Part Two
Chapter 9: Visitor
Lee rolled over in bed and slammed a groggy hand down on his nightstand, silencing the buzzing alarm clock for a fifth and final time. Rubbing his eyes for a moment, still half asleep, he glanced back over to the clock, only to spot the bright red digits, 7:32, blinking back at him.
“Aww, crap,” he muttered, launching out of bed toward the shower, and a morning which was set to begin in 28 minutes with an unfinished lesson plan on Bunker Hill.
After searching in vain for a spot in the faculty parking lot, Lee eventually pulled the Jeep to rest in the gravel beside the nearby performing arts center and jogged up the steps to the Collins history building with an impressive 83 seconds to spare. Exiting the stairwell on the second floor, he cut through the history department’s main lobby, where a young blonde sat slouched behind the reception desk, her fingers wrapped tightly around a pink, floral coffee mug as she perused her fourth celebrity gossip blog of the morning. Meanwhile, across the room, a casually dressed, middle-aged man sat silently on the sofa, his hands clasped atop a long, wooden cane, which was propped on the floor between his knees.
“Mornin’ Kim,” Lee said with a wave as he passed.
“Morning, Dr. S,” replied the blonde in her usual bubbly tone. “I just put on a fresh pot of coffee in the breakroom if you’re interested.”
Delighted, not to mention insanely caffeine-deprived at this point, he ducked left down the hall toward the glorious scent of burnt toast and freshly brewed, cheap Colombian.
“Oh, Dr. Summerston?” Kim blurted, swiveling around in her office chair to catch him. “There’s a—”
“Sorry Kim, but it’ll have to wait,” he called from the breakroom, hearing her trendy leather flip-flops clapping down the hall behind him.
“There’s a man here to see you,” she said, halting at the door. “He’s waiting in the lobby.”
Lee looked at his watch and shook his head. “Tell him I’m sorry, but I’m late to class as it is, then I’ve got the staffer with Dr. Loring after that. He’ll just have to wait.”
“Yes sir, but whatever it is that he needs to see you about must be important, because he’s been here since before I got in this morning, and I come in at seven.”
“That ain’t my problem,” Lee shrugged. “I hate to be that way, but it is what it is. I can meet with him, but he’s just gonna have to wait a little longer.”
Kim nodded and turned to leave while Lee retrieved a paper coffee cup from the cabinet overhead and tilted the pot to fill it.
“Hey Kim?” Lee called after her. “Who did he say he was with, anyway?”
She stopped in the hall and returned to face him. “You know, I don’t think he did,” Kim recalled—the freckles on her nose wrinkling with thought. “He just said he was from California, I think? Or maybe it was Arizona? I don’t know. Something about Phoenix, something or other.”
Dropping his coffee cup (and maybe even his jaw) into the sink, Lee sprinted back down the hall, arriving into the lobby just in time to hear Kim start to deliver his message to the stranger.
“It’s okay, Kim, I’ve got him,” Lee interrupted, stepping alongside to relieve her.
Visibly confused, the receptionist gave a shrug and a smile, then returned to her story about George Clooney’s alleged date with the recently (and suspiciously) divorced Julia Roberts.
Dressed casually in khaki slacks and a white, button-down shirt untucked at the waist, the slender man looked to be somewhere in his early 40s, with short, silvery-brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a narrow jaw, which was clean-shaven. Rising from his seat, he balanced his left side on the cane and extended his right hand to Lee.
“Dr. Summerston, I presume?” he asked through a cordial smile.
“That’s right, though I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” Lee replied, shaking his hand. “And you are?”
“Dr. Jonathan Reiser, Phoenix Gaming Company,” he said with a subtle bow of his head. “It’s a real honor to finally meet you in person.”
Momentarily speechless as his initial suspicions were confirmed, Lee fought to maintain his professional composure over the starstruck disbelief that welled inside him.
“Honored?” Lee said through an awkward chuckle. “I don’t know about that, but I appreciate the compliment.”
“I’d say it’s well deserved, wouldn’t you?” Reiser stated. “I mean, as of this morning, Mako Assault has been on the global market for eight months, two weeks, and four days; and out of the 19.3 million subscribers who compete within its construct, your clan was the first to beat it. In my book, that calls for a little recognition.”
His unease subsiding with the stranger’s sincerity, Lee managed a modest shrug. “Well… we just happened to catch a few breaks along the way that kept us alive through some tight spots is all.”
Reiser laughed and removed his glasses, cleaning them with the edge of his shirt. “Dr. Summerston, let’s be fair. It took a lot more than a few ‘lucky breaks,’ as you call them, to beat my game. Some of the strategies your team made use of were nothing if not innovative,” he continued, sliding the glasses back into place with the tip of his fore finger. “However, I must confess that once I learned you were a professor of history—with a specialty in war no less—that did take some of the suspense out of it for me.”
“Apparently not all of it,” Lee noted. “After all, we did just beat the thing…” he checked his watch, “…a little over 12 hours ago. Most folks wouldn’t exactly call that a slow response time.”
Reiser grinned. “Call it a pride thing,” he admitted. “You may not know this, but in addition to being PGC’s CEO and founder, I was also Mako’s lead programmer, and I went to a lot of painstaking detail to make sure that every one of its environments—many of which your team breezed through, I might add—were as thought-provokingly complex as possible. More hours than you know went into that product, so suffice it to say, Dr. Summerston, the fact that you beat my game at all is grounds enough for me to take an interest in meeting you.”
“Fair enough,” Lee said, satisfied. “So… what can I do for the CEO and founder of the Phoenix Gaming Company?”
“I’m actually here on sort of a fact-finding mission,” Reiser explained. “As you know, Mako 2.0 is currently in development, and I was hoping that perhaps we could sit down and talk about a few of the ideas that your team made use of during your run.”
Lee felt another pang of excitement. “Sure, no problem,” he replied. “Actually, I’ve got class and a faculty meetin’ ‘til around 11, but after that we can do lunch if you’re interested.”
“Absolutely, should I just meet you back here?” Reiser asked, gesturing to the lobby around them.
“That’ll be great. If you need anything, just ask Kim here. She’ll get you whatever you need.”
Kim gave a halfhearted acknowledgement, not bothering to look up from her monitor.
“Thanks so much,” Reiser said graciously, extending his hand once more. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“As am I, Dr. Reiser,” Lee replied.
Hurrying back by his office for the last of his lecture materials, Lee darted up the stairwell toward his third-floor classroom, the magnitude of what had just happened still spinning through his mind. Odd timing or not, he still couldn’t believe it.
Rounding the corner, however, something occurred to Lee—never at any point during Mako’s extensive registration process had he ever been asked for his real name. That’s what call-signs were for. Furthermore, how did Reiser know where he lived, much less where he worked or what he did for a living?
Pushing the door open with his back and heading for the instructor’s podium at the front of the room, Lee shoved the question to the back of his mind in preparation for his lecture, convinced that there must’ve been some simple explanation that he just hadn’t thought of. After all, web analytics could tell a person a lot these days, and he was quite the freq
uent user of many of the net’s fansites pertaining to the game, not to mention an assortment of industry sites, message forums, RSS feeds, and subsequent emailing lists for Mako-related news and information. Reiser had probably just cross-referenced his registration info with some random survey he’d filled out or a magazine subscription he’d had at some point.
Still, 12 hours to come from California to Jacksonville was by no means a lot of time to track him down, book a flight, and get to campus in time to find him.
“Strange,” Lee thought, cueing his slideshow to begin the session.
****
Two hours later—having all but chewed his own arm off to escape another two-hour snoozefest with his department head—Lee tossed his briefcase into his office en route to the lobby, where Reiser was still waiting patiently on the sofa.
“All set?” Lee asked with a jingle of his keys.
“Absolutely” Reiser replied, dropping a six-month old issue of National Geographic on the coffee table and reaching for his cane.
“Any preferences in the way of food?” Lee asked as the pair headed for the elevator.
“Not really,” said Reiser. “Although, I’ve always found that it pays to lose the tourist scene and follow the locals if you want to find good food. Got any suggestions?”
“Do ya like seafood?” Lee asked.
“Very much so,” Reiser answered.
“Great. There’s a place on the beach that, for my money, serves the best grouper on the east coast. That’s assumin’ of course that you like grouper.”
“Perfect,” Reiser nodded.
As the two made their way out of the building and into the parking lot, Lee directed the doctor to the Jeep. “There’s no sense in takin’ two cars, so you’re welcome to ride with me if you like.”
“Wow,” he noted, admiring the vehicle’s pristine condition and original shade of silver. “CJ-7, right?”
“Good eye,” said Lee.
“Very nice,” Reiser observed, tracing a finger across the front right wheel well. “Did you do the restoration work yourself?”
“I had help with the major stuff, but yeah,” Lee said proudly. “This jeep originally belonged to my dad. He drove it off the lot brand-new when I was a kid, so what little I do know about mechanics, I actually learned right here.”
“Why’d he get rid of it?” Reiser asked, drawing a shrug from Lee.
“He and my Mom decided to scale back to one vehicle once they’d both retired. Gas prices ain’t gettin’ any cheaper, ya know? Anyway, this Jeep was his gift to me when I finished Doc school.”
“That’s good that you got to keep her in the family,” Reiser said, climbing through the roll cage into the passenger seat. “I’ve gotta tell you, since arriving here I’ve really grown fond of a lot of your classic cars. They just don’t build them like this anymore.”
Though a little puzzled by the statement, given Jacksonville’s total lack of a vintage car culture, Lee brushed it aside and slipped into the driver’s seat.
Twenty minutes later, the Jeep pulled into the dirt parking lot of The Sandy Toe Bar & Grill, a small, rundown seafood diner located just beyond a trio of lavish beachside hotels on the strip. Pushing through the weathered wooden entrance, Lee and Reiser stepped into the main dining area, where they were immediately met with the low chatter of the early lunch crowd and the tangy scent of sizzling, blackened fish—Mahi, Lee guessed from the list of daily specials on the wall above the register.
“It’s a nice day outside,” Lee suggested, never one to pass on an ocean view. “You alright with the deck?”
“Sure,” Reiser replied.
Exiting through the back of the main dining area—past a pair of potted ferns and an old painting of a lighthouse at daybreak—the duo emerged on the rugged planks of the Sandy Toe’s massive, wraparound deck, where they were greeted by a young brunette server with deep, coppery skin, wearing jeans and a blue tank top.
“What’s up, Lee?” she smiled from behind the tiki bar, a pair of menus and napkin-wrapped plasticware already in hand. “How are the ribs?”
“Still a bit sore, Megan, but not bad,” he said, turning on his stool to gesture an introduction. “Dr. Reiser, meet Megan Kingsley. She owns this place, plus her husband runs the surf shop where I buy a lot of my gear.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” replied the doctor, nodding another bow. “And by the way, it’s just Jon.”
“Nice to meet you, Jon,” Megan responded in kind, the ends of her long, brown ponytail fluttering in the sea breeze behind her bronzed shoulder. “What can I get you guys to drink?”
“I’ll have a sweet tea with lemon, please,” Reiser announced in a near-giddy tone. “I never pass up a chance to have sweet tea when I’m down in the south,” he explained. “They’ve got it in California, but it just isn’t the same.”
“Ya know, I get that,” Lee said with a chuckle. “Water with lemon, Megan. Thanks.”
“No problem,” said the server. “Take a minute to look over the menu, and I’ll be back in a bit with those drinks.”
****
“So I’ve gotta ask,” Reiser began, squeezing the lemon into his tea once they’d ordered their meals. “On the final environment, why did you choose to steal the transport ship and rescue the refugees? I mean technically, your mission was simply to blow the orbital depot and get out in time for the fleet to extract you. Considering everything that was riding on the success of that mission, don’t you think that was a bit of a gamble?”
Lee tilted his head and took a swig of his water. “Well, there’s always the old cliché about ‘never leave a man behind’,” he noted, “and in this case, we’re talkin’ about nearly 300 civilian men, women, and children. But morality issues aside, up until that point every little detail of every mission was factored into the scoring outcome, and I just figured that, in keeping with the Auran principle of takin’ care of their own, that’s what we had to do, whether it was implied or not. If we’d simply blown the depot, gotten out, and left those people to die, it’s a pretty good bet there would’ve been consequences for that. Am I right?”
“Indeed you are,” Reiser agreed. “The dilemma you’re referring to is a built-in character parameter that we refer to as the Sygarious protocol, and in my humble opinion, it’s one of the single most critical elements of the game.”
“A morality test?” Lee guessed.
“That’s correct. Had you not made the decision that you did, the game would’ve advanced to a bonus level whereby your team would’ve been redeployed into the heart of Alystierian space for a final rescue mission that, by design, was quite literally written to be a no-win scenario.”
“Sorta like video game purgatory,” Lee concluded, a little surprised by the explanation. “I take it that’s what happened to the other team that made it to E-42? They ditched the prisoner ship in the name of wrappin’ the mission and got exiled to the bonus level where they couldn’t move on.”
Reiser’s lips drew tight, as if Lee’s deduction had somehow hit a nerve. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said curtly.
“Just out of curiosity, why would you write it that way?” Lee asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for authenticity and everything, but why not just let ‘em finish the game at that point? I mean, they’d come that far.”
Reiser considered this for a moment. “Well as you pointed out, that’s Aura,” he began. “When I set out to write this game, I didn’t want another cookie-cutter shooter or flight simulator. I wanted a game that took the very best elements of every genre in the business and wove them together with a highly intricate story about two polar-opposite civilizations that the players really could get engrossed in. That meant filling each step of the overall plot with these types of moral dilemmas whereby the players themselves are quite literally forced to evaluate each decision they make through the philosophical lens of the people they’re supposedly fighting for. I guess to nutshell it, I wanted Mako’s players
to have to think about their role in this story as if they were actually there, rather than as impartial bystanders who are free to do whatever they want in the name of advancing to the next level of a mere game.”
“Wow,” Lee remarked, sloshing his straw through the ice in his water. “I always appreciated the fact that Mako was different from other games with respect to its depth of involvement, but hearin’ you talk about it that way… well, it’s pretty heavy.”
Reiser shrugged. “For a lot of very personal reasons, this story is extremely dear to me and in addition to making a game that played really smoothly, I wanted it to reflect that.”
“So has anyone else come close to finishing it?” Lee asked, trying not to sound overly vain.
Reiser’s lips tightened again. “Two other clans are hanging tough on E-39, but let’s just say they lack a lot of the…” he paused with a grin, “creativity of your group.”
Lee chuckled at his meaning.
Just as they neared the end of their drinks, Megan reemerged from the kitchen carrying two large, white plates—both all but overflowing with grill-marked fish, brightly colored vegetable toppings, and piping-hot steak fries.
“I have a favor to ask of you, Dr. Summerston,” Reiser began, draping his napkin over his lap and dabbing a smudge of tartar sauce on his grouper sandwich.
“Name it,” he said. “FYI, though… my students call me Dr. Summerston—most of ‘em anyway. To everybody else, it’s just Lee.”
“Lee, I’d like you and your team to fly back to San Diego with me and spend a few days consulting my staff for development on Mako’s follow-up.”
Lee’s eyes went wide. “Are you serious?”
“Extremely,” said Reiser, washing down a bite of his sandwich with another sip of his tea.
“All five of us?” Lee added, drawing a nod from his visitor.
“As you well know, when I designed Mako Assault, one of the main things I wanted to do was load as much detail possible into every facet of its play, thereby creating the ultimate ‘team sport’ setting where it’s virtually impossible for a single player to survive alone. Hence, separate MOS assignments for everyone. In the case of your group, that worked to perfection; so it makes sense that all of you have a say in the development of the franchise’s next installment because each of you brings a very different skill set to the table, and as such, a unique perspective as it pertains to that skill set’s place in the overall framework of the game.”
Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) Page 13
