ago?” added Shah.

  “Ancient history,” said Hector, and turned back to the screen. “Guys, a little help.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Sanjar, and fired another engine block.

  “Hey, that’s cool,” said Shah. “Did you build that? Wow!”

  Back in the hotel there was another crunch and Mal-X came flying back in. “Someone is shelling us!”

  “What? You mean with artillery?”

  “Who are those guys?” asked Shah.

  “I don’t know!” said Mal-X. “They are coming from the west. Come up on the roof and you will see!”

  “This is out of hand Mal-X,” growled bin Laden. “Get Izaak Ersatz. Get him! Get him now!”

  “I’ll contact GoreFiendHell,” Izaak heard him say, as they disappeared out the door. “Have him mobilize.”

  “Hey!” said Helen, “Alanya! That’s where we went on vacation.” She and Shah settled onto the couch to watch.

  “Isn’t Izaak Ersatz your character, Hector?” said Shah. “Sanjar’s been playing with you guys, right?”

  Hector paused and looked at Sanjar. “Right,” he confirmed, then Izaak took the opportunity to bolt down the stairs of the resort, hoping to put some distance between him and bin Laden.

  “You know,” said Sanjar after Izaak was half-way down, “you could probably have killed al-Nib, that other guy, and Mal-X and gotten Vera back just now. And the slipgate.”

  Hector’s gut twisted into a knot. Sanjar was right, but Hector had been thinking about bin Laden, not al-Nib, and the consequences of dying in the game. “Too late,” he hissed through clenched teeth, and ran outside where the Reavers were watching helplessly as one-ton engine cases rained down on them. Another dark streak appeared in the sky and came hurtling in. The Reavers shot at it, but it did no good. The massive Caterpillar engine block smashed into the fourth floor of the hotel and collapsed a whole corner of the building. Hibernating characters spilled out like larva from a broken ant-mound.

  “Direct hit!” cried Hector.

  “Cool!” hissed Shah.

  “I love it!” yelled Deion, and they pounded knuckles.

  “I made you a diversion,” said Sanjar. “Use it! Get in that Bison. Get out of there!”

  Izaak saw two Reavers climbing into a Bison, so he hopped into the back and manned the heavy machine gun. The Bison roared out of the compound and turned onto the road that led down to the harbor. As soon as they were clear of the resort, Izaak turned the gun and assassinated both characters, tossed out their bodies, and took the wheel.

  “I remember that!” said Helen, as Izaak roared past crumbling structures along the road. “We walked up that road to get to the castle. God, it was so hot!”

  “I remember all you did was complain,” Hector quipped. “Like you’re doing now.”

  “Shut up squirt, or I’ll tell Mom you’re playing.”

  “I’ll tell Mom you were over here when Shah’s parents weren’t home, fatty,” Hector shot back

  “Sanjar, did you know he’s not supposed to be playing?” asked Shah.

  “If you say anything, I’ll tell Mom you had a girl over,” Sanjar replied, without missing a beat.

  “Would you pansies please just shut up!” Deion snapped. “We’re trying to save the world here.”

  Izaak careened down the road, doing his best to keep the quirky-handling vehicle between the curbs. The road wound all the way to the back of the peninsula where the wall came to the very edge of the cliff, before bending back toward the mainland.

  The meandering road gave the bad guys time to regroup, and when Izaak passed the hotel on the lower road, gunfire rained down on him. The vehicle began to smoke and became more difficult to control. But Hector had played enough to know the limits of the equipment and at the last second, leapt away. The Bison exploded almost as soon as he hit the ground.

  But gunfire was still erupting above and he scrambled behind one of the high, thick walls that crisscrossed the peninsula. For the moment he was protected from their fire but knew they’d be coming for him. From where he crouched, he could see
downhill to the harbor and the Red Tower. Uber Pwn floated in the harbor below, but he knew it could be airborne in an instant. “Uber Pwn!” he cried, and pointed, though Sanjar was sitting only a few feet away.

  “I can’t hit it down there,” said Sanjar. “V-2 doesn’t have enough elevation.”

  “Didn’t your math account for it?” From the way Sanjar talked, math could do anything.

  “The math accounted for everything except your sight-seeing tour! I told you we needed a way to get you out.”

  “Why don’t we take the Stryker?” said Deion.

  “You think we can make it?” said Sanjar.

  Hector didn’t even know what they were talking about. “What’s a Stryker?”

  “You remember that truck I picked everyone up in that night? It’s had a few modifications since then.” Sanjar paused for a second, then said, “We need to contact everyone we know who plays Omega Wars. Give them the gate replicator coordinates. I’m going to put it in the tunnel. Our base isn’t really very defensible. We’re not going to get out of this without help. Shah, grab a controller. Helen we –”

  “I don’t play moronic games,” she scoffed. “I’ve got better things to do.”

  Hector knew about a dozen screen names off the top of his head and started punching them into an invite. Deion knew about as many and started adding them to his own window. Sanjar had more because it was on his system. And Shah rattled off names like they were friends of the family. He knew so many that Helen glared at him and he returned her look with a timid “What?” She just rolled her eyes. They all sent invites telling their friends to bring more friends for the biggest Omega Wars battle of all time. They just didn’t tell them it was real.

  At the last, Hector called Tyra and begged her to join. She refused, so he put Deion on the line and he told her it had something to do with Chaz.

  It made her angry but she joined anyway and a moment later, T-Reg emerged, combat-ready, from the Spartan’s lair. “Now, what’s this all about?”

  Ch. 30

  Sabrah highlighted the name ‘Veyron’. All she had to do was press ‘x’ and the character would be deleted forever. A worthless character in a game that had become too painful to play. She checked her phone again. Hector had sent three text messages in the last five minutes and she’d opened none of them. Her finger began to depress the button that would void Veyron but she closed her eyes and stopped.

  Instead she sent a message to Thrylos. Hopefully, he would get it and meet her in their usual spot – an abandoned villa on a hill overlooking the city. She could even see it from Google Earth. So far no Reavers had come that high up, Thrylos had taken care of the thorks, and scarobs didn’t bother empaths, except her of course. They’d met there a half-dozen times now, Thrylos teaching her like a Greek philosopher and Sabrah sitting at his feet, meditating. It was calming, yes, but so far she’d been completely unable to access anything empathic.

  But there was no Thrylos when she arrived, so she climbed the stairs to the porch on the second floor and stood looking over the city. The Reavers were out as usual though Uber Pwn was sitting in the harbor on large floats. They had begun transforming the city to their own liking, collecting useful tech and clearing out pests.

  Sabrah didn’t mind seeing packs of thorks eliminated. Even though they existed only in the digital realm she loathed them and found herself wishing MegaSoft hadn’t rendered them in quite so much detail. But she had a soft spot for the scavenger robots, if only they would leave her alone. Not that they were particularly little or very cute. But while thorks would go out looking for a fight, scarobs wanted only to work. If the real world ever became able to build such things, she thought she might like to have one. At least they would be predictable and controllable – unlike certain people she knew.

  Even now, the memory of Izaak coldly watching as Alkindi was killed, flushed her with rage. Hector seemed so kind and understanding. And then, he went and did that. But she knew he could have pulverized Sanjar easily in the fight, but had held back. Whatever else he might be, he wasn’t a cruel person. But he’d set up Alkindi. She wasn’t ready to forgive him.

  “Hallo!” came a voice from below.

  “Up here,” Sabrah called, and she heard footfalls on the stairs. A moment later, Thrylos appeared.

  “You said you wanted to talk?” he said in his unusual accent.

  “I have a friend,” she said. “I think he may be in trouble.”

  She told him about Izaak but left out the part about terrorists wanting to kidnap the President. He listened quietly until she was finished.

  “All too often we make decisions based on what we think, rather than what we know,” Thrylos replied. “We may think the actions of someone make no sense. Only when we take the time to get inside that person do we see their actions are perfectly understandable from their point of view. If they are not crazy, then we can try to either correct their point of view, or accept them for what they are. That is the definition of a friend.”

  What was at the center of Hector’s rage? The death of his father? The injustice of that death? Or the people who’d killed him? Very different things. She knew what was at the center of her own fury. Her father’s betrayal and destruction of their happy home. Her mother renouncing what she’d always said was right. Or was it simply because they ignored her?

  A flag popped up on the edge of her screen. It was an invite from Hector. She ignored it.

  “Is everything alright?” Thrylos asked.

  “Yeah. It’s nothing. I’ve thought about what you said. About not living my parents’ life, but my own. About actively trying to find the good that comes every day, instead of dwelling on the bad, that’s usually the same thing every single day.”

  “And does it help?”

  She thought for a minute. “I think it will help in my relationship with my family.” She laughed bitterly. “But I still can’t access any kind of decent powers. Still can’t help my friends when they need it.”

  “Why don’t you try again,” he said. “I’ve been watching you when we meet, and I have an idea. It’s a little crazy, but I think you should try.”

  “What do you mean, try?”

  “Try to access your empathy. Concentrate. As we have been discussing. I want to see what happens.”

  “What do you think is going to happen?” she said.

  “The same thing happens every time.”

  “I know. Nothing.”

  “No,” he said. “Not nothing. Something always happens. The same thing always happens. We just never connected it. Go ahead, try. I have an idea.”

  So she put her character into her empathic pose. For Veyron, it was standing still with her arms at her sides, chest thrown out, back slightly bent, and her face turned to the sky. When she did this, the game added wind which blew her hair back making her look like a crazed witch. But back on her couch, Sabrah closed her eyes. She tried to remember everything Thrylos had ever told her, then tried to empty her mind and forget it all. Abandon the anger she had allowed to fill her soul. Accepted Hector for what he was. There was a rushing sound like wind through trees, with branches and creaking and rubbing together. She blocked it out and tried to concentrate harder than she ever had in her life. But nothing was happening. She was sure of it.

  Then she opened her eyes and screamed. The porch was covered with scarobs and the grounds below were a sea of mechanical, segmented insects. And they were all staring at Veyron.

  Ch. 31

  Izaak huddled against the wall, not more than a few hundred yards downslope from the collapsing resort hotel. Gunfire poured down like rain. He’d already been here too long. He checked his power level. Refrac would pull it down faster but he didn’t really have a choice. So he turned it on and faded into the background. Then hugged the wall following the road. The first thing he needed to do was get beyond the outer wall. Then, he could meet up with the Stryker somewhere in the city.

  Hector’s screen was now halved,
since Shah had logged in. Shah had brought a merc into the game and punched in Sanjar’s coordinates. But he didn’t ask if there was a way out until he was already in Alanya. He wasn’t happy with the answer, but now he was stuck.

  Others started slipping in as well. The Germans arrived. Then c’Irith. Then more friends of Hector, Deion, and Sanjar.

  “We’re fighting the Reavers here,” Darxhan said, loudly to those gathered around him. “If they win, they’ll take over all the slipgates in Omega Wars!” Everyone started shouting at once and went on complaining about the Reavers until Darxhan finally calmed them down and started giving out combat assignments.

  “Take over the slipgates,” Sanjar laughed. “You’re a genius.” Deion beamed.

  “Take over the slipgates?” T-Reg said in stupefaction. “You said this had something to do with Chaz!”

  “It does,” Darxhan told her quietly. “I’ll tell you in a few minutes. Let us get things organized first.”

  “Uber Pwn’s in the air,” said Izaak. From his position over the harbor, he watched as it slowly lifted from the water and rose into the sky.

  “I’ve got a few more shots left,” said G0dd4rd. “As soon as it comes around the peninsula, I’ll lob an engine block at it.”

  “It’s not going to do any real damage, you know,” said Deion.

  Sanjar beamed. “But it’ll be so much fun!”

  “Are you guys going to come get me?” asked Izaak.

  “Let me take a few more shots,” said G0dd4rd. “It’ll get Uber Pwn moving this way so we don’t have to drive right underneath it!”

  The massive ship moved slowly forward, and G0dd4rd waited until he could see the whole hull like a giant Frisbee coming at them. Then he calculated a firing solution, adjusted the elevation of the barrel, and launched a huge, green block. It tumbled through the sky as if thrown by a titan and slammed into one of Uber Pwn’s wings.

  “Direct hit!” Izaak exclaimed.

  “And I just told them exactly where we are,” replied Sanjar.

  Uber Pwn turned slowly until it was coming straight at them. It aimed its guns and started firing. And unlike Sanjar’s engine blocks, its shells were explosive.