Virtual Prophet (19 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

“Despite our best attempts to learn more details about the players who will soon go back into the Game, we have very little to report.

“It appears that all five hundred million will enter the Game as closely together as can be accomplished, which will result in the biggest influx of players at one time in Earth’s history.

“Most fans know the basic statistics; of the 1.3 billion Tygon children who play the Game, one billion of them inhabit human avatars. The count of players currently in the Game is approximately half a billion, with the other six billion humans of the Earth population comprised of Non Player Characters, or NPCs, as they are commonly called.

“There are rumours of a mysterious plague that is killing humans on Earth, but we aren’t seeing any indications of this from the number of players being ejected. Our best guesses, based on the limited observations of players who are near some of these events, indicate that the humans being affected are only NPCs at the moment. We’re unable to tell how serious the issue is, because most players are isolated in small groups throughout the world as a result of the chaos that resulted from ‘the Day.’

“What can fans expect to see over the next few days of the Game? We will see a massive increase in births all over Earth as the five-hundred million enter the Game beginning tomorrow, sometime in the late afternoon. Next we will be trying to get more information on the NPC plague and report how widespread it is, and whether it has begun to affect player avatars.

“Our first order of business relates to the only piece of information that Gamers have shared with the press: They have all been instructed to view Danielle’s feed, which leads us to believe something important is going to happen.

“We will be doing the same thing as the Gamers; watching Danielle and reporting any developments as they happen.”

Lisa Rohansen - Game Central News

Earth

“It’s getting dark. We should go back to camp.”

Dillon ignored his little brother. The two of them had been exploring the empty building all afternoon. This was the most fun Dillon had experienced in a long time, and he wasn’t ready to leave just yet.

Dillon was reaching to open a large, complicated looking panel. It was round, about two feet in diameter, and covered with light bulbs and wires. He moved slowly, careful not to break any of the fine wiring that was attached at various places on the front and sides. Just a few more inches and he would have it separated from the rest of the wall...

“What’s that?” Dillon’s little brother asked loudly into his ear.

“Damn it, Cory! I almost broke this thing. Stop sneaking up on me like that!”

Dillon looked over at his little brother. Cory was eight years old, a child of the new world. He’d never experienced any of the cool things that used to exist before the Day. Dillon occasionally felt sorry for him, but most of the time he envied his baby brother; he didn’t know what he was missing.

Dillon remembered life before the Day. He’d been eight years old when it happened, almost nine. Like every kid his age back then, he’d had a smartphone in his hand, constantly texting and watching videos; the only time he put it down was when he picked up a game controller. The world had been an incredible place for a young boy, but then the Day had occurred… and everything had gone to hell.

The past eleven years had been a continuous struggle. Dillon’s family was very close, which turned out to be a positive thing in this new age. Over forty brothers, sisters, and cousins had banded together and struck out to find a suitable place to settle down and ride out the crisis. It turned out that there was really no such place, and they’d spent the past decade as nomads, traveling from place to place, hoping to find a good spot to settle down. From what they had witnessed over the years, Dillon’s family had fared better than most, but it hadn’t been a picnic.

“What is that, anyway?” Cory whispered.

“I don’t know,” Dillon said. “Some kind of electrical panel, maybe.”

“What’s an electrical panel?”

“Hush up and watch, and maybe you’ll find out,” Dillon said. Whenever he didn’t know how to answer his little brother’s questions, he would tell him to hush and watch. It had turned out to be pretty good advice for the most part, and Cory always thought his big brother was smart for showing instead of telling.

The panel was stuck; no matter how he tried, Dillon wasn’t able to fully pull it away from the wall. He peered into the space between the panel and the wall; he could see a locking slot of some sort holding it in place. He nodded his head and turned it slowly, in the direction of how a clock hand moved.

Suddenly the panel lit up, and a loud series of beeps and clicks began to sound from the wall. A deep, whirring noise started to build, and in the space between the panel and the wall Dillon could see a screen start to turn slowly in time with the sound.

“Whoa, what’s happening?” Cory shouted as he scrambled away from his brother, stopping only when his back was pressed flat against the far wall.

Dillon quickly turned the panel back the way he’d found it. The noises stopped and the lights blinked out. He took a step back from the wall and looked around. The place remained dark and silent everywhere else. He glanced at his brother. Cory was pale, his eyes and mouth open wide.

Dillon walked over to his brother and hugged him, laughing and spinning him around. “It’s okay, squirt,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“What was that?” Cory asked. “It sounded terribl
e
.”

Dillon released his little brother and walked back to the device on the wall. He grabbed hold of it and turned it one more time, laughing with delight as the lights turned on and the sounds once again began to reverberate from the wall. After a moment he turned the panel back, and the wall went silent once more.

“Come on,” he said excitedly, “Let’s go tell Dad and Mom what we’ve found.”

“What have we found?” Cory asked.

“Power!” Dillon said. “The power’s back on!”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Trew

“I don’t understand,” Trew said. “How were we able to see her feed if she’s an NPC?”

“When I detected her potential early on, I set up a channel for her,” Sylvia replied. “Sometimes an NPC shows exceptional promise, and I have the authority to assign them a channel. Over the course of the Game, there have been many memorable plays from NPCs, Trew. I thought you knew this.”

“Is it common knowledge?” Trew asked.

“No,” Sylvia admitted, “but I thought Brandon might have filled you in on some of these things.”

“Brandon and I didn’t have much private time together,” Trew said. “There’s a mountain of information that I likely should know, but I don’t. I was hoping to sit down and read most of the instructions he left for me when Danni was out of the Game and I had more available time.”

“Time is running out,” Cooper said.

“Thanks for the update,” Trew said with a sarcastic tone. He looked back towards the main screen, and then whipped his head back towards Cooper. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Thorn said the Game was going to end much sooner because Brandon entered it, right?”

Cooper nodded.

“Tygon is powered by the same source that keeps the Game going, am I correct?”

“Indirectly, yes,” Cooper said. “Tygon is powered by energy sources in the Dream, and the Game is powered by sources on Tygon.”

“So that means that Tygon itself will power down eventually.”

“When Thorn’s power source runs out of energy in the Dream, then yes, Tygon will disappear,” Cooper acknowledged.

“Has that been sped up by Brandon entering the Game?” Trew asked.

“It’s not a concern,” Cooper said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not the limiting or determining factor here,” Cooper explained. “If the Game fails to do what it was built for, then eventually everything will power down and shut off. In the grand scheme of things, the Game will go offline first.”

Trew put his hands against his eyes and rubbed them wearily. He’d been running on very little sleep since he came out of the Game, and it was starting to take a toll on him. “I have to keep this simple,” he said. “I start asking questions and it takes me so far away from my original thought that I can barely manage to get back on track.”

Trew put his arms on the desk and lay his head down to rest. Cooper looked at his tablet, and Sylvia was respectfully silent.

“Yes!” Trew’s head shot up quickly, his eyes focused and full of energy.

“What’s up?” Cooper asked.

“The old man said I was right, didn’t he?”

“You know he did.”

Trew picked up the phone and dialed a number. He held the receiver to his ear and waited patiently.

“Who are you calling?” Sylvia asked.

Trew held up a hand for silence. After a few moments he spoke.

“It’s Trew,” he said into the receiver. “Melissa just left the Game. According to the feed, she ‘woke up’ and left her avatar. Sylvia just informed me that she’s an NPC.” Trew listened to the person on the other end of the line for a moment before asking, “Any idea where she could have gone?”

Trew listened again for some time before responding. “Okay, call me back when you know more.” Placing the receiver in its cradle, he looked at Cooper.

“Who was that?” Cooper asked.

Trew smiled. “I think I found her,” he announced with a pleased look on his face.

===

Thorn walked into the large hall where Brandon’s body was kept. He looked down at the still form and fondly brushed a stray lock of hair from his face, listening to the monitor beep steadily in time to the boy’s heartbeat. Thorn checked the rest of Brandon’s vital signs and nodded in satisfaction as he confirmed that all was well at the moment. He looked around the empty room and shook his head sadly at the considerable number of empty stasis tables. He’d sacrificed much to gamble on Brandon, but he was still convinced that this plan would succeed. Thorn sighed and left the room.

He walked down a darkened, grey hallway, passing identical doors on either side. Thorn paused outside the door to the General’s quarters.
Perhaps I should go in and give him an update,
he thought to himself, but quickly shook his head and dismissed the idea. He continued to walk until he reached the doorway at the end of the hall.

Thorn placed his hand on the doorknob and paused. He was afraid of what he’d find on the other side of the door. It had been days since he had visited this room, and he feared the worst. Taking a deep breath and standing straighter, Thorn turned the knob and entered, flipping the light switch on as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Tables lay positioned around the room, each occupied by a body. There were no monitors hooked up to any of them; there wasn’t enough power to allow for such a luxury. They were all breathing, but for how much longer was anyone’s guess. These were citizens of the Dream who’d been pulled into the simulation that Thorn had built; the game that this world had lined up to play. The game that had gotten out of control and pulled everyone it could inside, trapping them so none could escape. The game that would soon cause the mass extinction of all people on this planet.

Thorn made his rounds, walking to each table to observe the individual on it until he was certain they were still breathing. Their bodily functions had slowed down so much that it was sometimes difficult to determine that fact. He started at the first one on the right and scrutinized each until his eyes came to rest on the final table in the room.

He looked closely at this figure, watching the slow rise and fall of its chest. He stood watching as the seconds ticked away into minutes, and still he continued to observe. Finally he turned away and walked towards the door.

Behind him he heard a deep gasp.

Thorn smiled and looked at his watch, marking the time. Then he turned around and walked quickly to the table he’d just left a moment ago.

As he drew close, his smile broadened, tears of both relief and hope welling in his eyes. He leaned down to look closely at the person’s face.

Thorn saw the eyes were open and blinking slowly. Seconds later, the head turned and looked at him.

“Where am I? The voice croaked, raw and dry from months of disuse.

Thorn wiped tears of joy from his eyes as he leaned closer and whispered softly. “Hello, Melissa. Welcome home.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

“The purpose of the Game has always been to serve as a learning tool for our children. With that goal in mind, it became apparent early on that the time difference would be a significant issue. Many scientists, physicists, and scholars have spent considerable effort attempting to figure out the exact mechanics and details of the time difference between the Game and Tygon. I never worried too much about the specifics as long as it continued to work on a consistent basis, which it did. Early on I realized that if the Game started and continued in a linear fashion then the technology and skills of the avatars inside the Game would soon outdistance our own. There would be no real point to putting kids into a simulation where fantastic things were the norm, because they would learn nothing that could be brought back with them when they exited their plays. Imagine a child spending a lifetime living on a planet that had learned to alter its own gravity, or growing up using computers that were so advanced compared to Tygon technology that when they returned to us they would stagnate when left with a boring, primitive world in which to live out the rest of their lives.

“To address this issue, I did the math and decided that every five thousand years of Game time I would reset the servers to begin again. At a rate of ten years per week times fifty weeks in a Tygon calendar year... that meant that every ten Tygon years we would have a Game reset. This would allow our children to live and experience similar types of developments as our own world has undergone, so that they could bring back life experiences that were practical and useable in their own reality upon graduation.

“Of course, we were very surprised at both how similar some things turned out and how different other situations seemed to go.

“I think that overall it has been an excellent experience so far for both the players and the fans. As we prepare to reset the Game for the second time, all of us look forward to the next cycle of the Game.”

Interview with Brandon Strayne during the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the Game

“How’s she doing so far?” Trew asked.

Thorn had appeared a short time ago, joining Trew and Cooper in Sylvia’s office to discuss Melissa’s status and to give Trew an opportunity to ask questions. Thorn was charged with positive energy; he was clearly excited and his smile looked optimistic.

“She’s doing very well,” Thorn said. “We’ve had her up and walking around. Her appetite is present. All signs indicate that she’s back to normal, which is very encouraging.”

“Any danger that she will slip back into the simulation?” Cooper asked.

Thorn shook his head and looked at Trew. “As Cooper knows, that was one of our major concerns,” Thorn said. “Would she be pulled back in after finding her way out? To test this, we let her rest and sleep inside the shielded room with the rest of the volunteers who are all still locked in Sim2, which is what we call Earth,” Thorn smiled and shook his head. “It appears that her mental process for ejecting herself from Sim2 protects her from being pulled back in. She slept three hours and woke up feeling refreshed with no indication that the program tried to steal her back. If I were to nod off in that room, I would be sucked into Sim2 immediately, as would anyone else currently awake in the Dream.”

“So you’re using the consciousnesses developed by NPCs in the Game to reanimate the bodies of people on your planet?” Trew asked.

“No...” Thorn said. “Melissa is originally from the Dream. She has simply returned to her body.”

Trew stared at Thorn for a moment, then shook his head in confusion. “How is that possible?” he asked.

“There’s only one way for it to be possible,” Thorn said. “You tell me.”

Trew frowned for a moment, then he grabbed a nearby pad of paper. He started to make circles and label them, then he began to draw lines back and forth, stopping on occasion to erase one and draw it a different way. Finally he looked at the drawing and nodded in satisfaction. His eyes widened in surprise as he fully understood what he’d just mapped out.

“You merged the two Earths into one,” he said.

“Exactly,” Thorn confirmed.

“When? How?”

“The ‘how’ is boring technical jargon,” Thorn waved his hand. “The ‘when’ is the interesting part. You know about the Game resets, right?”

“Of course,” Trew said. “Everyone on Tygon knows about the resets.”

“That function was built into the program on purpose to do more than just to reset the server and time period of the Game.”

“So ten years ago, Tygon time, during the reset of the Game, you and Brandon somehow merged the Earth of the Game with the Earth from your game, which was originally called Tygon 3.0, but you began referring to as Earth?”

Thorn smiled. “Clever, right?”

Trew looked at him dubiously and then glanced at Cooper, who nodded to confirm that what Thorn was saying was indeed true.

“So you knew back then that this might happen?” Trew asked.

“Brandon did,” Thorn admitted. “Once he took control of VirtDyne and he began developing the Game, he contacted me and had me change the name of Tygon 3.0 to Earth. I don’t remember the exact timeline, but that’s what happened.”

“Brandon had this vision for the past thirty years?”

“More than that, but for argument’s sake, let’s say yes.”

“So Melissa is originally from the Dream. She went into the game you created and became trapped. Then, unknown to her or any of the other players inside, they eventually merged with Brandon’s version of the Game from Tygon. On Tygon we thought of them as NPCs... but they are in fact players from another reality sharing the same playing field?”

“There you go.” Thorn clapped his hands together. “Not so difficult at all, once you get a good look at the whole picture.”

“It’s a tangled, freaking mess!” Trew said.

“No,” Cooper said. “It’s a playing field where two realities meet. One group can learn from the other.”

Trew considered the statement, and then he nodded his head. “It’s brilliant!”

“If Brandon were here, he would bow and say thank you, I’m sure,” Thorn said.

“Who is Melissa in your world?”

“She’s a member of my Hand,” Cooper said.

“What?” Trew was surprised. “How did a member of your Hand get pulled into the Simulation? I would have thought you and your group would be very careful about exposing yourselves to the dangers associated with proximity to Sleepers.” Trew had learned that citizens of the Dream who had become trapped inside Thorn’s game, once called ‘Tygon 3.0’ and now just referred to by survivors as ‘Sim2’ were called ‘Sleepers.’

“She volunteered to go in,” Thorn answered. “When it became clear what Brandon was planning, I began to look for mentally strong citizens from the few of us who remained protected underground. We assembled groups of them and began to train them in the art of meditation and mental focus. Then we asked for volunteers to enter Sim2, hoping that one of them might be lucky enough to find an opportunity to be of use to the cause.”

“Lucky enough?” Trew couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “The more I hear about this entire story, the more it seems all of you have been flying by the seat of your pants. Looks like an awful lot of luck was required to get to where we sit today.”

“It was,” Thorn agreed, “and I can assure you that a significant amount of luck is still required to get us to where we need to be.”

Cooper chuckled as he saw the grim expression on Trew’s face. “Luck means something different to you than it does to us, Trew,” he assured the young man.

“What happens next?” Trew asked.

“Next we see if Danielle can do what Melissa just accomplished,” Thorn said. “We see if she can wake up from the Game to come back to Tygon and show five hundred million children that such a thing is possible.”

“What will that accomplish?” Trew asked.

Thorn laughed and shook his head. “I’m not going to ruin the whole story for you in one sitting, boy. I think you will figure out most of it, and the rest you can watch as it unfolds.”

“Wait a minute,” Trew looked scared. “The Game ends when Danielle exits it, doesn’t it?”

“That was based on her dying to exit the Game,” Thorn assured him. “If she can exit without dying, then she has found a loophole.”

“Sylvia?” Trew asked. “Is that correct?”

Sylvia said nothing.

“Sylvia?” Trew asked loudly.

“Yes, Trew?” Sylvia replied.

“What Thorn just said? Is he correct in his assumption?”

Again, Sylvia did not reply.

“We can’t allow her to try,” Trew said.

“If she doesn’t try, the Game ends anyway, Trew,” Thorn said. “This way at least there’s a chance for a different and better outcome.”

“It looks like we need luck to help us out yet again,” Cooper said.

The three men sat and watched Danielle on the monitor in silence.