Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

“I freely confess that all Charlie’s charity work makes him my moral superior,” Austin said.

“You contribute to charity,” Dagmar said.

“Usually when Charlie tells me where to send the check.”

She smiled. “Nothing wrong with following the advice of a moral superior.”

Austin talked about Wyoming. He’d bought a condominium in Jackson Hole-half a million dollars for twelve hundred square feet-and now he talked about quitting and buying a ranch. Dagmar was faintly surprised he hadn’t yet bought a Stetson, a pair of alligator-skin Tony Lamas, and a big cowboy belt buckle.

“You don’t know how to run a ranch,” Dagmar said.

“Some of the ranchers I’ve met,” Austin said, “you get the idea it can’t be that hard.”

“I can’t picture you up there, I just can’t.”

“Well,” he said, looking at her, “it might be hard getting a good RPG together.”

She sighed. “I miss live gaming,” she said.

“So do I. We should do it sometime.”

She nodded.

“I’ll check with Charlie. Maybe we can commit some nights.”

“After the current ARG is over, okay? It’s absorbing all my energy.”

“If we wait for us all to have time off from work, it’ll be forever.”

Dagmar considered this. “That’s so true.”

“How long has it been since Charlie actually played anything? ”

Dagmar looked blank. “Not since I’ve been back in California.”

“I wonder if he’s played since he crashed Lost Empire.”

Dagmar stared. “Charlie was the one who crashed Lost Empire? ”

Austin was startled.

“You didn’t know it was him and BJ? ”

“No. They didn’t tell me.”

Lost Empire had been a classic fantasy MMORPG that had been brought down by its own rather primitive economic system. The game designers had kept the economy simple, figuring that players would be more interested in killing monsters and performing quests than in becoming entrepreneurs. Some smart trading had resulted in players’ gaining monopolies in basic commodities such as “grain,” “wood,” and “gems,” bringing down the whole system. The result had been a game reset and a lot of players having their money refunded.

Austin looked down at his blue-corn enchiladas. “It wasn’t exactly their greatest hour. Maybe they’re embarrassed.”

“I’m impressed, though. Lost Empire was a pretty good hack.”

Austin seemed dubious. “Don’t tell Charlie that I told you, okay? ”

“Sure.”

After buying lunch, Austin took her back to the Burger Angeleno parking lot to pick up her car. She followed him to Great Big Idea, where he had a meeting with Charlie.

Great Big Idea occupied part of an office tower of ocean-colored glass in the San Fernando Valley, sandwiched between a Chili’s and a Gap on a green bluff overlooking the Ventura Highway. The building was owned by Charlie, or by his company, or his foreign backers-Dagmar was a bit unclear about it. The rest of the building was occupied by AvN Soft, Charlie’s company, the name of which was usually pronounced “Avvensoft.”

Austin was in the atrium, talking on his phone, when Dagmar entered. The atrium rose all eight stories and neatly bisected the building, with offices off balconies to either side. The atrium was filled with greenery and comfortable furniture and had a small coffee shop. A lot of the employees preferred the less impersonal environment of the atrium to their offices, wireless connecting them to their jobs.

“I know we made the benchmarks,” Austin said. “And the next step is the release. So we’ve got to stick with the plan, all right?” There was a pause, and then Austin said, “I’m sure it’s a great idea. But save it for Release 2.0.” His heel tapped with impatience on the imported Finnish porphyry of the atrium floor. “Dude,” he said, “we’ve had this conversation.”

Dagmar waited for the dialogue to end so that she could thank Austin for lunch. Charlie arrived first, padding through the atrium in blue suede Adidas.

Like Austin, Charlie was a Type One Geek, tall and thin, with a balding head. He wore dark-rimmed spectacles, chinos, and a Versace sports shirt of the same pastel shade as Austin’s.

“No,” Austin said firmly. “You’re sticking with the strategic plan. Because if you don’t, I’m going to spank you hard. Got that? ”

Charlie listened with a grin on his face until the conversation was over.

“That wasn’t BJ, was it? ” he asked.

Then there was a moment of awkward silence as he and Austin recalled Dagmar’s relationship with BJ, and then Dagmar reached out to pat Austin’s arm.

“You can say what you like-I haven’t slept with BJ in ten years. Thanks for lunch. I’ve got a meeting of my own. Have a good time.”

She took the elevator to Great Big Idea, which was on the third floor. She had a meeting of her creative team-while she did most of the writing, other people handled Web design, graphic art, audio, video, and the more complex and technical sorts of puzzles for which the form was known. The meeting took place in a boardroom covered with charts and schedules drawn on whiteboard and glittering from plasma screens.

On the largest screen, Dagmar’s mantra glowed, one line following the next on infinite repeat:

Read the Schedule

Know the Schedule

Love the Schedule

The meeting was to make certain that everyone had taken the mantra to heart, and Dagmar was pleased to discover that for once, nothing had gone pear-shaped. Everyone was making the deadlines. The number of people who had joined the game was now more than eight hundred thousand and still climbing.

After the meeting broke up, Dagmar helped herself to a cup of coffee from the machine and walked to the boardroom’s floor-to-ceiling window to gaze across the Ventura Highway to the Santa Monica Mountains, dull brown against the brilliant California sky.

The players were calling the game Motel Room Blues. Her own name for it was The Long Night of Briana Hall.

Either would do. The important thing was the hundreds of thousands of players, who, if they could be persuaded to join Planet Nine, would quadruple its membership.

She looked down at the parking lot just as Austin started to cross it toward his Corvette. His head was shaded by his Yankees cap, and he carried his keys in one hand.

Dagmar’s attention was caught by motion in a corner of the parking lot-a motorcycle had just bounced across the low concrete berm that separated the AvN parking lot from the Chili’s restaurant next door. The bike accelerated as it moved along the row of cars. It was a green and white Kawasaki, and the rider wore what looked like brand-new riding leathers and a black helmet with a visor. Dagmar could hear the bike’s whine from her third-floor perch.

Austin had heard the machine and had politely stopped to let it pass. Instead the motorcycle slowed and came to a stop, as if the rider were going to ask Austin a question.

The rider drew a pistol from his green and white jacket and shot Austin five times. At each report the glass window rattled in its frame.

Dagmar’s heart lurched with each shot. A scream seemed to crouch somewhere in her throat, ready to spring. She stared as Austin fell, as the biker calmly put away his pistol and accelerated.

Dagmar clawed for her cell phone and tried to punch 911 while still keeping her eyes on the biker. She hit 611 instead.

The biker couldn’t get into the Gap parking lot-there was a fence with a three-foot-high cable stretched across a series of posts-so he turned left at the end of the row of cars and then, almost casually, made his way out of the parking lot and down the frontage road, where he accelerated out of sight.