A Slave in the Locked Lands

by Arthur Stone

  “Where to? How?” Lebovich was paying full attention now.

  “The Jeeps have no idea.”

  “Have you managed to find out just how he did it?” Coleman asked.

  “We have.”

  “Well?”

  “They checked everyone leaving the building by making them join a party. In that scenario, all the hero’s bonuses are revealed, and it is believed that concealing them is impossible. Also, top players with high-level invisibility skills searched the whole building, looking into every nook and cranny. No one was hiding there. The Jeeps are still at a loss. Their main version is that the player formerly known as John Archer44 simply deleted his character. They could find no other way anyone could disappear like this. That was the only way the data became a little less secret—they posted it in the officer section of their forum, and I have access to it by way of the player I have already mentioned. Take a look at this screenshot.”

  The still frame looked impressive. It was showing the lower part of a Gothic building. Even without seeing the upper part, it was a safe bet to assume the roof would be adorned with tall and narrow turrets and other decorative elements of the same sort. A short staircase led toward a lancet arch, with about a dozen players standing on it, some of them looking rather perplexed. They must have tried to descend the stairs, but got stopped by the players facing away from whoever took the picture. Elaborate garments worn only in the city and expensive suits of armor were seen side by side with newbies’ rags and well-worn leather armor of low-level fighters. The faces showed rage, confusion, and curiosity—any professional photographer would give their eye-teeth to take such a shot. Only the numbers, letters, and other symbols above the heads of the participants and the gaming interface elements at the border of the screenshot looked out of place.

  “This is the main entrance to the Peghur chapter of the Mages’ Guild. One of the Jeeps took the screenshot. They photographed everyone going in and coming out, and they did it more than once. There are also many shots of the interior. However, they are irrelevant, because we see the most important detail here,” Cody pointed toward one of the players. “This is the one we’re looking for.”

  “Is this a joke of some sort?!” Lebovich looked irate, while Coleman and Gray remained pointedly silent.

  “No jokes. John Archer44 did not delete his character. He merely went through another transformation. A radical one, as you can see.”

  The Chairman of the Board pursed his lips, shook his head, and said somberly:

  “If this is true, I really don’t know what to think.”

  “Anything wrong?” asked Coalman unctuously.

  “Everything. There is no way a player can change sex in our game. No such methods even exist. No mechanism for such a procedure has ever been introduced.”

  “What about disguise? Could the character actually be male?”

  “Take a closer look at the screenshot. It was taken in full stat disclosure mode. The circle with a cross at the bottom is an ancient symbol of femininity, and it is used in the game for the same purpose.”

  “Could he have forged it?”

  “Inconceivable. But even if so, what about everything else? Look at the legs. They aren’t completely covered, and the clothes reveal enough to see their shape is feminine. The character editor would never choose anything like that for a male character. Also, even though the top garment is cheap and covers virtually everything, you can still make out the breasts.”

  “He could have padded them.”

  “This is a game—not real life. It’s hard to use random objects like that. You can carry them in your hands, in your bags, in the character’s slots, and so on, but it’s hard to place them in any random place you can think of, and they’re unlikely to stay there long even if you succeed.”

  “It’s in the facial features, the figure, and the complete absence of an Adam’s apple. The race itself may be feminine-looking in general, but not that feminine. The character editing mode does not let anyone go far in that direction. There was a big outcry from the trans community who really wanted to be able to change their characters’ sex or at least be able to make them indistinguishable from the opposite sex visually, but it didn’t lead anywhere. Also, the project had already been launched, and we couldn’t make any corresponding changes even if instructed. Besides, socially conservative countries were strongly opposed to it, and we didn’t want to upset their markets.”

  Gray butted in:

  “I know what character editor can do perfectly well, and I have to agree that this is a picture of a girl and not a transvestite. You should also pay attention to the other symbol next to the name that looks like a drawing of a female head with long hair.”

  Lebovich banged his fist on the table.

  “Brown! Are you screwing with us?! The character’s appearance is based on its owner’s real-life looks!

  “What’s the big deal?” asked a confused Coleman.

  “This symbol means that she did not use the editor. Or, at least, used it minimally, without deviating from her actual appearance too far. You can make your hair longer, or trim your eyebrows. Lip color is something you can change; leg proportions are not. Nor can you enlarge your breasts.”

  “Nevertheless, it is John Archer44,” said Cody, quite oblivious of the director’s rage. Having really gotten into the presentation, he forgot about the nature of the company he was addressing.

  “What makes you think so?” asked Coleman, who was rather ignorant of the finer points of the game, in a nonchalant voice.

  “It has been established by process of elimination. There is no one else. I have used the resources available to us to run a background check on anyone noticed at the guild. Every account owner has been found except for this young lady with an allegedly lifelike appearance. You can find her in the game, but there is no information about her in the real world.”

  “It might be an elite account registered somewhere in the East Asian sector. Even with our resources, checking an account like that isn’t easy.” Gray shook his head.

  “It isn’t as hard as it might seem. Apart from that, even then the fact that the character in question has an owner in the first place could have been established, and it wouldn’t take us longer than a quarter of an hour. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone behind her. She’s like an NPC: a nobody out of nowhere.”

  Lebovich wouldn’t relent.

  “Even if this were true, take a look at the screenshot. I’d bet you an Andrew Jackson against a rusted penny that these guys at the bottom of the stairs tell everyone to accept a party invitation. This is why the players don’t look too happy—many of them are fed up with the whole thing. Had this been the person we’re looking for, the party bonus would have revealed as much. Everybody knows that heroes give bonuses, and that once they join a party, other players receive announcements to this effect, so they wouldn’t have missed him.”

  “Our hero is quite unusual,” said Cody. “I have also found out that no female characters were checked in this manner. Or, rather, they only checked a few at the very beginning, and one or two more later on—accidentally, or because they were suspecting a clever disguise. Therefore, our man had a chance of escaping, and he must have used it. I, too, had my doubts initially, suspecting an error or our search capacities being inadequate. However, further investigation yielded unexpected results. The player you see before you is a flighting by race, and has the most banal name: NurseLady. On the other hand, the name shows at least some originality—judging by the absence of a number at the end, the name hadn’t been taken, unlike John Archer44. The race is peculiar and has a very narrow specialization. As is the case with a couple of other races, it requires a specific appearance. Its representatives are thin—or, rather, slender, with long legs and fine facial features. If your real-life appearance does not match, there is no way you can put a ‘head’ icon next to your name, and will either have to pay extra for character editing or make a different choice. But
our hero—or heroine, as it were—appears to have passed that test. This screenshot documents her first appearance inside the game. She didn’t leave any earlier traces. However, we did manage to track her further actions. It seems as though she was eager to make herself noticed in as many places as possible. We have located some of the players from the party she’d been leveling up with. All of them but one noticed how good a player she was, which is strange for such a low-level character. NurseLady performed her tasks brilliantly, no matter how grave the situations—she survived, and made sure that most of the party members survived as well. The leader of the party, and the very player who criticized her, said virtually the same thing. It must have been some personal dislike, hence the ungrounded accusations. Afterwards, our heroine was spotted roaming the towns and cities of the neighboring provinces. She was noticed at the auction house and a few markets. She was also often seen using stationary teleports. Some players have talked to her personally, and they all talk about her mentioning a rich father who had told her to level up her flighting character so they could play together as a family party. He is also supposed to be the very person providing her with money for teleports and decent equipment, as well as paying for her leveling. NurseLady hired an NPC party from a mercenary guild to farm mobs in the Fiery Cleft. That was the last place where she was seen. And now we cannot locate her via any in-game methods. Private chat messages just seem to vanish in the void. The same thing happened to that hero after the red messages in all chat windows. Don’t you think this coincidence to be rather odd? To sum up, John Archer44, a perfectly unknown player, entered the Mages’ Guild, and no one has seen him since. However, a player called NurseLady came out: a thin and frail-looking girl aged sixteen or seventeen, and around level 15. Most peculiarly, no prior mention of her has been found, but afterwards there were dozens of eyewitnesses whose reports have been perfectly consistent. A player of a rare race with a perfect knowledge of the game whose origin is completely unknown. Mr. Lebovich, I hope you find my argumentation convincing. Rostendrix Poterentax, John Archer44 and NurseLady are the same player.”

  The Chairman of the Board nodded.

  “I’m completely flabbergasted by the news. I don’t even know what to say—this changes everything, and there’s a lot of stuff that we have to rethink… Do you have an opinion of your own on this matter?”

  Cody shrugged.

  “I don’t quite see the point in such a thorough investigation, but one cannot help observing a number of oddities, some of them quite inexplicable.”

  “Such as?”

  “Sex change and other transformations should be impossible. The game mechanics should forbid it categorically. The ‘interest of the Gods’ achievement is also impossible to explain, since the backstory of the world implies a complete absence of deities. Those are the few things that I simply fail to understand.”

  “How about the things you do?”

  “The Jeeps say John Archer44 was a level 11 player. Yet we know that Rostendrix Poterentax spent a long time hunting high-level monsters and accumulating experience. Heroic achievements similarly add to experience and levels. He should have reached level 50 at least after his account became unlocked, which is inevitable in this case. The Jeeps were confused by this, but their explanation was simple. Or, rather, they had two versions: either the NPC mage who had scanned him made a mistake, or Rostendrix killed himself a few hundred times, losing most of his levels. That would be a strange thing to do, but it might explain mismatching levels.”

  “Very strange indeed—who would waste so much XP?”

  “Actually, that is something I’m prepared to accept. There are other things that I found far more odd.”

  “Which ones exactly?”

  “What I find most confounding is his behavior. What we see in the first video is a textbook noob. That is to say, an inexperienced player, or a complete greenhorn, knowing nothing of—”

  “We know what a noob is—get on with it,” Lebovich interrupted.

  “Oh, sorry. He exhibited similar behavior back at the mine. However, every eyewitness praised his business acumen, and also reported the fact that it had taken him but a few days to become a good hunter. As a result, he gave up mining completely, switching to monsters instead. It has been noted that Rostendrix died often during the first day or two, but soon stopped, and there have been no more deaths since then. Let us also consider the following: the players from the party that grinded with NurseLady have all noticed her perfect control of her character, her capacity for assessing the situation, her choice of healing priorities, her ability to survive mob attacks, etc. One of the party members was leveling for the second time, having deleted his first character for personal reasons. He was the one praising NurseLady the loudest. I must point out that his first character was level 98, which means that the player was experienced enough to distinguish between a newbie and a pro. He suspects that NurseLady wasn’t the owner’s first character, either, and that she has considerable experience. Moreover, this experience specifically relates to support characters—healing, buffing, etc. And we know that Rostendrix was a necromancer or a similar class at the mine, using creatures raised from the dead to hunt. All of this could be explained if the account owner had specific training, or was a good actor. He might simply be good at pretending to be anyone. Another thing is that we aren’t looking at a noob, but, rather, a player with considerable gaming experience with characters of various specializations. Yet if we assume special training, a few oddities unrelated to in-game activities can be explained.”

  “Could you elaborate on that?” Lebovich grew tense.

  “Well, what happened at the data center, for one. We lost the AI responsible for the creation of new characters and the re-authorization of existing ones. And the way it happened was rather strange, too. The character creation function was only restored the next day, while everything else remained functional. They still haven’t found an explanation for it. In particular, the very same AI was controlling hundreds of crucial NPCs, and they’re all still perfectly functional, just like before. Not a single critical error has been recorded. No redistribution of processing power involving the other two AIs has taken place, either. The AI in question was also responsible for sector-wide weather control, but—”

  Lebovich interrupted him.

  “We have already gathered as much. What we fail to understand is the connection between the player’s special training and the loss of the AI.”

  “If we assume there may be a conspiracy, or some other unknown power that stands behind this player, everything can be explained by a third-party intervention.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “I mean, we are facing an organization that operates effectively both in the real world and inside the game. They are the ones responsible for AI issues. After all, when we lost it, we also lost every opportunity of controlling the characters created with its aid. We don’t know how to fix this—the database backups were destroyed as well as the AI, and that was certainly no coincidence. Moreover, even the printouts are gone. This is still being investigated by the company. Rostendrix was only identified as a result of the agreement he had signed to the effect that the account data can be revealed to a third party—namely, his attorneys. There was no link between the AI and this bureaucratic aspect, so the information was received via completely different channels, which is likely to be the only reason it has remained intact. Someone must have been really interested in concealing the character owner’s identity, or lead us to such a conclusion—I can think of no other explanation. This would be a perfect coverup for any sabotage against the project, but nothing of the sort has been proven yet, and everything seems too low-key and too sophisticated for an operation this banal. Also, why would he leave a paper trail if he had intended to hide? It was obvious enough for all the other measures to be rendered ineffective. If someone is playing us, the nature of this game puzzles me. Nothing seems quite right about it…”
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