“So have you done anything lately to exploit the world we’ve made for you, Conlan?”
There was something about his tone that said this wasn’t a good time to lie. That he already knew everything I’d done, and was testing me to see if I’d tell him the truth.
“Um, well maybe I blew some people up,” I said. “But it was an accident the first time, and they had it coming the second time! Fucking Horizon pricks.”
I was letting my anger get the best of me. That wasn’t good. At least not in front of someone who worked for Lotus who could probably ban me if he really wanted to.
“And your little discovery in those mines is exactly why you’re here,” Trelor said.
My shoulders slumped and I looked down as a pit of ice formed in my stomach. Fuck. I was in trouble for blowing up those Horizon assholes, and it was so bad that they’d sent someone more powerful than a GM to swat me down. It probably wasn’t helping things that I’d also talked about how the fuckers deserved it.
They did deserve it, but in my experience official representatives of a game company usually didn’t care about the specifics of rules being broken so much as they cared about banning anyone who was breaking those rules.
“And I agree those assholes had it coming,” Trelor said, a grin splitting his face. “Fuck Horizon!”
I stared at him and blinked a couple of times as my brain caught up to what he’d said. I even rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing what I thought I saw. An official representative of Lotus who was about to ban me for exploiting their systems shouldn’t be sitting there leaning over his desk grinning. He should be glowering at me, royally pissed off that I was breaking the rules in his game, but there was none of that with Trelor.
It didn’t make sense. And I got that tingling along my scalp that told me there was something interesting going on here, because I figured things not making sense meant there was an opportunity here.
Especially when he was talking smack about Horizon.
“So you don’t like Horizon either?” I asked.
“No one who built this game likes those assholes,” he said. “Sure it was nice that they gave us those licensing fees for their modules while we were working on Lotus Online. They provided a stopgap that had people wanting to buy the earbuds while we were working on this.”
He gestured all around him, and the meaning was clear enough. Most everyone had figured Lotus was using Horizon to keep the lights on and popularize their system since they didn’t have a game ready to go at launch, but it was weird to hear someone from the company laying it out like that.
“But you still don’t like them even though they kept Lotus afloat?” I asked.
“Of course not!” he growled. “What self-respecting gamer likes those fuckers? Everyone who built Lotus are gamers, even if we haven’t had much time for games outside of Lotus since crunch time started to get this launched.”
My eyes narrowed. On the one hand it was interesting getting all this insider information, but on the other hand…
“Why are you telling me any of this?” I asked.
“Why not?” he asked with a shrug.
“Aren’t you worried about getting fired? What if I go out and show the world the playback from this?”
Trelor grinned and made an expansive gesture. “Go ahead. Show me the recording.”
I knew where the hell this was going before I got there, but I thought about accessing my personal recordings anyway. Sure enough when I looked at my personal stream, something that saved the last twenty-four hours unless I went in and selected something to save more permanently, there was a big black screen with the glowing green outline of a hand rendered in ASCII art flipping the bird. It started right around the time I stepped into Trelor’s Oddments.
“Okay, so you’ve got my attention,” I said. “Why did you bring me here? Is it because of the gem I used to blow up those Horizon fucks?”
“The gem you used to blow up Horizon fucks?” he asked, arching an eyebrow and showing something other than amusement for the first time since he’d introduced himself.
“You don’t know about that?” I asked, suddenly feeling like a perp who’d given up too much information to a cop who had no idea what the fuck was going on.
“Humor me and assume I don’t,” he said, still arching that eyebrow.
“If you don’t know then there’s no way I’m going to give anything away,” I said.
Trelor sighed. “Would you be willing to tell me something if I told you I had no interest in getting you in trouble? Or that I could simply pull the logs and see what you’re talking about, but I’ll be a lot more grumpy because you forced me to go looking?”
“Sounds like the kind of thing a cop would say to someone to convince them they aren’t about to get thrown in the slammer,” I said. “So no thanks. You can go on that wild goose chase through the logs.”
Trelor frowned for another long moment. He muttered to himself for a bit, then muttered something at one of those glowing orbs. It pulsed for a moment, and then everything around us went dead. All the glowing and the special effects that made the place look magical were gone, and it was just the two of us staring a challenge at one another across the room.
“I need your help, kid,” he said.
“My help?”
“You’re the first fruits of my labor. The first person capable of Spellcrafting who also fits some very specific requirements I’m looking for.”
My chest felt tight. He’d given a hell of a lot away there. There were other people out there who could Spellcraft. At least that bit about me being the first who also fit his requirements would seem to indicate there were others out there who could Spellcraft.
I wasn’t alone, but the others were keeping their mouths shut if what I’d read, or rather what I hadn’t read, on the official forums was anything to go by.
“Care to go into exactly what sort of ‘specific requirements’ you’re looking for?” I asked. “Or how many other people have fulfilled them?”
Trelor’s grin was positively rapacious. Like we’re talking it took the looks Keia gave when she was at her most bloodthirsty and turned them up to eleven. It helped that the smile was plastered on the face of a dude with a villainous Van Dyke, and not a hot elf chick.
I definitely didn’t want to make out with him as he grinned rapaciously, that was for sure.
“That’s simple enough,” he said. “I’m looking for someone capable of unlocking several crafting and gathering skills in rapid succession which showed the appropriate interest in crafting over killing.”
“That’s it?” I said. “But I’ve mostly been gathering. I haven’t actually crafted anything yet.”
“But you were pursuing it,” he replied. “Besides, that’s not the most important thing I’m looking for.”
“And that most important thing is?”
I noticed he’d glossed over giving me a number on how many people had discovered Spellcrafting at this moment, but I figured I wasn’t going to press my luck when he was already in a talking sort of move.
“I need someone with no allegiance to Horizon,” he said. “In fact, you might say I want someone who hates Horizon with such a deep and abiding passion that nothing will stop them from trying to get a little revenge on those bastards.”
I licked my lips. I was liking what this guy said more and more. Sure it was a little creepy that the game had somehow been rummaging around in my head to discover motivations like that, but I guess it’s the least I should’ve expected from a system that had direct access to my brain.
“Can Horizon access my thoughts to the degree you seem to be able to?” I asked.
“Fuck no!” Trelor said, and hearing that kind of potty mouth from a badass wizard was a touch disconcerting. “I’m not even supposed to be able to do that, no one in Lotus is, but I’ve had some help from Al.”
“Al?” I asked.
“We can talk about that later. If you decide to work wit
h me,” he said.
"So you're a wizard," I said.
"Sort of," Trelor said. "And you're a crafter?"
“Crafting is way better than whacking monsters,” I said. “Especially if you’re working with a crafting system that can break a game.”
“A man after my own heart,” Trelor said, holding a hand over his heart to show me how serious he was. "Hell. Some of my best memories from playing games are from crafting."
“Mine too,” I said, then my eyes narrowed as I looked around the room.
“So you really do work for Lotus,” I said.
“Guilty as charged.”
“And you need my help for some reason.”
“More than you could imagine.”
“I suppose I have one question before I give you a yes or a no.”
“Shoot.”
“Why the fuck are you assholes letting Horizon take over the game and ruin it? The whole world was looking forward to a game where Horizon wasn’t calling the shots, and you let them send in an invading army? What the ever loving fuck are you assholes thinking?”
46
The IOI Gambit
Trelor slammed a meaty palm down on his desk again. “You want to know why the fuck they’re running around in our game? Because we made a deal with them and apparently the middle management pukes and legal idiots never thought to put in a clause that prevented them from invading the game!”
“I mean that was pretty fucking stupid not anticipating that they’d pull the IOI Gambit,” I said. “But why the hell would the Lotus higher ups make any deal with Horizon in the first place?”
Trelor’s face screwed up in something that looked like genuine pain. When he spoke his voice was quiet, but full of cold fury.
“Those fuckers threatened to slow down our fucking game on their infrastructure if we didn’t give them a new way to make money now that we were killing the cash cow they’d been milking for the past couple of years with those shitty modules they rushed to market.”
“But they own like all the infrastructure in the world,” I said.
Sure there were a couple of aging satellite constellations out there from a more hopeful time that provided Internet access around the world, but there were so many people trying to access them at any given time that trying to get something as simple as a text email through could be difficult. Trying to game on them brought back the bad old days geezers talked about of five red bars on Battle.net when you had to wait ten seconds between sending a unit a command and the unit carrying out said command.
“Exactly. Word is the executives figured it wasn’t a big deal. Let Horizon sell items in the game. People would go to raid dungeons to get most of their loot anyway,” Trelor said. “They didn’t anticipate the IOI Gambit, which goes to show how little the assholes in management know about the culture they’re regularly fleecing for those huge bonuses.”
I sat back. Trelor waved a hand and something appeared behind me, which was a good thing for my tailbone since I’d been headed on a one way trip to the floor before. I was so used to chairs appearing behind me when I was in the Amyrlin’s study with Kris that I didn’t think about the chair maybe not being there in this case.
“So they came to you and threatened to throttle the game if you didn’t throw them a bone. Lotus offers them in-game item sales because you don’t think it’ll be a big deal with raiding. Then they invade and shut down raiding so players will buy their stuff. Those devious motherfuckers!”
“Agreed,” Trelor said. “Motherfuckers of the highest order.”
“What about the forums?” I said. “I couldn’t find anything on the official Lotus forums about Horizon taking over.”
Trelor’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Yeah, my understanding is the community managers are working insane hours keeping those posts off the forums. They don’t want to embarrass the company while the lawyers wrangle with Horizon.”
“I’m guessing the lawyers wrangling isn’t doing much good since they’re still here after a month of doing their dirty work in early access,” I said.
“As a duly designated representative of Lotus I cannot comment on ongoing legal matters,” Trelor said while making a jerking off motion.
“What about crafting?” I asked.
“What about it?” Trelor asked.
“Horizon is focused on selling items in game and they’re shutting down raiding, but what about crafting? Couldn’t players make stuff that’s as good as or better than the shit Horizon is selling?”
Trelor leaned forward again. All the glowing implements came to life at the same moment, and it gave him and his smile a slightly unhinged feel.
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone came along and did something like that using the wonderful system I put together specifically for a person who loves crafting more than PVP, PVE, and raiding combined? The rare individual who sees a crafting system as a means to its own end, rather than something to give them a shitty bonus while they’re swinging Anal Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the What The Fuck Ever at the latest treadmill raid boss?”
I was already sitting, so there was no need for me to do another stunned sit down. The enormity of what he was implying without coming out and saying it was sinking in. This was big. Way bigger than anything I’d done before.
It was a chance to grab Horizon by the danglies and repeatedly punch a multinational corporate monstrosity exactly where it would hurt them: their bottom line.
“So you really don’t like Horizon, do you?” he asked.
"I don't," I said.
"Any particular reason why?" Todd asked. "Like did they stiff you on a module refund or something when you realized it was shit and tried to get your money back?”
I wondered if he was playing with me. He knew my name, after all, so presumably he could look up other information as well. I also figured even if he was playing with me, I’d play along. It wasn’t every day that an actual person working for the company that created the game I was trying to break came along to offer me assistance doing that breaking.
"The bastards killed my sister," I said. "They turned her into a vegetable with some bad mental feedback or something. I don't know the technicalities of it, but they fucked up the direct connection into her brain and they killed her. I can’t prove it, but I think they did it deliberately. I had to watch as we disconnected her from life support and I held her hand as she breathed her last breath, but she was long gone at that point.”
A long awkward pause filled the room.
"Is that so?" he finally asked. “I’d heard some of the stories. I thought that might be the case with you based on some of the research I did, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“Oh?” I asked, suddenly interested. “So do you have any insider knowledge on what happened? I know Lotus is a party to some of the lawsuits, but there hasn’t been much in the news about it.”
“None of that is my department. Sure some people got fired when the higher ups realized it was possible for Horizon to do something like that, but even that’s just rumor. Human Lotus Interfacing is being tight-lipped while legal does their thing,” he said.
“So Lotus is trying to cover it up?” I asked, feeling a spike of anger.
“As far as I know they’re doing everything they can to make sure nothing like that can ever happen again while also waiting for everything to go through the courts since Horizon is being less than forthcoming about what happened on their end to everyone. Us included,” he said.
“You swear there’s no coverup?” I said.
“I swear I don’t know anything about a coverup if there is one,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you. I know as much as you when it comes to Horizon killing people with the Lotus hardware. If there’s some conspiracy out there they didn’t invite me into it.”
I sighed. That was about what I’d expected. For a wonderful moment I’d thought maybe I’d get more information about what had killed Diana. So much for that hope.
“So
are you still going to work with me?” he asked.
I thought that over. I guess I’d always known there was the possibility that Lotus might be involved in everything that happened with Diana, even if that involvement was something as simple as not telling the world about the flaw Horizon was able to exploit to kill her.
Still, there was something about Trelor that made me trust him. Maybe Lotus did have something to do with those deaths. Maybe not. Either way, I believed him when he said he didn’t have anything to do with it.
Besides, who was I kidding? This was the opportunity of a lifetime. Someone from Lotus wanted my help fucking over Horizon. This went well beyond exploiting the game.
“Fine. We have a deal,” I said.
“I’m glad you…”
“On the condition you bring my friends in on it too.”
Trelor paused. He looked at me with the sort of wary eyes that said he didn’t like my proposal.
“Your friends?” he asked.
“Their names are Keia and Kris. I’ve been gaming with Kris since we were both kids, she was dating my sister when Horizon killed her, and I know Keia in the real world and the game. She’s a badass who’s helped me fighting Horizon.”
“And does your desire to have her helping you have anything to do with how she looks in whatever tight armor she parades around in?” Trelor asked, his tone quite dry.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“You know I could have you banned from the game permanently if you don’t play along,” he said, though his tone said he wasn’t all that serious about it.
“You could try,” I said. “But then you’d have to go looking for someone else. And I can assure you you’re never going to find someone who hates Horizon as much as I do while also possessing my unique resume.”
“Your unique resume?” he asked, sounding like a man who needed to be convinced of something.
Luckily I had just the thing to prove to him just how much he needed me and no one else. I pulled up the first person video of me taking out the Horizon gamemaster and played it for the second time since that fateful day.
Spellcraft Page 35
