Down the Brink

by Lisa von Biela

  At least now she only did that on the nights she wasn’t with Lennie. Aggie reached for the bottle of Unisom on the bathroom counter and shook it. Only a few left. Maybe she should start taking them again on nights she spent alone. Try to get more sleep. But, with the side effects, would she end up with less—or more—brain fog than she had now?

  Lennie knew Gil was due back in only a couple more months, but whenever she brought it up, he changed the subject. As if by denying the reality he could hang onto her forever. He couldn’t really believe that, could he? Whatever else she’d done, she’d never given him any reason to think she would leave Gil for him.

  Sighing, Aggie turned and scrutinized her face once more in the mirror. What had she turned into? Someone she sympathized with—and someone she wanted to punish for being weak. She had to put an end to this. Soon. But not tonight. She turned out the light and went to answer the doorbell.

  CHAPTER 20

  Second Monday in September, 2021

  Los Lobos, California

  Sammy opened Zach’s door and poked her head in. “Hey, you coming? Everybody’s about ready to knock off and have a beer.”

  Zach hastily clicked an icon to switch his computer screen back to something innocuous. “Oh, I was just double-checking some code I wrote earlier.” He gave the most nonchalant chuckle he could muster, like he had nothing at all to hide. “I’m kind of on a personal challenge to see if I can get it through testing without any bug reports.”

  “You trying to make the rest of us look bad? The testers think they haven’t done their job if they don’t find something—even if it’s just a cosmetic fix.” Sammy tipped her head. “Come on. It’ll still be there tomorrow, and that code isn’t due in to testing until later this week.”

  “You go ahead. I won’t be much longer. I just have to wrap up a couple of things while they’re fresh in my mind, then I’ll catch up with you.”

  “Okay. I’ll save you a seat.” Sammy smiled and closed the door.

  Zach blew out a long breath. MoonPop was a huge improvement over GSI and its heavy authoritarian vibe. But sometimes it felt a little cultish in its own way. The daily get-togethers after work, for one thing. And everyone was almost unnaturally mellow and happy all the time. Worse, no one ever questioned anything. Even something with red flags all over it.

  Like the Payoff module. Russ’s explanation for the two versions had to be bullshit. The public MoonPop game ran plenty fast already. Even running them side by side, he couldn’t detect any performance difference between the public and internal versions. He only used his company-issued device to play because it handled so nicely, not because of any difference in the gameplay.

  And when he asked Sammy what she thought about the two Payoff versions, it was like talking to Teflon. She just shined it, no big deal, and went off in some other direction. Not like she was hiding something, but like she’d never once given it a second thought. Strange. She was usually so inquisitive and detail-oriented, the type who’d chase down a mystery nonstop until she nailed it. The perfect person to help him figure this out. But he didn’t want to involve her or anyone else quite yet. Not until he had a better idea what was going on. He could be chasing down a phantom, in which case he’d feel pretty damned foolish. Even more so if he involved Sammy and wasted her time. She’d think he was an idiot.

  Maybe he was just more cynical than his peers. Well, he had every right to be after what he’d been through. His whole world shattered that day when Raymond tried to hold up the C-store. His mother became so consumed with guilt after he was convicted for murder that she decided she was unfit to be a parent at all. One day she dropped Zach off with his favorite aunt, and he never saw her—or his father—again.

  The only way to survive is to depend on no one but yourself, take nothing at face value, nothing for granted. And right now, a lot of things did not sit right. Least of all the strange source code he’d been staring at when Sammy popped in. Despite the maximum-level access restrictions, he managed to hack into Payoff_External and Payoff_Internal early that morning before everyone else got in. And he still had no clue what he was looking at. The modules were written in a different programming language than the rest of the game, in a language he’d never seen before.

  None of it made sense, unless the whole idea was to conceal the true purpose of the modules. Why else would someone lock them down like that and write them in a different language? What could the modules possibly do that was so important to hide?

  Zach glanced at the clock on his computer screen. He’d better go join Sammy and the others at the bar soon so he wouldn’t be missed. Rarely did anyone work overtime, and he didn’t want someone to get curious about what he was up to.

  He copied the two Payoff modules onto a thumb drive, slipped it into his pocket for later, and logged off for the day, first making sure he didn’t leave temp copies of the hacked modules anywhere on MoonPop’s servers or his local disk drive. There must be a reason they were so secretive about those modules, so he’d better take no chances on someone finding out he was poking through the code.

  Zach rubbed his hands together. He loved a good challenge. How long would it take to crack the mystery of the Payoff modules—and what would he find? More than anything, he wanted to blow off hanging out at the bar tonight and get right on it. But he didn’t want anyone wondering why he wasn’t there and asking questions.

  CHAPTER 21

  Second Thursday in September, 2021

  Los Lobos, California

  Zach chugged the last of his Red Bull and set the empty can next to the others lined up behind his laptop. Stuff tasted like bull piss, but at least it kept him going after a full day at work, a couple of hours at the Modernistic with Sammy and everyone else, and several more hours in front of his computer at home.

  He’d done little else lately in his off hours but study the code in Payoff_External until he spotted patterns in the syntax that looked like commands. That much he had, but not much else. The language was so unlike any he’d encountered, even in school, that he still had no idea what it was doing.

  If he was right and those phrases were commands, there might be something out there that referenced them somehow. He typed the most frequently occurring phrase in quotes into the search engine. Maybe he could at least find out what language it was and go from there. He hit Enter and crossed his fingers.

  Pages and pages of search results came up. Zach started scrolling through the list. Much of it contained useless matches on the words themselves, which he expected. Too bad he didn’t have enough clues to focus the search better. He’d just have to grind his way through it all and hope something came of it. He kept scrolling.

  Zach rubbed his burning eyes and clicked Next yet again. Twenty-nine pages into the search results, persistence finally paid off. He clicked the link, hunched over the screen, and read as fast as his tired eyes could manage. The Payoff modules were coded in a language called BAL-II, successor to BAL-I. Apparently, BAL-II modules could be called within other object-oriented languages, while BAL-I could only be called within proprietary BAL-I programs.

  BAL stood for Behavior Altering Language.

  “Whoa. Never heard of that before,” he whispered.

  Zach saved that link and refined his search to home in on BAL-II. Right away he hit pay dirt, an article in some obscure programming journal from a few years back. He popped open another Red Bull and started reading.

  BAL-I was originally developed at Duke University about ten years ago to investigate whether interactive video games could be used to help people stop smoking. The games worked, even better than anticipated. But the project was silenced and shut down soon after. Why? Because Duke happened to be in the wrong state to work on anything that might discourage smoking. Big Tobacco threatened to cut its substantial endowment to the university unless the program was immediately mothballed. And mothballed it was.

  Until DARPA heard about it. BAL-I’s capabilities were exactly what the s
ecretive government agency was looking for. It resurrected BAL-I and used it to develop video games that were extremely effective in lowering soldiers’ inhibitions on the battlefield. That project went dark shortly thereafter, but there was some indication that DARPA funded its video game work by licensing BAL-I to a private, unnamed software vendor for its own use.

  And that’s what led to BAL-II. To monetize its investment in BAL-I, the vendor decided to develop and market BAL-II, a version of the language that could be called from other languages. That way, entire games or systems didn’t need to be coded in BAL-I’s more difficult syntax to capitalize on its behavior-altering capabilities.

  Zach ignored the time and took another swig of Red Bull. His mind raced with a million questions. Who else was using BAL-II these days? And for what? He shook his head. Doesn’t matter right now. Focus on Payoff. Why is MoonPop using it in Payoff? What’s it doing?

  If he could get a feel for the main commands and syntax, he could probably figure it out, or at least come close. He tried a different search, slogged through pages and pages of results, and finally found a poorly scanned PDF listing of BAL-II commands. He hoped it was reasonably accurate, because it was the only thing he could find even remotely close to what he needed. He pulled up both versions of Payoff on his screen and scrutinized them line by line. Fortunately, they were not terribly lengthy modules. In fact, Payoff_Internal was quite short.

  Zach grabbed a pencil and pad and started taking notes as he worked his way through each module, painstakingly interpreting the logic using the list of BAL-II commands and syntax he’d found. By four in the morning, he finished his analysis and sat staring at his notes, open-mouthed.

  Payoff_Internal was barely more than a shell. It did nothing but track how many times the player reached certain goals. That was it. Payoff_External was quite another story.

  Whenever a player reached a new level in the game, Payoff_External tallied it, and then it ran a routine that generated subliminal visual messages within the congratulatory graphics the player saw right after reaching the goal. The higher the level achieved, the longer the congratulatory graphics ran, and the more times the code delivered the subliminal messages. So the better the player, the bigger the payload of behavioral alteration. All delivered at the subconscious level.

  But what was the actual payload? And why did public users get it and not MoonPop employees? Zach finished another Red Bull and dug further into the syntax. Early morning sun began to stream through his apartment window just as the answer hit him.

  Violence. The subliminal messaging was designed to encourage the player—particularly the more proficient player—to commit violent acts.

  But why? And who would have authorized the Payoff module, let alone written it? Who else knew what it really did? Did Russ know anything, or was he just following orders to make sure the modules were called in the right places? What the hell had he uncovered?

  Zach tried some other searches, frantic to find out more about MoonPop, the company. Who started it, and why? There had to be an explanation for what he’d discovered. Maybe Payoff was just a way to make the game more addictive. The gameplay might be more appealing to those with violent tendencies, so delivering the payload at each new level made the player want to play even more. But where was the money in that? MoonPop was not only freeware, it was ad-free. He never did understand how they made their money.

  He kept digging. And there it was, buried several pages deep in his last set of search results.

  Roy Benetti, CEO of MoonPop, used to work for GSI, according to an old cached LinkedIn page. He started MoonPop right after leaving, in fact. With a shitload of capital from undisclosed sources, it appeared. You don’t just hit the ground running with a company like that, not like he did.

  Zach thought back to his time at GSI, and suddenly it all made sense. One of his responsibilities was to ensure the production data was backed up and checked for integrity on a regular schedule, and so he had full access to all of it. And there was this huge monthly expenditure for R&D. He never understood what R&D there would be for a prison, let alone why the amount would be so massive. It must have been payments to keep MoonPop in business.

  Because MoonPop helps keep GSI in business.

  By increasing violent tendencies in its most devoted players, MoonPop ups the odds those players will commit violent acts of one sort or another and eventually wind up in the prison system.

  And that’s why MoonPop employees are given versions of the game without the behavior-altering payload.

  Zach stumbled out of his chair, his legs stiff and numb from hunching all night in front of his PC. He glanced at his watch. Time to wake up and get ready for work. How the hell was he going to walk in there this morning like it was just another day, knowing what he knew now?

  CHAPTER 22

  Second Friday in September, 2021

  Los Lobos, California

  Zach skipped sleep entirely and got to work way early so he could sneak in without running into anyone. He hustled into his office and shut the door, hoping no one popped in for a good long while yet. Calling in sick would only delay the inevitable. Besides, if he did it for more than a couple of days, someone would ask questions. The fewer stories he had to make up to cover his tracks, the better.

  He plunked down at his desk and went through his usual morning ritual of logging on, checking email, looking at testing status, and other normal things. But nothing felt normal today. Anything but.

  And he didn’t even know the whole story yet. Who else at MoonPop knew what he knew—or more? None of his co-workers had given the slightest indication that they knew anything about what Payoff_External really did. Not once. Not even Sammy seemed the least bit concerned or intrigued, even when he’d directly asked her about it. The rank and file probably had no clue, likely by design. Someone in management had to know, but how high up? Just Benetti? Or more?

  Zach stared blankly at his computer screen as the ramifications of what he now knew came into sharper focus. It was ingenious, really, the more he thought about it. The for-profit prison model was a real moneymaker as it was. But it depended on getting inmates to fill the beds. What better way to boost profits than to influence people to be aggressive, to be more likely to commit a violent crime that would land them in prison? And to do it in such a sweeping, yet insidious, way?

  It all fit. Everyone at MoonPop was mellow because they got the neutered version of the game. He’d chilled out, too, compared to how he’d been when he was working at GSI. It wasn’t the job after all—at least not entirely. He’d become more and more aggressive and impatient because he’d been playing the public version of the game—and getting better at it. He clapped his hands to the sides of his head, terrified and disgusted to think they’d been messing with his mind without him knowing it.

  A quick knock at the door, and Sammy stuck her head in. “Didn’t see you come in today.” She frowned. “Whoa, dude. Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

  “Oh, uh…I was up with some stomach trouble last night. Didn’t get much sleep.” He patted his stomach and gave a weak smile. “Maybe too many of those turbocharged chicken wings.”

  “I snarfed a bunch of them last night and didn’t have any problems. Maybe you got a bad one.”

  “Could be. I’ve got a few things I really need to get done to stay on schedule, but then I think I’ll go home early and rest. I’m sure I’ll be back to normal by Monday.”

  “Is there anything you need?” Sammy averted her eyes. “I could, you know, bring something by your place if you needed it. Soup, or medicine, or something.”

  “That’s really nice of you to offer. No, I’ll be okay. I think the worst is over. Just need to lie down and rest.”

  Sammy nodded, flushed a little, and began to back out of the doorway. “Well, okay then. Take care of yourself. Call me if you change your mind, and let me know if I can help with anything so you can get out of here sooner. You really do look awful.” />
  “Thanks, Sammy. Appreciate it.”

  Zach quietly let out a long breath. That was interesting. Now that he thought about it, Sammy’d been hanging out mostly with him at the Modernistic these days. And vice-versa. Like something had started between them, but snuck up on the both of them. He’d never met anyone quite like her. Someone who loved tech as much as he did, and was damned good at what she did. Smart, funny, and beautiful…

  He shook his head. No time to think about that now. She bought his story, and that’s what mattered for the moment. Maybe he’d let her in on this at some point, but not yet. Right now, he needed some time alone, away from everyone at MoonPop. Monday would roll around soon enough, and he had a lot to work through before then.

  He turned to his PC and pulled up some code he’d been working on. At least if anyone else stopped by, it would look like he was being productive. He still needed to wrap his head around all this, and figure out what he wanted to do about his discovery.

  He could start with the press. They might not believe him at first, but he’d saved a file with the links to everything he found last night. It was all there on his PC at home, if they had the balls to run with it. But whistleblowing was a crime, so maybe the press wasn’t such a good idea.

  Calling the police was a no-go. They were in cahoots with the courts and the jails and probably quite happy with the status quo. Even if they accepted his story as fact, they’d never do anything about it. Besides, he couldn’t even look at a cop to this day without remembering how they yelled at Raymond and beat him before cuffing him and dragging him away. Right in front of him and his mother. He’d never, ever forget that.