Interlude- Brandon (13 page)

Chapter 36

The door knocked and Thorn finished reading the last paragraph of the material he was studying before he answered. He placed the tablet on his desk and looked up.

“Come in.”

Cooper entered and sat down. He said nothing; Thorn remained silent as well.

“It’s confirmed,” Cooper finally announced.

Thorn nodded. He’d watched the entire session, thanks to a hidden camera in the interview room. If things had gone unfavourably, Thorn knew that the traps in the room would have proven effective at killing Cooper. Thankfully that wouldn’t be required. He still had to deal with Cooper’s friend, but that would be easy enough.

“So what does this mean?” Thorn asked.

“It means I’m now your game piece instead of the General’s.”

Thorn shook his head. “That’s not how I work,” he said. “I don’t want blind followers. Your life should have always been yours. I would like to help you get back as much of it as you can.”

“That’s not possible, Doc,” Cooper said. “Maybe we can help some of these boys and girls out, though, or at the very least try to stop the General from doing it to any more of them.”

“You know better than I do how powerful he is,” Thorn said. “The General is the safest man in the world… at the moment.”

Cooper looked at Thorn and suddenly wondered how powerful Thorn actually was. His security checks had come back textbook clean — perhaps too clean. Something about his demeanour suggested that the General might have seriously underestimated this man. There was definitely a game going on between the two men, but Cooper knew it was way out of his league. He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not going to even ask what you’re up to, Doc,” he said. “As far as everyone else in the world is concerned, I belong to the General. Within the Sim, I can communicate with you safely and I’ll follow your instructions, as long as it doesn’t endanger myself or my Hand.”

“Are you still performing operations for the General?” Thorn asked.

“Not since he had me come in here to spy on you,” Cooper said with a wink.

“What have you told him, about me?” Thorn asked.

“My reports have been boring and uneventful,” Cooper said. “You only showed me one thing that I should have reported, and now that I know it’s true, I’m glad I didn’t.”

Thorn looked at Cooper shrewdly. This was the moment when he either stepped off the cliff and committed to bringing Cooper in as far as he dared, or decided to hold back and look for other avenues to work. Thorn took a deep breath and decided to take the step.

“I’m going to teach you about the Sim,” he said.

“I think you already covered the Sim.”

“There are many little tips and tricks that I held back. In fact, I’m holding a significant amount of technology back from the General.”

“Why?”

Thorn smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. “Why is not a question you will want to ask me too often, Cooper. The answers you’ll get from asking me why will only cause you to lose sleep.”

“I’ve seen some crazy stuff, Doc. I doubt you can tell me anything that’ll make me have trouble sleeping.”

“How old are you?”

“24,” Cooper said.

“Trust me, son, there are things I know which would chill you to your very core.”

Cooper looked at Thorn and shrugged. “Okay, Doc,” he said. “What else do you need from me?”

“I need you to make Brandon your best student.”

Cooper laughed, “That won’t take much. He’s likely the best already.”

“Together, you and I will need to see that he stays that way,” Thorn said. “This program is designed to be a long one, but it might not be long enough. We have ten years to get Brandon into top shape. We also need to bring as many of the others along as we can. The Sim will break many of them. It will be an extreme struggle to keep half of them from going insane, and the ones that don’t succumb will need to be incredibly talented at all aspects of the Sim.”

“Ten years? Why ten years, Doc?”

“The specifics are too complicated to get into,” Thorn said
. “There is a group of very intelligent people who feel that we will face extinction no more than ten to fifteen years from now.”

“By we you mean…?”

“I mean everyone. Something is going to happen that could destroy all of us.”

Cooper was stunned. “Do you know what it is?”

“Not specifically,” Thorn answered. “The pattern of economics and agriculture, and the ecology of the planet are all rapidly deteriorating. The two superpowers are more interested in destroying each other than addressing the real problems. Some of us believe we’ve spotted the situation early enough, and it’s their intricate and complex equations that are allowing us some small window of opportunity to prevent the catastrophe. Everything will end, and we have to do our best to stop it.”

“Have you thought about informing the General?” Cooper asked. “If he knew, then maybe…”

“Oh, the General knows,” Thorn said with disgust.

“What do you mean?” Cooper asked.

“I mean,” Thorn said. “That the General’s ultimate goal is to destroy our planet.”

Chapter 37

The General’s smiling face appeared on the large video monitor at the front of the room, and the crowd became quiet as they waited for him to speak.

“Good morning, everyone,” he said. “I want to welcome you all to the Sim; my creation that will be a training centre for you to learn and grow in so many new ways. I’m sorry that I can’t be with you today, but important business has called me away. I wouldn’t miss the chance to address you, though, so I’m taking the next few moments to tell you what’s in store as you begin this grand new adventure.”

The General’s face faded and was replaced by video footage of Cooper and the other members of the General’s A Hand. Scenes of many different scenarios flashed by as the General’s number one team ran, swam, climbed, fired their weapons, and performed a myriad of other activities on diverse and interesting looking playing fields.

“Cooper and the other elite groups have been busy field testing hundreds of simulations over the past few weeks, while most of you have been getting acclimated to the Sim. I’m confident that you’ll all have great fun over the weeks, months, and, for some of you, years to come during your time in the Sim.”

Thorn’s smiling face appeared on the screen opposite the General’s. “I want to introduce you to the genius who created this incredible virtual reality world that you’ll be living and playing in. This is Mr. Thorn. From here forward, many of your interactions from me will come through him. He speaks with my complete authority and has a much better understanding of how all of this works than I. Please join me in giving him a big welcome.”

The students all began to applaud wildly and Thorn nodded graciously on the huge monitor.

“Thank you, General, and hello, everyone. I’ve had the pleasure to meet many of you already, and I look forward to getting to know each of you as we embark on this journey together. It’s been over a month since the first players began to enter the Sim. Many of you have competed in a number of games, which has helped us to fine tune the Sim and come up with a very comprehensive scoring system. As of today, the earlier scores have been wiped clean, and we will begin keeping permanent score. This means we will rank and award points based on variables such as your time inside the Sim, games won and lost, achievements from new projects, skills you will be able to learn, and much, much, more. All of this information will be tracked, and you can view your scores at any of the main computer centres outside of the Sim. The Centre will be the main area inside the VR world to find all major updates, announcements, and track your rank against all the other players. There is a wide range of ages, sizes and skill sets among you. If you’re an older kid thinking you’ll automatically rank higher than the younger children, I think you might be in for a surprise. The younger players among you are more fearless and will likely score better than many of those of you who are older, at least in the beginning.
”

“Our imaginations have been extremely busy which means no one should ever run out of new games to play, or challenges to experience. It’s my hope that some of you will display an ability to develop new games for others to play. A new job class is opening up for graduates of the Facility: that of Game Designer.”

Thorn smiled at his audience. “I know it’s confusing and quite a lot to understand at the moment. We will all learn as we go, and if you have any questions you can send them to me from the Centre. ”

“There are only one hundred beds available for use at the moment, but there are one hundred and forty-five students in this room today. The way to get more play time inside the Sim is simple; win. Some of you will not be able to get a table as often as you would like, while others might end up living inside the Sim for very long periods of time. I encourage all of you to learn from your experiences and make the most of every opportunity when you’re in there. You never know what will get you the best score. Sometimes it will be winning against all your competition, and other times it might be for helping the entire team to win even though you might not cross the finish line at all
.”

“We intend to keep you on your toes. The General selected you because you are the best of his children. If you get to stay, then you will become the very best.”

Thorn smiled and nodded to the group as his face faded and was replaced by the General’s.

“I wish you all luck and success,” the General said. “Now, who wants to play?”

The crowd erupted in a roar of cheering and applause. 

Chapter 38

“Still no luck producing a functioning headset VR unit?” the General asked with a frown.

Thorn shook his head sadly, careful to convey severe disappointment through his body language, lending credibility to the lie as he sat across the table with the General. “I’m afraid not, sir,” he said.

The General shifted in his chair and leaned forward to shuffle through reports lying in front of him on the table. “It’s been just over two years since we began this project, Mr. Thorn. I would have thought by now that a headset
would be available. I’m anxious to enter the Sim and experience it for myself.”

“The process is extremely safe and easy to perform, General. We’ve done the entry process hundreds of thousands of times now, and we haven’t experienced significant complications at all.”

“I know,” the General said. “For some reason it just doesn’t feel right, though. I refuse to be put under and hooked up to wires and medical sensors.”

Thorn and the General had gone over this point countless times and it never led anywhere pleasant. Thorn quickly changed the subject. “I do have excellent news to report, however. We’ve added new programming so that in complex games and scenarios involving more than five players, they no longer go up against only computer generated opponents. In the next few days, teams will be able to directly compete against each other in larger simulations.”

“What?” the General asked, “What are you talking about? I’ve seen thousands of games and simulations being played. I always thought they were two teams of real players going up against each other.”

Thorn chuckled and nodded. “Thank you for the compliment, Sir, but
until now it has been against NPC opponents. There's been exceptional improvement in NPC development, and for the most part they now appear and act very realistically. They are indeed excellent if you’ve thought they were real players.”

“If it’s been non-player characters facing off against my players until now,
” the General said, “then it has been very convincing indeed. Tell me the benefits of players now being able to face each other.”

“They could face each other in numbers of ten versus ten or less. For the larger games, there are many benefits to players facing off against computer generated opponents,” he said. “We could put each team into the same situation as the others and get a true sense of how they might look for, and come up with, different solutions to the same initial problem or challenge. Many of our simulations will continue to be run this way, because the opportunities for diversity are so promising.”

“That makes sense,” the General agreed.

“There are also many scenarios which will become more challenging, and therefore more rewarding,” Thorn said. “Playing against computers provides a limited amount of challenge to the professional, which our players are rapidly becoming. The real progress comes from facing the ever-adaptive and always strangely creative real mind.”

“Have the players always known they were facing digital opponents?” the General asked.

“Of course, sir. It was the only way to slowly and methodically desensitize them to the more martial and fatal aspects of their training. They see a target, they shoot it, or stab it, or snap its neck, or blow it up. They don’t feel any remorse or guilt because it isn’t real. They’ve done this so many times that violence is just a response to specific stimuli.”

“How will they handle facing live opponents?” the General asked.

Thorn’s mouth quirked into a slight smile. “They won’t be facing ‘live’ opponents, General. They’ll be facing digital avatars the same as always. The only difference is that the avatars will be controlled by other players. It should present no challenges with the conditioning.”

“They will recognize the avatars they face now.”

“I'm sure they will adapt to that,” Thorn assured him.

The General smiled. “Excellent, Mr. Thorn. You really are doing a wonderful job with all of this.”

“Thank you, sir. We’re building so many layers to this training program… I’m pleased that everything is going smoothly.”

“I’m also intrigued by the Longevity and Blurring projects. How long can we keep them inside the Sim now?”

“We can keep them safely inside for three months at a time,” Thorn said. “Many of the top ranked players are inside that long before we pull them out. I think we could stretch it out longer, but their muscles atrophy and then it requires too long a break to get their physical condition back to normal, which causes them to lose too much time from the Sim overall.”

The General shook his head. “There are ways to fix that. We’ll bring in more medical staff to monitor and physically manipulate them to prevent the muscular atrophy. This is one envelope I want to keep pushing, Mr. Thorn. I also have another project going on where we place subjects in cryo stasis. I would like to see if we can immerse them in the Sim.”

Thorn nodded his head. “Sounds interesting, General. Of course we would be willing to try that.”

“Good,” the General nodded. “What about the Blurring?”

“It’s working very well. We put a subject to sleep here and secretly immerse them in the Sim. They wake up thinking they are still in reality and live normally inside the VR world until we bring them out. When we do bring them out, we are careful not to let them know what we did.”

“Are you able to do the opposite?”

“Have someone think they are still inside the Sim when, in fact, they are in reality?” Thorn asked. “We haven’t bothered to try. I
can't imagine why something like that would be of interest.”

“Something like that is of extreme interest to me, Mr. Thorn. I don’t imagine it will be too difficult to
Blurr the subjects into thinking they are still inside the Sim, will it?”

“I don’t think so, no,” Thorn replied.

“Then let’s get to work on it,” the General said.