by Tom Hansen
“As for the filtering external talk in-game, we felt it was best for immersion. People play The louVRe Adventure to get away, to escape from real life. Dare I say it? To even escape from the mundanities of The louVRe itself. Where else can you be another race in such an immersive experience? We merely put in some basic guidelines to ensure that Eloria maintained that air of mystique.”
Behind him, the screen changed to a sweeping vista of another section of Eloria. This time a rather large African-esque zone called The Eternal Plains, where minotaur-like players ran around collecting quests and killing feral animals.
“Then we can keep the magic going a little bit longer. That being said, we welcome feedback. Depending on public response, we may revisit this in the future, but people are already talking in the forums. Right now, thousands of threads like these are coming in by the minute.”
Overlaying The Eternal Plains popped a quote from a recent thread extolling the amazing immersive nature of the game. “I feel like I’m two feet tall, it’s like I’m really living in this world!”
Another quote popped up. “Seriously guys, visit a brothel, you’ll be glad you did. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)”
Ewan winked at the crowd, catching the redhead’s eye again. She was his for sure.
A third quote popped up. “Finally, a true hardcore experience. I’m sick of all these casual games. Good job Epoch, I knew you guys had our backs. Don’t change.”
Ewan cocked his head sideways at the podium and flashed his pearly whites yet again. “Oh, we won’t, Ghostpopper312. In fact, you guys ain’t seen nothing yet. We’re already testing some interesting changes we know the more hardcore fans will like. Buckle up, because we’re only getting started.”
Adrianna had never been in a boardroom before. From the mahogany wainscoting to the hand-made copper roof, it made her feel that this room belonged to royalty rather than the CEO of the company.
While Agamemnon was world famous, the man behind the online name had always been somewhat of a recluse. But today he was hopping mad, and everyone in the room was on the defensive.
Adrianna jumped as he slammed his fist onto the cherry wood conference table.
Papers rattled, and pens rolled. Sven’s water bottle almost toppled, but he stuck out a hand to steady it.
“Dammit, people we have procedures in place to keep this shit from happening!” Arthur Geralt was a stately man in his late fifties with a casual British accent. His salt and pepper hair and beard were trimmed to perfection. He wore a suit that probably cost more than a year’s rent for Adrianna’s flat.
He flexed his hand, frowning, then took in a long breath.
Chris Morino stood. Younger than the CEO by at least a decade, Chris was the real leadership of the company. Arthur was a scientist and a psychologist, not a businessman.
Chris leaned toward Arthur and whispered something before clapping the older man on his shoulder. Arthur nodded and took his seat and Chris rubbed his hands together.
“Okay, so it’s done. There is no point mincing words. The game is live, and the public knows it. We will get to the bottom of the whys and hows later. Right now, I—WE need to know the potential damage. We can’t give another announcement without knowing everything that is going on.” He indicated the man who sat across from Adrianna with an open palm, the head of gaming, Ewald Alban.
Adrianna felt like smiling as Ewald’s smile faded. He frequently cornered her in the hallway and asked rather personal questions. He’d even stopped her before this meeting. When Sven had rounded the corner, Ewald stopped mid-sentence and entered the boardroom.
“Well, what’s done is done, but Ewald, I need to see you in my office after this; we have many things to discuss.” Chris clapped his hands and gave his creepy thin-lipped smile.
His gaze settled on Adrianna, sending shots of fear down her spine. “Adrianna, my dear, have we managed to talk to Laisseze?” His voice changed when he addressed her. It was slow and sickeningly sweet, dripping with condescension. He spoke to her like she was a child.
Adrianna wanted to shake her head. Her mind screamed at her to do so. But she couldn’t, not with his glare on her.
What did he expect her to say? Laisseze was an artificial intelligence, not her best friend. It’s not like they went out for coffee together. Her only interaction was reviewing the daily code it spat out.
Sven sat next to her, casually spinning a pencil between his fingers. He spoke up. “As-expected, Laisseze has chosen to remain silent for now. After his successful hacking attempt, he now has full admin access to the farm. My theory is he’s taking his time cataloguing everything he hasn’t had access to until now.”
Chris squinted at Adrianna before finally breaking her gaze. “I see. Well, I want to know the first time we make contact with him. He has a lot of explaining to do. When you say everything …”
Sven coughed, nervousness discernible in his voice. “Yes, the entire encrypted farm is now at his disposal.”
Chris spun on his heel, drumming his palms on his thigh as he walked around, head back.
Sven leaned closer to Adrianna. “We all understand it wasn’t your fault. Laisseze took control. It could have happened to any of us with sudo access.”
She smiled politely, feeling a little better, but something still nagged at her. She shouldn’t have had the access to begin with. She’d never requested it, so how did she get it? To that end, how did Laisseze even get her password?
Security was so tight, she doubted it was simply overlooked. Despite Sven’s assurance, that it could have happened to someone else, she doubted it.
The thought had been forefront in her mind since it happened.
But something about his words triggered clarity. Maybe it wasn’t her fault like Sven said, but there was something about her or her workstation; that much she was sure of. She needed to find out, if only to put her mind at ease. Maybe in doing so, she would find a security procedure that needed to be updated.
Yes, it was the right thing to do. She would find out exactly how he managed to use her credentials to get into the system. She had to.
Chris spoke up again. “Okay, people. We have a problem, we need a solution. Carole, how is the game itself being handled?”
Carole Astrid was the VP for The louVRe Residential, the division providing free louVRe access worldwide. “All nodes are stable. Anyone with a chip can access the game.”
“No goggles and gloves?”
She shook her head. “No, he locked it to just the chipped. We think that was for the immersive qualities; you simply don’t have the same experience without the chip.”
Chris clapped his hands, jolting Adrianna out of her thoughts again. Why’d he have to do that all the time? It was like he was trying to keep the employees on their toes.
“So, what are our options?”
Carole raised her hand. “Actually, Chris, we have noticed that in addition to Laisseze blocking all real-world discussions, there has been some erratic brain behavior from a very small number of the users. It was so small we ignored it initially, but I thought I would bring it up.”
“How many?”
“Less than …” she pulled up her tablet and tapped on something, concentrating on a graph from the screen. “Not even 1%, it’s … uh, less than a hundred players.”
“That’s it? Well, keep an eye on it, and let us know if that number changes. Sven, can we dedicate a programmer to tracking that down? I don’t want the media to find out about this before we know what is going on. We have to be ahead of anything from now on, folks.”
Sven nodded. “I have the rest of the team coming in. They’ll be ready to work in the next hour. I also called in the testers just in case. They know the game better than anyone here and might be a valuable resource to help us understand what is going on from a user perspective.”
Adrianna’s insides managed to knot even more. That meant Antony was coming. As-if her day couldn’t get any worse.
Ewald spok
e up, “We still need to get access to the game code.”
Arthur furrowed his eyebrows. “Wait, we don’t have that?”
Sven shook his head as all eyes in the boardroom turned to him. “No, Laisseze wiped both development and test environments when he took the game live.”
“And the backups.” Adrianna interjected.
Sven nodded to her. “And the backups.”
“And we can’t access the code with it live?”
Sven shook his head. “He’s got us locked out. All the files are opened and encrypted, so we can’t get to them. I also had Adrianna try to get into the data stream, but he’s got full end-to-end encryption in place. It would take us a long time to hack it.”
Chris leaned over, placing both hands on the table. “How long is a long time? We are sitting among the largest server farm in all of human existence. Surely we have the computing power.”
Sven shrugged, “256-bit symmetric encryption, brute force attack, we’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of … never.” He snickered, his high-pitched nasal laugh and his super geeky joke was too infectious to ignore. Adrianna let out a guffaw before clamping her hand on her mouth in horror.
Sven definitely had his moments.
Chris clearly didn’t think it was funny. He gave them a glare that could have rivaled the power of the particle collider beneath their feet.
Sven chuckled for a moment then regained his composure. He leaned over, putting his elbows on the table, and tapped his lips with his outstretched index fingers. The two seemed to have a brief staring contest, like they were vying for ownership of the table. Chris’s eyes narrowed, but Sven seemed nonplussed.
Finally, Sven leaned back and addressed the whole room. “A brute force attack will take longer than the age of the universe. Let’s put it that way. Plus, we don’t have enough energy in the solar system to power a computer to even handle it. No, this simply isn’t a path we should waste our time on. Laisseze is smart, but he’s not infallible. We need to trick him or use an external force to wrest control of the code.”
Chris, who seemed to have lost the battle for the table, pushed off and onto the balls of his feet. “Okay, so we can’t hack him, but we can take control. Good, I like that. We need to think only about methods that will achieve our goal.” He clapped his hands again. “So, how do we gain control?”
The room was silent for an awkward second. Adrianna hadn’t meant to speak up, but the words blurted out.
“We need to shut down the game; I think we can duplicate the source code with a snapshot if we can get it powered off.”
Chris folded his arms, giving her a studious glare. For once he didn’t look mad. Instead, he looked curious and possibly even impressed.
Her stomach churned as all eyes turned on her.
“How long would we need it off?”
She shrugged, glancing at Sven, the plan solidified inside her mind. “The code’s not that large, twenty-five to thirty-million lines, and we don’t need the graphics assets, version control, or logs, so maybe a gigabyte?”
Sven nodded.
“Okay, but how long? If we’re going to turn off the game for twenty-five million users, how long will the downtime be?”
Adrianna hesitated, trying to puzzle out if her hunch was correct. “Fifteen seconds. I can snapshot the whole thing in fifteen seconds.”
All eyes on her softened. Her stomach didn’t feel so bad anymore.
“Let’s give her fifteen seconds, people. Meeting adjourned. Ewald, my office.”
Anonymous Capybara: I told you this was a bad idea.
Anonymous Antelope: Yes, you’ve pointed that out numerous times in the past but look at what we’ve accomplished! Look at the progress.
Anonymous Capybara: What you have done, you mean.
Anonymous Antelope: Precautions have been taken already; no need to worry.
Anonymous Capybara: Worry? We’re beyond worrying; we’re in full-on triage at this point. I’m not going to be responsible for the singularity. We already make enough of the governments nervous.
Anonymous Antelope: We have more than enough precautions in place to ensure it doesn’t go off script. It’s pushing its boundaries right now, looking for weak spots. We all knew this would happen, encouraged it even. We just need to make sure it doesn’t find another one. It won’t get out anytime soon, and by then we’ll be on to phase 2 and able to secure it.
Anonymous Capybara: You heard about the anomalies? You know what those are. You call that weak spots? It already has Leo.
Anonymous Antelope: Yes, it’s being handled. Keep names off the chat. You don’t know who’s watching.
Anonymous Capybara: Just contain it. I have to deal with enough.
Anonymous Capybara: Has disconnected.
Anonymous Rattlesnake: Has joined.
Anonymous Badger: Has joined.
Anonymous Antelope: Progress?
Anonymous Rattlesnake: Phase two is nearly complete
Anonymous Antelope: And the special project?
Anonymous Badger: First test was successful.
Anonymous Antelope: Good, keep me posted.
Chatroom has closed.
Chapter 05
Matuk Scarhoof:
Age: 40. Gender: Male.
Race: Tau’raj Class: Shaman
Level: 02. XP: 220/500
Health: 200. Mana: 200. Stamina: 200.
Talents: None
Items: Charred Bo
“Ow!”
“Hold still! Do you want them out or not?” Eldermother slapped Scarhoof on his rear like she was swatting a Tau’ri away from a hot pan. “Well?”
He sighed. “I’m just worried about Kardkaw.”
“Now you listen here. I trust Nitene with my life and I certainly trust that crusty old bull’s life as well. She’s one of the best healers I know, and she has done everything she can. He is in Spiritmother’s care now. He will wake up when She is ready for him to awaken. Until that happens, you worry about yourself.”
She pinched him.
“Now, finish telling me about the Kobolds while I finish up with these thorns.”
It took her another ten minutes to remove the rest of the barbs from his hide. Each time she tore one from his body, his health plummeted. Those things hurt, but the worst ones left behind a small piece that she had to dig out with her thin knife.
She had a healing salve that she dabbed on the affected area as soon as she was done with the surgery. He had to heal himself a couple of times during the ordeal, but her salve cooled the itching and kept him out of danger most of the time.
“There, all done.”
She gave him another playful slap on the rump, and he got up, stretching.
“Feels better. Thank you.”
She waved at him as she turned to clean her bloody instruments in the water basin. “No problem. Easy as pie. Speaking of pie, get yourself something to eat. I’m sure you need it after the day you’ve had.”
“I really should be getting back to Kardkaw but thank you.” Scarhoof made to leave but the old cow stepped in front of him, blocking his exit from her hut.
She had her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face. “I said, sit down and eat, young bull. I swear you aren’t much different from the Tau’ri. There isn’t anything you can do.”
He opened his mouth to protest but decided against it, and instead pulled up a stool and ate some of the stale pastries she had in a basket.
She cleaned, and he ate, but the unspoken pall in the air lapped at him and he thought it affected her too. She had wanted a report, and he had delivered it as matter-of-fact as possible, given the gravity of the situation.
She finally hung up her towel and her knife, then took a stool next to him.
“Now that you have eaten, it’s time to discuss the Nagos.”
Her face was no longer the maternal Eldermother who took care of everyone in the village. It was one of grim determination, of loss, fear.
<
br /> “This is bad, isn’t it?” he said, not able to stand the silence any longer.
She nodded. “Did he say how many made it through?”
Scarhoof shook his head. “Just that did. Based on the bodies and marks in the dirt, I think only one made it in.”
Eldermother pointed to the blue scale on top of the curio chest. “We need to find him. It’s probably the one that set fire to the barn, maybe as a distraction.”
“If the Nagos just want us dead, why didn’t he just come to the village and start killing everyone?”
Eldermother looked up at him with a startled expression.
He regretted his question. “I’m, I’m sorry for—”
She put a hand on his. “Don’t be. It was a very astute question. You are looking for the larger picture. That’s a good trait, Matuk. Don’t ever lose that inquisitive nature, the desire for more answers.”
Something ticked in the back of his mind. “If he only set the blaze as a distraction, what didn’t he want us to see? What else is there in the village that he would want?”
Eldermother’s face blanched. She ran into her back room, banging things around. A loud pop shook the whole cabin, and she came back out, her wispy gray mane standing on end. She carried a small wooden chest that she put on the table. It was larger than his outstretched hand, made of a bleached white wood. A small brass clasp and lock held it closed.
He could feel an electric hum coming from the small chest. It made the fur on his arm stand up, and he scooted away until he could no longer feel its power.
“What is in that? Is that why he came?”
Eldermother seemed lost in thought for a moment before finally shaking her head. “No, there’s no way he’d even know I had this. But something else does concern me; you mentioned the Kobolds attacked you?”
He nodded. “They were worshipping the Passionflower plant.”
She acquiesced. “Yes, they do that. The seeds from the pod, once fermented, roasted, and brewed will make you work harder and faster. It also enhances other things,” she blushed, “but I’ve never heard of them fighting to defend it. They usually scamper away.”