Player Reborn 2

by Deck Davis

  It was a good point. Tripp had supposed that the idea was to climb up to the top. Otherwise, why make it a tower at all?

  But the endless passageways…what were they for?

  Etta nudged him. “Guys, look. Something’s happening.”

  Tripp saw what she meant now. Beams of golden light were threading in the air in front of them. Feeling wary of it, he gripped his Flagellation Flail. What use that would be against harmful light was anyone’s guess.

  The light wasn’t dangerous, he soon saw. Within a few seconds, it had formed words, like how his level up notifications displayed.

  Hear my words,

  Hear them clear,

  For in the tower of Windborne,

  Death is near.

  The rules of the tower are many. Too many to tell in but a breath. Here are a few, adventurers, so that you may…

  “Hear my words, hear them clear?” said Rolley. “This is text, dumbass. We’re reading it.”

  With that, the words began to change.

  Read my words,

  Read them clear,

  “I think ‘clearly’ is the correct word. Not clear,” said Barnard.

  But that wouldn’t rhyme.

  “It’s responding to us. Is this thing sentient?” said Etta. “Is someone controlling the tower?”

  Tripp felt a cold dread settle in him then. This was starting to seem all too familiar.

  Could it be…

  His thoughts went back to his last spell in Soulboxe, when the game’s sentient AI, Boxe-5, had gone sadistic.

  No. They’d decommissioned Boxe. He was making the game way too unstable and messing with subscriber numbers. Surely the new devs wouldn’t be that dumb?

  “Erm, guys,” said Etta. “Wasn’t our light-text friend about to tell us some rules? They’re gone now. That’s what you get for correcting grammar.”

  Rolley spread his arms out. “We’re sorry!” he yelled. “Please tell us the rules.”

  And the light began to change shape again.

  Read my words,

  Read them clearly,

  For in the tower of Windborne,

  Death is nearly.

  See? Doesn’t work, does it? I need this to rhyme, young mage, and your change in words makes my rhymes sound silly.

  At any rate, the rules of the Tower of Windborne are thus.

  CHAPTER 14

  Julie Ward

  Glass was a poor insulator of sound. That was clear to the whole Soulboxe development team as their boss paced in his office. He yelled into his phone and did his best to bring a coronary upon himself.

  “You’re not taking the god damn dog,” he shouted. “And the house? No way. We sell it, split it, move on. Thank Christ I didn’t have kids with you.”

  It was hard to focus when your boss was going through a divorce and was in a slanging match with his soon to be ex-wife. Julie had to try.

  Then again, maybe Rathburger’s troubles were a warning. The guy had been married. Happily, at first. Then Soulboxe had chipped away at his life until his wife gave him an ultimatum that she knew wouldn’t go her way.

  Was Rathburger obsessed because that was the kind of person he was, or did the game turn him into an obsessive? Hard to say, but Julie felt like she was slipping, too. Ever since they canned her the first time she worked here, all she’d thought about was Soulboxe. Now that she was back, she was making up for lost time.

  “Julie,” shouted a voice.

  It was Rathburger, leaning out of the door of his office, clicking his fingers. “My office, now. Mush. Mush.”

  Julie stood up. “Wish me luck, everyone,” she said to the crowded dev room. Nobody looked up; they were all too busy for luxuries like looking up from their computers.

  No good wishes came her way, so she just imagined getting them. And she needed them, too. That was something she knew about meetings with Rathburger.

  When Rathburger had formed a consortium to take over Soulboxe, he’d reached out to Julie.

  “Babe,” he said down the phone, clearly drunk. “How about we let bygones be bye-byes. What do you say? I need to make changes to Soulboxe, and you know the game better than anyone.” And then his voice dropped a little. “Nearly anyone.”

  Julie, who started a blog when she was fired from Soulboxe so she could write about the behind-the-scenes stuff without breaking her NDA, went back to her dream job.

  It had been great at first. She was back working on the game she’d loved so much, one that she’d poured her soul into all those years ago.

  But now Rathburger was burning out again, and he had all this stuff going on with his wife. He was like a stick of dynamite with an invisible fuse. Ready to blow, no warning.

  It started when he’d fired an intern for spilling coffee on a laptop. An accident could have happened to anyone. But Rathburger blew his top.

  Then he’d fired two devs who he said didn’t have the right attitudes. What the right attitude was, nobody had a clue.

  Now he was calling Julie into his office. This might be the end. Oh well, better look him in the eye when he canned her.

  Rathburger was sitting behind his desk again when she went in. He had a takeout coffee cup in front of him, steam rising and fogging his glasses. Over in the corner, there was a waste bin filled with empty cups and crushed energy drink cans.

  “Julie,” said Rathburger. “Take a seat.”

  “There’s only one chair.”

  “Then take a stand. We need to talk.”

  Man, he didn’t look good. Julie was obsessive enough about Soulboxe. Thirteen-hour days were what she thought of as taking it easy. But Rathburger…word was he hadn’t left the office in three days. It smelled like it.

  Looking at him, at the bags around his eyes, the word-weary look in them, she wondered if she’d be better getting fired. Taking it easy again. Working at Soulboxe was amazing, but it drained the life out of you.

  But no. The first time they fired her, she missed the place so much, and she couldn’t lose it again.

  So she’d look him in the eyes. Make him face her like a man when he told her to leave.

  “Listen, Eli,” she said. “You can spare me the crap. If you’re going to ask me to leave-”

  “Julie, I need help.”

  He said this without his trademark cockiness. She saw a little vulnerability in him now. And damn it, she was such a nice person that her negative thoughts about him drifted away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I did something that I shouldn’t,” he said.

  “If this is about your wife, I can’t really-”

  “It’s about the tower.”

  Ah. The Tower of Windborne.

  It was a cool idea. One of the interns had it, actually. Rathburger took charge as soon as the poor kid had said: “Hey, maybe for our next event, we should…”

  To his credit, Rathburger had taken the idea and ran a marathon with it, stretching it out, adding depth. But now the intern who’d birthed the brainchild was looking for work elsewhere. Poor kid. Julie had written him a letter of recommendation and reached out to a few friends she knew at other studios. He’d be okay.

  Truth be told, after helping the kid, she’d forgotten about him immediately, sucked into her work. Events in Soulboxe were a common thing. To keep things fresh, to draw in older players who had become jaded with the game, they hosted special quests. Stuff like the Halloween goblin hunt. The dungeon under Glendon that could only be accessed through the cellar of the Thirsty Rat pub.

  The Tower of Windborne was one of their biggest yet. Bigger than all the stuff at Godden’s Reach, even.

  A seemingly endless tower that required users to solve a riddle to enter it.

  A tower with trap and puzzle rooms that changed for every player who got access.

  Infinite levels, infinite rooms, or it seemed that way, anyway. Until you cracked the mystery and realized what the real goal of the tower was.

  Nobody had done it yet.
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  It had been a great success so far. Not only had new subscriber rates increased by 17%, but player retention had increased to 50%. This was an industry high. Not only that, but older account logins had picked up massively.

  But now Rathburger was sitting there with eye bags the size of the Grand Canyon. There was an ashtray on his desk even though it was against fire code to smoke here, and he’d quit smoking years ago.

  “You better spill,” she told him. “What have you done, what’s gone wrong, and how do we fix it?”

  “That’s what I like about you, Jules. It’s why I called you in here and not the others. I mean, they know their stuff or they wouldn’t be warming their asses in our office, but they don’t have your lack of tact.”

  “Lack of tact? Coming from you-”

  “It’s a giant compliment. Tact has its place, Jules. But tact can show itself out of the door in this office. We need people who talk straight.”

  Whew. So he wasn’t going to fire her.

  “Spit it out,” she said. “And then maybe you can go home. Take a shower. Do that thing we humans call sleep. Purge your body of caffeine, give it a break.”

  He rubbed his thinning hairline now. “I thought I’d learned from what happened last time,” he said. “I guess I have, in a way, but still…”

  “What did you do, Eli?”

  “You haven’t been involved in the Tower much, have you?”

  “On the design side, sure. I had the idea to have the monks carry corpses out of the door.”

  “We might have stretched ourselves a little, Julie. I, uh, I brought Boxe back.”

  “What?”

  She must have said this too loud because Julie saw faces turn toward Eli’s office windows now. Eli stood up, opened the door and yelled at them.

  “You guys have more than enough work to do, so I suggest you do it,” he said. Then he added for good measure, “Thanks for your hard work, by the way.”

  As he settled back behind his desk he said, “Have to keep them sweet. A hug for every slap.”

  “I’m sure they feel so warm inside. What do you mean you brought Boxe back? He was the whole reason Soulboxe nearly went under.”

  “No, the balance sheet was the reason. That, and our asshole of an investor was asset-stripping the company. He was making me outsource work to people who had no business in the industry, but hey, they were cheap.”

  “That’s why you put the consortium together.”

  “I met a few people at dinner parties. You know how it goes. Cigars, brandy, buddying up to them. We managed to get enough cash together to buy my baby back.”

  “That doesn’t explain Boxe. Didn’t you sell him to a university or something?”

  “We licensed him, Jules. That means we own him, and we can use him how we like.”

  “Even so, he was making the game unstable.”

  “He was making it great! He was the only thing that made Soulboxe different.”

  “You’re completely discounting Lucas’s efforts.”

  “Lucas is a genius, but he’s got a conscience. A conscience is a chain holding you back, and I tried to get him to break it when it came to Boxe, but he wouldn’t. I offered him a place on the consortium, but he passed on it. I heard he’s over in France or Italy or something, drinking cocktails and sitting by the pool.”

  “That’s the life.”

  “That’s death. When you stop moving, you float to the surface. I prefer to keep swimming.”

  “If you’re using Boxe again, you’ll drown us all,” said Julie.

  “Relax. I’ve been working on him for a while now. You probably can’t tell, but I’ve barely slept lately. Course, the only place I could sleep for a while was the couch. Better staying here, to be honest. Thank Christ that’s over.”

  “Yeah, you need to start taking care of yourself.”

  “Later. See, I think I can make Boxe stable again. Mute some of his personality, while keeping his intelligence. He could start running Soulboxe again. We’d have dynamic questing, maps that change on the fly, every player could create his own story. Soulboxe would be back.”

  “Soulboxe is back. Jut a more stable version.”

  “A god damn inferior version. A version barely breaking even. The numbers aren’t stacking, Julie. Quick fixes like the tower help some, but they aren’t the long-term answer.”

  “Neither is introducing a sadistic AI to ruin everyone’s day.”

  “Here’s the thing, “said Rathburger. “I know how to fix his defects, but I need a live environment to test it on.”

  “So you let Boxe take control of the Tower of Windborne. He’s generating the puzzle rooms, making the traps.”

  “Exactly. And it might get nasty for a little while, just until I work things out. But it’ll be worth it.”

  Julie thought about the players trying desperately to get into the tower. They’d have no idea that in there, an all-powerful AI with a sick sense of humor was going to use them as toys.

  “What a set of unlucky bastards,” she said.

  CHAPTER 15

  “I feel so lucky to be here,” said Etta. “I mean, out of all the players who tried to get into the tower, how many have there been so far? Ten? Twelve?”

  “I think it’s more like twenty. Not sure how many are still in here, though. I don’t think life expectancy is long in here.”

  Rolley pointed ahead now, toward the staircase where more words were forming in the air. “Looks like the tower has forgiven us. We get to see the rules.”

  Tripp focused on the writing. Something about them gave him a sense of familiarity that nagged and tugged at his mind. He knew what his brain was trying to tell him, but he didn’t want to accept it. Instead, he focused on the words.

  The rules of the tower are thus:

  Few hearts will bond beneath this roof and those that bond may not always be trusted. A knife is a knife, no matter who wields it.

  You have but one soul here, traveler. Death does not grant a second chance.

  Once a threshold is crossed, nary an adventurer may change their intention.

  But hark thee, traveler! Pay heed to this. Twixt the…

  …I will stop writing this way. Forgive me, but it is grating on me.

  Ahem.

  Between the rooms, you will get a rest. A place to heal and strategize. Perhaps there are even people waiting for you in these areas of safety.

  The words hovered there for a few minutes. There was only one rule that surprised Tripp.

  “‘You have but one soul here, traveler. Death does not grant a second chance.’ I expected that if you die, you can’t come back,” he said. “We’ve seen the monks, after all.”

  Etta nodded. “Right. And once we commit to entering a room, we have to finish it.”

  “Pretty standard for a Soulboxe puzzle place. It was the same in the labyrinth in Godden’s Reach.”

  “The player killing worries me,” said Barnard.

  Rolley stared so hard at the text it was like he was trying to move it with his mind. He was willing it to rearrange so it made sense to him. “Where does it talk about plyer killing?”

  Barnard pointed. “’Few hearts will bond beneath this roof, and those that bond may not always be trusted. A knife is a knife, no matter who wields it.’ I guess that means player-killing is enabled, so you can’t trust anyone. Or, there are NPCs in here who will try to trick us.”

  “Or both,” said Tripp. “If I know how this works, and I’m getting increasingly worried that I do, then it’ll be both.”

  “Know how this works? What do you mean?” asked Etta.

  Tripp decided it was time to share his thoughts. “Boxe.”

  “Huh?” said Rolley.

  “He means the AI who used to run Soulboxe,” said Barnard, “Before they changed things around. Word is that he was unstable. Too clever, with too much power. He was causing problems in the game world.”

  “Problems is putting it lightly. He was batshit
crazy. Lucas said he almost tanked Soulboxe completely.”

  Barnard stared at Etta now. “Lucas? As in, Lucas Goobs? The guy who made Soulboxe?”

  Etta nodded. “Coombs. Not Goobs. And he was the co-creator.”

  “He’s her brother,” said Tripp.

  Rolley’s eye widened. “Your brother started this? Then what the hell are we doing? Get on the phone to him and hook us up.”

  Etta shook her head. “No can do.”

  “Sure you can. If the guy made Soulboxe, then he can probably program whatever he likes into the game. Just get him to gift us a few legendary swords. No, some mythical armor. Or maybe-”

  Etta crossed her arms now. It was the first time she’d shown even a slight flicker of annoyance toward Rolley.

  “I won’t ask my brother for help. Okay? I work for everything myself. Besides, Lucas is in Europe somewhere, drinking mojitos and sleeping all day. He doesn’t work for Soulboxe anymore.”

  “If I had a brother who created a game like this, you can bet I wouldn’t be mucking around in a tower.”

  Barnard shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s something to be said for rejecting nepotism. When something isn’t earned, it's rarely valued.”

  “Thanks, Barnard,” said Etta. “That’s a sweet way of putting it.”

  Barnard smiled and nervously fidgeted with his robe.

  “Let’s focus on the here and now,” said Tripp. “We know that player-killing might be enabled here. There could be NPCs ready to trick us. We can only die once, and once we commit to a room, we can’t leave it. Sound right? Have we interpreted the rule correctly?”

  The gang nodded and grunted in assent. Barnard, playing with the mage goatee beard on his chin, had a strange look on his face.

  “You know, there is a way to check if player-killing is enabled.”