Escape The Grid: Volume 1

by Patrick F. Kelly

  Joey replied, “Well of course it’s venison, but tell me something more. Show me that you learned something from the four hour session this morning.”

  Maxime studied the entree, moving items around with his knife and fork. “Well, they are venison shanks, leaner and healthier than lamb shanks. The sauce is made from figs, parsley and ...” He dipped his fork in the sauce and tasted it. “I’m going to guess Port.”

  Joey smiled. “Fast learner. Good job, kid. Take a bite.”

  Maxime used his knife to cut a slice of venison. He then scooped up some of the fig and rosemary and dumped the sauce onto the meat. He bit into it, and his taste buds exploded. It was the most succulent meal he had ever tasted.

  “That good, huh?” Joey asked, laughing at Maxime’s expression.

  “Oh my… This is so delicious. I can taste olive oil and the sweetness of the port and figs, maybe a hint of apples too, and the venison is fabulous.”

  “OK, so here’s a little more color for you. The port is from the Cima Corgo region in Portugal, not too far from the Spanish border. The grapes grown there are considered among the finest quality in the country. This is the best porto in the world, my friend. The figs you are eating are the best from California, but the ones for your date on Friday will be imported from Greece, from a farm near where Homer got his inspiration to write the Iliad. Just imagine the guy, three thousand years ago, sitting around and eating figs from the area. Best figs in the fucking world. The venison was hunted free range in northern France and aged for 21 days. Think you can remember all that?”

  Maxime continued eating. “Sure. Homer, Iliad, figs, Cima Congo, Port, free-range venison, aged 21 days, northern France.”

  “Cima Corgo,” Joey corrected.

  “Sorry, Cima Corgo.”

  “The memory on you is fantastic. We are going to make a lot of money together. You know, most guys that work for me can generally pay everything off in their first year and then spend the next few years saving up for their getaway to South America.”

  Is this guy for real? Could it be that fast? One year and everything is paid off?

  Maxime hadn’t met any of the other guys yet, so he took a mental note to ask around as he met the others. He said to Joey, “This is delicious, but maybe too much of a good thing. I’m afraid I’ll mess up my stomach if I finish it all in one sitting.”

  “So save it for later and get back online. Your next training is Date Etiquette. Have you ever been on a date before?”

  “No sir.”

  “Enough with the sirs, kid. Anyway, it’s better that you haven’t dated cause I won’t have to train away any bad habits. Why don’t you spend the next four hours or so learning all the ins and outs of dating and manners and then you can finish up your food afterward. Maybe reward yourself with a game on the grid? What d’ya think?”

  “Great.”

  “Well don’t let me hold you up. I’ve got other guys to visit and prep, but if you need anything, just send me an alert. OK?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Joey frowned at him. “You know what kid? The whole Southern thing with the sirs and the ma’ams, it’s probably gonna play well with Margaret. So why try to change it, huh? Ya wanna call me sir, call me sir. Just get through all the training and be ready for Friday. If she don’t like ya, then you and me both’s in a world a hurt.”

  Joey walked out and Maxime went back to the VR area and connected himself to the robotic arms. He put the goggles on.

  38

  AFTER MAXIME FINISHED his second set of training, his mind was tired. He took off the goggles and set down to finish his meal. Even after sitting for four hours, it was delicious. As he ate, he contemplated all of the rules for dinner etiquette.

  The training had been with a British woman, who called herself the Butler, and had been excruciating. The Butler had taken Maxime through every detail of dinner forks and dessert spoons and bread knives and where every plate and utensil was supposed to be placed. He had been tested over and over again on how to hold the chair for the woman and how to place her napkin. He had been scolded for foolish behaviors such as hand placement during the meal and off-limit conversation topics.

  Maxime couldn’t imagine why any woman would want him to behave in these ways, and he assumed that the training was some kind of generic session. He wondered how much he could veer from the script, given that Margaret didn’t strike him as British royalty. At one point, he considered messaging Joey, but he decided that it was best to just learn everything here as a baseline instruction.

  But now that it was over, as horrendously boring as it had been, Maxime could get excited. Joey had given him the evening to play and had provided him with an all-access privilege to any of the big consumer gaming worlds. He had decided on Soldier World and had already logged in to see what was available. Chewing the fig and rosemary, he reflected on the top twenty players.

  What am I doing?

  Whereas Maxime’s rank wasn’t in the top 10,000 gamers, these guys were in the top 20. If Maxime played as them, he might make mistakes and be discovered. He needed to earn his right to play at this level.

  What if I just watch them play? Just get used to the big stage?

  He swallowed his last bites, put the plate and utensils in the cleaner, and hopped into his VR getup. Within 30 seconds, he had chosen a guy named ZeroDarkThirty and was watching the world through his eyes. Maxime sets his robotic arms to move him in the same ways that ZeroDarkThirty moved, jumping when he jumped, falling when he fell. He could see, hear and feel the same sensations as ZeroDarkThirty, who had no idea that his account has been hacked.

  And what he saw was amazing. ZeroDarkThirty was playing a new game called Drone Commander, which seemed to involve multiple drones simultaneously attacking areas. It was a game that Maxime had never seen and appeared to be a new release or a Beta release reserved for only the top players.

  This is so realistic!

  Most missions in Soldier World have great graphics but you always feel like you’re in a digital world. Maxime always assumed that the game designers kept it a little fake to minimize the links between playing the game and real life. He remembered news stories from the past about kids committing violent acts and blaming the video games. On SoWo, they did a lot of subtle things to help remind gamers of the difference between VR and real life.

  But this game was completely the opposite. It looked so real that Maxime started wondering if it might be. The drones weren’t under the player’s control. They were moving on a set pattern, and everything looked to be 360 degree video. ZeroDarkThirty would be one second on his platform looking at twenty different screens all around him. He would then find the one which had the most action and jump into it, and there he would be completely immersed in 360 video in whatever the drone was seeing.

  Everything looked real. They were outside a trailer where the details on the ground and door and walls were so amazing that Maxime felt that it was a real video somewhere. The drone would then fly into the trailer and you would see people, where the bodies looked real but the heads seemed fake, like leaders from history. In one moment, Maxime saw what looked like Hitler. Another person had the face of Saddam Hussein but was wearing a dress. Another had a troll’s head. It was surreal.

  In every situation, ZeroDarkThirty pulled the trigger at just the right moments, killing Hitler and Hussein, and then jumping back out to his platform. He scanned the twenty-plus screens and looked for his next move. Sometimes, he would simply lean in toward the 2D screen, and he could see enough to pull the trigger and kill the bad guys, without having to jump into the 360 views.

  The action was very fast-paced but different from other games. He wasn’t sure if he liked it. Since you had limited control over the drones, there wasn’t much to do. You told the drones where to go at a high level and then shot when they got into position. You could shoot and kill and verify the kill without even using the 360 view.

  It seems pretty lame…

>   After about an hour, he disengaged from ZeroDarkThirty and went to the main SoWo platform. He waved his hand and pulled up the top 25 gamers that were online.

  What the fuck?

  Amazingly, all 25 of them were playing Drone Commander. Maxime didn’t get it. He submitted for more information on Drone Commander.

  Blue screen of death. What?

  His system went down. Total shutdown. He had to take off his goggles and reboot all of the hardware. Weird.

  After five minutes and grabbing some vitamin water, he tried again. And again he got a total shutdown.

  What in the world is happening here?

  Since he had no troubles playing as ZeroDarkThirty, he decided to log in again as a top player, but this time he picked someone who was logged out. Maxime was going to see if he could control the gamer. Maybe Joey’s hack access was the problem.

  He logged in as BlackHawkDown and had no issues. Now for the moment of truth. He picked the mission Drone Commander, the exact same selection that had shut down his VR system twice in a row. Only this time it worked. He was in.

  He read the info about the game. No real surprises here; Maxime had already experienced playing it, so the summary was more or less expected. But then he saw it.

  Holy shit, dude!

  Look at that payout schedule. Maxime would have to work at Support World for over ten years to make what these guys could make in a single mission. How could this be right?

  He disengaged from BlackHawkDown and logged in as himself. If he was going to play for this much money, he wanted it going into his own account. Surely he could use the money to payoff what he owed Joey.

  And once he was controlling his own gamer, reality set in. He had no access to Drone Commander. It was an invitation-only game.

  Maxime scanned the top 100 players on SoWo. Everyone in the Top 50 that was logged in was playing Drone Commander. Not a single person ranked below 50 was.

  Short invite list. Probably doesn’t extend to number 13,459.

  He considered his next move. The game wasn’t that fun, but the money was huge.

  What if I could win that prize?

  What if Joey could hack into the system and get Maxime an invite? Or what if he could use another gamer profile and transfer the winnings to his own account?

  Get real…

  Hacking into an account is one thing. But transferring money involves more security protocols, encryption, equipment checking. If Joey could do it without getting caught, then why bother doing anything else? Maxime wouldn’t need to win the game. He could just log into one account after another and empty their money credits into his own.

  He shook his head. He imagined Joey saying, “Don’t get your hopes up, kid. Focus on your training. You have a job here, and it pays quite well. No need to take so many chances. If they catch you here, you’re dead.”

  Stealing money from people’s accounts would likely be noticed. Better to not even bring it up with Joey. Just the mention of it might get him worried.

  Maxime shrugged.

  Let’s play for fun.

  He logged in as MarkItEightDude, went to Drone Commander, and selected the tutorial. He spent the next four hours learning how to play. To his amazement, it was a lot of fun.

  39

  SOFIA SAT IN her social studies class listening to Miss Woods.

  “Class, we live in a unique time. This is the first generation in the history of human beings where the global population is shrinking. Who knows what that means?”

  A few students raised their hands. Miss Woods called on one of the girls, who responded, “That there are fewer people in the world?”

  “That’s correct,” she replied. “If you think about it, only women can have babies. It is one of our many qualities that makes us superior to men. Now, imagine that society wants to maintain the same population over time. How many babies does each woman need to have?”

  Again, students raised their hands and one of them replied, “One child per woman?”

  “That is an excellent answer, Samitha,” Miss Woods said. Sofia smiled, since Samitha was her friend, and was one of the smartest girls in the class. Sofia sometimes had play dates at Samitha’s house, and her mom had said that she could have more sleepovers because of all her traveling.

  Miss Woods continued, “In the past, when we couldn’t control the gender of the babies and when people had shorter lifespans, we used to say that every woman needed to have 2.2 babies to sustain the population. That was because on average, half the babies were men and half women and a certain number of people would die before they had grown up enough to have their own babies. But today, since we only count the female population and since we can control the baby’s gender, we only need to average 1.05 female babies per person to sustain the population.”

  Sofia raised her hand. Miss Woods called on her, “Yes, Sofia?”

  “Is it bad that the population is shrinking?”

  “Well, people used to want to have a growing population so that there would be laborers to produce our goods and services, but others worried that too many people would also consume all of our natural resources and destroy the planet. Today, we are much better at protecting our natural resources and creating sustainable products. We are also better at using robots and software. So the population doesn’t matter too much, as long as we ensure that new babies are born the right gender. Luckily, that is a very easy thing to do.”

  Another girl raised her hand and Miss Woods called on her. “I heard in China that they limit how many babies mothers can have.”

  “That used to be true, but it isn’t any more. China had a period of time, about a hundred years ago, where they limited the number of children to one per family. And the horrible men in the society back then would kill their baby daughters because they only wanted sons. Because of this, there was a period of time where there were far more men than women in China. But this reversed itself.”

  She cleared her throat and continued, “When the female revolution started, women began to have children, making sure they were baby girls. Most women in the world today, whether it is China or the US, have jobs and responsibilities and don’t have the time to raise three or four or five children. So most women, in both China and the US, have only one daughter. As a show of hands, class, how many of you have sisters?”

  Only one girl out of twenty raised her hand.

  “Exactly my point,” Miss Woods said. “There are twenty of you in the class, plus myself, so twenty-one women. I don’t have a daughter. All of your mothers have only one daughter except for Addy. Addy, how many sisters do you have?”

  “Only one.”

  “So you see, we have twenty-one women, all of your mothers plus me, and twenty-one daughters. That is exactly one daughter per woman, which is slightly less than the average we need to sustain the population. And this is happening everywhere, which means that in thirty years, there will be fewer people on the planet than there are today. And again, this isn’t a bad thing. There will be jobs for everyone, and the computers will do most of the work to produce what we need.”

  Miss Woods walked around the room, “Let’s move on and talk a little about the jobs that you all will have. Did they teach you in fifth grade about the Garden Metaphor? Who has heard of the Garden Metaphor?”

  Every girl raised their hand. “Samitha, can you summarize it for me?”

  Samitha nodded. “The US is like an abundant garden that all of us girls are inheriting. Each of us will find our roles in society to care for the garden. Just like an apple tree needs to be cared for differently than a blackberry bush, each of us will learn how to manage our sections of the economy.”

  Miss Woods was noticeably impressed. Samitha’s words didn’t sound like rote memorization but more like a deep understanding of the principles. “Well done, Samitha. Indeed we live in an abundant garden which we have all inherited. A long time ago, there was an agricultural revolution where human beings learned how to cultivate the
land and grow food more efficiently. They learned where to plant the seeds and how to water and fertilize. They learned about crop rotation. And, amazingly, most of the work was done for them by nature. When you plant a seed in the right place, it will grow without much work by the farmer. In the agricultural revolution, nature was the great automated machine, and people could let the land do the work for them. But what are the dangers in a garden?”

  Sofia raised her hand and answered, “The weather can get worse. You can have a drought and the plants don’t get enough water. There can be insects.”

  “Exactly, Sofia. We live in southern California, which is essentially a desert, so we know all about droughts here. But over time we have learned how to desalinate the ocean’s water so we have an abundance of water. Farmers today know how to protect from insects, either by farming indoors or by using nano-pesticides that keep away insects without harming humans. But people in the past didn’t have our technology, so they spent a considerable amount of work dealing with weather and insects. In fact, they spent about zero time on their production and almost all of their time on protecting the plants. How is that similar to us today?”

  Several girls raised their hands, and Miss Woods called on one. “Today, the robots do the work, but we have to protect the robots. Like put them indoors so they don’t get rained on.”

  “That’s right. We spend our time designing the robots or supervising their work or repairing them. We make sure that they are protected from the weather or cyberattacks. Our job isn’t to produce the fruit of the garden. Our job is to design, manage and protect the robots and software. We live in an age where the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the information revolution all combined together. And for us to design, manage and protect our automated systems, every woman in America needs a lot of training. That’s what school is for.”

  She paused and then said, “In middle school, we will try to assess every girl’s personality, passion and intelligence. There are multiple types of intelligence and everyone has different passions and personalities. So we will spend the next three years trying to help you find your ideal role in the garden.”