Multiplayer (13 page)

“She’s a friend of mine,” said Hector.

“Is she any good?” asked L3r0y.

“I don’t know.”

“She’s cute,” said Darxhan. “If you like the bride of Frankenstein.”

“She looks better without all that makeup on,” retorted Izaak, surprised at how defensive he’d become.

Just then T-Reg –Tyra’s character – and c’Irith emerged. c’Irith, the character of one of Tyra’s friends, was a talented and clever smuggler. Outside
OmegaWars
, Hector had never met her, but knew she didn’t live nearby. She was dark and wore skin tight clothes over a frame that was simultaneously athletic and voluptuous. Both their characters were enhanced humans, eHumans. They had all gamed together before and answered Hector’s call for help by joining his new clan.

“Who looks better without makeup?” asked T-Reg, hitting the tail end of the conversation.

“An empath.”

“An empath?”

“The fraulein Izaak invited to join our new clan,” answered BayernFC.

Everyone groaned and complained about how useless she was going to be when another character climbed up the stairs out of the dark pit. “Shut up, you guys,” Hector blurted. She emerged and Hector knew instantly it was Sabrah’s empath, Veyron. It was the only character he’d ever seen that looked exactly like the human counterpart; dark clothes, pale skin, long, jet-black hair, and plenty of piercings. Apparently her character’s hair hadn’t caught up with the real world just yet.

“Guys, this is Veyron.” said Izaak clumsily. “She’s an empath.”

“Can you do teleport?” asked BayernFC.

“No,” answered Veyron.

“Organ burst?”

“No.”

“Invisibility?”

“No.”

“Shockwave?”

“No.”

“You can at least heal, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Not completely useless,” said BayernFC.

“Shut up you moron,” said Izaak. “I asked her because she’s about ten times smarter than you. So just deal with it.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” said Veyron.

“No,” Izaak shot back. “I want you here.”

He was staring the rest of them down when a nearly naked woman emerged, clad in a stainless steel bra and matching, metal panties. Milk-white breasts bulged like twin Zeppelins from the armored lingerie and her hair was a volcanic eruption of red. In her hand was an enormous battle axe.

“Whoa,” said Darxhan.

Veyron introduced her. “This is Rada, everybody. She’s a barbarian.”

“No kidding,” the giant merc added.

Hector groaned inwardly. The last thing he wanted was people he didn’t know involved in his Alanya quest. It really annoyed him that Sabrah had invited this girl into his game without checking with him first; a major breach of online etiquette.

“Hope it’s okay,” came a male voice from the ravishing body. Male? Hector wondered.

“Do you know how ridiculous you look?” said T-Reg. “What do you think those panties are going to feel like after they rust a little. And can you imagine wearing that bra in the winter? Your nipples would –”

“Please!” snapped Izaak. “I don’t want to talk about that!”

“I could stand to hear a little more,” said Darxhan.

“Shut up!” barked Izaak. “We’re trying to be serious here.” His quest was falling apart before it even got started. And he knew his mom had one eye on the clock.

“Serious?” said T-Reg. “He looks like a fool.”

“Can we just forget what he – her, she looks like? Can we? Please. And get on with this. Because I’ve only got a limited time to play before my mom pulls the plug. So if you’re done?”

“I’m done,” said T-Reg. “But he still looks stupid.”

“Please forgive her,” said Izaak, turning to Rada. “Sometimes she has trouble controlling her mouth.” Then he wondered why he was defending this character that he didn’t know and hadn’t invited.

“At least I don’t wear a metal thong,” T-Reg muttered. “Can you imagine getting your period wearing those?”

The boys howled their disgust at the thought while all the girls laughed.

“Party foul!” yelled Hector. “Party! Foul! What’s the matter with you T?!”

When Izaak finally got everyone calmed he took a deep breath and turned to the barbarian. “So, who are you on the outside? Do I know you?”

“That’s Chaz,” said Veyron.

“I was in your school last year,” said Rada. “Chaz Martin. I’m home-schooled now.”

Chaz
, thought Izaak. Chaz Martin? The dork who got in trouble all the time? How had this so quickly become a disaster? “Okay,” he said weakly. “Welcome.”

“We can leave,” said Veyron. “If you don’t want us here.”

“No, no, no. We need all the help we can get.” A barbarian and an empath were no help at all, he thought. So, why was he being polite?

“So what’s the quest,” asked, BayernFC. “You said it would be good.”

“A portable slipgate,” Izaak answered, and heard them “ooh” and “aah.” “These guys are using this area to train for invading someone else’s base and they’re going to use their slipgate to do it.” Then, supported by grunts and occasional comments from Darxhan, he told them about their adventure and the discovery of the slipgate. But he left out the part about
Vera
. He didn’t want them thinking he dragged them here for his own ends, which is exactly what he was doing, though admittedly, a portable slipgate was far more useful than
Vera
. She was just gravy. “Now,” he said upon finishing. “We’re going to need a base around here. This basement just isn’t going to do it. Need something larger and not in the middle of town. Darxhan and I saw some possibilities north of town. And there’s a box canyon with some buildings in it that I saw on Google Earth that would be perfect. I want the mercs to go check it out. And you too, Rada.” He looked her up and down. Soft porn was not the kind of thing to take into a Muslim village. “You just stand out too much to go into town. Like walking in with a big sign. Be careful of the scarobs up north. The rest of us are going back to the old city and look around some more. See if we can come up with anything.”

Darxhan, BayernFC, L3r0y, and Rada clunked off to search for a base while Izaak, Veyron, T-Reg and c’Irith crept toward town. They hadn’t gone far through the rubble and blasted buildings when Veyron suddenly halted next to a dilapidated old car. It might have once been red, but was now rusty and faded.

“What?” said Izaak.

“Look in the car,” she said.

They did, and promptly brought weapons to bear on a figure sitting motionless inside. Then they all jumped when he turned his head and looked at them.

“Greetings,” he said in an odd sort of accent. Quite unlike the others Izaak had heard in the area but at the same time similar and somehow familiar.

“Who are you?” Izaak asked. “What are you doing here?”

“You can call me Thrylos, if you want,” he said, climbing out of the car. The character was old with short white hair, grizzled beard, and dressed in a tattered green cloak. And not only did the character look old, he sounded old. “As for what I am doing here, I might ask you the same thing.”

“But you were just sitting there,” said Izaak, guessing he was probably a non-player character. An NPC. Old people didn’t play video games. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I had hoped to avoid this manner of confrontation.”

“Don’t get smart,” quipped Izaak. “We could kill you easily enough.”

“We can’t kill him,” said T-Reg cautiously. “Bad form to kill drifters. Bad luck.”

“He’s no drifter,” Izaak retorted. “He’s an NPC. Look at him.”

“Well, we can’t take him with us,” said c’Irith. “He might be working for… I don’t know.”

“Yes, who?” said Thrylos. “Who might I be working for?”

“
Them
,” said Izaak. “Either way, she’s right.”

“Who’s right?” asked Thrylos.

“Both of them,” said Izaak shortly. “So, back in the car, old timer.”

“You’re so polite,” replied Thrylos with thinly veiled sarcasm, and climbed back into the car.

“You can thank me for not killing you. But since we can’t have you following us.” Izaak pulled out his PlasmAll, an arc-welder Izaak could use to fabricate metal, and welded each of the doors shut. After that, he cut metal plates out of the hood and trunk.

Thrylos watched calmly from the front seat. “So much for restoring it now. And it had such a good body.”

“Very funny, old man,” said Izaak, welding the plates over the windows. He had to be an NPC, but Izaak didn’t want to kill him just in case he was a drifter.

“I’m sorry he’s doing this,” said Veyron. “I’ll come back later and –”

“You let him out and I’ll seal you in there with him,” said Izaak, moving to the front windshield.

“You don’t have to be so mean,” said Veyron. “It’s just a game.”

“Right, it’s just a game,” said Izaak, “which is exactly why I
can
be so mean. None of this actually matters. Besides, he’s an NPC.”

“Does an NPC have a conversation with you?”

Izaak thought for a moment. She did have a point, Thrylos seemed almost human. But… “Things have gotten pretty advanced you know. Ever talked to Siri? She’s more interesting than my mom.” He heard Thrylos break into laughter. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh,” he replied, clearing his throat. “Just your stimulating conversation.”

“This is Turing Test level,” replied Veyron.

“No, this is Alanya,” said Izaak, trying to figure out what she’d just said. “Test? What?”

“Alan Turing,” Thrylos provided, calmly watching Izaak weld him in the car. “British mathematician and father of artificial intelligence. He suggested a way to test for human-like intelligence in computers, now called the Turing Test.”

“And he just passed it,” said Veyron. “So he’s either a character, or the world’s first true A.I.”

“I’m guessing… character,” Izaak shot back, and lifted the last plate into position. “All the more reason to finish the job. Sorry,” he said to Thrylos.

“Oh, we’ll meet again,” Thrylos replied. “I’ve just got that feeling.”

“Be careful what you hope for,” Izaak answered, and welded on the last plate.

“Now let’s go,” said Izaak, and led them on. He thought it strange that an old man would be playing
Omega Wars
and thought about what Pappous would do here. It didn’t fit, but in some ways it did. This Thrylos seemed like the type that was always trying to be wise in a world that was running a lot faster than his old brains could keep up with. Just like Pappous. Whatever wisdom their age had brought them didn’t belong here. He wished he’d just greased the character and been done with it, before the old man started trying to give Izaak advice. He got enough of that in the real world and didn’t need it in here. He owned this world.

Veyron looked back a few times until they turned the corner of a crumbling building and the car dropped out of sight. The patrols were inattentive as before and they crept by them easily without the lumbering mercs, and melted into the rubble on south side of the road.

Alanya was far less crowded than it had been on their previous visit, almost empty. So they explored the area from the harbor on the east side to the long, flat, sandy beach on the west. They avoided direct contact with the locals and were careful not to speak to anyone which was fairly easy since the place was so empty. It looked much as Hector remembered with quaint shops, restaurants, and hotels. In all, about a quarter of the original town had been rebuilt. But they still couldn’t find a VTT terminal. Finally they worked their way up the peninsula, following the road that led to the castle – and again ran into armed guards outside. But Izaak wasn’t interested in the castle. He was interested in the portable slipgate, so he led them to the mosque where they found more guards outside the onion-domed building’s dark doors. They looked like low-level vanguards.

“The slipgate is in there,” Izaak said, watching from a concealed spot outside the wall.

“And you say a limousine got escorted inside the mosque?” asked Veyron. “By police motorcycles?”

“The citadel, not the mosque. And they only looked like police. Don’t know that they were.”

“And then there was a battle?”

“Right.” Izaak paused, remembering the battle. “And that was weird, too.”

“What made it weird?” asked T-Reg.

Izaak thought for a moment. It had been troubling him ever since, and there was really only one thing that compared. “It was more like a war game,” he finally said. “My dad used to use a military training simulator at Fort Bragg. It was a first-person shooter sort of like
Omega Wars
. You know, to train for missions, but it was classified. He said
Omega
was a lot better and he and his team actually started using it for training before he left for Iraq. They’d fight for a while, and then just stop and stand around and talk about it, then go back to their online lairs. Or fight some more. It got really boring sometimes. It reminded me of that.”

“Maybe a group doing multiplayer who wanted to have more players than arcade mode supports,” said Veyron. “What is it, thirty-two characters in arcade mode?”

T-Reg said: “Then they all went into the mosque and slipped back out?”

Izaak remembered it perfectly. “Yup.”

Veyron looked up at the dome. “Do you think you could get in there, c’Irith?”

“Not in broad daylight,” the smuggler replied. “Maybe if we came back at night. But I’m not sure what I’d do once I was in there.”

“Steal the gate,” said Izaak.

“I don’t even know what it looks like.”

“Just sort of a box with –”

“What we need,” said Veyron, “is a plan.”

They talked it over and decided to head back down to meet up with the rest of their clan. Not only were they pressing their luck staying up here, Hector knew it wouldn’t be long before his mother started shouting upstairs for him to stop playing and he didn’t want to have to ask T-Reg to carry him back.

They’d nearly descended the peninsula without mishap and were looking for a spot to scale the wall when Veyron said, “Don’t look now but we got company.”

Izaak glanced around to find they were being trailed on either side by a half dozen men wearing small white turbans and dressed in khaki, vanguard-style uniforms. They looked like police Hector had seen in Turkey. “Don’t panic,” said Izaak. “Just act like we haven’t noticed them. Let me find Deion.”