by Terry Schott
“No.”
“I finished it on the weekend.” Glen’s lips pressed together. “You bought a ticket and experienced sOar?”
Yuri nodded.
“I’m kicking myself now for not trying it. It was extremely realistic, right?”
Yuri sighed and dropped the paper onto the pile. “It was.”
“I think Cyber Inc. is in very serious trouble once they get their virtual theme park running properly.”
Yuri looked at the console for a moment. “Perhaps you are right.”
Glen held up the Magma unit. “Then tell me everything we know about this thing.”
***
Ivan swivelled in his chair and wheeled toward the table located between his desk and Loredana’s, coming to rest beside her. Shawn was sitting across from them.
“Okay.” Ivan nodded. “The rumours are true. I’ve used the Magma console to create a new internet which is faster and without all the junk accumulated over decades of use slowing it down.”
“It’s only been a couple months.” Shawn leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “How did you get it up and running so quickly?”
Ivan smiled. “The units are designed to meticulously record the preferences of each user. Every single search, web click, site visit, each activity a person performs while on the net is recorded by the Magma units and then reported to a central super core. It only took a few months for my tracking algorithms to enable me to create a new internet populated with everything people want.”
Shawn took a deep breath and looked at Loredana. “He makes it sound so simple.”
“For me, it is.” Ivan shrugged.
“Are we still on schedule for our release date?”
“Yep.”
“Good.” Loredana smiled. “Let’s get ready to change the entertainment industry.”
#23
“Come take a look at this.”
Loredana looked over her shoulder at Ivan. “What’s up?”
“I think it’s ready to go.”
Loredana slid her chair across the floor and looked at the code on his monitors. “Is this the Heritage Project?”
“Your name for this project is boring.”
“What do you call it?”
Ivan smiled. “Bring Loredana’s dead ancestors out of creepy robots and sink them into a virtual world project.” Loredana nudged him and he laughed. “What? Too wordy?”
“A bit.” She continued reading. After a few seconds, she pointed at a monitor. “What’s this part?”
Ivan shook his head. “You are sharp.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time over the years coding in my spare time. You know that.”
“Still, I don’t think more than half a dozen people on the planet could keep up with me, and half of those would need a day or more to go over my stuff. You read along as if it’s a book.”
“Thanks.” She pointed to one section. “What’s this part?”
“The doorway to a second area in the simulation.”
“That leads to where?”
“So far, we have one large game map, right?”
Loredana nodded. “A gigantic central continent where everyone will come to play.”
“The doorway leads out of that. I’ve given your family a private little island of their own. No one else will be able to access it.”
She smiled. “Perfect. Will they be able to interact and move to the main continent?”
“Of course.”
She skimmed the rest of the code and then leaned back. “It’s ready for them, then?”
Ivan nodded.
“Good.”
“Will we put them in first?”
Loredana’s eyes widened. “God, no!”
“Why not?”
“Because, if it doesn’t work perfectly, then they could be lost.”
“It will work.”
She shook her head. “You can’t be sure. The robots were encoded to a very old program. The process goes back over a hundred years to Henry Cyber, the founder of Cyber Inc. himself. I don’t know how he even managed to find someone to make a robot back then, let alone get his essence transferred into it, but that’s what happened. The code is archaic. If we mess up the translation, or if it doesn’t match your language for the virtual reality, there could be problems.”
“We have copies of the data.”
She shook her head. “But we don’t know for certain that the copies contain everything in the robots. We have to treat the transfer attempt as if it’s the only one we will get, because it very well could be.
Ivan typed on his keyboard and brought up two different files, one on the left screen and another on the middle. “Compare those.”
Loredana looked from one to the other briefly. “It’s obvious that they are the same language.”
He pulled up a third file on the right screen. “How ‘bout that one?”
“It matches the other two.”
“The one on the left is Henry. The middle one is your dad.”
“And who is it on the right?”
“No one.”
She frowned. “Then what is it?”
“It’s my grid coding for our simulation.”
“What?” She looked from one screen to the next before looking at Ivan. “They are identical.”
Ivan nodded.
“How is that possible? The code you are using is ahead of its time.”
He shook his head. “It’s an old code.”
Loredana looked confused. “That’s not possible. I’ve seen a ton of code, and the language you use is more advanced than any computer language ever developed.”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you learn it from?”
“You know that copy of the Game is Life that I showed you? The one that shouldn’t exist?”
Loredana nodded.
“It was hidden in the subtext of that book.”
“Like some secret code?”
“Yeah.”
She ran one hand through her hair as her eyes moved between the screens. “So whoever put it there all those decades ago is still more advanced than we have become after all this time?”
Ivan bit his lower lip as he nodded.
#24
Today marks the opening of Lava Game’s new virtual reality park, Transition.
Right out of the gate, it has become the best-selling game in history, breaking sales and subscription records in minutes that took weeks to reach in the best releases of the past.
Loredana Cyber has announced that instead of the original one hundred servers, there is enough initial demand to create one thousand. That’s right, folks. With one hundred thousand players per server, that puts the overall population at one hundred million players online on day one of release!
Don’t worry about lag or slowness during play. Ivan Thorne assures us that the Magma network can accommodate exponentially more servers before feeling any strain. That’s good news, as millions more are expected to come onboard every minute.
In the blink of an eye, everything changed.
One second he was sitting on the couch in his apartment and using his controller to create a character on his TV screen. When that was completed, he peeled the cover off the back of his new ticket and placed it on the back of his neck. He took five deep breaths, closed his eyes, counted to ten, then opened them.
He stood in a field, the grass under his feet lush and soft. He wriggled his toes, enjoying the feel as the blades scrunched between them. “I forgot to choose shoes.”
“Would you like a pair?” A woman’s voice, sultry and calm, sounded close to his right ear.
He turned, but there was no one near him. “Who’s there?”
“Sylvan,” the voice responded, still located near his ear.
He frowned, then smiled. “My personal assistant inside the game?”
“That’s right, I am your spark. You named me Sylvan.”
“Oh wow. You sound so real.”
Gentle peals of laughter cascaded over him. “I am real.” The voice paused. “It appears you forgot more than shoes before you entered Transition.”
“Oh?”
“You did not select a name.”
“That’s right.” He turned to face the direction of the soft breeze and closed his eyes. Inhaling, he thought he detected the scents of grass, rain, and . . . “Do I smell cinnamon?”
“Most likely.”
“Strange to smell that out here in the country.”
Sylvan did not reply.
He turned, looking up at the blue sky filled with clouds, then down at the ground which was covered with green grass for hundreds of feet on all sides. In the distance was a large silvery dome. “What’s over there?”
“That is the welcome centre. When you are ready, you will make your way toward it.”
“Why not have me appear inside of it?”
“Because there are things that you will learn along the way. Would you like shoes now?”
“Once we leave the grass.”
Sylvan chuckled. “And have you decided on a name? It will help me to communicate with you better.”
“Yes. My name is Troy.”
“Excellent. When you are ready to move forward, we can begin your basic orientation.”
“Basic orientation?” He took a step forward and stumbled, barely righting himself before falling to the ground.
“Good catch.” Sylvan’s tone was encouraging. “You may not be physically holding the controls, but the connection between your system and avatar needs to be calibrated. You will start walking, then jog, then do some jumps and bends. By the time we get to the welcome centre, you will have the basics covered.”
“What about flying?”
“In some areas of the map, but not this part.”
“Map?”
“As you wish.”
A blue map appeared in front of him. A small cursor flashed on an area. Not far from that was a building marked ‘Welcome Centre’. The remainder of the map was very large and dark blue.
“The map will open up as you explore.”
“Just like a regular game.” The map faded as he looked away from it.
“You sound surprised.”
Troy shook his head. “This will take some getting used to. It feels as if I am here and there is no other place as real. Games don’t feel like this.”
“They do now.”
Troy smiled and did a deep knee bend. “I think this is gonna be fun.”
Sylvan laughed. “Of that, you can be certain.”
#25
The door closed and Ivan leaned back in his chair, pulling his tie loose with a shake of his head. “Oh my god, this is painful!”
Loredana refilled their glasses and placed the bottle of sparkling mineral water on the table. “Take the tie off. I don’t know why you bothered to wear it anyway.” She grinned. “Same with the suit jacket.”
“I know.” He removed the tie and balled it up before throwing it into the corner, watching as it hit the wall and slid into the garbage. “I thought it would give us, I don’t know what you call it.”
“Equal business stature?” Loredana looked at the files in front of her.
Ivan snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “That’s it! Business stature.”
Loredana giggled. “We’ve spent the last three days meeting with corporations who want to make certain their brands appear inside the virtual world of Transition. We have something much better than business stature.”
Ivan waited for her to tell him. When she didn’t, he raised his shoulders and shook his head. “What?”
“Leverage.”
“Ah.” He smiled.
“We could sit here in our underwear with diving goggles and snorkels attached to our heads and these companies would still smile and compliment our wardrobe .”
“And not get it.” Ivan raised his eyebrows. “You are vicious when it comes to signing deals.”
Loredana’s smile was tight-lipped. “They can afford it. Most of them have been stealing money from the public for decades.”
“There are some who would say that we are doing the same.”
“Ten dollars a month from each account?” She snorted. “Please.”
“I’ve done the math.” He shuffled through his messy pile of papers, retrieving one covered in numbers written at haphazard angles. “We are beyond rich, Loredana. We spent almost all the cash we made on sOar getting everything in place to release Transition, but we are way ahead of where we ended with that project.”
“Four hundred and twenty billion.”
Ivan rubbed his chin, counted the figures on his paper, then nodded and looked at her with a sober expression. “Give or take a couple of billion.”
“That amount will explode when we sign contracts with the businesses approaching us.”
“Cyber Inc. hasn’t requested a meeting.”
“The party is just getting started.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Then they don’t.”
Ivan watched her, then rummaged through his papers again. “How much time before the next meeting?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Good. I want to talk to you about a couple of issues with Transition.”
“Problems?”
“No. Not yet.”
“All servers are up and going strong?”
“Of course. The main problem is NPCs.”
“Non-Player Characters? What about them?”
“We need to delete some. A lot.”
“Why?”
Ivan scratched his scalp. “They drain the system too much.”
“I thought we had lots of resources to keep the system expanding.”
“We do, but it’s still finite. There are many areas on every server where no player is present.”
“Really? There are a hundred thousand players on each server.”
“Yeah, really. The virtual space is huge, and it is growing. To have NPCs standing around doing nothing all the time is a waste of energy and code.”
“Can’t the mainframe determine the non-populated areas and shut the NPCs down until they are needed, then re-activate them?”
Ivan furrowed his brows. “Mainframe? What are you talking about?”
“You know. Like Sylvia in Shawn’s books.”
Ivan laughed. “There is no god-like creature inside of our simulation.”
“There isn’t?”
“Not by a long shot. There is a very complex system running everything, but it has no self-awareness or sentience.”
“It has learned from an enormous number of interactions from every Magma user. I thought that would lead it to becoming intelligent.”
“If only it were that simple.” Ivan shook his head. “Computers have come a very long way in their ability to crunch numbers and create complex executable programs, but they are a trillion miles away from being like us. I can get them to behave better than most, but they still rely on data input and then do as the programming dictates.”
“So what do you suggest for dealing with the NPC issue?”
Ivan pushed a piece of paper toward her. “Take a look at that and tell me what you think.”
Loredana read the information and nodded. “Mind if I add a tiny flourish to it?”
“Be my guest.”
#26
Shawn opened his eyes and blinked once, then again as he adjusted to his surroundings.
“Welcome back,” Loredana said from her chair beside him.
“Thanks.”
“So. What did you think?”
A smile spread across Shawn’s face. “It’s incredible.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased.”
“You made my books come to life.” He sat up. “At least the part about Earth. I did not have time to make an in-depth exploration.”
“You will find that everything is there if you look closely enough. Many of the finer details layered in
your stories are contained in the simulation much the same way. If you want to get the most out of the experience, you need to spend a lot of time in the park.”
Shawn laughed. “Park. The Game area is incredibly large.”
“As large as Earth is in your stories.”
“I’m impressed.” Shawn reached up to the back of his neck.
Loredana shook her head. “You don’t need to remove the ticket.”
He paused. “I don’t?”
“If you intend to play often, it’s safe to wear until it falls off naturally. Then you can put another one on. Don’t worry, there is no danger of being sucked into the simulation by accident. The process for entering Transition is very specific.”
“Five deep breaths, close your eyes and count to ten, then open your eyes.”
“Exactly.” Loredana handed him a bottle of water. “You can go about your normal day and even sleep with the ticket on. As long as you don’t initiate the entrance sequence, you are fine.”
Shawn touched the tape. “Makes sense. I don’t suppose too many people will repeat the sequence unintentionally.”
“That was the plan when we created it.”
Shawn took a drink and frowned.
“What’s the matter?”
He shrugged.
“Go ahead and tell me.”
“It’s not a big deal. I just thought more players would be inside the Game portion of the simulation. It’s not getting the traffic that I had hoped.”
Loredana laughed. “I never expected it to, Shawn. The Game matches real life very closely. Who would want to enter a virtual reality simulation and spend their first few sessions in a real-life scenario when there are many more incredible things to experience?”
“You’re right.” He laughed. “To be honest, I wondered that right from the moment you offered to buy my theme park rights.”
Loredana smiled and said nothing.
When she didn’t reply, Shawn sighed. “Are you going to tell me?”
“You’re clever.” She raised a bottle of water of her own in toast. “I’m certain you will figure it out.”
***
“Carlita?”
The voice close to her ear startled her, causing one hand to slip off the cliff face. Her other fingers dug into the jagged rock as they took her entire weight, her shoulder burning at the strain. “Damn it!” Carlita dangled for a moment, looking down at the ground far below. With a grunt, she gripped the rock with her free hand and she put one foot into a crevice as she panted for breath.
