Armchair Safari (A Cybercrime Technothriller)

by Jonathan Paul Isaacs

The old lady finally emerged from the back room again. Krystian was sure she was just going to make a guest appearance before another exit, but miraculously she came back up to the window. He would have been ecstatic except for the fact that she was carrying a mess.

  “Here,” she spat. The hag tossed what used to be a box onto the counter. It had an entire corner smashed and one of the edges was ripped open. Around it was a tight cocoon of clear plastic wrap to hold it together with a note that said the damage was not Posta Romana’s fault—the box had been received this way. Krystian took the package and prayed beyond measure that his Condor Gaming Glasses were still undamaged inside.

  To top it all off, some random fucker’s letter had been accidentally caught up in the plastic wrap and was enveloped like some bug immobilized by a spider’s web.

  “Hey, there’s somebody’s...”

  The old lady stared at him.

  “Oh—fuck it.” He turned and left.

  Out on the street, the afternoon sunlight did little to warm the chill in the air as Krystian trudged back to the metro stop. It was busy. Unmelted snow blackened with the grime of the city was piled up on an occasional corner. Pedestrians clung to the feigned safety of the sidewalks as cars ignored the suggestions of red lights and one way signs. Krystian dodged one near miss himself, crossing the street and darting past an alley where a couple of gypsy kids clung together near the back, sniffing cheap solvent out of plastic bags.

  Just as he was about to swear at another passing automobile, Krystian was reminded that alcohol was not, in fact, the only positive quality to Romania. There were also the girls. They were hot. One chick in particular, wearing a black leather jacket and tight green pants, was standing near the front door to a small café ahead of him.

  “Look at you, beautiful girl,” he said as he approached. “Want to go have a good time?”

  She lifted her chin warily from her smartphone to see who was talking to her. Her green eyes darkened.

  “Se pierd,” she hissed. Get lost.

  “Well, that’s a hostile attitude. I think you are in need of what I’ve got for you.”

  The girl scowled and marched off in a huff.

  Krystian pantomimed a sword thrust at her as he admired her from behind. Sadly typical. It was hard to get the action he wanted. All these pretty bitches and none of them wanted to play.

  Krystian continued back toward the metro station. He needed to get back to his apartment so he could get online and put these Gaming Glasses to work. Forget this shitty country. It was all sad and broken. It was far better to be immersed in a virtual world where he could actually be somebody. He saw himself as a hero among heroes, someone who would continue building his own path toward greatness. When he was gaming online, it made him feel alive, and the virtual reality glasses he was carrying were a key step in extending the euphoria.

  Maybe Petra would come through for him. He didn’t really have many friends, let alone any who were girls, so when he had bragged to her about his idea for a scam to make a lot of money, he had been ecstatic when she had offered to try and hook him up with some help. He hoped he would hear back soon. That would be awesome.

  In the meantime, Krystian needed to escape the bleak truth of daily life. He had to follow his calling. He would show them all.

  Palo Alto, California.

  Bill Tyson was sitting in his office and banging out an email on his keyboard at Hepburn, Coffin and Smith, a leading Silicon Valley VC firm, when his phone interrupted his conversation. He had lost track of time. Looking over at his clock showed 10:30 a.m., right on the nose.

  He pushed the speaker button. “This is Bill.”

  “Hey Bill,” said a man’s voice.

  “Jim. Good to hear from you. You’re punctual, as usual. How’s the search going?”

  “Really well. We’ve got our guy lined up and he starts next week.”

  Bill leaned back in his chair and relaxed. He had been helping Jim Palmisano look for a new Chief Financial Officer for over two months now. “That’s great news! Which candidate?”

  “Derek Callahan. Like I told you before, I used to work with him at my previous company, before starting this one. Solid, smart guy. I think he’s going to fit in perfectly.”

  “Oh. Good,” Bill said. “Callahan... he was up in, where, Boston?”

  “Yeah. We’ll have to relo him and his family down here to Texas.”

  Bill frowned. “Right. There was no one local you wanted?”

  There was a pause on the phone. “Bill—this is our guy. I want the best people I can get, and people I can trust and rely on. Especially in the top finance role. You know how important that is to our particular business model. Besides, I’ll just cover the relo out of Netertainment’s operating budget.”

  “Okay.”

  Bill still wondered why Jim couldn’t have picked up a local candidate for less. He was very sensitive to how money got spent. The total investment in Netertainment was approaching a hundred million now, from Bill’s firm and others, and that didn’t even include the sweetheart licensing deal they had set up to commercialize the virtual reality technology from the University of Texas. Thank God they hadn’t had to purchase that upfront. But everything would come due eventually. All of that money had to be recouped.

  As if sensing the disapproval, Jim cleared his voice on the phone. “Spill it, Bill.”

  “No, no—it’s fine. You make good choices, Jim. I just think it’s a shame about Erin, that’s all.”

  “Yes, we will miss her,” Jim agreed. “I wasn’t planning on having to replace my CFO anytime soon. But I can’t blame her for leaving. Her husband got the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  “He was going to where, again?”

  “Copper mining in Chile. He’s going to run the show down there for his firm.”

  Bill smiled darkly. “I’m glad we don’t have that relo expense.”

  No reply. Bill knew Jim was probably shaking his head at his miserly ways.

  “Jim, this is great news,” Bill said, deciding to wrap up. “Glad you found someone you can trust. Let me know how it goes and when I can meet him. Okay?”

  “You got it. Thanks, Bill.”

  “My pleasure. See you.” He hung up.

  In the world of hi-tech venture capital, not all investments were the same. Most companies either failed outright or else got dismantled and the pieces sold off. The reason the VC industry worked was because of that one company, that one firm out of ten that happened to have the right product, in the right place, at the right point in time, that made it big. All the stars needed to align for the massive payday from that one firm. And in his heart, Bill knew that Netertainment was going to be that company.

  2

  Austin, Texas.

  Derek Callahan was late, lost, and soaking wet.

  It was raining fiercely outside. Derek stood inside the lobby of the office building and shook the water off his overcoat into a neat puddle at his feet. The substantial glass wall behind him showed only angry gray clouds extending over the parking lot into the greenbelt beyond.

  He cursed silently. It hadn’t been storming when he had left his apartment two hours before. Nah, I don’t need an umbrella. Idiot.

  There was nothing quite as embarrassing as being late for your first day on the job. To top it off, Derek still wasn’t sure if this was the right place. He had never been to the actual office before—everything had been on the phone. He’d known Jim for years. But Derek didn’t really know Jim’s assistant, or for that matter how to interpret the directions she had given him to the office. He thought this was the place. But it was difficult to see any signage outside when the sky was pissing all over you.

  Derek slopped his way over to the building directory near the elevator. There was only one listing. So it seemed this was the place. Amazing luck.

  He waited on the elevator and took it up. Stepping out at the top revealed another world.

  A set of brilliant blue letters spell
ed out Netertainment against a gleaming panel of stainless steel over the reception desk. On either wall to the left or right were amazing displays of fantasy art. CGI-generated barbarians wore ornate breastplates and wielded massive axes. Fantastic castles commanded tall cliffs overlooking the ocean. Panoramic vistas stretched for miles with impossible colors and dramatic shadows. Whoever ran the art department at this company was certainly earning their pay.

  “Can I help you?”

  There were two young women at opposite ends of the long reception desk and the closer one, the one on his right, was staring intently at him.

  “Hi, yes. Derek Callahan.” Derek stepped forward, a trail of water extending behind him. He felt like a snail leaving a path of slime. The girl glanced distastefully at the mess he was creating.

  “I’m here to see Jim Palmisano.”

  “Oh? Is that so? Why?”

  Derek blinked. The receptionist’s tone was not particularly friendly. He wasn’t some salesman trying to pitch a new catering service. Shouldn’t a visitor be greeted more politely?

  He examined the girl for what was really the first time. First of all, she was beautiful, maybe late twenties, with wavy blonde hair and bright blue eyes. The way she lounged in the receptionist chair showed off an athletic figure beneath a low-cut blouse and black skirt. She certainly did not seem to be doing receptionist-type things.

  But there was more. There were tattoos. She was covered in them.

  Both arms, down to her wrists, were inked in sleeves of blues and greens and reds, strange symbols along with fantastical depictions of dragons and wizards. There wasn’t a square inch of pink skin to be seen. That contrasted sharply with her chest, neck, and hands, which were all bare and which somehow made her arms stand out that much more. The patterns and images were complex, and Derek couldn’t really study what they were about without being rudely obvious.

  An atypical greeting from an atypical receptionist, at what he already expected to be an atypical employer.

  A gargoyle on her left arm leered at him.

  Yeah. What had he gotten himself into?

  “Well,” Derek said, recovering, “Jim told me on the phone that when I got here, I should have him swing by and collect me. Today’s my first day working here. I’m your new Chief Financial Officer.”

  The girl looked him over. Unrepentant, almost annoyed, she leaned forward and picked up the phone. “I’ll call his office.”

  Derek sighed and peeled off his drenched overcoat. He brushed off the last dampness that had infiltrated the sleeves of his suit jacket and tie. The other girl at the far end of reception desk was watching, horrified. Not at the water. At the suit.

  The tattooed girl dialed a few buttons, spoke briefly to a person on the other end of the phone, and hung up. “Jim will be down here in a few minutes.” Then she went back to lazily watching the computer screen in front of her.

  Was it getting warm in the room? Or maybe it was just the hostility.

  Derek walked to the right and studied the murals. The images really were fantastic, almost photorealistic. He looked closely at one. It was like he was peering through a pane of glass at a National Park. Well, except for the dragon eating the goblin in the front. There were also some press releases about virtual reality and machine-assisted art design. The production values of this place were impressive.

  He turned and noticed the tattooed girl watching him. Their eyes met for a moment before she shifted her glance lazily back to the computer screen as if deciding that, yes, he was still a dull annoyance.

  This was just bizarre. He felt a smirk crawling across his face.

  Derek walked back to the desk. “What’s your name? If we’re going to be working together, you can at least tell me your name.”

  The girl turned her head and considered him with a silent, level gaze.

  Derek stared back, waiting.

  “Lucy,” she said finally. “So you’re our new CFO, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  Man, she was pretty. Her ink seemed to make her that much more exotic.

  Lucy didn’t take her eyes off his. “I hope you’re good. You have some big shoes to fill from your predecessor.”

  This could almost have the makings of a conversation. Derek leaned forward over the edge of the reception desk. “Oh? Tell me about him.”

  “Her.”

  “Okay, her. And?”

  The PC next to Lucy suddenly made a chime. She leaned forward and used the mouse to click through a couple of menus. Derek watched in fascination as she went back to completely ignoring him.

  Abruptly, she hit the ubiquitous Control-Alt-Delete and stood up to leave through the security door.

  “I guess we can talk about it later, then,” Derek observed dryly.

  Their eyes met one last time and Derek saw only challenge in her face. He was clearly the outsider to her. How he had instilled so much hostility so quickly? That usually took at least a week.

  He glanced over at the other receptionist and noticed that she was watching Lucy’s exit as well. The relief was plain.

  The security door was still open when a heavyset man with receding hair and button-down shirt stepped past her into the door, turning to Derek and smiling warmly.

  “Derek, my boy! Welcome to our little company here!”

  Derek stood up straighter and smiled. “Hi, Jim.”

  “Sorry it took me so long to come over here. I hope you didn’t wait too long?”

  “No, no, it was fine.” Derek lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you, though. I think your receptionist needs to go into a new line of work.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, not the friendliest sort. Kind of makes you feel like she wants to kill you and stick your head in a post office box.”

  Jim Palmisano seemed puzzled as he looked at the remaining young woman, sitting out of earshot and now happily typing on her keyboard. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the security door with sudden clarity. A broad grin spread across his face.

  “Lucy? Oh, no, no. Oh, Lord, no! She’s not the receptionist. She’s my CIO. And yes,” he added with a chuckle, “she is clearly not the person you’d want receiving guests to your company.”

  Derek agreed. But she was undoubtedly the most beautiful CIO he had ever met. She was probably a queen in the world of I/T dorks and propeller-heads.

  “What I’ll tell you, though,” Jim added, also in a lowered voice, “is that she is the best, the absolute best, when it comes to making our infrastructure run. Plus she has a security background that’s second to none.” He chuckled. “Maybe she thinks she needs to protect us from you.”

  “And here I was thinking I just had to worry about your temper.”

  “Oh, you’ll be fine. She’ll warm up to you. Lucy’s just a tough one, that’s all. She actually has a really interesting background. Maybe she’ll tell you about it someday. If she doesn’t roast you over a spit for dinner.”

  Derek offered up a queasy smile.

  Jim tapped his keycard on the badge reader and the door lock released with a loud clack. Jim waved a greeting to Pia—the real receptionist—and they proceeded down a hallway into a large, open room filled with the cubicles typical of a hi-tech company.

  Jim Palmisano, age fifty-one, was the President and CEO of Netertainment, a venture capital-funded software startup specializing in what was known as MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. It was his second attempt at founding a business. The first one, an L.A.-based software company that matched would-be actors and actresses with available roles in film, television, and project work via an online service, had failed along with thousands of other businesses when the economy imploded years earlier. But even in failure there were great lessons to be had. Experience was not something that could be taught, and so living through the birth and death of a company provided insights that produced an executive of the sort that venture capitalists loved. Now in Austin with Netertainment, Jim believed tha
t he had found a niche in the video game industry that would be far and away more successful than any other company in his VC’s portfolio.

  “Did you know that in terms of revenue, the video game business is larger than the film industry?” Jim asked Derek as they wound their way through the maze of cube walls. “Over fifteen billion a year, and that’s just in the U.S. Over fifty billion worldwide. Those strides are because gaming is interactive. Games let a player participate in crafting the story, in making choices, in feeling the danger or the adventure far above what passively watching a film can provide.”

  “Yeah, I know. You might have mentioned all this a couple dozen times to me.”

  “Sorry, I forget sometimes what I say to different people. It all starts running together. Regardless, Netertainment is poised to be the best online game company of all time. You see, if I were running a traditional adventure game, my company would be the one having to create all the stories, the characters, the quests, the villains. But that has its limits. The world would be static. Players would get bored and unsubscribe, taking their monthly fees with them. I would need to keep investing to produce new expansion packs and modules that keep the game feeling fresh and new.

  “Armchair Safari, is not like that. Safari is a game centered on harnessing the creativity of the players to construct the adventure. Arm the players with the means to author the unfolding story that they can participate in both the production and the consumption. They are both the players and the dungeon masters.”

  “And how does that work, I’m sure you’re about to tell me again?” Derek said.

  “Yes I am. We make the toolsets that let our subscribers create the characters and quests themselves. Then we ask the subscribers to adventure in each other’s creations. The end result? Not only do we tap into an enormous creative pool that far outpaces what we could design as a software studio, we do it in a sustainable, never-ending way. The players create the quests. They design the puzzles. They generate the challenges, and then go forth to test themselves against someone else’s. The incentive to interact becomes overwhelming and addictive.”