by S. K. Holder
Connor took the clipping from Ted. The headline read: MISSING PERSON. GAMES DESIGNER, BETH CROSSWELL. The article said she was last seen drawing money out of an ATM by Liverpool Street Station. It hardly backed up Ted’s claim that she had vanished while using a ‘modified’ laptop. He shrugged and placed the article back on Ted’s desk. ‘When did Howard Collins go missing?’
‘About six weeks ago. He lives alone. According to Steve he’s off sick. Bull is what I say.’
‘And Howard had one of the special laptops?’
‘He sure did. I was there when Steve gave Howard his laptop, which conveniently disappeared the day he went on,’ he formed double quotes with his fingers, ‘sick leave. Something on those laptops caused their disappearance. I just don’t know what. I couldn’t find anything on your brother’s laptop. Nothing out of the ordinary. I couldn’t find anything in the hardware. Could be something hidden in the machine itself, but I wouldn’t know, not without bashing it open, and I didn’t want to bash it open, in case it was hazardous. I was going to get this other friend of mine to have a look at it. He’s a computer engineer and an uncertified hacker.’ He banged his ear with the heel of his hand and took another gulp of coffee. Some trickled down his chin.
Connor frowned. He thought that Ted needed to lay off the caffeine. He also thought that sharing his Narrigh experience with Ted, no matter what the games developer had told him, would be a very bad idea. He needed to find out more.
‘What do you think happened to them?’
‘At first I thought something had gone wrong with one of the games. No probs. I had to take all the company computers offline. Nothing to do with the programming of course, that’s flawless. However‒’
‘Why would you think something went wrong with one of the games?’
‘Howard Collins had been conducting what we call a Beta trial on The Quest of Narrigh when he disappeared. Beth Crosswell installed the Beta version of The Plague of Pyridian on one of the modified laptops, so she could test out the game before its release.’
So three other people had disappeared. The surreptitious lift Ted had used to take him to the basement embarked from the 25th floor where his uncle worked and only stopped at the basement. How could his uncle not be involved? He spoke his thoughts out loud. ‘My uncle should know what’s going on in his own company.’
‘You would think so. I bet he can’t name one Tridan Entertainment game off the top of his head. For him it’s all about the money. Steve Lepton heads the games division. I remember the day your brother came storming through the lobby shouting his head off about the affair your uncle had with your mum. It was about two years ago. Kane took a month off work after that fiasco. When he came back he promoted Steve to Head of Production. Steve really shook things up. He got rid of a lot of staff and moved others around…’
Connor recoiled, his cheeks flaming. He felt as if someone had kicked him in the gut. So that’s why Luke was mad? His brother had known about his uncle for two years and never told him. So this wasn’t about Narrigh. It was about Kane’s relationship with his mother. Kane must have been trying to squirm his way back in to their mum’s life and Luke had come to Tridan Entertainment to put a stop to it.
Ted hunched his shoulders. ‘Judging by your reaction. I take it you didn’t know about your mum and Mr Brailey. I’m sorry. I never meant to upset you. I’m getting the impression there’s a lot about your uncle you don’t know. I know he told Steve to lock your brother’s Tridan Entertainment account. That probably didn’t help your brother’s mood none when he waltzed in here this morning.
‘This may sound crazy to you, but I think Narrigh and Pyridian exist on a virtual plane. My guess is Lepton works for a secret organisation. The laptops double as a teleportation device and Professor Hatleman, Howard and Beth were teleported through the laptops into these gaming worlds as part of a covert experimental initiative.’ He propped his leg up on the desk. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if the government was in on it.’
Connor stared at Ted and realised for the first time what crazy sounded like. He didn’t know what sort of secret organisation would want to experiment on gaming company employees. And what did covert experimental initiative even mean? What if it was a mind warp? And Steve Lepton had done something to the laptops which made their users start seeing things that weren’t there? Steve could also have done something to Ted, to mess up his brain.
‘You need help,’ said Connor. ‘Psychological help. I think I’ll give a career in games development a miss thanks.’
‘I’m telling you this is something big. Your uncle knows Steve Lepton better than anyone. You’re the C.EO.s nephew. You must be the closest family he’s got, since he doesn’t have any children of his own.’
‘I can’t help you. Why don’t you ask Steve yourself?’
‘My getting the sack is not going to help either one of us and I can’t go to the police. You can get into places other lowly people can’t. His office for example or his home. You look like a smart kid. Tell Kane you want to spend time with him. Get to know him.’
Kane Brailey would never go for it, thought Connor, daring to contemplate the mission. Pretending to like his uncle, after what he’d learned from Ted, would take time and dedication. If his mum had feelings for Kane, past or present, he could understand why she didn’t want him in their lives. ‘How do you know I won’t tell my uncle what you’ve told me?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be in school? And laptop theft,’ Ted nodded at the laptop on the desk, ‘that’s a criminal offence. Just kidding, about the laptop that is. It’s my gift to you, Connor. You help me find my friend and I’ll throw in another laptop and a games console for free.’
‘You think I’m going to spy on my uncle for a laptop and a few free games. I can get those from my uncle any time I want.’ Bribery wasn’t going to get Ted what he wanted. Howard was dead. ‘Caught in the mounds,’ he had heard. He could never spy on Kane, but he could spy on Steve Lepton.
Ted rubbed his cheeks. ‘I have to ask myself why you’re so loyal to a man you hardly know, why you’re so hostile to someone who tells you that people in your uncle’s organisation have gone missing, and why you don’t want to act upon the information I’ve given you.’ He raised his chin. ‘Another secret to add to your family coffers is it?’
Connor didn’t reply. He was only just discovering the Brailey secrets himself. It seemed improbable that his uncle would risk his nephews’ lives by giving them a computer capable of transporting them to another world. Kane could have picked up one of the special laptops for Luke without knowing what was on them. And as Ted said, Steve Lepton was responsible for making most of the company decisions. He wasn’t opposed to drawing up a STEVE LEPTON RECON PLAN. ‘What does this Steve Lepton look like?’
‘A blonde, blue-eyed, tanned mop.’ His eyes widened momentarily. ‘Why have you seen him?’
Connor shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
The phone rang and Ted nearly flew off his chair. He jostled it into place with his feet and took the call. ‘Erm…okay. I know that Stacey….and I was going to…don’t freak out….yes…I’ll come down.’ He hung up the phone. ‘That was reception. They said you didn’t sign back into the visitors book. I’ll go sort this out.’ He tore a corner off a piece of paper and wrote down his telephone number. ‘This is my mobile number. Don’t call me at work. I’ll sort you out with a visitor pass. Wait here. I’ll be five minutes.’ He emptied the contents of his pockets onto the desk, and then hurried from the office, tucking his shirt into his trousers as he went.
Connor found a Plague of Pyridian gaming guide in the bin. He fished it out. It was covered in coffee-stains and someone had sketched a maze on the inside back cover. He flicked through it in search of two words: Odisiris and Citizens. At a glance, he couldn’t see them. He shoved the guide inside his bag along with Ted’s phone number.
He saw Ted’s key card lying on the desk amongst the tissues, keys and other scraps he had take
n from his pockets. The key card looked like the one Ted had used to access the special lift, minus the sticky tape. Connor pocketed it.
He peeked out of the door. The corridor was empty. He headed for the stairs that would take him to the basement.
EIGHT
Connor swiped Ted’s key card through a slot by the door to get into the basement.
Once through, the door slammed behind him. He took the stairs one at a time. His heart thumped in his chest. He had already thought of three excuses to recite if he got caught – all of them lame. He took a sharp breath. He couldn’t afford to get caught.
He padded across the floor. He thought he heard a noise: low breathing and a squeak. He spun in circles, his eyes growing wider. He realised the sound came from him. He was getting all jumpy over nothing. He didn’t like wide empty spaces or cramped ones for that matter. He always found them terrifying when he was alone.
Something had changed in the Pyridian tourist attraction. Something he hadn’t noticed before, unless he had missed it the first time around. The door to one of the cubicles stood open. The inside had been furnished with a round steel table surrounded by four stools.
He stood outside it, contemplating whether or not he should go in. He made up his mind to come back to it and headed for the office which held the supercomputer. He tried the same swipe card on the door, just as he thought he had seen Ted do. It didn’t work. He tried sliding the door back with his fingers. The door held fast.
He checked the toilets; they were empty. The cafeteria was also deserted.
He wandered around the basement until he found himself standing outside the cubicle once again. He stepped inside it. He looked behind him, staring up at the walls to see if there had been any security cameras installed. He couldn’t see any.
He slumped down on one of the stools and placed his bag on another.
He took out Luke’s laptop. He had brought the charger with him. He fished it out and then hunted around for a plug-point. He sighed when he couldn’t see one. He examined the bottom of the laptop. It looked like every other one he had ever seen. He lifted the lid and tried the power button again. This time the laptop came on. He couldn’t have pushed the power button hard enough the first time.
Ted had disabled Luke’s log in account, which gave Connor instant access to Luke’s computer desktop. The desktop held shortcut icons for The Quest of Narrigh and The Plague of Pyridian. His brother loved playing online role-playing games. His obsession with them had nothing to do with Tridan Entertainment. Luke had installed plenty of games and removed them when he grew bored to make room for more. Luke had told him he had uninstalled The Quest of Narrigh. Why had he lied?’
He pressed the enter button on The Plague of Pyridian’s home page. He was not asked for his password, his email address or his username. So Ted had lied too. He hadn’t locked Luke’s account.
He noticed that Luke had reached Level 2 and he had used the same player character as he had in The Quest of Narrigh, Duffy. He shook his head, mystified. Why had Luke obtained a Beta version of The Plague of Pyridian? And why would he go to the trouble of playing it for such a short time before effectively abandoning it by leaving his laptop in Kane’s office?
The gaming levels reached could have been an approximation of hours, or days, or weeks of game play. He had no way of knowing. When Luke played ‘The Quest’, he got to Level 65 before he arrived in Narrigh, or so he had said. Connor had made it to Level 20. The duration of play had nothing to do with how, when, or even if you got there. So what was it?
He clicked the BACK TO START button in the upper left hand corner of the screen and read the game’s backstory word for word…
Pyridian
“It was the year of the Anchor March in Pyridian. A year in which all Peltarcks gathered at Fort Erghelm to celebrate the day the first of the race arrived on Pyridian and made their claim to land, sea and air. From that day, one thousand years ago, there sprung 30 million Peltarck.
A single event changed the lives of the Peltarcks.
One day a UFO landed, opening a mammoth crater on the planet’s floor. From a distance, the object looked like a great black rock. The Peltarcks believed it was a meteorite. They cleared the area where the meteorite had landed, but day by day, month by month, the meteorite began to change its form. It disintegrated in places to reveal yellow murky orbs that gave off a dull glow.
The Peltarck government knew something was not right. Under the instruction of their Emperor, they sent their most trusted explorers up to the crater site to take samples.
The explorers feared the object in their midst. The meteorite gave off a strange smell and it leaked copious amounts of congealed mucus. The inexplicable mass made noises, and one explorer claimed they saw it move. So the explorers took a sample of the rock for their scientists to study. The scientists ascertained that the rock was from another planet, within their galaxy, called Upsilon. They sent a fleet of their best warriors out to investigate, but the fleet never returned and they heard no word from them, so they sent out another. They too did not return.
One day, a lone warrior went to the meteorite site to investigate. Why he went alone, who can say? He found the meteorite had shed its rock core, and what it revealed made his skin go cold. He saw a soft bubbly membrane filled with eggs, and within the eggs, he saw something alien. One slithered out of its egg to his feet. He killed the newly hatched lifeform and took it back to the scientists who were keen to study it.
They sent a crew of Peltarcks to all that was left of the meteorite. The eggs had hatched and the aliens had gone. The Peltarck government panicked. They destroyed the alien, the empty membrane, the warrior and the scientists who had handled it because they feared contamination. They then dug almost 200 feet underground in search of the aliens.
They spent months scouring the breadth of Pyridian in search of alien life. They never found it. They knew one day the aliens would emerge once more, bigger and more terrifying than they could ever imagine. They did their best to prepare for that day, living in fear and hoping that day would never come.
The day came when the aliens reappeared. The Peltarcks had no warning. Their homes were destroyed and they had to seek refuge underground. The aliens never went there.
The aliens became like a plague on Pyridian. The Peltarcks built their homes underground where they felt the alien race could not touch them.
They pleaded for the Citizens, from the planet Odisiris, to help them. The Odisirians sent a whole fleet of their best soldiers to defeat the aliens.
The alien population did not die out. They mutated.
The Peltarcks were unbroken. They embraced their new life as if they had never known any other. They forgot about the tall cities and buildings and the blue sky they once knew, convincing themselves over the years that such a living would be torture, that to live above ground was against their culture and religion. That it was forbidden.
Several thousand Citizens moved permanently to Pyridian to help ward off the aliens.
As the years went on, the threat lessened. The Citizens built their own city above ground; the Peltarcks kept theirs below.
But the aliens are not dead. They continue to flourish. The Peltarcks live in ignorance; the Citizens in readiness…’
Connor felt himself perspiring and removed his jacket. Narrigh seemed like a luxury holiday compared to Pyridian, he thought. He used the camera on his phone to take some pictures of the last few paragraphs of the Pyridian backstory so he could show them to Riley. It was all the proof he needed to convince him that he wasn’t imagining things or going crazy; there were Citizens in the world of Pyridian, just as there were in Narrigh.
He entered Duffy’s game profile. The scene was set. The player-character was dressed in a military-style black uniform. He stood against an inky-blue and grey backdrop. Two half-moons and a white star stood in the sky. An airship had just landed: a grey pod with legs like spiders.
He gingerly tapped the F
ORWARD button and Duffy took his first tentative steps under his command toward a charcoal grey mound that resembled a sandbank.
The laptop screen flashed purple. Connor held his breath. A mere ten seconds later, the flashing stopped and he saw that Duffy had moved. He was now partially hidden behind the sandbank. Connor could have sworn he saw the cursor move all by itself. The airship had slipped out of sight and something moved towards him. He couldn’t tell if it was a rock or another ship. Another soldier had appeared. Dressed in the same uniform as Duffy, he had yellow hair and carried a gun.
Duffy’s energy bar ran low. It was a quarter down from what it had been when he had first entered the game. He stared at the two soldiers on the screen. He had to be seeing things. The characters on the screen were no more real than the game. Like Luke said, it was a mind warp.
He took the game off pause. A new image had appeared on the screen: a big blurry image, made up of minute multi-coloured blocks. He tapped the ESCAPE and ENTER keys several times. The easiest thing for him to do was to switch it off, slam the laptop shut and put it away. He couldn’t do it. He desperately wanted the answers that had led him to Narrigh and back. What if the answers lay in Pyridian?
He glanced around. The door had shut. He counted six air vents on the ceiling and six on the floor. None emitted any air. A small glass window had opened in the cubicle wall. He went to the door and slammed both hands against it. He attempted to jimmy the door to the right and then to the left. It appeared to be stuck and had no visible handles. He tried knocking on it: an action which barely produced a sound and left him with stinging knuckles.
He looked out of the glass window and was relieved to see Ted peering at him while munching on a sandwich. ‘Get the door,’ he shouted. ‘I’m locked in.’
Ted rubbed the corner of his eye, showed Connor one side of his face then the other. He ran his fingers through his hair and took another bite of his sandwich. To his frustration, he realised that Ted was gazing at his own reflection. Hadn’t he heard him knocking?
