“They do all their living in bursts lasting a dozen seconds, punctuated by nearly a minute of total inactivity. Evidently some selection mechanism determined that a concentrated burst of activity is more useful than long, drawn-out mobility.”
Jumping, I thought. You couldn’t jump in slow motion. Predators must have been the first creatures to evolve toward the burst strategy—and then grazers had been forced to follow suit.
“We’ve given them the collective term Strobelife—and their planet we’ve called Strobeworld, for obvious reasons.” Icehammer rubbed his palms together with a whine of actuating motors. “Which, ladies and gentlemen, brings us rather neatly to the game itself. Shall we continue?”
“Get on with it, you bastard,” I murmured. Next to me, Risa squeezed my hand and whispered something calming.
* * *
We were escorted up a sapphire staircase into a busy room packed with consoles and viewing stands. There was no direct view of the Arena itself, but screens hanging from the ceiling showed angles in various wavebands.
The Arena was a mockup of part of the surface of Strobeworld, simulated with astonishing precision: the correct rocky terrain alleviated only by tufts of colorless vacuum-tolerant “vegetation,” gravity that was only a few percent from Strobeworld’s own, and a magnetic field that simulated in strength and vector the ambient field at the point on Strobeworld from which the animals had been snatched. The roof of the dome was studded with lamps that would blaze for less than 13 hundredths of a second, once every 72 seconds, precisely mimicking the passage of the star’s mercilessly bright beam.
The game itself—Level One, at least—would be played in rounds: single player against single player, or team against team. Each competitor would be allocated a fraction of the thousand-odd individual animals released into the Arena at the start—fifty-fifty in the absence of any handicapping. The sample would include animals from every ecological level, from grazers that fed on the flora, right up to the relatively scarce top predators, of which there were only a dozen basic variants. They had to eat, of course: light could provide their daily energy needs, but they’d still need to consume each other for growth and replication. Each competitor’s animals would be labeled with infrared markers, capable of being picked up by Arena cams. It was the competitor’s goal to ensure that their population of Strobeworld creatures outperformed the rival’s, simply by staying alive longest. Computers would assess the fitness of each population after a round and the winner would be announced.
I watched a few initial heats before my turn.
Most of the animals were sufficiently far from each other—or huddled in herds—that during each movement burst they did little except shuffle around or move slightly more in one direction than another. But the animals that were near each other exhibited more interesting behavior. Prey creatures—small, flat-bodied grazers or mid-level predators—would try and get away from the higher-level predators, which in turn would advance toward the grazers and subordinate predators. But then they’d come to a stop, perfectly motionless, their locations revealed only by the cams, since it was completely dark in the Arena.
Waiting.
It was harder than it looked—the dynamics of the ecosystem far subtler than I’d expected. Interfering at any level could have wildly unexpected consequences.
Risa would have loved it.
Soon it was my turn. I took my console after nodding briefly at my opponent; a rising player of moderate renown, but no real match for myself, even though neither of us had played Stroboscopic before.
We commenced play.
The Arena—initially empty—was populated by Strobelife via robot drones that dashed out from concealed hatches. The Strobelife was in stasis; no light flashes from the dome to trigger the life cycle; as stiff and sculptural as the animal we’d studied in the yacht. My console displayed a schematic overlay of the Arena, with “my” animals designated by marker symbols. The screens showed the same relationships from different angles. Initial placement was pseudo-random; animals placed in lifelike groupings, but with distances between predator and prey, determined by algorithms compiled from real Strobeworld populations.
We were given five minutes to study the grouping and evolve a strategy before the first flash. Thereafter, the flashes would follow at 72-second intervals until the game’s conclusion.
The five minutes slammed past before I’d examined less than a dozen possible opening gambits.
For a few flash cycles nothing much happened; too much distance between potential enemies. But after the fifth cycle some of the animals were within striking range of each other. Little local hot spots of carnage began to ensue; animals being dismembered or eaten in episodic bursts.
We began to influence the game. After each movement burst—during the minute or so of near-immobility—we were able to selectively reposition or withdraw our own or our opponent’s animals from the Arena, according to a complex shifting value scheme. The immobile animals would be spirited away, or relocated, by the same robots that had placed them initially. When the next flash came, play would continue seamlessly.
All sorts of unanticipated things could happen.
Wipe out one predator and you might think that the animals it was preying on would thrive, or at least not be decimated so rapidly. But what often happened was that a second rival predator—until then contained in number—would invade the now unoccupied niche and become more successful than the animal that had been wiped out. If that new predator also pursued the prey animals of the other, then they might actually be worse off.
I began to grasp some of Stroboscopic’s latent complexity. Maybe it was going to be a challenge after all.
I played and won four rounds out of five. No point deluding myself: at least two of my victories had been sheer luck, or had evolved from dynamics of the ecology that were just too labyrinthine to guess at. But I was impressed, and for the first time in years, I didn’t feel as if I’d already exhausted every aspect of a game.
I was enjoying myself.
I waited for the other heats to cycle through, my own name only displaced from the top of the leader board when the last player had completed his series.
Zubek had beaten me.
“Bad luck,” he said, in the immediate aftermath, after we’d delivered our sound bites. He slung an arm around my shoulder, matishly. “I’m sorry what I said about you before, Nozomi.”
“Would you be apologizing now if I’d won?”
“But you didn’t, did you? Put up a good fight, I’ll admit. Were you playing to your limit?” Zubek stopped a passing waiter and snatched two drinks from his tray, something fizzy, passing one to me. “Listen, Nozomi. Either way, we won in style and trashed the rest.”
“Good. Can I go now? I’d like to speak to my wife.” And get the hell away from Tycho, I thought.
“Not so fast. I’ve got a proposition. Will you hear me out?”
* * *
I listened to what Zubek had to say. Then caught up with Risa a few minutes later and told her what he had outlined.
“You’re not serious,” she said. “He’s playing a game with you, don’t you realize?”
“Isn’t that the point?”
Risa shook her head exasperatedly. “Angela Valdez is dead. She died a good death, doing what she loved. Nothing the two of you can do now can make the slightest difference.”
“Zubek will make the challenge whether I like it or not.”
“But you don’t have to agree.” Her voice was calm but her eyes promised tears. “You know what the rumors said. That the next level was more dangerous than the first.”
“That’ll make it all the more interesting, then.”
But she wasn’t really listening to me, perhaps knowing that I’d already made my mind up.
Zubek and I arranged a press conference an hour later, sharing the same podium, microphones radiating out from our faces like the rifles of a firing squad; stroboscopic flashes of cameras pre
figuring the game ahead. We explained our proposition: how we’d agreed between ourselves to another game; one that would be dedicated to the memory of Angela Valdez.
But that we’d be playing Level Two.
Icehammer took the podium during the wild applause and cheering that followed our announcement.
“This is extremely unwise,” he said, still stiffly clad in his mobility frame. “Level Two is hardly tested yet; there are bound to be bugs in the system. It could be exceedingly dangerous.” Then he smiled and a palpable aura of relief swept through the spectators. “On the other hand, my shareholders would never forgive me if I forewent an opportunity for publicity like this.”
The cheers rose to a deafening crescendo.
Shortly afterward I was strapped into the console, with neuro-effectors crowning my skull, ready to light up my pain center. The computer overseeing the game would allocate jolts of pain according to the losses suffered by my population of Strobelife. All in the mind, of course. But that wouldn’t make the pain any less agonizing, and it wouldn’t reduce the chances of my heart simply stopping at the shock of it all.
Zubek leant in and shook my hand.
“For Angela,” I said, and then watched as they strapped Zubek in the adjacent console, applying the neuro-effector.
It was hard. It wasn’t just the pain. The game was made more difficult by deliberately limiting our overview of the Arena. I no longer saw my population in its entirety—the best I could do was hop my point of view from creature to creature, my visual field offering a simulation of the electrical-field environment sensed by each Strobelife animal; a snapshot only updated during Strobetime. When there was no movement, there was no electrical-field generation. Most of the time I was blind.
Most of the time I was screaming.
Yet somehow—when the computer assessed the fitness of the two populations—I was declared the winner over Zubek.
Lying in the couch, my body quivered, saliva water falling from my slack jaw. A moan filled the air, which it took me long moments to realize was my own attempt at vocalization. And then I saw something odd; something that shouldn’t have happened at all.
Zubek hauled himself from his couch, not even sweating.
He didn’t look like a man who’d just been through agony.
An unfamiliar face blocked my view of him. I knew who it was, just from his posture and the cadences of his speech.
“Yes, you’re right. Zubek was never wired into the neuro-effector. He was working for us—persuading you to play Level Two.”
“White,” I slurred. “You, isn’t it?”
“The very man. Now how would you like to see your wife alive?”
I reached for his collar, fingers grasping ineffectually at the fabric. “Where’s Risa?”
“In our care, I assure you. Now kindly follow me.” He waited while I heaved myself from the enclosure of the couch, my legs threatening to turn to jelly beneath me. “Oh, dear,” White said, wrinkling his nose. “You’ve emptied your bladder, haven’t you?”
“I’ll empty your face if you don’t shut up.”
My nervous system had just about recovered by the time we reached Icehammer’s quarters, elsewhere in the building. But my belief system was still in ruins. White was working for the IWP.
* * *
Icehammer was lounging on a maroon settee, divested of his exoskeletal support system. Just as I was marveling at how pitiable he looked, he jumped up and strode to me, extending a hand.
“Good to meet you, Nozomi.”
I nodded at the frame, racked on one wall next to an elaborate suit of armor. “You don’t need that thing?”
“Hell, no. Not in years. Good for publicity, though—neural burnout and all that.”
“It’s a setup, isn’t it?”
“How do you think it played?” Icehammer said.
“Black really was working for the movement,” I said, aware that I was compromising myself with each word, but also that it didn’t matter. “White wasn’t. You were in hock to the IWP all along. You were the reason Black vanished.”
“Nothing persona, Nozomi,” White said. “They got to my family, just as we’ve got to Risa.”
Icehammer took over: “She’s in our care now, Nozomi—quite unharmed, I assure you. But if you want to see her alive, I advise that you pay meticulous attention to my words.” While he talked he brushed a hand over the tabard of the hanging suit of armor, leaving a greasy imprint on the black metal. “You disappointed me. That a man of your talents should be reduced to cheating.”
“I didn’t do it for myself.”
“You don’t seriously imagine that the movement could possibly pose a threat to the IWP? Most of its cells have been infiltrated. Face it, man, it was always an empty gesture.”
“Then where was the harm?”
Icehammer tried a smile but it looked fake. “Obviously, I’m not happy at your exploiting company secrets, even if you were good enough to keep them largely to yourself.”
“It’s not as if I sold them on.”
“No, I’ll credit you with discretion, if nothing else. But even if I thought killing you might be justified, there’d be grave difficulties with such a course of action. You’re too well known; I can’t just make you disappear without attracting a lot of attention. And I can’t expose you as a cheat without revealing the degree to which my organization’s security was breached. So I’m forced to another option—one that, on reflection, will serve the both of us rather well.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll let Risa go, provided you agree to play the next level of the game.”
I thought about that for a few moments before answering. “That’s all? Why the blackmail?”
“Because no one in their right minds would play Level Three if they knew what was involved.” Icehammer toyed with the elegantly flared cuff of his bottle-green smoking jacket. “The third level is exponentially more hazardous than the second. Of course, it will eventually draw competitors—but no one would consent to playing it until they’d attained total mastery of the lower levels. We don’t expect that to happen for at least a year. You, on the other hand, flushed with success at beating Zubek, will rashly declare your desire to play Level Three. And in the process of doing so, you will probably die, or at the very least be severely maimed.”
“I thought you said it would serve me well.”
“I meant your posthumous reputation.” Icehammer raised a finger. “But don’t imagine that the game will be rigged, either. It will be completely fair, by the rules.” Feeling sick to my stomach, I still managed a smile.
“I’ll just have to cheat, then, won’t I?”
* * *
A few minutes later I stood at the podium again, a full audience before me, and read a short prepared statement. There wasn’t much to it, and as I hadn’t written a word of it, I can’t say that I injected any great enthusiasm into proceedings.
“I’m retiring,” I said, to the hushed silence in the atrium. “This will be my last competition.”
Muted cheers. But they quickly died away.
“But I’m not finished yet. Today I played the first two levels of what I believe will be one of the most challenging and successful games in Tycho, for many years to come. I now intend to play the final level.”
Cheers followed again—but they were still a little fearful. I didn’t blame them. What I was doing was insane.
Icehammer came out—back in his frame again—and made some half-hearted protestations, but the charade was even more theatrical than last time. Nothing could be better for publicity than my failing to complete the level—except possibly my death.
I tried not to think about that part.
“I admire your courage,” he said, turning to the audience. “Give it up for Nozomi—he’s a brave man!” Then he whispered in my ear: “Maybe we’ll auction your body parts.”
But I kept on smiling my best shit-eating smile, even as they wheeled in the same
suit of armor that I’d seen hanging on Icehammer’s wall.
* * *
I walked into the Arena, the armor’s servo-assisted joints whirring with each step. The suit was heated and pressurized, of course—but the tiny air-circulator was almost silent, and the ease of walking meant that my own exertions were slight.
The Arena was empty of Strobelife now, brightly lit; dusty topsoil like lunar regolith, apart from the patches of flora. I walked to the spot that had been randomly assigned me, designated by a livid red circle.
Icehammer’s words still rang in my ears. “You don’t even know what happens in Level Three, do you?”
“I’m sure you’re going to enjoy telling me.”
“Level One is abstracted—the Arena is observed, but it might as well be taking place in a computer. Level Two’s a little more visceral, as you’re now well aware—but there’s still no actual physical risk to the competitor. And, of course, even Level Two could be simulated. You must have asked yourself that question, Nozomi? Why create a real ecology of Strobelife creatures at all, if you’re never going to enter it?”
That was when he had drawn my attention to the suit of armor. “You’ll wear this. It’ll offer protection against the vacuum and the effects of the pulse, but don’t delude yourself that the armor itself is much more than cosmetic.”
“I’m going into the Arena?”
“Where else? It’s the logical progression. Now your viewpoint will be entirely limited to one participant in the game—yourself.”
“Get it over with.”
“You’ll still have the ability to intervene in the ecology, just as before—the commands will be interpreted by your suit and transmitted to the controlling computer. The added complexity, of course, is that you’ll have to structure your game around your own survival at each step.”
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