Over the space of about ten seconds, comprehension sank into his skull. Jeremy.
Chen set his hammer aside and slipped toward the far corner of the construction site. He’d been happy to stay in touch with Hailey after Avatharn, and even happier that the game had brought them together on a quest line that led them to Devon. But if he were honest with himself, he would have been happy never to see Jeremy ever again.
There wasn’t any bad blood between them. Quite the contrary. As the main tank and main healer for their long-standing group, the two shared responsibility for everyone’s livelihood and in-game success. It had been intense, to say the least. Almost any time the group wiped, it was because either Chen or Jeremy had made a mistake. If a damage-dealing or support character pulled too much aggro, the tank and healer could usually recover the situation. But if Jeremy failed to drop a critical heal or Chen missed picking up aggro on the “adds” as new monsters raced into the fight, it was usually curtains for a group adventuring at an elite level.
In those situations, the temptation to lay blame had been strong, but the bond Jeremy and Chen had shared had forbidden it. The rest of the group had teased them about the united front they put forward after an encounter gone wrong. They’d said that the two were like a married couple taking care of their children. That hadn’t bothered Chen—unlike some boys he knew from the social groups his parents put him in to augment his online home-schooling, he wasn’t squeamish about gay marriage or anything. It was just… the relationship had sometimes felt too intense. He hadn’t felt worthy of Jeremy’s high regard for him. Or maybe tanking was just too much responsibility, and his interactions with Jeremy reminded him of that. When building out his knight character in Relic Online, he’d opted specifically for damage dealing rather than defense and aggro control. He didn’t want to worry about failing the group. And he especially didn’t want to fail someone like Jeremy who had supported him unconditionally since the beginning. Someone who understood the pressure and never buckled.
Chen shook his head. He’d never shared these thoughts with anyone. Even though some people made good livings playing games, most of society still considered them silly. They’d laugh at him for taking his in-game roles and responsibilities and friendships so seriously. Or worse, they’d just turn away, too uncomfortable with his weirdness.
So far, at least, the Relic Online experience had been different. Sure, he’d been stuck tanking a few times because he had better armor than his friends, but with a spec that focused on damage, no one expected him to be effective at it. With this character, he just wanted to have fun. Kill some goblins now and again. Except now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to slay anything. Not after the beach.
Devon, though walking fast, was obviously scanning the village in search of him and Hailey. No doubt she assumed that he’d be psyched about the chance for a reunion. As Chen slipped farther away, putting some of the finished buildings between him and his pair of friends, he grabbed a fistful of hair from the back of his head.
So much stuff had been getting to him lately. Was it because his parents had been on his case about college applications, ignoring the fact that he had a better job than most graduates? Was it because his sister, Mei’s, depression was dragging the whole family down?
Maybe he just needed a few days off. The company would understand, right?
Regardless, he needed some time out to chill and think. Maybe catch up on his homework or bake the chocolate chip cookies that Mei was so fond of.
He hurried past the farm plots, and ducking into the shadows of the inner palisade, he sat down and logged out.
Chapter Seventeen
IT HAD BEEN at least three months since Emerson had actually worked at the E-Squared building in downtown Tucson—most hours he did put in were from home. Swiping his wrist in front of the authentication reader at the front door, he half-expected the LED to flash red. Companies were usually quick to lock down access when they put an employee on mandatory leave—the "vacation" Bradley had demanded after Penelope had insinuated Emerson was a danger to the code base, for instance. There was rarely the same sort of pressure to restore credentials when someone was reinstated.
Plus, the IT guys who were responsible for the access database weren't Emerson's hugest fans. Sure, they'd cooperated with him in the operation to get Penelope under control. Emerson had even concluded that Nathan, the bearded head of IT, wasn't the complete idiot he'd once assumed.
But a night of cooperation didn't erase the time Emerson had gone around their system for allocating disk space and processing cycles to particular projects. He'd needed some extra horsepower to test some theories during Veia's initial development, and the whole system of requisitions and approval had just been so slow. The resources had only been diverted from the customer-facing servers processing login for E-Squared's flagship real-time strategy game for a few hours…
Emerson had received a mild scolding for circumventing company processes.
Nathan had been thoroughly screamed at for leaving the system open to loopholes. It hadn't really been fair, in retrospect. After all, Emerson should have known better, especially since he had a solid grasp on how the resource reallocation might affect other titles. But Nathan had been offline and unreachable throughout the episode, having taken his latest homebrewed beer to a competition in Santa Ana, California. Apparently, he had some mystical superstition about negative energy affecting his elixir's chances of taking home the trophy, so he'd turned off his phone.
Bradley had been less than pleased.
In any case, though the grudge might still stand, someone in IT had actually flagged Emerson's record as having valid access credentials, and the LED flashed green as the door unlocked with a thunk.
As he pushed into the air-conditioned lobby, a message from Owen's girlfriend, Cynthia, flashed in his vision. He minimized it while he nodded at the camera in the reception area. A robotic voice welcomed him, and he headed to the elevator.
On the top floor, he gave his office a sideways glance as he marched past to Bradley's office. For some reason, his bobblehead collection of famous tech CEOs from the 1970s forward looked childish, and the fantasy posters he'd taped to the wall seemed a pathetic attempt to fit in with the other developers who lived and breathed the worlds they created. It wasn't that Emerson didn't like fantasy stuff. He'd read the classic Game of Thrones books—well, up until the long, long awaited books 6 and 7 which an AI had taken over writing in 2020, selling them under the Gorge R. R. Modem pen name. Of course, since sales had been conducted purely on the blockchain, no one had ever identified the AI's programmers. No doubt they'd retired comfortably and in obscurity.
Anyway, he liked fantasy. He just wasn’t obsessed.
And why should it matter that the technical and creative challenges—not some obsession with fantasy or role-playing—were what had led him to game design? It shouldn’t. His creation, Veia, had produced a world so real that players like Devon were convinced that the NPCs were as alive and aware as humans in the real world were. That, more than his knowledge of fantasy fandom, was what made Emerson belong here.
Next time he had free time on his hands, he would replace those fantasy posters with prints of images from Relic Online. Maybe taken off his livestream when he rolled a character and experienced the world his AI had created.
He continued on down the hall toward Bradley Williams’ sprawling corner office.
In the short couple weeks since Emerson had brought Devon here and all but forced his way into the building, the CEO had further customized his office with a collection of stalactites and stalagmites that appeared to have been harvested from an honest-to-god cave and painstakingly hollowed out so that LEDs could be installed inside. Light pressed through the translucent stone to give the effect of a glowing cavern. Entering was like stepping into one of the fantasy worlds from Emerson’s posters.
Bradley was installed in a cushy chair behind his desk and seemed to b
e “busy” watching what looked like an episode from the latest season of the reality show Do Over where contestants were given a free facial restructuring and the chance to win twenty years of life extension treatments out of reach to all but the ultrarich. Emerson had to work hard to keep the disgust from his face. The lows that the contestants stooped to to gain the social following needed to win the grand prize were abominable.
Finally noticing Emerson, Bradley commanded the smart room controller to pause the video with a dismissive gesture of his hand. He leaned back and put his feet up on the massive stone desk. Another wave of his hand raised the light level emanating from the stalactites. Emerson wondered if the CEO was fishing for a compliment on them. He wasn’t about to give the man the satisfaction. In fact, he cursed himself as the sound of dripping water from the corner of the room caused him to glance toward what appeared to be a new carved-stone pool complete with trickling waterfall.
Emerson was tempted to ask how the CEO could justify this kind of interior design while putting so much pressure on his engineers to increase performance and therefore cut costs. Pressure so intense that Penelope, out of desperation, had tried to harvest power from the Entwined implants, leading to the situation with her AI’s intrusion into the players’ minds. Given the new decor in the CEO’s office, it didn’t seem possible that E-Squared could be running at a loss. Unless maybe the stalactites were intended to get them there when it came time to pay taxes.
Emerson took another of those yoga breaths he’d been practicing. “Well, here I am,” he said.
The CEO nodded. “I wanted an in-person update on the AI problem. How soon until we’re ready to patch the implants?”
“Is there a reason you’re asking me and not Penelope?”
“You’re working on the solution together, aren’t you?”
Emerson nodded. “Along with Miriam at Entwined.”
“Why does it matter who I brought in for an update?”
Another yoga breath. They really didn’t work as well as advertised. “I guess I figured that you’d want to hear from her because it’s her AI that caused the problem…”
The CEO switched his feet so that the other ankle was crossed over the top. “I have her working on something else.”
“Something more important than the patch?”
“Well, I should hope she could handle both. Especially with your and Miriam’s help.”
“So what do you have her doing?” Emerson knew he was walking a line with his boss. The man could handle questions and criticisms—sometimes, anyway—but it would have been better to spend half an hour flattering him first.
“Well, although we’re having problems with her AI operating outside the bounds of high-level content, I’m hoping—”
“You’re not really thinking of keeping it online after we solve this, are you? It went totally outside the goal parameters of creating compelling content for high-level play.”
“I’m just exploring options. And anyway, are we sure it’s outside its stated goals? The demon attacks on the starting cities are some of the most talked about events in the last couple decades of gaming, and the rally of the highest-level players to retake Eltera City is still showing up on the big sites as even bit players in the raid upload their streams. You know what they say about publicity…”
“Yeah, but have you checked the list of complaints customer service is fielding? Eltera City might have some semblance of order now, but players are still being spawn-camped in Frostheim. The moment they materialize, demons chew their heads off.”
“And we’ve contacted those players and allowed them to roll an alt while the game world responds. My theory is that after Eltera City is stabilized, the players will organize a force to march on Frostheim. Or maybe Veia’s NPCs will get there first. My secret hope is that when the march happens, it includes a large percentage of alternate characters created by the players who are trapped there. Can you imagine anything more rewarding than freeing your previous incarnation from an endless cycle of hell?”
The CEO tilted his head back and looked at his cavernous ceiling, clearly reveling in the idea.
Emerson held his tongue for a minute, trying to get a grip on his emotions. He was the first to admit that he wasn’t a game designer. Veia was responsible for Relic Online’s player experience—he’d just seeded her learning process with millions of examples of fantasy worlds, gameplay mechanics, and real-world histories.
Though Emerson often wondered what Bradley contributed to game-development projects besides a figurehead-status, Bradley had been in the business for more than a quarter century. Emerson’s respect shrank for him daily, but he wasn’t about to go toe to toe in an argument about what was good for a game world.
He could, however, speak with authority on the technical issues they faced.
“Frankly, I think you would be remiss in assuming we can get Zaa under control. The problem with the many-layered neural net and the quantum cores we use to instantiate and train the AIs is that we have no real visibility into or direct control of their state. Penelope can’t just command Zaa to leave players alone.”
Bradley shrugged. “Never say never, right? Five years ago, you told me it was impossible to create a general AI powerful enough to accomplish what Veia and Zaa have.” He crossed his ankles again. “Anyway, if we’re done questioning my judgment, perhaps you’d like to answer my question. How soon until rollout on the patch?”
Emerson clenched his jaw. “We’re making steady progress toward the fix.”
“Not good enough. I need a hard date, and I need it to come in the next seven days. We need to have that patch in place before someone outside of our circle discovers the vulnerability we’ve exposed in Entwined’s hardware.”
Emerson shook his head, dumbfounded. “You haven’t forgotten, have you? If we roll out too soon, we might cause an epidemic of mental breaks, not to mention irrevocably losing the chance to rehabilitate cases like Owen’s. I don’t think any PR agency in the country could cover for that.”
Bradley was fiddling with some gadget or toy, a brushed metal collection of rotating pieces and odd shapes. He set the thing aside with a clack and dropped his feet to the floor.
“PR is an issue. But it’s not my real concern.”
“Oh?”
“I’m worried about hackers. Entwined implants trust our servers implicitly—we do a little authentication dance now and again, but where they refuse connection from most sources, we’re like the neighbor they let in even if they’re carrying a blood-soaked knife. And worse, our servers know how to use the implants to commandeer brain power because some numbskull over at Entwined left in their debug code. So it doesn’t matter that, to the outside world, their security is ironclad. If someone gets in through us, players’ brains are wide open. And unlike Entwined with their single piece of technology and single interface to the greater Internet, there are a whole slew of applications and servers and listening ports under E-Squared’s umbrella. Think about it. We have enough problems with Zaa. What if some hacker used our exploit to effectively mind-control our players?”
Emerson’s eyes widened in horror at the notion. “Then put Nathan on it. We need to lock down our security.”
Bradley fixed him with a flat stare. “Great. I didn’t think of that. In fact, I didn’t get here by building successful products and growing companies from indie game startups to massive publishers funding a dozen internal projects. Fortunately I have people like you to tell me what to do.”
Emerson met the man’s stare, refusing to crumple. “Regardless of how many MMOs you’ve shipped, it doesn’t make it right to risk ruining hundreds of lives because there’s a chance that a hacker might find our holes. You see that, right?”
Bradley took a deep breath, and for a moment looked almost human. “Of course I see it, Emerson. In case you’re mistaken about me, let me state things plainly. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since I learned of th
e problem. Hell, I’ve hardly slept at all.” He gestured at the frozen scene from the reality show on the screen suspended from the ceiling. “I’ve resorted to watching crap like this just to give my brain a momentary break from cycling over the numerous disaster scenarios looming.
“So I get it. But I didn’t build this company or any other by reacting to events. I prepare for them by anticipating the future. Engineers like you typically see someone like me as an idiot with a business degree. A business degree that’s largely irrelevant because anything one needs to know about corporate structure or marketing or finance can be dredged up from the Internet. That’s fine. I don’t need you to lay gifts at my feet to show your appreciation for the work I’ve done to build this company. But I won’t sit by and wait for the worst to happen. The moment we believe there’s potential infiltration, the patch is going out. I don’t care what state it’s in, so I suggest you start delivering stable builds on a daily or hourly basis. And I suggest you eliminate every single distraction that’s keeping you from getting your star player prepared for her part in this. I want her going for the governor’s kid by tomorrow evening. No later.”
Emerson swallowed. Tomorrow? He didn’t even know if Devon could get her Shadowed stat up that fast.
“We clear?” Bradley asked, raising a hand in preparation to resume his reality show.
“Clear.”
Emerson turned for the door and pulled up his messenger app. He subvocalized a couple of quick sentences to Devon. “I need you ready to go after Owen tomorrow night. Please. And I’m sorry it’s so sudden.”
He sent it before he could think twice, then glanced again at the alert indicating a message from Cynthia. The poor woman worried so much for her boyfriend. Someday Emerson hoped to have that kind of relationship, a bond with someone loyal enough to keep fighting for him when he couldn’t. But he didn’t have the mental cycles available to reassure her right now. She’d just have to soldier on alone for the moment.
Citadel of Smoke: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 4) Page 14
