by Charles Dean
“The honor was mine, Elmont, I’m just glad I could be of assistance to the town,” Darwin said with a face that would have almost convinced Kass he was serious--if it weren’t for the fact he was talking to an NPC. Is he trying to trigger a special event, or is he actually one of those role-players? He’s kind of too good looking to be a role-player, and his neck is way too devoid of beard. Kass froze. Did she just think that Darwin was good looking? Nope. Nope nope nope.
“Yeah, the honor was mine,” she said in the same fake cheesy manner that Darwin did. Kass was certain that Darwin knew something about the game that she didn’t. That’s why he had so many notes on that paper. If only I had had more time to read it all, I’d know what he was up to.
“You two are truly great citizens. For your deed as well as your concern for our people, I’ve got a reward. I normally wouldn’t give these away no matter how many White-Horn’s someone killed, but I think you two have proven to be more than just disrespectful adventurers. So . . . here. One for each of you according to your abilities,” he said, handing each one of them a Ring. The one he handed Kass was a beautiful white gold Ring with a series of tiny sapphires lining its edge. Jackpot! He did know something. “These Rings are usually only given to the elite Knights and Mages to aid in their service of the Kingdom. Wear them well.”
Kass brought up her inventory screen as quick as she could and pulled out the ring. ‘Ring of the Ice Queen. Grants the wearer: + 10 vitality, + 10 Spirit, + 10 Concentration.’ What? This is insane. Kass looked at Darwin with curious eyes to see what he got. If hers was a Frost Mage’s Ring, what would a Novice’s Ring be? I bet it’s Ring of the Bathrobe Knight with +10 to Spoon throwing and +5 to flap protection.
“Oh, and heroes,” Elmont continued, “be careful to avoid people dressed in all black. I’ve heard a lot of talk about people being killed lately. We rely on those peoples’ hard work and contributions to keep the town running. It would be nice if someone could do something about the problem, but we simply don’t have the resources to spend on gearing up new Guards to protect the people. Not since our silver ore mine was overrun, anyway.”
You have received a quest from Captain Elmont to clear the silver ore mine. Would you like to Accept or Reject?
Accept. Darwin, you better not expect us to go straight there and skip shopping though.
Robert:
Walking into the office before noon was something that had a strangely eerie feel to Robert. Before the project began he had certainly been working more regular business hours than he did now. Regardless, the long nights over the past few weeks as everything pushed closer and closer to the release date, and the patch containing the final AI update, meant he barely ever saw the place before noon. He couldn't help but feel that he was out of place somehow. Like he was stepping into a girlfriend's dorm room when he was in college. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary, certainly no bras hanging from computer chairs that he could see (the guys would wet themselves if there were). He just felt like he somehow didn't quite fit in. Like he didn't belong there, that something was off.
Even after he made his way to his work station--luckily, without having to talk to anyone-- he still couldn't quite shake the feeling. Upon quick review of his area, however, he couldn't find any reason for the feeling to persist. Everything was just as he had left it a few hours ago, and his slightly OCD personality was thankful for it. "I've gotta learn to get some sleep. I must be getting paranoid," he thought to himself as he looked around. "There's certainly no fluffy pink carpeting going to appear here."
Pulling his laptop out of its travel bag he quickly set it up on the desk and connected it to the Ethernet cable dangling from a hole in the wall. He had to figure out what in the world his daughter had been talking about. A bathrobe and a spoon? Last he had heard, the development for most of the world had been put to a temporary stop. Anything that was still in development, and there was a ton, wasn't planned on being implemented for months to come yet. And, as best his memory served him, though it was still a little hazy through a sleep-clouded brain, none of that had included anything about bathrobes and spoons. Christmas hats and party favors had been sent out as gag-gifts over the holidays, a normal part of the planned festivities in any game, but none of that was supposed replace or preempt normal starting gear.
"Where to begin?" He rapped his fingers on the desk trying to discern the best possible place to start looking for what could have explained this. The obvious solution was to chalk it up to his daughter having exaggerated or outright lied. But neither of those were character traits that had ever seemed to manifest themselves in Kass. She had always been forthcoming with anything she had to tell him and never really had the propensity for making up outright lies. Well, with the exception of a few boys she had dated in high school, but that was to be expected of any teenage girl and had been years ago before she went off to college. Better yet, what reason did she have to exaggerate or lie? He knew that she had been up most of the night playing the game, and seemed to be getting really immersed into the experience, but there wasn't any reason to make up something like that. She had seemed so certain about it, too. "So where to start?" he questioned again.
Picking up the phone, he dialed a short series of numbers that would connect him to Gary's desk on the other side of the building. Gary was one of the lead designers for the game, and if anything had been added in at the last minute, he would certainly be the one to know about it.
"Hey, Gary, it's Robert."
"Robert? Before noon? Is everything alright? There's not something going on with the AI again, is there? We can't take another round of guys choking up last night’s dinner. It's too soon after that last incident, and we can't handle that again."
"Haha, no, nothing like that, fortunately." Robert chuckled to himself as the image of a kid in his mom's basement hooked up to a VR-sim with a spaghetti stained t-shirt quickly flashed through his head. "That was awful. Shouldn't have to experience that again anytime soon. I was wondering, did you guys make any last minute changes to the holiday packages that were sent out to players? I know us code-jockeys aren't usually up to date on things like that, but I thought I had been keeping up with it all pretty well anyway."
"What do you mean? It was all just pretty much the standard stuff we discussed at the last staff meeting. Colored hats and hair bows. Some people were lucky enough to get candy canes or teddy bears that could be equipped as a weapon, but that's about it."
"So you guys actually sent out a spoon as an equippable weapon?"
"A spoon? I don't remember anything about a spoon. A nutcracker would have been more appropriate," Gary laughed from the other end of the phone. "No, nothing like that. It wouldn't make sense or fit the genre of the game. Maybe for Easter when we do the egg-dying contest, though, that's not a half-bad idea. Anyway, the stuff we sent out didn't really do any damage and was for decoration only. You know how hard up the bosses are on us about not interfering with the game world. You would have to be an idiot to use it for anything other than standing around in town and showing off with."
“So nothing about any spoons? Or bathrobes?”
“Nah, nothing like that, but I’ll ask around and see if maybe one of the guys decided to try and slip something in last minute. I trust them, but they do have a sense of humor. They do things like that from time to time just to break up the monotony of the work. It's pretty harmless in most cases; but, hey, I'll tell ya what: let me ask around and I'll see what I can find out. Sound good?"
"Yeah. Thanks." Robert hung up the phone and sat for a minute thinking. Where was he going to look next? If the design team had actually added in something last minute, that would have been the easiest solution. It wasn't likely, but still possible. They generally stuck to their schedules and limits pretty strictly. There was so much hype surrounding the new system and AI that interfering too much would cause a panic and inevitably be found out.
Opening up his computer, he reopened the internet
tab containing the forum post he had originally found. Even though it was located within the bugs and mechanics section, a moderator had already flagged it as spam and moved it to a separate forum. Posts were never deleted. They had already learned all too well from previous experience that replicating issues could pose a huge problem and sometimes even the most inane or poorly written report could be the key to fixing the problem, so no help there.
Clicking on the user’s forum name, Robert ran a search for posts made only by the original poster. Scrolling through his history, the guy looked like a real jerk. Apparently, he had a reputation for being a bit of an elitist snob and liked to flaunt it at anyone who would listen. It looked like he had made the mistake of opening up another thread in the general discussion after seeing his post in the dev forum get flagged and moved, and it also looked like the trolls were having a field day with this one. "Trolling the troll,” he thought idly as he scrolled through the thread finding nothing of any real substance that might help him. Searching various forums for keywords like "spoon" and "bathrobe" turned up nothing.
Robert rubbed his weary eyes that were now clearly showing his lack of sleep. He could almost feel the dark circles sitting under them. Glancing over at the clock, he noticed that it was now almost midday, and he had next to nothing to show for his search. It bothered him. Not because he wasn't turning up any information--because in truth he hadn't really expected to--but this project had become something of a habit to him. He had so many long hours invested into putting all the pieces together and making it run right that he had become attached to it. All the long hours straining over a computer monitor that finally resulted in an 'Aha!' moment. All the time spent grinding away his teeth as he tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Maybe it was the fatigue wearing on him, but for some reason he had to figure this out. The connection between what Kass had said and the post from the Internet troll couldn't merely be coincidence. If he went over the time line in his head, the timing would line up almost perfectly.
He leaned back in his office chair and propped his feet up on the corner of his desk. One of the advantages of actually having an office rather than being stuck in a cubicle was that he could get away with stuff like that. He didn't have to worry about someone suddenly walking around a corner and berating him for lounging a little bit. He crossed his arms over his chest and sat staring at his monitor. The last option he could think of at the moment--and one that may have been the most logical--was to simply start pouring through the lines of code and hope to track something down. The problem with that route was that the game was massive. It contained millions of lines of code and complex architecture that would make it almost impossible to find. He would literally be searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack--except that this was like looking for a needle in a Super Dome full of hay. He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. "Just think for a minute, Robert. There has to be a logical explanation to this."
He could feel someone pushing on his shoulder. An insistent nudge that shook his whole body, rocking it back and forth.
"Come on, man. Wakey, wakey."
"Murgh," Robert groaned in response. His whole body felt stiff and he was quite certain that both his feet were actually numb. He rocked forward in his chair letting it level out. Apparently he had fallen asleep leaned back and now his body was paying the price for it.
"I know you've been putting in a lot of hours lately, but napping at work is a bit much even for you," the voice chided.
He recognized that voice. He looked over and through sleep fogged eyes could see Gary standing beside him.
"I asked around a bit like I told you I would. None of the guys on the design team claim not to have had anything to do with any last minute additions to the holiday packages. They even seemed pretty confused as to why I was asking about a bathrobe and a spoon. I'm also pretty sure Nelson thinks I'm trying to pull a fast one over on him, though. Kid's been paranoid ever since I let him spend a full day trying to figure out how to design boots for the frog race."
"So no one changed anything?" Robert's mind seemed to have trouble booting up for some reason.
"Or at least they claim not to have; and, as far as I can tell, they're telling the truth. What's this all about, anyway?"
"Eh. I know it probably sounds crazy, but I just felt like there might be something to it all. My daughter, Kass, claims that she was up most of the night playing with some guy who actually killed a minotaur with a spoon. A spoon! Sounds crazy, right? Then I remembered seeing someone make a post on the forum in the dev section claiming that he had been killed after a player somehow threw a spoon into his eye. Something just didn't add. If it had just been one and not the other, I would have written it off, but both of them at the same time? Just seemed like it was a little much to be coincidence. I was really hoping that maybe one of you guys had made some last minute changes that I didn't pick up on. But now . . ." Robert trailed off and gave a slight shrug of his shoulders.
"Alright. Well. There's probably something else you should know about as well then since you seem to have taken an interest in all of this." Gary leaned against the desk where Robert's feet and been propped up moments before. When he started speaking, his voice was much lower. It almost had a conspiratorial tone to it.
"This isn't being officially reported anywhere outside my own office yet. I'll bring it up tomorrow after the all-staff meeting if I have to, but it's a conversation that I plan on having only with the department heads. I guess you'd find out then anyway."
Robert was curious. What was going on within the design team that would warrant keeping such closely guarded secrets all of a sudden? Their work was basically mapped out for months in advance.
"Something went wrong with the Unity Arc."
Robert sat up straighter in his chair. His mind was suddenly firing on all cylinders. "Wait, wha--"
Gary held up a hand stopping him before he could continue. "Just listen. Something went wrong with the Unity Arc. Sorta. You remember the basic premise for that, right?"
Robert nodded his assent and with a slight wave of his hand gestured for Gary to continue speaking.
"Well, basically, there's a lot of the game that's set in stone. And there's also a lot of the game that isn't. We provided the world, the concept, the races, and all the background lore that normally goes along with building any MMO on such a massive scale. Each of the races have a history, a background, a starting area or homeland. They have some quests to help them along in the world, but we didn't provide any real direction beyond that for the players. But, as far as the rest of the world goes, we decided to leave everything open ended. It's up to the players to create the politics and decide how they're going to interact with one another. Think of it as a social experiment on a grandiose scale. I would be lying to you if I said we didn't have some major universities and research firms keeping an eye on what we're doing here as well. "
This was news to Robert, and it must have shown on his face. Gary shrugged, seeming to dismiss Robert's obvious concerns and said, "Where do you think we got all the money to invest into the AI? Military grade government-designed tech doesn't come cheap and this definitely isn't a Kickstarter project."
He paused for a minute to let Robert absorb the information. "So, what happened with the Unity Arc. Sorry, what sorta happened with the Unity Arc?"
"Yeah yeah. I'm getting to that. So anyway, to start the world off and let everyone get used to the sim while we were testing out the game, we kept most of the races locked. They were able to venture off where ever they wanted and explore the world, but we really wanted them to focus on each of the starting areas. Make sure none of them got into something over their head or skill level too quickly. After the we found out that the AI was going to pair up correctly to the pre-existing game world, there was a scripted event that was supposed to take place within each of the racial starting towns. So, we put in a check that would prevent them from partying with anyone outside their own
race. Anyway, that's where the Unity Arc comes in. The event was supposed to allow each race's ruling council to depose the sovereign that was already in power. After that, it would break the rule and allow any of the races to party up however they wanted. A real 'out with the old and in with the new' system, if you will."
Gary paused to make sure that Robert was following along. None of this would really be news to him. It had been planned out months in advance and talked about at length. As much as they wanted to keep a hands-off approach to running the game and not interfere, there were certain things that had to be tested.
"So, that's where things went wrong."
"You mean the Unity Arc didn't trigger?" Robert finally questioned.
"Yup. Sure did. Everywhere except within the human race."
"There's no reason that should have happened. I remember working on scripting part of those events myself. Didn't we even finally agree to let certain members of the design team sit in on the council meetings so that things were guaranteed to go smoothly? Being able to party up with whomever you want is a pretty big deal. If something went wrong there, that's game breaking.
"Yeah, so now you understand why we aren't exactly spreading this news around. The world is massive enough that the players don't seem to have really noticed. It didn't take them long to start up their own little wars with the other races, but for the most part they haven’t figured it out, and those who are catching on aren't making a big fuss out of it--yet. Most seem to think that it's still part of the game design for whatever reason.
But here's where things get really interesting. Our design team member that was sitting in on the human council meeting was Nelson. He said that during the meeting something unusual happened. The summoning circle within the king's court suddenly lit up and a strange man appeared. Nelson described him as a tall broad shouldered man complete with red eyes and claws. The king claimed that it was his 'prized champion' or something and sent him off to the front lines to conquer the invading forces. This champion, or whatever he was, said that all he wanted as his ultimate weapon was a soup spoon."
