Video Game Recruiting (Corporate Marines Book 1) (18 page)

We sat like that for several hours until she drifted off to sleep again.

Billy popped up again and let me know that she would be medicated until tomorrow so I left. I couldn’t focus on my work, but I did get ahold of Ken. He didn’t ask, but he could tell things were not good. Hal had rerouted the extra work off of us and we were just responsible to check data. Ken would send me the files when he was done and I would review them.

Back in my room, just before dinner Billy popped up on the screen. I wasn’t used to that as AIs didn’t just pop up in your bedroom unannounced.

“Timothy, the Corporation wants to thank you for handling Seven as carefully as you did.”

“Mmmm, Billy, I just told her how I was feeling and tried not to make her feel like an ogre. But I had to get it out or she would have picked up on it. She’s smart.”

“Yes she is. Seven will not be going back out on deployment. With a regrown leg, the estimates are that she would only be returned to 80 percent effectiveness. She will still be used in the capacity as an instructor. If Earth were invaded tomorrow, then anyone available would be put in armour, but that would also be a desperate last measure. So she will not be leaving again.”

Billy stopped talking and I was trying to process that all. “And Timothy, you also need to understand that when she joined, she was restricted access to all family and friends. It is the best way to get a Marine to have their game face on. She had written several letters to you, but they could never be sent. She did not want to leave you, but the offer she was given was too strong to pass up with a sick father at home. Try to have some patience with her, Timothy; she just lost everything she worked toward and is now trapped here when her instincts want to be out in the deep protecting everyone back here, including her family and you.”

I nodded. I understood. That was part of the reason that I wasn’t more upset than I currently was. My hurt feelings were normal for a little boy losing his best friend. But she had been more than that.

What if she lost that sense of who she was? Would she adapt? Could I help her?

“Thanks, Billy, I’ll keep that all in mind. It’s just a big change for me to adapt to suddenly.”

“Of course, Timothy. I am sure you’ll do your best,” Billy replied. Then he clicked off.

I got up for dinner and then sat there considering everything I knew. AIs were scary.

I slept better that night and spent more time with Tina, or call sign Seven, the next day. The doctors were slowly bringing her off of the drugs, but she was still bedridden. She now had a full bio casket attached to her leg. It started almost at the top of the leg and went down past where the foot should be.

We talked every day and she was as cutting and smart as I remembered her.

When they increased her dosages to force sleep for healing, I would head off to work and look in on her before I went to bed.

She was never very emotional and didn’t appear overly happy to see me. But the few people I talked to seemed to think that she had come out of her shell.

Billy was always watching and checking up on me to make sure I was dealing with this well. Back at the office, Ken was dealing with all the big things and having Howin take on more of the day-to-day activities.

After a month there, the doctors had her get up and start walking. They talked about increasing “flexible mobility of the regrown limb.” What I got from that was that being stationary while regrowing a full limb meant you ended up with a limb that had limited mobility.

Doctors with technical degrees and working with top-notch technology? They don’t speak English. Part of me didn’t think they even spoke human anymore. But they knew what they were doing.

It didn’t make any sense to me. They were regrowing a full limb and constantly stimulating it so that it was properly developed. But if you didn’t get up and hobble around on it, you could lose half the normal mobility compared to your original leg.

If we had functional Level 8 AIs, all these little problems could be resolved in days.

Another one of those insurmountable problems, though, that humanity would someday have to work around.

We carried on for another two weeks like that.

She was tough. Real tough, and stronger than I thought possible.

I watched her do full arm extension pull-ups with her full body rigidly held. She cranked out eighteen and I knew she could do more. During a workout I could do a dozen, but after that my form fell apart.

Then I received the message from Ken. The new budget was coming down and there were talks of cuts. The president had called for presentations from departments and sub-departments to see what area the cuts could come from.

For some reason I had been chosen to present for the gaming centres. I would have thought that the VPs would have been the ones doing the fighting. Luckily, I had kept current with what was going on, I could put the presentation together quickly, and I knew my topic.

I spent as much time with Tina—or Seven—as I could, but work started to pull me back.

I was going to leave that night so that I could be fresh for the presentation in just under two days. I was saying bye to Seven for now, but I had permission to come back after the discussions were over. The doctors and AI felt that Seven may have up to 90 percent of her leg’s use back when everything was done.

She was walking with me down the hall, working the bio casket and the new leg inside as much as she could. Once in a while she would put a hand on my shoulder, usually when she was in pain and needed to stop for a second. But we always carried on.

We were just finishing our circuit of the medical wing when I realized something. “Seven… no, Tina, you know what? I missed you and I’m going to miss you when I go back down to the office for these presentations. I don’t want to leave you.”

She stopped walking and put a hand on my shoulder for stability while she looked at me.

“My leg hurts” was all she said. I let her put her arm around my shoulders for more stability.

As we hobbled down the hall, she started talking. “Billy, Privacy Mode 42, please.” She slowed down. “We have up to four minutes where whatever we say now is privacy-locked to my name or yours. Untouchable, unless we do something illegal or against corporate law.”

I felt a shiver when she said “law” and not policy or rules.

She continued. “You don’t know the things I have done and what I was trained to be. What I would have done in circumstances. You shouldn’t want to come back and be near me. I’m broken in so many ways. Now I can’t even go out and be useful to the Corporation or humanity. This really sucks, Tim.”

I stopped walking and just stood there. Then I pivoted and looked at her while still supporting her weight. “You are not broken. You’re injured. Injured doing the job of protecting humanity from what’s out there. You have a new job. You need to get past the self-pity.”

I turned back and we continued slowly moving down the hall.

“I want to come back because you’re an important part of my life… and a hottie.” It sounded like she was choking at that one and I smiled at her.

“You are important to me. I need to come back and see what that means. If you don’t want me to because you don’t want to see me, I won’t understand it but I would go with what you want.”

We were back at her door. She looked at me with that expressionless look, cold and uncaring. Then she pulled me down and wrapped her other arm around me and squeezed like a bear trap. She pressed her mouth to mine and the kiss was hard and passionate. I put my other arm around her and squeezed back a lot more gently. She responded by pressing her body against me and I could feel her wince as she put too much weight on her leg.

Eventually she pulled back just a bit. “I want you to go and win this fight for funding. Then I want you to come back to me here so that we can figure some things out. I think I want to try more of that kissing and maybe you could screw my brains out. That would probably help.”

She had that old gleam in her eyes. She was so similar but so different. “I’m okay with that. I’ll be back in about five days.”

She let me go and stepped back. It seemed like her leg wasn’t bothering her at all.

“I’ll see you in five days, then, and you had better not be late.”

She turned and walked into her room.

When the door closed, I turned and headed for my room to grab what I needed. I had been able to acquire casual clothes here in the stores, but would need to get more when I went home.

I had a travel bag and was upstairs waiting for the flight in half an hour.

I
walked into the conference room where the senior people from our region were gathered. There were numerous screens on the wall with signs indicating where they were from. I was about to be grilled in front of almost every senior person in the Corporation. Some of the signs indicated that the representative was off-planet, and the time-zone indicators meant that almost every time zone in the world was represented.

I gulped and then continued breathing through my nose, slowly calming myself down. It was just another game time for me. I thought about Tina back in recovery and how the Corporation was going to keep a fully trained Marine that could only operate at perhaps 80 percent effectiveness, back on Earth for retraining so that she could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of possible candidates that were chosen through the different selection methods.

The Corporation did try to protect its people when it could. I could feel call sign Seven behind me and I straightened and walked forward to the podium so that all sensors could see me and I began.

“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my presentation. Major changes have been made in the gaming centres’ algorithms in the last few months. The recruiting value of the gaming centre would still appear to be questionable Finally, we have rolled out some very expensive new updates and upgrades that are costing more than they are gaining the Corporation right now, and we intend to roll out more updates regularly which will continue to cost the Corporation money.

“I will address all three points and demonstrate why the gaming centres should not have their budgets cut. Instead, they should have their budgets increased.”

I didn’t wait for anyone to object but went straight on the attack.

“The first two points are closely related. Historically, the gaming centres for any region have not successfully given the Corporation any meaningful numbers of recruits. The one to three recruits we gain per year out of North Am has allowed us to slowly grow the number of Marines we have on duty, but that is nowhere near meeting the numbers that are required.”

“The algorithm change is shown in the files that have been submitted. We have increased the number of candidates to be selected while NOT decreasing their effectiveness. Numbers have gone from an average of two candidates per selection cycle to eight in the last one and the forecast is thirteen for this cycle. If we have successfully modified the numbers, the forecast success rate should be sitting at approximately eighteen to twenty-six per course.”

I paused and took a sip of water from a glass before continuing. “I have faith in the numbers, yet I have to remind everyone that it is important to remember that a single minor change to the algorithm may throw the numbers off further. We do not want the top five hundred to make the cut. The actual percentage of the population that can successfully complete Marine training is miniscule. We need the best, not the mediocre or even the good.”

One of the senior VPs’ screens lit up. It was solar development with a question. “Yes, sir?”

“Mr. Labaron, I can understand the difficulty and even see the danger of modifying such a complex algorithm. It does sound to me that perhaps you are padding your statement to protect your department when things don’t turn out quite right, though. Why the sudden large changes and modifications? Mr. Smythe was a hard-working senior manager with years of experience that had been pushing the gaming centres with great effectiveness. You are spending a great deal of money, possibly on empire-building, and may only show us good, not great, candidates. Explain, please.”

Deep breath. I could feel Seven pressed up against my side holding me up. There had to be confrontation in this arena, or everyone would just start kissing rears and then the wrong projects would go forward. They had the data.

They were testing me.

“Sir, if I may address the financials after, as that is the third point. The other points… Mr. Smythe had a careful and constant hand on the algorithm and data. We should be able to use the top perhaps 5 percent of the acceptable population for Marine qualification. That would put our numbers at almost thirty per selection cycle just using the straight numbers. We have only been getting the two, as Mr. Smythe was erring on the side of caution and getting the cream at the top. Something like 0.4 percent.”

I paused while I considered my notes. I needed the correct page. “If you refer to Annex D, Page 2, you can see the previous algorithm and directly under that is the modified one we are using now. We are not able to simply change one factor as it throws everything off. We have had to go through and modify one hundred and twelve different factors as they are all inter-connected. To ensure we were not sending the wrong candidates to course, we had to run a Level 3 AI in full simulation mode for four different courses. The first two were failures and the improvement after that was exponential. It cost a fortune to tie up a Level 3 for that long on only one simulation. It would have cost us dozens of times that to train the wrong candidates and then end up losing a Marine and his full personal kit. Much more if that trooper had cost the Corporation a starship through an incorrect action.”

I paused again and took another sip of water. There was a loud “bing” and the senior VP of tech development’s screen lit up.

“Gentlebeings, I am very aware of the situation with the algorithm and have, in fact, had several AIs running the new mods. Mr. Labaron was quite lucky to have had as much success as he did working the program. I am confident that the changes he has submitted will work much sooner than expected. It is a shame that Mr. Smythe was not able to see this for himself.”

The screen clicked off. There was silence everywhere and then the senior VP of solar development lit up again. He sounded amused. “Very well, Mr. Labaron; I believe the tech side’s expertise. Can you explain the costing side? And why you are going to be spending more than previously?”

His screen clicked off again.

“If you review Annex C under the costing section, you will see our analysis of the gaming centres. They have provided income while allowing us to recruit and gain data on the general public. If you flip to the second page, you can see the statistical evaluation of attendance to those centres over the last decade. The numbers have been slowly dropping off, and that drop off was increasing until three months ago. The introduction of the home units that allow people to join sims from home would account for a bit of that drop, but not all.”

I took a sip of my water and a deep breath. I didn’t think anyone was going to want to hear this.

“The die-hard users are moving on and we are not capturing enough of the new potential users. If this trend continues, we should have lost over half of the attendance within eight years.”

The others in the conference room with me were all around my level or a bit higher. None of the VPs or higher were here as everyone was viewing via sim. I could hear someone gasp.

There was nothing like dropping a bomb like that on your own department to have others shocked.

I had to push through.

“The rate of release of new missions and options for gamers has been relatively slow, unless it was one of the larger pushes that seemed to happen every few years and was promoted live with Billy Banger. The same missions are still available from when I started playing this system years ago. The in-game play is phenomenal compared to the start. But the
overall
number of new missions has just not increased that much. Experienced gamers are getting bored as there are only so many possible variations to fight against. We have just released a new mission last week and attendance is up. Our new mission releases will be roughly every three to four months. Then, once or twice a year we will release new mods or something that gamers will find fun.”

The senior VP of tech development’s screen lit up. “We are not about fun; we are about profit and successfully getting the best and the brightest into the Corporation so we can successfully grow and develop. From what you just said, you should scrap the ‘fun’ options and possibly just increase the new mission releases to more frequently to be effective.”

I didn’t understand why some of the senior personnel couldn’t see what would need to be done or the rationale behind it. Maybe they were being deliberately slow? I had to take another deep breath before continuing.

“I’m sorry, sir, I have to disagree. The centres are about gaming. We released a new mod for zombies in a few of the old missions. Historically, zombies were very popular as they represent the dark side of humanity. Initial numbers look good, but for statistical analysis I would prefer another two months to verify that the results are stable. Gaming centre attendance has increased by 9 percent. That eliminates the previous two years’ drops in attendance if those maintain.”

“But we do not want zombie hunters. We want top candidates for the Marines and some of the other projects, Mr. Labaron.”

“Yes, sir, and those players are going back and playing games more often. That increase in gaming means that the servers and AIs have more raw data to analyze for the effectiveness of the potential candidates. If a candidate is into the centres enough and plays over fifteen different sessions, then AIs are able to place them with only a 2 percent error rate, which is phenomenal. But those gamers have to play a lot or the variation grows quickly. As long as they are in the Marine sim, then it does not matter what they fight as the body’s physical and emotional responses are the same for both as a fight-or-flight scenario as long as they have the settings set high enough. These are the reasons that we are increasing release rates and adding the occasional mod.”

I could feel the sweat dripping down my back. I must have lost a third of my body weight in moisture and I hoped that there were no nasty trick questions coming. I had covered all my points.

I waved my hand and my presentation faded away. At this point, I was supposed to bow out so the next presenter could step forward and begin.

I didn’t. I had to get my parting shot in. “I would ask before I leave if I may give one recommendation for the other mandatory testing that is currently used.”

There was a rustle around the table and then the main screen with the chair’s icon flashed on and off and a voice said, “Very well.”

I could see some of the senior personnel at the table grimacing. They were thinking about how the junior upstart was going to try to empire-build and look like an idiot. Some were grinning. Two were just watching me expectantly.

“I understand, through rumour, that the budget is a bit tighter this year. I also understand that every department is concerned about cuts. Given what the Corporation is doing with the long view in mind, I would ask that you carefully consider before cutting any expenditures to the recruiting and evaluation department. If such a cut is going to happen, it should be spread equally among the different departments. Traditional testing is just as important, for while almost two billion humans use sim training in some way, many do not. Every human on Earth and eventually beyond needs to be tested and evaluated. The number that can successfully complete some of the more dangerous tasks that the Corporation deals with is in the dozens right now. As we expand and grow, that number must increase as well, but at an exponential rate. Every spaceborne project is at risk and we cannot afford to spread military assets too thin. So please do not cut any one project to the bone.”

It was not the best speech that I had ever given and in the Corporation, while this would be understood at an emotional level, the bottom line was still a large part of everyday business. Without profits the Corporation would lose power, strength and vitality. So perhaps for a few years our budgets were cut…

Before I could move away, the president’s screen flashed again. I felt my guts clench. Had I gone too far? Was I about to be reprimanded or demoted? Probably. No one wanted emotional impact here.

I stayed where I was as the screen flashed solid, indicating that the president had the floor. I could still be seen by all the sensors so I did my best not to appear nervous or scared. I was pretty sure that I had flopped with that little speech.

The screen flashed in time with the words. “Here is a case study of a violent offender that has been arrested and was subsequently run through standard processing.”

The screen shifted and the picture of really young man, accompanied by information, started filling it. I knew this case. Everyone in North Am had heard of it and opinion was pretty solid that the subject one S Slate was guilty. All the physical evidence and sensor reads said so. He had even said as much when asked in public. The footage had clearly been doctored, though. He had been trying to say something else.

I reviewed his scores and was jolted. He was in the top 2 percent of potential recruits according to this. The biggest threat with subjects like this was that they disassociate with the rest of humanity and work for themselves. Which he clearly had.

The president’s screen flashed again after seconds and he spoke. “How would you evaluate this potential candidate? Sides and thoughts, please.”

The screen from one of the senior VPs that was in South America right now flashed and then he had the floor. “Scores are exceptionally good for this candidate. Just looking at that, he would appear to be a prime candidate. However, he killed four other people from the grade ahead. We do not need nor want individuals who will go off after some harassment that most children carry out on each other at one time or another. The negative press of this, along with the possible mental instability which would remove the subject from training, makes it obvious to myself that this is not a real option for Marine training. I vote against.”

The next screen to light up was the senior VP’s for recruiting and training. My boss. “The subject’s scores are very good, but they are not the best we have ever seen. Because of this, with the facts pointed out by Kirk, I would agree and we could move on. However. We have access to additional information that the public and the local judiciary system do not have. We have through various data feeds a much more comprehensive image of what happened and why the subject did what he did. I fully support this subject as a candidate. If he is dealt with properly, then we will have a very loyal Marine that has the potential to be one of the best we have.”