Gamer Fantastic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  Carlos rubbed the raw spots on either side of his nose where the goggles rested. “Wanna go for coffee?” he said.

  A dark, dreadlocked, and nose-ringed head appeared above the cubicle wall with the tag that read JAQUILYNNE BAXTER—though she’d said not even her parents ever called her anything but Jaq. “We’re losing a million dollars a minute,” she said, “and all you can think of is coffee?”

  “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Even if they get the network back online right away,” came Paul’s voice from behind the other wall, “it’ll be at least an hour before the players can get back into the game.”

  “Coffee it is, then. Paul, you are coming with us.”

  “Oh, all right,” Paul said, stepping out of his cubicle like a snail being pried from its shell. Paul was Jaq’s opposite in every way—pale, blond, and quiet—but he knew the technical workings of Chaos World’s systems better than Carlos and Jaq put together. Both of them were trying to repay him for all the help he’d given them by encouraging him to socialize more. Carlos wasn’t sure Paul appreciated this.

  Carlos stood, running his hands through his hair in a vain attempt to unflatten the “Chaos Crush” that was endemic among headset-wearing employees, and grabbed his wallet. But just as he was about to leave his cube, the rarely used flat-panel display on his desk began flashing a message. “Uh, guys?”

  “Yeah?” Jaq paused with her hand on the Secret Annexe’s door, beyond which a rickety stairway led down three flights to the atrium.

  “Take a look at this . . .”

  Jaq and Paul came back to Carlos’ cube. All three of them stared at the flat panel. The message was bright red and blinking rapidly.

  FOR CHRIST’S SAKE STAY WHERE YOU ARE, it said.

  Too many floating panels crowd Carlos’ vision. There’s the battle suit’s real camera feed, the matching simulated view that Scooter’s hack is feeding the battle suit instead, half a dozen security cameras, the map of the sim, and the map of the real world. There are only two dots left on each map. On the sim map, Carlos’ dot is leading the battle suit’s dot toward the elevator. On the real-world map, the battle suit is in the same place, but Carlos’ dot is sitting still on the third floor.

  Why did he think this had been a good idea, again?

  Paul frowned at the red blinking message on Carlos’ flat-panel display, then ducked into his own cube. “Same here.”

  “You ever see anything like this before?” Carlos asked Jaq.

  She shook her head slowly. “Nooo . . .”

  Then the message changed.

  QUIT YAPPING AND GOGGLE UP!

  Carlos looked at Jaq. She shrugged. When he looked back the message had changed again.

  GOGGLE UP NOW DAMN IT THIS IS LIFE OR DEATH—SCOOTER.

  “Ohh-kay . . .” Carlos said and sat slowly down. His chair was still warm.

  Jaq’s eyebrows wrinkled in annoyance. “What, you’re doing it?”

  Carlos pointed at the screen. “It’s from Scooter.”

  Jaq snorted. “Probably just some prank.”

  When the goggles had powered up and adjusted themselves, instead of the usual view of Chaos World, Carlos saw a blank white room containing only his own default avatar—a bronzed and bare-chested warrior—and Scooter Jablonski.

  Scooter was a legend within the little world of Chaos Inc. Software engineer and scenic modeler par excellence, he was responsible for half of the key subroutines and nearly all of the look and feel of the many realms that made up Chaos World. A Turkmenistan War veteran, his avatar looked exactly like him—patchy gray crewcut, heavily bumper-stickered mobichair, and all.

  Most people were terrified of the damaged old hacker. He had a foul mouth and a hair-trigger temper, and it was rumored that anyone who crossed him might find their bank account deleted or themselves demoted, fired, or in trouble with the law. It was certainly true that management had given him a whole section of the basement to himself so he didn’t have to interact with anyone else face-to-face. But Carlos had worked closely with him on a problem in the new Crystal Caverns module and had learned to respect his intelligence and dedication.

  While Carlos was fitting his hands into the datagloves, Jaq’s and Paul’s avatars appeared, a hulking she-demon and a lean gray wizard, respectively. Scooter gave a sharp nod and said “About fucking time. Okay, here’s the sitch.” Several data panels appeared behind him, each showing a low-res video feed. “These three assholes have cut all of our external comms.”

  Each panel was a security camera view of a different part of Chaos Inc.’s offices. But the scene depicted in each looked more like something out of some competitor’s combat game.

  In the atrium, an armored battle suit stood watch over a large crowd of people, all lying on the floor with their hands behind their necks. The suit, basically a two-meter-tall man-shaped walking tank, completely covered the wearer. Bulky and angular, studded all over with antennae and sensors, it was painted in desert camouflage except for a red band around one bicep. Shoulder-mounted weapons pods twitched constantly as the suit strode back and forth, leaving deep footprints in the flooring.

  Another panel showed an office area; the triple-size cubicles and large conference tables indicated it was executive territory. Two more battle suits loomed over the cubicle walls. “Blue there seems to be the leader,” Scooter said, pointing to the blue band on the arm of one of them. “They came out of an unmarked semi in the loading dock.”

  The blue-banded battle suit towered over Martin Yao, Chaos’s founder and CEO, with one forearm-mounted machine gun aimed right at his head. The suit’s other hand held out a data tablet. “You will authorize immediate transfer of one hundred million dollars to this account,” the wearer’s amplified voice rasped. “We’re not greedy. It’s less than fifteen percent of your recent IPO.”

  To his credit, Yao’s voice didn’t tremble. “I will authorize the transfer,” he said, taking the tablet. “But it will take at least an hour for a transaction of this size to clear.”

  “We will remain here until it does,” the battle suit replied. “But if there is any delay beyond that, or we suspect you are trying to communicate with the authorities in any way, my associate will begin terminating your employees one by one.” He gestured to the remaining battle suit, this one with a green color band, that stood guard over a group of men and women in business suits. One of the execs raised his head, but when the armored intruder fired a machine-gun burst into the ceiling he quickly put it down again.

  Jaq’s avatar brought its hands to its face, which looked very strange on a fanged green demon. “Oh my God. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Carlos’ pounding heart agreed, but his brain pointed out a problem with that strategy. “How? Our only way out of the building passes right through the atrium.” The Secret Annexe had two doors, but the other one, criss- crossed with tape and marked with a large DANGER—KEEP OUT sign, led nowhere but the attic.

  “So we just sit tight,” Paul said, “until the police arrive.”

  “Fuck no!” Scooter said. “Ever since the last election there’s been ‘zero tolerance’ for ‘terrorism.’ ” He made quote marks in the air with his fingers. “We’ve got maybe an hour before the cops come stomping in here with heavy antiriot mechs, and if ten percent of us survive the resulting battle they’ll call it a success.”

  Jaq’s avatar slumped. “If we can’t trust the cops, what can we do?”

  “We’ve got one secret weapon.” Scooter pointed to one of the video panels. “Those clanks are Lockheed-Nissan Atlas Mark IVs, same as we used in T-stan. I don’t know where these assholes got ’em, but I hope they didn’t pay too much, because the Mark IV has a vulnerability in its AV subsystem. I can hack in and substitute anything I want for the audio-video feed from their helmet cams.”

  “Can’t you just blind them?” Paul asked. “Or disable the suits completely?”

  “If I shut the AV subsystem off t
hey can just open their helmets. And this is military hardware; we’re lucky there’s even one security hole. Whatever we’re going to do, we have to do it through that.”

  Paul waved his wizard wand, and sparks shot out. “Attack them with a phalanx of dragons!”

  Carlos shook his head. “That might confuse them for a few seconds, but we can’t really hurt them, and as soon as they realize they can’t trust what they’re seeing they’ll just switch to their own eyes, like Scooter said. We need something closer to reality.”

  “Exactly,” said Scooter. “Like the office sim.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Jaq. But Carlos understood immediately.

  The office sim was an exact virtual copy of the interior of Chaos Inc.’s own office building. The techies and testers used it to test out new physics and video code—it was so familiar to everyone that any bugs in the simulation immediately stood out. And it was a real hoot to hunt down dragons and ride unicorn-back through your own office. Not to mention being able to shoot spells and arrows at a simulation of your boss.

  “In the sim,” Carlos explained to Jaq, “everything will still be going according to their plan. But in the real world we’ll be sneaking everyone out right under their camo-painted metal noses!”

  Machine-gun bullets rattle through Carlos’ avatar. The battle suit’s real cameras show bullet holes pocking a wall in an empty corridor. “Missed me!” Carlos taunts and hustles his avatar past the open door of the former factory’s heavy service elevator. He ducks up the stairs, hoping the intruder will take the hint and half hoping he won’t.

  A moment later Carlos hears the elevator’s motor groan under a load that’s almost too much for it.

  Okay, he took the hint. Now this plan really has to work.

  The white walls around them dissolved, replaced with a new scene—a perfect simulation of the atrium, complete in every detail from the caulked cracks in the skylight overhead to the skidmarks on the carpet from last September’s office-chair races.

  “How complete is the sim?” Paul asked, looking around.

  “Almost the whole damn building,” Scooter said. “And every single employee, based on their badge photos and biometrics.” Employees began appearing in the atrium, each standing in a neutral position. “I’ve got 3-D models of the Mark IV in my files too. And a police antiriot mech in case we need one.”

  While Scooter went away to work on the battle suit avatar, Carlos, Jaq, and Paul set about moving the simulated employees into positions matching the ones in the video feed from the real world. It was hard, because even though they were lying with their heads down under armed guard, they kept shifting around.

  “What do we do if the bad guys start to notice they’re in a sim?” Paul asked as he shifted a group of HR people with a gesture.

  Carlos swallowed. “I guess we’ll play it by ear.”

  Suddenly a battle suit appeared in the middle of the atrium, so realistic it made Carlos jump in his seat. “How’s this?” Scooter’s voice boomed from it. The battle suit bent and stretched as though limbering up, servos in its joints whining.

  Carlos walked around the suit. The weapons pods on the shoulders tracked his movements, clicking as they turned. “Scary.”

  “Okay.” Scooter’s normal avatar appeared next to the suit, which relaxed into a neutral posture. “As soon as we’re done arranging the executives I’ll deploy the hack. But I thought of one thing while I was working on this sim.” He patted the battle suit avatar. “The Mark IV’s helmet isn’t exactly soundproof. I can insert sounds into the operator’s headset, but they can hear sounds from the real world too, and if they don’t match the sim . . . game over.”

  Paul gulped audibly. “Should we be typing instead of talking?” he whispered.

  “We’re okay where we are,” Scooter replied in a normal voice. “But once we’ve got those assholes in the sim, we can’t just make an announcement on the PA to evacuate the building. Someone’s going to have to go to the atrium, and the executive suite, and lead them out. Quietly . That means someone other than me.” He wheeled back and forth, the motors of his chair whining.

  Jaq, Paul, and Carlos looked at each other. “We’ll draw straws,” Jaq said.

  Scooter set up a random-number generator.They each picked a number from one to three. And when the digit glowing in midair spun to a stop, it read three. Paul.

  Paul blew out a breath, loud in Carlos’s headset. “Okay. Give me some paper and a big black pen.”

  Carlos hears the elevator stop, the big old door sliding open with a squeal. Too soon! It’s only on the second floor. On the security camera view, the battle suit steps out of the elevator, peers ponderously side to side.

  Is this an opportunity?

  Carlos looks over the map. Damn it, no. Nothing he can use on the whole second floor.

  He takes a deep breath. Clenches his hands in the datagloves. Triggers a command.

  Carlos’ avatar appears on the second-floor stair landing, runs out into the corridor, then skids to a stop as he sees the battle suit. As soon as he’s sure the intruder has seen him, he turns and hustles up the stairs. Bullets spatter the wall behind him, the sound of gunfire much closer now to his real position on the third floor.

  The battle suit’s wearer growls inarticulately as the elevator door closes.

  “Okay,” said Scooter. “Simulation’s set. How about you guys?”

  “Ready,” said Paul. He stood at the door of the Secret Annexe, wearing his phones but not the goggles and gloves. Once he left they’d be able to talk to him, but he couldn’t talk back.

  Carlos swallowed and adjusted his goggles. Alone and invisible in the simulated atrium, he glanced one last time between the security camera view and the simulation, then slightly tweaked the position of one employee. Scooter was going to slave the simulation to the battle suits’ real camera views, so the position and orientation of the scene would be correct as the suits moved through the office. But it would be up to Carlos and Jaq to move all the employees around in reaction to the suits’ movements. The avatars had no intelligence of their own. “Ready,” he said.

  “Jaq?” Scooter asked.

  “Almost done.” She was doing the same job as Carlos, but in the executive suite. “Stupid CEO won’t keep still . . .” After Yao had authorized the transfer, the leader had herded him into the group of executives and gone off to patrol the building, leaving the green-banded battle suit to watch over the group.

  “Waitin’ on ya,” said Scooter. He had perhaps the easiest job, tracking the leader as he roved the empty offices. But he also had to monitor and maintain the hack and the simulation.

  “Hang on, now the VP of Sales is going for a bathroom break . . .”

  Carlos called up a virtual keyboard and opened a private chat with Scooter. “DO WE REALLY HAVE A CHANCE?” he typed.

  “Let me tell you something,” Scooter replied in private audio to Carlos. Located in the basement, he had no reason not to speak out loud. “In T-stan, I commanded an EEOD—an Electronic/Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit. High-tech bomb squad, in other words. Not a real soft job—EEOD casualties could run as high as sixty-five percent. But those guys and gals were my friends and my family and my coworkers, all rolled into one, and even though I was stupid enough to get myself blown up, I got every single fucking one of my people home in one piece. And we’ll do the same here. Clear?”

  “CLEAR,” Carlos typed. He tried to feel as confident as Scooter sounded.

  “Okay,” Jaq said at last. “I’m ready.”

  “All right,” said Scooter. “Going live in three, two, one . . .”

  Two new data panels appeared in Carlos’s vision: one showing the real camera feed from the battle suit in the atrium—they called him Red, after the color of his identifying band—and another showing the simulated view that Scooter’s hack was feeding him. They matched perfectly.

  “Huh,” came a strange voice in Carlos’ headphones. A data panel identif
ied it as Red—Scooter had set it up so they could hear the intruders’ radio comms, but not be heard.

  “What is it?” said Blue—the leader, the one Scooter was monitoring. A hard, aristocratic voice. Someone used to getting his own way.

  “Some kind of flicker in my video.” On the security camera view, Red tapped the side of his helmet.

  Carlos held his breath.

  After a long moment, Blue’s voice returned. “I’ve run diagnostics on your suit and they’re clear. Must have been a temporary glitch. Let me know if it happens again.”

  “Right,” said Red, and resumed pacing around the atrium. One employee shifted away from the battle suit’s clanking feet, and Carlos moved the corresponding avatar to match. He didn’t want the intruder stepping on anyone because they weren’t where they appeared to be.

  Carlos licked his lips. “Okay,” he said, “looks like we’re good to go in the atrium. Good luck, Paul.”

  “Thanks.”

  With his real ears, Carlos heard the door open and close behind him. He tried to slow his pounding heart by focusing on the task of keeping the simulation matched up with reality.

  A minute later, Paul appeared on the atrium security camera, holding up a piece of paper that read KEEP SILENT—HE CAN’T SEE US—FOLLOW ME in large black letters.

  Carlos’ teeth clenched. One exclamation from a startled employee—one gasp, even—and it would be all over. But although many people put their heads up, and some poked other employees who hadn’t seen the message, nobody made a sound. Paul gestured a broad “come along” and started backing away, keeping well clear of the battle suit.

  Gradually, fearfully, the employees began to move. Creeping on hands and knees at first, then rising to a trembling walk as they realized that, yes, amazingly, the battle suit really was oblivious to their motion. Several people stumbled, their limbs stiff after hours of tense motionlessness, but others nearby caught them.

  It was working.

  “Um,” Scooter said.