Avalon Red

by Mark New

  Becky had asked Dr Martin to take a look at the ACI system that had caused Meille such problems. He had run a high seneschal diagnostic and confirmed that there was only the expected number of rogue AIs in the system and no sign of anything else untoward. By this time, Becky was following up the death of Professor Andersson so she just acknowledged the report. It was Martin himself who was puzzled by his findings, given the state of panic exhibited by Meille previously, so he took it upon himself to investigate further. Probably he was the only person who could have found it: the architect of the system was the only person who could have discovered where the crack in the wall had been papered over. He’d told Becky (I’d lost track of which vir-game they’d chosen to meet in this time) that there was one area which didn’t quite seem to look the way he’d designed it when he had stripped back the virtual wall. He applied a deep interrogation and, sure enough, it turned out to be a route into the wild which had been used by precisely one rogue bot. He’d sealed the breach and he was confident that it couldn’t be used again but tracing the escaped bot was almost impossible though he would try.

  The various threads of the investigation continued through the summer: Martin failed to find the bot; the death of Andersson was classed as due to her stroke and not suspicious by the Swedish authorities; the search for my whereabouts went on.

  Joshua Martin went missing in September further raising alarms with Argonaut Security and, as they started to investigate that as well, David Winter fell into a coma. I knew I’d heard that somewhere so it produced an alert in my head when she told me about it. I didn’t share it with her. I’ve learned before not to jump into speculation but I do trust my instincts and Winter becoming ill three days after the disappearance of Martin didn’t seem to me to be a coincidence. Becky had looked a little concerned when I asked her if Martin and Winter had been communicating in the days before they were incapacitated. She said they had but they were friends so the communication was expected and no more intensive than usual. Most of it had been unencrypted and they had only been talking about the upcoming release of the next Avalon add-on quest that Winter had just finished. I didn’t have anything I could tell her but it was my hunch that there was a connection with the deaths. I put that in my cloud-presence in the centre of the mindmap I drew of the situation. I honestly couldn’t tell you why I thought that was central but my instincts had proved useful in the past so I thought I’d run with it until I had any evidence either way.

  The most recent development, of course, was the compromising of the codes. It had come entirely out of the blue about a week ago. One morning the Argonaut Security Seneschal, probably the most sophisticated AI on the planet, had issued a top level alert requiring the presence of George and Jason Latimer and Becky in the security dark room where it informed them that there was a 96.3% chance that the codes had been compromised. There were, it told them, grounds for suspecting that an unauthorised bot had been in the system the night before. It had covered its tracks brilliantly and it was only when the morning’s standard diagnostic test had produced a result that varied from the previous day’s test by an almost infinitesimal amount that the seneschal had undertaken a deeper test and found the anomaly. This was alarming in itself but coupled with the ongoing investigation it was dynamite. With a flair for the dramatic, only then did Becky tell me that Meille had been involved in setting up the security system around the New Mexico facility. She stressed that at no time did he know what was going to be placed there but the link was obvious. The Latimers directed her to share the news of the probable breach with their UN liaison, who was - surprise, surprise - Peter Houghton and he was less than pleased to discover the link with Meille given his assistance to Becky with the investigation. She told me that she hadn’t previously told him about Meille’s background and now that he knew it seemed the fledgling romance had hit the rapids. I could understand her not telling me at the beginning as she was still a little unsure of my cooperation but not telling the man who had risked his job to assist struck me as unnecessarily secretive. Houghton had thought the same. I discovered that I wasn’t really bothered about it either way. Maybe I was growing up at last or maybe Naimittika was a shade more important.

  As I lay there contemplating the facts as I knew them and reflecting on how, all things considered, it had been a really shitty day, I received an answer to my message. I groaned aloud.

  Not only was a giant corporation pressurising me into helping avert a world crisis, not only had my ex swanned back into my life raking up memories of terrible things I’d done in the past, not only was my future on a paradise island where I’d finally found some peace being put in serious jeopardy but now this. I had to play a bloody vir-game.

  Chapter Six

  The meeting was scheduled to take place in half an hour. It added another level of security to leave little lead-in time. It was unlikely that our encrypted comms had been intercepted and it was even less likely that any hostile party could muster the resources in the short time available to find us in the vast worldscape of a massive Online vir-game. The last requirement was to pick a suitable game in which to rendezvous and my contact had selected the hugely popular Knights of Camelot. I seemed to recall that it was a favourite haunt of his. It ticked all the boxes for the purpose at hand, having a vast world in which to meet and a large number of players at any one time. The downside was that I would have to go through the registration process and so I’d better get started. Regular players would have their own characters already set up and possibly a few spares. I could have done that myself given that I used vir-games for clandestine purposes more often than I cared to admit. However, leaving anything ingame, even just a basic character, leaves a trace. OK, it would take quite a lot of illegal digging to trace someone just from a single character in a vir-game but it was a trace that was preventable so I made a point of registering afresh each time and then covering it up. No sense in not maximising anonymity. It was some time since I’d visited the realm of Camelot so I didn’t know what improvements had been made to the security features. The first order of business was to access a false TAG before going Online. That was taken care of with a simple thought directed at the implant. It was significantly simpler for me to go Online than for anyone using the full vir- equipment. For starters, I didn’t have to plug in goggles and gloves or (the ultimate geek wet dream) a full vir-suit in a vir-room. Next stop was the Online anteroom for the game. It wasn’t quite full immersion - although that’s where the tech was heading - but from any subjective perspective, you really felt that you were there in person. The realistic look was that good and it was even more impressive the more expensive your vir-wear happened to be. That was even more true for me as the implants allowed me to wander around with just a thought and I didn’t have to flick an icon with a glove to initiate movement. So, still railing against the horrors of a vir-game, I lay on my back on my bed, opened the portal and went Online.

  I’d pre-selected Knights of Camelot so that was where I ‘landed’, to use the appropriate gamer slang. My ocular, audio and cortex implants were engaged and so, as far as my brain was concerned, I was standing in a meadow full of buttercups, bathed in sunshine, enjoying a slight breeze and looking at a pavilion tent that came straight out of the age of chivalry. The only indication that this was the 21st Century was the pennant flying from the apex of the tent which displayed the logo of the game developer. I switched on the label function and instantly the information label appeared on the pennant showing the name of the game, the developer and the copyright information. Then I did something highly illegal and turned on the deeper function layer. Beneath the label a smiley icon was now visible. A games developer with a sense of humour, obviously. These higher functions were part of the game infrastructure and not available to ordinary gamers. Even the best hackers would have a problem in getting to this layer but not me. My implants were heavyweight military grade tech. To be fair, gamers would probably choose not to use deep labels even if they had a
ccess. Most serious players turned off labels altogether because they didn’t want to know the details of any character they encountered. For them, part of the fun was not knowing if the character with whom they were interacting was a game seneschal, bot, other human or simple non-player character (or NPC as they were known). I, on the other hand, always prefer to know what I’m up against. I guess I was never psychologically suited to being a gamer. The other thing I don’t like about vir-games is the historical inaccuracy. The whole Camelot thing was a fictional creation anyway and represented an idealised version of history that never existed so I braced myself for anachronisms. I wasn’t disappointed.

  A knight emerged from the pavilion to meet me. He was holding a broadsword and wearing a surcoat over chainmail that was the wrong century for the sword design. The label introduced him as the game entry seneschal and the deeper label showed the AI model and batch number. It was an up-rated version of the one I had previously encountered so this should go relatively smoothly.

  ‘Greetings, Sir Knight,’ he said, saluting me with his sword, ‘Wouldst thou try thy mettle in the glorious land of King Arthur and the Round Table?’

  I flicked a game icon that had appeared along the bottom of my field of vision and skipped the introduction. Honestly, life’s too short.

  It took about ten minutes of realtime to exit the far side of the pavilion dressed appropriately for the game. That consisted of five minutes of picking a basic knight character, complete with armour, mail, shield, impressively deep black cloak and broadsword and the other five minutes hacking the seneschal to erase its memory of my TAG. False TAGs weren’t easy to come by so I wasn’t about to allow widespread recording of the ones I had. As far as the senior game seneschal now knew I was just a standard bot, properly labelled, and programmed just to wander around, interact with gamers and generally add atmosphere. As long as I didn’t deviate from what would normally be expected from such a character, I’d have no problem with the security protocols.

  About a hundred yards from the tent exit was a stable selling horses to gamers. This was where games made their money from people who had to have the accoutrements and were prepared to pay real money for them. Bots, naturally, could interact free of charge so I picked a nice looking black warhorse that would have cost me a princely number of vir-coins had I been a paying customer and headed off to the designated rendezvous point. I could have just used the in-game movement icon but bots didn’t generally do that and it was worth the time to preserve my anonymity. I opened an overlay map and followed the route to the location my contact had designated. Along the way I encountered a number of characters both on foot and on horseback. Where the labels indicated real people I said hello in cod-medieval fashion as bot etiquette demanded and ignored anything game-generated. I noted with some amusement that very few gamers had picked anyone from the lower orders as their character; it was all knights and ladies and one or two clerics who were probably destined to become warrior-monks. Funny how nobody wanted to be a serf. I might have been tempted myself but I needed to move through the worldscape quickly and peasants simply weren’t allowed to do so. It wasn’t like I’d ever come back and be a lowlife for recreational reasons.

  I’d galloped the first league but I let the horse (the label called him ‘Storm’) walk the last mile or so in order to time my arrival at the destination. It turned out to be a kind of large estate dominated by a fortified house of the kind nobody built before the late middle ages. There was a wall surrounding the whole estate, helpfully labelled ‘defensive wall’ in case I hadn’t noticed the fifteen foot structure as I approached. The road led up to a gate guarded by two knights resplendent in blue and white surcoats and holding pikes. Over the house flew a large flag depicting what appeared to be a blue bird of some kind on a white background. I compared it with the graphic displayed in my invitation and it matched. This was definitely the place though I hadn’t expected anything so grand.

  As I walked Storm the last few yards the knights on guard, who looked identical up close, crossed pikes to bar entry. The one on the left, Sir Tweedledum, said ‘Hold, Sir Knight. What is thy business at the castle of Lord Patrick?’ I checked their bot labels and saw in the deep menu that they were programmed to admit a certain dashing knight.

  ‘I am Sir Gary of London,’ I announced grandly, ‘I have urgent business with Guard Captain Sir Edward and I bid thee let me pass.’ No, I honestly couldn’t say that I’d ever enjoy making an idiot of myself like this just to play the game.

  The pikes uncrossed. The knight on the right, Sir Tweedledee, informed me that the Guard Captain was in the great hall and was expecting me. Storm and I rode on towards the main entrance.

  A groom (level one NPC, utterly stupid) met me by the door and led Storm away to the stable. I left my shield and helm with the horse. I had my trusty broadsword with me and besides, it’s not real! As I went in, a woman wearing some kind of dress that looked more Louis XIV period than anything else passed me on her way out. Her label read Chin We and the TAG was Chinese. A real person, so I made like a bot and executed a perfect courtly bow.

  ‘My Lady,’

  ‘Sir Knight,’ she acknowledged me graciously. She didn’t have labelling turned on so it was a good bet that she (or possibly he - it takes all sorts) was a serious gamer. I hoped I wouldn’t find many more inside.

  As the building was essentially a house and not a castle there were enough large windows for the great hall to be bathed in sunlight. I hadn’t been to this part of the worldscape before and I wondered idly if it ever rained here ingame. There were only about half a dozen people present, milling around on programmed business or gameplay or whatever. A quick glance at the labels showed that all but two were bots and one of the bots was the NPC kind. He was a servant with a broom and he was sweeping around a large figure of a knight sitting in an uncomfortable looking chair beside the unlit fireplace. This particular knight was sporting a surcoat with the same emblem as the flag on the roof, the odd-looking bird. I felt underdressed in plain armour and a black cloak. Bots don’t sport elaborate designs unless they are recruited to his side by a gamer who then pays vir-coins to have his men dressed in the livery. It’s all about the money. The game label showed that this was Guard Captain Sir Edward. The deep label showed his TAG. This was my contact. The NPC sweep-monkey moved away as I approached. Sir Edward regarded me coolly. As far as he was concerned, I was a bot. At the precise second he’d arranged for our meeting, I surreptitiously sent a contact label direct to his interface which was presumably just his goggles. I didn’t think he had a vir-suit though he could probably have afforded it on his salary. He, or rather his character, visibly relaxed. He glanced warily at the only real gamer present, another knight at the back of the hall who seemed to be chatting up a Lady bot. With a slight incline of his head indicating that I should follow, he went down the hall and turned left into a passage. I duly trooped along behind him. He turned to his left again and entered a room through a large oak door. The label showed that it was the Guard Captain’s Office. I shut the door behind us and looked around. Two wooden chairs, one wooden desk and a small storage area were all that it contained, plus on the wall behind the desk was a tapestry of that bloody bird again. He indicated the guest chair and sat himself in the chair behind the desk.

  ‘Sir Gary of London,’ he read my label.

  ‘Sir Fuckwit,’ I greeted him amiably. ‘Is there any chance in hell that you can convince me that you haven’t gone batshit insane?’

  He knew what I was talking about and had the good grace to look guilty. It’s amazing how lifelike you can make your character appear when circumstances demand.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think that’s likely at all.’

  Well, good. Now he knew that I knew about it, and he knew that I knew that keeping quantities of world-ending material isn’t a very good idea.

  I noticed that he had managed to convey an expression through his character twice now. There is usually a
n icon that allows for some kind of expression to be displayed but while gamers might use it if they were serious players, there seemed no reason for him to employ it in what was a clandestine chat. I looked through the deeper functions and there it was: he was using a facemask game control. Very upmarket, though not quite a full vir-suit.

  ‘Facemask? You show off!’

  He looked momentarily startled. ‘I forget you can do all that digging,’ he said ‘It’s most disconcerting. Yes, I’ve been using it on a trial basis courtesy of the makers.’ Yeah, funny how the rich get freebies, isn’t it? ‘Apparently the new Avalon upgrade will accommodate a full range of expressions so they expect a big take-up of the mask when Avalon Green is up and running.’

  ‘I don’t imagine the trial leaves much time for the day job?’

  ‘You’d be surprised how much of the day job happens ingame.’ He shifted in his chair, or rather his character did. Sometimes the subjective reality fools you into thinking the character is the person. Keeping the labels displayed is a way of ensuring I don’t get drawn into the game. Hating it is another good way.