The God Game

by Danny Tobey

  He clicked on the purchase.

  Illuminated Text. 10,000+ Goldz.

  Worth it.

  Then through the lenses a bit of magic happened. In fire-laced gold font, formulas began writing themselves on his exam, in the space where his work was supposed to go, like a book from the Middle Ages. The diagrams and notations burned and sparkled. He looked around him. The other students were heads down, working on their exams. Mrs. Kite looked up and met Alex’s gaze. His eyes shot back down to his test.

  Stay calm.

  This is amazing.

  Someone was watching him (or something, he reminded himself—couldn’t an AI handle intro physics?). Someone was feeding him a way out. He thought about the belt. Not this time.

  But then he saw the text disappearing, even as new text appeared at the end of the work.

  “No!” he thought—he almost said it out loud.

  Jenny Prentiss glared at him.

  He had said it aloud. What was wrong with him? Why hadn’t he slept more?

  Well, because I didn’t know God would be my silent partner on the exam.

  Don’t waste it, he told himself, this time silently.

  He started tracing over the fiery equations on the paper, his pencil flying, locking the answers down as the text burned itself out. He started worrying his results would be too good—no one would believe it was his work. Put some mistakes in, he whispered to the God Game, I only have to pass. For all he knew, there were mistakes in there. He imagined the AI could deliver a perfectly calibrated score—good enough to avoid the belt. Bad enough to avoid suspicion.

  He was halfway through the exam when the golden handwriting stopped.

  He didn’t notice at first. He was too focused on keeping ahead of the lines disappearing above. But then he saw. What the hell? Where’s the rest?

  “Come on,” he said, and this time it was out loud again.

  Jenny Prentiss was engrossed in her work. No angry look this time.

  His hand was shaking, gripping the pencil too hard. Why would the Game toss him a lifeline, then snatch it away? Then he got his answer:

  INSUFFICIENT GOLDZ.

  What? His cache was empty?

  No, no, no.

  He couldn’t run out now. Not in the middle of the test. He was doing so well. Sweat ran down his cheeks. How much amphetamine was in his system? His heart sounded like a kettledrum. He simply put his head down on his desk; resigned.

  Promise me, a voice said in his ear.

  “What?” Alex moaned quietly into the crook of his arms.

  Promise me you will always do what I ask.

  “I will,” he said, almost crying.

  Anything.

  “Anything.”

  His Goldz began spinning upward on the counter in the corner of his gamespace. The illuminated text returned. Shaking, he grabbed his pencil and began tracing again, as fast as he could, minutes to go.

  Time’s up, the voice said in his ear.

  The bell rang, and Mrs. Kite said, “Pencils down.”

  He’d made it two-thirds of the way through the test. Was it enough? Did he pass?

  Mrs. Kite stopped him on the way out. “I like your new glasses.”

  He stared at her blankly for a second, dumbfounded.

  As he left, the Game whispered in his ear, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

  34   COSMIC FIRE

  Heading to the library to meet Kenny, Charlie wondered whether it was possible—could Alex have destroyed Mr. B.’s car?

  Charlie had to know.

  Seeing his father totally ruined and demolished by his mother’s death had been terrible, but in some ways seeing Mr. B. brought down was worse. Cancer had kicked Charlie’s dad’s ass—Charlie hadn’t caused that—but the Game was Charlie’s fault.

  Huddling in the stacks, Kenny told him about the fake Vindicators logo and Candace.

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. She just kind of mumbled and left.”

  “What did you say?”

  “What could I say? I was holding it in my hands! Why would the Game do that? We did everything it asked.”

  “Maybe we weren’t supposed to.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe we were supposed to say no,” Charlie said, thinking of the bracelet.

  “You think the Game was punishing us for doing what it said?”

  “Yeah, like a test.”

  “Charlie, you obviously weren’t raised in a religious house. Trust me. God prizes obedience above all else. If the AI was fed on the Bible, it means what it says.”

  “What if it asks us to kill someone?”

  “The Bible is filled with God ordering people to kill someone.”

  “What about Thou Shall Not Kill?”

  “There’s an asterisk.”

  “I think Alex may have destroyed Mr. B.’s car.”

  “Really?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “No. He had that physics test today.”

  “Oh, crap, I forgot.”

  Charlie sent Alex a note:

  How did the test go?

  He didn’t get a response.

  * * *

  Mary had tried to grab Charlie on the way out of class, but he ran after Mr. Burklander, who seemed totally out of sorts. She had rethought Charlie’s offer. After the burst of bravery had gone through her last night, she panicked on the way home. Tim would notice the bracelet was missing. She could wear the one from Charlie. Just temporarily.

  But Charlie brushed past her, and Tim found her between classes before she could do anything about it. She smiled her brightest smile, hoping to keep his eyes on her face, but they went immediately to her wrist.

  “Where is it?”

  “What?”

  He closed his eyes, as if he were frustrated talking to a dumb child. “My bracelet. Where is it?”

  “Tim, it doesn’t go with every outfit.”

  He nodded slowly. “Sure, okay.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed hard. Physical strength wasn’t the real source of his control—she knew that—but it was icing on the cake. There was more than one way to break someone’s bones.

  “You doing okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “It’s just the time of year. Makes me remember it all over again.” It was a threat, but he said it like he cared.

  “Me, too.”

  “So where were you last night?”

  She tried hard not to flinch, but it felt like she had. “I was home.”

  “I swung by.”

  “When?”

  “Where were you?” he repeated, ignoring her.

  She tried to lie. She tried to think of something great to say. But she couldn’t.

  “I took a walk,” she said finally.

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes. I don’t like the way you’re talking to me.”

  He put his forehead against hers. “If I sound upset, it’s because I care about you. That’s so dangerous, walking alone at night. I don’t want anything to ever happen to you.” He kissed her forehead. “I spoke with your dad. We’re having brunch with our parents this weekend.”

  “You talked to my dad?”

  “Mary, we’ve got so much good stuff ahead of us.”

  He walked to the door, then stopped and turned around and smiled.

  “So you’ll have it tomorrow? The bracelet.”

  “Of course.” Mary felt chills running all through her.

  When he left, she got a text from a suppressed number. Mary had experienced a true stalker once—it came with the territory—but that was over and her dad had made sure that student was long gone. So when she saw a new, blocked number and a cryptic text, she had some fear. She deleted the message immediately, but still, the idea stuck in her head and would pop back up later:

  Run for student body president. He’ll hate that.

  * * *r />
  Charlie found Peter on the Embankment, drawing lazily on a joint. His eyes twinkled in the crisp fall sunlight, achingly blue.

  “I need to find Alex,” Charlie said.

  “I can help with that. Come, sit. This Game is amazing. I’m starting to understand the rules. Once you get to a high enough level, aka enough Goldz, you become a Watcher.”

  “Those people in masks?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do they do?”

  “I couldn’t say if I knew.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  “I wish. Hardly. But I did get enough Goldz to buy Advanced Eye of God. You will not believe how badass that is.”

  In the Game, Peter’s avatar was no longer just a dot on the map, or a cone in the 3-D view, but a chimera, tiger-headed and eagle-bodied. “I can go anywhere. The world is my gamespace.”

  He flew over a map view of Austin, a strange mix of 3-D and photographs, soaring over Turner, which was crawling with students’ names like ants. If anyone saw them, they’d look like they were staring up at the clouds, probably high.

  Peter searched for Caitlyn and found her avatar walking down the hall, complaining to that sycophant Marissa Minnow, who kept saying, “I know, I know.” The digital reconstruction was not photo-realistic but hyperreal, video feeds from passing phones and hall cameras and old clips online blending like streams of reality flowing together, all points and pixels in between extrapolated. “And here’s the treasure chest.” Peter opened up a trove of Caitlyn’s old phone calls, Web searches, docs. Intro EOG had given him texts; Advanced EOG had given everything. “She writes poetry. Can you believe that? She’d never tell anyone.” He’d also seen evidence of her altruistic side, but he didn’t mention that now. That just made her callous treatment of him feel worse—why did he deserve the sharp side of the knife?

  “Don’t you feel a little pervy, looking at all this?” With a shiver, Charlie wondered how many others were out there, maybe watching him?

  “Nonsense. I’m leveling the playing field. Literally. Can Kurt Ellers do this?”

  Peter rose and announced, “‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon!’”

  A few lounging students clapped boredly.

  “Thank you,” Peter said, and sat back down. “Poetry, see? I will hack my way to love.”

  “Can you tell where Alex is?”

  “Probably.”

  Peter typed into a search bar, and his avatar rose up and flapped its wings through the cityscape. The creature flew gracefully through the trees and buildings and set down into a hover over Alex’s house.

  “He went home.” Peter let his chimera dive downward, passing through the shingled roof and coming into Alex’s hallway.

  “You can go inside?”

  “Yeah, sure, why not?”

  “How is that physically possible?”

  “Think about it—anything with a camera. Phones, TVs, Nests, watches, laptops, nanny cams, toys. All it needs is a glimpse and it can map the rest. I can see, hear, whatever.”

  “What if the devices aren’t on?”

  “The Game can turn them on remotely and make them look off—the FBI’s been doing it for years. Even if there isn’t a camera in the room, the Game can tell where people are from the EM fields.”

  “This is creepy as shit.”

  “Privacy is dead. Here’s our boy.”

  And there was Alex, lying on his bed, Aziteks on, staring up at the ceiling at God knew what.

  “I guess the test didn’t go well,” Charlie said.

  “Maybe he feels he’s earned a rest.”

  “I’m going to see him.”

  “Why? We’ll see him tonight.”

  “I need to know if he trashed Mr. B.’s car.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “For the Game. Where did he get the Goldz to buy those glasses?”

  “Who knows.”

  “Where did you get the Goldz to buy the Eye of God?”

  Peter grinned. “Aw, that was nothing.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Why? What have you done, Mr. Gold Bracelet?”

  “How did you know that? Are you spying on me?”

  Peter shook his head. “Nah, that’s weird.”

  Charlie looked Peter in the eyes and asked him the question that had been brewing since Charlie’s run-in with Burklander. “How do you quit the Game, Peter?”

  “Quit? How should I know? Why would you want to?”

  “Ask your friends online. They must know.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is the kind of game you try to get into. No one asks how to get out.”

  “Peter, please. Just ask. We don’t have to do it.”

  “Find out yourself. Why do you always need my help?”

  That stung Charlie more than he expected. He thought of Peter sitting for hours with him, after his mom died. When no one else knew what to say or do.

  “Fine. I’ll handle it,” Charlie said.

  “Then I bid you adieu, fair maiden.” Peter glanced around the lush grass and gentle slope, his face so handsome and elemental he could be a Nazi or Nazi hunter, but nothing in between. He shook his head and smiled. “Caitlyn writes poetry. ‘O blessèd, blessèd game! I am afeard, being in night, all this is but a dream.’”

  When Charlie was gone, Peter let his avatar fly gracefully through the city, until he was hovering over Kurt Ellers’s house.

  35   ANGEL OF DEATH

  Kenny got a text from Eddie Ramirez that was smug and gloating.

  No commentary, just a link to a CNN article:

  Scientists Use Computers to Predict Faces from DNA

  The article was more concerned with guessing what Jesus looked like, but Kenny knew exactly why Eddie was sending it to him. He was probably typing away on the article right now, drunk on DNA evidence and Candace’s new revelation about the satanic logo.

  Kenny thought of his brother, or more precisely, his parents’ faces when his brother had told them he’d dropped out of medical school. How could Kenny ever explain this? No, Ma, I’m not really a satanist—I just defaced school property with human blood for a computer game that thinks it’s God. So … all good? How would that go over in the doctors’ lounge?

  He put his face in his hands. He had always been so careful. Straight A’s. Extra credit. Following Malcolm Gladwell’s ten-thousand-hour rule with the cello—and sure enough, Kenny was number one in the state. The only place he cut loose was with the Vindicators. Would that one little safe space be his downfall? Yet, if he didn’t have the Vindicators, he was 99 percent sure he would have exploded a long time ago.

  What did the Game want from them? Why was it hurting them? And after he spent his hard-earned Goldz on the Hydra, which was supposed to save them!

  He pulled out his phone and typed:

  We did what you wanted. You cheated us.

  It felt vaguely sacrilegious to lash out at God this way, and he had to remind himself it was just a bot.

  The answer came:

  Trust in the Lord.

  Furious, Kenny typed:

  Trust? You tricked me.

  Unsearchable are My judgments, My ways past finding out.

  Yeah, right, Kenny thought. Like giving Eddie everything he ever wanted. Kenny knew he should stop, but he couldn’t. He felt humiliated.

  How was that HELPING us?

  The Game said:

  I will always help you.

  BS, Kenny thought, but the Game wasn’t done.

  All you have to do is ask.

  No way, Kenny thought. He would not demean himself. More important, he would not go deeper. Yet even as he climbed the stairs to the Tiger Claw office to reason with Eddie, Kenny knew the truth, deep down: there was no reasoning with Eddie. And as clever as Kenny was, he could see no way
out, short of asking God to lift the plague he’d made for them.

  36   CHILD SACRIFICE

  When Kenny walked into the Tiger Claw office, Eddie was there, smiling, and he laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his editor’s chair.

  “I’m thinking we go out in two waves,” he announced, without saying hello as Kenny entered. “First, the splash. Front-page picture of the pentagram. Really blow it up big. All the streaky blood stuff right there, pow!” Eddie rocked forward in his chair and let his feet hit the ground. “Then … a quote from Candace, talking on background. ‘A student with firsthand knowledge also described seeing other satanic imagery on school grounds, associated with a group of students calling themselves the Vindicators.’”

  “Eddie, don’t do this.”

  “Shh, listen, it gets better.” Eddie wiggled his fingers like a conjurer. “‘For those who remember, all of this is eerily familiar to that infamous group of student deviants.…’ Segue to the Friends of the Crypt.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Sure I do! So then, the second wave. The reveal! The DNA, you holding the Vindicators crest, Mr. B.’s car…”

  Kenny felt ill. Had Eddie connected that already?

  “That’s right! It had to be you guys. Like the Friends of the Crypt blew up that car. I don’t even have to prove it. Just the connection is riveting! Let the police sort it out.”

  “Eddie, I’m here to give you a chance. I know this all looks bad. But these are good people. They didn’t do what you’re saying. Not like you’re making it seem.”

  “I’ll make you a deal. Give me a blood sample for a DNA test. If it doesn’t match, I’ll kill the story.”

  “Eddie, please. No story is worth destroying these lives.”

  “You guys did this. Don’t blame me.”

  Kenny felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He glanced at it.

  Put on your glasses.

  He ignored it.

  “What about if it was just me?” Kenny said.