The Goddess Quest

by Lawrence Ambrose

  "You sure you want to do this?" Alex asked him. "Trust me when I tell you this is no guaranteed win."

  "You're telling me this isn't set up from above? 'Cause that's how it looked to me at the table with those weird hands."

  "I don't know what's set up 'from above.'"

  "Then why are you betting 25 large on four?"

  "Because I saw a pattern."

  "Good enough for me." He gave her a shaky grin.

  Alex nodded to the croupier. The dapper, older male sim spun the wheel. The ball bounced around and rattled into number eight. Jimmy's breath wheezed out.

  "Son of a bitch," he said.

  Alex wasn't surprised. They weren't going to make it that easy for her. Losing 25K was no biggie, at least to her, but her unwanted partner appeared on the edge of cardiac arrest. She was tempted to tell him to fuck off, but she wasn't sure who or what he was. Was Jimmy what he seemed to be – some fifty or sixty-something guy who liked Frank Sinatra? A hardheaded businessman? Someone who had some money but not so much that 10 OD didn't hurt. Someone who didn't like to lose, clearly.

  Or he could be part of the game. Brushing him off might deprive her of a necessary clue. Better to play all possibilities.

  "I warned you."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  Alex placed the minimum hundred dollar bet on seven. Jimmy waved off the bet, muttering that he'd just watch for a while. The winning number was 17. She played several more hands with minimum bets, losing most. She thought she saw a pattern, and then it would slip away. Or she wasn't smart enough to see the real pattern. She halted play to take stock.

  Alex was about to move on and take her clue-seeking to the slot machines when something about the number order struck her: instead of a mathematical pattern it seemed more of a word/sentence structure. She reviewed the numbers, which she'd been memorizing, over the last twenty minutes: 17, 21, 5, 5, 14, 15, 6, 20, 8, 5, 1, 12. Substituting letters for the numbers, she knew she was right:

  QUEEN OF THE AM.

  Alex grinned. Baby, it was about to get brutal. She placed a 10K bet on 1 for "A." The croupier rolled the little ball. Ka-ching! One was a winner! Jimmy's breath wheezed out once again.

  "Man," he said. "You just won 350,000 bucks!"

  Alex focused him out. Queen of the Ama... Had to be "Amazon." She placed 50K on 26 (Z). Jimmy was gasping like a fish out of water.

  "Just a sec, just a sec," he said, holding up a hand to the croupier and staring at her. "You got this?"

  "I do. I figured it out."

  "Son of a bitch. Okay..." He whipped out a credit card, brandishing it at the croupier. "Put me down for twenty grand."

  Suddenly the lights illuminating the wheel started flickering and the wheel stopped its slow spin. The ball clicked and clacked around indecisively and dribbled into 15.

  "I'm afraid there has been a malfunction, gentlemen," the croupier informed them. "Your bets have been nullified and play will stop with this device until necessary repairs are made."

  The two stared at him in wordless shock. In her mind, Alex watched seventeen and one-half million OD shrivel up and die in her head. Apparently, there were limits on how much the GM would permit contestants to loot the system.

  "You got to be kidding me," Jimmy snarled.

  "I'm afraid not, sir," said the croupier. He cocked his head as though listening to or for something. "Management would like to offer you both five hundred in chips to compensate for the inconvenience."

  "Five hundred?" Jimmy shook his head. "Big frickin' deal. I'm down ten grand."

  Alex rose reluctantly from her reveries to an annoying twinge of guilt. She sighed.

  "I'll cover your losses, Jimmy, on two conditions."

  "Really?" His face lightened. "Like what?"

  "Are you a sim?"

  "Are you serious? Do I act like these zero-one 'tards?" He pointed to the croupier. "No offense."

  "None taken, sir. Particularly, since I don't know what a 'zero-one 'tard' is."

  Alex had never known Sims to reference or demonstrate any awareness of their simulacritude. If you asked if they were a sim, they'd either be uncomprehending or assert their identity's reality within Parallel Worlds. They knew nothing about the real world except insofar as they'd read about "alternate worlds" in science fiction novels. So Jimmy was definitely an avatar.

  "Condition two," Alex said to the man. "You stop following me around."

  "You got it, buddy. And thanks for being a mensch, by the way."

  Alex considered delaying payment until her stay here was over but decided the hardnosed bastard was the type who'd keep his word. She nodded to the croupier.

  "You have our credit information?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Transfer ten thousand..." She paused and shrugged. "Make that twenty thousand from my winnings into Jimmy here's credit account."

  "I will do so, sir."

  "Jesus Christ, kid." Jimmy was thumping Alex on her broad shoulders. "And here I thought you were some young punk. You're a class act all the way! Frank's never gonna believe it, that's for damn sure."

  "You're welcome."

  "All right." He backed away, grinning and holding up his palms. "Consider me officially out of your way. You have a good one, kid. You ever need a car in the Real, you call me – I own Jimmy Edgar Motors outta NYC. I'll get you one at cost. And I mean at dead cost, not one frickin' cent more."

  "What kind of cars do you sell?"

  "Mostly high-end, but I can get you any damn kind of car you want."

  "Thanks, Jimmy. I might take you up on that."

  They shook hands. Alex headed toward the nearest slot machines with an immense sense of freedom. She strongly preferred her games people-free. Avatars were messy and if engaged usually caused nothing but trouble. Maybe it was just coincidence or her overworked imagination, but this contest had a different feel to it. She was getting the sense that it was going to involve people and would become messy. The good news was that she was handling it and appeared to be well ahead of the field.

  Yet it seemed almost too good to believe. She was smart, but surely not so smart she could just breeze through an elite quest ahead of the strongest players in the world.

  She asked a booze-server where the Queen of the Amazon slot machine was. While Alex braced for "never heard of it," the shapely female sim pointed to one corner of the room.

  The Queen of the Amazon wasn't much to brag about. Instead of the towering, Romanesque mass of blinking lights, obscure and rather ominous symbols, and silver dollar-sized slots Alex had expected, the Amazon Queen was a modest little square lady with quarter slots and bikinied women bearing swords, spears, and shields swarming up its metal walls. Alex wondered what kind of person this machine would draw.

  She couldn't think of anything better to do than make the maximum five-quarter bet and pull the handle. After the obligatory beepings and blinkings a single coin clinked in the tray. Alex retrieved it. A penny. She filled the machine with quarters and pulled the handle again. A bust. Another play, another bust. A third bust and Alex pocketed the penny and moved on to greener pastures – the last clue provided by the dog sculpture artist's fake name – Keno.

  She picked up a ticket at a Keno table, marked the number one with a provided pencil, and turned the ticket in at the Keno window near the front of the casino. She placed a 20K bet on 1. Five minutes later, the twenty numbers were in, and they included number one, adding a 3-times payout of 60K to her winnings. If gambling were always this profitable, she'd need to add it to her gaming repertoire. Sadly, this was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  The more important question was what the penny and her winning bet – and possibly the winning numbers – signified, if anything. In this stage, it was obviously a numbers' game, but she had to draw the line somewhere or she'd end up counting her footsteps right to the nearest loony ward.

  Alex purchased a vending machine sandwich to satisfy the nutritional part of her Physical Needs
Quota (PNQ). Unlike with sex, even an AFIRM Gen 3 could only make food marginally more satisfying than peeing in a dream. Much of the food's taste and texture were there, but no fulfillment.

  Up in her room – a studio with a small kitchen, a couch, and even a spare room –Alex paused at the room safe. Usually, anything purchased in the Parallel Worlds could be sent directly into one's digital inventory along with one's money. In this game, however, only OD itself could be transferred into an account, just as it could be in the Real. Actual objects owned by the contestants were stuck in this reality until the completion of the game. That didn't apply to those not in the game, however. Any non-contestant here was free to steal your stuff and transfer it into their digital accounts. There would be no legal recourse. But since anyone other than the handful of Goddess questers could easily transfer small items into their DI, what was the safe for? Merely to match real world appearances?

  Alex pushed on the safe door's handle. It didn't budge. Locked. Interesting. In real life, they left a hotel room's safe unlocked as far she knew. Could mean something.

  She called the front desk. "Hi. Alex Milner in Room 414. My safe is locked. Could you give me the combination?"

  "Just a moment." After a few seconds: "I'm sorry, Mr. Milner. We can't provide our master combination over the phone. We'll send someone up shortly to open the safe and then you can set your own combination."

  A slender, elderly sim showed up shortly and asked for some privacy as he punched in the override code. The safe door refused to open.

  "Odd," he muttered. "It's either been reprogrammed or is malfunctioning. We can remove it and replace it with another one."

  "No." The man glanced up at her sharp tone, which Alex softened. "No, thanks. I'll keep this one."

  "Yes, ma'am. I'll let the front desk know."

  "How many numbers in the combination?"

  "Four in the standard combination."

  "How many in your override or master combination?"

  After a brief hesitation, he answered, "Seven."

  A normal person might've been curious why she wanted to know, but he was just a sim. Alex stared at the safe as the sim let himself out. She could tell she was losing her mental sharpness. All the numbers and clues were starting to blur together and assume grotesque shapes in her head. She checked the clock on the nightstand, which was synched to real-time: 8:30 PM. Somehow, she'd completely lost track of the time. She needed to check out, eat, drink, and remove bodily wastes.

  And sleep. An AFIRM might not require physical movement, as did a MEM (motion enabling machine), but artificially maintaining a brain in a lucid dreaming state cost beaucoup energy-bucks. Less, if you were lounging on a virtual beach; more, if you were trying to become a virtual god.

  The safe was clearly her next target. The combination was the solution. A grouping of number-suspects should provide the answer. But she could do that just as well in the Real as she could here – better actually, with real sustenance and waste-removal.

  Alex found her mom watching yet another health documentary in the living room, the sound turned down low.

  "How's it going?" she asked, turning her gaze from the big TV screen with a reluctant air.

  "Fine."

  Alex waddled to the kitchen feeling as if she was firing on about half of her cylinders. Par for the course after a long VR session. She added a pinch of Starbuck's instant coffee to her cacao drink. Not what most people would do before going to bed, but she knew she'd need at least three hours to unwind and unscramble her brain from REM induction. A little stimulation had a brain-cleansing effect for her.

  Her mom rose from the couch and walked over.

  "I made something special for you. Why don't you sit down and enjoy your drink and I'll heat it up and bring it to you."

  Alex flopped down at the kitchen table. Sometimes, her mom really tried to be a mom. Not exactly her first instinct, but she usually had good intentions. God, she hoped it wasn't quiche.

  The microwave dinged and her mom brought over a slice of quiche. Arrrggg.

  "I know, I know, my last quiche turned out pretty crappy," she said in a rush, "but I think I nailed this one. Really. Try to keep an open mind."

  Alex took a bite. Hmm. Interesting. Not half-bad. "Is that chocolate I'm tasting?"

  "Yep." Cindy appeared to be glowing. "A recipe a department friend recommended. That's cacao along with fresh eggs, broccoli, and spinach from the farmers market. With a dash of nutritional yeast and raw honey thrown in. You like it?"

  "It's okay. Though when anyone says 'cacao' I always think of that Portlandia episode."

  Her mom laughed. "Maybe we should make it our 'safe word'?"

  "Maybe not."

  Another bite and Alex felt her appetite stumbling to life.

  "Want to tell me what's happening in the game?"

  "I'm in the lead, so far, I think. I'm close to solving the second stage. Oh, and I've won four hundred and fifty-four thousand Omnidollars."

  Alex couldn't help smiling at her mom's shocked expression.

  "Dear God." She was actually flushing. "That's incredible! And you're in the lead?"

  "Yep."

  "Well...congratulations, baby! I knew you were talented, but in all honesty I wasn't sure how you'd do against the best in the world."

  "I wasn't, either. But now we know."

  "What are you working on now? In the game, I mean."

  "A safe." Her mom's interest in her gaming would take some getting used to. "I think it holds the final or next-to-final step in Stage Two. I'm trying to figure out the combination."

  "How?"

  "It has to be a grouping of the numbers I've used to get this far."

  "Where are you, exactly, in the Parallel U.S.?"

  "Las Vegas. The Wynn Hotel. In my room."

  "Sounds glamorous." Her mom smiled. "We went to Las Vegas once."

  "I remember. It left an impression – not a positive one."

  "Not positive on your dad and me, either. We never went on vacation to a gambling resort again."

  "You might like it better in the Verse. The smoke isn't as annoying."

  "I doubt it. I have enough trouble in the real world."

  "So do I. That's why I like it there."

  Cindy gazed at her daughter for an extended moment over her coffee. She seemed to be about to speak, but thought better of it. Alex pushed away the remaining small slice of quiche.

  "Thanks," she said.

  Back in her room, Alex slogged through some sit-ups and a couple minutes of running in place before settling into her walk-in tub and waiting for it to fill. This was probably her favorite part of the evening. The warm water caressed her sore, stiff body as she floated in a sea of temporary well-being.

  Four or seven digits – that was the question. One question. What would the most likely series be for either number?

  She stretched back and waited for the numbers to speak to her.

  Chapter 7

  7:15 AM AND ALEX was back in her hotel room with a clear mind and some combination prospects. Time to do this thing.

  First up: 4149. Four, the original Blackjack sequence and her room's first number; one, her room's second number and her slot win and winning Keno bet; four, her room number's last digit; 9, the first winning Keno number and the sum of her room number. She punched them in.

  No go. Remaining confident in the first three digits, Alex punched in 4140. Nothing. She swiftly entered 1-8 for the fourth digit – the remaining possible numbers. The door obstinately refused to budge. She then ran through 0-9 in the first position, maintaining 414 for the last three numbers. Still nothing.

  Resisting a wavelet of dread – not something she could ever remember feeling in a game before – Alex induced the safe into override mode (pressing and holding the number 9 as she'd seen the repair sim do), allowing her to enter seven numbers.

  Her first choice, not feeling any real hope: 4144144. Fail. 9999999 – fail. She screwed around with o
ther combinations, but without a clear hypothesis, failure seemed inevitable. And failure was what she got.

  Wait a minute, she thought. How about the sum of her room number – 9 – entered four times? She tapped in the numbers with cautious optimism. The door remained locked. Goddamn it. Alex took a breath. She could see spending the day running through numbers while waiting for a revelation. Or...

  I'm being retarded. Of course, it was possible that a combination couldn't open the safe! Maybe a brute-force opening was the only option. It all came down to understanding the Gamemasters' mentality. That's where majoring in computer game development/design came in handy, with its numerous brainstorming sessions. One central lesson: while the predominately male game designers pretended to be cool-headed logicians, the truth was that they fancied themselves as artists. Part of being artistic was showing the world how clever they were. Part of it was the pure joy of fucking with people. Like the Harry Potterites calling normal people "Muggles," the people Alex in games development referred to the computer-challenged masses as "NoDigs" – what they imagined was a clever combination of "not digging" and "non-digital."

  Making someone believe they needed to discover a combination to a safe when in truth no combination would work fell cleanly under the "joy of fucking with people."

  Alex accessed several YouTube videos on breaking into safes. Most of them covered accessing the override combination, which she'd already done. One showed prying it open with a bunch of tools she didn't have. Another involved removing a nameplate and turning a "master lock screw." This safe lacked a nameplate.

  But the repair-sim might have the tools and the ability to break into the safe.

  Alex called the front desk and said she'd left something in her safe but couldn't get it out. Fifteen long minutes later, the elderly sim-repairman reappeared.

  "You were able to get it open after I left?" He sounded surprised, if not skeptical. "How did you do that?"

  "Just tried a bunch of combinations and one worked," Alex replied with a shrug. "But when I tried it again, no luck. Like you said, it's malfunctioning."