Cold War Rune: A Virtual Reality novel (Rune Universe Book 2)

by Hugo Huesca

  Yeah, fun and that guy didn’t go hand in hand.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Noob's troubles

  Mai and I walked into customs carrying an unconscious man while we smiled at everyone—drones, players, NPCs—like a pair of friendly maniacs. Strangely enough, few people gave us a second glance. The reason why became obvious soon enough.

  The line into the Command Center had grown massively since the last time I’d been there, mostly filled with annoyed people staring at the front of the line, where a man was arguing, almost screaming, with the security drone.

  “—why do you keep repeating this?” the guy asked. I could see his veins pulsating on his forehead. He was a player wearing basic ballistic armor over torn and dirty gray overalls. “You wanted a permit—here’s your permit!”

  “I kept repeating this because you don’t get it,” said the little drone. Even the machine looked annoyed, but the androids surrounding the scene had their weapons drawn and at the ready. “You already have a permit, yes, but you need a signed permit before coming in.”

  There were a few explosion-shaped craters around them. A couple of maintenance drones were all over the scene, cleaning fervently while also keeping a healthy distance between themselves and the fire-lines of the androids.

  An image of what was going on began to draw itself on my mind and I flashed a smile. Before I got any more comfortable, I retrieved my items from their storage spot behind the drone.

  Oh, this can’t be real, I thought, overjoyed. With a quick gesture of my hand, I turned on the Record function of my mindjack. Please, please, let this be what I think it is.

  “You didn’t mention that the last time!” exclaimed the man. The androids’ trigger fingers twitched.

  “I had no time before you started trying to kill me! I don’t even know why they let you Safeguard back, you are obviously unhinged,” said the customs drone.

  “Kill you? You—you’re not even alive! This is a goddamn game, you dense block of software—”

  The line of people and NPCs gasped like a single entity. Someone at the back whispered something like: “Oh, God, he went there.”

  The drone was dead serious, even if he had no face and no way of conveying it. “Please, sir, remove yourself from the facilities. This conversation is over. I don’t have to stand here and take your verbal abuse, I have feelings, you know?”

  Mai, who was staring agape at the scene unfolding in front of us, turned briefly to me over the slumped form of Jarred. “They do? Have feelings, I mean.”

  “I honestly don’t even know.”

  “Remove myself?” exclaimed the man. “I’ve been trying to enter this place for an hour now! I’ve important real life business to attend in there, and I’ve no time to go around doing random bullshit to get whatever permit you’re programmed to demand from me.”

  “He’s clearly delusional,” muttered an NPC.

  Another one nodded. “He thinks he’s some kind of hotshot or something.”

  “Poor dude is dressed in drags, I mean, I could take that ballistic armor down with a plasma toothpick.”

  The man glanced at them with murderous intent. He was opening his mouth to curse at them when a window appeared in front of him. A Quest log, for the looks of it. Even though I couldn’t read it, I had a clear idea what the Quest was about. Something like, “You need a signed permit to gain access to the Command Center! Find some high-ranking Federation officer who needs a favor!”

  The guy dismissed the prompt without bothering to read it.

  “Enough!” declared the drone. “Leave right now or else…”

  “I bought this game,” spat the man. “I paid for so many one month subscriptions—the least you could do is let me save all the asses of the real people here. I swear—”

  The androids had shifted a bit closer to the drone and I realized things were going to get real ugly in a second. I let Mai carry our unconscious hostage by herself (not a problem with her power-armor) and slowly got near the man with my hands raised and my best smile.

  “Hey—!” I read his username. “John Doe! There you are, buddy, I’ve been looking for you all day.”

  The attention shifted to me instantly, and all the tension along with it. More importantly, the androids were now half-pointing their weapons at me. Which was not cool, but it was a necessary price to pay.

  “It’s you,” pointed out the mysterious Mister Doe. “Do you know the troubles I’ve had getting in that Leadership Command of yours?”

  “You know this man?” the drone asked with a hint of accusation in his voice. “Do you know the troubles this man has given us this last hour? He even got himself killed.”

  “I’m deeply sorry,” I told the drone. “He was supposed to stay on our ship.” I pointed a finger at my head and drew a circle over my ear:

  “You see, we’re flying him to a mental facility in Oruga System. We’re hoping he can find the help he needs… but my partner and I needed to go get our other friend.” Attention shifted briefly to Jarred’s unconscious frame. “Because he’s very drunk—as you can see. So we made a stop in the Command Center. Doe here must’ve overheard us and managed to get here all by his own. He was supposed to be this killing machine of a soldier, before the accident…”

  I could feel my Persuasion battle against the drone’s doubts. The story would fall down like a house of cards in a baby’s playground the instant the drone checked my credentials, or Doe’s.

  But I was betting heavily on the fact that he mostly wanted us to disappear now.

  Doe looked at me while his eyebrow twitched furiously. But he was smart enough to shut the hell up and appear unhinged.

  “I should fine you… But I really only want for you all to go away.” The drone sighed.

  “Yeah!” someone screamed at the back of the line. “We’ve been waiting forever!”

  “Sorry!” I told everyone. “We’ll take him back to the ship! Thanks so much for your understanding!”

  I gave “Doe” a look that begged him to follow along, and power-walked out of the customs office and made a bee-line for the shuttle. The man grumbled and followed suit.

  “Finally!” the same dude at the back exclaimed while we left the place.

  In less than ten seconds, Mai, Doe, and I had enough distance between us and customs to talk between us without danger of being overheard.

  “You did this on purpose, Dorsett,” said John Doe, who was none other than a fake alias for the master of disguise himself, John Derry. “You knew there was no way I could get into the Shopping Center without that permit.”

  “The drone lets you in if you bribe him with 5000 databytes,” Mai muttered shyly. She was carrying Jarred over her shoulders like a sack of potatoes.

  Derry’s face was blank. His lip trembled slightly. “I see.”

  “My mistake,” I told him. “I totally forgot you were such a noob.”

  The shuttle back from the Center was empty except for us, so we took seats at the rear of the vehicle and waited for it to send us back.

  “You’re still an immature jackass, I can see that now,” Derry said. “I hoped you’d be more serious with the lives of you and your girlfriend in jeopardy, Dorsett. Wasting time like this is only putting her in more danger.”

  That would’ve demolished me if I’d actually wasted any time. In fact, we were breezing through General Jenkins’ Quest so far. I pointed towards Jarred, trying not to look too smug about this fact.

  “While you were there yelling at… a dense block of software… Mai and I were getting closer and closer to the CIL’s secret base.”

  Like it wanted to match my words, a Quest prompt appeared in front of my face:

  You have advanced on a Quest! Well done! You’ve captured Jarred and are a step closer to reaching the Taren smugglers.

  You have advanced in the following: Persuasion (87th Level), Luck (9th Level)

  Luck? I thought, looking up like one would do while praying. Serious
ly, Rune? Nothing I did back there was reliant on luck.

  The Quest prompt also appeared with Mai, who nodded with pleasure at her results and whispered to herself something like, “Damn right it was a nice sneak attack.”

  When a prompt flashed in front of Derry (perhaps trying to get him to join the Quest-chain?) he immediately dismissed it again without a second glance. “We’ve no time for games, Dorsett. Mai, is what he’s saying true?”

  “About the base?” The man nodded a confirmation. “Well, yes, I think… For what I understand, some general is supposed to search their location for us while we go murder some people he doesn’t like. It happens all the time, Director.”

  “I’m not your Director anymore,” the man dryly cut her off. “That General is an NPC, right? A part of the game. How is the game supposed to help us deal with a real-life danger?”

  “Well,” stuttered Mai. “Well…”

  “Oh, c’mon!” I interrupted. “You’ve said so yourself, Derry. This is more than just a game. Of course the Signal knows where they are, and all this,” I made a gesture encompassing everything around us, “is happening inside it.”

  Derry—the real life Derry, not his avatar—leaned closer to me and asked in a low and dangerous tone: “You’re saying this thing is smart? That we’re connected to a true AI?”

  Back in the game, Mai was staring at our avatars, which had suddenly gone still. I ignored her and focused on the real world. Derry was close enough for me to smell his breath—like stale tobacco. What the hell was his problem?

  “You should know,” I told him, drawing away from him. “You were CIA, weren’t you? I bet you know more than I do about the Signal. If your people thought it was a real goddamn AI, I think it would’ve never gone into public access—”

  “You’d be surprised, Dorsett,” the man said, “how many things never meant for the public eventually make their way into public hands. Yes, the CIA kept a close eye during Rune development over the Signal, as did the military, the FBI, NSA, NASA, the GKL, and all the others. No one thought the system governing it was actually self-aware, so production continued.”

  “Then I don’t know what has your panties twisted—”

  “If a true AI was smart enough, and had enough computing power, don’t you think it wouldn’t be smart enough to pretend it wasn’t actually a true AI? Do you really think it couldn’t play dumb to fool what amounts to it as a bunch of ants? I think it would be a trivial effort for it.”

  Goosebumps danced down my spine. I had wondered several times just how smart Rune really was.

  “You have no idea what this thing is thinking, or if it even thinks at all, so you shouldn’t go around involving it in humanity’s business.”

  Interesting how you call your own interests “humanity’s business,” Derry, I thought.

  “And yet it’s only helped us. It’s helping us find the CIL faster than we could ever do on our own, and it helped me before when you tried to kill me. Remember that one time, buddy?”

  “I’m not your buddy,” Derry almost growled. “And really? That’s how you choose to interpret Rune’s actions? As helpful? The way I see it, it has only acted in its own self-interest. It wanted the Earth to access the Signal, couldn’t do it itself for some reason, then got you to. Now, it’s probably doing the same thing, just we won’t be able to see it until it has already gotten its way.”

  “That’s… a really convoluted way of thinking,” I told him. Even if I profoundly disliked the guy, I knew, by the way his eyes shone madly as he talked, that he’d lost several nights’ worth of sleep over Rune. “Of course the Signal will appear dangerous if you choose to interpret its actions in the worst way possible.”

  “Answer me this, Dorsett,” Derry said. “If the Signal was good and absolutely not plotting something under the table, then why didn’t it simply transport you straight to the source a year ago?”

  “What?”

  “If it was really on your side, it should have simply teleported you straight to the Core, no silly business with planets and keys and maps.”

  “That’s not how it works…” But something inside my head was losing its shit.

  “And now, why does it wants you to go around and pretend we’re actually in a game? Do some quests to gain the location of a real world terrorist organization? Why won’t it simply tell you were they are, make you invulnerable, then teleport you there?”

  No, really, why hadn’t it?

  I’d played this game more than Derry. I knew that wasn’t how Rune was supposed to work. And at the same time, I really had no idea how Rune worked at all.

  “I don’t know,” I told Derry as I shrugged my shoulders in defeat. “I don’t have a single clue.”

  Derry drew back and strangely enough, he relaxed a bit. “I think you’ve learned something valuable today, then. Don’t trust the digital gods of other civilizations.”

  I considered smashing his smug mug against the table. He’d probably shoot me. It’d probably be worth it. Instead, I told him:

  “Screw that. At some point, you are fucked either way, you know?”

  “What?”

  “It’s just like you said, but the other way around works too… if it’s really good, why hasn’t it helped me? Well, if it’s evil, why hasn’t it fucked us over? Not like we could do anything about it, it’s an ultra-advanced, infinite AI from outer space. What are you exactly thinking we can do, shoot it with your gun? That’s how you like to solve all your problems, don’t you?”

  There was the eyebrow rising, which meant he was pissed off. Which meant he was eating his own words.

  “There may be a ton of reasons why it hasn’t acted against humanity. Maybe it needs the device we’re helping build for it—”

  “There may be a ton of reasons why it hasn’t helped us, so I’ll choose the worst possible one and run with it,” I parroted him. “See how you sound? That’s you, dude. That’s how you talk.”

  I refuse to believe there’s only darkness waiting for us out there, I thought. It would be silly to think there were only glitter and puppies in the world, but it didn’t mean it was all grime.

  “I see nothing I say is going to make you change your mind,” said Derry and I could almost see the irony hanging over his head like a lampshade. “So I won’t say anything else. But know this, Dorsett, I do hope you live long enough to see the result of your decisions. If they’re your decisions at all, kid.”

  “Thanks, Derry. I hope you take a very long stick and sh—”

  Inside the game, Mai was shaking us softly. “Uh, guys? Are you still alive out there? I don’t want to interrupt whatever is going on, but this is the second trip around the station, and Jarred is starting to stir. And there’s this guy getting closer…”

  It felt more or less like when I was young and Mom walked into me goofing off while I should have been doing homework. Judging by Derry’s expression, he was thinking something similar. He hid it rather well, though.

  With my focus back in Rune, the real world dissolved like it never had existed in the first place.

  I was sitting in the back of the bullet-wagon, next to one “John Doe” and one “Super Star Pretty Soldier Mai.” A player clad in purple power-armor had entered the wagon a few seconds ago and was eying my little group with suspicion.

  “Alright, Mai, sorry for that,” I told her. “Time to go.”

  As we got up, Jarred mumbled something. He really did look like a drunkard, which was good. The player got closer to us, which was bad. The three of us could definitely take him, but if he alerted security as to what’s going on…

  “Yo,” he told us while we half-panicked. “Are you kidnapping that guy?”

  Mai cursed under her breath (we all heard her anyway) and Derry’s hands slowly lowered to a gun that wasn’t there.

  “God! What’d ever make you think that?” I said with a huge, toothy, panicky smile.

  “Well, for starters,” the player said, “you’re thr
ee players carrying an unconscious NPC with a health-bar consumed by non-lethal damage.”

  Oh, yeah, that’s a thing that’s visible to players.

  The silence grew longer with each second.

  “There’s a really good explanation for this,” began Mai. “A really, really good explanation—”

  “The fate of the world is at stake, kid—” began Derry at the same time as Mai.

  “Yeah, we kidnapped him,” I told the player, raising my voice enough to drown out my fumbling group.

  “Oh,” said the player while Mai and Derry looked at me like I’d lost my mind or had just betrayed them. “Why?”

  “It’s part of a Quest,” I told him.

  “Ah,” said the player. “I see. Good luck, then.”

  “Thanks!”

  And that was that. He went to sit on a bench and I carried the unconscious NPC out of the wagon and into the depths of the Argus Station.

  “What?” I told Mai and Derry, who were staring at me—one in a more hostile way than the other—silently as we walked. “This is still a videogame, ‘member?”

  “I guess I ‘member,” said Mai. I could practically see the tension leave her shoulders. “You just made me almost literally soil myself there—aaaand I said that in front of the Director. Someone please shoot me…”

  She didn’t actually use the word “soil,” by the way.

  “Ex-Director,” Derry said.

  Once we were inside my ship, I felt much safer than running around with an unconscious kidnapping victim.

  “We’ll need to interrogate him,” I told Mai. “There’s enough space in the cargo bay for that.”

  “Sure,” she said, while she glanced around the ship with critical eyes. “I like this design. Where did you buy it?”

  “Made it ourselves,” I told her proudly. “My friends and I.”

  “Must’ve been really expensive,” she said. She placed the tip of her fingers over the corridor’s retro-flavored chrome finishes. “I went for a retro feel for my own fighter, but had to order it custom-made from the Shipyards. It set me back like half a year of grinding.”