by Lee Bond
For a reasonable price.
All this, and more, in three months. Out of the mists of Switzerland and into the dry, sunny climate of San Francisco. From devil to saint, almost overnight, there was one idea, one invention, one thing that'd captured everyone's minds.
The game called Specter.
From the moment the server had come online and the beta available for download, geeks and leets and hackers -on the side of the government, on their own side, or in the employ of companies taking a thrashing- had been trying to burrow in and crack the secret codes wide open. They were looking for anything. The language structure of the game itself. Hardwired commands hinting at tech specs for the server.
Anything. Anything at all. Hackers, everywhere, burning bridges, burning midnight oil, inventing and displaying all-new, all-lethal codes able to shred government encryption codes into pixelated shrapnel.
Big boys and girls, heavy hitters from the Deep Web, they too, had risen out of the depths like latter-day digital Cthulhus, ready, willing and able to use their eldritch coded kung fu to chop Changetech's firewalls into so much sushi.
With no success.
All of this was known. All of it was discussed, at length and in detail, on forums far and wide. It was speculated that people who had no concept of time, who believed they were the only beings on the planet, knew of Garth Nickels and the things he'd been up to.
The only thing that wasn't known was…
Who was Garth Nickels?
The whole world was going to find out, and in very short, very surprising, very explosive order.
And then everything was going to change.
***
The crowd's applause was overwhelmingly effusive. With boyish good looks, an attitude that screamed humble and an earnest desire to make America proud again, Elton Crux was the literal poster boy for Achievement. His big dreams and wild ideas had captured the hearts of people the country over and the third iteration of plans to get a space elevator into action no later than 2020 had investors nearly shitting themselves insensate to get into bed with Crux.
Yet, the applause -no matter how effusive, no matter how insane- was short-lived. Keever Rocklins had painted an extremely dark outlook on the world of the future before his counterpart, Crux, had made it to the stage, and no matter how flashy and grand the younger man's dreams were, they'd caught some of Rocklins' pallor; the reporters and bloggers and journalists and web-casters were caught between admiration for what Crux was doing and the dangers coming from Camp Nickels as highlighted by Rocklins.
Erick with a 'K' and his pristine moustache stepped up to the podium once Crux had taken his final sweeping stage bow. The emcee didn't like to admit it, but he was very much in favor of what Elton was trying to accomplish and more than a little disdainful of Changetech's efforts.
Still, personal feelings were personal feelings and all the assembled souls had begged and pleaded for the powers that be to bring Garth Nickels to the show, and so it was.
"Ladies and gentlemen, a final round of applause for Elton Crux! What a grand visionary. An elevator right into space. I'm sure that we'll be seeing much more from Camp Crux in the next few years!" Erick waited for the crowd to die down, slightly disappointed that the applause diminished quicker than he felt was proper. Damn that miserable sourpuss Keever and his gloomy future telling.
Someone from his crew should've stepped up with an FYI about all of that. The content of the man’s speech had bordered on something an extremely well-educated Luddite might say. Erick was sure that Keever’s passion hadn’t been meant to skewer Elton’s dreams but to eviscerate Garth, but things hadn’t happened that way.
Still, the die had been cast and there was nothing anyone could do about it. When the smattering of applause was one hundred percent done, Erick regretfully signalled the audio guy manning the sound and prepared himself for the worst.
Garth Nickels was coming on stage, and he was going to do so in style.
The sultry –some would say explicit and inappropriate- opening strains of More Human than Human by Rob Zombie split the relative, mutter-filled, silence of the Convention room like a hot knife through butter. Intrepid bloggers were already recording the nonsense with their smartphones and Bluetooth cameras while the more responsible press were shaking their heads, heavily disappointed in the showmanship.
Garth Nickels burst through the curtain with a ridiculous cartwheel.
***
Garth caught the handmade laptop tossed his way by Rommen with a lazy hand, smoothly dropping it onto the podium before gazing out a sea of faces. So many people. He did a rough count and got to a hundred intensely focused people before losing interest, and that wasn’t even including all of the people on the other end of the cameras.
He was at his most exposed right now. Even before, back when he’d been on Hospitalis, battling Sa Gurant, he hadn’t been quite so exposed, though it might’ve seemed like it; surrounded by Goddies, watched over by the Horsemen, there’d only been a few hundred thousand Latelians nearby, while this … this felt much more intimate.
Then, as now, he hadn’t started off on what you could call ‘the right foot’ but that was what it took. Everyone in San Francisco should feel goddamn lucky that their local airport hadn’t ripped itself to pieces in an explosion so terrific that it changed the fucking weather patterns for the entire goddamn planet.
Garth wanted to shake his head, mentally call himself an asshole, but the eyes of the world were watching, and as he watched the crowd shuffle this way and that as they tried to get a better picture or the right angle or just one more, he saw the spark.
The spark of realization that not all was well with Mister Nickels was lighting people up. The slightly-glowing, solid-looking contact lenses were a dead giveaway, and the people down there, slowly but surely realizing for themselves or being whispered to by their neighbors, weren’t as polite as Erick with a ‘K’ or the divine Special Agent Angela Devlin.
There’d be plenty of time for that. Depending on circumstances that Garth was both unaware of and had no control over would determine when the interesting bit would happen; most of the time during his repetitive Murder Syndrome, ten or fifteen minutes from the start of the speech had been the moment fate collided with The Line.
Things were going to be different this time. It probably wouldn’t stop that ball from moving further, but a mildly happy ending was better than the one he kept trying to script.
Eventually, everyone got bored of taking pictures of the mildly smiling man with the hair and the weird eyes and the hands started raising. Then the questions started flying, loudly barked by professional question askers, individual tones cutting through the wall of sound. A guy in the back started howling inquiries through a megaphone, but he was quickly tackled by in-house security and tazered into polite unconsciousness before things got really out of hand.
“Wow.” Garth said into the microphone, his voice bouncing off the walls. “Some guys, eh? Just rollin’ on in here with a big old megaphone, drowning all of you out. Good thing someone was here to taze him, get him in line with the rest of you, hey?”
The audience shifted uncomfortably. Was the man really making an allusion to his own roughshod entrance into the US? Was he really talking about the Federal government’s involvement in those very same practices?
Without being prompted?
More questions sizzled through the air. Garth popped open the laptop, tapped a key, and –with half an eye on the monitor- started talking. “So, here’s the deal, ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls … I am a visionary. No capital letters or anything. I don’t have any superpowers,” Garth paused here, just for a second, just to give Rommen, who was backstage, to snort or laugh or make some kind of comment just loud enough to be heard at the podium, continuing when nothing was heard, “or anything like that. No, all I have is a mind to rhyme and two black feet. No? No MC Hammer fans? Well. This is … awkward. You people need to listen to more music.”
In the very front row, a young woman with a delightful pageboy haircut that was also the precise color of a pixie’s diaphanous wings bulled forward, throwing a bony elbow into a Rastafarian’s exposed neck when he tried beating her to the punch.
“RektMelissa157 from Leaderboard Tech.” RektMelissa raised her mike high enough to catch every nuance of Nickels’ answer, delivering a tiny little kick to Atomic Bob’s chin to keep him down. When Nickels delivered a curt nod –complete with bemused quirk, a fact which would go into the transcript- RektMelissa asked her question. It could be anything in the world, any question, any one of the million things that everyone in the office wanted her to find out. Anything at all. “Rumor has it that you plan on adding the Gallifreyans to the Specter Universe, complete with a rogue Doctor Who and Master appearing whenever and wherever the game itself chooses. My question is this: which of the Doctors will you be implementing, and how soon will the DLC be available for purchase and download? Will Gallifreyan tech be made available? Will…”
Atomic Bob gouged a knuckle into RektMelissa’s calf muscle as he pulled himself up. Angry enough to lose his temper but nevertheless keeping his calm, the Rastafarian used the silence generated by RektMelissa’s absolutely stupid question to ask something that was of far more interest to the world at large.
“Atomic Bob from Porterhouse Online, Mister Nickels.” Atomic Bob ignored RektMelissa, who hobbled off a bit out of the way so she could work on her sore calf muscle in relative privacy. “Globalrace 3K has swept the world with it’s lunatic fun and crazy prizes. I’m guilty of killing evenings and weekends trying to complete some of the more out-there circuits, but what I want to know … what everyone wants to know … is … what’s the point? Fan theories on Reddit and 4Chan and, well, any forum anywhere cry for explanations. Some people think there’s an overall pattern, some kind of Easter egg, others believe it’s an actual circuit. What are we out there doing? Why are we doing it?”
Garth opened his mouth, more interested in answering Pixie Girl’s question about Whovian DLC than the Rasta’s awkwardly insightful question about Globalrace when the four star General that’d been lurking in the back this whole time finally swept forward with a retinue of armed guards that politely but irresistibly shoved journalists out of the way.
The Kin’kithal perked up. This was new. In all of the other Lines, the General had chilled in the back, alternating –with each repetition of said Line- between disgust, rage and outright hostility at the different ways in which a certain time-traveler stuck in a temporal loop dealt with his own mounting frustration at being stuck.
The laptop’s screen flashed bright green, once, twice, three times and then announced with a pleasing tone that it’s work was done, which put a gigantic smile on Garth’s face; with Globalrace being as popular as it was, and people being as easily addicted to something as they were, pretty much everywhere in San Francisco was layered under thick blankets of precisely mapped out quadronic circuitry, including the Convention Center.
In point of fact, of all the buildings in the vicinity and next to the compound, the Convention Center was home to more invisible rubidian circuits than any other place, unless you chose to take the entire world into consideration.
His lens-covered eyes filled with data. Info pulled from cellphones and smartphones, tablets and laptops. He had livestream footage bounced back through the laptop from machines beaming his image out across the Internet. Hasty text messages from reporters and journalists to home offices streamed across his peripherals. Elated voices quickly layered atop QuickTime videos and flash gifs and everything else happening in the electronic sphere of influence inside the Center was his to command.
Including everything coming from the General and his staff. Garth was glad the man was being an active participant this time, though he did wonder what his particular catalyst had been; was it Devlin’s presence, a Federal burr in a Military boot, or was it the lenses? Or was it something else?
Hell, for all he knew, General Habercome was just a giant Nickelback fan. Curious enough to waste a few seconds, Garth quietly ordered the laptop to do a background search on the General, soft EuroJapanese words uttered well below the range of the microphone in front of him.
Garth raised a welcoming hand to the General, delivering an apologetic look to everyone in the room who was suddenly being trumped by the physical incarnation of everything that was wrong with the world. The lenses showed a sudden and furious uptick in hashtags involving #militarycomplex and #fuckthearmy and things even less complimentary.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the universal press, I give you, General Shelley Habercome, four star wizard in the art of warfare and mayhem. What can I do for you today? In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m supposed to be up here answering questions like those coming from RektMelissa157 and Atomic Bob, and not dealing with propagandist rhetoric from a puppet of the Military and Fossil Fuel Combine otherwise known as the United States Army.” Garth leaned into the sudden roar of surprise and mirth erupting from the assembled horde of hungry news reporters.
Habercome adjusted his hat, glared daggers at all the unwashed hippy Internet freaks with their weird hair, strange smells and patently un-American views of how the world should be. His retinue spread a little thinner, not quite using their legally presented weapons to hold the crowd at bay, but implying very nicely that shit would go sideways the moment anyone got it into their heads to do something foolish. The crowd knew the deal, though. They’d all been through this situation a dozen times or more down the years.
“Mister Nickels.” Habercome cleared his throat. “Under the legally binding agreements signed by you and your legal representation, you are not permitted to speak on anything deemed protected under the National Protection Acts III, IV, and XI.”
Garth held up a finger, mouth slightly open. “Buh?”
In the back of his mind, Rommen deShure was slowly making his way through the crowds of assistants and other idiots with backstage passes, irrevocably hurtling his way towards implacable Destiny –not to mention a nice stairwell view of the podium- that very second.
There was about five minutes left, and Garth was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to go on any kind of diatribe, which kind of bummed him out; for this last and final chance at Internet fame, he’d really been looking forward to calling JJ Abrams out for excessive use of lens flare. He’d even prepared some Specter Engine-derived graphic displays to display once and for all exactly what the future would look like.
“We have it on solid authority that nearly everything you’re doing here today possesses the potential to undermine the American Way of Life instead of cementing it in the future, Mister Nickels, and we are here to get some answers.” Habercome stepped forward, and his wall of soldiers followed suit, shoving the crowd back.
Hot cries of displeasure reached his ears, and he was certain that the Internet was already on fire with footage of his actions.
It didn’t matter. None of it did. The only thing that mattered was Garth Nickels, and getting him under control. As he waited for Nickels to respond, Habercome watched as the man at the podium started typing on his laptop.
A split second later, half the crowd stared at their various electronic devices in confusion. The other half, anger.
Garth leaned forward until his lips were nearly touching the microphone. “Uh.” A high-pitched warble bounced from the speakers, momentarily distracting everyone from fiddling with their devices. “What’s it to you?”
Habercome blinked like he’d been bonked in the forehead with one of those old-fashioned Billy clubs. Rommen was out in the crowd now, working his way patiently across the floor, aimed for the exposed stairwell on the west side of the floor. Garth supposed that somewhere behind him, Special Agent Angela Devlin was on her satphone to the Boys in the Office, very interested to discover just what in the great googly-moogly an actual 4 Star General was doing in San Francisco, verbally harassing an asset and using a polite displa
y of military might to keep a literal horde of people connected to the Internet.
“Sir?” Habercome didn’t know how to respond. He’d been prepared for prevarication, for a slippery fish dangling on a poorly baited hook, but not overt admission.
“What’s it to you?” Garth tracked Rommen’s movements through the crowd, wondering –as the stalwart security officer pushed right by the General’s soldiers without generating so much as a blip of interest- what in the hell was wrong with everyone. They had a guy storming through the crowd with an actual, literal doomfaring scowl in his face and they were all, like, ‘ooooh, my phone isn’t working and I can’t play Candy Crush while I’m beaming all of this to the Internet’. “I actually mean that. What’s it to you? If I’m working for or against the American population? Does it really matter to the Military Industrial Fossil Fuel GMO Combine what I’m doing? None of you seemed to be too terribly upset when I was busy strip mining foreign businesses of their assets and patents. I can’t help but notice that I’m still standing here, and not once in the last three months has anyone tried to kill me. You’d think that my colossal assholery would’ve brought some kind of international reprisals, right? Like … Spetsnaz Black Ops dudes in balaclavas … or is it baklavas? I can never remember. Oh, and ya’ll can stop trying to get an Internet signal or Wi-Fi or even, like, an actual carrier signal. All your base are belong to me.”
***
Devlin resisted the urge to throw her satphone so hard against the wall that it shattered into broken pieces of plastic and wiring. The only thing staying her hand was that -unlike her personal phone- the government issued satellite phone was working. It just wasn't working properly; the checks she'd run on the device indicated that she could make all of the calls she wanted, just to a phone number that she didn't recognize and was comprised of three digits only.
The same went with all of their gear. The rifles and their scopes were receiving updates from somewhere, just not their own surveillance equipment. Installed earlier that day -against arguments from some of the heavy hitters speaking at the convention that day, including both Keever Rocklins and Elton Crux as well as a half-dozen senators and a polite Englishman who'd only given up calmly arguing when one of her team blatantly checked his weapon- to keep an eye on the man Garth Nickels claimed was going to take drastic action, the cameras were no longer beaming information.