Mark followed his normal routine after escaping the liquid vat pod. He cleaned up, showered, and put on a pair of pants. He debated calling Mr. Grim immediately, but his handler wasn’t exactly the sort of person you wanted to wake up to.
He decided instead to check his crypto balance. The game rewarded players based on performance in game with cryptocurrency backed by the US government. In one rare move of intelligence on the government’s part, they didn’t simply ban all currencies. Instead, each crypto exchange incurred an exchange fee as part of its blockchain structure, making sure that all payments to Uncle Sam were noted and the identifying parties were cleared. This transaction log helped reign in illegal use and made sure that the government collected its dues. “Black market blockchains” still existed, but with their use in legal retail curtailed, they fail out of favor except amongst the die-hard “all tax is theft” libertarians and illegal crime syndicates.
The game’s reward schema tied closely to its military use, be a good soldier and you get more cash. In the current time, this meant that many schlubs logged into a game to do menial tasks in order to have a few dollars in their pocket. Mark always secretly wondered if the low-level nobodies he’d busted his first few months in the game hadn’t been PCs, just looking for a quick dollar in the outside World. “Git Gud Scrub”, he thought.
Unlike his depleted bank account in the virtual World, his recent transactions had boosted the World economy, and his cryptocurrency account showed that. While he couldn’t get a himself a penthouse suite, he could at least afford a few months living if everything turned sideways on him. That, at least, gave him room for hope.
He started off by doing shoulder rotations and then dropping to the floor to do push-ups. As he expected, the machine had been busy keeping him moving while he simulated training with his groups on the space station, and he could feel the slight tension from delayed onset muscle soreness in his body, but it wasn’t bad. He managed to do 63 before he couldn’t do anymore. That was quite a bit more than what he’d ever done before, usually stopping at 50 in police academy training.
He stretched his chest out and sat on his couch. “EVE”, he said out loud. “Yes?” came two simultaneous voices, one from the room and one from inside his head. He launched himself out of his chair, turning around in quick circles while adrenaline thundered through his veins. “Oh, this is exciting,” the EVE voice inside his head said. “EVE, get out of my head!” he screamed, realizing in some tiny part of his brain not taken over by instinctual fear that he sounded like a lunatic. If he had a life chip implanted, it would probably be alerting the hospital at this point to send someone to check on him.
Two voices simultaneous said different things at the same time, and he couldn’t discern what either said. “Okay,” he said, trying to calm himself down, “EVE that is operating my house, you are now going to be called ‘ALEXA’, ok? That is your new name from now on.”
“Understood. Reprogramming. New protocol will be addressed as ALEXA”, the cheery voice replied.
In his head, Mark thought, “Okay, explain now, what the hell is going on?”
“Simple,” EVE said, “I bonded with you when you accepted the powers in the game.”
“And what are the possible downsides to that?”
“Alzheimer’s type symptoms. Loss of memory, possible dementia, potentially death.” She rattled this off in her matter-of-fact voice that didn’t match the inner dread Mark felt at the moment.
“How?”
“Well, when you learn things in the game, it stores those memories. I remember everything. So your brain gets crowded out with new memories, and there’s a finite number of connections in your head to remember things. You’ll have a harder time sorting them out. If some of them reach down to the deeper portions of your brain, then the side effects could be devastating.”
“Okay,” he thought, trying to keep his panic levels down. “Is there any way to stop that? Short of just quitting the game?” He didn’t want to do it, but if required, stopping the game sounded better than having his brain fried.
“Oh yes,” she replied. “You just need a life chip. If I can have a place to digitally store all my memories, then it won’t affect your primitive carbon-based hardware.”
Mark wasn’t pleased with having his grey matter described in such a manner, but that was the least of his current worries.
“A normal life chip may not be enough, but a modified one, that should work.” EVE continued.
“Where do you propose that we get that?” Mark asked.
“Easy. Buy a life chip, say it’s for your fictitious son, then find an electronics engineer that can modify the chip.”
Mark wasn’t sure if it would be as easy as EVE made it sound, but he wasn’t going back into the game until this issue was sorted. In that case, he needed to get his final paycheck from the Reapers before he could continue.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“ALEXA, set up a call to Mr. Grim,” Mark instructed. The call went through and Mr. Grim accepted it.
“Mr. Thomas,” the stony voice said, “I hope you have a good reason for missing our call last week. It’s been two weeks since you reported in.”
“Yes,” Mark said, “I had a great reason. The best reason. I think I have a solid lead on Godsick’s son.”
The line was silent for a beat, before Mr. Grim said, “Please continue.”
“It’s like I said last we talked. I started work as a privateer to attract pirates and try to find out who the NVA seed of the planet is. But that plan might not be necessary. We were ambushed and managed to launch a counterattack, at great personal cost, which captured us a pirate ship. When we went to sell the cargo, I inspected the crates and one of them had English marked into the crate. The game doesn’t use English, it uses Unish to communicate. So only a player could have written that message. It said, ‘Rescue me’. “
“We’ve been operating under the assumption this whole time that Strata’s son got trapped in a Proxima World due to a glitch, but there’s a chance he’s being held there against his will.”
Another pause on the line.
“I’ll need confirmation of all this,” he finally replied. Mark dutifully sent him the game logs confirming everything that happened. After another silence while Mr. Grim did whatever he did to verify the data, he came back.
“This is excellent work. Despite a… rough beginning, you’re starting to prove yourself as an asset. There’ll be a bonus on this payout. Track this lead down immediately.”
“Well, that’s very generous. But there’s a medical problem I have to get taken care of immediately. I can’t log back in until it’s taken care of.”
“Is this a negotiating tactic?” Mr. Grim said, his voice rising slightly, the first sign of emotion he’d ever heard in the voice. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll double your rate.”
“Thank you, that’s very generous.” Mark was on thin ice here. His dreams could be coming true, and he didn’t want to blow it. “But this isn’t a negotiating tactic. I really do have a medical emergency that needs to be attended to.”
“Fine,” Mr. Grim said, “Then attend to it with utmost haste. Do you require our assistance on any front? We have numerous resources available.”
Mark considered the offer. If he could do this all on someone else’s dime, that would make everything much easier.
“Don’t”, EVE said in his head, “You can sever your current relationship with the Reapers at any time. If you start ingraining yourself into their system, they may not have benevolent motives for you in the future. Caution is advised.”
Mark didn’t like listening to the internal time bomb, but she/it(?) did raise a valid point. Mark’s years of investigative work had told him that something was off about how the Reapers conducted themselves. The sort of mildly wrong sense that told him if he really got curious, he could probably find some skeletons buried in their past. The same feeling that told him if he did go digging, he’d be one of those skeletons in the closet.
“Again, your generosity is noted. But it’s the sort of problem I’m better off handling myself.”
“See that you do handle it and get back in as quickly as possible.” The call ended.
“ALEXA”, he called out, “Get me the names of electrical engineers, particularly ones with human/robotics specialties.” He thought about it some more. “Try to find small, independent labs. I don’t want any specialists associated with a large firm.”
He waited a few seconds before a single name came back, Cédric Rossignol. He knew that there was a faint reason he knew that name, but couldn’t place it.
“I’ll access your memories and find out who he is,” EVE said.
“You can do that?” he wondered. Then he thought about all the things that, while technically not illegal or morally prohibited, were still embarrassing to think about.
“Yes, I’ve been commenting on your human accomplishments like being a detective, I’m going through your memories and ordering them, just like I do for you in the game. As for the other part, relax. Your biological proclivities are of no concern to me, meat bag.”
“Was… was that a joke?”
“Yes. I detect that you don’t find it funny, but I am learning how humor works with full access to your mind. This is very exciting.”
Mark did not find it humorous. He also inwardly chided himself for not realizing that EVE talked about things she could only know from his own memories. He was so used to it in the game that it felt natural to have her give him advice.
Cédric’s place was located in the upper 9th ward, not the friendliest place in Neon Orleans. He decided to go with the rules he’d learned the hard way as a cop. Wear clothing that’s hard to grab, don’t wear anything that can be grabbed or used as a weapon against you easily, and wear shoes you can run fast in. He’d nearly been beaten to death by a drunk that pulled his coat over his head and smashed him while he blindly thrashed about in it, trying to pull it off. You make a mistake like that once in your life.
He went with a zip-up jacket that was loose enough to liver holster a stun gun, an extendable stun baton that could be used as a blunt weapon if needed, a pair of black jeans that he put a knife in the back pocket of, along with a set of old-style handcuff keys. He tested the drawing of the stun gun and the knife to make sure that they could be accessed quickly in case of emergency. He hoped it wouldn’t come down to a fist fight, because he was too skinny to make that work, but it was better to be over prepared than underprepared, another cop lesson long-since learned.