16th March, 2052

His alarm woke him at 3 am. Another day, yet another ersatz hangover. Even though there was no pain, Jake opened his eyes slowly, looking around his bedsit with half open lids. He swallowed, expecting nausea and a little soreness despite knowing there would not be any. Why did his character insist on drinking so much? Was it a social thing, peer pressure? Or a way of overcoming shyness? Jake had never really been prone to either, so why the pathetic reliance on alcohol? Not only did it give him the worst headaches, but there was also some kind of an in-game buff associated with it, as well as the effect on his characters thinking. I mean, it sounded like half the people they spoke to were feeding them lines about merchants and robberies and they never picked it up. Except for Grim, of course. Jake sniggered. He hadn’t even got that far, the blacksmith he’d spoken to sounded like a doozy; could he have met anyone more likely to push him over the edge into frothing madness? The sight of Grim storming around the bar, eyes bugging and smashing mugs down whilst giving an impromptu performance of ‘a man too stupid to breathe and chew bread’ had all of them in stitches.

After a quick breakfast of left-over curry, he threw on yesterday’s clothes (not-too-smelly) and headed for the cleaning depot for his shift. The streets had been washed clean by the overnight rain and smelt fresh and alive. This was good, perhaps there would less extra rubbish to collect. Also, people were less likely to hang around and spew in the streets with rain dripping down their necks. They’d probably do it in the auto taxis, but that was not his problem.

The crippling carbon tax on private cars and autonomous cabs meant there was hardly any traffic on the streets, and so less noise and pollution. Also, the post-pandemic population crash and net movement from the cities meant much lower population densities in the major conurbations. A police drone zoomed past, and Jake made sure he looked up to ensure clear identification; if he didn’t, he’d be tagged as unknown and would be picked up by street cameras and more drones as he got further into the city. They’d back-check and cross-check and possibly do a speculative prediction with potentially unexpected results. Also, the more scrutiny he came under, the harder the system would look, creating a flurry of positive feedback investigations that might last days. The key to survival in today’s information-rich society was to be identified early and often, in predictable patterns, and get placed on a lower tier search algorithm. Systems were less likely to look closely at your deviations from expected on lesser ranked search classifications.

Jake enjoyed his walk, musing about the game and enjoying the silence. At one point he was sure there was someone walking behind him on the street, but when he looked back there was no-one, just empty paving reflecting the light from streetlamps and the whispering of leaves from the trees. Also, there was no deviation in the flight paths of the drones that flew along the street, a sure sign that there was no-one else on the street.

By the time Jake and his little road sweeper were in the CBD, he was in a great mood. Partly this was because of the day; no rain, a beautiful walk, a nice soundtrack on his player and no callouts, but mainly because of Darkworld. He couldn’t remember when he’d enjoyed a game more. And the characters were so real; he honestly couldn’t tell who was a person and who was an NPC, they all seemed to possess that confusing and annoying quality that only Real-World people had.

The memory thing was a bit weird, mind. He could see how it helped with immersion; the number of times in other games he’d had to endure someone droning on about jobs or politics when something amazing was happening. Or worse still, had to listen to angst-ridden teenagers talking about their non-existent love lives to the exclusion of all else. Or bickering. Always bickering. And it did feel a little unusual to have Real World thoughts but to simply ignore them, or to notice something that his character did not and do nothing about it – a bit schizophrenic that, but it did make for engaging gameplay. He wasn’t too sure about the legality (or ethics) of the whole thing, but overall, he was having far too much fun to question it.

A ping - unexpected rubbish, the first of the night – and he was headed towards the Shambles, the old industrial center of the city. He gunned the engine and was singing loudly as he reached the location shown on his map, doing a nifty skid as he mounted the pavement. He slowed and stopped as he approached the location, but couldn’t see anything, just deserted warehouses and a few boarded over shops. No apartment conversions had been built here, and none of the new biotech light industries had chosen to set up in the warehouses, so it felt eerily quiet and deserted. He’d heard that a few street kids lived around this area, off the grid and rumoured to be radicals of some sort, but he kind of doubted it. I mean, why live in this shithole when there were lots of new places available all over the city?

He felt rather than saw someone mount the side of his cab and turned suddenly. There was a figure half-sat on the edge of his cart, hanging onto one of the handles set on the edge of the canopy. Below medium height, broad-shouldered and clothed in non-descript black jeans, combat boots and a hoodie. She had a hand in one pocket, and there was a cloth mask of some sort over most of the face so only the eyes could be seen. Something in the way the figure sat perched on the edge of the seat said ‘girl’ to Jake, but he was not reassured; mugging was an equal opportunity profession nowadays. Though with the number of drones and cameras about, a decidedly risky one.

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“I haven’t got any money,” said Jake at once.

“I know,” the figure replied and sniggered. The light voice confirmed that this was a girl.

“You could steal the truck if you like. It’s not fast, but it’s really good at cleaning.”

“Why would I want to steal your truck?” said the girl in a slightly confused voice.

“To clean?” hazarded Jake. This mugging was not going the way he’d expected, but he figured the longer he could extend it, the better the chance of a police drone coming by.

“Why would I want to clean the streets?”

“A deep-seated need to tidy up? A public-spirited impulse? Something you’ve always wanted to do?”

“Don’t be an idiot.” The girl fiddled with her mask, and Jake could see it didn’t reflect light at all; it looked like a patch of complete darkness obscuring most of her face.

Smart cloth, he thought, to defeat facial recognition. He could see patches of it sewn into her clothing to break up and alter her outline. Maybe not a mugging then. But what? “Well, what do you want?”

The girl shrugged. “Maybe I was just out for a walk when I saw you and thought ‘he looks interesting, let’s have a chat’. Anyway, we’ve met before.”

“We have?” Jake was sure none of his ex-school friends had made a career out of mugging. “Did we go to school together? College? Greenie clean-up?” There were a number of short, muscular girls whom he knew, but none of them wore active camouflage and wandered the streets at five am, or at least be didn’t think so.

The girl said nothing, just sat silent and still on the edge of the seat.

“Can’t really place you. Perhaps if you took off the mask?”

“Then I’d have to kill you.”

“Ha ha,” said Jake, deadpan. He thought a bit. “It’s about the game, isn’t it?” Darkworld was the only vaguely interesting thing about his life that he could think about.

“Got it in one. We want to find out more about it.”

“We? Who’s we?”

“Call us a group of concerned citizens. Better still, don’t call us anything, it will only bring you trouble.” The girl cocked her head, listening to a concealed earbud. “A drone’s coming. Cover for me.” She started to get up.

“Wait, you never said what you wanted.”

She paused for a moment and looked Jake in the eyes. “To meet you, of course.”

“What? Why would you want to meet me?”

The girl raised her hand and laid a finger alongside her nose in a vaguely familiar gesture and gave an exaggerated wink. “Our secret.” There was the buzzing sound of a drone coming along the street and the girl was simply gone, disappeared into a pool of darkness. Jake felt a weight leave the side of the truck and was alone again.

Crap, crap, crap. He’d stopped for too long, and the system was investigating an anomaly. What to do? After a moment he put his chin on his chest and closed his eyes, hoping it was one of the supervisors who recognized him on duty tonight.

A light shone in his eyes, and he sat up with a start. There was a drone hovering a couple of meters in front of his truck, shining a spotlight onto him. “Shit, I must have fallen asleep.” He muttered as he got out of the cart, making sure his face was clearly visible. The drone continued to hover in front of him but politely dropped the spotlight to his feet. He rubbed his eyes and tried to look embarrassed. “Sorry, I dozed off for a moment. Any chance you could ignore this? I don’t want to get into trouble, just I didn’t sleep well last night.” He smiled up at the drone. When trying to mislead the system, it was always best not to give them anything they could disprove, as you never knew when they might randomly check on you. Hopefully no-one monitored his sleep pattern.

The drone hovered for a few more seconds then waggled its rotors twice before buzzing off up the street. Sighing with relief, Jake quickly got into the truck and resumed his route.

All the way back to the depot he tried to work out why he’d covered for the girl. She was obviously a radical of some sort, and by not reporting her at once he was becoming complicit in what she was doing. If something happened, the system would find out his part in it, it always did. But then again, he had his doubts about Darkside Beta. Yes, it was the most exciting thing he’d ever done, but even the excitement couldn’t hide his uneasiness about the memory suppression that seemed integral to its design. Perhaps someone ought to be looking into it.

A small, honest part of him also admitted that the girl was also really hot. Well, he thought she was hot under the black clothing and the active camouflage. To be fair, the camouflage was a big part of the hotness, he had a bit of a thing about deadly ninja girls suddenly appearing then disappearing just as mysteriously. Not that he’d ever met a deadly ninja girl, though come to think of it, one of his old school friends, Casey, used to be on the wrestling team and she could be pretty brutal. Not subtle though. The honest part of his mind continued to poke at him, noting even if he did see ninja girl again, he’d probably be unable to speak to her, or would babble on again like an idiot as he just had.

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