Best of British Science Fiction 2016
Page 8
An abject victim of the tech-mediated magical worldview, she crept to the manager’s office – as cowed as if somebody had pointed a bone at her. The door was shut; she knocked. A voice she didn’t know invited her to enter.
Reuel was not present. A young man with blue, metallic skin, wearing only a kilt of iridescent feathers, plus an assortment of amulets and weapons, sat by her sponsor’s desk. His eyes were a striking shade of purple, his lips plum-coloured and beautifully full. His hair, braided with more feathers, was the shimmering emerald of a peacock’s tail. He was smiling calmly, and he was slightly transparent.
“Oh,” she said. “Who are you?”
Three particularly fine feathers adorned his brow: blue, red and grass-green.
“I am Reuel’s friend, Pevay. You are Chloe. I am to be your Spirit Guide.”
“That’s great,” said Chloe, looking at the three fine feathers. “Thanks.”
“You’re wondering how I can be seen ‘in the real world’? It’s simple. The house is wified for DW holos.” Pevay spread his gleaming hands. “I am in the game right here.”
“I’m not getting thrown out?”
“Having proved yourself in battle, you are detailed to seek the legendary 56 Enamels; a task few have attempted. These are jewels, highly prized; said by some to possess magical powers. I could tell you their history, Chloe.”
The hologram person waited, impassive, until she realised she had to cue him.
“I’d love to know. Please tell.”
“They were cut from the heart of the Great Meteorite by an ancient people, whose skills are lost. Each of the 56 has a story, which you will learn in time, Chloe.”
This time she recognised the prompt. “Okay. Where are they now?”
“Scattered over the world-map. Do you accept the quest, Chloe?”
Chloe hadn’t emphasised her interest in the alien. She’d talked about sharing the whole game house experience. But she wasn’t sure she believed her luck. I’m looking at Reuel, she thought, glumly. The whole secret is that Reuel likes to dress up in NPC drag, and he’s going to keep me busy on a sidequest so I can’t ruin the team’s gameplay. Then she remembered the seventh shadowy character, at the meeting on the shore.
Her heart leapt and her spine tingled.
“I accept. But I don’t know if I’m staying, and it sounds like this could take forever?”
“Not so. I know all the cheats.” Pevay grinned. His teeth were silvery white, and pointed. He had a lot of them. “With me by your side you’ll be picking them up in handfuls.”
She went down to the Rumpus Room alone. The basement was poorly lit, drably decorated and smelled of old sweat. Thick cork flooring swallowed her footsteps. Her return to anthropology’s Eden had morphed into a frat-house horror movie or, (looking on the bright side) a sub-standard episode of Buffy. The map was gone. The Battle Boxes lay on the table, all personalised except for one. Glaring headlamp eyes, a Day of the Dead Mexican Skull. A Jabba the Hutt toad, a Giger Alien with Hello Kitty ears. A dinosaur crest, and a spike from which trailed a lady’s (rather grubby) crimson samite sleeve.
Invisible beings watched her. Elders, or ancestors. Scared and thrilled, the initiate donned the padding, lifted the unadorned Box and settled it on her head. She tried not to make these actions look solemn and hieratic, but probably failed–
She stood in an alley between high dark dirty walls. She heard traffic. As the synaesthetics kicked in, she could even smell the filthy litter. Pevay was there in his scanty peacock regalia: looking as if he’d been cut and pasted onto the darkness.
Who are you, really? she wondered. Reuel? Or some other gamer in NPC drag, who’s been messing with Reuel and his friends? But she wasn’t going to ask any questions that implied disbelief; not yet, anyway. Chloe sought not to spoil the fun.
“Are you ready, Chloe?”
“Yes.”
“Good. All cities in the Darkening World are hostile to the Frag except one, which you won’t visit for a long time. To pass through them unseen we use what’s called the Leopard Skill, in the Greater Southern Continent where your people were formed. Here we call it fox-walking. You have observed urban foxes?”
“Er, no.”
“You’ll soon pick it up. Follow me.”
To her relief, fox-walking was a game skill she’d met before. She leapt up absurdly high walls and scampered along impossibly narrow gutters, liberated by the certainty that she couldn’t break her neck, or even sprain an ankle. Crouching on rooftops she stared down at CGI crowds of citizens, rushing about. The city was stuffed with people, who apparently all had frenetically busy night-lives. She was delighted when she made it to the top of a seventy-storey tower: though not too clear how this helped them to “cross the city unseen”.
Her Box sidebar told her she’d won a new skill.
Pevay was waiting by a tall metal gantry. The glitzy lights and displays that had painted even the zenith of the night sky were fading. Mountains took shape on the horizon. “That’s where we’re going,” he said. “Meteorite Peak is the highest summit.”
“How do we get there?” She hoped he’d say learn to fly.
“Swiftly and in luxury; most of the way. But now we take the zip-wire.”
The Jet-Lift Terminal was heaving with beautiful people, even at dawn. Chloe stared, admiring the sheen and glow of wealth: until one of them suddenly stared back. A klaxon blared, armed guards appeared. Chloe was grabbed, and thrown out of the building.
Apparently her guide had no cheat for humans with idiotic reflexes. It took her a while to reach the departure lounge, where he was waiting at the gate. A woman in uniform demanded her travel documents. Chloe didn’t know what to do, and Pevay offered no suggestions.
“Guards!” shrieked the woman. Pevay reached over and drew her towards him. He seemed to kiss her on the mouth. She shrivelled, fell to the red carpet and disappeared.
Hey, thought Chloe, slightly creeped out. What happened to fictional but completely realistic? But she hurried after her guide, while the armed-security figures just stood there.
“Was I supposed to have obtained the papers?”
The Jet Lift took them to a viewpoint café near the summit of Meteorite Peak. They stole mountaineering gear, evaded more guards and set out across the screes. Far below, the beautiful people swarmed over their designer-snowfield resort. The cold was biting.
Chloe reached for her weapons, but found herself equipping camouflage instead.
“I didn’t know I was slaved to you,” she grumbled.
“Not always. I’m detailed to keep you away from combat. Your enthusiasm is excessive.”
They reached the foot of a crag: a near-vertical face of shattered, reddish rock, booby-trapped with a slick of ice. “This stage,” said Pevay “requires the advanced skill Snow Leopard. You’ll soon pick it up, just follow me.”
The correct hand and footholds were warm to the touch: she should have been fine. But she hadn’t thought to consume rations or equip extra clothing. The cold had been draining her health. She felt weak, and slipped often: wasting more health. When she reached the ledge where Pevay was waiting, and saw the cliff above them, she nearly cried. She was finished.
“You missed a trick,” said Pevay, sternly. “Remember the lesson.” He gave her a tablet from one of his amulet-boxes, and they climbed on.
The ascent was exhilarating, terrifying; mesmeric. She watched her guide lead the final pitch, and could almost follow the tiny clues that revealed the route to him; found by trial and error if you saw only the rock: obvious if you were immune to the game
’s illusions–
High above the clouds they reached a rent in the cliff face: one last traverse and Chloe stepped into a cave. A chunk of different rock stood in a niche: adorned with tattered prayer flags and faded sacred paintings; a radiant jewel embedded in its surface–
“This is a shard of the meteorite,” said Pevay. “The ancient people fired their first Enamel here without detaching it from the matrix. Take it, Chloe.”
The jewel lay in her hand, shining with a thousand colours.
“You have won the first Enamel. Save your game, Chloe!”
No, she thought. I’ll do better. She replaced the prize, stepped backwards, and fell.
She stood with her guide in the icy wind, at the foot of the crag: an attack-helicopter squadron clattering across the sky behind them.
“Are you crazy?” yelled Pevay, above the din. “You just blew the whole thing!”
“You helped me when I went wrong and I’m grateful, but I want to do it right.”
He seemed at a loss for words, but she thought he was pleased.
“Save your rations. I’ll give you another rocket fuel pill.”
She accepted his medicine humbly. “Thanks. Now cut the dual controls and I’ll lead.” When she took the jewel again, she felt as if her whole body had turned to light. “That was amazing!”
Pevay laughed. “Now you’re getting the juice, new kid!” A spring had risen from the cavity where the jewel had been. He bent to drink, grinning at her with all his silvery teeth.
“Oh, yeah! That’s some good stuff!”
DW had a warp system that would take you around the world map instantly, but Chloe hadn’t earned access to it. She was glad Pevay didn’t offer her a free ride. She didn’t feel cold as they walked down: just slightly mad; euphoria bubbling in her brain like video-game altitude sickness. The contours of this high desert, even its vast open-cast mines, seemed as rich and wonderful; as colourful and varied as any natural environment–
“It was fantastic to watch you climb! You’re an NPC, I suppose you can see in binary, the way insects see ultraviolet. I was thinking about a myth called The Skate and the South Wind that I read about in Lévi-Strauss. He’s an ancient shaman of my trade: hard to understand, heavy on theory; kind of wild, but truly great. A skate, the fish, is thin one way, wide if you flip it another way. Dark on the top surface, light on the underside. The skate story is about binary alternation. Lévi-Strauss said so-called “primitive” peoples build mental structures, and formulate abstract ideas, like “binary code”, from their observation of nature. All you need is your environment and you can develop complex cognition from scratch–”
“You need food, Chloe. I’d better give you another rocket fuel pill.”
“No, I’m fine. Just babbling. Do you really come from another planet?”
He seemed to ponder, gazing at her. His pupils were opaque black gems. Her own avatar probably looked just as uncanny-valley: but who looked out from Pevay’s unreal eyes?
“They say you’re an anthropologist. Tell me about that, Chloe.”
“I study aspects of human society by immersing myself in different social worlds–”
“You collect societies? Like a beetle collector!”
If a complex NPC can tease Pevay’s tone was mocking. But if truth be known, Chloe saw nothing wrong with being a beetle collector. People expected more, a big idea, a revelation: but she was a hunter. She just liked finding things out; tracking things down. She’d be happy to go on doing that forever.
“I started off in Neuroscience. I was halfway through my doctorate when I decided to change course–”
“The eternal student. And you finance your hobby by working for whoever will pay?”
Chloe shrugged. “You can’t always choose your funding partners. The same goes for DW, doesn’t it? I try not to do anything harmful. Are you going to answer my question?”
“What was your question, Chloe?”
“Do you really come from another planet?”
“I don’t know.”
She sighed. “Okay, fine. You don’t want to answer, no problem.”
“I have answered. I don’t know. I don’t remember a life outside the game. Are you here to decide whether the gamers’ belief is true or false?”
“No! Nothing like that. Most people’s cultural beliefs aren’t fact or evidence based, even if the facts can be checked or the evidence is there. I’m interested in how an extraordinary belief fits into the game house’s social model.”
“Then the team should have no quarrel with you. You don’t seem fatigued. Shall we collect the second Enamel now, Chloe?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
The gamers weren’t around when she returned, but she must have done something right. That evening she found she’d been given access to the transcripts, playback and neuro-data for the three sessions she’d shared. The material was somewhat redacted; but that was okay. What people consider private they have a right to withhold. But what mountains of this stuff DW must generate! And all the records just a fleeting reflection of the huge, fermenting mass of raw computation that underpinned the wonderful world she’d visited; and all powered by the juggernaut economic engine of the video-game industry–
No neuro-stream for Pevay, of course. . . But why not? she wondered. Maybe he’s a mass of tentacles or an intelligent gas cloud in his natural habitat. He’s still supposed to be interfacing with the game, some way. Shouldn’t he show up, in some kind of strange traces? Anomalies in the NPC data? She’d have to ask Reuel. He’d have an answer. People take a great deal of trouble justifying extraordinary beliefs. They’re ready for anything you ask. Still, it would be worth finding out.
If Pevay wasn’t being sneakily controlled by a human gamer he was an impressive software artefact: able to simulate convincing conversation, and a convincing presence. Chloe wasn’t fooled by these effects. People got “natural” replies from the crudest forms of AI by cueing responses without realising it. They were doing most of the work themselves. People, she thought, are only too eager to respond emotionally to dumb objects, never mind state-of-the-art illusions. A favourite hat will fire up the same neurons as the face of a dear friend. (Making nonsense of that famous Turing Test!) But the quality of the neuro was amazing. If she couldn’t examine Pevay’s data, why not try some reverse engineering?
Mirror neurons, predictive neurons, decision-making cells in the anterior cingulate . . . All kinds of fun. She worked late into the night, running her own neuro-data through statistical filters, just to see what came out; while tapping her stylus on her smiling lips (a habit she had when the hunt was up). Start from the position that the gamers aren’t “primitives” and they aren’t deluded. They’re trying to make sense of something.
A Fox in the City
Chloe was summoned to a second meeting on the beach, and told that she could stay, as long as she was pursuing her sidequest, and as long as Pevay was willing to be her guide. She could also publish her research, subject to the approval of all and any DW gamers involved – but only if she collected all 56 Enamels. While living in the house she must not communicate Darkening World’s business to outsiders, and this would be policed. Interviews and shared gameplay sessions were at the discretion of individual team members.
Chloe was ecstatic. The Enamels quest was so labyrinthine it could last forever, and publication so distant that she wasn’t even thinking about it. She eagerly signed the contract that was presented to her, back in Reuel’s office; a DW lawyer in digital attendance. Reuel told her she’d find the spare Battle Box in her room. She was to log on from that location in future. The team needed the Rumpus Room to themselves.
She sent a general message to friends and family, and another to her supervisor, saying she wouldn’t be reachable. She didn’t fancy having her private life policed by Matt Warks, and nobody would be concerned. It was typical Chloe behaviour, when on the hunting trail.
Chloe had envisaged work
ing with a team of DW gamers: observing their interaction with the “alien NPC” in gameplay; talking to them afterwards. Comparing what they told her, and how they behaved, with her observations, and with the neuro . . . She soon realised this was never going to happen. The gamers had their sessions, of which she knew nothing. She had her sessions with Pevay. Otherwise – except for trips to a morose little park, which she jogged around for exercise – she was alone in her room, processing such a flood of data she hardly had time to sleep. Game logs; transcripts; neuro. “Alien sentient” fan mail. Global DW content. She even saw some of the house’s internal messaging.
Nobody knocked on her door. Once or twice she wandered about after dark looking for company. All she found was a neglected, empty-feeling house, and a blur of sound from behind forbidding closed doors. She felt like Snow White, bewildered; waiting for the Seven Dwarves to come home.
Only Aileen and Reuel agreed to be interviewed face to face. The others insisted on talking over a video link, and behaved like freshly captured prisoners of war: stone-faced, defiant and defensive. Needless to say they all protected the consensus belief, in this forced examination. Josie evaded the topic by talking about her own career. Sol, the friendliest gamer (except for Reuel), confided that he’d pinpointed Pevay’s home system, and it was no more than 4.3 light years away. Then he got anxious, and retracted this statement, concerned that he’d “said something out of line”. . . Warks smugly refused to discuss Pevay, as Chloe didn’t understand Information Universe Science. Aileen, who was Reuel’s girlfriend (sad to say), believed implicitly, implicitly that Pevay came from a very distant star system. Jun, the silent one, had the most interesting response: muttering that “the alien thing was the best explanation”, but then he clammed up completely, so she had to cut the interview short. But Reuel was the only player, apparently, who’d had sustained contact. Spirit Guides rarely appeared on the field of battle. They had no place there. Not much of a warrior, her sponsor was the acquisitions man, embarking on quests with Pevay when the team needed a new piece of kit; a map; a secret file. Or lootable artworks they could sell, like the 56 Enamels–