Reaper

by Janet Edwards

  “Incoming orders,” announced the buggies in unison.

  Nathan and I hurried back to sit on our buggies. I was expecting Supervisor Fraser’s face to appear on the display screen in front of me, but instead I saw a golden-haired, elven stranger.

  “I am the senior supervisor for Long Stay Area 31,” she said.

  I could hear the same words echoed from Nathan’s buggy, and we exchanged startled glances.

  “We’ve just had a conference of all senior supervisors worldwide,” she continued. “We are aware that all of you worked well past the end of your last shift, and most of you were called in for questioning later. In the aftermath of the Avalon bombing, regular maintenance patrols are a lower priority than being prepared to cope with any further major crisis. You have all been stationed in the centre of your patrol areas to give you the maximum chance of responding successfully to alarms. You will remain at those points for the whole of this shift unless alarms sound.”

  The woman paused. “You may take the opportunity to rest.”

  Her image vanished from the screen. I sat there for a moment while my sleep-deprived brain absorbed the information, then I climbed down from the buggy and stretched out thankfully on the floor. It was formed of rock hard, unyielding plastic, but it was still blissful to lie down.

  Nathan got off his buggy, frowned, and then selected a spot that was near to me but at a tactful distance. He lay down, tried several positions in an attempt to get comfortable, and then got his bag from his buggy to use as a pillow.

  I missed everything that happened in the next six or seven hours, because I was deep in dreamless sleep.

  It wasn’t an alarm that woke me, or the buggy announcing the end of my shift, but the sound of heavy footsteps. I opened bleary eyes, saw the legs of a droid beside me, and sat up in panic. Now I could see the droid’s head wore the face of the bird that had been in charge of my interrogation. It was here to drag me back to that prison cell!

  “I’m sorry to wake you,” said the bird.

  Nathan was sitting up too now, his face showing he was stunned by the bird’s words. I was stunned too. Adults didn’t apologize to children. We were outside Game. We weren’t real people yet.

  “I’m here because it’s vitally important to hunt down the Avalon bomber,” said the bird. “I think you may be able to assist me.”

  I scrambled to my feet. Nathan literally shook himself, before standing up as well. I still wasn’t sure whether I was being arrested or not, but my brain was starting to register some odd things about this droid. It was coloured gold rather than the usual bronze, it had no ownership markings on its chest, and its shape and movements were a more convincing match to a real human being than usual.

  The droid’s head was especially startling. A normal droid’s head was a uniform bronze colour, except for the flat front that displayed the face of the adult controlling it from Game. This droid’s head had somehow taken on the colours and contours of the full bird head. It even had a crest of feathers that seemed to ripple as it moved, and a beaked mouth that opened and shut as it spoke.

  I couldn’t work out whether the droid’s head was genuinely changing shape to create those movements, or it was just a holographic illusion. Either way, the uniqueness of this droid proved I’d been right about the bird being someone very important.

  “The bombing was a real world crime,” said the bird, “so there is a United Law investigation in progress. Since it was a Game server complex that was bombed, there is also an official Game investigation happening in tandem. Finally, since over eleven thousand Gamers died from medical complications arising from emergency defrosts, the players have elected to have their own representative monitoring the progress of both those investigations and reporting back to them. They have asked me to be that player representative.”

  The bird paused for a moment. Nathan and I waited in respectful silence until it started speaking again.

  “My plan was to liaise with the two official investigations while doing some small-scale investigations of my own, but I’ve hit a problem. I entered Game centuries ago, and I’ve never defrosted or used a controlled droid to visit the real world. I’ve been totally immersed in my life in Game, and when I did spare a few minutes to think about the real world, I assumed it was the same as when I left it.”

  The bird paused again. “This conversation seems horribly one-sided. It would help if one of you would say something occasionally.”

  I exchanged glances with Nathan and spoke cautiously. “We’re finding it hard to tell whether you want us to speak or not. Most adults wear a face that’s human to some extent, but it’s hard to interpret the expressions on yours, and there aren’t any clues in your voice either.”

  I held my breath, braced for a reprimand, but the bird just nodded. “You have a point. I asked the Game Techs to give me an anonymous appearance and voice to avoid attracting too much attention. That was useful during the interrogations, and there may be times when it’s useful again in future, but now isn’t one of them.”

  The droid’s head blurred. When it came back into focus, all trace of the bird had vanished. I saw the head of a handsome man, with dark eyes that were filled with laughter, and black, feathered hair that clung closely to his scalp. Nathan and I recognized him instantly and gasped in unison.

  “My name is Hawk,” said the man, in a voice that held all the expressive tones that the bird voice had been missing. “Am I easier to talk to now?”

  Chapter Four

  Hawk the Unvanquished was talking to me, casually smiling at insignificant Jex. When the Game started its first ten year trial, there were fewer than a thousand Founder Players. I wouldn’t recognize an image of most of them, only knowing they were Founder Players because of the diamond bracelets they wore, but everyone in both real life and Game would recognize Hawk.

  Death Canyon on Ariel was designed to be an impossible obstacle course for pilots flying that world’s archaic biplanes, but Hawk made it through, and stunned Game Techs massed to welcome him as he reached the end. Hawk was the champion of the Battle Arena on Medieval for ten years running and retired unbeaten. Hawk led the outgunned and outnumbered army of Ruby in the famous victory over the forces of Sapphire on Civil War.

  Those achievements stunned people like me who were interested in the combats and challenges of Game, but it was Hawk’s actions in things like the Steppes protest that won the hearts of the wider Game population. Each year on the anniversary of the opening of Game, several new worlds were added. Game world Steppes had problems from the start. Its opening was delayed by last minute technical problems, so it was left out of all that year’s publicity about the new worlds, and its treeless plains didn’t attract much player interest.

  At the end of five years, Steppes still had less than ten thousand residents. The Game Techs decided to shut it down as a failure rather than let it gradually turn into another Havoc or Abyss. The residents refused all offers of relocation though. They’d grown to love the vast skies of Steppes, and staged a series of protests to try to save their world.

  Those protests were failing, ignored by all the major Game news channels, when Hawk arrived on Steppes. He talked a dozen other Founder Players into joining him, and the sight of them in their glittering diamond bracelets drew crowds of reporters. There was an immediate rush of players applying to become residents of Steppes, and the Game Techs decided to upgrade the world rather than abandoning it. They added dazzling night-time auroras and flocks of fire-birds, and Steppes became one of the most popular worlds in Game.

  I could think of a dozen more stories that I’d heard about Hawk. He wasn’t just a Founder Player but a legend in Game. No wonder the terrified players had chosen him to be their representative.

  Hawk stood there, laughing at our stunned faces. “Perhaps I should have stayed as the bird after all. You still aren’t talking to me.”

  He gave us the teasing grin that was so typical of Hawk, and Nathan finally choked
out a single word. “Wow.”

  “You’re ...” I gulped. “You’re my all time hero. You killed the Kraken solo! You ...” I broke off, realizing I must sound like a gushing fool.

  “That was less impressive than it sounds,” said Hawk. “The main problem is wearing down the Kraken so you can reach its weak spot and ... Anyway, forget that. I was explaining to you that I’d stupidly assumed the real world had stayed just the same in the last four centuries.”

  He gave a laugh of self-mockery. “I started controlling this droid about twelve hours ago. The moment I sent it walking out of its storage room at the United Law facility, I could see this world was totally different from the one I’d left behind. The facility corridors were full of controlled droids, but the only people physically present were teenage cadets and a couple of pregnant women.”

  Hawk gave his characteristic, one-shouldered shrug that I remembered seeing in dozens of replays of him in Game. “I told myself I should have expected that given everyone enters Game at eighteen now, but a host of trivial physical details keep bothering me.”

  He turned to point at Nathan’s buggy. “Why is there a dark blue apple on that buggy seat?”

  “Because I was planning to eat it later,” said Nathan.

  “I guessed someone was planning to eat it,” said Hawk. “What’s worrying me is why it’s blue?”

  Nathan and I exchanged confused looks. “The food outlet had sold out of strawberry apples, and I don’t like apple apples, so I bought a blueberry one,” said Nathan.

  Hawk gave an odd shake of his head as if Nathan’s answer had somehow made things worse. “And why don’t rooms have any windows?”

  “I know that houses in Game have windows,” I said, “but buildings in the real world don’t. There’s no need for them when everywhere has movement-triggered, artificial lighting.”

  “Yes, but windows aren’t just for letting in natural light,” said Hawk. “They’re to let you admire the views. The small pod things that rush round on railway lines have windows, so why don’t the rooms?”

  I’d no idea what to say to that. I’d dreamed of having my own house with windows on Ganymede, because I’d have the stunning view of Jupiter in the sky. I’d never considered the idea of having a window in the real world. Even if it had been possible for my room to have a window, which it wasn’t because it didn’t have an outside wall, the view from it would have just been an area of litter-strewn grass, a couple of broken delivery trolleys, and the wall of the next apartment block.

  “The windows in pods are to let you see where you are, so you know if you’ve reached your destination transport stop or the pod is just pulling in to let an express carriage overtake,” said Nathan. “Rooms don’t need windows because they don’t move.”

  Hawk still didn’t seem entirely happy with our explanations. “There’s the odd, faintly green colour of the overhead lighting too.”

  Nathan and I automatically glanced up at the ceiling. The lights seemed fine to me.

  Hawk looked at our uncomprehending faces and sighed. “I told myself that odd physical changes didn’t matter. I was reassured to discover the teenage cadets talked using almost identical words and phrases to the ones teenagers used when I entered Game. There was just the odd quirk, like the way they sometimes abbreviated United Law to Unilaw, but otherwise speech seemed to have changed surprisingly little in four centuries.”

  I frowned. Didn’t Hawk realize that there was nothing surprising about kids today using the same words and phrases as they had four centuries ago? We all slavishly copied the speech patterns of the players we saw on the Game news channels and in replays of Game events, particularly famous Founder Players like Hawk, to prepare for when we entered Game ourselves.

  “I was fooled into thinking that teenagers’ words hadn’t changed much so their lives hadn’t changed much either,” said Hawk, “but then I was invited to sit in on the interviews of older teenage workers from the body stacks.”

  He pulled a pained face. “I dropped out of the first few interviews within a minute or two because the teenagers were too hysterical with fear to speak. Nathan, you were calmer than most, but usually limited your answers to a simple yes or no. Jex, you were by far the most articulate, and said a lot of things that shocked me, like the point about the school leaving age being down to ten.”

  There was an oddly vulnerable tone to his voice now. “When I entered Game, teenagers went to school until they were eighteen, and many kept studying for years after that. I’d been aware that the school leaving age had been reduced a couple of times since I entered Game, but I assumed it would still be something like fifteen or sixteen. When I learned that children left school and started work at ten years old, I knew this world bore no resemblance at all to the one I’d left behind, and I’d absolutely no chance of doing my job properly.”

  The golden droid’s hands waved in a gesture of helplessness. “I can’t help hunt down which teenagers planted a bomb when I’ve no idea what’s normal life for teenagers today. I can’t judge the progress and decisions of the Game or Unilaw investigations when I don’t know the most basic facts about this world. I told the players that I was resigning. I said they needed someone new to Game to do this job, someone who was familiar with the real world as it is now. The players wouldn’t accept my resignation though. They aren’t willing to trust an unknown new player to represent their interests.”

  His voice suddenly changed from wistful to briskly businesslike. “I’m stuck with my job, and that means I have to do some rapid learning about what the world is like today. I especially need to learn about how teenagers live and work, so I came here to see you two working.”

  Hawk had come to see us working and he’d found us asleep on the floor! I flushed with embarrassment and rushed into a hasty explanation. “The senior supervisor said our shift could rest unless there was another emergency. We’d worked long past the end of our last twelve-hour shift, and then Unilaw dragged us in for questioning, and ...”

  “I understand why you needed sleep,” Hawk interrupted me. “You work twelve-hour shifts here?”

  “Yah,” Nathan and I chorused the word. “We get a half an hour mid-shift break,” Nathan added.

  Hawk winced. “Working twelve hours a day in Game might be bearable because you’d still have twelve hours a day to enjoy yourselves, but in the real world most of that time must be taken up sleeping.”

  He turned to look round at the rows of freezer units. “Jex, you said in your interview that you patrol the body stacks looking for maintenance issues. That means riding your buggy along the rows of freezer units, looking for ones showing signs of failure?”

  “Yah,” I said. “I mean, no. We ride patrol on the buggies, but we aren’t checking the freezer units. Those are designed to last at least ten thousand years without maintenance, and have their own control systems monitoring them. Our job is to check for external problems like water damage and potential roof collapses.”

  Hawk glanced up at the ceiling. “Aren’t there more interesting jobs that you could be doing?”

  “Most of the interesting work involves signing up for a career path when you’re eleven,” said Nathan. “You spend the years until you enter Game as a cadet in training, and then work from within Game for another forty years after that.”

  “You didn’t want to make that long a commitment?” asked Hawk.

  Nathan was looking defensive now. “I accept there are big advantages in taking the career path route. Cadets have better accommodation and shorter working hours than standard. Once they finish training and enter Game, they get their annual subscriptions paid each year, and their lifetime subscription paid when they complete their forty year term and retire. I didn’t try it because there are a hundred kids competing for every space on a cadet training course, and none of the possible careers interested me.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been taking the alternative approach of saving as many credits as I could before I enter
ed Game. My plan was to allow myself a six month holiday and then start work again using a controlled droid. I’d calculated I would be able to pay my annual Game subscription each year and still save enough to pay my lifetime subscription within thirty years.”

  I’d listened to a lot of kids saying similar things. Their estimates of how long it would take them to pay their lifetime subscriptions varied from a conservative forty years, to a wildly optimistic twenty years. The truth was that it usually took people far longer than they estimated. If you didn’t have a career commitment forcing you to work regular hours, then it was easy to give way to the temptation to spend more and more time exploring the delights of Game.

  My mother had fallen into that trap, working and saving hard for her first year or two in Game, and then getting sucked into a daily round of parties and socializing. She gradually worked fewer hours each year, until she was barely working enough to cover her annual Game subscription. By the time she’d been in Game for eighty years, she was the only one of her friends still working, the only one still wearing a silver rather than a gold bracelet. The others had paid their lifetime Game subscriptions years or decades earlier.

  When her friends started visiting worlds that wouldn’t accept anyone in a silver bracelet, my mother was left behind for days or weeks at a time. She was desperate to pay her lifetime subscription quickly, and the fastest way to get the extra credits she needed was to sign up to have a child, but returning to the real world was incredibly hard for her after spending so long enjoying the luxurious life of Game. My mother had hated every minute of the year it took for her to have her eggs harvested, fertilized, implanted, and then go through the process of pregnancy and giving birth.