KILLER GAMERS

by D Gemcats Purcell

  12.SIX GEARING UP FOR INTERPLANETARY TRIP

  Meanwhile back on Toigan, there were tons of information pouring in from Threeme, much of it focused on Truereal. Six was poring over information and had requested the case files pertaining to the murder of Sri that had been pinned on his business partner Michael. It struck them that Sri might have been the very first victim indeed based on his mode of death by poisoning, not unlike many of the subsequent ones there on Threeme, as well as Baclet and Toigan. This information had not been publicized widely at all in the press, deliberately. All the other subsequent deaths followed Sri’s, just based on timing. The diversions used were pretty sophisticated, and the perpetrators must all be pretty brilliant people. Gamers were generally very smart resourceful people after all. Six would know very easily upon meeting this Michael fellow whether he was guilty or not. Six therefore through their bosses Breecher and Buenafe started to communicate directly about their thoughts to Superintendent Boggin and Chief Maitland as a way of being efficient and setting up the best conditions for their visit. It was necessary to have the politicians and Judiciary set up to be flexible enough to respond to the unique skill sets being brought to bear on the issue. Nothing would be said to Michael or Truereal yet of course, but with all the information coming in from the neighboring planets as to the crimes taking place there, the authorities were certainly open to the possibility that they may have jailed the wrong man. Six felt that they were making progress and continued to pore over the intelligence data. They certainly felt that in a week or two, when they landed on Threeme, they would have a good grasp of the case and the players.

  In view of the imminent interplanetary trip by Six, Jonah and Jessi was spending some time with Jessi’s parents in suburban Pommerose. Jace and Susan were overjoyed with them being there. Most of the time now Jessi and Jonah stayed at his parent’s farmhouse out in the country about 1 1/2 hour away by regular auto. They were still pitching in to help with farm work on a regular basis, not only at Dad’s farm but also at Moog’s and his wife Juliana’s farm twenty minutes away. It was fun to still be able to have that structure for Jonah. That was a good grounding for him, harkening to his roots, his core. Jessi and Jonah were legitimately well to do just from their two years of working as part of their group Six and all the bounty and salary money they had accumulated, still unspent. In fact their investment portfolio was doing quite well. All of the members of Six were in a great financial position, largely wealthier than their parents though just bordering around nineteen. They had their ‘lucky stars’ to thank for that. They were born with various gifts, enhanced by the Immersion and lucky to find each other to form a team that reinforced each other’s strengths. Jonah and Jessi formed the initial core, being the first couple to bond. Thankfully her parents Jace and Susan and Jonah’s, Jonah Sr and Elma had been supportive and nurturing. So Jonah and Jessi were intensely careful to return that love and support back to them.

  Jace and Jonah had taken to playing lawn tennis at the local courts just down the street at the community nets. It was a favorite pastime of Jace and Jonah was fairly good at it, making him therefore a worthy opponent on the court. Lot of games were catered to there including mini golf and swimming for those who needed that outlet with super large ‘Olympic’ sized pools. A couple of weeks ago when they had popped over to spend one night, Jonah helped him tweak his AI based world class space simulator in his basement. He had discovered quite by accident that Jonah had the incredible, to him, ability to meld with electrical and electronic circuitry and thus diagnose rapidly any issues such as bad components. He had complained of a slow response compared to before, in his video rendering and was considering changing a whole series of video cards in frustration. Jessi had overheard Jace and Susan talking and suggested he had Jonah look into it. Jessi mentioned it to Jonah who had come down the stairs at just that time.. Her Dad had said, “You are just here for a night, I’m not going to burden Jonah with that. It’s a whole project to get into the guts of my system.”

  Jonah with his enhanced hearing had heard it all of course and said, “It won’t take more than a few minutes really to find the defect if you have one in the system; I’m ready now.”

  Jace and Jonah had traipsed sown the stairs with Susan clapping dishes together in the kitchen shouting, “Dinner will be ready soon.”

  In the basement, Jace had turned the system on as instructed by Jonah after he had reconnected some of his trays. The hum from the system sounded like a few hundred bees in a hive just around the corner. Jonah stood admiring the enclosed sim chamber going through its startup checklist bobbing up and down, swaying on its legs and even going inverted while rotating at the same time with the muted swish and whine of its electro-hydraulics. It was an impressive contraption to have in one’s own super large basement. Even more impressive was the fact that Professor Jace had taken some special ordered parts and imbued them with incredible software innovations to produce such a fine end product. In fact he had developed such a unique following that even companies in the business vied to get him to license his improvements to them. There were capabilities here therefore not yet available to training simulators even for astronauts. Jonah had gone over to one of the input devices - a keyboard, sat down and resting his hand on its wiring, visibly calmed himself and seemed to freeze immobile.

  When he got up, he went over to the second of four tall racks of electronic trays with their humming cooling fans and focused on the next to the last one toward the bottom. He carefully place two fingers on different parts of the wiring and concentrated. When he lifted his hands off, he said matter of factly, “This tray has some anomalies and it involves this hub here. It is likely a manufacturing defect in the electronic switch right here.” Jace, hopeful but slightly skeptical went through the shut down procedures after marking the component, then pulled the tray after it had cooled enough for more detailed testing. He said, “Thank you Jonah, I will go take it apart and test it in detail. Were there any other concerns?”

  Jonah said, “Nope, for such a huge system, the voltage flow was remarkable free and smooth. It’s obvious that you’ve been able to incorporate the best components. It felt like spaceplane level of quality honestly.”

  Two days later, Jace called Jonah when they were back at Jonah’s farmhouse in Dudemar. He said, “I waited until I was able to replace that electronic switch and test the system and I almost cannot believe it Jonah. The system is back to full speed. Now, looking back I realize that it had been slowing down for a while now. All of my diagnostics weren’t able to pinpoint the issue, in fact they had pointed to different trays from the one you had so quickly honed in on. Thank you, thank you so much. It was obviously an intermittent problem within the switching and therefore hard to pick up on. Sorry if I was a little skeptical about your gift Jonah. I know Jessi told me about how you guys can trace problems of that nature, but it really did not hit me how accurate you can be. I would have asked you a lot earlier in the game to help.” Jonah said, “It is one of my native skills. Long before the enhancements and the Immersion, I have been using it at home and at my friends home helping him with developing and troubleshooting AI robots and other broken electrical and computer equipment. I have never known myself not to be able to diagnose and fix such issues. Glad to be of help.”

  13. CHARLIE IN THE FOLD

  Charlie had called on the vidcom and wanted Jonah and Jessi to come over later that evening after dinner. No specific reason was given, but they hadn’t been at his place in Vinceland for a while. They had all been busy. Five had long since returned from their assignment, and since Mader and Adrianna were spouses, they had been busy spending quality time with each other of course. There had been a preoccupation between the early spring planting that was going on throughout their farm country and the time that Six had been devoting to perusing the data coming over from Baclet initially and now mostly from Threeme where to all appearances, the epicenter of the crisis seems to be. That process had been taking
quite a few hours every evening. So they jumped into the Jessi’s low slung auto but with the top up, opened the garage door behind it and off they went. The sun had gone down already and it was a cloudy evening so quite dark they drove slowly with their headlights flashing off the fences creating odd looking shadows everywhere and spying the odd deer lifting their head up to take a look. Charlie’s home was really just a few farms down and they pulled into his driveway only to realize that there were an unusually large number of vehicles all over his front yard and beyond. Charlie it seems was becoming a regular popular guy!

  They found a parking spot off to the side where the paved driveway had faded into gravel. This was often where odd pieces of equipment like tractors would often be left parked waiting their turn to either get fueled and go back into the fields or to get taken apart and repaired. Jessi winced as she was forced to bump through the ruts. Once they’d popped out and closed the doors, who did they see going into the side door but Dillion and Mehia arms around each other. Jessi looked over at Jonah and the mental communication was, “What’s going on here? This feels like a party!”

  There was the merkaur peeking out from behind the mess of autos. My gosh, that means all of Six is here! Just then a voice called out, “Jessi and Jonah are here, start the music!” It was Matt and Rona racing toward them from the direction of the barn behind the house. They looked every bit the couple and Rona was pink faced with excitement. Matt said, “Surprise! We are having a little get together and wanted it to be a surprise. Charlie and Monique are in the house and need you two in there first. Then you all need to come join us in the barn right after.” They turned around and went back toward the barn after Rona gave a quick hug to Jonah and Jessi. All they got from Matt was a quick backslap, each of them. It was true that familiarity breeds contempt, doesn’t it.

  They snuck in through the same side door that Dillion and Mehia had just gone through. Dillion and Mehia had not gone far, standing rather close to each other in the mud room as Jonah and Jessi brushed past. Jessi mumbled low to them, “You people need to get a room you know.” They pulled apart from their tight embrace and Dillion mumbled back, “Some of the old married folks have forgotten passion it seems!” Jonah and Jessi started to turn back toward them, “We are going to pull on your ear lobes until they bleed for being naughty.” Mehia wasn’t going to stick around for that and she bolted back toward the outside door pulling Dillion behind her, but not before she spouted at them, “Old Spoil sports!” Jonah and Jessi giggled, turned around and went into the living room. They didn’t hear the door open and close, so they presumed the couple remained smooching in the mud room. Charlie’s parents were no where to be found. Jonah always made a point of seeking out Charlie’s parents and greeting them properly. That was considered good etiquette among most folks especially the family oriented noncoms. These were neighbors, folks who were like parents to him. There were young people milling around mostly as couples with glasses in hand and current pop music playing low in the background. Fetch was kneeling silently in one corner in his ‘rest position’. Jessi said, “I wonder what he would say about us humans milling about doing so-called socializing?” Jonah said, “Be my guest ask him Jessi and you’ll discover that he always has an opinion even though you might not like it!”

  Charlie was engrossed talking to three young people two of whom they both recognized, Josh - Rona’s brother, Captain Ronald’s son who looked sharp, very sharp. He was in a light blue sweater top with khaki cargo pants, neatly trimmed beard and had grown a neat barely discernible mustache. As he turned to look at them, his eyes were sharp, discerning, focused and confident and he acknowledged them with a quick nod. He was like day to night compared to the depressed defeated tormented young man that they had met two months ago. It was heartwarming to see the visual evidence of change and improvement in him.

  Josh was with a tall leggy blonde young lady and together they had been having an earnest conversation with Charlie. The other young lady was leaning very slightly on Charlie’s arm while holding his left hand with both of hers and was one of the young ladies they had been introduced to over at the Captain’s home ‘that day’ months ago. Jonah realizing that they weren’t finished, gave a brief wave of his hand and walked on a tangent away from them toward one of the unoccupied comfy two seaters with Jessi in tow slightly behind. Jonah paused to make sure his sweetheart was comfortably seated, before he eased down beside her. He and Charlie were practically brothers and he knew that Charlie would get it. ‘We will talk when you’re done,’ was the non verbal communication. Anyway two minutes later, the group came over and Jonah and Jessi stood up as they were being introduced. Josh gave a hug to both Jonah and Jessi in greeting and said, “Jessi and Jonah, please meet Maryann my fiancé and I believe you may have met Janey here with Charlie who works at Nugent with Rona and is a neighbor of ours too.” Jessi spoke up, “Oh yes Janey, good to meet you again,” and the two gave each other a brief hug. Janey reached over and shook Jonah’s hand while still holding on to Charlie with her other hand. Jonah nodded politely and said, “Good to me you again Janey.” They were clearly an item, she and Charlie.

  Jessi and Jonah quickly mind talked, “Man she is possessive eh! They must have been spending lots of time together while we were busy getting on with our own lives.” Josh and Maryann after some brief conversation moved off headed to the local hot spot - the barn, with drinks in hand. Charlie and Janey turned and dragged two single chairs over as he motioned for us to sit. He said, “You wont believe it but after the trip to the Captain’s home, I have had the opportunity to speak to your tutor Jongi and her husband Choka of the Council of Scientists almost every day. Man, those people are brilliant! Of course I had met them at your farm at the wedding and at the party too. They insisted that I come on board fully. They told me that they could not let my talents go to waste.” He was rolling his eyes in fake disbelief. “Can you believe those people were fooled into thinking that I a noncom from the country had any talents that they needed! Anyway I signed the forms they sent me and for the last two months I have been a junior scientist with the council drawing a salary! What a dream come through!” His girlfriend Janey was laughing now, an honest unadulterated belly laugh. Tears were on the brink of rolling down her pretty unmade face. ‘Kudos to Charlie, he loved them open, honest and not laden with makeup. She clearly had good skin, nice genes, but was she the type who would make a good country-boy’s wife or would she faint, the first time she slid on her backside on a pile of slippery cow manure?’ Jonah said to Jessi in mind talk. Jessi mentally was doing her own version of a belly laugh, quite unnoticed by anyone but Jonah.

  Charlie was not finished yet. “Since they recognized Fetch’s utility in picking up the strings of offending code amidst all the torrent of coding for other legitimate sounds and visual information that comes out during a video game, they wanted to continue to use him and me to comb through the hundreds of other games out there most, on the VidDarknet but also on other systems. He did not have a mind to corrupt like a live human’s mind and you and I had built multiple firewalls that prevents code processed by Fetch getting into his operating system. In fact he really has his own proprietary operating system truly, since he has been constantly tweaking the original on his own, in response to threats or his needs given the amount of AI we have imbued him with. When I look at the original software that he started with and the backups that he makes every time he has modified his system, it is astounding. I keep backups stored away safely, just in case and I run it against all kinds of old and new threats on an isolated system away from the house for security that isn’t connected to any other system or network and it is amazing how insulated and hardened it is now. It just shunts threats into a safe cache and flags it by level of danger. They also have used Fetch to run simulations on what might occur in human’s brains, partly based on what we saw with Josh’s and a few other’s reactions. This has helped to clarify what different responses might happen from different
strings of code. Maybe not perfectly, but a hierarchy of threat levels were obtained through that. Rona and her colleague Janey here with me who both have tremendous skills with software came with Josh and they all have helped me to work on this with Fetch. They too have been getting paid for their work by the Council. So I believe we are in a better place to counter this plague. All of those results in the background have helped the programming techies at the Council some of whom actually came down here to the farm too, to modify the Immersion equipment to better be able to rework the corrupted minds. Really it has been shocking to me Jonah, how much the human mind is programmable and how amazingly efficient our biological systems are able to stack up layers upon layers of memory interlinked with emotional triggers in the brain. If I were younger, I would seriously consider going through the Immersion like you did. I have a lot more confidence in the process now. I’m doing fine without it though, so I’ll stay the way I am.”

  He continued, “A few of the techies I worked with are here tonight. They are apparently going to be marooned on Baclet and Threeme to operate the new build outs that I helped work on too. I had to go with them and Fetch too, to their clean rooms to contribute along with Fetch. I tell you, Fetch was dressed up in sterile drapes since they didn’t want cow shit from my farm to contaminate their stuff and he was very uppity about it. There was much griping and moaning.” Janey and Jessi were both holding their sides now laughing out loud since Charlie was saying all this with a completely straight face and the most earnest expression. That was how he truly felt too; he wasn’t just putting this on for ‘kicks’. Of course, Fetch was just like his Master and would not have taken kindly to this imposition. After all he programmed Fetch.