by Kit Falbo
I can order Jasper to accept the nomination, but I get the feeling that would take all the goodwill or reputation points I have developed with him. If he’s unwilling, I can’t see the play for the throne succeeding. This may take a while. I take a seat in one of the chairs. “Alerin thinks we have at least even odds of getting this through the city council.”
Jasper snorts at this. “I bet he also had you give him all your money and do favors for people.” I open my mouth but can’t think of anything to say. Jasper takes this as the confirmation that it is. “This is why the representatives and people in power won’t give up using Touched. A few words and requests and they can get you to help them and have Touched give them things they want, consequences to be damned. As much as the Touched have their nicknames for us, there are many citizens who call your kind useful idiots. You don’t even question if what you are being told is true.”
I’m a little stunned. I hadn’t wondered if Alerin King is lying to me and even more importantly, if the quest pop-ups can lie. I have enough lies in the real world. Being here always feels like a little vacation even if all I’m doing is working the forge. If tomorrow’s vote fails, I can always move on. One thing I do have is a lot of experience with is moving on and a grandfather who is very good at convincing people to do things they might not want to do. “You may be right. Maybe I have been one of those useful idiots. The nomination will be happening tomorrow anyway, and I’m not going to force you to accept it. Though it might look worse for you if you don’t. I would like you to hear me out.”
Jasper doesn’t leave. He doesn’t get angry. He just looks frustrated and a little tired, so he sits down. Picking up a little bell that is on the desks he rings it. “I’ll have someone bring us some drinks.”
I’ve had drinks in this game that tasted like sweet rosemary, creamy mint, burnt strawberries, and even something akin to French fries, all with strange or silly names. Almost all of them with Jasper sitting next to me as we talk about how his day went or our plans before I head over to the forge. This is the first time that it’s one that tastes like rich and creamy chocolate. I spend a few moments breathing it in while Jasper sips his. “What is this called?” I ask.
“I believe it is called… a hot chocolate.” Jasper finishes his drink and sets the empty cup down. “Tell me what you want to say.”
“Hot Chocolate. I’ll have to remember that one.” The game got me this time. “Imagine winning. Those concerns you have, you’ll finally have the power to act on them. The way the Kingmaker quest is going, a companion who’s spent months acting as a mule or sitting at a shop making healing potions will be the next ruler. “
I see him grimace, obviously thinking about some of the tasks his compatriots have been given. “That doesn’t make me better than them. I just needed a job to keep off the streets. You may not have ordered me, but even all this is at your request.”
“Fine, you’re unhappy with what I’ve asked you to do.”
“That’s not what…”
I lift my hand up interrupting him. “I know the feeling of not being allowed to do what you want, the need to work for your goals. This was my goal before I even met you. It doesn’t matter if you are better or worse than anyone else. I could have gotten anyone assigned as my companion, and they would be where you stand now. You could have been made a mule and ordered not to speak. All of this is luck.
“I’m not a fighter. You don’t see me slugging it out on the frontlines trying to defeat the Man of Masks. If this attempt fails, I’ll make you a deal. You can pick what you want to do, and I’ll leave you alone. You want to go back to bookmaking or whatever you want to do, it’s yours.”
“This is just. I don’t…“ He sits there lost in thought looking conflicted about what I’m offering him. I could just order him. I flick through my player menu options to separate myself from the melodrama. The quest giver toolkit is on a tab. I’ve kind of ignored it since I used it with Noxtimus. So, I start poking around it while Jasper sits there looking lost… Maybe. A box appears in front of me. You have offered Jasper a quest.
Jasper’s eyes focus on me. “I’ll do my best, no promises on succeeding.”
Chapter Thirty-One - Casey ELLIS
There is a buzz around the office. Someone leaked the information about Chess’s runaround for the Kingmaker prize to the rest of the staff. I don’t really know who leaked the information, but I would say probably, almost definitely, Frank. Thankfully, there hasn’t been a peep outside of the office, which makes sense because we were good about not having leaks before the game’s release. Still, when Sun got a whiff of it spreading around, he sent out a memo about if anyone did release the information and he found out about it, they would be fired with cause.
The whole situation creates unhappy people around me. While I was gone on the leadership training, I think Frank whittled away at Sun about the situation. Sun is unhappy that I can’t definitively prove the player was cheating. He is unhappy with me for not getting the news he wanted. He is unhappy with Sally and Abigail for being unable to tell him whether Chess will succeed, because if you want AI’s that act like real people they are not always the easiest to predict. Outside of a lot of solid yeses and no’s there is a wide middle ground of those who hadn’t decided on it yet. I don’t even know how Frank managed to dodge the ire, being the AI architect.
To be fair, the Chess issue is just one mess with the potential to be a headache, as opposed to all the other messes that are slowly piling up and may turn into bigger problems. There is pressure to get the long-term gaming pod systems that are taking off in Asia and starting to pick up steam in Europe working with the game.
Asimov’s, AI rights groups who can’t accept that the characters in the game are just that, characters in a game. Having relatable, almost human characters above and beyond the competition is probably the biggest draw of Fair Quest. It is also drawing small protests outside immersion centers and larger ones inside the game. Most players don’t care, but the protests inspired a counter group of fanatical trolls and players who like to take advantage of the game characters to piss in the protester’s cheerios.
During all of this, we’re setting up the final touches for the EU release, before moving onto Asia and running predictive models on area and story expansions we have waiting in the wings.
Stella is unhappy about the long hours, trips, and how stressed I am.
It isn’t shocking to find a cold dinner waiting in the fridge as I get home late again. “Stella?” I call out to a quiet apartment. She has stuck a note to the fridge: Gone off with the girls to blow off steam, don’t wait up.
I can’t say I blame her. I say it’s work stuff when she asks what’s bothering me. I don’t want to burden her with the fact that I’ve stretched the bounds of what I’ve been comfortable doing. I grab a beer from the fridge and take a portion of the dinner out to heat up. I don’t want to tell her about the almost decade old flyer with the photo of the missing Nate Shoefield that I just can’t stop seeing.
The author of the Scars of the Missing blog had taken a few days, but he’d finally gotten back to me with an address in Texas of where the mother is living. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with it and have just been sitting on the information. I push those thoughts aside and find a cheesy rom-com with Matthew McConaughey to take up my attention as I eat my food.
The movie is mostly over when Stella stumbles in. She is wearing a cocktail dress and moves like she’s been drinking. “I thought I said not to wait up,” she says slurring her speech a little.
I pause the show and go to help make her more stable. “You look like you’re trying to re-live our college years.” I can smell the alcohol on her breath. “Come on, let’s get you to the shower and to bed.”
She snorts but lets me lead her towards the bedroom. “One of us has to not be grumpy and relax. “
I don’t feel like fighting. I’ll admit I haven’t been as present in recent weeks as I would l
ike. I know the in-game city council will be voting tomorrow, and it will probably be settled, and if not, then in a week. “In a week I’ll put my foot down and take a vacation. Maybe we can go and relax at a beach together.”
“That’s nice,” she says a little woozily. Instead of making it to the bathroom she crashes on the bed and is mostly out and beginning to snore.
“We’ll fix us soon,“ I say to her unconscious form. Then I take off her boots before tucking her in and starting to get ready for bed myself.
My phone wakes me up, and not in a pleasant way. I’m already cursing leaving the ringer on. It stops only to start up again half a minute later. I grab it. It’s 3am and work calling. I answer groggy and clueless about what is going on. “What?”
“Go check the latest FQ Report upload. Then get back to me.” It is Sun on the other end. He hangs up, and I slowly peel myself out of bed, wondering if I really shouldn’t have waited up. I make my way back into the living room where I keep my laptop and boot it up.
The FQ Report is one of those gaming vlogs that focuses primarily on Fair Quest. While we don’t allow streaming because of the adult nature of some situations, we still have censored screenshots players can take. They often take enough of them to make animated clips like with the Thriller dance, and other performances groups chose to organize.
There is one from two days ago: No new Chess item auctions!?!. Not shocking. The newest one was uploaded an hour ago. The Raze of Pequant. Pequant is one of the three starting zone towns just south of the training grounds. It is probably the smallest and least popular, with maybe a hundred NPC’s making it home. I select the video to play.
The host wears a 3d printed armor set and looks a little tired himself.
“Breaking news from Fair Quest. Two Anti-Asimov and Cit-Lover guilds, Flame Droogs and Sad Pups, along with scores of independent players gathered an hour ago at Pequant. Unofficial numbers put it at between three hundred and four hundred players in total gathered in the span of ten minutes before they started to assault the town.”
A cut-in window to the right of the host displays shaky screenshots of waves of explosions, magical bolts of fire, lightning or balls of plasma raining towards the town.
From what I have seen, the presenter has never been one to take sides on the debate about whether the NPC are alive or playthings. Still, he looks strained and emotional, taking a brief pause before continuing.
“Though Fair Quest is famous for making it difficult to kill NPC outside of certain quests and in most situations, guards are quick to response to events like this, it is clear that Pequant was selected because of its small size and the fact that it only had ten guards working there. The battle lasted twenty minutes. A few handfuls of starting players tried to help defend the town against the high-level guilds.”
More screenshots showed the fighting.
“Some of the marauders who died initially in the assault were able to wait the ten minutes to respawn and then get back into action. By our count, the hundred NPC were able to take out more than twice as many players before the whole town was wiped out. Only the handful of women and children that were escorted away at the beginning of the fighting survived.”
The next series of images are pictures of destroyed buildings and bodies littering the street. Wounds that are particularly gruesome are blurred out.
“It didn’t take long for ripples from this action to be felt throughout the game by NPC and players alike. Asimov groups immediately started a petition to restore and recover the village back to how it was before the attacks, while counter groups immediately started their own petition to leave it as it is. Where the news has spread, players are finding themselves kicked out of some businesses and are refused to be served by NPC. The in-game ripple effect is only just beginning. Either way, expect more and frequent updates from the FQ Report.”
The video ends, and I stop whatever autoplay is going to start next. It is shocking. We did have pre-planned trigger events that could change the balance in the world if a player stumbled upon them. I suppose we should have seen something like this coming as well. Not sure I needed to be woken up for this. After sitting a while, I start to wonder if I should just go back to bed. My phone rings again, and I answer. “Do you think he planned this?”
“Who?” I ask confused.
“Chess!” Sun exclaims, sounding more like Frank than his usual self.
“I don’t see how this helps him. He’s just a lone player.”
“Abigail has assured me that this will push his companion over the edge to win the city council vote because of his anti-player stances. Who knows what this action will do for the High Council one.”
I hold back a sigh, still not sure how Frank managed to weasel his way under Sun’s skin so deep. “These types of actions have been building for a while. It may be surprising, but it shouldn’t have been. It’s most likely a coincidence. We’ve seen very few signs of Chess interacting with players in the game. He is practically a hermit.”
“He could have organized this all from outside the game. You said he was ruthlessly playing games to win.”
Of all the things for Sun and probably Frank to focus on from my report on what I gathered while at the convention this had to be it. I can feel a headache coming on. “Still no signs that he is cheating, even if he was behind this.” I feel my thoughts drifting back to that image of the missing boy and how it matched up to the name on Chess’s account. “There is one more place I can go to get more information on whether Chess is breaking the terms of service and we can remove him from the game.”
There is some silence on the other end of the line before Sun speaks again. “Where’s that?”
I feel my chest tighten up about taking another trip down this path, but I still answer. “Texas. I want to go in person. We’re talking about a minor. I’ll need to handle it with care.”
Texas is hot. I promised Stella, who is more than a little irritated and still hung over, that I will try to make it back tonight. Though I did say it is possible I might be away a day or two. She threw her shoe at me. She did calm down some when I told her that my boss has assured me I’ll get three days off starting ten days from now for a vacation with her.
After ten minutes in the Texas heat waiting for an auto-cab, I have already decided that this would not be the state to take Stella on vacation too. I run my credit card and give the address. During the drive, I do my best to calm my nerves. I had considered calling first, but it seemed so impersonal and strange. Not that this whole situation isn’t strange anyway.
I‘m relatively calm when the cab stops and dings that it is at the destination. The sound undoes most of my calming attempts. I pay an extra fee to have it wait around for an hour rather than having to call a new one out if I need it.
I get out and walk to the door of what looks to be a normal looking home in a normal looking suburb. I have a little guilty hope that no one is home, or that the family has moved on, so I can say I tried my best with what I had and put it all behind me. I knock on the door.
After a few moments, I hear shuffling behind the door. Then it opens, and I see is a short woman with red dyed fiery hair. “We’re not looking to buy anything, and I already have a church, mister,” she declares before I can get a hello in.
“I’m looking for a Ms. Shoefield to talk about some business.”
She looks at me with even more suspicion. I’m afraid she might even close the door on me, “I haven’t gone by that name in years. This isn’t about some debt you are trying to collect?”
I didn’t figure it would be this awkward. “No, no, nothing like that.” I take a short breath and just spit it right out. “It’s about Nate.”
I could see her shake a little and lose some of that fire in her eyes. “They find him? Is he alive? Are you with the police?”
I have tried to rehearse how this was going to go, but reality is different. “It’s complicated. Can I come in to talk?”
She look
s me up and down, I don’t think I look all that threatening, but I’m still a strange man she’s never met. “Fine, that might be best. But if you’re jerking me around, you will wish you never came to this house.” she says with determination and more than a hint of anger.
She takes me to a couch in the family room and introduces herself as Annie, then offers me some tea.
“Yes, please.” I wait patiently as she makes it. She brings it out in tall glasses iced and with a straw. I take a sip, and it’s so sickly sweet I wince a little before speaking. “My name is Casey Ellis, and I work for the game company Immersion Arts.”
After drinking some of her own tea with more gusto than I managed, she says “You’re with a game company? What does this have to do with Nate?”
“We were doing a check for security reasons on players and the name Nate Shoefield came up with the same birthday as your son. Research led me to the missing persons report, and our company wants to make sure that someone isn’t using your son’s identity. Now it is going back to a boy about your sons’ age who goes by the name Jay. Did your son ever go by some sort of nickname like that?
“What, no. Do you think that this Jay might be using my son’s identity? How could anyone do such a terrible thing.”
I take another sip of my tea. Once you get used to the shock of it being so sweet, it really isn’t so bad. “That is what we are trying to figure out, ma’am. So, we can take appropriate actions. I’m just looking to get more information before we make our decision. Did your son like to play games?”
“What child doesn’t like to play games, Mr. Ellis.”
“Does Chess mean anything to you?
“The game? My father taught him to play and use to say Nate was pretty special at it. I remember stepping on a piece at some point. It was worse than stepping on a Lego. I was so mad.”
I could see her getting angry thinking of it.
