Chapter 52: Incentive Structure

Donica might have lost Third Eye access, but she still possessed a potent evil eye.

I tried not to squirm under it.

“There’s something I’m not sure we should tell you,” I said. “We’re not positive it’s a thing, everyone’s got enough worries on their plates, and we’re all being cautious already. It just seems like fear mongering.”

“I suspect I already know,” Erin said, “But please, tell us. I’d hate to think we’d missed something important.”

Of course she’d figured it out. How could I have imagined Lena and I would beat the resident stathead when it came to recognizing patterns in data?

To Lena, I said, “You wanna go, or shall I?”

“Go for it,” she said.

I nodded. I rubbed my hands.

I could say what I liked about my reasons, but ultimately, I suspected I hadn’t said anything because vocalizing the fear made it feel more real.

Too late to stop now.

Of course, I had to figure out where to start.

At the beginning felt right. Erin would know all of this, but the others might not.

“Mask is pretty distinctive,” I said. “Unless there’s something even weirder going on than usual for Third Eye, which is saying a lot, we can track where they’ve been invading since people started reporting them.”

“Before we go any further,” Zhizhi said, “you and Lena keep using different pronouns for Mask. You don’t know if they’re male or female?”

“Depends on which of us you ask,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Lena said. “But I know, you know?”

I pressed my lips together. I didn’t say, “AlephLambda,” because we both knew I was thinking it.

“As hard as it might be to believe, I’ve been wrong before.” Lena tossed her hair. “Seriously, though, the dude is like six foot six. And rake me over the coals for stereotyping if you want, but the specific kind of edgelord he is? I’ve seen girls do all sorts of cringey shit, but I’ve only ever seen guys embarrass themselves in that specific way.”

A statement which didn’t make me want to argue about it less.

“I don’t care if the asshole is from Mars or Venus or fucking Jupiter,” Donica snapped. “Just pick something and get to the point.”

Which, once again, did not make me want to argue less. I just barely managed to realize I’d crossed the line from principled to petulant. “Fine. For consistency’s sake, I’ll go with ‘him.’”

“Thank you,” Donica said. “God. Now, will you please enlighten us as to what ‘his’ oh-so-troubling pattern is?”

I felt partly responsible for Donica getting hurt. If we’d been more cautious about going back to the construction site, or more skilled fighting the creature, she wouldn’t have been in a wheelchair and out of the Third Eye beta. Even before that, we’d bonded over our first unnerving visit to the construction site.

All of which was to say, I’d sort of let myself forget how much we tended to rub each other the wrong way.

To hell with rubbing. Time to rip a scab off.

I locked eyes with her and said, “He started off invading solo players. Judging from what happened to Lena, he still does. So why are the only recent reports about him from groups?”

Donica held her glare for a moment. Then the implication sank in and she sort of shrank into her chair. Her voice sounded hoarse. “What exactly are you saying? You think he’s murdering the people he defeats?”

Turned out, the scab had multiple layers.

Lena and I had both seen the pattern, both worried about it, but we hadn’t said the “M” word aloud. Talk about making it feel more real.

Until Erin said, “He is almost certainly not.”

I spun to look at her, and I wasn’t the only one.

Too many of us at once. She tried and failed to smile with the pressure on. She mumbled, “Or, at least, that isn’t what I got from the data.”

“How do you figure?” Lena asked.

“First,” Erin said, “it’s possible this Mask person is only interested in challenging fights, and no longer finds most solo matches to be such. Whereas The Magnificent Ashbird is far from an ordinary player, and might have been compelling to face off with on her own.”

“Makes sense,” Lena said. From my angle, I couldn’t see her flash a grin, but I heard it in the tone of her voice. “I am pretty awesome.”

“You are,” Erin said brightly. Then she turned the brightness down about ninety nine percent. “It’s an explanation for the pattern, and I certainly hope it’s correct.”

Miguel puffed on his cigarette. It had burned down almost to the filter, either because he’d been caught up in the conversation or because he didn’t have an ashtray handy. He held it away from his face and said, “Because the other explanation you suspect is not so optimistic?”

Erin lowered her eyes. “I’m afraid so.”

“Not murder, though?” Zhizhi asked. She sounded the least disturbed by the word of any of us. Because she wasn’t a player and thus, perhaps, not a target? Or because she worked at a newsroom and if it bled, it led?

“Not murder,” Erin said. “At least there’s that.”

“You sound pretty confident,” Zhizhi said.

“You have to understand, I’ve looked at a lot of data about Third Eye. Just this afternoon, I spent some time checking if reports of various paranormal events were up since the beta started. To see if what happened to Cam and Lena was typical, yes? They are up, it turns out, although not so dramatically I can rule out it simply being noise. I think our perception of how many players have found even one Reactant is skewed. Most people still just have Materials.” Erin’s hands fidgeted on her lap as she spoke.

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I knew she was talking around the subject, but talking around it sounded pretty good to me, so I made no effort to hurry her. Neither did anyone else.

Finally, she said, “One thing I have not seen anywhere is a report of an unexplained death that looked Third Eye related. From what you’ve told us and what was in the reports, Mask uses a very distinctive form of attack. I’m not sure what it would do to someone with no HP, but if it really could hurt them, it seems like it would be... well, messy.”

I thought about those rapid, tiny pinpricks Mask had peppered me with. Bernie grumbled on the couch and I thought of the hole Mask had put through him.

I really wished I hadn’t thought of either, and shuddered. “That checks out.”

Erin’s head bobbed.

Zhizhi leaned against Miguel’s TV. “My understanding is that murderers try to hide the bodies.”

“Try, yes,” Erin said. “If Mask is invading full time while traveling around the country – around the continent, even –, you’re talking about a lot of bodies. It’s possible, I admit, and it’s also possible that I just don’t have access to reports with the, ah, gory details.”

She offered up a pause and a weak smile. Only Donica and I chuckled.

“In all seriousness,” Erin said, “I simply don’t get ‘murderer’ from this pattern. What would be the point?”

“Silencing witnesses?” Zhizhi suggested.

The rest of Erin’s smile disappeared. “Well. Maybe.”

“A guy like that wouldn’t want to silence anybody,” Lena said. She glanced back at me. “You agree, right, Cam? What’s the point of putting on that whole getup if you’re not leaving somebody to talk about it?”

I nodded. “Yeah. His costume disguises his identity, but you could do that with a ski mask. You cosplay your avatar because you want somebody to see it.”

“Besides,” Lena said. “Witnesses to what? Playing a game a way some of us don’t think is cool? Like, I admit, it scared the shit out of me, and that was obviously what he was going for to some extent, but if I hadn’t been worried about Bernie, I think I would’ve just treated it like when Matt invaded me. I’m not even sure it’s a crime.”

“I suspect you could get somebody booked for assault,” Donica said. “Or at least menacing. How a jury would respond, I really have no idea.”

“Any half-decent defense lawyer would just dig up the example of Assassin,” Zhizhi said. “You guys know that one?”

Erin, Donica, and I nodded. Miguel inclined his head with only a hint of a smirk. He’d earned far more. From what I understood, he’d twice won his college’s semester-long Assassin’s Guild; I’d made it as far as the final four one year, but the prize had always eluded me.

Lena looked back and forth between us. “What the hell? Does everybody here know a game except me?”

“It’s basically tag for college students,” I said. “You sign up and get a name you’re supposed to ‘kill,’ and somebody else gets your name. You have to hit your target with a toy weapon, like a plastic lightsaber or a nerf gun, to ‘kill’ them, but you can’t let anyone else see you. If you succeed, you get their targets added to your list and it goes until one player remains.”

Lena stared up at me. “I have never regretted doing online college more than in this moment.”

“Not gonna lie,” I said, “it was pretty great.”

It was also not dissimilar to the PVP element of the Third Eye beta. In-world PVP in the real world, combined with player elimination.

You know. Similar aside from the life-changing, world-changing magic.

Which, as far as we’d seen so far, could only make us safer.

I frowned.

If Albie, as AlephLambda, had explained Third Eye PVP to me in those terms way back on the first night, would I have looked at it differently? Maybe not, because it still retained from invasion the obnoxiousness of PVP intruding on the aspects of the game I’d actually signed up for.

If the original Kickstarter had described it in those terms, though?

Hell. I might’ve ended up with the same five thousand dollar regrets Lena did.

“It’s the same principle,” Zhizhi said. “If people opt into the game, they agree that at any time, if another player catches them alone, they can tag them to score a point.”

“A defense that would work better,” Donica said, “if we’d known there would be a PVP element when we signed up.”

Maybe because the Assassin comparison had made at least the conceptual appeal of Third Eye’s PVP model click for me, I spoke up. “Fair enough when the beta first started, but it’s been running for a while and we all know invasion is part of the game by now. Besides, I bet it was in the EULA somewhere. If nothing else, it would be pretty tough to make a legal claim that you didn’t accept the possibility and then turn around and keep playing.”

Donica tapped her finger on her leg. “Well, that isn’t my problem anymore, now is it?”

I winced.

Lena either noticed or anticipated my reaction, because she twisted around to glare at Donica. “The point is, there’s just not enough risk of legal action for somebody to go around killing people to shut them up. Especially somebody who couldn’t be identified through his mask and voice changer!”

Donica shrugged. “So he’s on a power trip. A disturbed, bitter person who muddles through life with no agency and blames everyone else for it. Then when he gets a little taste of power, he snaps and uses it to lash out. Spree shooter behavior.”

That explanation fit my impression of Mask better, which probably wasn’t very charitable of me.

It apparently didn’t fit Zhizhi’s. Or at least her understanding of the facts. “Ignoring your massive oversimplification for a minute, what he’s doing isn’t a spree. If he’s going around murdering people in secret, that’s more like a serial killer. Totally different profile.”

“Okay, I’ll defer to your expertise.” Donica’s lips curled up. “I’m sure you’ve covered a lot of murders in your journalistic career.”

Lena would’ve exploded at that, and maybe I would have, too. Sure would’ve gotten annoyed.

Zhizhi just got even. “About as many as the murder cases you’ve worked with that law degree of yours, Ms. Junior Athletic Scout.”

“I studied contract law,” Donica muttered. From her scowl, though, it was obvious which one of them had scored more points in the exchange.

Miguel cleared his throat.

“All of this speculation about Mask’s motives for murder is very interesting,” he said. “I seem to recall, however, that Erin wished to explain why she did not think he had such a motive.”

Zhizhi shot him a look I couldn’t quite parse. After a moment, she said, “My bad.”

“Yes,” Donica said. “Sorry, Erin. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s okay,” Erin said. “This is important. I sure don’t want to leap to conclusions.”

“Still,” I said, “you’ve probably figured out more of this than we’ve even started thinking about. What do you get from Mask’s pattern?”

I motioned like I was asking her to take the floor, which in retrospect was maybe rude when it wasn’t my floor. Last time we’d had one of these big gatherings, Lena and I had played host, and I’d sort of gotten used to the role.

It didn’t matter. Miguel didn’t object, and Erin didn’t stand up.

Instead, she pushed her glasses up her nose. “When I looked at the pattern, the first thing I thought of was, what does someone get out of invasion?”

“The thrill of the hunt,” Lena said.

“A chance to big himself up over other people,” Donica said.

I said, “Ten percent of the target’s XP.”

“Mmhm!” Erin bobbed her head in my direction. It made her glasses slide back down and she fiddled with them as she spoke. “If you stop thinking of it from a criminal perspective and start thinking of it from a game playing perspective, murder seems obviously counterproductive. Someone you’ve proven you can defeat might not be interesting to fight if you like the fighting side of the game, but they are someone you can get more XP off of whenever you want. Killing them would just be destroying a resource.”

Zhizhi raised her eyebrows.

Lena whistled. “Dang. Ice cold.”

“Just... trying to be practical.” Erin pressed her fingers together.

“It makes sense to me,” I said. Frankly, the dissonance between Erin’s cheerful, practiced voice and how ruthless what she’d said sounded? Left me grinning. “How does that explain the pattern of people no longer reporting, though?”

“Oh!” Erin blinked. In the exact same tone of voice, she took the smile right off my face. “No, I don’t think it makes any sense for Mask to be killing people. If anything, I think he’s abducting them.”