“I’m sorry he’s doing this,” said Veyron. “I’ll come back later and –”
“You let him out and I’ll seal you in there with him,” said Izaak, moving to the front windshield.
“You don’t have to be so mean,” said Veyron. “It’s just a game.”
“Right, it’s just a game,” said Izaak, “which is exactly why I can be so mean. None of this actually matters. Besides, he’s an NPC.”
“Does an NPC have a conversation with you?”
Izaak thought for a moment. She did have a point, Thrylos seemed almost human. But… “Things have gotten pretty advanced you know. Ever talked to Siri? She’s more interesting than my mom.” He heard Thrylos break into laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh,” he replied, clearing his throat. “Just your stimulating conversation.”
“This is Turing Test level,” replied Veyron.
“No, this is Alanya,” said Izaak, trying to figure out what she’d just said. “Test? What?”
“Alan Turing,” Thrylos provided, calmly watching Izaak weld him in the car. “British mathematician and father of artificial intelligence. He suggested a way to test for human-like intelligence in computers, now called the Turing Test.”
“And he just passed it,” said Veyron. “So he’s either a character, or the world’s first true A.I.”
“I’m guessing… character,” Izaak shot back, and lifted the last plate into position. “All the more reason to finish the job. Sorry,” he said to Thrylos.
“Oh, we’ll meet again,” Thrylos replied. “I’ve just got that feeling.”
“Be careful what you hope for,” Izaak answered, and welded on the last plate.
“Now let’s go,” said Izaak, and led them on. He thought it strange that an old man would be playing Omega Wars and thought about what Pappous would do here. It didn’t fit, but in some ways it did. This Thrylos seemed like the type that was always trying to be wise in a world that was running a lot faster than his old brains could keep up with. Just like Pappous. Whatever wisdom their age had brought them didn’t belong here. He wished he’d just greased the character and been done with it, before the old man started trying to give Izaak advice. He got enough of that in the real world and didn’t need it in here. He owned this world.
Veyron looked back a few times until they turned the corner of a crumbling building and the car dropped out of sight. The patrols were inattentive as before and they crept by them easily without the lumbering mercs, and melted into the rubble on south side of the road.
Alanya was far less crowded than it had been on their previous visit, almost empty. So they explored the area from the harbor on the east side to the long, flat, sandy beach on the west. They avoided direct contact with the locals and were careful not to speak to anyone which was fairly easy since the place was so empty. It looked much as Hector remembered with quaint shops, restaurants, and hotels. In all, about a quarter of the original town had been rebuilt. But they still couldn’t find a VTT terminal. Finally they worked their way up the peninsula, following the road that led to the castle – and again ran into armed guards outside. But Izaak wasn’t interested in the castle. He was interested in the portable slipgate, so he led them to the mosque where they found more guards outside the onion-domed building’s dark doors. They looked like low-level vanguards.
“The slipgate is in there,” Izaak said, watching from a concealed spot outside the wall.
“And you say a limousine got escorted inside the mosque?” asked Veyron. “By police motorcycles?”
“The citadel, not the mosque. And they only looked like police. Don’t know that they were.”
“And then there was a battle?”
“Right.” Izaak paused, remembering the battle. “And that was weird, too.”
“What made it weird?” asked T-Reg.
Izaak thought for a moment. It had been troubling him ever since, and there was really only one thing that compared. “It was more like a war game,” he finally said. “My dad used to use a military training simulator at Fort Bragg. It was a first-person shooter sort of like Omega Wars. You know, to train for missions, but it was classified. He said Omega was a lot better and he and his team actually started using it for training before he left for Iraq. They’d fight for a while, and then just stop and stand around and talk about it, then go back to their online lairs. Or fight some more. It got really boring sometimes. It reminded me of that.”
“Maybe a group doing multiplayer who wanted to have more players than arcade mode supports,” said Veyron. “What is it, thirty-two characters in arcade mode?”
T-Reg said: “Then they all went into the mosque and slipped back out?”
Izaak remembered it perfectly. “Yup.”
Veyron looked up at the dome. “Do you think you could get in there, c’Irith?”
“Not in broad daylight,” the smuggler replied. “Maybe if we came back at night. But I’m not sure what I’d do once I was in there.”
“Steal the gate,” said Izaak.
“I don’t even know what it looks like.”
“Just sort of a box with –”
“What we need,” said Veyron, “is a plan.”
They talked it over and decided to head back down to meet up with the rest of their clan. Not only were they pressing their luck staying up here, Hector knew it wouldn’t be long before his mother started shouting upstairs for him to stop playing and he didn’t want to have to ask T-Reg to carry him back.
They’d nearly descended the peninsula without mishap and were looking for a spot to scale the wall when Veyron said, “Don’t look now but we got company.”
Izaak glanced around to find they were being trailed on either side by a half dozen men wearing small white turbans and dressed in khaki, vanguard-style uniforms. They looked like police Hector had seen in Turkey. “Don’t panic,” said Izaak. “Just act like we haven’t noticed them. Let me find Deion.”
Hector pulled out his cell phone and called Deion. “Yo, man,” he said. “Think you guys could give us a little fire support? I think we’re going to be needing it in a couple of minutes.”
“Give us a few minutes to get there,” answered Deion. “We were on our way back in.”
“Meet us at the arched gate next to the Red Tower.” Hector put his cell phone away. “They’re on the way.”
“This is creepy,” said c’Irith. “Why don’t they do something? They’re like zombies.”
They turned a corner and came face to face with a line of police blocking the arched gate. “That’s why,” said Izaak, as the groups shadowing them closed in behind.
“Halt!” their leader demanded, in a thick Middle Eastern accent. “What are you doing in Alanya?”
“Questing, like you,” said Izaak, trying to sound friendly while he looked them up and down. The leader was wearing mirrored sunglasses and had a heavy, black moustache. His armor and weapon, as well as those of his comrades, were Omega Wars default which told Izaak they were probably newbs. But they were also outnumbered five to one. And several of their party were not all that useful in a direct firefight so it was more like ten to one. He noticed they had no markings. “What’s your clan?”
“You must to come with us,” commanded the leader.
“Do what?”
“You have violated our sovereign territory by coming here. You must stand trial.” The guards surrounding them kept their weapons trained on the intruders.
“Dude,” said Izaak, “what are you talking about?”
“Just come with me. All of you.”
“ESP,” said Veyron, and an instant later Hector’s cell phone beeped. ESP referred to any communication between active players that was outside the universe of the game. It could be very useful since players not near one another in the game, or who wanted something kept secret from others in the game, could communicate in other ways. This was a text from Sabrah and it read, This is an adult. A curious chill passed up Hector’s spine and
dispersed into his scalp.
“Now,” said the policeman, “just drop your weapons and come with me and no harm will come to you.”
Izaak had seen enough movies to know that when a bad guy says, ‘no harm will come to you,’ it meant they were going to kill you no matter what. So Izaak nodded. “Okay. Anything you say.” He dropped his sniper rifle on the ground and pulled out his assault rifle, but instead of dropping it, a long blade flipped out of the base. Hector attacked, slicing off the leader’s head.
T-Reg had obviously read his mind. Before the chief’s head hit the ground, she had popped smoke and tossed a frag grenade toward the guards. Then the two of them opened up on their attackers. An instant later they were in a hail of bullets.
“My health’s down to nothing!” cried c’Irith almost immediately. Just as quickly, Veyron swooped in and healed her. Then Izaak took major damage, as did T-Reg, and Veyron quickly healed them both. But Izaak knew that wouldn’t last long. The game was designed so that the more an empath used a specific power in a short time span, the more difficult it was to use. Like mana in a fantasy game. And she was using hers up fast. It was rumored that players had suffered nosebleeds and even fainted from the intense concentration. But Hector didn’t think it was true since the game was still on the market.
Bullets seemed to pour in from every direction. Izaak fought back and tried to find cover but they were surrounded and in the open. He and T-Reg stayed back to back but it seemed that for every enemy they killed, two more took his place.
“Veyron,” c’Irith cried again. “I’m almost gone! Smugglers aren’t made for this!”
“I don’t know if I can,” she panted. A few seconds later, c’Irith’s health sprang up to half and they beat the assault back.
But just as the Spartans began to take the upper hand the policemen rallied and charged, unleashing a wall of digital lead and hand grenades. “We’re not getting out of here,” Izaak hollered, when one of the policeman charging toward him suddenly did an impression of an exploding watermelon. An instant later, three massive mercs and a red-headed barbarian came crashing into the melee.
The mercs targeted and fired with pinpoint precision while Rada sprang back and forth nimbly, hewing with her axe. Izaak had never seen a really effective barbarian before and it was impressive. The police began to give ground and Izaak and T-Reg joined the offensive. In seconds, what was left of their force broke and fled back into the city. BayernFC and L3r0y charged after them, picking off stragglers, but Izaak called them off.
“Sorry about earlier,” T-Reg said to Rada, panting from the intensity of the combat. “You really saved our butts.”
“And you didn’t do bad either,” Izaak said to Veyron.
“Well you fought good, too,” said Veyron.
“I hate to break up this mutual admiration society,” said Darxhan, “but they’re about to send out two hundred guys to come looking for us. So let’s bounce.”
Izaak knew Darxhan was right, so they all followed Darxhan through the shattered city streets, steadily west. Along the way, they told about how they had tried the valley to the north but it had been overrun with scarobs which meant there must be a big hive somewhere up there. Darxhan told them that they’d only survived because Rada, who having little tech was of little interest to the bugs, was able to keep the scarobs off the mercs long enough to mount an organized retreat.
The road Darxhan took them on headed out of town to the west until it merged with a highway which skirted the town to the north, hugging the brown feet of the Taurus Mountains. The hills reached right down to the sea and there was just a narrow strip of land where the road ran along a low, rocky bluff. The divided highway was littered with derelict military vehicles, trucks, tanks, and transports. It reminded Hector of pictures he’d seen of the Gulf War that happened before he was born. Just offshore, beyond the surf, was the rusting hulk of a ship.
After a half-mile or so, a large hill rose up and swallowed the beach. The two lanes of the highway diverged, with one lane clinging to a ribbon of land along a narrow cliff-edge, and the other plunging into a road-tunnel that pierced the mountainside. There, a rocky knob thrust out into the sea and upon it was a two-story concrete building overlooking the water from the edge of a low cliff. It might have been a hotel, once, or a restaurant. It was now, Darxhan informed them, their new base.
Hector’s mother stuck her head in the room, surprising him and completely destroying the illusion he was enjoying. “Ten minutes,” she said.
“Ten minutes? Why so early?”
“Because you play that thing too much. It’s all you do. It’s a waste of time, and it’s warping your brain.” She smiled broadly. “Any other questions?”
“But I’m playing with Tyra and Deion. And Neils, and Dirk, too!”
“Nine-and-a-half minutes,” she said sternly, and disappeared. Almost instantly she stuck her head back in. “Tell Neils and Dirk I said hi. And Katia, too” Then she was gone.
They passed through a bare lobby into a back room with a view of the Mediterranean. Off to the left was the Alanya Peninsula and they could see the western bluffs and the citadel atop the cliffs some two and-a-half miles away, across a shallow bay. Beneath them the surf crashed onto the dingy brown rocks that lined the shore. There were more rooms upstairs as well as a ladder that led to a flat, walled roof.
“I thought you said there was something special,” said Izaak, when they met back on the ground floor.
“Follow me,” said Darxhan, and Izaak detected a hint of mischief in his voice.
They descended a set of stairs into the darkness and emerged in a cave at water level. The rough, gray sides were some dozen feet high and twice that wide with a concrete pier that ran along one side. One direction disappeared into darkness. In the other, there was a large set of doors that closed them off from the outside. Two dead thorks floated face down in the water. “Previous owners?” asked Izaak.
“They were behind on their rent,” said Darxhan.
Hector glanced at the clock. “Well, we’re going to need proximity sensors in the hotel. Security cameras. Defensive weapons. A boat would be cool.” The possibilities were endless.
“Sounds like we’re going to need a good cybertech,” said T-Reg.
“I know one,” said Darxhan.
“Bring him in,” said Izaak. “He can start with the wall for our bedroom.”
Hector relayed his mother’s message to L3r0y and BayernFC who were already putting their characters to sleep in the back of the cave, then set up a line of laser-activated sentry mines along the cave floor. They all put their characters into hibernation. Hector logged Izaak off the game just as his mother announced it was time to quit for the night. And that she meant it.
Ω
After everyone else was gone, Veyron switched off the sentry mines, crept out of their new lair, and wandered back into Alanya. It was deep twilight and she was surrounded by crumbling buildings with dark windows. Almost anything she might encounter could easily kill her but she couldn’t stop herself. She came across some scarobs harvesting tech but that was the one thing to which empaths, like barbarians, were virtually immune. Unless threatened, scarobs were only interested in tech and empaths could use no tech or they lost their powers.
Powers, Sabrah thought, bitterly. What powers? For whatever reason, she was having a lot of trouble discovering them. When she first watched the trailer for Omega Wars, Sabrah had been thrilled about the new character-type, different than any game so far. She wasn’t much into video games but this twist intrigued her; a brainwave-sensing headset you could use to ‘learn’ powers. And she’d found the game to be a welcome escape from her self-destructing family. But searching for powers that didn’t exist was getting a bit tedious. There were supposed to be powers, and it would make what she was doing now a little easier if she had any of them. Levitation. Sight. Teleport. Invisibility. But she didn’t. She’d have to do it the old fashioned way, with eyes.
It took her a while to find what she was looking for and she went in a circle a few times but she finally located the building with the basement where they had slipped in. Then she retraced the path they had taken until she found the old car where they had sealed up Thrylos. She was expecting to find the old man still imprisoned and try to help him. Instead, the plates had been blown off and Thrylos was gone.
Ch. 12
Mr. Zahedi made the newspaper the next day. His picture took up most of the front page and, with his scarred face and black eye patch, he looked every bit the part of a terrorist – or a madman. At school the talk was about the Zahedis, too. Was Mr. Zahedi a terrorist? Who had turned him in? Would he ever come back? Sanjar came to school as usual, and the other students plagued him mercilessly with questions until the teachers forbade it. There was a rumor that someone even threw a brick with an American flag taped to it through a window of their store.
Mrs. Reynolds continued on about polynomials and quadratic equations and Hector got back a homework assignment with an ‘80’ on it. Nothing spectacular but at least it kept him out of trouble. Mrs. Reynolds also took the opportunity to deliver a lecture on how algebra had been invented by Arab scholars as Europe foundered in a Dark Age. If her story was supposed to make Hector like algebra more, it was a complete failure.
In history, their gung-ho teacher continued the theme in his class by assigning a project. They were studying the Crusades – Medieval wars sanctioned by the Pope to gain control over the Holy Lands in the Middle East. Sanjar was typically eager to interject his own, warped point of view on the topic, bitterly condemning the Crusaders, but today he was quiet. Hector gave a self-satisfied smile, and settled in for a lecture on why so much of the world’s history revolved around that area. To help them understand this, they each had to pick a Middle Eastern topic which had been important in antiquity and was still important today, research why, write a report, and give an oral presentation. Sanjar perked up at the idea, or at least looked less dejected. But hopefully the family would be deported before Hector had to hear Sanjar’s one-sided report about how the west destroyed everything good in the Middle East.
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