by Hawke, Jessa
“Don't feel silly,” Chad spoke again, his voice accompanied by his footsteps as he approached her. “Sometimes I smoke too much weed and get seriously freaked out watching a storm roll in. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Would you like a drink?”
Chad took her by the hand and led her back to the bar. Fran was impressed that Chad could take her hand and lead her somewhere without seeming creepy about it. It made her think that she really wasn't the first visitor to gawk at the weather outside as it proudly unfurled itself. Fran didn't look away from the sky until she was back at the bar. Then, after a Brad handed her a drink, she finally started to feel at ease.
“So, you two are going to change gaming forever,” she said.
Fran figured it was a good enough ice breaker as any.
“We are, actually,” Chad said. “You see, up until now people have merely created static worlds for the main character to knock about in. Take the Fallout series, for example. Sure, you can change of change the game—you could more so in the past games in that series, but I digress. What we are going to create is a world that the player can actually manipulate. And we aren't talking about some horse shit like maybe you kill some bad guy villain and then he doesn't run the town anymore but all the Non Player Characters keep talking about him like he's alive or some shit. We're talking about an actual, and quite literal, immersion experience.”
Fran sipped her drink and looked around the giant room with glass walls she was in, that had the two leading men in the gaming industry, a bar, herself, and of course the elevator that looked like a phone booth.
“What do you mean literally?” she asked, looking up suddenly from her drink. She was surprised to find the two men looking out toward the ocean as the storm crackled with electricity before them, instead of looking down her cleavage. Maybe she just couldn't compete with mother nature, she reasoned.
“Well,” Brad said. “You will pretty much be wearing this thing on your head. It's kind of like some of the other devices you've seen, but different. For starters this thing isn't going to blind you. Some of the other contraptions that you wear on your head come pretty close to damaging your eyes after you wear them for long enough, and by long enough I mean for a few hours. Since we want people to play our games for more than a few hours we have head gear designed for it. The head gear is light, it's sleek, state of the art. And it's not just the device itself but how it interacts with several other devices. It's kind of technical and we aren't really trying to just tell everyone how to make the best game ever, but they sure as hell can buy a ticket and enjoy the ride if they want.”
Fran nodded and took a sip of her drink.
“I understand that you have to play your cards pretty close to your chest at this point. The gaming industry seems to have become more and more cutthroat in the past few years.”
“You think?” Chad said incredulously. “I mean, come on. Cutthroat is putting it nicely. Some of what openly goes on in the industry is appalling! I mean, it's just corporate espionage dressed up to look like something else. And you know what? Everyone goes along with it, like a bunch of fucking dunderheads. Well not us. We aren't just going to give out the secrets of how our shit works. I mean, sure, once someone buys the gear and the game there is no way from keeping them from reverse engineering it to figure out how it works. But you know what, they'll have to fucking pay us first, and these things won't be cheap. And also much like other electronic devices, there will be a lot of fail safes that don't allow for tampering. So it'll probably take about a dozen purchases to crack the head gear alone, and then what?”
“I'll tell you what,” Brad said with a chuckle. “Then they figure out that the entire thing was coded using program that we designed. So then they have to figure that out. I give them maybe three to four months to crack it wide open. But by then it'll be too late.”
“How will it be too late?” Fran asked.
“By then we'll have cornered the market,” Chad said. “By then it won't matter if they rip off our product and get something just like it out for less eight months later because we'll already have released the next game by then. And it'll be even better than this game because this game is going to help build the next game!”
Fran was having a hard time figuring out if these two were full of shit or not. There was something in her that wanted to believe everything they said, and take every claim at face value. After all she was in a glass bubble on top of a building, so maybe these dudes were legit if they could get the money and had the imagination to create these swank digs. But at the same time there was something inside of her that kept telling her to keep her distance from belief, that she needed to know much more before she would be able to write a proper story. It wasn't going to be enough to just say that Figure Four was going to change everything and leave it at that.
“So what can you guys show me?” Fran asked as the sky grew ever darker around them. “I mean, I don't need to know the deepest darkest secret of the plot, or know the lines of code, but I need more, fellas. And you know that. I need more so I can pen out something that will really help you guys move product, and help the industry by making people believe in it again. Gamers right now are burned out on the drama and ever increasing prices of games that have less and less emotional pay out. People want things to be strong and dynamic.”
The air around the glass bubble started to shimmer, then turned to an iridescent glow before blooming into countless long tendrils of electricity that twined together at the top of the glass bubble to shoot a spike of static electricity high into the clouds above.
“Holy Christ,” Fran said.
“Quite the show, eh?” Brad said, making himself another drink. “That was pretty much the entire idea behind having this place be a glass bubble. We both thought with how storms roll off the ocean here that we'd be able to harness static electricity off the building and maybe channel it into the air. Of course we had no real idea what we were doing because we are programmers, not scientists, but it worked out somehow!”
It happened again, and this time, though it was still silent in the bubble, it made the whole building tremble as another jolt of energy jumped off the tower and spiked into the air.
“Damn!” Chad hollered. “That was a good one!”
Brad nodded and turned to Fran.
“You see, we aren't just shooting all of the juice off into the atmosphere,” he said. “We're harvesting some of it to be used to power this place. You'd be surprised how much we are able to collect and keep. So this glass bubble we're standing in isn't just for looks, it has a function. Without it we wouldn't be able to cook off the excess. Of course, how this all works is really complicated, and like we said before we aren't really sure how it's done, but we know enough to tell you about it.”
“Which is how much I want to know about the next installment in the Radioactive series,” Fran said.
Both of the men looked at her and nodded.
“So we wanted to get away from strapping goofy shit to our head, but it just wasn't what panned out,” Chad said. “So here is the head gear. Try it on.”
Fran slipped the device over her head. It was a box that rested over her eyes that she looked into. Some of what was happening was going on inside of the box, but some of it was going on outside of the box, as if there were other devices projecting things that only the head gear could pick up.
“Like we said before,” Brad said. “There is more than just the head gear. That's really where we felt like the devices of the past had fallen short. They wanted you to put something on your head and then play a game. We want you to put something on you head and let the game play you. So, while the head gear is necessary, it isn't the end all be all of the system.”
Fran couldn't believe what she was seeing. It wasn't like a hologram, and the in game environment didn't try to look hyper realistic. Instead the head gear made it seem like there were actual people in the room with her. There was a dark figure in the corner she focused her attenti
on on.
“This is a demo,” Brad said. “And the dark man is the demo man. Well, part of it. Enough that you'll get a really good idea of what's going on. Just go talk to him.”
Fran wasn't sure what to do, but she tried to steady her gate as she walked over to the dark figure she knew wasn't really there even though she could see him. By the time she got to him the dark figure had become an old man, and then when she opened her mouth he morphed into a young man, then shrunk down into a baby in a pile of clothes. Just when she'd finished recoiling from the cries of the baby the form was back to standing in front of her, its features with a pallor cast over his complexion that would have spelled death for a living being.
“What can I do you for?”
The voice came easy, as if straight from the south, but it also had a slight tremor in it that seemed to reverberate for an instant before disappearing completely, as if the sound itself was a stream of water plunging down from fountainhead to a pool below.
Fran didn't know what to say. What kind of game was this?
“What's your name?” she asked.
“What's in a name?” the figure asked, then went on. “I'm a projection of your imagination. Everyone that meets me thinks that I'm some kind of Non Player Character, or some other kind of NPC, but I assure you that I am not. I am the player. I am you. What you see before you now is exactly what your mind wants you to see.”
Fran didn't know what to think. If this dark figure turned pasty white middle-aged man was really from her mind then he was from a place that she never thought of or went to very much. Maybe he was though.
“But how can my brain act without me?” Fran asked.
“That's simple,” a voice in her ear said. “This is Brad by the way. I've tapped into your head gear. Basically your mind is infinite, believe it or not. I know that most people would scoff at the idea of the human mind being this enormous untapped resource because it seems like science fiction, but believe me when I tell you that your mind is the ultimate game. The figure that you see in front of you now isn't one that the rest of us see. Sure we see a figure, but the figure is different for all of us. I see my mom whenever I look at the demo's 'dark man,' but Chad sees someone that he knew that died in Iraq. It's whatever your mind decides you're going to see. And you can't control it.”
“What?” Fran asked.
She pulled off the head gear and the figure in front of her was gone.
“You can't control it,” Brad said again. “Most of the real work we had to figure out was how to build in enough safeguards that there is no way that a person in the game can get lost in the game, and that if person becomes upset enough the game shuts off.”
Fran looked down at the head gear in her hands. It didn't look special at all.
“So what you're telling me is that there is a lot more to this than just the head gear.”
Both Chad and Brad nodded from the bar, where they had both returned to their previous seats to sip drinks and watch her interact with the demo.
“A lot more,” Chad said. “Like if we really wanted to we could sell this stuff to the government and there wouldn't be any more need for the CIA interrogators because the government could use our stuff to just rip the information right out of peoples' minds. But we don't want to sell it to the government, not that it matters much anyway because as soon as the console hits the market they'll figure out how to do what we're doing and things around the world will change dramatically.”
“How so?” Fran asked.
“Well for starters there won't be any more conference calls. People will just be in the same 'room' together and figure out whatever it is they need to figure out, or talk about. I don't know, that's just one example of many. Another way to use it would be to--”
Brad cut him off.
“Consider this,” he said. “There is one highly qualified brain surgeon in all the world who can look at a brain scan and accurately tell what the fuck is wrong people. I'm not sure if you caught the special on NPR last week or not. Anyway, so there is only one guy, right? So that means that demand is high because supply is so low. Well if the guy plugs into the mainframe he could see brain scans in real time, but 'virtually.' Also, after a long enough amount of time his mind will imprint on the mainframe.”
“What's the mainframe?” Fran asked.
Brad let out a long sigh, and Chad shook his head.
Chad was the one who answered.
“There is some kind of current out there. We have a little bit of it in each of us, and that's how we manipulate the 'game.' But the current is funny and we don't know how to predict what it will do. Something that we have noticed is seeing what we call shadows of ourselves sometimes when we plug in outside of the game world. We aren't going to allow people to do that, by the way, but I'm sure they'll figure out a way to jail break or system.”
Fran walked over to the bar and sat down. She looked around the room at the glass walls. Outside the sky is clearing and birds were soaring between buildings. It was amazing, something that she never thought she would see.
“It's too bad you have to wear those things, though,” she said.
“You don't,” Chad answered.
“What?” Fran said.
Chad snapped his fingers and the walls turned to regular walls of an office building.
“You see our system plugs into you, rather than you plugging into it. Partly because we are using some kind of natural phenomena that we don't really understand. At all. So that's a little scary sometimes. But the head gear allows the system to keep a close eye on the user so that if things go really wrong it can just pull the plug.”
The three of them talked more and more about this strange psychic stream they both had found and planned and using to share their new game with. They wanted people to be able to traverse the made up universe of Radioactive while being able to actually change things. What world people would see would be up to them, but since most people who bought the game would see something along the lines of the first two games they weren't so worried about making everyone have the exact same experience. Something they were worried about, though, were new users whose minds wouldn't quite no what to project. So they were working with graphic artist and hypnotic therapists to try and figure out some kind of intro they could play for their gamers before they jumped in.
The more Fran talked to the two beautiful men the more she realized that they were doing a lot more than just pioneering video games, they were pushing into the future when it came to socialization. People would no longer need to face time, or use Skype, or any other program when they could plug into some kind of natural stream. The two men also seemed fascinated by what they had found. Thinking that they might be in trouble they had kept their discovery a secret for a long time, from even their closest friends. But eventually they knew it had too much potential to keep to themselves, so they built it into their next game so they could at least profit from it before the entire world stole it.
“Oh yeah,” Chad said. “People will pass this software around like it's not illegal because it's going to be the thing, like the internet but not.”
Fran couldn't believe she was where she was at as the walls flickered back to being crystal clear glass. She realized she had no idea what the weather was, that ever since she'd walked into the building they'd plugged her into whatever it was that allowed them to use peoples' minds as a kind of playground.
“What else did you two see in my head?” she asked.
The two men exchanged slow, guarded glances before answering.
“Well, we know that you want to fuck us,” Brad said. “And that you really want to make it as a reporter. That's about it.”
Fran was stunned. It was true that she wanted to fuck them, but it wasn't that he'd said it, but that he'd known to say it all. Were they actually able to peer into her mind with their creations or was it just a good guess?
“We don't really get that good of a look in your head,” Chad said softly. “E
veryone's mind is so wildly different and infinite in its own way. So we only know very little. I think we can only look into the reptile of your brain or something.”
Fran didn't feel much better. It was all starting to feel like some kind of weird Twilight Zone episode that she didn't sign on for. But before she could ask if it would be rude to leave Chad ran his hand down her back and she felt something akin to electricity shoot through her body. She looked at Chad and he smiled. Fran smiled back. What could hurt if she had some fun before she broke one of the biggest stories, not to mention the biggest gaming story, ever. She knew that maybe it wasn't what some people would consider professional, but she didn't care what most people thought. Most people never did anything but eat, sleep, and maybe make some kids between going to work at some shitty job they don't even care about. Fran wasn't like that, and being different meant that sometimes she liked to indulge on things that maybe weren't the best for her by other peoples' estimations but were just what she needed. Fran didn't think anyone knew better than her about what she needed, and she thought as much as she felt Brad slowly pulling on her neck line.
