Atlas Alone

by Emma Newman

  “I’ll wait here,” Bobby Bear says. “I’m here if you need me, Dee Dee.”

  I give him one last look, wondering if I’ll be able to say good-bye to him once I’ve defeated the boss; then I march out of the hallway into a gigantic split-level room. It looks like it was made from an amalgam of every single high-society murder mystery mersive I have ever played in. It’s so big it makes the full-sized grand piano in the far corner look small. It has floor-to-ceiling windows giving panoramic views of London, the same cream marble flooring as the hall, but with a luxurious carpet on the upper area. There are sofas as big as king-sized beds, with beautiful people draped over them like they’re in the middle of some fashion shoot with no photographer.

  There are serving staff of all genders and a few drones too, some of the latter on wheels, some in flight, delivering top-ups to glasses and trays of exquisitely arranged chocolates. There have to be more than a hundred people in this room, all of them familiar to me, the guests being various media stars I met in the course of my work. Just as they were on Earth, they are too wrapped up in garnering the most admiration they can to even notice me. The serving staff are made up of people who were at the fringes of my job. The guy who organized catering for those crazy-expensive old-style shoots is serving canapés to a group of actors and it’s the first thing I’ve seen that makes some sort of sense.

  A cluster of guests is standing on the upper level, laughing, their attention focused away from the main area of the room. Perhaps there’s some sort of game going on, or an entertainer. Uninterested, I scan the room for anything that hints toward a final boss fight. Nothing. Not even a disagreement between guests. Confused and disappointed, I’m about to leave to see if I can find another room with some sort of glowering monster in it who needs a good twatting, when I hear a voice that stops me dead.

  “Oh, darling, sometimes you are just so ultra!”

  My father. That was my father’s voice, coming from the upper level! I run across the room, push past the human coat hangers and there he is, with my mother, holding court. They are lying back on a circular sofa, supported by dozens of cushions in shades of brown, my father’s feet being massaged by a young man who in the real world was a trainee director. Dad looks like he did when I was a child: tanned, his blond hair swept back, his eyes—my eyes—that glacial blue of our family.

  My mother sits next to him while another woman—someone who was involved in special effects in the real world—is massaging my mother’s hand. She too looks like she has stepped out of the memories of my childhood before it all went wrong, her dark brown hair long and straight and glossy. Oh, but they are so beautiful, so perfect, that my breath catches in my throat.

  I want to throw myself onto the sofa like I did as a child, wriggling my way between them to make sure that their love still encompassed me even when they were so deeply focused on each other. They’d laugh every time I did it, and make mock groans and then tickle me and—

  But I don’t move. I can’t let myself do it. This isn’t right. They’re dead. They died a long time ago and I am not going to throw myself through the wall I’ve built between that perfect memory of them and the reality. They haven’t noticed me and I back away before they do, reeling, trying to shore up my crumbling resolve as my father laughs again.

  I should have expected it, given the stairwell, the nest, the sheer emotional hurricane this gameified hazing has battered me with. Their bodies weren’t on the stairs; that was a kindness, I’d thought, something too brutal for even this arsehole to code in. But somehow this is worse. He must have found the data from Bobby Bear. Must have—

  Then suddenly it makes sense. I’d been thinking, like a total fool, that the data on all these people and these phases of my life must have been destroyed on Earth and lost forever. But the people in charge of this trip let me join the crew. They would have mined the entire Internet, trawled through data farms and warehousing to find out everything they could about me. That data must be on the ship server, ready to be exploited by this sick genius. Is he just using the US gov-corp’s thorough research to initiate me into the leet circle? Or is he telling me that they know everything about my life, even the parts I thought no one knew about, like the nest in the basement?

  I leave the room via a door to the left of the grand piano, barely taking in the person playing it. Ze is very talented; I absorb that much on the way into the adjoining hallway.

  It strikes me that no one has offered me any refreshments or talked to me. Another member of serving staff passes without even glancing in my direction, and to be honest, it’s a relief after the silent stares from the dead bodies on the way up here. I feel like I am invisible, or at least so far down the social ladder that no one deigns to look at me.

  Feeling unfocused, I drift to the next room and find a huge kitchen full of caterers. It’s homely though, not made of the industrial steel units found in the top-class hotels, and it’s vaguely familiar. However, I can’t remember ever being in a place like this before. There are pots on a six-ring stove bubbling away, huge trays of ingredients being made into canapés by three cooks working in an assembly line along one of the counters. Thinking that I’d like to try one of them, I head over to steal one of the assembled ones from the final tray, only to find they aren’t food at all. They are electronic components of some sort.

  “What the . . . ?” I pull back as one of the waiters collects the tray and carries it balanced on the fingers of his right hand out of the room in the opposite direction from the party.

  “Why are you here?” says one of the cooks, right at me.

  I blink at her, thrown by the sudden loss of invisibility and the fact that she looks like a woman who sat at the same table as me at that awful awards ceremony. “I’m looking for someone,” I say. “Someone causing trouble up here.”

  Then they all turn and look at me. I take a step back. Every single person in this room was at that ceremony. I’m sure of it.

  “He’s not in here,” the cook says. “You can’t be looking very hard.”

  I ignore the spark of hurt pride the comment causes and scan the room. “I heard something when I was downstairs, but nothing seems to be wrong up here.”

  She laughs; then they all start laughing, as if I’d said the funniest thing in the world. “Everyone’s going to die,” she says, still chuckling and wiping a tear away from the corner of her eye. “He’s going to kill them.”

  This is the weirdest lead-in to a boss fight I have ever experienced. “Okay . . . so . . . what the hell is going on?”

  The cook points out of the room with her knife, in a way no sensible person would in a busy kitchen, in the same direction the waiter just took the tray of components. “He’s through there. We’ve all known it was going to happen. Even our parents and grandparents did. He’s just getting it all set up now.”

  I look at the trays in the assembly line. “What is he setting up? Some sort of weapon?”

  She nods.

  “Well, shit, why are you helping him?”

  The look on her face makes me feel stupid. “Do you have another job you could give me? And all my staff?”

  “What about the people through there?” I point toward the party. “Do they know?”

  “Know about what he’s going to do?” She laughs again, and all of the other staff laugh too, all stopping their work to look at me and laugh, like this is some sort of weird art-house play about social embarrassment or something equally tedious. “Do you think that would make any difference? They don’t care.”

  They all have knives. Every single one of them. Even the ones stirring the pots on the stove have knives in their free hands. I look at the racks on the wall, hanging down from the ceiling over the central work top and in the blocks on the countertop that they are normally stored in. Not a single free knife in the entire room. I don’t want to go rooting about in the drawers, not yet anywa
y.

  Shit, am I supposed to deal with the boss with nothing more than a saucepan and enthusiasm?

  “If you’re not going to do anything, you may as well leave,” says the cook. “Go outside and get killed with the rest of them if you like.”

  “No,” says the cook next to her. “She’s allowed to be here and watch from the window if she likes.”

  “Watch everyone in London die?”

  “Not just London, darlin’,” he says. “The ’ole bleedin’ world, innit.”

  This is too close to the bone to be coincidence, surely? Is the game designer trying to tell me he knows what they did to Earth?

  No, that’s ludicrous. How many games have I played where I, as the hero of the piece, have had to stop the big bad from destroying the world? It’s a trope, nothing more.

  I have no intention of just sitting back and watching mass murder happen all over again, game version or not. I march out of the room, heading in the same direction as that tray of components was taken, my thoughts bouncing between seeing all of this as a message buried in a sick initiation and trying to work out how to handle it. Pretty much any other game that ends with a violent final boss tools you up as you progress: armor, weapons, whatever. And if it isn’t a violent confrontation, there are usually all sorts of clues and story elements along the way to give an insight into the enemy so they can be defeated in some other, dialog-heavy way.

  But this game? This game chucks all of that out the window and then pisses on it. I mean, what kind of thought process went into this? “I’ll make a game. Let’s set it in the player’s old life and visit all those juicy traumas along the way. Hello, player! Welcome to hell. If you look on your left, you’ll see the pathetic attempt to make a home in the basement of the building you once lived in. And if you look on your right, you can see your dead parents, laughing again. Don’t look down! There’s dead people there. All the dead people you ever knew. Ha! I am such a genius!”

  Of course, the lack of the usual narrative supports could be his way of trying to make this seem more realistic, admittedly in the most unrealistic way possible. Life in meatspace doesn’t have the same rules, doesn’t lay out the right way to go as clearly as lots of games do. The figurative armor and weapons we need aren’t often laid out in easy-to-access places, scaled to our ability at the time. Well, some people would argue they are, but they’re the same sort of idiots who say that positive thinking helps to overcome systemic inequality.

  Thing is, the coder is making so many statements here—or at least I think he is—that it’s just a messy soup of experiences. I’m so uncertain of anything, I can’t see what I’m supposed to be getting out of this, other than some vague promise that it will help me reach my goals. Running up all those flights of stairs might have helped a tiny bit, but I picked my way up here slowly. I suppose there was the whole door-code thing . . . but . . . ah, fuck it. I’m going to take a look at this weapon thing and then come up. If he mocks me, I’ll just mock him back. The invite to the leet server from Carolina will still be legit.

  The door leads to a short hallway. I’m irritated by the fact that the programmer hasn’t even bothered to make me want to face the big bad at the end. I mean, I don’t know anything about him. There’s been no tear-jerking scene where I find out he’s killed my puppy or anything. No mission parameters set by someone back at a hidden base somewhere. It makes me complacent, putting my hand on the door and pushing it open without any consideration.

  A bullet grazes my shoulder and it burns like a spear thrown from the depths of hell, the bang of the gun seeming to follow several seconds later. Adrenaline spikes; I duck down, hands on top of my head instinctively as I look for cover. A table has been knocked over just a couple of meters away and I dive behind it, expecting more shots, but none follow.

  I put my back to the tabletop, draw my legs in and grin. Now, this is more like it!

  8

  ALL I CAN see from my hiding place is a painting of an old sailing ship being tossed on the ocean in a storm. There is a thick carpet laid from wall to wall, making me wonder if this is a bedroom. I listen for the sound of the shooter crossing the room to come finish me off, and I’m puzzled by the fact that they haven’t tried to shoot me through the tabletop. There’s a loud sigh and what sounds like a gun being tossed onto the floor.

  “Knock first!” a man shouts. “I can’t stand it when you forget the freakin’ rules! I nearly killed you! Dumb-ass!” His accent is from somewhere in the southern states, but all those drawls sound the same to me. I have no idea which particular place he comes from.

  I suddenly know why I’m wearing a tux, just like the rest of the staff. I am such a cocking idiot. “Sorry, sir!” I call back.

  “Well, come out, then. What did you want?”

  My heart still banging away like I’m in a firefight, I stand with shaking legs.

  It is a bedroom, with an en-suite on the other side of the room. All beige and white and so neutral it makes me feel like grabbing a few cans of brightly colored paint and just lobbing them around the room so it has some definition. It’s like it’s been designed to be so restful it hardly exists.

  Everything is so perfectly coordinated it feels like a high-end hotel room, or something that’s been designed by an AI. Nothing here speaks of a life or a person’s interests, just furniture and generic ceramic ornaments that have complementary colors. There’s another sea-based painting, but that smacks of an AI wanting to create something with flavor. The bed is, unsurprisingly, huge and covered in scatter cushions, which you’d just have to push onto the floor to go to sleep and then put back in the morning. What’s the point of them?

  The room is spacious enough for a large sofa and two armchairs arranged around a rug, and a small dining table too. What is that even for? This must be modeled after a hotel room.

  There’s a man, alone, on the far side of the room, standing in a circular area that suggests a turret-shaped protrusion on the side of the building. He’s wearing something like a SWAT team uniform, black, functional. No helmet. He has brown eyes, brown hair, and I have no idea who he is. I don’t recognize him. The first person here I can’t place from somewhere in my past. He’s looking at me expectantly. “Errr . . . the butler said you might need a hand, sir.”

  “Come over here, then,” he says.

  There’s a complex machine next to him, partially assembled, with the latest tray of components resting next to it. He is literally putting it together, pretty much from scratch, and it looks like he’s almost finished it. There are some tools, but nothing useful for my purposes. I approach, cautious, taking in as much detail about the equipment around him as I can.

  “I need to know you’re safe,” he says, folding his arms. His legs are slightly parted as he stands there, appraising me. Typical male power stance. Whatever, Mr. Nonplayer Character, I can handle you.

  “I’m one of the staff,” I say. “I have clearance to be here.”

  He just stares at me. He’s waiting for something more. I stop a couple of meters away, not wanting to push the AI into combat mode, which is usually what happens in an end scene like this. If I stay outside of the NPC’s personal space, I’ll be able to keep it in dialog mode to find out why he’s doing this.

  I don’t need to know, necessarily. The other NPCs have told me what he’s going to do. But I want to be thorough. If this is an initiation, I want to look good, and blowing it after all the shit it’s put me through already would be really dumb. He’s obviously waiting for some sort of password or secret handshake or—

  The pin! I pull back my jacket and the tiny little CSA pin that I took in the previous level is still there, simply affixed to a different shirt. “Does this reassure you?” I ask, brazening it out.

  He smiles, relaxes. “Thank you, sister. Now, shall we do God’s work?”

  Sister? Shit, is this some sort of cult?


  I smile. “Yes, brother. Could you tell me what stage you’re at?”

  He turns away to look at the machine. I could stab him in the back, but I’m still not very confident about how exactly to use myself as any sort of weapon, let alone as a knife. Bobby Bear said something about consequences . . . am I supposed to detonate myself somehow, thereby removing the threat but ending the game?

  “I’ve figured out how to put it together; that was tough but not beyond me. Now I’ve cracked it, I just have to finish putting all these in the right places.” He gestures at the remaining components.

  I can’t help but think this looks like a sort of stylized puzzle piece. There are markings on the little bits of electronics, hinting that there is a pattern that needs to be identified and followed. But this is a boss fight, surely, not a puzzler? The first NPC in the game pointed me toward it, right at the start of the game. Other NPCs have told me he’s going to kill everyone. As crappy as the signposts are in this game, those have been pretty damn obvious.

  Too obvious, perhaps? No, if I start second-guessing now I won’t get anywhere.

  “Looking good,” I say. “So, once it’s done, are you ready for the next part of the”—I look at the uniform and consider the way he treated me—“mission?”

  “I’m more than ready. I feel good about this, actually. I wasn’t sure if I needed to go through this again, but . . .” He coughs. “Errr . . . I mean, I feel totally comfortable with the mission.”

  “You’re going to detonate the weapon?” Shit, I hope I am triggering the right dialog here. I want to understand exactly what he’s going to do, and as long as this NPC believes I’m in the same organization as he is, the fight won’t kick off.

  “Sure I am. Only this time, I get to watch.”

  This dialog is weird. Like it’s hinting that he’s been training for it, maybe that this has happened before. He’s looking out of the window, gazing across the rooftops of London. “We’ll be safe here. We can watch it from this very window. Watch them burn. All those sinners. All those who refuse to acknowledge the true path to God.”