Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (35 page)

We laughed repeatedly over some of the truly ridiculous things he had said and on the one occasion where Jason had enacted retribution. Dan said that was the moment he knew Jason was an alright dude no matter what he said to Dan. In some way that made sense to Dan. I take back the coherent comment from before.

Once we arrived at Port Town I headed off toward the Market and Dan started in the direction of the Tavern. Once I was comfortable with the distance between us, I activated my Blacksuit and made my way toward Stan’s. We could tell that the other was still online, but with Dan and Wayne’s antics at the Tavern, and my ruse of researching the market, we were usually online long after Jason had logged off.

As soon as I cleared the gate, and was a safe distance from prying eyes, I dropped my Blacksuit long enough to summon my horse and then headed out to Stan’s.

* * *

“Ok lad, show me again. This time do it while ya walkin’.”

Per Stan’s orders I walked through the woods near his home and in an instant wrapped myself in the shadows of my Blacksuit.

Stan was impressed. I could tell by the look on his face. But he also wanted to be his usual surly self so he sent me through numerous other “tests” with my abilities. He had me walk backwards, sideways, run, and even try to do it while I was jumping through the air. I’ll admit, that last one was a no go.

“Ha! You see lad, a true Blacksuit don’t have no problem with flying through the air and inta some shadows. But I guess you have come a long way regardless.” I didn’t argue since I knew Stan was looking for some way to show me his position as superior. Not that it was ever in question for me.

“Stan, I also learned a new thing while I was out recently. I snuck up on a guy, well an undead guy, while I had my Blacksuit on. And then I struck him. And I did massive damage.”

“Ya disemboweled him!” Stan said excitedly.

“Yeah, exactly. I hit him with a Disembowel. It was pretty awesome,” I answered all smiles. I didn’t know if Stan was going to be upset that I learned this skill without him, but I could tell by the look on his face that he was really happy for me.

“Excellent lad! That was the last thing I had to teach ya! It isn’t like the shadows though, once you got it, you got it. It takes a little bit of luck but I know you got that in spades,” Stan said while giving me a wink. Which was certainly odd. Since Stan was an NPC, it wasn’t like we had ever talked about my Skills and stats.

“Does that mean…does that mean that I am done Stan?”

“Aye lad, aye it does. You done this ol’ Halfling proud son. I didn’t think you was going to have it in ya the first time you stumbled through me door, but ya proved me wrong. I admits it.”

“Wait. Does this mean I get access to the Underground?”

“Ya will, just not yet. Ya improved at a level I ain’t seen before. So I didn’t think ya would be ready so fast. The truth is you won’t be able to get into the Underground because the Underground ain’t here lad. It’s in the Capitol.”

“So I just need to go to the Capitol then?”

“Sorry lad, don’t work that way. At some point the stars will align and yous and you’s friends will get asked to go there. When ya do, look for me upon arrival. I’ll take ya down into the darkness then and be happy to lead the way.”

I was slightly disappointed that after all this I still couldn’t go to the Underground. But the look of admiration from Stan alleviated all of my self-pity.

“I’m happy to say lad, this ain’t goodbye, it’s just ‘I’ll see ya later.’”

And with that, we bid each other farewell, and I left the clearing out in front of Stan’s home. I didn’t know when I would get to the Capitol, but when I did, I would finally get access to the Underground.

* * *

Interlude

AltCon Headquarters

Upon arriving at the AltCon boardroom, Terrence Jolston could see all of the people inside already sitting in their seats and pouring over the reports in front of them. Jolston had prepared those reports himself, and knew exactly what they said. The fact that the money grubbing sloths sitting around the table were so immersed in the documents was absolutely no shock to Jolston. The first test had been launched and it had been a complete and total success. At least that was how Jolston saw it. However, he was gearing up for any naysayers that may show themselves at this meeting. There was always one or two.

Once Jolston took his seat the spokesmen for the group stood and started clapping. Soon after, the others around the table took up the applause. Jolston was mildly surprised, but knew that a wolf could hide in sheep’s clothing, and this table was a pack of Timberwolves.

“Absolutely fantastic results Mr. Jolston. We were just reviewing the numbers, and I must say, this exceeded the expectations of this board. There were many doubters, myself among them, when this project first started. I saw money hemorrhaging from multiple directions, and I had a hard time believing the science you and your team were putting forward. But numbers don’t lie,” he said while holding up Jolston’s report, “And the numbers are staggering. According to your report, 97 percent of the people in Resurgence, who were sent the offer to buy outdated games they couldn’t even play on the new system, purchased them all within 24 hours. These numbers are outstanding.”

And there it was. Jolston immediately saw where the attack would come from. Three percent. They would want to know what happened to those other three percent. While three percent doesn’t seem like much, that meant that out of the 6,000 players, 180 didn’t buy the games.

“Thank you for that sir. We are in total agreement here. This test was a complete and total success,” Jolston said.

“Well, I wouldn’t call it a ‘total’ success Mr. Jolston, since there is the issue of the three percent that did not purchase the game,” said a weasel faced looking smug bastard sitting just to the right of the spokesman. Jolston chided himself for saying the word total. He knew better. And he saw that this was not an isolated comment, but that the spokesman and weasel were going to try and play good cop/bad cop.

Good thing Jolston came prepared.

“That is true. Out of the full complement of test subjects, three percent did not complete the purchase per our conditioning. However, if you read the earliest reports I provided to this board, the projection for non-compliance was five to ten percent. An amount that was deemed acceptable, and in fact necessary. It was the opinion of this board that if everyone followed every instruction the suspicion against our company would increase exponentially in a very short time. As such, we are modifying the conditioning to meet the recommendations of this board, your recommendations, and adjust the program to fall in the five to ten percent range.”

A picture tells a thousand words, and Jolston wished he could take a snap shot of every one of these smug bastards at that moment. This was to be one of Jolston’s trump cards against the board. He was saddened that he had to play it so early, but the board members decided to take the fight to him out the gates. So be it.

The spokesman recovered first and went on the attack. So much for good cop. “This board worries that if there was a lack of compliance in this test, the next one, where we put additional demands on the test subjects, could result in greater than five to ten percent. You can understand how this worries us.”

“Some people will have a natural disposition to follow some conditioning over others. For instance, a person who shows full compliance on conditioning centered around admiration for AltCon may not physically, or financially, be able to accomplish the conditioning to expend funds to AltCon. That individual who has absorbed 100 percent conditioning of admiration will be a strong force for our overall project, as they will be the ones to convince others to get in a RAC and try the game. The fact that they couldn’t afford to purchase the games should not be seen as a failure.”

“If it didn’t work Mr. Jolston, how could it not be called a failure?”

“One individual sold his car so he could have the money to buy eight outdated games that he will never play. The man now has no transportation. I ask you, how does that look to the regular populace? Don’t you think that may raise unnecessary suspicion?”

This quieted down the table a bit. This was another trump card Jolston planned to play, and it had the desired effect. None of these bastards wanted to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

“All of this is moot gentlemen. As you can see at the end of my report, the big man has concurred with our findings, and the conditioning needs to be ratcheted back to meet our 5-10 percent margin. Our next test will go live in a month and I look forward to another one of these insightful meetings at that time.”

And with that, Terrence Jolston stood up and walked out of the boardroom. None of them could see it, but Jolston had a huge smile on his face.

* * *

Undisclosed Location

“Sir!”

The General quickly looked up from his desk and took in the image of Daniel Hamson. He looked ragged and worn-down, but he had a fire in his eyes. However, that didn’t excuse his behavior. “Mr. Hamson, you do not just barge into my office like some damn…”

“No time for that! Umm…Sir. We need to convene a meeting. And we need to do it stat. Everyone. I know what’s been happening!” Dan said and then ran out of the General’s office.

Normally the General wouldn’t be taking orders from anyone, but gone was the scatter brained dullard he had seen at every other meeting, and a new Dan had just busted into his office. Just this once, the General was willing to appease and get everyone in the meeting room.

The General entered the meeting room to an already heated debate.

“Mr. Hamson, you missed your last security briefing.” Colonel Thomas was saying to Dan.

“I didn’t miss it. Trust me, I didn’t miss it at all.”

“You didn’t show to the briefing as ordered,” the Colonel said with a little more force in his voice.

“Well that’s a true statement.”

“And would you care to tell me why you didn’t bother to show. Something more important?”

“Why didn’t I show? Because the people in that office are the same ones that gave me that useless backstory that I was supposed to follow.”

“That backstory was designed by my team and was a standard full scope backstory!”

“Really? Designed by “your team” is it? Because if I remember correctly, and of course I do,” Dan said while tapping the side of his head and reminding the Colonel of his flawless memory, “I suggested all of the things that would go into your little back story. And you know what? What you came up with was worthless.”

“Worthless?” the Colonel said, raising his voice slightly. “That was a top notch backstory we hashed out Mr. Hamson!”

“Really? Is that why the number people were supposed to call is disconnected?” Dan asked.

“You called that number? You are not authorized to call that number!” The Colonel said, getting even more heated.

“Let me get this straight, you are telling me that the number for my lawyer, who ostensibly is responsible for managing my millions, is one that I am not supposed to call? And you wonder why I didn’t bother with your security briefing. Whoever was responsible for putting that together is a moron.”

“I personally put that together Mr. Hamson, and you are skating on thin ice!”

“Oh. Here I thought you just put out a contest for special needs children to see who could come up with the best fairy tale and you went with that.”

The Colonel jumped to his feet and shouted, “That’s it! I am tired of working with this useless idiot…”

“SIT DOWN COLONEL!” The General yelled. He was standing next to the head of the table, hands on the top, vein bulging on his forehead.

“Now. Mr. Hamson, please repeat that part about the number not working,” the General said, in a much milder tone.

“Sure sir. Soon after the security team provided me with my “backstory” I called the number. It was disconnected. I tried on several more occasions and found it never worked.”

“And why didn’t you report this?”

“Why? Because if my security was going to rest in the hands of people who couldn’t even set up a simple phone number, I didn’t plan on giving them a second chance to screw up my chances of getting into the Beta.”

“But you did get into the Beta, so obviously AltCon checked your story. What did you tell them?”

“I just used the truth. And if any of you had ever bothered to check it out you would have seen it was already there and in place.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the Colonel asked.

“If it wasn’t for the threat that AltCon represents, I would seriously walk out of here right now. You really didn’t bother to look at my financials at all did you?”

Blank stares were all that Dan received.

“So sad. To put simply, I am rich. Like millionaire rich. Many times over. I stopped working at 30.”

“Well then what the hell are you doing as some IT scrub?” the Colonel said, insulting not only Dan but all IT people everywhere.

“DoD does cool stuff, and I was bored just moving money around in the stock market. So I got this job, which you would know if you bothered to even do a fifth of your job.”

“Now wait a minute…”

“Shut up Colonel. Dan, if you have so much money, why are you not out inventing or starting your own business?”

“Jesus Christ! Have none of you read my psychological profile? I know I have. I’m lazy and a total underachiever!”

The Colonel looked over at the General and threw his hands in the air. “And this is who you are pinning all our hopes on to unravel what is happening at AltCon?”

The General had ice in his eyes when he looked over at the Colonel. “I would suggest for the rest of this meeting you don’t speak Colonel. At all. And when this is done, you and I are going to walk to my office and call that number that was supposed to be the lifeline of Mr. Hamson’s backstory. If that number is disconnected, you are on the first plane to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

“Now, Mr. Hamson, why have you called us all here?”