“But you could be so useful to others! Your knowledge is priceless! Surely…”
“Oleg, Oleg,” Balabanov interrupted me, shaking his head in reproach. “If my ‘digital’ existence became widely known, trust me, I would have more problems than it’s worth.”
“So, why are you telling me this? Aren’t you afraid that I—”
“I’m not, no. Pour more wine. It’s going to be a long conversation. Hear me out.”
First came the backstory. Andrei told me the history of the Sphere of the Worlds project. It was his magnum opus, a work he had started in his youth and launched only in his old age. Back in the twenties, a group of enthusiasts inspired by the prospects of VR, began working on the concept of a unique game that was sure to conquer the world. Along the way, of course, the company also took on other projects, which enabled them to stay afloat. He did not tell me the details, but I remembered hearing that a lot of Balabanov’s research in VR and AI was top secret and even used in secret government projects. The team spent many years developing the theoretical as well as the practical concept of Sphere; it was a labor of love, something they put all their hopes and dreams into.
Finally, almost everything was ready. The only thing they still needed was money, which would enable them to buy expensive equipment that could maintain virtual servers and powerful AIs, hire staff, and, most importantly, support the procedural generator, the cornerstone of the game. The Magister told me, the operation of the system required super expensive components used in secret military developments.
And so, they started looking for an investor. They tried knocking on many doors, an all but complete project in hand, but to no avail. Few people had the money necessary for the game, especially since Balabanov did not want to sell his pet project, instead, wishing to stay on as co-founder.
At last, riding the wave of the latest phase-out of oil, one of the high rollers of the market became interested in the promising proposition. Total immersion VR games were growing in popularity across the world. It was Agasyan, who had just invested in manufacturing VR capsules.
A new VRMMO would be an interesting marketing solution, increasing demand for them exponentially, and eventually, he and Balabanov came to an agreement. Sphere of the Worlds was on.
Alfa test, beta test, market launch... The game was a smash hit. A month after launch, Sphere took the top spot in all rankings, leeching off subscribers from the veterans of the genre. The number of players skyrocketed. Three months later, they had to double the number of staff, add processing power, and move part of the data to cloud storage. In a year, the profits generated by Sphere of the Worlds broke all previous records, and became Agasyan’s main source of income.
That was where the problems began. It was a whole lot of money, and as you know, the bigger the sum, the less you want to share it.
“Originally, we had the following deal,” the Magister told me. “Our company got a third of all profits, and the rest went to Agasyan. When the amounts grew beyond a certain point, I received the hint that we were taking too much. I replied that it wasn’t fair,” he continued. “That was a mistake. They weren’t kidding. Then, the plane crash happened. Do you get it, Oleg?”
“You mean…”
“We were killed! It was no accident! Agasyan gathered our entire team, paid for our ‘vacation’ and chartered a flight for us. We had no idea he was capable of something like that! He wanted to get rid of everybody all in one go, and take Sphere for himself! The plane exploded in the air.”
“Seventy people died. The legal nuances—our contracts, our shares, our successors—were easy to handle, with Agasyan’s resources. Now, Sphere of the Worlds was officially one-hundred percent his. And it was all his doing. That Armenian is a sly one, I’ll give him that, if not for one small ‘but’.” I was quiet, not wanting to interrupt him.
“Sphere is a very complex project written in a unique code. Some parts of it—I won’t go into details—aren’t known by anyone in the world because we invented it ourselves. The new developer team won’t be able to figure out our code. Agasyan didn’t foresee that. By killing us, he made Sphere uncontrollable.”
“I hear you, Andrei,” I said. “Thank you for your trust. But there’s one thing I don’t understand: why are you telling me all this? This kind of information is dangerous. Maybe it would be better for me not to know it.”
“Oh, Oleg. You still don’t get it, do you? And you’re now stuck in the same boat as me,” replied Balabanov, smiling. “You made your choice back when you picked up this sword.”
“What choice?” I said indignantly. I liked the whole murky story less and less with every word. “I had no choice! What the hell is this weapon? Who are the Seven? Can you explain?”
“Well then, it’s revelation time,” the Magister smirked again. He stood up, threw some more firewood into the fire, and poured us some more wine. “Yamato, the new lead developer, would have given much to hear this information. Thankfully, he doesn’t have access to this location.”
“Have you ever heard about the Flooding of Taerland?” He asked me, and after my negative reply, he continued, “There was once a world called Taerland, rich in resources, one of the first worlds of Sphere, in fact. It was controlled by an alliance called Pandorum—have you heard of them? The players of that alliance managed to procure a few Soul Eater weapons and had the ‘genius’ idea to populate the Astral Plane and level up the Eaters, while they were at it.” Balabanov snorted in amusement.
“The guys took a fundamental approach. They carried out a complete genocide of Taerland’s NPCs, annihilating one faction after another. They moved the souls into the Astral Plane, which, by the way, we had never designed as a place for players and NPCs to live... But people will always find a way!”
“In short, a large-scale farm of NPCs via Soul Eaters triggered the procedural generator to try and correct the balance. The results were...incredible. We never expected anything like that. A rebellion broke out in Taerland, NPCs fighting back against the players. All players, not just Pandas, were declared enemies and mercilessly killed. The NPCs banded together, created a powerful faction, and raised a giant—and I’m not exaggerating—a giant army of undead. Millions of zombies and skeletons, thousands of liches, arch-liches, and other unholy creatures. In just a few days, the horde destroyed all the player castles in Taerland, burying them under piles of bodies. It was horrific. Even Pandorum pissed their pants. Playing in Taerland became impossible, as the world was controlled by NPCs, and players were killed as soon as they logged in. We had to intervene due to the massive number of complaints sent by players stuck at respawn points.”
“It was one of the few times the procedural generator has been stopped. We had to manually remove the players and the undead army... In the end, we realized that it was impossible to fix it—and so, we flooded all Taerland, destroying all rebelling NPCs... After that, the world was closed, and we started thinking.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with the Seven and their weapons,” I remarked.
“Don’t interrupt! I was just about to tell you that part. So, events in Taerland demonstrated that we couldn’t control the procedural generator. But what if tomorrow, it goes postal, and the NPC rebellion continues in other worlds? We could lose the game.”
“So you can’t correct its work?”
“No, only slightly adjust the results of generation! But when it comes to global changes, it becomes impossible! We needed a manual override. The main feature of Sphere is the unpredictability of its procedural generation, despite the templates. It’s a very complicated system, a progressive associative AI, one of the most powerful in the world. It can do the work of thousands of writers and game designers. It’s thanks to this system that the worlds of Sphere are so diverse and detailed. But its power made it dangerous.”
“We started thinking and developed an access key, a way to override the procedural generator and switch it into manual mode.”
“The Key!” I exclaimed. “Quality: Key! So the Seven...”
“Are not an update,” the Magister nodded. “Seven Brothers is a protocol, an emergency access protocol to the procedural generator. The weapons of the Seven are Keys that allow us to switch on the override.”
“It seems kinda excessively complicated.” I said.
“We couldn’t do it in a simpler way! It’s not an ordinary random generator, where you set the conditions and turn it on and off. It’s an adaptive AI that thinks a thousand times faster than any ordinary human. You don’t know how it works, and the new developers don’t have a slightest idea either, but I do. It’s a completely autonomous system. I won’t tell you how we came up with it. You don’t need to know. Even turning the beast off is a problem. If it detects a threat, it copies its algorithms to cloud storage.”
“Sounds like the stuff of science fiction.”
“It does! I did say it took us a long time to think up this solution. We created seven items, making it an integral part of the procedural generator’s code, guaranteeing that it won’t be able to destroy it. When these items, taking the form of the weapons of the Seven, are assembled, they can control the generator in manual mode and disable or enable its features, no matter where the AI’s algorithms are stored. It’s our emergency access, in the event of a Taerland-like incident. That’s why the weapons are so powerful: to help the bearer of a Key survive in hostile situations.”
“Why seven Keys? Why not just one?”
“Because giving one person complete control over procedural generation means giving them power over all of Sphere. I wasn’t working alone, I had friends and associates, and that’s what we decided: only the seven of us together could make the right call. One can betray, waver...but not all of us. So that’s why the Keys only work as a set.”
“I have a question!” I interrupted him. “What if I abandon my account? Break the capsule?”
“After a month-long inactivity, the Key will return to its secret repository. True possession will be nullified, and the weapon will become available to a new character,” Balabanov shrugged.
“By the way, that’s why we made our digital copies NPCs. Originally, we planned on them becoming the Seven Brothers, the keepers of the Keys,” he went on. “Thing is, if the generator goes crazy and starts destroying players, only NPCs have the chance to survive and active the Keys.”
“So you’re not the only one who’s ‘digitized’?” I asked. “Your team is also here? Did I take the sword intended for one of your colleagues?”
The Magister fell silent for a while, pondering his response. Finally, he spoke.
“Unfortunately, not everything went to plan. Disaster struck unexpectedly. Yes, six of my associates had digitized copies inside Sphere, but the preparation of Seven Brothers wasn’t yet over. We didn’t launch the protocol in time. Some of the copies were in sleep mode, some were scattered God knows where. We had no time to activate the Keys and take them from their repositories. I was searching...tried searching for them when I realized what was going on. I couldn’t find anyone. Then I made a decision, a hard one, but I didn’t see any other option. I still don’t.”
“I made the Keys available to players,” the Magister looked at me bluntly. “I needed people to become the Seven Brothers. You’re the first who has been fortunate enough to find a Key.”
“Why do you need it? Why launch the Seven?” I asked. “Did the procedural generator go crazy again?”
“God no!” Balabanov made the sign of a cross dramatically. “Perish the thought! But don’t you see what I’m getting at?”
“No. I mean, I really don’t!”
He told me, and what he said blew my mind so much that I could not help but believe him straight away. Something like that could not be faked. And with that came the feeling that it was no prank, but a real story, albeit a messy one, and I had plunged into it head-first — even having this amount of information was risky...
“And to do this, I need access to the generator,” the Magister continued. “By gaining power over Sphere’s main AI, I’ll be able to take Sphere away from Agasyan. And then, with this resource at my command, I will be able to fulfill my plan!”
“That’s an interesting story,” I remarked. “Not sure how much of it is true, but you’re clearly keeping something back. For one, why are you so sure that the players who find these Keys will want to help you? Case in point, what prevents me from going to the admins and telling them this story? I suspect they’d give me a good reward for information like this!” The Magister showed me his tanned dry hand with fingers spread wide.
“Why am I sure?” He said softly and bent his thumb.
“First, you’re smart. Even if the admins listen to this story and don’t declare you crazy, what do you stand to gain other than a small ruckus? I foresaw this situation, so they won’t be able to hurt me, even if they buy into the ‘digital copy of Balabanov’ story. It’s not real life. They’re playing on my field, by my rules.”
“Second, your greed. What could the admins offer you? A small reward? They’ll throw you a bone, like a dog, and forget you. I’ll give you no more and no less than a part of Sphere’s possible income, and that’s more that six zeros after a digit. In case of a successful outcome, of course. Oh, and I’ll tell you something right away. I did my research on you, Oleg. You came to Sphere to earn money. As the creator of the game, I could help you make millions!” His middle finger joined two others.
“Third, conscience!” Balabanov said. “That barely researched substance unpopular in our time. Still, I believe that justice will prevail and the villains will get theirs! That my death and the deaths of seventy more innocent people will be avenged. I believe in human decency, Oleg, that people will want to help me, because I’m on the side of the good.”
“As for the fourth, well, it’s your basic sense of self-preservation. This information’s very dangerous, Agasyan is no fan of jokes. What do you think he’ll do if rumors about him arranging the plane crash start circulating? I wouldn’t want to risk that if I were you.”
“There’s also the fifth point,” he said, resuming his monologue. “Trust me, I can convince hardballs. There are ways...”
“One thing doesn’t add up,” I said. “You told me that the Keys were part of the generator. Then why did the law of Balance work against my sword, and the faction war start?”
“That’s on you, Oleg,” the Magister laughed. “Why did you identify the Key? All of its affixes work well without identification, hadn’t you noticed? An unidentified item is a great way to cheat the system, and hide its true power.”
“Then why did you leave the option to identify it at all?”
“Because all items in Sphere are created based on templates, otherwise, they can’t exist at all. Keys are no exception. It’s just that they were created by us...for us, which is why some things might not be obvious.”
Putting it lightly, I was blindsided by all the information that had just been heaped on me. Still, that did not strip me of the ability to think logically. A digital copy, even a 100% likeness, still wasn’t the same person, only an associative AI imitating them. And it was programmed to fulfill a certain task. Astoundingly, Balabanov seemed to read my thoughts.
“I know you’re thinking that a digital copy, an AI, is building some global plan... And essentially, you’re right. But where does consciousness being and end? Read Takiyami in your spare time. I am the Andrei Balabanov, who climbed the ramp of the vanished airbus. I think like him, act like him, and act out his plans! Because I am him.”
“I’m...sorry,” I said. Over the past few minutes, I kept getting messages that somebody was pressing the emergency exit button on my capsule. It was an option used to wake a person up from VR.
“I’m being called away,” I said. “I need to log off.”
“Go!” the Magister said, waving his hand. “Consider what I have said, and then give me your decision. If you help me, you won�
�t regret it!”
* * *
Having switched off the neutral interface, I found myself in the real world, looking at Alena’s worried face behind the half-translucent carbon fiber. My wife was clearly trying to pry open the VR capsule using impromptu tools. She had never done anything like this before, which meant that something very important was happening.
“Oleg, sweetie, someone came for you, and you’re stuck in there, not answering! I’m scared! I told the concierge not to let them in!”
“Wait, honey, one step at a time.” I said, cupped her agitated face and blowing at it softly.
“Who came? I don’t get it.” Still, I felt restless. Carefully, I looked out from behind the curtain and saw a big black Turbo parked opposite the entranceway. A tough guy in a suit was smoking next to it; judging by his coal black hair, he was of Japanese descent.
Alena told me that the car had arrived half an hour before, and that a girl and two scary-looking unfamiliar men had started calling us via videophone. They were asking for me, using my full name, very official-sounding. Still, they weren’t cops, as the concierge had refused to let them come in without Alena’s permission, and they had not shown any ID.
Yeah, I really needed to treat old Ramil with some drinks. His vigilance was impressive. I changed some of my clothes, splashed water on my face, and called downstairs, asking to let the uninvited guests in.
They appeared at the door a few minutes later. The girl was slender and long-legged, dressed in white and blue and sporting a trendy hair color, burnt charcoal, made popular by Aimi Akada, and the guys were broad-shouldered and serious-looking, both wearing dark blue suits. One was clearly Asian, the others looked Slavic. I noticed that one of them was carrying a thick folder with a company logo: two intersecting circles with a sword running through them. The same gold badge was pinned to the lapel of the blonde’s golden jacket. Whoa! Sphere of the Worlds staff?
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