KILLER GAMERS

by D Gemcats Purcell

  Most of the video games consumed over the video network and that includes VidDarknet, originated or were bought over by the extensive entertainment complex on Threeme. If it did not initially get invented there, maybe post production was in some way done there. The video software industry was huge there. The total population of Threeme was maybe eight hundred thousand humans with only a thousand or so hardy souls living outside of the three city complexes. This made it very lightly populated indeed compared to Baclet and Toigan, neither of which had had to be geofarmed to make their natural atmosphere safe to breathe. However the folks there have an outlook that is very aggressive toward maintaining their independence and it shows up in their governance and law enforcement. The survival of all depends on a certain discipline by all in their intertwined existence traditionally, so outliers are sanctioned very harshly. Now that the climate has been modified to allow reasonable survival with more breathable air, there aren’t as dire consequences for sabotage to the protective glass domes as in the early years. In the past, simple sabotage once proven to be deliberate, could get one a quick death sentence, not totally unreasonable as that sabotage could result in the death of others! The relatively draconian traditions engendered though in Threeme’s legal system lives on for better or worse.

  Michael and Kicha, husband and wife both were programmers who work with game development with the company Truereal that Michael and his co-partner in business Sri founded and operated. The couple had just come from a Saturday afternoon trip and had emerged from the ‘tube’ as they called it. There was a tube station at the park for the convenience of patrons and the nearby residents. In reality it was a relaxing trip to the park about six miles away where they had wandered through the trails among the giant redwoods and lush undergrowth. It had been a magnificent day with the space network blasting down rich focused sunlight on that part of Threeme since the cloud cover was light. They had walked holding hands, glad to be out of their apartment and in the ‘open air’ with birds singing. The bees and other pollinators were busy doing their jobs and it was fascinating to stand for a while and just watch them. It was so nice to get out into the real world and feel the natural breeze on their faces all of it under large bubbles though. Normally they would work from their homes in game development and though still in their late thirties and childless by choice, they were extremely well to do with a very active investment portfolio in metals spread over Baclet and the resource laden moons of Threeme including Trat. They had bought some ice cream from one of the little stands in the park, watched the families with kids that still need to be pushed along in strollers as well as those old enough to walk while holding on to their parents hands. They had thrown a few crackers that they had carried with them for that purpose to the ducks. Now they were walking back the three blocks to their apartment. They noticed a law enforcement auto parked in front of their apartment complex but thought nothing of it as they climbed the stairs to their third floor pad, ignoring the elevator which everyone called the “lift”. Little did they know their lives were about to change.

  Although Michael and Sri were partners in their successful business with sixteen employees which included both their wives Kicha and Tumi respectively, there had always been some friction between them. It revolved around direction mostly, of the company. Never had those business disagreements been terribly fractious or violent. In fact that pull in different directions had been utilized to fine tune and calibrate the company for the better. When officers knocked on their door four years ago, Michael and Kicha had had no idea as to what was coming. Michael was told that Sri was found dead early that morning and had obviously been so for many hours. The last person to see him was Michael at 8pm when they had by video camera been seen to be exiting their office and going to the tube station together. The videos also showed them separately arriving at their home stations and seeming to start the short trek to their respective apartments. Kicha would corroborate his arrival home at 0912 pm and Sri was picked up by nearby cameras on his threshold at his apartment at 0845pm. Although Michael claimed he never left his apartment, his vidcom was somehow pinged trekking back to Sri’s apartment at 11 pm and a person his height was seen heading out of Sri’s place at 1105pm which corresponded to the approximate time of death. What’s more is that Michael’s prints were lifted off the door handle. There was some sort of liquid thrown onto Sri’s chest judging by the staining on his shirt presumably after he opened to door to someone he knew. He had been poisoned. Michael’s wife Kicha claimed to have been in bed with him around that very time. Sri’s wife Tumi meanwhile had been away for a few days everyone in the company Truereal knew, to check on her single mother who had just been discharged from hospital. Later, she would realize that she too may have died had she not been away. That had all happened about three and a half years ago.

  The detectives on the case had told Michael that he unfortunately was a suspect and he had had to remain in custody for a few days. Michael and Kicha who knew that he really was innocent, was confident of him being exonerated and went on to get two very good lawyers. Tumi though upset at her husband’s murder, was very sympathetic and supportive form the beginning. There really wasn’t a good motive, and folks knew that it wasn’t all that hard to lift someone’s hand or finger print make a 3D printed glove and hey presto a person’s print can be made to appear anywhere. Also a clear look at the face of the person leaving Sri’s apartment was not obtained and no corroborating video was seen at Michael’s home going or returning. However, somehow his vidcom must have been cloned to allow someone to pretend to be him making their way from the vicinity of his residence to Sri’s place and back. That made it seem awfully suspicious, plus the one thumb print conveniently placed on Sri’s door knob. The reality is that Michael had never been to Sri’s apartment. Michael could really not think of anyone who would go to that extent to frame him. He knew he had been framed as did his wife, but there was no way the and his lawyers could do anything to convince the panel of judges of that.

  In the quirky way that justice was served on Threeme, when the evidence was brought to a grand jury, they felt that there was enough for a trial. Michael’s lawyers brought a very strong rebuttal at the case. It was the first murder of three total on Threeme that year in the month of April and it almost felt that the judiciary was looking to stick it to someone, anyone with the slightest taint. Well, Kicha thought for the thousandth time, it happened to be my man, my only Michael now in the brig for a crime he obviously did not commit. This had turned into an absolute nightmare, one that would never end. A year later, the sentence thankfully was for twenty years instead of the death penalty which it could easily have been. He was sent to the Millcreek Penitentiary. That was two and a half years ago not counting the year already spent in custody.

  Dutifully Kicha visited Michael as often as allowed, once a week. It was a great comfort to them both, especially since conjugal visits were allowed at Millcreek. It felt very clinical and exposed with all the careful exams for contraband that Kicha had to go through. But it was all they could do. Luckily Tumi did not believe the so called evidence and had joined Kicha in fighting for Michael’s innocence and that is what likely saved him from execution and instead saw him getting the twenty years sentence. In fact Kicha and Tumi together continued to work as the new bosses jointly and were achieving great success much to the amazement of their employees and rivals who had been expecting the demise of their small company Truereal. Of course their travails had become well known throughout Threeme and they were awarded even more contracts. Their lawyers had scoured all the options looking for other likely culprits including rival companies but could never pin anything down on anyone. Other suitors or love interests were checked but nothing solid came up. There had even been innuendo that the two wives were lovers. Less than half year later the strange killings started in earnest. To date there were seven middle to higher level managers killed. There was now a serial killer on Threeme and no one could make sense of it
. Michael certainly could not now be blamed. Most were killed by poisons just like Sri was. That certainly did not sway the judiciary to re-examine Michael’s conviction though, so far.

  11. THREEME, BACLET AND TOIGAN TALKING

  In a tightly monitored society like that of Threeme where every movement was tracked by AI within cities by motion sensors, cameras, robots and from space satellites overhead, it was mind boggling that the individual doing these killings could get away with this and not leave a trace. The authorities eventually came to the conclusion that there had to be multiple killers. Other than that, they could only throw their hands in the air in frustration. They realized that they were stumped. It was with some relief when Chief Martinette and Munchin called from Baclet about some other matters of interest to learn that they too were flummoxed by a series of dramatic killings, mostly poisonings that were plaguing them. Superintendent Boggin, chief of Internal security gave a briefing to his colleague Chief Maitland who was the equivalent of Defnet security on Threeme. In fact one of Chief Maitland’s brother-in-law had been a victim of the poisonings. His last known contact was with a teen girl who had run past him on the steps of the tube where he was later seen on video staggering and falling down on the platform dead. The video had been very poor quality as if someone had been deliberately jamming the video feeds all over the tube station at that juncture in time. Martinette and Munchin had called back two days later to give them an update with news from Toigan. It was more awful and alarming now to everyone since it involved all three inhabited planets in this solar system. The connection times were long- an almost a three hour transmission time one way for radio signals to travel to Toigan from Threeme. However now there was hot and frenzied communication from Threeme with both Toigan and Baclet. It was still forty minutes to Baclet one way by radio from Toigan. Mostly people used voice to words which used less data to transmit than voice alone and in some ways it was very awkward and annoying.. Now there was full coordination and promises of cooperation too.

  This cooperation and communication was pointing at the VidDarknet as the agent indoctrinating its adherents into utilizing their brilliance to effect these murders all over these three planets. Unfortunately the tracers put on by Toigan and Baclet using their top of the line crypto trackers seem to lead to Threeme. Obviously, the perpetrators were superb, but with the help of the network servers as well as top secret government intelligence agencies, all roads led to Threeme where the software was initially made and continued to be polished and refined. New versions all came from here. The information shared showed overwhelmingly that video games cached before three years ago seemed devoid of the programming issues. Superintendent Boggin after enlisting the help of some super vetted programming help from Chief Maitland’s office to work with a very select few from his own Internal Security people in a top secret task force, a week later confirmed those findings. It pointed to Truereal and everyone of its workers could have been in a position to interfere. There were two ladies leading a group of sixteen employees and one of the founders was in prison for killing his co-founder partner. It was now the two founders wives who were cooperating and running the company successfully. That would bear some careful investigating Superintendent Boggin thought. However all video production companies were being carefully scoured and using the intel from both Baclet and Toigan, the search began the define who the users, particularly the regular ones were. Surveillance was covertly instituted to identify such people and to start a vigorous tracking process across all the three planets. Threeme was an even more highly monitored society than Baclet and Toigan, just because they needed to, to protect everyone’s welfare on such an inhospitable planet.

  As a result of this surveillance about forty gamers were brought in and interrogated and thirty two had to be kept in confinement under national security laws. Those folks were felt based on the interviews plus brain scans, to be too dangerous to allow back into society. Both Baclet and Threeme were now looking to Toigan to complete the final development and testing of reprogramming technology which was felt to be within two months of release. There had already been tremendous success with volunteers on Toigan. Captain Ronald’s son Josh had been one of the volunteers and he had actually called to let Jonah and Jessi know that he felt even better about himself and more confident than ever. He believed that he had rounded the corner on that episode in his life. Chief Martinette and Munchin of Baclet had strongly recommended the Team Six to their compatriots over on Threeme. As a result, Superintendent Boggin and Chief Maitland had already been begging Six’s bosses Breecher and Buenafe to loan Six to them to get the problem solved. Breecher and Buenafe were dragging their heels though so that when Team Six did go, they’d also be able to take the hardware and software plus technicians to operate the new deprogramming equipment too. It was such a long expensive haul over to both Baclet and Threeme that it was not to be undertaken lightly. So Team Six was on notice and there were lots of technical people now in training to equip them for the upcoming space flight. Some would hop off at Baclet and stay for a few weeks operate the equipment and likewise at Threeme. Plus it was necessary to keep control of such hard won technology. Those machines would be coming back to Toigan unless allowed to stay there through licensing arrangements. They were going to Baclet and Threeme under an emergency protocol only for now. Six though would be there for a few days or at most a couple of weeks to conclude the case and bring the offenders to justice. So all details of the investigation ongoing over there was to be shared with Six as it happened and the power centers there were passing the appropriate laws and legal framework necessary to allow a foreign law enforcement entity to be able to operate legally there. Such red tape had been removed from Baclet already when they were in crisis with their in-space hijackings to allow for Toigan’s help. The history of Team Six’s successes had had a direct impact on Threeme too, since they all had had their investments under threat during that crime spree. So law enforcement, the judiciary and the politicians were only too happy and excited to host Six. However, none of this was being broadcast to the public since they were trying not to spook the villains.

  Meanwhile on Threeme where news travels fast as in small communities, it was known that a bunch of teens to forty plus years old adults had been picked up in a law enforcement dragnet and a few news agencies had started speculation as to whether there might be a connection to the spate of puzzling murders. Attempts to dig information from the law enforcement agencies by reporters did not reveal anything more than a simple confirmation that ‘yes we are in the throes of interviewing people who might be able to throw some light on these issues, but no hard leads have yet been found’.

  Meanwhile, at Truereal, Kicha and Tumi were in the process of fine tuning their latest game creation. This time they were using a game engine that though based on the basics of their old Truesoft platform, had been substantially rewritten , not just simply tweaked, to provide a faster more fluid and more adaptable platform. They called it their Truejump skeleton. They had literally spent the last three months writing the software with the help of AI and two robots. The two robots were specially designed in-house to help with the faster visual game character creation motion effects relieving the humans of thousands of hours otherwise spent doing that. Those robots had been perfected about one year ago. The concept for the game was polished off on one weekend by the Truereal team, but the fine writing took one whole week. Finally the creation of the simulations were the long slow march! In fact Michael even from prison had been instrumental in the pushing for the robot concept and participated as best he could in its design. He did have access to a primitive computer in prison but it was mostly for simple research and communication, thus wasn’t able to contribute much to the fine details. However the staff had really pulled together as a team and as a result they were engaging with a limited beta release already to a few of the most devoted fans. It seemed like it had potential to be really a blockbuster video game.