by G. Akella
***
It all began a few years ago when, on the insistence of my little (and only) sister, I submitted my works to the studio behind the Realm of Arkon.
Roman Kozhevnikov, a 32 years old Moscow resident, divorced, no kids. An ordinary man with an ordinary childhood, after getting my Bachelor's in finance online, I took a job as head of sales at a midsized company. My hobbies included art, beer and women. I was just your average Joe.
On that momentous weekend, my little sister burst into my rented apartment like a tornado. Wrinkling her nose at the fragrance hovering in the hallway—my latest fling had just departed ten minutes prior to her arrival—she shoved into my hands bags of produce, pecked me on the cheek and, without bothering to take off her shoes, slipped into the room.
"Hey!" I yelled after the ginger beast. "Shoes off!"
"Like you ever clean this place!" Alyona shouted back from inside the room. "You should be putting your hoes to work, at least—have them vacuum once in a while. Don't leave it all up to me."
I carried the groceries into the kitchen. My sister would never visit just because—she was under constant impression that her brother was on the brink of starvation. I must have told her a thousand times to stop bringing me food, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.
"Have some decency!" I said indignantly, walking into the room. "I clean up plenty. Maybe not every day, but every other for sure…"
"Oh, sure! Dusting off a keyboard, rinsing a coffee mug, and flushing the toilet—that's real proper cleaning," she snickered, peering into the monitor while hammering away on the keyboard.
Man, her future husband was in for a fun life! If anything, it wouldn't be boring. Considering Alyona's energy, daily shakeups and eventual spoon-feeding at a mental ward was all but guaranteed.
"Don't you have Internet at home? What are you searching for? Need any help?" I asked, but my little sister simply waved me away.
"The only thing you're good for is searching for the nearest club or dating site. Don't make me go into your browsing history… Ah, there it is!" she stuck a finger in the monitor. "Have a look."
"What is it?" I asked as I walked up to her. Looking back at me from the monitor screen were two female elves, clad in suspiciously light armor as they posed triumphantly over the carcass of some mythic beast that sprouted more arrows than a porcupine had quills. "And?"
With a heavy sigh and a wry face, my little sister got up from the chair, sat me down in it instead, and began to speak—in the tone of a doctor addressing a mental patient.
"Look, big bro, you know that I love you. I want you to be happy. But instead of starting a family, all you care about is women. I want you to get your shit together and quit gawking at tits all day long." Turning my head toward the monitor, she pointed a finger at an icon that read "Careers". "These guys are looking for a location illustrator. This is your chance! Your drawings are amazing! And the Realm of Arkon…" Alyona swung her arms excitedly, "that project is already worth a hundred billion, and it's only picking up steam. If you put in even five years there, you'll be set for life."
"Hold your horses, sis. They need a professional. And I know video games about as well as a pig knows oranges. You probably need to know how to draw in 3D."
"Gosh, Roman, you can be such a dolt sometimes! Look, it says here in plain language—they want someone to create! The implementation won't be your problem at all!"
I didn't want to argue. Drawing fantasy-style scenery was indeed a hobby of mine. Sometimes, when reading a good book, I'd get absorbed and try to recreate a vision from it on paper. Only a few people knew about this hobby, however. That same day I e-mailed seven scans of my drawings to the address indicated on the site, and Alyona herself composed the e-mail. The response came three days later. And in another two weeks I was already in San Francisco…
The game's subscriber base kept growing, the world kept expanding, and my work was in hot demand. And they paid me well for it. So well that I didn't need to care about my daily bread, and could even send money to my sister back in the now-distant Moscow.
For two whole years I worked like a dog, buying a car and a house in the suburbs. It was more than I'd ever dreamed of. I went back to Russia a few times and was even considering bringing my sister stateside when it all came crumbling down.
For the past several months or so, ominous clouds had been gathering over the company. Strange people would turn up at the office and summon employees for private conversations. The management would disappear at meetings for days on end. Rumors swirled that we were being bought out by the US government.
Our department was left alone—indeed, why bother the artists? The worst that could happen was that I'd get canned, and I didn't worry about that much, considering the project's prospects. These things normally went down was as follows: a bunch of big shots in their ivory towers would do their dance and replace some or most of the management, which hardly ever impacted us mere mortals. Our staff was multinational and, shockingly, didn't include even a single American. We even jested that, after the sale of the company, a new American faction would appear on the Arkon map, its banner featuring a hamburger and a Coke vending machine.
The joke was based on reality—you could buy both Coke and Pepsi in the game in nearly every Erantian bar, though their art looked different from the real thing. There was also cellular communication with the real world, and priced accordingly. Just because your boss lost track of time leveling his blacksmithing skill, that's no reason for the firm to go out of business. And it didn't end there—many companies and banks bent over backwards to establish in-game offices, petitioning to the authorities and bribing NPCs, buying up castles, powerleveling their employees and concocting all kinds of schemes to circumvent the RP-17 requirements and import their real names and logos into the game. The game's gold was worth roughly the same as its real-world counterpart. One gold coin—three grams in weight—cost around one hundred evergreen coins. Money could be officially transferred into and out of the game by paying the applicable taxes and fees. The limit were set at three thousand dollars per account to transfer in, with no limit to transfer out.
Each account was limited to only one character. Sick of your druid and want a warrior instead? No problem—delete the druid and play warrior all you like. Furthermore, you were not allowed to transfer real money into the game more than once, just as you weren't allowed to create a character of the opposite sex. When creating your first character, the game read your biometric parameters and stored them in the Sage's database. All of these "restrictions" could be easily bypassed by depositing money into some firm's real-world bank account: paying for consulting services regarding breeding gerbils in Antarctica, for instance, would result in gold being credited to your game account. The game and near-game world were experiencing a veritable gold rush, with people quitting their real jobs in favor of earning virtual money. The circulated amounts were astronomical. High-level clans would capture and defend areas of concentrated rare metals, where their miners toiled day and night to earn dough both virtual and real. Rangers were always on the lookout for new, undiscovered dungeons with the aim of selling any new information to various gaming communities. Many companies imported their whole businesses into the game. It was little wonder, then, that the government of the world's Foremost Democratic Power was expressing interest.
Toward the end of summer, the entire staff was taken on a company retreat aimed at promoting a corporate culture, filled with trainings on teamwork and fostering leadership. Held at a posh hotel on the coast, we were subjected to roughly five hours of brainwashing at various trainings daily; come evening, the folks would let loose and take to drunken debauchery. This went on for one whole week.
At the final party on Friday, after the brass gave their speeches and the final round of revelry began, I headed up to my room to change my shirt, whose sleeve had been smudged with some exotic sauce by a certain colleague of mine with soft lips and a C cup.
Walk
ing past a door leading to the terrace, I heard a commotion and a woman's sobbing. Deciding to take a look and see if my help was needed, I came upon the following scene. Standing with his back to me about ten feet away was a man, holding the chin of a sobbing girl in a gown with two fingers of his left hand, and hissing lazily through clenched teeth:
"Do you realize who you're refusing, slut? On your knees, and start working off your debt." Lowering her chin, he slapped her hard across the face. "Now, bitch!"
Now, I'm far from a knight in shining armor, but I but don't like seeing women harmed. And I really, really don't like rapists. Putting my left hand on the bastard's shoulder, I spun him toward me hard enough that his chin came crashing head-on with my right fist. As he began to topple over, I sealed the deal with a left—purely on instinct. The would-be rapist collapsed to the floor. I was about to kick him in the gut for good measure (as I said, I'm far from anyone's version of a knight), but then I recognized the victim as Adam Cheney—a real asshole who also happened to be on the company's board of directors—and decided against it. That, however, turned out to be a mistake…
Cheney stirred, then scrambled up from the floor. His eyes were two pools of rage; he spat some blood on the white marble, and spoke in a tone of bitter frost.
"You're an idiot, Roman. Or rather, a dead man," he drew a finger across his throat, fixed his blazer, and was gone from the terrace.
An unpleasant course of events, to be sure, though I didn't regret my actions in the slightest. My time in this friendly country had clearly come to an end, since my employment termination was all but guaranteed. As for the dead man comment, well, we would see about that. We weren't in Africa, after all, but it would be good for me to consult with a certain someone who might have useful advice for my predicament. I turned to the girl.
"You all right?" I asked her.
Her mouth agape and big brown eyes opened wide, the girl shifted her gaze from me to the door into which Adam had disappeared with barefaced horror. Finally, seeming to arrive at a decision, she uttered:
"We have to get out of here! Can you give me a lift?"
"Meet me in front of the main entrance in twenty minutes. I'm Roman, by the way."
"I'm Jane. And, Roman… Thank you," she spoke softly.
We drove in silence for thirty minutes. I was in my thoughts, contemplating the road, while Jane was checking something in her mirror. She was a real looker, with huge eyes the color of chestnut, almost black, raven hair fashioned in a bob style, and a slender figure that even the denim pants and jacket she'd changed into couldn't ruin.
As for me, I was sulking over the fact that I really didn't want to go back to Russia. Let the nationalists curse me all they want, but I liked living here. Have you ever seen the mist envelop the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge? The feeling you get when observing the phenomenon from the bridge itself is indescribable. And then there were the Yosemite mountains with their glaciers and waterfalls, and the ancient sequoias in the Mariposa Grove! I wasn't particularly enamored with America as a country and its exorbitant ambitions, but Americans themselves were pretty decent folk.
But what could a simple graphic artist do? Even in the Realm of Arkon, a single character had incomparably more control over their fate. Perhaps that was why so many people were living their whole lives online?
"How does Cheney know you?" Jane's voice interrupted my contemplation.
"We met about a year and a half ago," I glanced at her concentrated face. "He was personally managing a project the details of which weren't disclosed to me. I designed the zone: a castle, ten or so villages, landscapes and environs. It was an unusual order—had to be a recreation zone. A lake in the middle, yachts and mansions, a woods, and the castle itself was nearly twice the standard size, clearly of the level ten variety. Cheney's assistant was all over me the whole time…" I creased my brow, trying to remember the name. "McLean, I think it was. See, there are certain rules. For example, RP-17 would never allow contemporary buildings in the game. Or making a zone that wouldn't be accessible by foot. I tried to explain these things to that shit-for-brains, but it was useless. In the end I gave up and did as instructed, then handed over the art to the designers. What should have been an easy job—an almost perfect circle twelve miles in diameter—turned into a nightmare. So much headache, you'd think I was drawing the Great Forest."
"McLean left the company seven months ago," Jane put the mirror away into her purse. "I'm scared, Roman! Very scared. Cheney is not the kind of man to forgive something like that. I don't want to work here anymore." She looked at me, alarm splashing out of her eyes. "I'm on vacation starting Monday. I'll mail in my resignation, lay low for a while and hope he forgets about me. The company is going through tough times—hopefully that will keep him busy."
"How did you end up there, anyway?"
"Because I'm an idiot! I needed some paperwork signed, and Adam hasn't been in his office for weeks, always traveling or in meetings. I finally caught him after his presentation, and he suggested we go up to his room and iron out some points of contention. When he started hitting on me, I slipped out of the room, but he caught up to me and pushed me out onto the terrace. It was stupid of me to go up to his room, wasn't it?"
I grunted. It was the eternal women's question, and if you answered it honestly, you could forget about getting any. And since I actually really liked the girl, I gave the politically correct answer: no, she wasn't at fault whatsoever, it's just that sometimes our circumstances overwhelm us.
We dropped by her place to pick up her stuff, then headed to a hotel she was planning on holing up in, unwilling to stay in her own home. Along the way she asked me to stop the car, got out and made a call to someone from a pay phone.
"My girlfriend will pick me up Sunday evening," said Jane, climbing back into the car. Then she added, "You're not going to leave a helpless woman alone, right?"
The weekend flew by. Jane ended up being a surprisingly pleasant conversationalist; we spent our days sightseeing, going to the movies and dining at cafés, and our nights making love. It wasn't love or anything of the sort—we simply had fun together. At least I thought so, even though our interactions carried a measure of tension. We made a tacit agreement not to bring up work or the incident from Friday. And it wasn't until Sunday evening, as I was loading her things into her girlfriend's Volkswagen, that she pressed herself to me and whispered:
"Promise me you'll leave this place. I have a… premonition."
I lifted her chin and kissed it, gave her a wink and said:
"Everything will be fine, darling." And then, for some reason, I added, "If anything happens, my character's name is Krian. The first two letters are my initials spelled backwards—easy to remember. Take care of yourself…"
I didn't like parting on such an uncertain note. The whole story stunk, with its lack of a beginning and an ambiguous end. Would I ever see Jane again? I had no idea. And if I did, would we remember these two days fondly and want to rekindle them?
My musings were interrupted with a phone call.
"Hey, Ivan, I was just about to call you," I said excitedly.
"Hey, Roman. There's a French café right off Market Street, I'll tell you the address… It's about fifteen minutes from where you are. Give your name at the door and they'll take you to me. Hurry, I'm already here."
"Wait, how do you—" I started to say, but suddenly there was only dial tone.
It was all super weird. Ivan knew full well that I lived in the suburbs, and it would take me at least an hour to get to Market Street. Although… I glanced at the phone in my hand. Right, we lived in a world of high technology! Fine, then, this was even better.
I met Ivan Barnes a year and a half ago—exactly five minutes after I'd pulled his kid from under the wheels of a moving vehicle. His wife Sarah had driven up to meet her husband, and their son—four-year-old Sam, a facetious little guy—ran out onto the roadway after a soccer ball. I was just leaving the office and, luckily
, happened to be nearby. No one got hurt, and later that evening I was having dinner with the family at their home. I found out that my new pal was named Ivan in honor of his Russian great-grandfather who had immigrated to Canada many years ago. We would get together on many occasions since, and had even gone fishing a few times. But when the company entered its stretch of turmoil, Ivan pretty much disappeared. It had been three months since I saw him last.
Ivan held a fairly important post on Arkon's cybersecurity team, though his appearance—light skin, blond hair, high forehead—defied all my past stereotypes. Weren't representatives of his profession supposed to have an entirely unremarkable appearance? I could easily draw Ivan's portrait from memory even now. Sure, the company's cybersecurity guys weren't exactly CIA, but trust me when I say they were far from pushovers.
Following the bell's melodious ringing, a comely young woman in a conservative black skirt and white blouse walked up from the front desk. Cocking her head slightly and giving me a most welcoming look, she said:
"Is the monsieur expected?"
Naturally, having arrived on the last Parisian stagecoach, the monsieur smiled and took a look around. The café was small but cozy, with the customary French wine-colored tones…
"Yes, my name is Kozhevnikov," I said to the young woman.
"Please, follow me."
Ivan was sitting in a far corner, facing the entrance, over a cup of coffee and a lit cigarette. Upon seeing me, he rose to his feet and flashed his signature, picture-perfect American smile. For a moment, his eyes seemed warmer.
"Hey, buddy, long time no see!" he said. "How have you been?"
"Hey, Ivan!" I smiled back, answering his firm handshake. "How's Sarah and Sam?"
The young woman who had escorted me took my order of one espresso and withdrew.
"We're all right. It's you who's been having adventures," he shook his head.
We sat down. I produced a pack of Lucky Strike, put a cigarette between my lips and took a drag. As I exhaled, I asked him:
"As I understand, your phone call wasn't an accident? Or did you find out that I was nearby and decided to have some decency and finally see a friend?"
"Riddle me this, Roman, was it really necessary to punch out a Board of Directors member? Now, sure, plenty of people wanted to punch out this particular member. My guys were green with envy, watching that footage."
"Footage?" I asked with surprise.
"Can you really be so naive?" he winked at me. "The hotel is equipped with cameras all over—everything gets recorded. And a guy of Cheney's stature is nearly always under surveillance."
"So, that means—" I began to speak.
"It means nothing," Ivan interrupted me mid-sentence and fell back in his chair. "If that security footage hadn't accidentally," he emphasized the word, "landed on the desk of FBI Special Agent Foster—and I'm sure you've noticed the FBI sniffing around in Arkon's affairs—you, my friend, and the damsel you've rescued from the monster's paws, would be feeding fishes on the bottom of the bay."
I sat there, quiet and dispirited. This was indeed a jam.
"Thanks, Ivan. I didn't recognize him until it was too late." I took another drag and put the cigarette out in an ashtray. "So, what do I do now?"
"Don't thank me yet," said Ivan, completely ignoring my question. "My guys will lose your damsel somewhere along the way." He grinned and shook his head reproachfully. "Some conspirators you are! She'll be fine for the foreseeable future, and it should all blow over after a while."
"You were watching us the whole time?"
"What did you think? The FBI has the footage. They're going to want to interview you privately, by the way, so stay tuned. Anyway, on that footage Cheney is seen threatening you, and that's your get-out-of-jail-free card. If anything happens to you, that gives the FBI an upper hand on the company. Everybody gets it, which is why we were ordered to keep an eye on you. And only that."
I was finally brought my coffee. I took a sip and nearly choked from the thought that popped into my head.
"Were there also cameras in the hotel room?" I asked. "Cause we were, err…"
At first, Ivan was giving me a blank stare. Having finally understood my meaning, he burst out laughing.
"No, not in the room. But even if there were, it's not anything we haven't seen before," he assured me. "Though it wouldn't have killed you to be mindful of your neighbors as far as noise… Anyway, let's get serious. You need to understand that what I'm about to tell you transcends the bounds of even official secrecy."
I put my hands out in front and did the gesture of locking my mouth with a key and discarding it.
With a shake of the head and a sigh, Ivan asked me:
"What do you know about Arkon?"
"Only what everyone else does. It's a game world with full immersion. The world's most popular game, worth around two hundred billion. Roughly ten million daily connections, if memory serves me right."
"And yet, your own character is a measly level thirty five. Arkon is a world of possibilities. Wizards, warriors, elves and fairies. It offers the chance to become truly epic and achieve things you could only dream of in this world," Ivan peered at me with his eyes of cold gray steel, expecting a response.
I fell back in my chair and fired back without thinking:
"You know that I'm an artist, so I can spot fake from a mile away. My level thirty five warrior is there for work purposes—to roam around the different zones, check out the fruits of my labor. And when you know that it was all drawn by you… They can scream all they want about immersion and realism, but I think it's all crap. There's a disconnect between what the brain says and what the hands feel. For instance, you know the establishment near the Square of Heroes in Vaedarr, The Black Violet?" Ivan gave a confirming grunt, and I continued. "I was there only once. Picked up a girl for the night. And yeah, it feels good and all, but you can still sense that you're having sex with a rubber doll. Albeit an animated rubber doll. The tactile sensations aren't the same. Lilies may smell like lilies, but there's something off about them. I don't know how else to explain it. The point is," I produced another cigarette from the pack, "I think I want a normal life. To find a woman, settle down and start a family. And that's not an option in the game," I spread my arms.
"I didn't peg you for an aesthete, brother," Ivan smiled, "carping on lilies… I'll have you know that those who spend a lot of time online have a totally different perception of the world; for them, lilies are lilies. And the women are real. The analysts forecast that in another six months RP-17 will enter a whole new level of control. He's always learning, improving the degree of sensory authenticity so that even nitpickers like you wouldn't be able to tell the virtual world apart from the real one. Not that it would do you any good—there are plenty of women, but none of them can give you kids, that's just a fact. But I digress," he shrugged and creased his brow. "The truth is that things are dire."
"What the hell is going on?!" I couldn't take it anymore. "What's with all these spy games?"
"Remember the two girls from our PR division that disappeared? Monica Reed and Sarah Price?" He took out another cigarette from the pack. "Well, both of them had attended receptions at Cheney's mansion on several occasions." Ivan took a deep drag. "The cops only care so much about these things, but you know that the company can't afford to sit back. Any potential leaks must be plugged, and here you've got two employees with a level three clearance drop off the grid. When we started looking into everyone that was present at those parties, we dug up information on a project called Paradise—some kind of recreation zone in Arkon that's been placed outside the AI's control."
"But that's impossible," I objected. "Nothing can happen in Arkon without 17 knowing about it. He's a veritable demiurge—all changes to the system must be approved by him, and you can't change his settings without a shareholders' council and at least seventy five percent of votes." I looked at my frowning friend. "You read the news, don't you, Ivan? Arkon holds
only forty one percent of the shares."
"I don't give a crap what's possible and what isn't." Ivan leaned forward, "Not when Hayes calls me into his office and orders me to stop digging, and then one of my guys brings me this," he slipped a hand into the inner pocket of his jacket, took something out and put it on the table, then pushed it toward me.
Resting on the table in front of me was a typical cheap video player of Chinese manufacturing, barely the size of a cigarette pack.
"What's this?" I inquired.
Ivan fell back in his chair and crossed his arms, then nodded at the player.
"Turn it on and see."
I shrugged and pressed Play.
The picture came on right away. Spread out on a table, bound with chains and whimpering pitiably was a Light Elf female—obviously a player, name Prissy, level 15, health bar in the yellow, numerous cuts on her body, wearing nothing but bra and panties. The decor abounded in blood-red tones, though only several pieces of black furniture and a huge mirror fit in the frame. Standing next to the table was a Dark Elf, level 178, name Kuwaz. He was holding an ordinary kitchen knife and standing sideways to the camera, keeping his face out of the frame.
"Don't worry, sweetheart," he said with the voice of a good doctor, "we'll play a little more, and then we'll patch you right up." Cutting the bra with the knife, he tossed it aside, put his hand on the girl's left breast like he owned it, and asked, "how's this?"
Then he turned to the videographer.
"The hell are you recording for, idiot!" he screamed, his handsome face warped with rage.
"Relax, Ronnie, don't be so—" the other's voice sounded, but then the footage ended.
"Where did you get this?" I stared at Ivan. "This is… it's…"
"Exactly," he took back the player. "Does this change your tune? Is in-game torture impossible? Is rape impossible? Somehow I doubt that she'd consented to her brazier being removed. Oh, and Prissy," he held a pause, "that was the name of Sarah Price's character. She's listed as offline, but she's clearly there! You saw the footage—it's definitely Arkon, and not some Thai porn site. The button layout, health and mana bars…"
I kept a stunned silence. Torture was prohibited in the game, unless part of the game's story. A quest, for instance, might call for you to be caught and burned at the stake (the dark races sure had it made!), but in those moments all sensations of pain disappeared. But this—slashing and cutting with a knife—this was something else! There was always the option to log out and contact the administration. The offender's account would then be immediately and irreversibly banned. Removing another character's gear was likewise prohibited, including undergarments which could only be removed by mutual consent. The game was 18+, after all, and sex between any humanoid races was possible.
It was possible that the girl was a masochist in real life, that it was all orchestrated. But then why did her username match the missing employee's, and why was she listed as offline? I was thoroughly lost.
Ivan's phone rang.
"Hello?" I watched a frown come over his face as he listened. "Understood. Hanging up now," he said and put the phone away in his pocket, ruminating.
"You should leave, Roman. You've gotten yourself into a real shitstorm," Ivan declared, fished out a pen, and wrote down an address on a napkin. "We were ordered to lift surveillance off you. This is odd…" He handed me the napkin. "Go to this address. Lay low for at least three days, then call a cab and get the hell out of the state. Forget your phone here, and leave your car, too—my guys will drive it to your place later. Call me at work in a week. Now go, I've got the check. And good luck."
"Thank you," I got up and offered my hand.
He rose, enclosing my hand in his, and smacked me on the shoulder.
"Don't forget to leave your keys."
I put my bundle of car and house keys on the table, took one last glance at my friend, then turned around and headed for the exit.
Once outside, I took a look around, raised the collar of my windbreaker and, feeling like a character from a cheap detective story, hurried toward the subway. How quickly your life could change sometimes, forcing you to abandon everything—your car, house, job and coworkers—and run. Immersed in my thoughts, I missed the sudden shift in movement in a man walking towards me… A powerful blow right in the solar plexus and I doubled over in pain. There was a sting in my neck, and as I faded into darkness I heard the sound of doors opening in the van that had just pulled up behind me.
