Charles Stross: Halting State

Aye, reet, you tell yourself, as the viewpoint rotates and zooms in on the island, diving towards the cobbled streets and crowded alleys that thread the city. There are a myriad of folk here, not all of them human. You weave past the heads of giants and around the sides of a palanquin borne on the back of a domesticated dinosaur led by lizard-faced men, loop around a timber-framed shop that leans alarmingly out across the road, leap a foot-bridge across a canal, then slow as you enter a huge stone-flagged city square, and dive through the doorway of a temple of Mammon that puts Parliament to shame. So this’s what the wee one thinks he’s getting for his birthday? It’s all very picturesque, but the column of exotic dancers high-kicking their way between two temples tells you that Davey’d better have another think coming.

“This is the central bank. Our task is to keep speculation down, and effectively to drain quest items and magic artefacts from the realm to prevent inflation. One way we do this is by offering safe deposit services to players: Avalon Four runs a non-persistent ownership mode so you can lose stuff if you’re killed on a quest and respawn, and the encumbrance rules are tight.”

It’s not much like your local branch of the Clydesdale. Demons and magicians and monsters, oh my!—a bizarre menagerie of unreal, superreal entities stand in small groups across the huge marble floor, bickering and haggling. Here and there, a flash of light and a puff of smoke erupt as one of the staff invokes an imp or servitor to take this or that item to the safe deposit vaults, or to check an adventurer’s possessions out of their custody and return it to their owner.

“The time is just past ten fifteen…”

Your viewpoint jerks, then slews round to face the entrance to the bank. The doors are three times as high as a tall man, carved from giant ebony beams clasped in a frame of some silvery metal: The hinges they turn on are as thick as a body-builder’s arms. But they’re not silvery now—they’re glowing dull red, then a bright, rosy pulse of heat lights them up from the outside, and the doors begin to collapse inwards on a wave of choking black smoke.

In through the smoke marches a formation of monstrous soldiers. They’re larger than life and twice as gnarly, prognathous green-skinned jaws featuring tusks capped in gold. Their uniform is a mixture of brown leather and chain-mail, and their helmet spikes bear the impaled heads of their trophies, nodding above the points of their pikes. Just like Craigmillar at chucking out time on a Saturday night, you figure, only not as ugly.

There are many of them, for the column is at least ten rows deep: And something vast and red and reptilian looms behind them, ancient and malign.

Then the picture freezes.

“You are looking at an Orcish war band. There are at least forty of them, and they’re a very long way from home. The thing behind them is a dragon. They seem to have brought him along for fire support. Which is impossible, but so is what happens next.”

The picture unfreezes.

The Orcish warriors spread out and adopt a spearheaded formation. Their leader barks a sharp command, and the pikes are lowered to face the denizens of the bank, who are turning to watch with gathering astonishment and anger. Here and there the bright glamour of incantations shows a spell-caster winding up to put the intruders in their place. And then—

A wave of darkness descends across the room, and the occupants freeze in their tracks.

“This is when something —we’re not sure what—nerfed our admins back to level zero and cast a Time Stop on everyone in the room. That’s a distressingly high-powered spell, and it normally affects just one target at a time.”

Flashes and flickers of light fitfully stab into the darkness. The Orcs are dispersing, fanning out with the speedy assurance of stage-hands moving the furniture and props while the stage lights are dimmed. They move between flicker and fulmination, snatching up leather sacks and ornately decorated chests, seizing swords and swapping their cheap leather armour for glittering plate. Over the space of a minute they denude the floor of the bank, snatching up the treasures that are inexplicably popping into view from the ethereal vaults.

Finally, their leader barks another command. The Orcs converge on his banner, his helmet nodding high beneath its column of five skulls—and they form up neatly into columns again, and march out through the mangled wreckage of the doors. As the last one leaves the threshold, the darkness disperses like mist on a summer morning. A couple of the braver warriors give shouts of rage and chase after their stolen property—but the dragon is waiting, and the smell of napalm is just the same in Avalon Four as on any other silver screen.

“We’ve been robbed,” says Richardson. “Got the picture yet?”

It’s time to rub your eyes and start asking hard questions. So someone found a bug in your game, and you called the Polis? Looks like a good place to start. While these tits are wasting your time, ordinary folk are being burgled.

“You said the Orcs were a long way from home. How do you know that?”

Sam Couper—the middle geek—sniggers. “Traceroute is my bitch.” He shuts up immediately when he sees Hackman sizing him for a side order with fries.

“My colleague is trying to explain”—Beccy Webster’s subtlety of emphasis is truly politician grade; she probably mimes to Wendy Alexander videos before breakfast every morning—“that they were controlled by a bunch of gold farmers in a sweatshop in Bangladesh. But we lost them when they ran over the border into NIGHTWATCH.”

“We could have nailed them if that ass-hat Nigel would show his sorry ass in the office once in a while.” Russell is clearly pissed about the missing Nigel, but you can follow that up later.

“NIGHTWATCH is another game?” You’re in danger of getting a cramp in your raised eyebrow.

Webster nods, sparing a warning glance for the three stooges. “Yes, it’s operated by Electronic Arts. They in-source quant services behind their own iron curtain, so we don’t have admin privileges when we go there.”

She pauses, mercifully, and you think of your upcoming evidence session and fail to suppress a groan. “So why did you call us ?” you ask. “It seems to me this is all internal to your games, aye? And you’re supposed to be the folks who stop players from, from”—you shrug, searching for words—“arsing about with virtual reality. Right?” Wasting Polis time is an offence, but somehow you don’t think the skipper would thank you for charging this shower. More trouble than it’s worth.

“You listen to me.” When Hackman speaks, you listen: He’s got the same sense of menacing single-mindedness as a Great White homing in on a surfboard. “The exploit isn’t as simple as robbing a virtual bank of virtual objects. The way Avalon Four is architected means that someone had to leak them a private cryptographic token before they could change the ownership attributes of all those objects.” He clears his throat. “ You shouldn’t have been called.” He spares a paint-blistering glare for Richardson: “This is a job for SOCA, not the local police…But seeing you’re here, you might as well note that not only has an offence has been committed subject to Section three of the CMA, as amended post independence in 2014”— shite, he’s got you —“but we just completed our flotation on AIM three weeks ago last Monday, and our share price this morning was up nearly twenty-seven per cent on the post-IPO peak. If we don’t find the bastards who did this, our shares are going to tank, which will rip the shit out of the secondary offering we were planning to make in six months. The timing’s too cute: This isn’t just a hacking incident, it’s insider trading. Someone’s trying to depress our share price for their own financial gain.”