by Alex P. Berg
Caetano kept mumbling and shouting as the SWAT officers escorted him down the stairs, though it was obvious from the creakiness in his voice that he didn’t use it much. Certainly not around other people. “Let g—go of me, I say. You’ve g—got the wrong g—guy! I’d never g—go after g—gamers. I love g—gamers! I love everything about g—gaming!”
“But not Princess Gaming, am I right?” said the cop at his side. “Now shut up and keep moving. Don’t you know you have a right to remain silent?”
The two officers dragged Caetano through the front door, ripping his yells from the interior of the home and restoring a sense of peace. With Carl tracking me closely, I mounted the stairs and followed them into the room from which the officers had extracted Vicente. Inside, I found not his bedroom or a study or holoflick theater but the most extravagant gaming room imaginable. In the middle on a high pedestal sat an enormous gaming chair, padded with simulation breathable leather, equipped with a bevy of controls for temperature regulation, muscle stimulation, fluid replenishment, and even a mysteriously creepy ‘body fluid detox.’ A quick shower station stood in a corner of the room next to an autodresser, and a pair of extendable conveyers held freshly baked sweets and pre-prepared meals, likely for quick delivery to the central chair. I noticed the gaming rig was missing the standard pink Princess logo, however.
I walked around to the front of the chair, running my hand across the faux leather. I sighed and shook my head. “Why would someone do this, Carl? I mean, it takes a special kind of sick, twisted bastard to infect people with a virus that starves them to death. But to do it to a dozen people? That we know of?”
“It could’ve been thirteen,” said Carl.
I glanced at my partner. “I know I’ve said it before, but thanks. For saving me.”
He smiled. “You’re welcome, Rich. But let’s focus on how many others we both saved together.”
I heard a knock on the door. It was Sanz.
“Hey,” I said. “Find anything incriminating? A secret underground torture chamber, or a stash of child pornography, or a collection of political literature?”
Sanz shook his head. “Nothing so far. We haven’t found any staff, or droids for that matter. Just your typical household maintenance and lawn care dumbbots. Between this gaming rig and the rest of the place, it comes across as your standard Intro gamer megamansion.”
“Those come standard, now?” I asked.
Sanz gave me a look. “I’ll have a few guys stay behind and canvass the place thoroughly, but that could take days. Seeing as we’ve got Caetano, I’m heading back. Can I give you a lift? Cabs take a while to summon out here.”
I sighed. “I guess.”
Sanz lifted an eyebrow. “Something on your mind?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I was just expecting the raid to be a bit more…dramatic.”
“Like a tense gunfight against an army of battle droids?”
“I told you that in confidence.”
“We got our guy,” said Sanz. “Nobody got hurt. That’s a win in my data file.”
“I know,” I said. “And I’m with you. Trust me, I don’t want any more casualties. So what happens now?”
“What do you mean?” said Sanz. “We got the guy. Now we go home—if you’ll accept my ride.”
I caught a hint of a suggestion at the end there. “I hear you. Lead the way.”
29
I gazed out the windows of our pod, past the transparent walls of our elevated, evacuated tube and at the blur of foliage beneath us, a streaky mess of green intermixed with the occasional splotch of brown. It was amazing how a natural landscape could turn into a modern art rendition at twelve hundred kilometers per hour. Somehow I didn’t think that was how the original masters had found their inspiration.
I turned my focus back inside as we barreled along at high speed, probably forty minutes away from Pylon Alpha. Toward the front of the pod, a holoadvert transitioned from commercial to commercial in twenty second increments. One of the ads promoted Pylon Alpha’s upcoming E43 Conference, Cetie’s largest annual entertainment and gaming-related professional gathering. Thousands usually attended, though not necessarily the gamers themselves—most were too introverted to be able to make the trip. The advert cycled through a number of companies that would be making an appearance: Takachi Corp, Omegasoft, Triangular Helix, Verve, and of course, Princess Gaming.
As I watched the advert, my mind wandered to one of the news vids I’d watched with Officer Sanz, one from two years ago, right after the ouster of Vicente Caetano from Princess and right before that year’s E43. The reporter, a lovely if somewhat shy and mousy woman who was sure to appeal to the gaming masses, had gone into detail about Caetano’s ejection from the company, including the hostile takeover by Masters and his cronies, but the story didn’t end there. She’d spoken via Brain with several die-hard Princess gamers, most of whom lamented Caetano’s loss, especially to a sleazeball of Masters’ magnitude, and who predicted Princess would suffer as a result. Perhaps in the end user product they’d been right, but in terms of profits, they couldn’t have been more wrong. Sleazebag or not, Masters managed to bring in more users than ever before and come up with new schemes to separate them from their SEUs. Business boomed, company stock skyrocketed, and Masters headlined numerous parties emphasizing the company’s newfound success and creative direction.
I’m sure Caetano had been thrilled.
“Are you doing alright?” Carl sat next to me. He eyed me with a twinge of concern.
I gave him a nod. “I’m fine.”
“Still thinking about Caetano?”
He knew me too well. I’d never be able to pull the wool over his eyes unless I laid hands on a live sheep and some pruning shears. “I guess I still don’t understand why he did it. Kill those poor people, I mean.”
“Didn’t we already discuss this?” said Carl. “To get back at Princess Gaming for throwing him out on his proverbial behind. Not that his landing spot was particularly unpleasant. If you ever get tired of your apartment, we could consider relocating to the tropics.”
“The money, though,” I said. “That’s one of many things that don’t add up. Look, I get Caetano might’ve been angry. Furious, in all likelihood—but at Princess, not the gamers themselves. He built that company from the ground up. Programmed the initial hub worlds and many of the immersive games on which the company staked its reputation. According to the news docs I skimmed through, he stayed active in the programming even after the company hired several hundred dedicated programmers, as well as countless other employees. And look at his home. There weren’t any visitors, no family, no droids even. The entire focus gravitated around a gaming chair. By all accounts, third-hand and first-hand, the man’s an avid gamer. Cares about little else. So why would he go after Princess’s gamers?”
“I take it you don’t like the explanation we decided upon,” said Carl. “That by picking off Princess gamers one by one, he’d be able to do lasting damage to the company before anyone noticed.”
“No, I think the explanation fits,” I said, “or at least it would if Caetano were an unbalanced sociopath. But nothing we’ve seen about him supports that notion. Again, he loves gamers. Is an avid one himself, and according to the news vids I watched, the majority of Princess gamers, or at least those who were aware of him and his role, were saddened when Masters and company forced him out.
“More importantly, while the motive for getting back at Princess Gaming is solid, there are any number of other ways he could’ve gone about it, methods that wouldn’t have involved murdering people. Take the worm we assume he created. Caetano is an expert programmer. It would’ve been easy for him to create something like that, especially with his knowledge of Princess’s inner workings and servenet architecture. But I’ll bet that for the code to work, it has to have infected Princess’s servenets as well, otherwise how else would it be delivered to the end user? And if Cae
tano can hack into Princess’s servenets, then there are any number of other ways he could’ve sabotaged the company. He probably could’ve taken the whole Princess grid offline, wiped the servenets, or something equally traumatic.
“And I’ll tell you what else doesn’t make sense. The money. Why would he take gamers’ funds? He certainly didn’t need them, given his success. He could’ve just as easily embezzled money from Princess’s own coffers if I’m right about his hacking ability. And the biggest head-scratcher? In the malicious simulation that kept me prisoner, we tracked our killer through the dead gamers’ bank accounts. Why would Caetano give me the clue to discovering his nefarious plot through his own simulation? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Perhaps his malicious program was forced to adapt on the fly,” said Carl. “As far as we know, all of the people Caetano targeted were loners. He probably didn’t expect to have one of his mark’s relatives come looking for them. When you came poking and prodding, the code that attacked you, which until then probably had only been used to make the victims think they were in their apartments and continuing to play Princess games, had to change. Surely Caetano himself wasn’t directing all the minutia you experienced, so the program did what it could. That could explain why it created Kriggler as it did, based off old private eye vid docs, or why it used a version of Caetano’s own scheme as the basis for the plot of your simulated experience.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “But I think someone smart enough to create a program of such destructive potential in the first place would’ve put a few more preventative measures in place. And let’s not forget that beyond infecting people, his malicious code also successfully impersonated those same people in the Princess simulation, otherwise TriumphCat and the rest of Lars’s friends would’ve noted his absence. Whatever it is, that code is inside the Princess servenets.”
“Then we should warn them when we return,” said Carl. “If there’s lingering malicious code in their servenets, they’ll want to know.”
“Yes,” I said. “We should warn them.”
I sat back in my chair, chewing on my thoughts. The problem with my suppositions, of course, was that if Caetano wasn’t the culprit, then who was? Even if it didn’t make total sense for him to have executed the evil plot, all the evidence pointed to him, and he had a solid motive for action. Would anyone have a reason to set him up?
A clock at the front of the pod ticked forward methodically while the adverts continued to run.
Paige? I said.
Yes, my prince?
Can you load up that keynote address from last year’s E43 conference? I asked. The one from Princess Gaming?
Sure thing.
My vision faded, and I was transported inside the Pylon Alpha Civic Coliseum. A crowd of thousands cheered as Johnny Masters took the stage, and he responded with one of his used spaceship salesman smiles. He thanked them, and once the cheers subsided, he launched into a prepared speech, talking through bullet points about Princess’s wonderful upcoming game lineup, their commitment to the gamer, and their innovative team of programmers and content creators.
“Trust me folks,” he said. “This year is going to be Princess Gaming’s best in terms of game quality and immersion. Our sims will be the most lifelike, the most exciting, and the most engrossing of any provider’s, on this or any other planet. And you know why we do it? Because at Princess Gaming, we don’t just serve the customer. We are the customer. We love to game as much as every single one of you. That’s why our quality is second to none. Because at Princess Gaming, we get gamers!”
As the crowd cheered and Masters soaked it up, I thought back to my initial encounter with Masters’ avatar in the Princess Gaming new user orientation. He’d claimed he’d been built to be an exact replica of the real Masters, indistinguishable in every way, an NPC but a perfect copy of the real thing. In addition to making numerous claims about getting gamers, he’d also confessed to being a lifelong Intro, just like his gaming vassals.
And yet there he stood, in front of a roaring crowd of thousands, smiling and loving every second of it.
30
I stood in a darkened corridor at the Pylon Alpha Civic Coliseum, in one of the maintenance areas directly behind the main stage. Heavy cables for moving equipment stretched across the rafters above me, as did power cords for lights and audio equipment and holoprojectors. Through the barrier at my side, I could hear the muffled roar of the assembled crowd, as well as the equally muffled blare of the presenter’s voice through the coliseum’s speakers.
Officer Sanz gave me a nudge. “Sounds like it’s about over. You ready?”
“I’m ready,” I said. “Once again, thanks for letting me and Carl tag along.”
Carl gave Sanz a tip of his head at the mention.
“No problem,” said Sanz. “You earned it. Same plan as last time then. Stay out of the way and let me do the talking.”
“Not exactly the same plan, then,” I said. “Otherwise Carl and I would still be in the cruiser.”
“And I can still send you back there,” said Sanz. “Don’t make me regret this.”
I pulled my fingers across my lips, indicating their sealed-ness.
Sanz tilted his head, listening to the speech. At a particular cue, he waved his hand. “That’s it. Let’s go.”
We snaked our way through the back of the space, past control boards and display interfaces, until we reached the edge of the stage at the front. There, we joined forces with a pair of police officers and a member of the coliseum security. From our vantage point out of view at stage right, I could hear the cheers of the crowd and see the man they showered with applause: Princess CEO and president, Johnny Masters. If not for the color of his suit being different, the scene looked identical to the holovid I’d watched of the E43 conference from a year ago.
Masters pressed his hands together as the crowd continued to cheer, then waved and headed off the stage in our direction.
The security guard hailed him at the edge of the curtains. “Excuse me. Mr. Masters? Some men here to see you.”
Masters tried to brush past us. “Yes. Johnny Masters, nice to meet you. Look, I’m extremely busy with the festivities, so I’ll need you to contact my secretary. She should be able to—”
Sanz snagged him before he could weasel away. “Johnny Masters? You’re under arrest for the murder of twelve men and women, the attempted murder of twenty more, with charges still pending on a half-dozen others. You have the right to remain silent, and anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to counsel with an attorney, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Masters as Sanz cuffed his hands behind his back. “Arrested? For the murder of twelve people? Are you insane? What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you know who I am? You’re dealing with Johnny Masters here, damn it!”
“You can drop the act, Masters,” said Sanz. “We accessed the Princess Gaming servenets by subpoena. We found the traces of the malicious code you installed there, same as the code we found in the victims of your cyber attacks, and we tracked it through your company’s internal systems back to a dummy account. To be fair, it was smart of you not to upload the code into the servenets from your own master account. What wasn’t smart was providing the dummy account with a security access level only you and Princess’s chief security officer could’ve authorized, or waiting until your CSO was off site to give your dummy account said access so the CSO wouldn’t notice. We also found the code funneling you data from the feedback sensors in the specialty Mark VI Princess Gaming rigs each of your victims happened to possess, providing you with information about their gaming, eating, and sleeping habits, as well as giving you a spy channel into their apartments to convince you they were good targets. So trust me, it’s in your best interests to shut up and come along peacefully.”
Sanz didn’t give Masters much of a choice in the latter. He grabbed him firmly by th
e arm and pulled him toward the doors, with the two police officers flanking him on either side. Carl and I brought up the rear, completing the phalanx and preparing ourselves for combat—not that it would be necessary. The conference goers on the main exhibit floor parted in front of us like a sea, none of them the least bit interested in getting in our way, though most of them muttered and pointed and gossiped and undoubtedly filmed our excursion for posting on the public servenets.
Masters kept up his protests as he walked, though his ferocity and vigor ebbed ever so slightly. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. I’m Johnny fricking Masters, the most powerful man in gaming! I’ll have a swarm of lawyers so thick and so talented buzzing around me that you won’t even know when I’ll be acquitted. You’ll find out third-hand, from a courier who delivers the message to the cardboard box where you’ll be living after my guys get through with you. This isn’t over. Not by a long shot!”
We exited through the front doors, into the Cetie heat, and kept walking. Down the steps, to the trees that lined the side of the road, and over to the police cruiser Sanz had parked there. As we approached, Sanz activated the car doors, which popped open for Masters’ admission.
I’d kept my mouth shut the entire time, but I couldn’t leave without some form of justification from Masters, some parting shot fired from the muzzle of my own pistol. Not after what I’d gone through at the hands of his malicious simulation.
“Why’d you do it, Masters?” I asked as we stopped outside the car. “Why’d you kill all those people? What was it? Some sick game to you? Payback to Caetano? If so, for what?”
Masters eyed me, as if noticing me for the first time. “Who the hell are you?”
“Rich Weed, private investigator,” I said. “I’m the one who found one of your targets, Lars Busk, dead, and I’m the one you tried to take out when I came probing in the wake of Busk’s death. You could say I’m the reason you’re headed behind bars.”
