The Game

  Chapter 40

  Brandon leaned back in his seat, staring at the monitor and slowly drumming his fingers on the desk. Hack sat behind him, quietly looking over Brandon’s right shoulder at the scene playing out on the screen. They were viewing Danielle in real time, something that was supposed to be impossible.

  Ordinary citizens of Tygon believed that they watched events unfold in the Game in real time, but only Game Masters and handful of top level designers knew the truth. A one hour delay between the Game and Tygon had always secretly existed. This built in feature provided some interesting options for the men and women running the Game, specifically the ability to install improvements and patches seamlessly without interrupting the viewer’s experience. The Game was not meant to ever be powered down, players inside would die or be lost, and the virtual world would cease to exist. The one hour delay allowed improvements and maintenance to be conducted without interruption of service or any stoppage of viewing. Inside the Game the occasional avatar would sometimes experience déjà vu or other odd glitches that were a result of the maintenance, but no one made any fuss over the small hiccups when they occurred. The time delay also made it difficult to hack into the Game. A hacker inserting a rogue program into the Game was very easy to detect and eliminate. Mainframe detected hacks as time variations, and quickly neutralized them.

  Brandon had designed this feature into the Game, but he considered all these benefits secondary to his original purpose, which was to give him the sole advantage of being able to see things as they happened in real time. Brandon had kept this a closely guarded secret for thirty years, and now that he could finally communicate with players inside the Game, he had been forced to share the information with a few trusted individuals.

  Once they were sure it worked properly, Brandon decided to make contact with two Eternals. It was good to talk with Stephanie and Raphael again; he’d missed them both so much. Because of his busy schedule and the demands of running a world, Angelica used the apparatus far more often than he did. That would change once he began talking to Trew. Brandon would soon be spending a significant amount of time in the communication apparatus.

  A contact team, comprised of Angelica, Raphael, Stephanie, Hack, and Brandon, decided to wait until Trew was 20 years old to contact him. They were concerned that contacting him earlier than that might damage his avatar’s mind, or perhaps confuse him and knock him off the carefully planned path that was set for his play. Yesterday was the first attempt at contacting Trew, and it had resulted in a frustrating failure. Hack looked at the information and reported the results to Brandon. Now he sat quietly, processing his thoughts, watching Danielle go through her daily routine on the monitor.

  “He doesn’t seem to be too interested in meditating, Hack,” Brandon said.

  “I know.”

  “There has to be another way to get through to him. You told me prayer could work, too. He seems to be closing his eyes and praying lately. At least that’s what it looks like to me.”

  Hack shook his head. “I said prayer matches the brain waves of meditating, but we can’t get in on that, Brandon. I’ve been spending all my time trying to break into that avenue, but it’s locked solid.”

  “Mainframe,” Brandon said, closing his eyes.

  “Likely,” Hack said. “And if it is, then I can’t access it.”

  “It’s a computer. You’re the world's best hacker. It’s your name.” Brandon said.

  “It’s a god inside its own closed and secure system of the Game. I could break into it, sure. But the danger to the rest of the system is too great. What if I got in and accidently deleted key commands?”

  “Okay,” Brandon said. “Then what do we do?”

  “Well, the easiest thing to do is get Trew to meditate,” Hack shrugged. “We know that works, but he needs to get his brain into a stable alpha pattern for at least 15 minutes, and that can take months or years of practice to be able to get into a stable pattern for that long, depending on the avatar.”

  Brandon waved his hand dismissively. A few months or years was acceptable. It would only be a few days of Tygon time. Brandon didn’t have faith that Trew would ever take up the practice. He tapped he screen. “What about her?” he asked. “She’s been studying Eastern medicine for a few years, and she’s been meditating since she was a little girl, right?”

  Hack nodded. “Yes, she can meditate very well. She’s been trying to get Trew to do it for months, but he resists her for some reason.”

  Brandon made a sour face. “They’re in love, aren’t they? He should be doing anything she says, like most normal men his age.”

  “I don’t get much of a chance to view them, Sir. You would know more about their Game personalities than I do.”

  Brandon said nothing. It was very difficult to coax players inside the Game to do specific things. He’d been so certain that communicating with Trew would be successful. After all these years and dollars spent, now it seemed like the one player he wanted to talk to most would be out of reach to him.

  “Dreams or visions?” Brandon asked. “Spiritual communications?”

  “Those are always an option, Brandon. But they’re vague and often the avatars miss the messages.”

  Brandon nodded. After exiting their play, a Gamer could spend additional credits to tie up loose ends or leave messages behind for loved ones in the Game. They were spiritual credits, earned during play and available for use directly after exiting the Game. Dreams, visions or feelings at just the right time in a player’s life could be planted for future scenarios. Some players investing credits in Spirituality could also re-enter the Game as ghosts for a short time. It was a very sloppy method to try and get basic messages or communications to living avatars. For some reason the Mainframe allowed these types of activities, though often they were a waste of time. The intended avatar was often too out of touch to pick up on the subtle communications; most of the time it was a very expensive waste of credits. A player would have to have recently exited the Game in order to attempt to give Trew a message, and someone close to him in the Game. That didn’t seem very likely at the moment.

  Brandon sat and let his brain slowly consider ideas. Hack waited patiently.

  After what seemed like a very long time, Brandon snapped his fingers and sat forward eagerly.

  “Okay, I’ve got an idea. Get Angelica up here as soon as possible.”