Massively Multiplayer (20 page)

“You’re not far off,” Druin answered smoothly. “It’s presenting us a choice. Each of the three passages offers a different way, probably to the same goal.”

“How can you tell that?”

“Parallelism. The riddles sound alike, so they’re probably meant to balance. It’s a common technique in level design. This one,” he indicated the Eastern passage, “is a ‘way’ for ‘the brave.’ That would be warriors, people who rely on their physical skills to get them through challenges. This one,” he gestured North, “is intended for—“

“Wizards, mages,” Jenna interrupted. “And that one, the ‘Kings of Night,’ bit, that’s thieves, isn’t it? Like you? How’d I do, coach?”

“Very good,” Druin beamed. “We’ll make an adventurer out of you yet.”

“Don’t hold your breath. I still think a real pirate would have just dug a hole, not made up an elaborate riddle game.”

“Just go with it. Second part of the test: which path do we take?”

“The East,” Malcolm announced. “Evil must be met head on, and we are well armed, and we are strong in number. Moreover, no beast could have lived long on this desolate island.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Druin cautioned. “Jenna?”

“West,” she decided. “The question is, where’s our best strength, and that’s you. And you’re mentioned you’re a whatsit, a ‘declared thief’ – though I haven’t noticed you stealing anything.”

“Think of it more like a spy,” Druin offered, nodding for her to continue.

“Okay, so our best shot at surviving is to follow you down this passage, which would be designed for people with your skills. Am I right?”

Druin applauded quietly. “‘A’ plus. Malcolm, you’re covering the rear.” He turned toward the passage to the West with Jenna close behind. Malcolm, not the least bit mortified, hefted his sword and marched after them.

Wolfgang Wallace stepped out of the elevators, pausing as always to digest the shock of noise and light from the giant monitors and the crowded workspace of the eighth level. Humming the finale of Moussourgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition
, he made his way down to the main floor, where he was met by the programmer he’d met the night before. For the moment, he had decided to keep knowledge of the unsettling mystery data limited to as few people as possible, and had therefore assigned her to the investigation.

“What do we have?”

The programmer’s goggles were pushed up onto her forehead, this morning, revealing violet eyes that might have been pretty if they weren’t been red from the strain of long computer immersion. “Not much, yet. We’ve tracked all the instances of unauthorized detail zones, and we’re monitoring them from the outside. We have no access to their source code, because we can’t seem to find any memory allocation for them on our system, so right now we’re concentrating on the run-time manifestation, the actual areas as they appear in the game. Any attempt to enter one of the shadow zones using a standard programming avatar results in a complete shut-down of that workstation, as well as destruction of the avatar.”

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Marybeth Langridge, Mr. Wallace. Shift supervisor for Western server.”

“Okay, Marybeth, you’ve told me what we don’t know. Do we know anything?”

“Well, there are nice visuals. Whoever did this had a good deal of background in graphic design, or access to a large library of dynamic graphics routines. Commercial grade. Expensive.”

“How, exactly, is the workstation being shut down?”

Marybeth shrugged. “As far as we can tell, the workstation’s port is sent a soft-boot command, and at the same time a command to the building’s intranet shunts power from that workstation’s plug. The command is routed simultaneously through the main floor grid and through the backup generator, so we can’t hack around it without wiring up a portable power source, which our house security system won’t allow. It’s pretty clever. It makes it practically impossible to trace the boot command using the programming avatar’s toolset.”

“It also means that our mystery hacker owns our building’s intranet.”

“Yes. We’ve been speculating about a possible background in system security, commercial or maybe even military experience.”

“Set that aside for a moment. What about other avatars?”

She puffed out her breath in an exasperated sigh. “That’s where it gets weird. We cobbled up a stripped down angel, without the programming tools, and got the same response to intrusion, a complete system shutdown. Some actors from the catalyst division tried it and got fried as well.”

“That makes sense,” Wolfgang mused, “there’s probably a watchdog routine that monitors attempts to enter a shadow zone, checks to see if it’s someone with an Archimago port address, and nukes anyone who comes up positive. It keeps us from getting too close a look at what’s going on inside. All we have to do is set up a new node, outside Archimago’s known net address, and...”

“That’s not it,” Marybeth interrupted, shaking her head. “Because we have gotten in using one of these workstations. I just spent ten minutes exploring a lovely hot springs, halfway up Warden Peak. Very picturesque.”

What?!?” Wolfgang exploded. “How? Why didn’t you tell me that first?”

“We just found out. While you were talking to Curtis. It wasn’t my idea, anyway, it was Han’s. My assistant.”

“Okay, okay, but how did you do it?”

“Han made a guess that the watchdog program isn’t sweeping for ports, but for a class of intruder – specifically, anyone who isn’t a regular gamer, an end user. After all, we know that hundreds of those have made it into these zones without being incinerated. So we pulled up an old account and reactivated it. Then we logged in and simply walked to the nearest shadow-zone. Poof, we were in. By the way, you owe him the fee for one month’s game access. Me too.”

“Fill out a requisition for accounting,” Wolfgang said distractedly as he digested this new information. “Have you found anything significant yet? Any clues as to how this was done, or by who, or why?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. But we’ll find something.”

“Oh yeah, I’ll just bet it’s that easy,” Wolfgang mused. “Show me.” He followed Marybeth back to her workstation, whistling the first few bars of Beethoven’s third symphony.

Their progress was slow, as Druin tapped his way ahead using Jenna’s staff, occasionally pausing to toss rocks and other debris into the darkness. Twice he set off rusty traps in this fashion, contraptions covered with spikes, whose jerky movements might have been more threatening if they had been in better working condition. Twenty yards into the passage, their progress was halted by a massive gate, with a lock which Druin easily disabled.

“I don’t get it,” he muttered as he tossed another rock into the darkness. “This isn’t any kind of challenge at all. These traps have been ludicrously easy to find. That door was a joke.”

“Maybe this place is designed for beginners. Training wheels,” Jenna suggested.

“No,” Druin said firmly. “That first trap, back in the skull’s mouth cave, was not a joke. That thing would have flattened any beginning adventurers. It’s not usual to have a really deadly challenge like that up front, and nothing to back it up.”

“Maybe we’re being lulled into a state of complacency.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Druin muttered, as he stepped forward onto a section of the floor made up of tiles too square to be natural.

There was a faint click, followed by a sharp hissing sound. In front of them, a section of the tunnel wall swung back on both sides, revealing previously concealed niches. Druin heard a deep groaning sound, below the persistent hissing, and then a shuffling clank as a figure stumbled out of the nearest alcove. It was, as far as he could see, a complete human skeleton, draped in tattered chainmail. It lurched forward, moaning, and hefted a broad-bladed sword to its shoulder.

“Run,” he said quietly.

“What ho? What wickedness is here? Verily, shall I—”

“Run!” Druin commanded.

“Run, idiot!” Jenna seconded, spinning Malcolm around by force and shoving him back the way they had come. Druin got a glimpse of at least three more armored corpses shuffling into view before he whirled around and pelted after the others.

“What’s that sound?” Jenna screeched as they squeezed through the rusty gate. The hissing had become noticeably louder as they retreated, overwhelming even Malcolm’s howled protests.

“I don’t know!” Druin yelled, though he had a nasty suspicion. As he made it through the gate, he turned and shot the bolt home, hoping that would reset the lock mechanism. The skeletal warriors were invisible in the darkness of the tunnel, but the approaching groans indicated that they had not given up the chase.

Malcolm and Jenna were waiting impatiently in the riddle chamber with the bubbling spring, Jenna hopping nervously from leg to leg as Malcolm brandished his sword. Druin could see the problem at once. Additional gates had dropped from the archways of all the other passages, including the Southern route by which they had entered the island catacomb. They were locked in.

The hissing was a positive shriek now, like the whistling of a monstrous kettle.

“What do we do now?” Jenna demanded frantically. “Can you unlock the gates?”

“Maybe,” Druin shouted, rushing to the nearest. Even as he knelt at the northern gate, a bony arm reached through the bars to snatch at him, and he rocked backwards, almost landing in the bubbling pool.

More armored corpses were pressing forwards against the Northern and Eastern gates, some raising weapons as if to smash them to bits. Druin scrambled on hands and knees to the southern gate and inserted his lockpick, praying that his skills would be sufficient to overcome it. This time, however, the pick snapped off at once in the hole, the broken stub remaining mockingly in his fingers.

“No good! These are much tougher locks. It would take some time.”

“Do we have time?”

Suddenly, Druin’s world pulsed bright red. “No,” he shouted. “We don’t. That hissing is a gas trap. We’re being poisoned.”

“What?!?” Jenna shrieked.

Druin’s vision pulsed red again, indicating that he was being damaged by the toxic gas. He might survive for a while, but Malcolm and Jenna would be dead in moments. They needed more time!

“Jenna, healing! What’s in your pack?”

She ripped the backpack around and stared into it. “Flowers, mushrooms, bunches of things!”

“Get the red ones, and start healing, like you did with Rud! Help Malcolm! And keep dosing yourself too!”

Jenna nodded, and rushed over to stand behind Malcolm, who was already engaged with a skeleton which had begun bashing its axe against the Northern gate. As Malcolm howled with glee, Druin shut his eyes tightly and tried to think.

Clearly they weren’t getting out through any of the tunnels leading deeper into the caverns. Each archway was now blocked by a grating, bending under the merciless pressure of the undead soldiers who pressed forward, jaws agape. The poison gas might kill them before that, though. He couldn’t understand it! Missing a trap in the thieves’ tunnel was one thing, but the misstep had set off a chain reaction in every route. There seemed no way out, and the certainty of their doom fought struggled against every gamer’s instinct he possessed, all of which screamed that the designers always offered some chance, however slim, of escape. There had to be a way...if only he weren’t distracted by the ringing of Malcolm’s steel over skeletal armor, and desperately calculating how many more breaths of toxic gas it would take to kill him!

“Druin! The spring, it’s the spring! The fifth way!” Jenna’s cry broke through his paralysis.

“What?”

“The spring, the pool where the stream’s coming out! Dive in! It’s another way out!” she shouted, still frantically applying healing salves to Malcolm from behind.

“The spring?” Druin looked down into the pool, realizing he couldn’t gauge its depth in the dim light, then shrugged his shoulders. Anything was better than dying here from either slow poison or angry skeletons. He leaned forward and dove into the water.

Astoundingly, he didn’t brain himself unconscious on the rocky bottom. The pool was much larger than he had assumed from the surface, a natural oval ten feet on an edge and at least eight deep. Most significantly, he could now make out a tunnel, almost six feet high, which had been hidden under an overhang of rock, but which was illuminated by some phosphorescent blue lichen. He made for it as quickly as he could, awkwardly pulling himself forward through the water and aware that drowning could prove as fatal as the poison gas in the chamber above.

He need not have worried. A brief zig-zagging passage brought him to a place where the water formed another open pool. Cautiously, he poked his head out of the water, thankful that there was more light here from the lichen and from irregular cracks in the ceiling.

He was in a square chamber, obviously man-made (or at least creature-made, he amended silently to himself). On the nearest wall, small rectangular flumes cut into the stone channeled the water from some unknown source into the pool from which he had emerged. To the left and right, smooth gray walls stretched forwards into the darkness.

A splash from behind alerted him that his companions had followed, and they emerged, dripping.

“Why don’t I feel wet? Oh wait, right.” Jenna shook herself, only to find that her clothing was already dry. “Neat trick, if you could export it,” she muttered.

“It does my warrior’s heart ill to flee from a foe,” Malcolm said, shaking his head sorrowfully.

“It would do your warrior’s heart worse to be cut out and eaten,” Jenna quipped.

“How did you figure out the spring was a way out?” demanded Druin.

“Parallelism,” she answered smugly. “You may know all about the common design conventions around here, but I got a degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin. I’m a highly trained observer, with specialties in semiotic analysis. And I can count. You said that those riddle things always balance out.”

“They usually do. And the opening riddle offered a challenge of strength, magic, or skill, so we...”