Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

BJ looked at his computer in its cardboard box. “I’ll be prudent, then.”

“That would be good.”

He looked at her. “Doing anything for dinner tonight? ”

“I’ll be working late and grabbing a salad in the coffee shop.”

He shrugged. “Too bad. With my computer slagged and my software not arriving till tomorrow, I’ve got a free evening.”

“That means more work for me, unfortunately.”

“I suppose it does.”

She hugged him good-bye and suppressed an urge to kiss his cheek.

It wasn’t as if the last work-related romance had worked out very well.

And she could hardly consider it a good idea to have a boyfriend who made her boss crazy. Or vice versa.

She drifted to the window and watched BJ cross the parking lot and put the computer in his old Chevy.

It probably hadn’t been such a good idea to bring BJ into Charlieland.

But what choice, she reflected, had Charlie really given her?

A software suite and the loan of a computer were probably the least she could do in compensation.

FROM: Vikram

It took me a couple days, but I’ve been able to discover that the twenty-five million was transmitted from the United Bank of Cayman, from an account owned by a company called Forlorn Hope Ltd.

In the incorporation pages, the officers of Forlorn Hope include Charles Ruff of Los Angeles, California, and Anthony and Marcia Ruff of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, all in the USA.

The balance of the account, as of 1600 hours Cayman time yesterday, was $12, 344,946, 873.23, all in US dollars.

FROM: Corporal Carrot

How much???

FROM: Chatsworth Osborne Jr.

May I ask how you acquired this information, Vikram?

FROM: Vikram

I don’t want to say much here, for obvious reasons, but I’m from the Indian subcontinent and I come from a family connected with a merchant bank.

Everyone in the world is six degrees of separation from everyone else, but I only needed to go through two degrees to acquire this information.

FROM: Corporal Carrot

You’re with a merchant bank? Like the United Bank of Cayman?

FROM: Vikram

Well, no. I’m not connected with that institution. And I didn’t say that I was with any bank, just that members of my family are.

FROM: Corporal Carrot

You’re just connected, period.

You know, I figured it would be Chatty who’d bust this one.

FROM: Chatsworth Osborne Jr.

Corporal Carrot overestimates my powers.

But still, I find this interesting in terms of the game. Charles Ruff owns Great Big Idea and what his Wikipedia profile states is a profitable software company. I assume the other two corporate officers are his parents or other relations.

In addition to the late Austin Katanyan, that’s three more real, living people who have appeared in Motel Room Blues. What are we to make of this?

As I don’t believe that Mr. Ruff, wealthy as he may be, actually has twelve billion dollars lying around in cash, I also wondered how he managed to insert that figure in his bank balance, such that Vikram was able to discover it. How are we to read that?

Or is it that we really weren’t intended to backtrack the money transfer, just to accept that it was part of whatever scheme Cullen’s traders were up to?

But in that case, why the deception over the twelve billion?

It doesn’t entirely add up.

It doesn’t entirely add up, Dagmar read.

No, she thought, it didn’t.

Because she knew, unlike the gamers, that the figure in the Forlorn Hope account was real.

And she also knew that there was no way that Charlie, successful as he was, could have made that kind of money legally.

She reached blindly for her cup of tea, drank, replaced the tea on its St. Pauli Girl coaster.

Across her office, a leaf fell from one of Siyed’s bouquets.

Her sense of scale was completely wrong where Charlie was concerned. He was huge. He was like the Medellin cartel, like the Burmese junta, like the smiling president of oil-rich Nigeria with his Swiss accounts and white cotton-lined cardboard boxes full of blood diamonds.

Charlie’s Godzilla-size footprints ought to be all over the world.

And the fact that they weren’t-the fact that Charlie was masquerading as a modest software entrepreneur in the San Fernando Valley-meant that Charlie had left the real world altogether and now lived somewhere in supervillain territory. He was Magneto. He was Lex Luthor. He was Doctor Doom.

He was the Napoleon of Crime.

When the hell had Charlie found time to develop this secret life? Certainly not in the years since Dagmar had begun working for him. She’d seen him nearly every day, and she’d never once seen him meeting with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Probably the meetings took place in his secret base in a dormant volcano.

Was even the Russian Maffya worth twelve billion? In cash? Dagmar doubted it.

Unless, of course, Charlie owned the Russian Maffya. Given what she’d just discovered, she wouldn’t put it past him.

FROM: Dagmar Shaw

SUBJECT: Meeting

Charlie, I’ve got to see you. Are you still at the Roosevelt?

There was no answer to the email. Repeated phone calls were answered only by voice mail. Dagmar left a series of messages and then in her frustration drove down the 101 to Hollywood. She banged on the cabana door, which was opened by a fat, middle-aged man wearing nothing but a towel. He smelled strongly of cigars, and behind him were a pair of Hollywood rent-boys who gazed at Dagmar from over his hairy shoulders. Dagmar apologized and shuffled away.

Fucking Charlie, she thought.

She had to talk to somebody or she would explode. She called BJ and suggested they meet for dinner.

“Are you in the valley? ” he asked.

“I’m in Hollywood.”

“I know a little place on Olympic near Koreatown. Want to check it out? ”

When she got in her car, she unholstered her phone and prodded the icon for email. Charlie’s name leaped off the list. She retrieved the email and narrowed her eyes as she peered at the small screen.

FROM: Charlie Ruff

SUBJECT: Re: Meeting

Damn right we’ve got to meet. But I’m in Chicago right now and

won’t be back for a couple days.

I’ve got some ideas for the game. Don’t worry, nobody buys anything

this time.

“Damn you, Charlie!” Dagmar shouted.

A pair of tourists walking past gave her a quick glance, then just as quickly turned away.

Dagmar decided she didn’t care if they thought she was crazy, and pounded the steering wheel with her fists until her phalanges felt they’d been slammed by a crowbar. She slumped in her seat, breathless.

Suddenly she missed Austin very much.

There was a burning in the back of her sinus. She dabbed tears away with the back of her wrist.

She hadn’t had time to mourn him. Everything since Austin ’s death had been constant movement, dreadful pressure, frantic improvisation. All tangled up, one way or another, with The Long Night of Briana Hall and the decision to use the game to solve real-world problems.

That had been her decision, she realized. She’d pressed Charlie to permit it.

She realized, as she searched for a tissue to wipe away the tears, that she was as crazy as he was.

B J’s restaurant turned out to specialize in egg dishes. It was the kind of place that would serve you breakfast eighteen hours out of twenty-four.

“Be sure to order the candied pepper bacon,” BJ advised.

“Candied pepper bacon,” Dagmar repeated.

“Sounds weird, but it’s good. Try it.”

She ordered an omelette with an English muffin and the candied pepper bacon. BJ ordered corned beef hash with poached eggs on top.