Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

Charlie waved a listless arm as he spoke, and then let it fall. Dagmar looked at his supine figure.

“Do you need coffee or something? ” she asked.

“Coffee’s all I’ve had for the last dozen hours,” Charlie said. “I can’t look at food right now. The sight of it makes me-well, it doesn’t make me sick, it just makes me not want food.”

“Yeah,” Dagmar said. “I know what you mean.”

She was floating on coffee as well, quarts and quarts of the stuff, and the only food she’d eaten was a piece of dry toast she’d choked down with a handful of vitamins. Unlike Charlie, she’d gotten home the previous night, but she’d barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes she saw a blood-spattered Austin lying on the blacktop, mouth slack and open, the Yankees cap rolled off his head and lying by his hand.

Do you think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? he’d asked.

Her answer had been less than serious, but she’d give a different one now. She’d seen dreadful things in Indonesia, but she’d had the consolation of going home afterward and looking at them from a safe distance.

The atrocities were no longer at arm’s length. They were right in her lap.

“Murdoch asked me,” Dagmar said, “if Austin had any enemies. And when I said he didn’t, they didn’t believe me.”

“Would you? ” Charlie’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “They asked me if he had any connection to organized crime.”

Dagmar was overwhelmed by a feeling of disgust at the question.

“Christ,” she said, “that’s stupid.”

Charlie gave her an irritated look.

“It was a drive-by shooting,” he said. “A contract killing, most likely. Murdoch was only asking the obvious questions.”

Dagmar felt herself dig in her heels. Austin was not some kind of mafioso or drug dealer, and he didn’t deal with them, and any investigation aimed in that direction was not only wrong, it was a waste of the time that could be spent finding the killer.

“If it was a contract killing,” she said, “they hit the wrong man.”

An idea brushed against her mind, but she was too weary to catch at it, and it faded.

“Listen,” she said. “We’ve got a problem.”

Charlie turned again to Pinky and the Brain, gazed at them bleakly, then closed his eyes.

“Oh yeah? ” he said. “Is it important? ”

“I’m afraid so.” She gathered her strength, then spoke. “A video of the killing turned up on Video Us, along with pictures of the shooter. They were taken with a zoom lens from-I don’t know-across the highway, maybe.”

Charlie’s eyes were wide open and staring at her. “Do the police know? ”

“I called Murdoch and gave him the URL. I had to explain about the game-I don’t think he quite understood it.”

“If they catch the guy,” Charlie judged, “what Murdoch understands doesn’t matter. Who took the pictures? ”

“A new gamer who uses the handle Consuelo. But I think she’s a sock puppet for someone like Hermes or Joe Clever-one of our Dumpster divers.”

“Jesus.” Charlie sagged in his chair again. “At least one of those bastards finally did something useful.”

“It means we’re being stalked by someone pretty serious,” Dagmar said.

Charlie flapped a hand. “Who cares? We’ve been stalked before.”

“But not by a contract killer,” Dagmar said. “If we look in the rearview mirror and see someone following us, is it Joe Clever or is it somebody with a gun? ”

Charlie gave her an unreadable look. “We are not the targets here,” he said.

“Crazy people exist,” Dagmar said. “None of the people we work or play with are exactly models of middle-American thought and behavior.” She banged a hand on the arm of her chair. “Someone killed Austin, for Christ’s sake!”

“Right. Shit. Damn.” Charlie hesitated. “Do you think I should put out a warning to our employees? ”

“They might overreact.” Dagmar thought for a long moment. “But if you failed to put out a warning and someone got hurt, then you might be liable.”

That decided it.

“Right. I’ll have Karin send out an email when she gets back.”

Dagmar hesitated. “There’s another problem,” she said.

“Can it wait? ”

“No.” Again she hesitated. She didn’t want to acknowledge this.

“The Video Us site,” she said, “has had nearly half a million hits since the video was posted.”

Charlie’s lip twisted. “Sick fucks,” he said.

“No,” Dagmar said. “Confused fucks. Consuelo’s a gamer-she posted the link on Our Reality Network and nowhere else. Nobody knows whether the video is real or a part of the game. The Our Reality people have been speculating on their live feed continually since eight o’clock last night, and they’re not slowing down.”

“Jesus.” Charlie rubbed his eyes.

“The buzz is huge,” she said. “It’s spreading outside the usual channels. And normally we want buzz, just not the kind we’re getting.”

“Screw the buzz,” Charlie said. “You’ve got a subscription to their live feed, right? ”

“Yeah. Under one of my handles.”

Anger edged Charlie’s tones, burned in his eyes. He jabbed a finger into the laminate surface of his desk.

“So go online,” he said, “blow your cover as Dagmar, and tell them that Austin’s death was not a part of the game but a real-life tragedy. And they should shut the fuck up already. Got that? ”

“Right.” Again she hesitated. “But it might be too late.”

“Too late for what? ”

Dagmar looked at the savagery crackling behind Charlie’s eyes and decided not to answer.

“Never mind.” She rose. “I’ll go post the announcement.”

Unspoken objections still clattered in her mind, objections that had nothing to do with Austin’s death or the investigation.

They had to do with the shape of the game.

When Consuelo had posted the video and linked to it from Our Reality Network, the shape of the game had changed. The players had shifted their energies in an unanticipated direction.

Alternate reality games worked in a complex synergy with the player community. During the course of previous games, Dagmar had been forced to change the game when players moved in an unexpected way.

TINAG-this is not a game. The game only worked when both players and puppetmasters acted as if everything was real. When Dagmar, as puppetmaster, addressed the players directly, it shattered the illusion-it broke the fourth wall, as in theater when an actor turns to the audience and speaks to them directly.

If Dagmar posted a notice telling players that Austin’s death was real, all the player momentum that had been generated by the release of Consuelo’s video would come to a screeching halt.

Dagmar was loyal to her creations-to their integrity, their own internal sense. She wanted their shape to be logical, their interior purposes fulfilled. She didn’t mind changing her work if the change was for the better, but arbitrary changes made her crazy, and she completely hated changes that destroyed the illusion she had worked so hard to create.

But, she then realized, in this case her loyalty was ridiculous. What was the game-what was a mere story-against Austin’s tragedy?

Charlie was right. Dagmar had to make the announcement. Austin’s real death could not become a part of Dagmar’s alternate reality amusement.

She mentally composed the message as she walked to her office. As the executive producer for Great Big Idea she had a spacious corner billet and a desk filled with high-powered hardware. The rest of the office featured desks and shelves filled with souvenirs of Dagmar’s frenetic, complicated life. There were books, disks, manuals, file folders, and toys. There were posters from gaming conventions, graphic designs from the past four years of Dagmar’s games, portfolios of actors, technicians, and software designers, maps of areas where live events had taken place, books about the history of Los Angeles and other cities, and lists of the go-to people in half the cities of the world.