Down the Brink

by Lisa von Biela

  “Why are there two versions?”

  “Another part of the perk. Payoff collects a lot of stats and so it does affect performance a bit. The employees’ version is less intrusive, to keep performance at its peak. Besides, MoonPop employees tend to be much more adept at the game than the general public. So the in-house version captures a more streamlined set of metrics. We analyze them separately from the public metrics, so we can make more targeted adjustments to the gameplay.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “So, for the public version, call Payoff_External, and for the in-house, use Payoff_Internal. Pretty straightforward, but critical to keeping the game just challenging enough.”

  “Okay, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Good. That’s the only change I see. Everything else is spot-on. Great work, Zach.”

  “Thanks.”

  As soon as he got back to his office, Zach pulled up his code and made the calls as Russ instructed. Curious, he clicked on Payoff_External. What kind of stats did it gather that justified maintaining two different versions? Seemed like double work, as well as an opportunity for error.

  He frowned. The file wouldn’t open. Maybe the mouse slipped. He tried again. Still no luck. He right-clicked to check the file properties.

  The security level was cranked to the max. Only someone really high up could open the file to view, let alone make changes. He tried Payoff_Internal. Same thing.

  Zach leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands together. Odd to maintain two separate versions in the first place, but to lock them up behind max security was even odder. It’s not like they were doing anything all that esoteric. Telemetry was pretty mundane stuff, when you got right down to it. And even if management was worried about MoonPop employees blabbing proprietary secrets, they signed non-disclosure agreements as a condition of employment, and were paid quite well. Why anyone would want to violate the non-disclosure over something like this was beyond him.

  Besides, the modules were only called after a player reached a new goal. It’s not like they were part of the action, flow, or appearance of the game. And those were what made it so popular. So what the hell were these modules really doing that warranted this kind of security?

  Maybe Sammy would know something about it. Zach went next door to her office and tapped on the glass. Sammy turned, smiled, and waved him in.

  “Hey, you got a minute?”

  Sammy slipped off her headphones. “Sure, what’s up? Everything go okay with Russ?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. He told me to make sure to call these mandatory modules.”

  Sammy facepalmed. “Dammit, I forgot to mention those. Just got to be second nature to me, and I forgot you wouldn’t know to call them. Sorry about that.”

  Zach waved his hand. “No, don’t worry about it. He was okay about it, no biggie.”

  “Oh good. He’s pretty Zen about things. I think you’d have to do something really heinous to get on his bad side. Don’t know for sure if he even has one.” She chuckled.

  “So, they’re for deciding when the game needs to be adjusted to be harder or easier, huh?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well no, not personally. We’re supposed to call it, so that’s what I do. Simple call. Runs like a dream. Never had any problem with it. Whoever wrote it must have tested the hell out of it. I don’t think the version has changed in years, certainly not since I’ve been here.”

  “You’ve never tried to look at it, to see what it does?”

  “Nope. Never had a need. Besides, I’ve got plenty of other things to keep me busy. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I was curious why there needed to be two versions. And I couldn’t open either version.”

  Sammy’s brows knit. “Why not?”

  “Didn’t have clearance. Required the max level to open it. None of us have that.”

  “That’s strange. Like I said, it’s rock solid, but every piece of code needs maintenance sooner or later. If they have it set like that, I wonder who is responsible for maintaining it.”

  “Well, and why it’s set like that. Absolutely unviewable. Should at least be read-only, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, that would make sense.” Sammy shrugged. “But I don’t know that it matters. The stats must be accurate, if the comments posted on the MoonPop feedback page are any indication. Most think the game is just tough enough, and that’s why they love it.”

  “I suppose so.” Zach turned to go. “Well, I need to check in the changed calls so the testers can have at it.”

  “Grab a beer tonight?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Great. See ya in a while.” Sammy smiled, slipped her headphones on, and turned back to her monitor.

  Zach closed the door behind him and paused. Sammy seemed totally unconcerned about the Payoff module. More than that, she didn’t seem to have given it any thought at all. Maybe it was no big deal, but something didn’t feel quite right.

  CHAPTER 17

  First Wednesday in September, 2021

  Los Lobos, California

  Zach tossed his keys onto the coffee table and stretched his arms high overhead. Tonight, he could just relax, maybe even go to bed early for a change. No need to even make dinner. He’d had plenty of those turbocharged chicken wings at the Modernistic with Sammy and the gang. With nothing else pressing to do, a good long session of MoonPop sounded like just the thing about now.

  He flopped down onto the couch and picked up his player. Unusual to see a standalone unit in this day and age of web-based games and apps that played on whatever device you had handy. Kind of a throwback to the beginning days of gaming, only far more elegant-looking than the clunky old handheld devices he’d seen pictures of.

  They’d clearly taken a lot of care with the design. Nice form factor, just big enough to hold in both hands, perfectly weighted and balanced. A gorgeous, super-crisp screen using the latest glass and OLED technologies. And thumb controls that felt like an extension of his hands. All in a matte-black case that never showed dust or fingerprints.

  Still, it didn’t seem any faster than the web-based version, but maybe it was his imagination. Weird that MoonPop decided to spend the time and money to design a unit like that just for employees when the web-based version was already awesome. It was cool, nonetheless, and it made him feel sort of special to have something the general public couldn’t get at any price.

  If it weren’t a world of a bazillion apps that all ran on a bazillion devices, this little baby would be a hot seller. But the days of the standalone game were long gone. He shrugged and pressed the power button. The display lit up with the MoonPop logo and his most recent scores, then dissolved, picking up where he left off: about ready to blast through a new wave of MoonWarriors.

  His cell phone rang, breaking his concentration. “Crap.” He pressed a button to freeze the action and snatched the phone from his pocket. They’d released another code change to Testing, and it could be something he needed to deal with.

  “Zach speaking.”

  “Hello, Mr. Zach. How would you like to win a trip to Mexico? All you have to do is—”

  Zach calmly pressed End and put the phone away. He resettled himself and reached for his MoonPop game, then paused. Something inside him had changed. It wasn’t all that long ago when a junk call like that would send him into a rage. He’d yell and curse at the caller, then nearly slam the phone down in a red-hot fury. That didn’t happen anymore.

  He sat back a minute. Come to think of it, nothing much pissed him off like that anymore. His job at GSI must have been stressing him out way more than he’d realized. A bad job can do that. He thoroughly enjoyed his job now. Sammy was awesome to work with and hang out with. So were the rest of his coworkers. Not like those old assholes at GSI who thought they were still soldiers or cops or whatever authority figure they were before they started working there.

  It must be true what people said
. You spend so much time at a job, it damned well better make you happy most days or you should find something else. Life was too short to be miserable and let it color your entire life. Yeah, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t so tightly strung back in school, either. He was mellow. Good riddance to a shitty job.

  He readied himself for action and pressed the button. Twinkling stars hung in a blackened sky as his space pod sped along above the moon’s surface, faster and lower than it did in Level One. Bright, blood-red blobs—MoonPops—randomly shot up from the cratered surface below. He fired at them, racking up points for the ones he destroyed, losing points for the ones that bashed his ship.

  “Dammit!”

  Just as a sudden rash of MoonPops shot up on his right, a MoonWarrior ship came at him from over the horizon, splitting his attention. The ship was still out of the range of fire, and the MoonPops were coming fast and furious. He turned and nailed a bunch of them, then one of the bigger ones took a chunk out of his wing. His ship veered and pitched as he tried to compensate for the loss of control.

  The MoonWarrior ship moved in on him and fired while he was distracted, taking out the other wing entirely. Crash and burn.

  GAME OVER. TRY AGAIN?

  Zach took a deep breath, let it out. Should have steered away from that clump of MoonPops and worried about the MoonWarrior ship instead. MoonPops could only do so much damage, but the MoonWarrior could blow his ship apart with one shot. Like it just demonstrated. Amply.

  He braced himself, focused all his attention on the screen, and hit Play. He’d get to the next level if it killed him.

  CHAPTER 18

  First Friday in September, 2021

  Elias, Texas

  Gil lounged in his deck chair, soaking in the comforting warmth of the late afternoon sun. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, savoring the smoky aroma of grilling meat. His stomach growled.

  “The steaks smell incredible.”

  “They ought to. They’ve been marinating all day in my secret recipe.” Aggie stood by the grill, tongs poised.

  “What are we having with them?”

  “Beefsteak tomatoes from the garden. Finally had a few ripen. And some fresh corn. Sound good?”

  “Sure does.”

  Aggie’d outdone herself this year. How she managed to work all week and keep the yard looking like something out of a fancy resort—and cultivate one hell of a vegetable garden—was beyond him. By the time the weekend rolled around, he was usually pretty well spent from his work week, with just enough energy to take care of maintenance and repairs around the house.

  “Want a beer?”

  “Indeed I do.” Gil started to get up.

  “Relax! I’ll get it.” Aggie made a face. “Was that the doorbell? You weren’t expecting anyone, were you?”

  “No. Probably some door-to-door salesman. Rude to come near dinnertime.”

  “Stay put. I’ll check it out and get our beers.” Aggie set down her tongs and headed inside.

  Gil smiled. Not a day went by he wasn’t glad he married Aggie. She gave him the space and time he needed to work toward his dream of opening his own business. And on the weekends, she outright spoiled him. Life with her was everything he’d hoped for, and more.

  “What are you doing?” Aggie screamed from inside the house.

  Gil jumped out of his chair. Before he could take two steps, a swarm of black-clad cops in riot gear poured out of the house and into the back yard. Two of them dragged Aggie, already handcuffed, outside. Her face pale, she writhed and twisted, but could not escape their grip.

  “What the hell is going on? Let her go!”

  One of the cops clutching Aggie grinned, exposing a mouth full of shark-like white teeth with blood-red gums. He turned and jabbed a Taser into her ribs. She screeched and convulsed, arms and legs flailing like a rag doll. The cop kept the Taser on her until it began to smoke and the smell of burning flesh filled the air, then opened his jaws wide, wider…

  “Stop it!”

  Gil jerked awake, heart slamming against his ribs as he lay curled on his thin mattress, drenched in sweat. He pushed himself up and dangled his legs over the edge as he tried to catch his breath. At least once a week, this nightmare—or something like it—possessed him completely, then cast him aside like something broken, used up.

  The dream always started with some happy, idyllic scene with Aggie. Just to torture him, to remind him of what he couldn’t have. And then there were the cops. Always the cops—and always a small army of them—bent on destruction. Never an explanation. They just showed up and beat up on Aggie, on him, often both of them.

  The nightmares were bad enough, but waking up in the middle of the night was worse. Impossible to get back to sleep after being jarred awake in that cold, hard cell. And night was a terrible, treacherous time. He heard things. Things he wasn’t meant to hear, didn’t want to hear. Things that happened in prison in the small hours of the night.

  Gil cringed in the silence. The noises would start soon. He knew it. Silence never lasted long at this time of night. That was a given. It was the nature of the noises that he couldn’t predict. Sometimes, the sounds of desperate, illicit pleasure when a guard visited a willing inmate.

  Other times, when the visit was unwelcome, the terrified, soul-wracking screams of the debased. Screams with an intensity and an almost physical presence that passed through you, changing you forever on a molecular level.

  A cell door opened and slammed shut.

  “Please…don’t! No!”

  Sounds of a scuffle arose from farther down the cell block. Gil clapped his hands to his ears, but the screams refused to be shut out.

  Thunk.

  The words stopped. A weak, intermittent moan replaced them.

  Gil drew back against the wall as the moaning ramped back up to a drawn-out scream of pain, outrage, and helplessness. A gruff voice answered, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  Thunk.

  The gruff voice rose in a rhythmic series of wordless shouts, louder and louder. The screaming exploded to ear-shattering levels as it ricocheted off the merciless cement and steel inside the prison. Gil pressed his hands to his ears as hard as he could, but the horrible sounds drilled themselves into his brain.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, the shouting stopped and the cell door clanged shut. The screaming dwindled, replaced by moans and sobs of the most profound misery. Whoever it was sounded like he would rather be dead.

  Gil shuddered, experiencing the victim’s terror and humiliation almost as if it were his own. And wondering what he would do when his turn came.

  CHAPTER 19

  First Saturday in September, 2021

  Seco, Texas

  Aggie leaned over the bathroom sink and stared into the mirror. She gently touched the puffy, purplish circles that had formed beneath her eyes. Not enough sleep. Never enough sleep. And it was starting to affect her during the day. She forgot things. She couldn’t think clearly. Sometimes she spaced out for a couple of minutes at a time. Or it seemed like it, anyway. Her work was suffering, and so was her judgment. And poor judgment is what got her into this in the first place.

  She dabbed a little concealer beneath her eyes and took a step back. Better. Good enough, anyway. She put on some mascara, a little bit of blush, and a light layer of lip gloss. No need to overdo it.

  Gil’s toothbrush caught her eye. Unused for months now, it hung in its usual slot in the holder, collecting dust. Of course it was only a toothbrush, but it represented so much more. And it looked so…abandoned. Another reminder of how long he’d been gone, and how she’d failed him—betrayed him—when he must be so miserable and helpless. She should have stayed strong for him. Instead, she’d let her loneliness take control. She’d screwed up. Big time.

  Aggie fought back tears. Told herself she’d just have to redo her makeup if she started crying. It was a battle she fought most days. Some little reminder of Gil would set her off, thinking about hi
m in that horrible place. And about what she’d done.

  Seemed like he’d be in there forever, though his sentence was more than half over now. Only a couple of months left. But once he did come home, would things ever be the same? Would he figure out what she’d done…what she was still doing?

  Aggie turned away from the mirror and leaned back against the counter. When Gil first went in, she couldn’t sleep at all. Drove her crazy to think of him in that place, to be apart from him at all. Even more, without him beside her at night, keeping her safe, those memories came back and haunted her. The break-in, the gunshots. Her parents dead on the floor. So she tried the sleeping pills. They did work. But they granted her a fragile sort of sleep, laced with nightmares. And the pills left her feeling a little less sharp during the day, like she couldn’t think as clearly as before.

  She’d felt so alone, so terrified of facing those nightmares and memories night after night, and her thinking had been fuzzy from the pills. Then for the first time in months, she felt like another human being cared about what she was going through. Something inside her gave way, welcoming—demanding—physical contact.

  Aggie clenched her fists. If only she hadn’t given in that night. No matter why it happened, it was wrong and she’d made a horrible mess of things. She wanted to break it off with Lennie, but every time she tried, he somehow talked her out of it and they wound up in bed. Only to start the cycle over again next time she felt overwhelmed with guilt.

  She’d never cheated on Gil before, never even considered it. Now she’d gotten herself into a one-sided relationship and everything whirled out of control. Her nights were either spent with Lennie, or spent alone in her bed, wishing she had Gil back and that none of this had ever happened. Either way, she barely got any sleep these days.

  But she could wish all she wanted and it wouldn’t change a damned thing. Gil was in prison and she had given in and slept with Lennie that night. Now he claimed to love her. She didn’t love him. She was sure of that much. But if she wanted to be brutally honest with herself, at some level she did want him to love her. Regardless of his motives, Lennie had pulled her out of a very dark place. Before she got involved with him, she’d go home from work and stare at the walls, drowning in the silence, while she obsessed about Gil being in prison and imagined all the horrors he must be experiencing.