Chapter 1 – Life sucks
14th March 2052
Life sucked, thought Jake. He’d finished high school in the top five percent of his class. Similarly, college, getting higher distinctions in maths, English, four sciences, even a distinction in ethics, for God’s sake. He’d debated for his district team, volunteered at the local soup kitchen and even done monthly beach clean-ups with the state greens. His CV was two pages long and he had dozens of glowing testimonials and referee’s reports. And here he was, driving a boxy little road sweeper every other morning from four am to eight am, a make-work job invented by the government when everyone knew that automated cleaning robots could do a far better job.
Mind you, post covid Three and Four, the jobs market had gone into free-fall. Apart from the truly horrendous death rate, people had been forced to become less sociable. Most casual shopping was now done on-line, and in consequence a whole chunk of the jobs market was gone. What was worse was that these were jobs that had been mostly filled by young people; employment rates amongst the under twenty-five-year-olds was 40%, and many of these were jobs created by the government. After the ‘jobs and germs’ riots of the forties, there had been a massive cut back in automation to try to provide employment for the feckless youth of the nation, hence Jake’s present job. Twenty hour working weeks, a massive investment in affordable apartments, as well as the boom in available housing post-covid meant just about everyone had somewhere decent to live. Add free, super-fast internet, the greening of the cities and the development of online living and the government had just about managed to keep a lid on discontent.
He swerved his truck to suck up a plastic bubble tea container left discarded in the middle of the walkway, cursing rich kids who dumped trash on the ground even though there was a waste bin only meters away. He enjoyed the screech as it was shredded and then packaged by the tiny recycler inside the vehicle. Shame I couldn’t do that to some of the people I know, he thought, remembering a particular group he’d gone to school with. A bump, a brief scream, then gone, sliced, diced, and packaged according to category, size and value by the minicomputer inside the reprocessing unit. Jake, of course, would try to halt the gory happening, but would respond just a little too late.
Unless it was Erica, that is. For her he’d slew the sweeper to the side, hitting a lamppost and injuring himself (slightly). She’d pick herself up off the floor, clothing torn slightly in a revealing manner, and realize her mistake and how much she owed to Jake, the hero, and …
Of course, it couldn’t happen. The sensors would detect a human and halt operations instantly. Also, the microwave scanner at the front of the sweeper would respond to a possible collision by abruptly halting Jake’s vehicle. Finally, he didn’t think a body would fit into the suction pipe that drew rubbish up to the shredder. Perhaps a hand though, he mused. Place a coin so someone bends to pick it up, then woof! Sliced hand, mangled digits, very sorry, didn’t see you there, accidents happen.
Jake was pulled out of his reverie by a beep from the computer on the dashboard. A glowing dot appeared on the on-screen map and a moment later a flashing line connected it to his position. Some do-gooders had reported a pile of rubbish, he thought. At five am the chances were it was a pool of spew, or worse still, a prank call designed to drag him all over the city center and put him behind on his schedule. Mind you, they weren’t all bad. He remembered one episode a few months ago where he’d driven all over the city in pouring rain, going from one spurious rubbish pile to another, cursing the jokers making the calls. It was only later when he looked at his route tracker that he realized he’d traced out ‘Happy Birthday’ on the city streets; it had been his birthday that miserable, wet day, and somehow, they must have hacked into his employment records to find it out. Give people with mad computer skills free access to the internet, lots of free time and mainly on-line friendships, and weird things happened. Or maybe it was one of his old school friends; not all of them had been awful.
He pressed the ‘accept’ button and the sweeper began to move towards its new destination. Despite his general dissatisfaction with life, Jake had to admit that, for a make-work job, this was not awful. Sure, he had to get up at three thirty to get to the depot in time, but once he checked out the sweeper, he was his own boss. He could eat his breakfast on the move, clean his teeth and check out his phone, thanks to the self-driving system. He could even nap for brief periods, so long as he programmed the mapping system correctly and no-one thought it funny to film a sleeping man driving an automatic cleaning truck and post it on-line. And after work he could game to his heart’s content, contacting friends and enemies before grabbing a few hours’ sleep before his next shift.
As added bonuses it was not raining today, most of the drunks were gone from the streets and the clear sky gave a wonderful view of the stars whenever he entered darker areas of the streets. He wasn’t too worried about his own safety; the occasional whine of a police drone overhead meant that he was under intermittent observation, and most of the tele-cops would recognise his sweeper. He flashed his lights at a drone that stopped briefly in front of him, probably doing a facial recognition scan. It dipped slightly in response before zooming away.
A beep reminded him of his job, and he halted the sweeper just in front of a pile of books and folders in the middle of the pavement, just down from the entrance to one of the swankier hotels in town. One of the few perks of the job was first dibs on anything left on the street, so he got out and approached the pile of papers, spreading them a little with his foot, checking for vomit. A thick, plastic-bound manual of some sort, and a whole swathe of e-mails and documents; he was guessing someone from the hotel had dropped them; might be worth something to someone. When he looked closer, he could see there was a company name on the top of the manual, ‘Visi Dyne’. Jake realized this was the name of the company that marketed all of his favourite on-line games – No Future, Hell, and, of course, DarkWorld, to name a few. Also, most of the top-line games, who’s monthly subscription rate put them well out of his price range. Excited, he grabbed the pile of papers and shoved them under the driving seat of the sweeper before pressing the ‘task completed’ button on the dashboard.
By eight am Jake was yawning so much he thought he’d dislocated his jaw. There’d been two more rubbish call-ins, both pools of vomit. One included a soiled facemask and he’d had a good laugh thinking about how much of a mess it’s wearer must have been in, after vomiting whilst wearing an N95 mask. Not nice. It was weird how people still went out to the few council-approved pubs and bars, wearing masks and sitting a few metres away from any strangers, before drinking themselves into oblivion. Jake, never really having had the chance to try drinking to excess in bars due to the super-strict restrictions when he was younger, could not understand it. Also, the price; restricting capacities of the pubs meant the owners had to make their money in other ways, namely hefty cover fees and super-expensive drinks. Jake, on his pitiful income and with all the social distancing rules that were in force when he was a teenager, had never thought to try clubbing. From what he’d seen of the patrons leaving in the early hours it was mainly rich youngsters and businessmen and -women who did it.
With a final yawn, Jake drove his sweeper into its recharging stall at the council depot. He grabbed the papers he’d recovered and stuffed them into his bag, before stepping down from the cab of the mini truck and left the yard, nodding to a few other cleaners as they left. Normally it was a ten-minute walk home, but today he was so tired he called an auto cab and was home in minutes, collapsing on his bed without even changing his clothes.
-----
The first thing Jake did when he got up was grab the bag of papers dumped next to his bed and start reading. He was still reading three hours later, surrounded by half drunk mugs of coffee and an empty cereal packet. The papers seemed to be mainly from someone who worked for VisiDyne, a Dr Josef Stapleton. He was a games designer, and the mass of correspondence concerned a specialist patch he was developing for their top game, Shadow Realms. Shadow Realms was already a little different from most other games on the market, in that players were pretty much on a par with the average NPC, or non-player characters. They were not hugely overpowered and couldn’t constantly raise their abilities; emphasis in game was on working with the game elements, not beating them. It seemed even with this, there was a huge groundswell from players for a more role-playing version of the game, and Dr Stapleton was trying to develop a version to satisfy the players.
Skimming through the notes it seemed he had somehow vastly increased the complexity of the average NPC. He now believed that within certain constraints, it was well-nigh impossible to tell a computer-generated NPC from a player without extended study. He also had an idea about how he could prevent players from bringing real world elements into the game to disrupt immersion. Some kind of a penalty system, Jake guessed, but couldn’t find any details.
If what Jake was reading was true, then this was truly ground-breaking stuff. The increased decision-making abilities hinted at Turing like complexity, something only previously found on really big networks. It was also potentially worth a lot of money. There was even a short section on ‘temporarily introduced memories’ which sounded dodgy in the extreme, and he toyed with the idea of ringing one of the news channels and trying to sell the story but thought better of it. Damn that distinction in ethics! Two years ago, he wouldn’t have even thought about the implications of his actions, just seen the money. Eventually he decided to ring the hotel where he’d found the papers and see if Dr Stapleton was present.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Hotel Novaris,” said the receptionist.
“Hello, I’m trying to get hold of Dr Josef Stapleton,” said Jake, trying to sound confident and a little busy.
“Who shall I say is calling?”
Jake was a little uncertain about what to say next. He’d thought about giving one of the names from the e-mails, but guessed once Stapleton heard his voice, he’d know it wasn’t who he was expecting and hang up. Complete honesty was the best policy, he thought. Well, almost complete honesty. “Tell him it’s Dr Jake Dobie on the line.”
The receptionist cut him off before he could say more. “Hold one minute.” Did that mean he was there? Easy listening music came over the line, and after a short pause the receptionist came back. “Sorry, Dr Stapleton is not taking any calls at this time.”
Jake could hear her starting to remove the phone from her ear and he bellowed down the line. “Wait! It’s life-or-death! Just tell him it’s about a pile of papers he may have misplaced!”
There was a pause, then the easy listening music started again. It was almost immediately interrupted by a man’s voice yelling down the line. “Give me back my work! That’s illegal! I’ll have the police on you! Or corporate security! Who do you work for Dobie? Klinemart? Stevenson? Epic?”
Dr Stapleton was not only angry but probably a little drunk, and it took Jake some time to calm him down and convince him he was not trying to blackmail him. “Well, who are you then? What’s your doctorate in? And how did you get my papers?
On reflection, the PhD was probably a mistake, thought Jake. “I really am Jake Dobie. As to the PhD, well, not so much, though I’ve got a Distinction in Ethics!” There was silence on the other end of the line, so Jake figured he’d better push on. “I found your papers last night, outside the hotel. I drive a road sweeper and I almost sucked them up. I thought rather than recycle them, I’d return them to their owner.”
There was an audible gulp when Jake said ‘recycle’.
“Was, was there a little black notebook with the papers?” asked Stapleton, in a worried voice.
“Yeah, little black leather thing, full of equations and notes. Couldn’t make head nor tails of it.” This wasn’t entirely true. Yes, Jake couldn’t make anything of the notes, but he’d carefully copied each page of the notebook with his phone. For safety, he’d justified to himself, in case it got lost. Also, it was only a Distinction in Ethics he'd got. Not a Higher Distinction. “I could bring it round later today if you like.”
Dr Stapleton was almost speechless with relief. He insisted Jake brought the papers around at once, booking an auto-cab using his digital assistant whilst he was on the phone. Jake barely had time to wash his face and clean his teeth before a buzz announced the arrival of the cab.
-----
Stapleton met him at the entrance to the Hotel, hopping from foot to foot with anxiety, and seemed unable to take his eyes off the bin bag full of papers Jake was carrying. He was a tall, thin, middle-aged man with shoulder length brown hair in a state of disarray. There were heavy black framed glasses perched on his nose, an obvious affectation with laser lens surgery being so commonplace today. Without a word he ushered Jake into a lift then into a nice suite of rooms on the top floor, closing the door behind them. Once inside, he held up a hand for silence then checked his smart phone for something. Bug checker, Jake guessed. Paranoid or what?
“Thank God,” said Dr Stapleton, then enfolded Jake in a huge, back-pounding hug. “It would have been a disaster if this had gotten out.” He removed the black garbage bag from Jake’s hands and scattered the contents on the bed. A quick scrabble then he turned on Jake in a panic. “Where’s the book? The little black one you said you’d found. I thought you said you’d recovered it?”
Jake pulled the offending item out of his pocket and held it out. “Here it is, just keeping it safe.”
Stapleton took the notebook with a look of profound relief on his face. “This really is my lucky day. I don’t want to think what might have happened if this had gotten into the wrong hands.” He held his hand out to Jake and they shook hands formally. “Doctor Jozef Stapleton at your service. Call me Jozef. Will you join me for tea?”
When Jake agreed, he led him into another room with a gorgeous view over the whole city. Standing in front of a huge window, he could see the Park, twenty stories down, and the waterfront area, complete with a couple of the modern sail assisted cargo ships unloading at the docks. A whole suite thought Jake. The man has a whole suite of rooms on the top floor of the most expensive hotel in the city. He rapidly reassessed Doctor Stapleton’s importance upwards. A long way upwards. A call to room service and minutes later a knock at the door announced the arrival of two trolleys laden with pastries, various fruits and drinks.
The meal was good, the alcohol strong and the company even better. Under all the Eastern European stiffness, (and after several vodka’s) Jozef was a lot of fun, telling anecdotes about working in the game design business and how introducing the smallest of changes into a game could produce unexpected and hilarious effects. Add in ridiculous hours, poor social skills and huge egos and the mistakes could be significant. Jake joined in, telling Dr Stapleton about his friend’s experience with the infamous ‘no-bind’ slip up two years previously in the very game Jozef was working on. This had occurred when one of the developers had somehow omitted making one of the top tier super-weapons introduced in the latest patch bind-on-pickup. This resulted in one of the end-game rewards, normally only available after six months of long, hard questing, being available to anyone who could take it. The phrase ‘Out of my cold, dead hands’ suddenly took on a new meaning, as gangs of mid-level players slaughtered anyone suspected of carrying a copy of the sword, then fought amongst themselves before looting the bodies. Whole Guilds suspected each other of ownership of the weapon, and they went to war. The economy of the Shadow Realms game went into free-fall as players bought and sold the sword for ridiculous amounts. One particularly enterprising group went so far as to sell one sword four times, each time slaughtering the new owner and recovering the sword before reselling it.
As all games in 2052 had their currencies tied to Real World money, this started to spill over into everyday life. The police got involved, suspecting fraud, then the Government, suspecting electoral advantage, then various high-powered law firms, hired by super-rich, game-obsessed players, who’d found the sword/lost the sword/wanted the sword. An early attempt to solve the problem by resetting the sword’s binding characteristics were halted by a court order served by an affiliation of sellers who threatened to sue the company for loss of earnings. More thefts, murders and scams occurred, even driving Real World atrocities off all the news feeds and replacing them with their digital equivalents. This culminated in ‘The Slaughter at Dragon Rock’, when the Destroyers, the then top Guild in the Shadow Realms wiped out an entire NPC city looking for a copy of the sword thought to be hidden there.
Eventually the company had closed the whole quest line that led to Nikolai’s Sword and had removed those in play by buying them for exorbitant prices or replacing them with similar bound weapons. Where the players could be proved to be acting illegally, they were summarily banned, and all their possessions removed, the draconian punishments meant to discourage more cheating. All of this added to the rich tapestry that was gamer myth and legend; there was even supposed to be one copy of the sword left in existence that had been dropped by a player who was killed by monsters and then died of a heart attack in the Real World before he could recover it.
With a grin, Jozef added a few details to Jake’s story; apparently Nikolai’s sword had been designed as one of the game designer’s ‘emergency’ late game balancing tools. When activated, one of the swords optional powers had been to let the weapons resident demon, a horribly powerful entity, take control of the owner and their party. This allowed the game AI to step in and iron out any problematic details, the players conveniently losing all memory of what happened due to the effects of the demon. Usually this resulted in lots of dead bodies and the players themselves scattered to the winds. Unfortunately, no-one used this power more than once, as who wants to slaughter great swathes of the enemy and not remember it?
“Not to be repeated, no?” said Jozef when he’d finished, waving a finger at Jake. “Sometimes I let myself talk too much.”
Jake reassured him his lips were sealed, miming locking his lips and throwing away the key.
“Seriously now, you have saved my career by returning these,” said Jozef. “I would have had to explain to my bosses that I had over-indulged in vodka and lost the details of their latest expansion. Not something I was looking forward to. I owe you a lot, my friend. So, tell me, what can I do for you?’
Jake made noises about honesty and ethics and that there was no need for a reward, and Jozef laughed. “You are a gamer; I can smell it on you. You are interested in the game I am developing, DarkWorld the beta expansion to Shadow Realms. Would you like access?”
This time Jake made no attempt at denial, accepting the offer instantly. Free life-time access to the beta, Darkworld, acceptance onto the restricted server as a tester for Dr Stapleton’s patch, even a new, super-sensitive game controller that was supposedly so light you didn’t notice you were wearing it. Strangely enough, the beta Jake was signing up for was classified as a ‘Therapeutic Intervention System’, for the purposes of secrecy. Of course, there were non-disclosure agreements and media access contracts to sign, full of penalty clauses and digital ownership transfers, but these were signed off by Jake there and then on his phone. There was also a two-hundred-page instruction manual that he was advised to read. “This game is not like anything you have played before,” said Jozef. “You should read it.”
So of course, he didn’t.