Jay sat at his favorite booth at Roscoe’s Diner, impatiently awaiting the time he was set to meet Ichibad. He was thirty minutes early, which was plenty early to suffer through a slew of dirty looks from his previous manager. Briefly, and only briefly, was a consideration of begging for his job back. After all, at the moment, he had no real income. On the other hand, it would take him over a year, even overspending, to burn through his bank account. Better to hold off until he finished his business with Tumult Corp., whatever that ended up being.
Unable to be bored, Jay pulled his phone from his pocket. He busied himself texting his mother, Taylor Lynn, Sarah, and Claire. The most welcome update was from Claire about how things were going with preparation for the coming siege. Everything was progressing smoothly, with one notable exception.
Time was running thin for Jay to reclaim his access to the game before the siege began.
With a rush of wind, the door opened, catching his attention. Looking at the figure standing in the doorway, he immediately recognized that the person he was waiting for had arrived. The man wore a pressed purple dress shirt, left open to expose the white undershirt beneath. He was wearing loafers and a pair of black shorts with purple spots.
Given his appearance, Ichibad could easily be a hacker, as Jay suspected. He could also be escaped from a local college fraternity. After all, Roscoe’s served drinks at this time of day. The strangest part, however, was that his face was recognizable. Jay had seen it somewhere before.
The figure walked over to him, looking around for other patrons. There were several around, but everyone else was deep into their drink. Jay and the newcomer were the only people present who remained remotely sober. While Ichibad approached, Jay spun his brain, trying to remember where he had seen Ichibad previously. The hamster wheel wasn’t getting anywhere.
Jay didn’t know him, but he had seen the man before. He might have been at the amusement park. There were a lot of faces there that day, but Jay hoped that wasn’t the truth. If so, the other player had been following him, which would be spooky at best. He’d had enough of being followed around. If Ichibad’s intentions were pure, he’d have introduced himself. Nothing had clicked for Jay by the time Ichibad sat down.
“Jay Miller, I presume?” he asked. “What’s good to drink here? Do they have wine?”
Jay shook his head. “They have wine, but you don’t want to drink it. There’s actually solid gin if that’s your thing.”
“It isn’t really,” Ichibad admitted. “But, as they say, when in Rome. I’ll return in a brief moment.”
He did return a minute later, with Jay no closer to remembering why he was recognizable, carrying a martini. “This should hold me over, at least through our meeting. I appreciate you taking the time. We could have a reciprocal business relationship where we both get what we want.”
“Right. Uh, what’s your name?” Jay asked awkwardly. Referring to the other man as Ichibad in real life felt strange. It clearly wasn’t his real name. Unless he had some exceptionally mean parents who liked headless legends but couldn’t spell.
“John Miller,” the other man introduced. “I figured you already knew. Apologies for the misunderstanding.”
“Another Miller, that’s cool, though not uncommon. Wait, why does that specific name sound familiar?” Jay asked, his brain still spinning in the background, trying to put everything into place. “I have this strange feeling I’ve seen or met you before, but I can’t place it.”
“You’ve probably seen me in the news,” John admitted. “I’m in the process of suing Tumult Corporation to get my property back. It could be going better, truth be told, which is why I’m exploring other avenues. You have figured out why the Monster Hunter class is so important, haven’t you?”
Jay stopped to think. He wanted some answers, but he knew from experience Ichibad didn’t have any of the answers he sought.
“Delicious,” John noted after taking a sip of his martini. “Alright, I can see you don’t really know much. I can’t blame you for that. I wasn’t certain how hard it was to puzzle out, being how I designed it and all. So, anyway, here’s–”
“You’re not Ichibad, are you?” Jay asked, cutting him off. He noticed that John exhibited distinct personality traits. Less whimsical than Ichibad, this man was more airy.
“Goodness, no,” he said, waving it away. “Ichibad works for me. I had him set this meeting up so you and I could have a chance to talk. I went a little cloak and dagger because it would conflict with your contract if you were still working for Tumult. Lucky for you and me, they recently terminated that very contract. Not so much of a conflict anymore.”
“We can get to that, but could you–”
“Get back to the Monster Hunter thing first?” John inquired, cutting right back across Jay. “I sure can. Here’s what you need to know. I designed the Monster Hunter class to be accessible only to people with my son’s name who shared the same birth date as him on their game account. I foolishly thought that would be safe enough. Then you. You happen to share his birthday and his name. Since he was hospitalized due to a car accident, you ended up with the Monster Hunter class during the game’s initial release. Think of it as a key.”
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The man paused to let the facts so far sink in. Since they shared the same name, it was easy to see how Jay could have ended up in this situation. James was a common enough name. The car accident was a twist of fate but believable. If John’s son had been able to join the game first, he would have become the Monster Hunter. Jay would still be working as a bartender at Roscoe’s and probably playing some kind of magic-type class with Taylor Lynn. The Torchbearer had seemed interesting.
“What kind of key?” Jay asked, setting aside the man’s strange parameters around the class. “I guess what I mean is, what is it a key for?”
“Angela,” John stated simply. “A key for her. It.”
“For the artificial intelligence?” Jay’s mouth dropped open.
“Precisely.”
The whole situation was starting to line up. The Monster Hunter class was created as a key for the AI. It was a failsafe plan in-case Tumult Corporation failed to meet its obligations to John Miller and his studio. Since they were greedy, the company had obviously failed to meet those obligations if it had tried to meet any. The situation also illuminated why they hadn’t wanted to push their other contracts too far. They knew they’d be fighting John Miller and his studio for years.
Jay had accidentally ended up in the middle of everything, so John had sent Ichibad to keep his eye on Jay and help him. The only thing he didn’t know was what John wanted from him. Assumedly, Jay needed to use the key, but he had no idea where the lock was.
“I assume you want me to use the key,” Jay offered. “I’m not saying that I’m against that. But what does it do? What’s the point of using the key? I know I’m still carrying around a strange item from Ichibad. Is that involved? He made me promise not to look at the item until the time came. There was some vague assurance that I would know when. But I don’t think I do.”
John pulled a small orange envelope out of his pocket and placed it on the table. What was inside the envelope was unclear, but the object was small and fit neatly. It wasn’t labeled, but he slid the package over to Jay.
“The item is a weapon you must use to kill Angela Kitt when the time comes. The code we wrote needed to follow the game’s rules so it wouldn’t raise suspicion with the other developers,” John explained. “There’s buried code about effects applied when a creature is killed with specific weapons. We hid the lock and key among those effects. In this case, the code snippet calls out to the Monster Hunter servers where Angela is running. The code triggered there will cause alarm bells, so it must happen at the final moment.”
Jay could buy the game design concepts, especially after his previous conversation with Angela. The situation was strange, but his position had been odd since he received his special class. John seemed intelligent, so Jay wasn’t surprised he had a backup plan for what was most likely his life’s work, given the scope. Angela was so advanced that the game studio owner might have even more robust technology than the military.
“What happens when I kill her?” Jay asked. “I’m not agreeing to anything because I can’t even access the game. But this whole thing has me curious.”
“Assuming you’ve completed the three Angerine trials,” John acknowledged. “Which I happen to know you are completing. Then, assuming you also have the package I just gave you plugged into your full dive console, you’ll have ripped Angela from the game and placed her onto that physical drive. In other words, you’ll have ruined Tumult Corporation.”
“If I’m able to do this?” Jay asked, still mining for more information. He desperately tried to avoid thinking about what would happen to the game once Angela was ripped out. “What then?”
“You’ll be able to do it. Ichibad has Angela working on getting you back into the game right now,” John assured him. “The only thing taking so long is that Tumult was very thorough after we intervened with the Bestiary system. They’ve blocked your access on every possible level. So, Angela has to clone all of their game code, so she can set up a separate log-in system for you on its servers. Once finished, you’ll log into Angela’s servers, which will forward your connection to the game.”
“She can do that?” Jay wondered aloud, seriously impressed. Angela was even more powerful than he had thought. The technology involved in such a feat was far above his head. “That’s amazing. How did you possibly make something like this?”
“I just planted a seed and watered it,” John muttered offhandedly. His eyes glazed over as he looked away, trapped in a memory. It took him a few seconds to pull himself back to earth. “Anyway, will you help me? I want to save Angela from these greedy corporate overlords.”
Jay was unconvinced that John’s motives were totally pure. After all, he stood to profit immensely from using Angela. The warring companies had ongoing legal processes, which John could ignore if Angela were ripped from the servers.
“Wait,” Jay said. “Doesn’t Angela live on its own servers? Why do we even need to steal it back?”
“Just think of it like you’re pulling the plug,” John explained, obstinately refusing to go into more detail. Jay tried to push him harder, looking to understand more, but he refused. John simply repeated his previous question.
“Are you going to help?”
Angela was an artificial intelligence. In the end, she wasn’t a genuinely sentient creature. Still, if the AI was intelligent enough to rebuild an entire game from scratch, Jay could simply ask it. He would hand it over to John if the AI selected that option. Angela clearly didn’t want to remain on Tumultua Online. Jay couldn’t promise more but could swear that he would liberate Angela from the game.
“Yeah,” Jay said. “I’ll finish the third trial, kill Angela Kitt with the weapon, and liberate the AI from the game.”
“Excellent,” John smirked, offering Jay his hand. He didn’t seem to consider, even for a second, that Jay might just keep Angela. “I’ll make sure you’re properly rewarded. I’ll cover whatever contract fee Tumult originally promised you. It’s a win-win. You get exactly what you wanted, even though they snaked you. I get my work back.”
If John didn’t consider the possibility of being double-crossed, Jay wouldn’t draw his attention to it. He took the hand and shook on their deal. Of course, he’d only promised to liberate Angela from the game.