Gamers - Amazon (3 page)

Her head tilted awkwardly to the side, held up by a padded catch. One tube went into her nose, while another disappeared into her half-open mouth. Her body was frail and sunken like a deflated tire, but her eyes burned with the intensity of a whirling galaxy.

The voice, coming from a speaker box built into her wheelchair, crackled with sarcasm. "Seems you should be taking your own advice."

Blair ran her motorized chair past Zaela, who had tears forming in her eyes. The chair-bound woman rotated around until she was facing Zaela.

"Oh, get over it. We all say stupid things sometimes. Though you look like you say more than your fair share," said Blair's mechanical voice, which Gabby always thought was strangely expressive.

Gabby stifled a laugh, catching a nasty glare from Zaela.

"Well you did deserve that," said Gabby.

"Anyway," said Blair. "I don't mind-text usually because I'm busy sending commands to my chair or to Frank, my robot-helper. It's bad enough I get the two of them confused sometimes and walk Frank into a wall."

As if he'd been called, a silvery bipedal robot lurched out from between two rows. The robot was an older model, built like a linebacker and with unresponsive servos that made his movements sluggish. Two plastic caps had been crudely glued to his neck and squiggly lines covered his arms as if they'd been drawn by a four-year-old.

Frank picked up a stack of books near the entryway and wandered back into the rows.

"So how can I help you, Gabriella?" asked Blair.

Besides the enjoyment of smelling and reading old books, Gabby often came to the Library Museum because Blair was the smartest person she knew. But when Gabby opened her mouth, she realized she didn't have a question to ask.

"You're not still worried about getting into University are you?" Blair asked. "And while I don't agree with what they have to teach, you've got their shtick down cold."

Gabby shook her head. "It's not that." She paused and quickly glanced at Zaela. "It's the LGIE. Some group called the Frags have been messing around with my personal reality files and the LGIE wants to take a peek to see if they've changed anything."

"The LGIE? The Frags? Is there something I should know about?" asked Zaela.

Gabby had promised Zaela last year that she wouldn't try to "fix" her LifeScore anymore.

"It's not what you think," said Gabby.

Zaela crossed her arms. "Then what is it?"

"I don't know. That's the thing." Gabby hesitated talking about the boy with the ice-chip eyes that had appeared in the hallway. She didn't want to talk about him just yet, especially when she wasn't sure she'd really seen him.

She sighed. "Really I need to know what I should do about it. Administrator Bracket told me I should talk to my parents, but they'll just tell me to cooperate."

Gabby wandered to a table that had a space on it not stacked with books and jumped on, almost knocking over a stack.

"
Everything
is in those files: who I talk to, all my mind-text histories, programs, mods, skins, and recorded thoughts. Plus all the things I've seen and done in the last few months."

She thought about the pranks and hacks she'd done. They might not be looking for those things, but they would find them. Then Gabby realized that Blair was perfectly still, except for her wide expressive eyes, that seemed out of place on such a wasted body.

Zaela realized it too the moment before she was going to say something, so she closed her mouth and peered sideways at Blair.

The chair-bound librarian slowly pulled away from the two girls and circled around the table. They watched Blair until she made a complete rotation and came to a stop.

Gabby realized then how quiet it was in the Library Museum. Stray bits of static crackled on Blair's speakers, unformed thoughts or some other flotsam Gabby couldn't understand. Tubes gargled with liquid, at once silent, then straining for air, making a sound like a kid sucking on a straw.

In another part of the Library, muffled sounds of servos grinding and cladding footsteps made it past the walls of books stacked high to the ceiling.

"Do you still study history in school?" Blair asked. "No. You don't, do you? Such a shame." Even through the speakers, disappointment flooded her voice.

"We study the history of the gaming movement and specific histories if they help us be more competitive...," Zaela offered, but her voice trailed to nothing as she realized Blair hadn't
really
asked.

"Back two centuries ago, the world was split into two factions. There was a secret group called the Stasi. They were the most effective secret police ever known, even keeping the scents of its citizens so they could be tracked by dogs if they tried to run."

Blair's mechanical voice had a wonderfully knowledgeable cadence to it. Gabby could listen to Blair talk all day, and sometimes did, when the school grind got the best of her. While Gabby was a top student, the ever-counting LifeScore made her feel anxious, always. Coming to the Library Museum eased that worry as she could, for a brief time, learn for the sake of learning.

"The Stasi monitored the population through overlapping layers of informants." Blair paused and before the speakers could crackle to life again, the projection of Gabby's mother blinked into the middle of the entryway.

"Gabby, honey. Why aren't you in school?"

Her mother's hair had been cinched back in an oppressive ponytail. Gabby had gotten her looks from her mother: broad nose, full lips, and a slightly chubby face that she hated. Her mother used a wrinkle-free skin so the two were often confused with sisters.

"I...," Gabby paused, carefully choosing her words, "...was doing research on a new game cycle I heard they might implement for the Final Raid. They've blocked the links to it, so I thought I'd try the Museum for an old hard copy."

Her mother's hand reached up to rub her forehead. That's when Gabby knew that something was wrong.

"That's fine." The projection of her mother blinked a few times from the weak signal, while she crossed her arms. "But is there anything you should be telling us about? The LGIE stopped by a little while ago to talk."

Zaela shrugged and gave her a told-you-so look.

"I don't know, Mom. Administrator Bracket told me about it today. I was going to talk to you tonight when I got home," said Gabby.

"I think you should come home right now. After I contacted your father, he left work immediately," said Gabby's mother. "They're expecting an answer tonight."

Gabby's stomach did a barrel roll. Her father never left work unless it was a major emergency. For that matter, he never stopped working, constantly playing mini-games with his fellow workers to help define new business strategies.

Even though her hands shook, Gabby steeled herself. "Tell Dad not to contact the LGIE. I didn't do anything. I can explain what Bracket told me when I get home."

Her mother nodded and the projection disappeared. Gabby turned to Zaela and Blair, shoving her hands under her arms so they would stop shaking.

Frank the helper-robot stood behind Blair's chair holding two books in its silvery hands. He must have wandered up while she'd been talking to her mother.

Blair's voice crackled to life. "You should get going. You don't want to worry your parents any more than they already are."

Frank lurched forward and dropped the two books into Gabby's lap. The first had an owl on the cover with no title and the second was titled "The Secret History of the Stasi."

"I've been meaning to give you the first book for some time. The second is to help with your current crisis," said Blair.

"Thanks, Blair." Gabby leaned down into her chair and gave Blair a delicate hug. She smelled like medicine and ink.

Blair had once told her that since she'd been confined to a wheelchair, she missed hugs most of all, so Gabby always made sure to give her one before she left.

Zaela was a bit more squeamish and only touched Blair's chair. "I'm sorry for my comment earlier. I should have never said that."

There was dreadful gurgle from Blair's tubes in the moment after Zaela spoke. Blair rotated backwards and piloted toward a tall pile of books in the corner.

"Come here," wheezed Blair's mechanical voice.

Zaela cautiously followed the wheelchair to the corner. Blair's emaciated hand lifted slightly, pointing to the middle of the stack.

"There," was all Blair said.

The book pile threatened to fall over when Zaela pulled the book from the middle of the pile. A curious stare fell over Zaela's face as she read the cover. Then as she paged through the book, her face erupted as if a warm light had been shone on it.

Before Gabby could see what the book was, Zaela shoved it into her backpack.

"Thank you, Blair."

To Gabby's surprise, Zaela leaned down and gave Blair a hug.

The two girls returned to the FunCar in silence. Neither felt like playing any games on the way home. Gabby tried to muster the energy to look at the precious books that Blair had given her, but instead stared outside the bubble window.

Beneath the onslaught of advertisements, flooding down the street or flashing past the bubble, Gabby noticed that the leaves on the trees were turning bright colors. She'd forgotten that it was autumn, as she'd been so busy trying to get herself and Zaela into Blizzard University.

Halfway back, she remembered that her parents were waiting at home, probably preparing to give up her personal information. She tried to think of an argument to sway them, but her growing frustration stymied any thoughts.

When the FunCar stopped at Gabby's house, Zaela gave her a hug before she went in. Gabby walked up her manicured lawn as slowly as possible and stopped when her foot hit the front porch.

She glanced back at the FunCar speeding away from her house, and then remembered that she hadn't checked her LifeScore in hours. She couldn't recall a time that'd she'd gone that long without looking at it.

Her LifeScore waited at the periphery of her vision as a dull gray number indicating no change in the last few hours. Normally it was a healthy green.

Gabby was about to check and see how she ranked versus the rest of her class, when the front door opened.

Standing just inside, still wearing his business skin, her father uncrossed his arms and walked inside, clearly indicating that she should follow.

Already her hands had begun to shake again and her face had numbed. Her father had put a major debuff on her. Gabby took a deep breath and went inside.

Chapter Four

Their one story ranch normally felt like a grand palace, ten times larger than the space it actually occupied. Walls, covered in fantastic landscapes, turned the rooms into wide living spaces.

Her mother constantly changed the scenes so one day Gabby might walk into a castle entryway, and the next it would be a room on the moon.

Today the living room was nothing more than the shell of its normal, unaugmented self, only modified enough to cover the dust on the cabinets. Her parents sat on the couch and a chair had been strategically placed in the center of the room.

Her father ran his hand through his dark hair and motioned for Gabby to sit in the chair. His grim face reminded her of a stern statue.

Gabby clasped her hands behind her back to hide the shaking. Though her lips and face were numb, she willed them to make words.

"So what did the LGIE tell you?"

Her mother offered a half-hearted smile. "Honey. We want to help you. We know you didn't do anything, but some fringe element is messing with your files and the LGIE need to know what they're doing." She propped up her smile a little higher. "The LGIE is here to protect the sanctity of our system."

Gabby squeezed her hands together. "But those are
my
files. I don't want some weirdos snooping through them just because someone else was looking at them."

"These Frags are not just looking at them," her father said. "They've modified something and the authorities need to know what."

Gabby stomped her foot. If she ever got to meet these Frags, she'd punch them in the face, first thing, for messing up her life.

"So what if they've modified something? They're
mine
. I can take care of myself," Gabby huffed. "It's bad enough the LGIE tracks our TPS's."

Her father's eyebrows went up in surprise. "You know about that?"

"Yeah, Administrator Bracket told me. Was trying to give me a compliment about my high TPS scores," said Gabby.

"Get used to knowing your TPS, Gabby. We've been using thoughts per second metrics from some years now, ever since Western Brazil started passing us," her father explained.

"But that's not right! They shouldn't get to monitor your thoughts."

Her father shook his head. "They can't see your thoughts. They only use the capabilities of the neural actuator to see how fast you're thinking. In both raw brainpower and the speed at which you activate the neural activator."

Gabby paced. "It's still not right. It's like the LGIE is—" She remembered the books she had in her backpack and what Blair had said. "—the Stasi. Why do they even need to track your TPS?"

Her father's face betrayed an uncharacteristic level of worry. He normally kept his stoic, man-of-the-house face for them to see. It didn't help he had minimalistic skins on.

"Just gaming for new strategy developments isn't cutting it anymore. It's not fast enough. We're not always matching the right teams together and we're getting beat on the global market." Her father put his hand to his forehead, pushing his thinning hair backwards.

"The Brazilians pioneered thoughts per second as a way to find your best performers," her father continued. "They test TPS versus task oriented jobs and then decide how to fit the teams together. Low TPS scores are dropped to lower rank companies."

"That's okay, dad. You've always been at the top of the company rankings. I'm sure this doesn't change anything," Gabby consoled her father.