Asimov's SF, June 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Werewolves.

  How do you make it a world crisis rather than an individual crisis?

  Lycanpropic epidemic! You're not supposed to be critical during brainstorming, you know.

  Katrina decided not to correct his spelling. Yeah. We just pushed ourselves so hard to get the breathing room that now breathing is all I feel up to doing.

  There was a pause before Emil typed, Still breathing = still collecting Survivor Points :p

  “Still breathing.” Katrina drummed her fingers as the inevitable videoconference request appeared. She accepted without closing her mouth and was surprised to see how vapid she looked onscreen. “Breathing . . . global oxygen loss? Bit boring, low adventure potential,” she mused aloud. “And where would it go, anyway? Solar winds? Siphoned off by aliens?”

  Aliens. There was an idea. She fought reluctance to share any idea with Emil, then forced herself to say it: “We could do an alien invasion.”

  Sara's turn to look blank. “We've never done that?”

  “Technically, we have, but it was just a narrative excuse to flood the world with low-lying nerve gas. We didn't do anything with the aliens.”

  Emil's Byronic features crinkled into a pout. “You said a repeat was out.”

  “It's barely a repeat. Remember way back in the first quarter—oh, sorry, you weren't there. Tasha wanted to do War of the Worlds and the mob designers said they didn't have the resources for tripods. We took that as a guideline and didn't do any invasions.”

  “The Sino-Canadian Expeditionary—” Sara started.

  “No alien invasions. One of those will be a bang big enough for the veep brigade.” She opened a project file and started a list of ideas.

  A few hours later, Emil and Sara were having a debate over the relative merits of Alien & Aliens. Flirt-fighting. Well, Emil was extremely handsome, if you didn't notice how much higher his left eye was than his right. Sara had only been on the team a few months, so the sexual tension hadn't staled yet.

  Katrina left them bickering on her left-hand monitor and stirred Wee Kat on her right. Wee Kat had entered the “survivor stare” mode characters took before they logged themselves off for inactivity. Now she stretched, and Katrina toured the boat.

  Groups of survivors nodded and conversed in a canned mutter. Some, like the schlubby white guy Kat had been sitting next to, napped on the long benches. Unless they wore boat uniforms, these could be players or computer-run, no way to tell. The view swayed as ocean-sized waves crossed the Sound.

  Katrina checked the “phone” interface—several of her friends were online and alive, including five Seattleites. She sent Esteban, Status?

  I'm in the Space Needle. Helluva view!

  I'm on the Vashon Island Ferry.

  Smart. How high is this water going to get?

  I can't narc.

  If my feet get wet, steam over and pick me up.

  Roger. She closed the chat and imagined roping the ferry to the Space Needle and landing, after the flood receded, on the chaotic slopes of the Experience Music Project. Everything in AD had compressive and tensile strengths, a full array of properties. That roof would probably buckle. There were no day-afters in AD, though. No follow-through and no aftermath.

  She climbed up to the bridge and peered in at the computer's crew at the wheel. “Where are you going?” she said, one of the canned questions to which most computer characters would respond.

  The man replied, “I don't know,” through the glass but unrealistically loud. Good glitch to remember in case she felt like hassling some world-builders.

  Her friend Marcia's name flashed red on the list—she was issuing a distress call. In sailboat on Puget Sound, the attached message ran. Taking on water.

  Send GPS coords? Katrina sent, and soon she was using one of the other recognized phrases, “Please! You must help save my friend!” to get the ferry aimed toward Marcia. Marcia's character doggy-paddled from the swamped little boat over to the ferry.

  “Thank god, Kat, I couldn't get that thing to go anywhere and the waves were so big!” Marcia chatted as their characters clasped hands and the message You have created a group! There are 2 friends in your group appeared. Marcia had sat next to Katrina in high school Orchestra, and they had barely talked since, but any friend counted for AD's purposes. The more friends you had, the better.

  “You're so smart. Did you design the boat? Is that how you knew?” Kat led her inside and formulated a diplomatic response. At least she got extra Survivor Points for grouping.

  “Do you think the two of us should have an Alien marathon and see who's right?” she heard Sara say, and typed a hurried farewell to Marcia. She returned to Collaboration Space, observed Sara's smugness and Emil's smooth lack of expression. She felt her shoulders tense up just looking at him.

  “Let's get back on task, people,” she said, feeling more mendacious than managerial. “We have a progress meeting with Lee in a few hours, so let's get this invasion underway.”

  Natalie had the good grace to fall asleep—in Katrina's bed—before the team had to present their initial ideas to their supervisor. Lee was high enough up he knew more than one veep by first name, so his opinion mattered. He liked the invasion. He nodded as he scrolled through the storyboards Katrina had drawn of the invasion ships, the tank-like harvesters, and so forth. She'd even made a few ad mockups: Apocalypse Daily avatars cowering as a spaceship's shadow fell over them. Iconic, but not specific.

  “Brass will love this,” Lee said. “It's flashy, it's scary, it's a little camp.”

  Emil cleared his throat. “There's another idea I had, sir. To make this event really new.”

  Lee's eyebrows rose, in sync with Katrina's and Sara's. What's he talking about? Sara messaged. Katrina was too busy typing a similar message to Emil to respond.

  Emil's eyes twitched as the question arrived but he continued speaking. “The aliens are harvesting humans. Why not have them recruit some of us to help in the effort?”

  “Backstabbing?” Lee said.

  “It's a radical idea, of course,” Katrina said, frowning at the zone of her screen occupied by Emil. “Since this is a social game based on ties of friendship.”

  “At the end of the day, it's only a game, right? Who's going to mind a little competitive spirit?”

  Certainly not a shark like you, Katrina thought.

  Lee tilted back in his Aeron chair, swilling the idea around like a mouthful of twelve-year-old Scotch.

  “Of course, the company doesn't want to do anything that might decrease social involvement, since the game and the monetized datastream are dependent on recommendations and friend-invites,” Katrina said, packing in as many magic money words as she could think up.

  “Yes, yes. I'll let Brian and Krystal"—the veeps—"decide, but it's an intriguing idea. Innovative. Game-changing.”

  Katrina took a deep breath and leaned forward. “In that case, let's add an element of scavenger hunt to this. The aliens want us to betray each other to the harvesters—say, bundle or tag each other for pick-up—so they send devices down, rain them all over the surface. You have to find one in order to have a chance to sell out your fellow players.”

  Lee nodded. “Excellent work. Really stellar thinking from you and your team, Katrina!” He disconnected.

  Katrina let out her breath. That sounded like she'd won. “Emil,” she said as casually as possible, “I know you love brainstorming, but in the future let's talk about ideas as a group before pitching them to Lee.”

  Emil nodded. That was all she was going to get.

  Sure enough, just before quitting time she got an email from Lee, cc'ing her team and Brian and Krystal. They were so excited about the fresh new ideas. Green light for the A-day invasion!

  Sara sent another video request, but Katrina closed it. It's six, Sara. We can start tomorrow. She sat back and wondered how many Survivor Points she'd get for today. Maybe six hours of online survival so far, for sixty; fifty bonus if she man
aged to live the day out. Fifteen for the three hours she'd spent online grouped with Marcia.

  Natalie padded out of the bedroom, surveyed the fridge. “What's for dinner?”

  “Maybe you could be the one in charge of that, at least while I've still got a job?”

  “Meeting went that well, huh.”

  “I tried your backstab-the-backstabber thing. I feel dirty.”

  “As long as you feel employed.” Natalie examined a block of cheddar and shrugged. “Why's Endertainment looking to downsize anyway?”

  “It's bad all over, right?”

  “Sure, but I'd think the more people are out of work, the more people are enjoying the vicarious simplicity of running from tidal waves and pets with super-rabies.”

  “Beats our real problems, that's for sure.”

  * * * *

  A-day minus two, and Natalie's snores woke Katrina. She stared at her ceiling, one corner decorated with a landscape in gray cobweb. “Fine,” she growled, and walked out to her workstation. A-day was out of her hands now, hurtling toward her for good or ill. But she could always use more ideas, both serious pitches and backup for the days when Lee just didn't like a thing. She checked a few paranoid blogs and fringe science fora, saved some links, and settled in to doodle out ideas. Even her non-work doodles tended toward fleeing and carnage now.

  This time, the cartoon figures were fleeing a giant firestorm. Katrina was coloring the flames in the sky when a chime startled her: Sara logging in to Collaboration Space. Natalie grunted and rolled over, her snoring mercifully ceasing.

  What are you doing on this early, boss? Sara messaged.

  Couldn't get back to sleep. What about you?

  Oh, this is my most productive time of day! Sometimes I use it to work on my own projects, but today I felt like adding to the scenario files.

  Katrina felt she should say something laudatory about this behavior, but she didn't feel up to it in an oversized sea otter T-shirt at 5:20.

  I'm kinda glad to catch you alone, anyway, Sara continued. I'd gotten the impression you didn't think I should be going after Emil? You were so right.

  Katrina realized she might not be as subtle as she'd always hoped. Oh?

  I went to his apartment for that movie marathon thing. Maybe it wasn't a great idea to trap myself for hours on a first date, you know? He talks about nothing but himself. Blah blah, I hacked the school file server, I dated the prettiest girl, I decided not to be a musician because it wasn't sufficiently intellectual.

  Katrina wondered why Sara was telling her this. They'd never been anything like close, but maybe Sara was a different person at five am.

  You're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this stuff, but I had sort of a question. I tried to say something about the game when there was a break in the Emil saga, and he told me he never plays it. He pays some kid to play it under his name! Isn'tthat like, bad? I mean, it's a requirement, and also it's an employee account, right?

  It's not exactly a security threat. It just means the character gets some free swag occasionally and doesn't get charged subscription fees.

  Oh. I thought maybe . . .

  He might have been lying, anyway, Sara. He seems like the kind of guy who'd want to be seen as gaming the system, and from what you're saying, he was being pretty self-aggrandizing.

  I guess you're right. He went on about his collection of visitor badges, too.

  ?

  Like, he'd had an interview at Google once, so he still had the visitor badge, up on a bulletin board with a bunch of others. He had like five from Zone Red.

  How recent?

  How would I know that?

  They changed their logo. Was it the red Z or the bomb thing?

  Oh. Bomb. On the top one, bomb. Does that mean something?

  Not really. Don't worry about whether he's playing the game or not, I'll figure out what to do.

  Okay. I can't believe I'll have to talk to him again in a few hours, you know? He's such a douche. And have you noticed one of his eyes is higher than the other?

  Katrina wasn't sure how to answer that and maintain her managerial detachment, so she begged off. I'm going to get breakfast. She saved her sketches and signed out of Collaboration Space. Natalie's blanket had fallen off of the futon, and she put it back. She'd get dressed and bike down the way for donuts before Natalie woke up, surprise her.

  The street was almost empty—a man mumbling in a doorway, a convenience store clerk stealing a smoke with the door propped—and even with the cold air all around her and the scent of someone's woodstove in her nose, it reminded her of Apocalypse Daily. She smirked as she pedaled the same direction she had on several of those more perilous occasions. Maybe Natalie was right, and she spent too much time on the game: work time, playtime, brain cycles. But if the alternative was losing her job, moving back into the bunk beds at Baba and Mama's house and starting a visitor badge collection of her own, she'd stick with monomania.

  She almost passed the donut shop, which had moved a few doors up since the Google Streetview data that AD used. She chained her bike and ducked inside the steaming shop to face the small, bleary woman on duty. “Two glazed, two maple, a jelly, and a Bavarian cream, please.” The woman's movements were precise, effort completely minimized.

  This was something Baba had done sometimes when they were kids: had donuts waiting when they woke up, before he went off to work at Boeing. She hadn't remembered until she started ticking off Natalie's favorites and realized how she knew them. She wondered about Baba's work, if it helped to get up every day and feel you were part of something important, something lives depended on. Katrina folded a bill into the tip jar and stepped back into the morning chill with her box of calories. Any job was important if it was all you had.

  * * * *

  On the day of the launch, she woke to Traddles purring on her chest, which went a little way toward calming her anxiety. She hadn't exactly dreamed pitchfork mobs yelling “You ruined Apocalypse Daily!” but having to speed-dissect a live frog for a class she didn't remember registering for was close enough. She still felt guilty, as if allowing millions of users to betray each other was itself a betrayal.

  She logged on and watched the cut-scene the video department had put together: a huge spaceship like a raft of soap bubbles approaching Earth and breaking into its composite spheres in high orbit. The smallest balls fell bright through the atmosphere and landed, tearing into roads and houses. The charred shell of one melted off, leaving a great tread-bottomed machine, shiny violet. As big as a tank, but not a reused tank model: the company had gone all out, after all. It had a dilating maw and a huge antenna, and looked flatteringly like one of her sketches.

  Natalie sat up on the futon couch. “Good morning, sunsh—”

  “Hush up, this is the anniversary event.”

  “I'll get popcorn,” she said, without showing any signs of doing so.

  A face appeared on Katrina's screen, fuchsia in color and shaped like a shallow bowl. “I am Senior Commander Frit of the Apok Cooperative. Our harvesters have been distributed across your landmasses to collect humans for enslavement. To facilitate the process, incentives will be offered to cooperative humans!” A tentacle raised a poison-green object, between a grout-gun and a hypodermic. Katrina's idea. “Please use any one of these devices to inject your fellow humans with a microtransmitter, tagging them for retrieval by a harvester. Your DNA will be noted, and your freedom assured when you have tagged ten humans! Harvesters will of course make allowances for those actively involved in assisting our efforts. Good luck, humans!”

  The cut scene ended and Wee Kat was left standing in her apartment, facing the window and a view of the house across the street, caved in by a harvester landing. The machine was stirring in its bed of rubble, so Wee Kat grabbed her backpack and shiny new gun (500 Survivor Points).

  “Are you planning on shooting one of those purple mech things with that?” Natalie said around a mouthful of granola.

&
nbsp; “Everything in AD is breakable.”

  The phone interface buzzed and showed a message from Marcia. What the hell? This is the screwiest thing you guys have come up with, Kat. Is it for real?

  Katrina wasn't sure how to answer that. As real as the ice age yesterday, she typed, and headed out of her building the back way.

  There was a skip as she biked along, a couple of laggy moments. Was it the harvesters hogging processor, or was it the network—more players online than usual? She saw half a dozen people running along the street, away from the harvester she'd seen. Probably computer players, since they were running almost directly toward another smoke plume, another harvester. She saw another human pausing on a corner, looking around with purpose, and she skidded into an areaway. She wasn't used to seeing other survivors as a threat. Sure, there were griefers, but not all that many. Griefers couldn't get help from friends, lost Survivor Points if they killed people, wasted valuable time stealing vehicles and overpowering computer-run functionaries. Now everyone was a griefer.

  She pedaled slowly between the houses, listening for harvester engines or human footsteps. Then she braked, the bike wheels gliding in place for an unconvincing second. In a circular scorch mark in the pavement sat a green grout-gun.

  “Score!” Natalie said. “Lucky you.”

  “Ugh. I don't want it.”

  “What are you talking about? You said it was your idea.”

  “My stupid one-upping idea. I don't want to play the game that way.”

  “Take it up to Bellevue and tag Mr. Emil. Or one of your bastard bosses.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Well, if you don't take it, someone else will.”

  Katrina saw her point. She hit the “use” button and it disappeared into her inventory.

  “You could tag computer players. They're still human, right? No one gets hurt.”

  “I don't like to meta-game.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I try to pretend they're real boys and girls, just like me.”

  The “phone” buzzed. Cousin Lydia. Katrina? We're at Union & MLK if you want to join up.

  Who is?