Ultimatum: The Proving Grounds Page 4

  She nodded. “Right, you were talking about that when I left.”

  “We still have people watching the church in game. We came up here hoping to get a word in with the feds, but they don’t seem terribly interested. As far as they’re concerned, our only job is keeping Miller occupied.”

  Claire frowned, but she nodded. “So no change on that front.”

  “We’ve still got three logged in GM accounts, as well as a few more than two dozen members on staff who have access… at least while it amuses Miller for them to have access. We have the programming leads scouring the code to see how he got in and how to get him out, but it’s a losing proposition. If it’s anything on our end it would take a server outage and a patch to change it, and that would probably set Miller off. So the feds axed that plan.”

  Toby rubbed at the back of his neck. “Bummer.”

  “Indeed. So we’re back to playing along with Miller’s game for now, though he asks the impossible and he knows it.”

  “Impossible?”

  Paul glanced back over his shoulder as he called the elevator. “He wants us to beat the hardest content in the game, which he has monkeyed with since we last saw it, and do it in a week. He kicked all of our characters back to level one and into starter gear to level the playing field. We designed the game to take months of effort to work a character up to max level, and we’ll need gear on top of that. What’s more, we’re as mortal in there as anyone else, aside from the three GM accounts. We die and we’re locked out. You die, Mr. Morant, and we all lose. And your character doesn’t log out like ours.”

  “That does sound a little tricky.”

  “Yes. ‘Bummer’ is certainly the word.”

  4

  It took two elevators to get all of them back to the first floor where the “Pit” was set up. “This is where quality assurance works every day,” Paul explained as he held open the door, “but it’s also the place where we have the most VR stations running, so it’s advantageous for us to work from here so we can communicate inside and outside the game.”

  The room inside was pretty big. Bigger than Toby’s apartment by a factor of six or eight. It may have taken up half the floor. Computers lined the walls around the outside while the center was open, aside from pillars. Each pillar had four computers set up around it, and each of those had one section of the floor marked off with tape. Each was smaller than his storaging room, but there were quite a few.

  Claire hadn’t been lying about how many VR setups they had. Six pillars with four stations each… twenty four. Dang.

  The “Pit” likely got its name from the fact that all the windows were blacked out. Natural light could play hell with monitors… and sleep cycles. He worked in the back room of the print shop without windows because it was easier to convince his mind it was still light outside and he shouldn’t be tired yet. They probably tried to work the same way. Claire had mentioned the long hours earlier.

  The only place the room changed from either rows of computers or VR stations was at the dead center. The wall opposite the hallway they had just walked down was clear of work stations. It was painted a flat white and had several screens projected on it. Statistics about characters, average level, locations, all of them moving slightly as they updated in real time.

  Paul pointed to one of the VR setups near the center. “That’s you, Morant.”

  “Toby.”

  “Okay. Toby.” The group broke up as they filed into the room. Paul wandered to the center and spoke to the people working at the projector.

  Claire followed Toby to the designated station. “Huh.” She looked around. “I’m over there.” She pointed to the next pillar over. “Not so different from your setup, eh?”

  Toby barely heard her as he set his backpack down next to the computer. His station had all of the peripherals. All of them. It had the flip-people-off-in-real-time gloves, but it also had some things that weren’t available to the public yet. He picked up a vest covered in shining strips with a single blinking light. “What’s this thing?”

  “Motion detection. The whole omni-directional treadmill bit was cumbersome and way outside the consumer price range, so they worked that up. When you’re in the game, the sensors read where the helmet is looking and what the gloves are doing, but they can also track the vest. If you want to move you just lean a bit. Lean forward slightly to walk, lean forward more to run. Crouch down to crouch down, then lean to sneak. It takes some getting used to… but it’s not too tricky.” She shrugged. “At any rate, you can’t run far if you mess up. Get to close to the edges of the designated area and the headset shifts your view back to camera mode, and you stop moving in the game. That, and there’s a tether.” She pointed to a cable hanging overhead with a hook. “If it’s really necessary… it usually isn't.”

  “Huh. Neat. I was using a controller before.”

  “Ugh. Neanderthal.” She smiled as she started typing at the workstation tied to his gear.

  “Well I did roll a barbarian.”

  “Yeah… what’s that about? Not one of the stronger classes at the moment. In fact it’s one of only three that haven’t had class reviews yet.”

  “Honestly? It looked cool. And I had some trouble deciphering the patch notes. They were written in already-know-everything-about-the-game-ese. I’m not fluent.”

  “No?” She looked up from the screen as she waved to present it to him. It was awaiting login information. “You didn’t take part in the beta?”

  “Psh.” He tapped in his username. “Not for lack of trying. You never let me in.” He narrowed his eyes at her and covered his hand while he typed in the password.

  She rolled her eyes. “Well that’s unfortunate. But I mean, you understand the game, right?”

  “Sort of.” He nodded. Credentials accepted. “I heard about it not having static content. Making new quests as people did things in the world. Even level ranges changing based on what happens. I’ve been tired of collecting ten bear asses for random assholes for years, so always something new happening sounds good. That plus swords and sorcery sounded groovy.”

  “Heh. Unfortunately our dynamic content system is going to be working against us.”

  “Whys that?” He picked up the vest and slipped it on. He had never felt more like a valet. Or a blackjack dealer.

  “Because we can’t power level by using a proven content route. They don’t exist. Which means we need to keep moving and changing what we’re doing.”

  “Oh.” He slipped the gloves on. “That sounds bad.”

  “Pretty bad, yeah. Like Paul told you, the game is designed to draw progression out over months of active playtime. That’s assuming about two to four hours a night. Extreme cases would throw that off, obviously.”

  He nodded. He’d spent a few more sixteen hour days in games than he cared to admit publicly. “I take it we have a plan?”

  The VR headset appeared in front of his face. Paul was holding it. Toby hadn’t seen him get close. “We do. We need multiple people to get to the cap and get geared up in record time with unreliable content to provide progression. So we’re breaking into groups. We have two spares members for each group who scout ahead and report back to the leveling group. They rejoin to catch up on experience while two others swap out and become the new scouts to find the next location. We keep two groups working in each area so one can reinforce the other just in case a problem arises.”

  Toby nodded a few times. “That sounds like it could work, yeah.”

  “You’re the kicker, kid. The rest of us, while not exactly expendable, are not at the same level of importance. You’re the only one that can hurt Miller, so you need to make it to the end. You ready to get moving?”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then let’s get to it. We don’t have much time.” Paul turned and stepped over to one of the other stations where he started fiddling with his own vest.

  “ ‘Yes sir?’ “ Claire smirked.

  “What? I
t seemed like the thing to say. He was being all… official. In charge and stuff.”

  She nodded. “He can certainly turn that on whenever he wants. Though he doesn’t use it on us much. Mostly it’s an investors meeting sort of thing. Shows how upset he is by all of this.”

  Toby turned the headset over in his hands. He needed to adjust how it fit. His head was a bit bigger than average for someone his size. “Why? None of this is his fault.”

  “He hired Miller and he fired Miller. To antsy investors, this is all very potentially his fault. And how he handles all this, even if we win, is going to reflect on all of us and may very well hurt the company.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Hate to be the one to tell you this, but life’s not fair. Investors are especially unfair. They give you two years only to show up after one looking for a complete project with your next two months of payroll hanging in the balance. And that’s the normal operating procedure. This? This is way beyond normal. We’re making nice with the feds upstairs because we need them to find Miller before he does anything worse or actually mentions us, but also because we need this to look professional. Our entire company is hanging by a thread here… and Paul is holding it. So, you’re right. Maybe we should show a little more respect… but that’s not how we’ve done things in the past, and we don’t want him to see us flinch. Not right now. Right now he needs us backing him up. That goes for you, too.”

  She held out a plastic rod with a round weight on one end and a lanyard on the other. It looked like a club.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your sword, mighty barbarian.” She grinned. “You don’t have a controller and the gloves read your hand movements. You need something to stand in for holding a weapon. We use these.” She pointed to bright spots on the club. “The sensors can see it.”

  It was heavier than he would have thought by looking at it. “Huh. What if I bonk someone on the head by accident?”

  “Yeah… don’t do that. Stay in your space here. In fact, just try to stand on the square in the middle there.” She pointed to a rubber looking square on the ground.

  “And what magnificent piece of magical hardware is this?”

  “Super special. It’s a padded cushion that people who stand up a lot at work have been using for decades.”

  “Oh… well I guess that’s special enough.”

  She laughed softly. “You all set here, then?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” He set the headset on his head and adjusted the strap slightly. He could see the room around him with the camera mode engaged.

  “Cool.” She waved a hand in front of his face. “Then I’ll see you on the other side.”

  His phone beeped in his pocket as she walked away. It wasn’t easy to get to with the fancy gloves on, but he managed.

  Mitchel: the hell is going on man?

  Oh. Right. Mitchel.

  Toby: Too much to explain. Talk later. Also don’t kill Tobin Ironblood because that’s me.

  Mitchel: no promises

  Ah, good ‘ol Mitchel. He’d been a jerk for years. And he’d never been big on proper grammar in text messages.

  Toby: No, I’m serious, don’t kill me. It’s important. There’s some Tom Clancy shit going on.

  Mitchel: fine

  “Okay people, we set?” Paul was looking around the room with his headset under his arm. Everyone else present seemed to either be ready to go or already had their headsets on. “Right. Don’t leave the church until I say so.” He put his headset on.

  Toby turned back around and shoved his phone into his pocket. The login screen was hanging off to his right. He tapped it even as he turned to face it. The Proving Grounds logo appeared and the black wall overtook the area around him once more.

  He barely saw the messages about logging in go by.

  T1 connection. Nice.

  The character screen wasn’t empty this time. There was one character at the top spot. Tobin Ironblood.

  The figure standing before him didn’t look terribly imposing. Himself with scraggly hair and furs. The sword in his hand was difficult to see. It was almost invisible, but the place it should be had wavy nonsense going on. That sort of made sense. The item Miller had made was not a normal item in the game.

  Hopefully the damn thing worked to hurt things other than Miller, or he would have to carry around more than one sword. He wasn’t sure how much of a premium inventory space was at, but it would be a problem regardless if they were going to power level to the cap.

  He selected the character and waited. The image flickered a few times before the character login proceeded.

  The login screen faded away as the stone church appeared before his eyes.

  He almost fell down when the character started moving forward.

  “Woah!” He tried to stand up straight and managed to come to a stop. “Wonky.”

  The church was filling up around him as people logged in. The doors were shut and people were seated against them.

  He leaned forward a bit to try and get used to moving without the controller. He started and stopped repeatedly, but he managed to walk and run around a bit before returning to his starting point. “Neat.”

  “You got your sea legs yet?”

  He turned to see a young woman with fiery red hair. She wore some old beat up steel armor over simple brown robes and carried a two handed hammer. Her face was familiar, though everything else was not.

  “Claire?”

  “ ‘Kelara’ in here.”

  “I’m bad with names. I might still call you Claire.”

  She rolled her eyes. The woman before him seemed more and more like the one outside. “If you must, Tobin Ironblood.” That was a very particular gesture… was there a camera watching his face?

  He really should have read up on this more. Or read the manual. But nobody does that.

  He needed to be careful where he looked.

  Paul approached them in his less than shining starter armor. He looked just as he had outside. “Getting your bearings?”

  “Mostly. Keep taking a step now and then.”

  “You’ll get the hang of it. Takes a few hours to really get it down.”

  A man with darker skin and black hair approached dressed in beat up leather armor with a bow slung over his back. “And when you do get used to moving in here, you’ll need to take a break to hit the restroom. Then you take the headset off and fall flat on your face when you lean forward trying to walk.”

  Paul shrugged. “That doesn’t happen… often.”

  The other man scoffed. “Happened to me, man.”

  Claire held out a hand presenting the newcomer. “Jerry, head of QA. This is his pit.”

  “Jerry? No, Amos, thank you.”

  Toby nodded. “Amos.”

  “So you’re the guy, huh?”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “Cool. Welcome to my pit.” His eyes moved to the sword in Toby’s hand. “Mind if I get a look at that? It’s kind of a thing that should not be.”

  “Go for it.” Toby held the sword out and released it over Amos’ outstretched hands. The weighted rod he was holding fell from his grasp and hung by the lanyard as the sword fell into Amos’ hands, but electricity played over it before he had even lifted it up and it disappeared a moment later.

  Toby looked down to find it back in his own hand.

  “Huh.” The foreign object this close triggered the fade in on the camera mode. He moved the weighted club back to his hand in the real world with his other hand. The visible image of the rod disappeared.

  “Yeah.” Amos nodded at the sword. “That’s kind of a bitch.”

  Toby held the sword up before him. “Can you, I don’t know, inspect it anyway?”

  He shrugged. “Less info from inspecting a player, but it’s better than nothing.” His hand moved and his eyes followed as he read from menus Toby couldn’t see. “Yeah, that’s pretty damn weird.”

  Paul rubbed at his
beard. “How so?”

  “It doesn’t have any stats. Like, none. It has a name, ‘Soulbreaker.’ That’s all that’s listed. It has space for stats, its info window is the right size and all, but it’s empty.”

  Claire leaned in close to look at it now as well. “It is even a weapon? Will it cause damage?”

  Paul shook his head. “Only one way to test that and this isn’t the time or place. Once we get the leveling scheme rolling he’ll have plenty of chances to test it and find something else if it doesn’t work right.”

  Amos pointed at Toby. “It say anything more for you?”

  “I dunno.” Toby tilted the sword in the air before him. “Uhh… okay, stupid question. I have a controller at home. How do I… menu?”

  All three of the people standing around held up a single finger as though they had some brilliant idea and then swept that finger down in the air before them.

  He mimicked the gesture. The main menu opened.

  “Cool.”

  The inventory was easy to find. Backpack icon. Pretty standard. He tapped the sword’s icon on the floating interface before him. A box popped up.

  “Soulbreaker.” He shook his head “Nothing else.”

  “Damn.” Amos sighed. “Oh well.”

  Paul rapped his sword against his shield. “Listen up people, we need to get clear of this place with minimal casualties.” He turned to Amos. “How far beyond the building does the safe zone extend?”

  “Not far. We did some scouting earlier but barricaded the doors when people started showing up outside.”

  Paul grunted. “Anything of note happen out there while we were gone?”

  “It got loud, and then it got quiet. Been really quiet for awhile. Eerie. Didn’t dare open the doors. Windows don’t let us see much.”

  “Right. Okay, form up. I want tanks lined up in the front, ranged DPS at the back, melee DPS at their sides and surrounding the healers. All DPS be ready to drop anyone that comes close with a weapon raised. Tobin, you’re in the center. Try to keep your head down. Lets get this show on the road.”