by Dante Doom
Sivlander stretched his hands upwards and the world around him suddenly grew gray. The clouds slowed down, the snow ceased falling, and even the wind was cut out. Two large buttons appeared before Sivlander; one read “Game” and the other read “Settings.” Sivlander touched the Settings button, causing a swarm of other menu options to appear before him. He selected the option “Report Bug” and began to casually write a description of the weird face that had been sticking out of the mountain. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong there, sticking out of the face of a mountain. He mumbled the words as he typed them into the bug report. “Strange face out of mountain; some kind of graphics glitch at Vemor Mountain Ogre Chief Raid.”
After he submitted the bug, he closed the menu and immediately the world around him sprang back to life. The wind picked back up, the snow began again to fall, and he could hear his party arguing over the loot inside of the cave. Sivlander glanced at his experience bar to the side and grinned. If he completed this quest, it would mean yet another leveling up. This was the start of a fantastic day.
2
Agent Sang Ngo sat in silence. Her superiors were ignoring her, talking in hushed tones about some kind of game system. Sang had almost been certain that she was going to be fired when she walked into the dimly lit office, but upon seeing Agent Neil and Agent O’Hara, she realized it was going to be a briefing of some kind. This had been a surprise. She wasn’t sure if she welcomed it or not.
Neil and O’Hara paid her no mind as they discussed a holographic display in the center of the room. They were sitting in a circle, with a large white desk in the middle of the room. In the corner was an end table with a bonsai plant sitting on it. The bonsai looked as bored as she was. Such a cramped office for so many people.
“Another glitch report, see?” Neil said, waving to the center of the room. A holographic screen appeared before them in response, showing details of the latest report. Someone named Sivlander had reported something about a bug in that stupid game, Dragon Kings of the New World. While it didn’t appear to be of any interest to Sang, the other two were staring at the details intently.
“This is good,” O’Hara said. “This might finally be the contact we’ve been looking for. And it’s not just him?”
“Nope,” said Neil, waving and causing the holographic display to open up a forum page. “There’s a whole forum about this glitch.”
O’Hara smiled at the response, a girlish grin appearing on her face. “Sounds wonderful.”
Sang wasn’t paying much attention to what they were so interested in. She had more painful things on her mind. The last week had been hell on earth for her, and it was only going to be getting worse.
“Agent Sang!” said a gruff voice as the door opened up. It was her boss, Frederick Yuri. She immediately stood to attention as he entered. The other two agents stood also. After a few moments of hand shaking and words, they all sat down in a circle, watching the center of the holographic display in the office. A picture of a man appeared. Sang winced at the sight. It had been her partner, Alfred Munich.
A week ago, things had been going very well for Sang. She was a member of the CIA’s counterterrorism division and had been working with them non-stop for the last four years. At 26, she had been considered something of a star agent, highly skilled in hacking and countering cyberterrorism. She’d long been a woman who had real promise. Scholarships had been available for her to use, letting her breeze through school. When she’d graduated, she’d had offers from all of the intelligence agencies in America. The world had been in the palm of her hand, and she’d been convinced that she was destined for greatness. That was… until a week ago.
Sang glanced at the picture of the man before her and felt a deep pain well up within her stomach. She looked down at her feet, unable to look at Alfred for more than a few seconds. Flashes came back to her memory, of his calls for help. It was supposed to have been a simple job. There was a small organization in Chicago that had been trading a highly illegal drug known as Cwake with a group of suspected cyberterrorists who had been branded as The Unkown. Her parter, Alfred, had been pushing for an on the ground investigation of the warehouse which The Unknown supposedly worked from, but their superiors hadn’t been convinced that these terrorists were enough of a threat to require dispatched agents. Alfred, being the loud, excitable and perpetually optimistic man that he was, had told Sang of his intentions to check it out himself. Sang was the opposite of Alfred in a lot of ways. She was quiet, focused, and cautious when it came to disobeying orders. After much back and forth, Alfred had said he’d go and investigate it himself. She had run after him.
“Sang, are you paying attention?” Frederick asked as he crossed his arms.
“Yes, sir,” she replied. She felt her heartbeat going a thousand miles a minute as she watched several different pictures float across the display. They were all of the crime scene.
“We need to be clear about something, Agent Sang,” Frederick said. “The only reason you are here is because of the immense value that you bring to this organization. The death of your partner was an absolute tragedy, but it was an avoidable one.”
“Sir, I—”
“I am not here to argue. Our internal investigations committee determined that you were at fault for failing to inform your immediate superiors about Alfred’s choice to investigate a potentially hostile territory alone. By choosing to chase after him instead, you implicated yourself in this matter, as well. I have been in discussion with my superiors all week about your fate. We all agree that it would be a shame for you to be released from service this early into your career, but at the same time, your decision to aid Alfred in an unauthorized investigation is nearly unforgivable.”
Sang winced at that. When she’d found Alfred crouching behind a dumpster outside of The Unknown’s headquarters, she hadn’t convinced him to come back home. On the contrary, he’d managed to convince her to investigate with him. His excitement, his brashness, and his confidence had been enough to motivate her to get involved. All Alfred had needed was some pictures of their operation, she had been convinced. There would be no fighting, no attempted arrests. Just a few pictures of the inside of the warehouse had been all that was needed to make the mission a success.
Sang hadn’t done much in the supposed raid. She’d simply served as the lookout and the getaway driver, keeping an eye out for anyone outside of the warehouse. The Unknown had been extremely cautious with their work. They had no webcams and their cellphones were simplistic, having no capacity to record. This meant that all of Sang’s usual snooping methods were unavailable. So she had waited outside, watching for trouble. Ten minutes later, a few gunshots had rung out and Alfred had come running out of the warehouse, clutching his bloody stomach. Sang had been quick to get him into the car, but by then he’d collapsed. As she’d rushed to the hospital in a panic, he’d slowly died, in agony from the gunshot wound. His cries of pain would follow her for the rest of her life.
“Essentially, Miss Sang, you are in a very precarious position right now,” Frederick continued. Sang glanced at O’Hara and Neil, who both seemed equally unimpressed with her. “Either we release you from this job and perhaps consider pursuing criminal charges agaisnt you, or we find some way to move forward. I am a patient man, Sang. I understand that mistakes can be made, but a mistake like this was far too costly. Alfred was a good man and he deserves to be alive right now. He was somewhat reckless, which was why we partnered him with you. Your skepticism and caution were supposed to anchor him. Instead, you chose to enable him. This will be the last time you get to play action hero, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Sang whispered. It was hard enough to bear the horrible guilt of her partner’s death, but with Frederick hammering home the point, she felt herself growing bitter. This wasn’t fair.
“Good—now then, let’s move on from this and focus on the task at hand. You three were requested by me personally, and I’ve hand-selected the three agents w
ho I feel will be the best for this investigation.”
Frederick’s change in focus was a welcome respite for Sang. She turned her attention to the holographic display which was now displaying a symbol of a Dragon biting a planet. The words Draco were beneath the Dragon.
Frederick continued, “Who can tell me about Draco?”
“Game company, sir!” O’Hara said. “They’re responsible for that fancy new VR game.”
“That’s right. Now, there are dozens of game companies out there, plenty of virtual reality systems, and even a few games like Dragon Kings of the New World,” Frederick responded as he waved his own hand over the console. Three corpses appeared on the holographic display, as well as several different news clippings and a picture of a strange, oval tube. “Yet, for all of the games, the companies, and the VR hook-ups, Draco here is the only one responsible for the cover-up of three deaths directly related to their game.”
“Deaths related to the game?” Sang asked. “You’re kidding.”
“Have you seen those new biofeedback systems that Draco designed?” Neil asked as he turned to face her. “Sang, those things are amazing. You slide into them, plug in, and then you can literally feel like everything is real. I mean, the wind, the sun, the sand between your toes. Everything.”
“Neil, there’s no way you afford one of those things on your salary,” O’Hara teased.
“They had a display at the mall the other day and I tried it. It was incredible,” Neil replied.
Sang growled a little. She wasn’t particularly fond of gaming, primarily due to the fact that most hackers were stereotyped to be savvy uber-geeks who were obsessed with video games. Her hacking expertise often put her in the same company of men who were constantly talking about fantasy worlds and magic. She wasn’t concerned with the fake world of gaming, but rather focused on the real world of her career.
“Anyway,” Frederick said, regaining control of the room, “there’s the small matter of the attempted cover-up by Draco to attend to. They apparently put quite a bit of money into getting the families of the deceased to be quiet about it, and the news articles suddenly vanished. Fortunately for us, we’ve been keeping an eye on them long enough to know that something isn’t right.”
“What, do you think they’re killing their players?” O’Hara asked. “That doesn’t seem like a very safe way to build a customer base.”
“I doubt they’re intentionally doing it, but who knows? Draco’s not a particularly open company,” Frederick said. “They were the ones who created all of those biofeedback machines, though, and they’re the ones responsible for this game. My immediate fears are that they’re cutting corners and aren’t properly checking on the safety of their equipment. My long-term fears are… well, they might be up to a little bit more. They aren’t based here in the U.S. and any attempts to get information from them have come up flat. They’re based out of Venezuala and the government skirt they’re hiding behind isn’t exactly friendly to our government either, so we can’t even get them to comply with our laws.”
“Why not just ban the game, then?” Sang asked.
“The game is very popular.” Frederick answered. “The reality is, we don’t have much to go on, but intelligence chatter has indicated that Draco isn’t all that they seem, and we’ve got boots on the ground already trying to figure out how to best gather information.”
“It’s not like we can hack them, either,” O’Hara said as she waved at the holographic machine. It displayed a series of circuits and security systems. Sang recognized the configuration well enough. It was a closed system, meaning that there’d be no way to connect into Draco without some kind of internal access.
“Getting into Draco is the real challenge,” Frederick said. “But if we could somehow get an agent into Draco’s system, we could hack their entire database and find the information we want. We can figure out what happened to these players when they were in Sleep Time.”
“Sleep what?” Sang asked.
“Sleep Time!” Neil replied. “See those tubes? They’re amazing. So great that you kind of forget about your regular old body. You don’t necessarily feel thirst or hunger while you’re playing a game, and you certainly don’t feel tired. So, the body tends to just up and die after several hundred hours of playing consecutively when none of a player’s basic bodily needs have been met. When the technology was first introduced, there was that huge case about a rich dude’s daughter being hospitalized due to the dehydration she’d suffered while playing, and so Draco was quick to implement a rule called Sleep Time. For five hours, every single night, the entire game closes down acess and kicks everyone out. So they can eat, drink, and probably dream about going back to playing the game. Draco uses the time to do server maintanence, but a certain demographic of players can hack into the game even when it’s in sleep mode.”
“You mean they literally have to stop the game so that gamers won’t kill themselves playing it? That’s insane,” Sang grumbled.
“The autopsies determined that those who were killed all died around the same time: 3:34. They were in their pods at the time, playing the game. Sleep Time occurs at 2:00 AM every night, no exceptions. This means that they were hacking the game. The fact that three people all died inside of a game they weren’t supposed to be in, around the same time, shows there is something more at play.” Frederick said. “We’ve got to find out the truth here.”
“So, what’s the game plan?” Sang asked. “It’s a closed system, so I don’t know what you want from me. There’s no accessing Draco’s servers from an outside source, and the only way to hack it would be if you had a hacker actually go into the game and get to the…” she trailed off as she realized they were all looking at her. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. You want me to go in there?”
“You wanted to play field agent, didn’t you? Here’s your chance,” Frederick said with a bitter sarcasm.
“Hell, no!” Sang complained. “Those things are dumb, petty, and colossal wastes of time. I’ve seen so many important and clever people burn away their lives because they were just interested in gaming instead of living. They’re nothing more than… than rat wheels designed to simulate accomplishment.”
“Be that as it may,” Frederick said, “you aren’t going in to play the game. You’re going in to do your job as a hacker. Get in, find a way into the central database of Draco, and get the information we need.”
“There’s got to be some other way to investigate this thing,” Sang protested.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Neil said, “the rest of us would all jump at the chance to play a video game for our jobs, but you’re the girl who’s got the skills.”
“What do I have that other people don’t? If this job’s so important, shouldn’t you send…” Sang trailed off as she realized something tragic: this wasn’t an important job. O’Hara and Neil weren’t particularly the highest ranking members of the CIA, and they were well-known for being utilized only on matters that weren’t critical. The fact that she had just screwed up severely had damaged her credibility. This job was just some kind of side project for them. They were interested in gaining information, but everything wasn’t hinging on this case being a success. This was just a mission for grunts.
Frederick just shrugged. “Look, Sang, you have two options here. Option A: you can be a team player and go in there willingly, and in the process hopefully prove to my superiors that the ‘Alfred Incident’ was just an anomaly. Or, option B… you can refuse, pack your things, and go home. For good.”
Sang sighed. Frederick was right that she didn’t have a lot of options here. If she quit the CIA, it would be a disgrace, and she’d probably have to go into the private sector, working for security companies. That kind of work was boring and unrewarding. She had joined the CIA so she could make a difference. If this was going to get back up to the top... she had no choice.
“Alright... fine, but I’m going to warn you now: I don’t game. I’ve
never really gamed before, and I’m going to be terrible at it.”
“That’s where these two come in,” Frederick said, waving to the other agents. “O’Hara is on information detail; she’ll be the one responsible for pulling as much information about the game as she can find, as well as for keeping a line of communication going in between all of us. Neil is going to be responsible for handling your guide.”
“I can handle a game guide just fine,” Sang said. “They aren’t that complicated.”
“Nah, he means your actual, bona-fide, in-game guide!” Neil said, bringing up a picture of a tall warrior wielding a sword.
“Come again?”
“We recognize that you aren’t familiar with games, and certainly aren’t the type to... well, blend in with gamers... so we’re going to need to make sure that you’re able to navigate the land properly, as well as interact with the locals.”
“Navigate? Locals? Land? It’s a video game. Little pixels run around blasting at other pixels and suggest that they’ve had sex with those other pixels’ moms,” Sang said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Hah. Things have changed a lot since the old days of gaming,” Neil said. “Well, except for the mom jokes—those are pretty much the exact same.”
“Who is this guy anyway, who you want as my guide? Is he an agent?”
“Nah, just a private contractor,” Neil said. “Don’t worry about him; it’s my job to make sure that he’s as cooperative as ever.”
“Gamers aren’t really… the kind of people I get along with,” Sang grumbled. “It’s tough being a woman and working with computers. They tend to be a little… uncomfortable.”
“Look, I don’t have all day. Are you in or not? I’m doing you a favor here, Sang,” Frederick said as he started to stand.
“I don’t have much of a choice,” she said. “I’m not leaving the CIA. I want to move past the incident. I’ll do it. I just hope this guide isn’t like all of the other gamers I’ve met...”
