Walter Williams - This Is Not a Game

Dagmar considered this. “Did you copy what was on the disk?” she asked.

“I thought about it, but I was told it was encrypted and that I couldn’t read it, so I didn’t.”

“All right,” she said. “Well, thanks.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the deep voice spoke.

“What should I do if David calls again?”

“Say yes, if you like. But call me to let me know what you’re being asked to do.”

She gave Desi her mobile number and then said good-bye.

She turned back to her computer and saw that two more people had answered her email. She didn’t think she knew either of them personally, though it was possible they’d been in the crowd at certain live events.

Dagmar called them and got more of the story. By the time she’d finished with them, others had responded to her email.

Within an hour she had laid out the entire plot.

David had asked the players to help get Briana some of the IP addresses that would be used to perpetrate the bad guys’ stock manipulation. Since IP addresses would turn up in the game the following Wednesday as part of the players’ bot hunt, this was actually a plausible thing for the players to do.

Different players were asked to do different things. Some were asked to move the data on its disk from one place to another. Others were asked to shuttle a PC tower from Griffith Observatory to the deserted Cathay Bank parking lot in Chinatown. Others were asked to help move a flat-screen monitor. Still others hand-carried a greeting card from place to place.

“Did you read the greeting card?” Dagmar asked.

“Yes. The envelope was open.”

“What kind of card was it?”

“One of those ‘Thinking of You’ cards. It had some poetry on it. I copied it down-”

“No, that doesn’t matter. Was there a message? ”

“Yeah, I copied that, too. It said, You want to play this on this. With this being underlined. And it was signed, Love, D.”

Dagmar stared in cold horror at the wall opposite her chair. The players would have read D. for David, but Charlie would have thought it stood for Dagmar.

Charlie knew the Maffya was after him and might have hesitated to plug in an anonymous computer that appeared magically on his doorstep. But if he’d thought it was from Dagmar, he’d have tried to play the disk without question.

Dagmar felt her skin tighten in a wave of cold fear.

“Dagmar? ” asked the player. “Are you still there? ”

“Yes. I’m still here.” She rubbed her forehead. “Was the note handwritten?”

“Yes. Blue ballpoint.”

She hadn’t known one way or another if BJ had any talents as a forger, but there were enough samples of her handwriting around the Great Big Idea offices to give him a good start.

Her calls continued. She found that it was Corporal Carrot who had carried the united PC, monitor, greeting card, and data disk, all packed in a single box, to the Figueroa Hotel.

“I got instructions to put the box at a particular place,” he said. He sounded like a teenager. “Right at the door outside the Medina Suite.” There was a pause. “This didn’t have anything to do with the bombing, did it? I’ve been worried about that ever since I saw that Charles Ruff had been killed.”

Dagmar unclenched her jaw muscles.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said.

“Oh, good!” The relief in Carrot’s voice was clear. “That’s great!”

The last thing Dagmar needed was speculation about whether players in one of her games had been used in a terrorist event.

Even if it was true. Especially if it was true. It would cast every future ARG under suspicion, it wouldn’t do the players any good, and it wouldn’t help to catch the killer.

She told Carrot that if David called again, he was free to say yes, but that he should call her right away.

She could see now how Charlie had died. He’d finished his work on Patch 2.0, emailed the result to Dagmar, and then gone out for breakfast, or to put one of his empty Cokes in the flat, or left the room for some other reason. The box had been placed right in front of his door. Computer, monitor, disk, and greeting card. He’d read the note allegedly from Dagmar, then attached the monitor to the computer, plugged it in, and turned the computer on.

That’s when the bomb went off. Or maybe BJ had worked it so that the bomb was detonated when Charlie opened the door to insert the data disk. Charlie would have been right there, peering at the machine at close range through his glasses, when the gunpowder detonated.

Pain brought Dagmar out of her reverie. She looked down at her hands and saw that her fists had been clenched so hard that her fingernails had dug hard into her palms.

Killing was too good for BJ.

From outside the office, Dagmar heard the chime of the elevator. She looked out the windows and saw that it had gotten dark, that long lines of red and white auto lights were pouring past on the 101.

She heard footsteps coming toward her across the tile floor, and then she remembered that she was alone in the Great Big Idea offices, and that she’d given BJ access to the building.

Her heart gave a sickening lurch. She jumped out of her chair so quickly that her chair shot backward along its rollers and crashed into a shelf. Her nerves leaped.

Great, she thought. She’d just told him where she was.

She darted around the office looking for a weapon. She clutched at a pair of scissors and then thought of how useless they’d be against BJ’s powerful arms and big hands. Hands that had already broken Siyed’s body.

Belatedly she realized she could call for help. She reached for her phone with the hand that wasn’t holding scissors, punched 911, and was in the process of pressing Send when Helmuth appeared in the doorway carrying a pizza box.

They stared at each other for a moment in mutual surprise.

“God in heaven, Dagmar,” Helmuth said. “You look like hell.”

Carefully, Dagmar pressed End before the operator could pick up.

“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot you were coming back.”

Helmuth smiled. “Who did you think I was, Jack the Ripper? ”

“Close enough.”

He offered the pizza box. “There’s pepperoni, there’s a slice with mushrooms, and a couple slices of a rather tasty Hawaiian barbecue chicken with pineapple.”

“Great,” Dagmar said. She summoned the will not to faint dead away.

“Sorry I scared you,” Helmuth said.

She put down the scissors and pressed her trembling hands together.

“I think I’m getting used to it,” she said.

FROM: Dagmar Shaw

SUBJECT: L.A. Games

This is Dagmar Shaw, of Great Big Idea Productions, the company that is bringing you the ARG about Briana Hall.

We’ve managed to confirm that someone else is running live events that are piggybacking off our game about Briana Hall. These games do not seem to be pranks, but genuine live events running in parallel with our own.

Players should feel free to participate in these events if they feel so inclined, but please be aware that Great Big Idea does not sponsor them, and that discoveries made during the course of these adventures may or may not constitute actual answers to Great Big Idea puzzles.

We would like to continue monitoring this situation, however, so if you hear from anyone asking you to participate in a live event in the next few weeks, please contact me by responding to this email, and please include your phone number.

Please do not post about this on any of the regular forums, because

it might confuse our other players about what’s going on.

Thank you,

Dagmar Shaw

This Is Not Finance