Neal Stephenson - Reamde

“Too much has happened,” Richard said. “Since the beginning of the Wor we have registered a quarter of a million new players. Everything they know about the world and the game has been post-Wor. To roll the world back would be to unmake every single one of their characters.”

“So your strategy is to put your thumb on the scale. Grant special powers to the characters you’d see win. Like Athena with Diomedes.”

Richard shrugged. “It’s an idea. I am not here to lay stuff on you ex cathedra. This is a collaboration.”

“All I mean to say is that, if you help the Earthtone Coalition, then you are, implicitly, admitting that such a thing as the Earthtone Coalition exists. You are conferring legitimacy on this ridiculous distinction that has been created by mischief makers.”

“It was a groundswell. An enormous flocking behavior, a phase transition.”

“No respect shown for the integrity of the world.”

“All we can do,” Richard said, “is move faster than the other guys. Lunge ahead of them. Surprise them with just how cool, how adaptable we can be. Delight them by incorporating their creation into the Canon. Show them what we’re made of.”

“Well that puts me on the spot, doesn’t it? How can I decline, on those terms?”

“I apologize for my choice of words,” Richard said. “I am really not trying to corner you. But I do believe that with a bit of thought you could actually come up with something that you would not be so unhappy with.”

Don Donald looked like he was thinking about it.

“Otherwise, it’s just going to veer. Like an airplane with its control surfaces shot off.”

“Oh. I’m the empennage?”

Richard threw up his hands.

“The tail feathers on the arrow,” explained D-squared, “that make it fly straight. Made of quills. Like the ones—”

“That writers used to write with, I get it.”

“Trailing behind…”

“But guiding the warhead. Yup. Hey, are you a writer or something?”

D-squared chuckled forcibly.

“They want it,” Richard said. “They didn’t at first. They were thrilled to be off on their own, making up their own story.”

“The players, you mean.”

“Yes. This was very clear in the chat rooms, the third-party websites. Now that’s faded. They’re saying they want some direction back, they want the story of the world to make sense again.”

Something occurred to Don Donald, and he jabbed the stem of his pipe at Richard. “What language do they speak, in these chat rooms? Is it all English?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’d like to know who these people are. The instigators, the ringleaders. Are they Asians?”

“That is a common misconception,” Richard said. “That the Asians, less fluent in English, less conversant with European mythology, don’t cotton to the sorts of stories and characters that you like to write—but they are attracted by bright colors.” He shook his head. “We have analyzed this to death. It’s completely without foundation. Between the Chinese, with their Confucian background, and the Japanese, they are second to no one in their respect and maybe even awe for COBS.”

“COBS?”

“Crusty Old Brown Stuff. Sorry.”

“Another one of your internal acronyms?”

“A whole department. When you go into the world—which you never do—but when you go, for example, to the hut of Galdoromin the Hermit, at the End of the Fell Path, and get past his two-headed wolf and go inside and look around, all that shit hanging on the walls was produced by COBS.” Richard decided not to share the fact that the decor of Galdoromin’s hut had been inspired by a T.G.I. Friday’s in Issaquah. “Top-level design happens in Seattle, but the detailed modeling of the actual stuff all happened in China. They did a great job of it too.”

Don Donald appeared to be thinking about it. Richard tried shutting up for a change. He drained his tankard and stepped out to the garderobe. Then, back with an idea: “I was sleeping on the plane and a line came into my head: ‘We’ve all been made fools of!’ Kind of reflected the whole way I felt about the Wor. But later I was thinking, Why not turn it around and put it into the mouths of those people we find most annoying? ”

D-squared, sitting in profile to Richard, one elbow on the table cradling his pipe, turned to meet his eye. The pipe, supported by the hand, remained motionless, making it look as though cartoon character physics was in effect. “Make them out to be the dupes?”

“Yes, erect some kind of backstory where they had been seduced into this massive act of betrayal by fast talkers of some stripe who later turned out to be not what they seemed.”

“What about the blue hair?”

“We might have to finesse that a little, but the gist of it is that the people who signed up for this rebellion were told to wear gaudy clothes and adornments as a badge, so that they would know who was in on the conspiracy.”

“‘We’ve all been made fools of!’” the Don repeated. “Seems almost like sour grapes, doesn’t it, when you put it into the mouths of people you’re not especially fond of.”

“Again. Finesse.”

“What sorts of emergency powers might you be willing to put in the hands of the—it pains me, Richard, to hear these words coming from my own lips—Earthtone Coalition?”

“A full answer could get obnoxiously technical. The game stats are very complicated. So, if we wanted to be sneaky about it, there are all sorts of ways we could put our thumb on the scale, as you said earlier. Or we could just be obvious about it and invoke some new deity or previously unknown deep feature of the world’s history.”

“Which would need to be written.”

“Which would need to be written.”

A side effect of being chained in the powder room was being out of the loop. Zula had no idea what was going on. She ate her military rations and slept surprisingly well and woke up in good spirits. Not that her situation had improved. But at least she had tried something. She could hear people coming and going via the elevators. Since she had no windows, no phone, and no watch, she couldn’t tell what time it was.

She had managed to sneak a ballpoint pen into her pocket yesterday, so she wrote a letter to her family on paper towels, rolled it up, and stuffed it into the drainpipe she had disconnected yesterday. Maybe some plumber would see it when he came to fix the drain, and bring it to the attention of a supervisor, and eventually it would make its way to someone who could read English. She hoped so. She was proud of that letter. It was not devoid of humor.

Sokolov knocked once, then entered the ladies’ room and bid her good morning. He removed the handcuff from her ankle and escorted her out. “Leaving forever,” he said, “bring your stuff.”

They took the elevator to the ground floor and walked out the main entrance of the office building onto the front drive, a sweeping horseshoe partially covered by an awning, where a van was waiting for them with its engine idling and its rear doors splayed open. Standing behind it were four of the security consultants, wearing stupid hats, variously smoking or fussing with a stack of plastic coolers and rod-and-reel cases that had been packed in the back. As was invariably the case, they were being observed by a thousand Chinese people and an unknowable number of security cameras. But all the people doing tai chi in the shade of the trees, the uniformed schoolgirls streaming out of the ferry terminals, the taxi drivers killing time in the adjoining square, the paired PSB officers, the carters, the construction workers showing up to work on the skyscraper, all these people just looked at the scene around the van for a few seconds and reckoned that it was a bunch of crazy foreign visitors going fishing.