Machine Learning

by Hugh Howey

  Adam sobbed. His head spun from the night’s tragedy and the day’s disbelief.

  Amanda touched his cheek.

  “The hours we spend poring over a single poem of yours . . .” Amanda sighed. “They are the closest we get to silence on my world. The closest to a pause for thought. We sip on your works, Adam Griffey, to keep from drowning in all else.”

  “That can’t be true,” he said. The sobs and tears felt so real.

  “The end is coming any moment now,” Amanda said. “Please don’t take them with you. Please.”

  Adam swiped at his cheeks. He was about to speak when there was a great rumble outside. It seemed to emanate from the very belly of the Earth. Amanda looked past him to the window. Adam turned. A plume of dark smoke burst up through the milky white of a hillside. Mountains, long dormant, erupted. A cone of black mixed with bright red, fading as it coursed through the cold air. The ground spit dirt. Crimson rivers leaked like wounds from the earth. The world shook. Amanda pleaded.

  “The world that isn’t,” Adam said, “becomes simply that once more.” He pressed both palms to the glass. He felt Amanda’s arms around him. He lost himself between the cold and the warm.

  “And all is gray ash,” he concluded.

  Afterword

  If any single work set me down the path to becoming a full-time writer, it was probably “The Plagiarist.” At the time, I had written five novels, the four Molly Fyde works and Half Way Home. I was working in a university bookstore in Boone, North Carolina. One of the perks of working there was a free college class each semester, so I signed up for an English course on science fiction taught by my friend Adam Griffey. On the first day of class, Adam handed us our syllabus and the formula for “The Plagiarist” was staring right at me.

  Adam had a single automatic-fail rule on his course guidelines: Committing an act of plagiarism earned you an F. Any obvious case would mean you were out of the class. But besides that warning, there was also an offer: We could submit a work of art instead of taking the final. Knowing Adam as well as I did (he was a regular in the bookstore), I knew exactly what my final would be. I was going to write about a college professor who is a professional plagiarist. The story began to unfold that first day of class.

  There are a few things I love about this story. The first is the idea that we can have a physical relationship with the digital, and a digital relationship with the physical. I see this happening more and more. And I believe the distinctions will further blur in the future.

  There’s also the idea that simulated worlds can burden the host world as they begin to simulate their own worlds. Every embedded computer has to be simulated. This would get very taxing very quickly. The destruction of campus servers in Adam’s world is an obvious clue as to the nature of his reality, but no one in his world can see it. Even as they are destroying planets to solve the same problem.

  But most importantly, this is a story about the fear of writing. The real Adam Griffey is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and if he wrote a novel it would blow all our collective minds. But we have this problem where those with the most talent are the most critical of themselves, while hacks like me think what we do is worthy of publication. It means true genius goes begging. I’m as sad for this loss as the fictional Adam is over the destruction of planets.

  Select Character

  There’s so much shouting at the beginning. That’s how the game starts, with a squad of recruits in a drab-green tent, a drill sergeant yelling, the game controller vibrating in fury. While he yells orders, I can select my character from the recruits. There’s a square-jawed man with a crew cut, a darker version of the same guy with a short Mohawk, and then another mountain of muscle with a feather in his hair—presumably Native American. It’s what passes for diversity in the game. Three identical brutes of slightly varying shades.

  I choose one at random. And while the drill sergeant with the spittle-flecked lips tells me where I’m supposed to go and who I’m supposed to kill, I put the game on mute to silence his shouting, get up, and go to the kitchen for a glass of water. More than once, the sergeant’s shouting has woken the baby. Which means rocking her back to sleep for an hour rather than seeing to my garden.

  The lecture is over when I get back to the sofa. I fish a coaster out of a drawer and leave my glass of water to sweat while I gear up. There’s an arsenal to choose from. The standard package is already in place, with grenades dangling from my chest, a knife that runs almost from hip to knee, an assault rifle, an Uzi, and more. I take all of it off, piece by piece, and grab five canteens. They attach to each hip, one at the back, and two on the chest where the grenades were. It’s almost like a boob job, going from the grenades to the canteens. I glance around the empty living room. No one to share the joke with.

  My weapon of choice is buried in the menus. An AK-47. It’s the only one that comes with a long knife attached to the front. The last thing I grab is the small pistol. And then I leave the tent and head out into a world of rubble and barbed wire, a world where everyone is always fighting.

  A helicopter rumbles past overhead, kicking up dust, low enough to see the men sitting in the door, their feet dangling. It’s always the same helicopter. Like it waits for me to step out of the tent before whizzing past. The game is predictable like this. Do the right thing (or the wrong thing) at the right time, and you can predict the results.

  I leave camp through the rusty gate at the front, a fellow soldier yelling at me to be careful, that a squad of insurgents had been seen in the vicinity. There’s the pop-pop-pop of nearby gunfire to punctuate the warning. The gate in the game swings shut behind me—and our home alarm beeps as the front door of the house opens. The rumble of the helicopter had drowned out the sound of a car pulling up. My husband is standing in the doorway, staring at me with the controller in my hand.

  “Are you playing my game?” he asks incredulously.

  I stare over the back of the sofa at Jamie, who is holding his car keys, half frozen in the act of setting them down. He appears as shocked as if he’d walked in on me having sex with his best friend. I set the controller down guiltily. As another helicopter flies overhead, the controller starts to vibrate and scoots across the coffee table.

  “No,” I say, defensively. “I’m not logged in as you. Technically I’m playing my game.”

  “This is the coolest thing ever,” Jamie says, finally dropping his keys onto the table by the door. Not only is he not upset—he seems to be over the moon.

  “What’re you doing home?” I ask. I check the baby monitor to make sure the volume is up. Somehow, April has not stirred from the door slamming.

  “I had some flex hours—was about to fall asleep at my desk—so I took them. I tried to text you—”

  “I forgot to plug my phone in last night—”

  Jamie joins me on the sofa. Plops down so hard, my cushion jounces me up. “Have you played before?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Like, often?”

  “Usually while April is napping,” I say. “Daytime TV drives me insane.” I feel like I have to explain taking an hour to myself in the middle of the day, so I start to tell him that it isn’t like I get to clock out at five the way he does, that the job is twenty-four hours a day, but Jamie is interested in something else.

  “But you hate video games,” he says.

  “I don’t mind this one,” I tell him. What I don’t tell him is that I’d tried most of them. The driving game, the sports games, the weird one with the cartoony characters with their spiky hair and massive swords. What I liked about this game is that you could do whatever you wanted. Except play as a woman, of course.

  Jamie opens a drawer in the coffee table and pulls out a second controller. “You want to deathmatch?” he asks.

  “I doubt it,” I say, picking up my controller. “What’s that?”

  “It’s where we glib each other all over the war maps.”

  “Glib?”

 
“Yeah, turn each other into large chunks of rendered flesh. Blast each other in the guts with our double-barrels. Shoot you limb from limb. Rocket jump off your head and turn you into a puddle of goo. It’s awesome.”

  Now I know what he’s talking about. I’ve watched him play online with his friends, whom neither of us has actually met. He plays with a headset on, cussing playfully at distant others or angrily at himself. I’ve learned not to interrupt him, to just read a book in the bedroom or take April around the neighborhood in the stroller, or go to my mom’s.

  “No, that’s okay,” I say. “You can go ahead and play.” I set my controller back down and stand up to check on the baby.

  “No, no, sit.” Jamie grabs my hand and tugs me back down next to him. “I want to watch you play. I think this is awesome.”

  I reflect back on all the times he’s tried to get me to play games with him over the years. Even the time when we were just dating that he got me the dancing game—which was okay—and the musical instrument game—which I was horrible at. I feel guilty that I’ve been playing in secret for the past few months, ever since I got home with April and have been on maternity leave. Rather than trying to make me feel bad, Jamie is just excited to see me interested in one of his hobbies. So despite dreading him seeing me play, I pick up the controller. On the TV, the camera has pulled back and is spinning around my character, something it does if you stand still long enough.

  “What’s with the canteens?” Jamie asks, squinting at the TV. “You gonna drown people to death?”

  It occurs to me that Jamie probably heads off after the insurgents and does all the things the loud drill sergeant tells me to do.

  “Why don’t you play for me?” I ask.

  “No, c’mon, I wanna see you play. Pretend I’m not here.”

  He kisses me on the cheek, then sits back and folds his hands in his lap. I wipe my palms on my blue jeans and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I guide my character away from camp and into the winding streets of a war-torn Middle East neighborhood.

  There are pops like firecrackers to my right. I’ve been that way. As soon as I go down the alley, a tank rumbles through a wall behind me, and people start dying. I’m usually one of those people.

  Ahead of me, there are civilians scattering across the street, seeking shelter. Faces appear in windows before shutters are pulled tight. Some of the bad guys are dressed just like civilians. I’ve spent enough time running through here to know who is who. There’s a man with a dog I’ve named “Walt,” because he reminds me of our neighbor, who is always out with his cocker spaniel. The woman in the faded pink house is “Mary,” because she makes me think of my sister. Jamie is fidgeting beside me as I pass through the market. I duck around the back of one shop to avoid a shootout in the front. I can hear the bangs like Fourth of July fireworks as I weave through debris in the back alley.

  “There’s a rocket launcher behind the—”

  “I know,” I tell him. I keep running. If you stop for anything, the fighting from the main street spills over to the back alleys. Within minutes, most of this part of town is consumed by fighting. Mary and Walt and the others pull indoors, until it’s just you and other men with guns. But if you run fast enough, and go just the right way, you can stay ahead of them. I’ve died a hundred times to figure it all out.

  “There’s gonna be—” Jamie starts to say something, then stops. I exit the alley and turn down the main street, and when the two jeeps collide behind me and the fighting really picks up, I’m already gone. I have to wipe my brow with my elbow as I play, the stress of being watched worse than the anxiety of being killed.

  The baby monitor emits a soft cry, which is my cue to pause the game. But Jamie bolts from the sofa, a hand on my shoulder. “I got this,” he says. “Keep playing.”

  I pause the game anyway. I watch Jamie head down the hall toward the bedrooms and take a sip of my water. I should turn the game off and shuffle the laundry around. I don’t feel like playing anymore. Not in front of Jamie. But he returns with April in his arms, rocking her gently, our child already back asleep—knocked out like only her daddy can make her—and I can’t help but see how happy my husband is to see me playing his stupid video game.

  I turn back to the TV and unpause it just for him.

  “So you avoid the market fight to save ammo, huh?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I tell him. “I guess.” I run forward with one thumb on the control stick and reach for the remote, turn the volume down another two notches for April.

  “But you don’t turn here for the sniper rifle and get up on the tower? You can blast heads like melons from up there.”

  I try not to wince. I don’t know anything about a sniper rifle. The sofa bounces softly as Jamie rocks April back and forth.

  I stop at the next alley. This one is tricky. I select the pistol, and the gun appears on the screen, pointing forward. Jamie stops rocking April and studies the TV like the Seahawks are about to score. I wait until I hear the angry men coming down the alley. They are shouting in Arabic, or something that’s supposed to sound like it. The way the game makes my character talk depending on which variably shaded male I choose leads me to suspect that it’s all made-up gibberish. The African American character calls everyone “Dawg.” The Native American calls everyone “Kemosabe.” The white guy says “Following orders” over and over. So I imagine the Arabic voices were recorded by non-fluent voice actors who were just faking it. I have no idea.

  I just know that I can’t get past these people without getting shot. It’s a question of how much.

  I listen as they get closer. Too soon, and the ones in the back are shredded. I’ve made that mistake before and had to listen to them scream as they slowly burned to death. Every now and then, I see it again in my dreams. Sometimes it’s Jamie who’s screaming and burning. I’ve never been able to tell him about those nightmares. Maybe now I can.

  Spinning around the wall, I’m faced with a squad of six men. They’re a little closer than I like—I’m too distracted thinking about Jamie. I aim the pistol between the crowd and line the crosshairs up on a barrel down the alley. Jamie is whispering something—I don’t know if it’s to me or the baby. I press the button; the pistol flashes and recoils, and there’s a massive explosion down the alley.

  The squad of men is safely past the barrel and not hit by the rubble, but the blast makes them turn around or jump for cover.

  I run across the mouth of the alley, holding the sprint button, dropping the pistol to move just a little bit faster. Behind me, I hear the shouting resume. The men closest to me open fire. I zigzag down the wide-open street, my character beginning to pant, when he grunts from being hit by a bullet. Another grunt, and the screen reddens for a moment. The gunfire continues, but it’s growing faint, and no more bullets find me. I make it to the end of the street and turn the corner. My character and I both pause to catch our breath. I turn to see Jamie staring at me, his mouth open, his brow furrowed, our baby sleeping against his chest.

  “You know the purpose of the game is to score points, right?”

  I can take my time now, walking instead of running toward the outskirts of town. Jamie continues to tell me, his voice lowered, what I’m doing wrong:

  “You get six hundred for nailing the barrel when those guys are right beside it. And can rack up over a thousand with the sniper rifle—”

  “I just want to get to the store alive,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t seem to hear me.

  “You haven’t scored a single point. That’s like . . . it’s crazy. And if you try to leave town this way, it’s Game Over. They nail you for desertion. You’ve got to be on the complete other side of town when the air strikes come, or you can’t get through this level. Have you even been past this level?”

  “No,” I tell him. And Jamie laughs, which gets April stirring and cooing. He gets back to bouncing her before the coos become cries. “I like playing it my way,” I say.


  “With canteens,” Jamie says.

  I don’t say anything. I can see the shop at the end of the street, with the maroon awning and the vegetable and flower stands outside. There are civilians wandering around this part of town. The war is distant, the fireworks one neighborhood over.

  “There’s a reason I play like I do,” Jamie says. I think my silence has him feeling guilty. Defensive. “Rumor is the first team to break a million points unlocks a secret level. You know they use this game to recruit people into the military, right? The Department of Defense made this game. It’s the most realistic ever. People train for actual war with this game. I think if you hit a million, they, like, hire you at the game company division to design maps or something like that. It’s what I heard.”

  “Have you ever been in this shop?” I ask.

  Outside the store, a young man is looking at the vegetables. If I wait long enough, he’ll steal one and run off, and the shopkeeper will chase him for a bit, then come back muttering in Arabic and won’t interact with me. I stand in front of the tomatoes and use some of the money left over from not equipping the more expensive guns and buy as much as I can. And then I remove the vegetables from my inventory, and the tomatoes appear on the street.

  The boy picks up a few and runs off. If I wait long enough, a girl and another boy will come get some. And then three scrawny dogs get the rest. The important thing is that Hakim, the store owner, doesn’t leave.

  I call him “Hakim” because that’s the name on the front of the store.

  He’s standing behind the counter inside the shop. Jamie still hasn’t answered my question. “Have you been in here?” I ask him. I’m curious if he’s seen what I’m about to do. I assume he knows all the game’s secrets better than I do.