Neal Stephenson - Reamde

It all became clear when he interrogated the chat interface and discovered that there were no fewer than a dozen discrete channels to which he could listen here. Doing so, he was treated to waterfalls of jargon-laden statements in as many separate windows.

Snarph:WTS RG 50 BUX PP NOW

Opening a browser window atop his view of the game, he did some googling and learned how to translate such utterances: “WTS” meant “want to sell,” “RG 50” meant that the quantity for sale amounted to fifty or so pieces of Red Gold, “BUX” meant that Snarph’s player wanted American dollars (other commonly seen options being “EUR,” “LBS,” “YEN,” and “RMB”), “PP” meant that he wanted to clear the transaction using PayPal, and “NOW” meant the obvious.

Working laboriously from a translation key that he found on a wiki, he typed in

Lottery Discountz:WTS IG XX BUX WU 1HR

Which meant “I wish to exchange a yet-to-be-divulged amount of Indigold for dollars in about one hour, settling the transaction by means of a Western Union wire transfer.”

But he did not hit the return key, which would have broadcast the message to all the heavy-hitter gold buyers in the deepest recess of the pit—the channel into which he’d been typing. He, a complete nobody, was proposing to launch a transaction worth (at least) hundreds of thousands of dollars, using Indigold pieces that he did not actually have in hand yet. He had already seen other would-be sellers, making much less unusual propositions, being hounded down as mere mischief makers and slain on the spot. Worse yet—since death, in T’Rain, was only a temporary inconvenience—he might get exiled permanently.

So he waited and watched. Because there was an alternative to broadcasting on a channel: you could send the message privately to a specific individual. He only needed to find the right one. And now that he had discovered the chat interface and broken its code, he was beginning to feel he had some plausible hope of doing so. To begin with, he could ignore all the channels except the ones used by the highest of high rollers. Once he had closed all those windows, he began to look for lines that had the right sorts of codes in them. A particularly appealing one being

Dogshaker:WTB IG 2 EUR WU NOW

By mousing over the characters in his field of view, Csongor was able to identify this Dogshaker, a distinguished-looking K’Shetriae merchant in gleaming purple robes—perhaps a fashion statement intended to emphasize the fact that he dealt in the ultra-high-value Indigo coins. After a minute or so, this Dogshaker was approached by another character who apparently had Indigold to sell, and it became plain from their body language that they were whispering to each other. This meant that they had established a private chat channel and were now using it to negotiate terms. The negotiation appeared to stretch out over several minutes, which made Csongor somewhat anxious. But in due time they shook hands with each other and went their separate ways, the seller climbing up out of the pit and wandering off while the buyer remained where he was.

All of this reconnaissance had consumed a considerable amount of time, during which Marlon and James had been shouting at each other almost nonstop across the café, apparently helping each other negotiate some incredibly challenging set of obstacles, ambushes, and setbacks. Their epic adventure seemed to have driven away business at first, as the sword-and-sorcery-themed quest seemed to have destroyed the erotic ambience being sought by the mongers. Csongor had been a bit concerned that they might be thrown out of the establishment. But Yuxia had been at work distracting the proprietor, not so much by charming as by confusing him. When that began to wear thin, she had moved on to plucking money out of James’s wallet and purchasing “LDs”—Lady Drinks—shockingly overpriced beverages that were apparently the fiscal mainspring of the local hospitality industry. Thus Marlon and James had been left free to prosecute their virtual adventure. But of late there had been a lull, and when Csongor finally pulled his head out of the game for a moment to ask why, James informed him that they had fought their way to a ley line intersection and were even now in transit to Carthinias.

Now or never. Csongor created a new chat window, an invitation to set up a private conversation between Lottery Discountz and Dogshaker.

“How many Indigo do you have?” he called out.

“Twenty,” Marlon answered.

Lottery Discountz:WTS IG 20 BUX WUWT NOW

After a few moments’ pause, he saw a response:

Dogshaker:WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE.

Csongor, a bit nonplussed, typed back,

Lottery Discountz:The pleasure is mutual.

Dogshaker:You don’t have it on you.

Lottery Discountz:My friend is bringing it.

Dogshaker:But your message said NOW.

Lottery Discountz:They are coming on LLI at this moment.

Dogshaker:They have muscle? Tempting robbery targets.

Lottery Discountz:Some. Maybe not enough.

Dogshaker:Which LLI are they coming to?

(For one of the reasons the Carthinias Exchange stood where it did was that it was within a couple of thousand meters of not just one but four major ley line intersections.)

Csongor repeated the question aloud.

“Who wants to know?” asked James.

“A possible buyer.”

“He wants to rob us,” Marlon said.

“He seems respectable. He’s doing big transactions in the Exchange. He’s worried you’re going to get ripped off.”

“So am I,” said James.

“Me too,” said Marlon

In the chat window, Csongor’s interlocutor was becoming impatient.

Dogshaker:Would they be coming from the Torgai Foothills by any chance?

Csongor announced, “He has guessed you’re coming from the Torgai.”

“Of course,” James said. “These guys must all know that something big is going down there.”

“Comet Rider spell is attention getter,” Marlon added, perhaps for comic effect.

Dogshaker the moneychanger, apparently fed up with Lottery Discountz’s coyness, began to climb up out of the amphitheater, headed (Csongor guessed) in the direction of the ley line intersection that would tend to be used by visitors from the Torgai Foothills. “He’s headed for your LLI,” Csongor said. “I’m following him.” And he got his hands on the keyboard and sent Lottery Discountz running in pursuit.

“Does he have muscle with him?”

“No.”

“What class of character is he?”

“Merchant.”

“Then we’re probably okay,” said James, “unless he’s only pretending to be a merchant.” During this exchange, he had been sitting back from his keyboard, taking the advantage of a lull to stretch his arms luxuriously. Csongor guessed that nothing much happened during a ley line ride. But suddenly his eyes snapped back to the screen, and he sat forward, bringing his hands back to the keyboard. “We’re sort of committed now anyway.”

“You’re at the LLI?”

“Just popped out,” James confirmed. Csongor glanced over to see that Marlon too was once again fully engaged with his computer.

“Then I’ll lead him to you.” And Csongor typed into the chat window:

Lottery Discountz:Follow me, sir.

To which the moneychanger responded immediately with “K,” that being the chat abbreviation for the unwieldy two-letter message “OK.”

This LLI was a busy one, an area about the size and shape of a cricket oval surrounded by market stalls mostly occupied by small-time moneychangers. Upward of a hundred characters were scattered around it, some just standing there alone, others gathered in social clusters, still others engaged in duels that were frequently accompanied by spectacular magical light shows. Lottery Discountz stumbled to a halt in the middle of it and turned around several times.