Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

“Crap,” she said, and crumpled the card.

“Goodness!” said Luci. “Who is it? ”

Dagmar gave the short form. “Short psycho married foreigner,” she said.

Luci gave a knowing nod. BJ chuckled. He picked up the vase.

“Well, if he’s a bastard, it isn’t the flowers’ fault,” he said. “Where shall we take them? ”

They went to her office, where they cleared some of the rubble off a shelf and made a place for the vase. The soft scent of the roses floated through the room. Dagmar called Contracts and told them she needed a freelancer contract rushed through. She gave them BJ’s name, address, and Social Security number and told them he was going to be paid two thousand dollars per week.

“And backdate the contract to Monday,” she said.

That way, BJ could pick up his first check on Friday. Which, since he had quit his IT job for this, was the least she could do.

“Thanks,” BJ said, looking out her window at the highway down below. “Now can you tell me what the hell I’m doing here? ”

“Have a seat.”

He moved file folders from one of the chairs and sat in it. She explained what was happening in The Long Night of Briana Hall and how all that would have to change. She called up a flow chart of the action, put it on the big plasma monitor on the wall, and walked him through it.

He adjusted his rimless spectacles and pursed his lips in thought. “So Briana’s suspected of two murders, right? ”

“Yes.”

“And the murders aren’t actually connected? ”

“No. It just seems that way to the cops.”

BJ rubbed his chin. “That’s a coincidence,” he said. “I don’t like coincidences in fiction. I see enough of them in real life.”

Dagmar smiled, then gestured at the chart. “The cops don’t believe in coincidence, either. But the players are going to prove them wrong.”

“So one of the murders is committed by a terrorist, and the other was done by people involved in some kind of securities fraud.”

“Right.”

“Can we connect them in some way? ”

She blinked at him. “How? ”

“Well,” said BJ, “let’s say that the people involved in the fraud know that the terrorists are about to strike. So they’re planning on-I don’t know-shorting S &Ps or something, knowing they’re going to go down.”

“Ah. Like al Qaeda was supposed to have done-manipulated stocks just before 9/11.”

“Exactly.”

Dagmar leaned back in her chair. Possibilities cascaded through her mind.

“Yes,” she said. “We could do that. But in that case the players are only confirming what the authorities actually believe. It’s more dramatically satisfying for a player to prove an NPC wrong than to show he’s been right all along.”

“Then you make it a triple-layered puzzle,” BJ said. “Level one is solved by the cops, who think Briana’s guilty. Level two will be solved by the players, who will prove that the crimes are unrelated and that Briana is innocent of the murders. And then the players unravel the third layer, which shows that the crimes are related after all but that Briana is still innocent.”

Dagmar looked at BJ and grinned.

“Yeah,” she said. “We could work it that way.”

She couldn’t help being grateful for someone who was actually trying to solve her problems.

“Now,” BJ said, “tell me how this Russian assassin is connected to everything.”

Dagmar took a long breath and slowly exhaled.

“That,” she said, “is really complicated.”

She told him. His blue eyes widened.

“This is the guy who killed Austin? You’ve got hundreds of thousands of people trying to find a real killer? ”

“Millions,” said Dagmar.

“Holy Christ.” His arms made a hopeless, flopping gesture. “I have no idea what to say to that.”

“The problem is that they aren’t finding him. We’ve got to give them other things to work on until Litvinov surfaces. And if he doesn’t surface, we’ve got to give the players a satisfactory resolution to that plot.”

BJ scrubbed his face with both hands. “I can’t believe this.”

“Wait,” Dagmar said, “till you hear what Charlie wants to do with the water samplers.”

She was in the middle of her explanation when her desk phone rang.

“Dagmar,” she answered.

“Did you get my present, love? ” asked Siyed.

Her heart gave a guilty lurch at the sound of the East London accent.

“Thanks for the flowers,” she said, “but I’m too busy to see you.”

Across the desk, BJ smiled.

“Please, Dagmar,” said Siyed. “I’ve come all this way.”

“Sorry, no,” said Dagmar. “There’s this problem about your being married.”

“I-” And at that moment Dagmar’s handheld began to play “Harlem Nocturne.”

“My other phone’s ringing,” Dagmar said. “Gotta go.”

The display on the handheld showed it was Charlie calling. The sight of his name brought a flash of paranoia, and she wondered if one of Charlie’s spies could have seen her bring BJ into the building.

She didn’t think there was anyone but Charlie at AvN Soft who dated from BJ’s time, but perhaps she was wrong.

Her hands were clumsy in removing the phone from its holster, and in pressing the Send button to answer.

“Yes,” she said into the phone.

“Dagmar,” said Charlie, “are you ready for the keys to the kingdom? ”

Her head swam. It took her a moment to orient herself to an entirely different context, and then she reached for her stylus.

“Okay,” she said.

Charlie gave her an account number and a complicated password, a random mix of letters and numerals. Dagmar jotted it down on her handheld display and saved it to a text file.

“Got it,” she said.

“Right,” Charlie said. “That’s your budget for the game. If you need more, let me know.”

“Will do,” she said. “Whose name is the account under? ”

“Atreides LLC,” Charlie said. “It’s a corporation I created years ago but never got around to using.”

“You named the company after the family in Aeschylus? ” Dagmar asked.

“No.” Blankly. “I named it after the family in Dune.”

“Right,” Dagmar said. “Of course.”

Sometimes she forgot what subculture she was living in.

“I’ll need a good accounting at the end of this,” Charlie said.

“You’ll get one,” Dagmar said. With BJ’s payment listed as “Consultant fee,” and no names mentioned.

“How’s the game moving? ” he asked.

“I believe I gave you my views yesterday,” said Dagmar.

“Just do it,” Charlie said, and hung up.

BJ was watching her. Amusement glittered behind his spectacles.

“You have a very complex life,” he said.

“No kidding. Excuse me for a moment.”

She used her trackball to take her to the Wells Fargo page and then typed in the account number and password.

Charlie had given her an account with twenty-five million dollars.

She stared for a long moment.

Curse of the Golden Nagi had been budgeted at four million, with live events on three continents. The Long Night of Briana Hall had a budget double that of Golden Nagi, much of which had already been spent on professionally produced, professionally acted video, by far the most expensive item in the budget. Now Charlie had given her more than triple that sum, in addition to the eight million already in the budget.

The keys to the kingdom indeed.

If Dagmar couldn’t do what Charlie wanted on this game, she thought, it was because it simply couldn’t be done.

At one o’clock, Dagmar had an emergency meeting with the Great Big Idea creative team, fourteen people altogether, with the exception of one woman who was in Amsterdam setting up the weekend’s live event.