Bedlam (10 page)

And all of this was true, all of these were reasons he agreed with. The problem was that added together they came nowhere
near to justifying what they had forced Neurosphere to forgo.

When he was trying to be philosophical about it, he’d muse that ‘he giveth and he taketh away’. He being Ross Baker, leading
architect of the technology and leading advocate of the digital rights cause.

Behind the scenes Zac had tried his absolute best to hamstring Baker’s efforts. However, it became obvious as soon as the
debate went public that there was only one way it was going to go. That was when he decided that the best damage-limitation
strategy was for Neurosphere to be posturing as pioneers of the new legislation, rather than appearing as the entity most
conspicuously needing to be constrained by it. This at least meant they had a strong hand in framing the new laws, but to
Zac that didn’t amount to much more than getting to add a soft velvet lining to their handcuffs.

It was Baker who made the argument that the legislation
would protect their own intellectual property and guarantee their exclusive position in the new market. This must have sounded
very convincing to anybody naïve enough to believe that other people would actually stick to these rules.

‘Of course, this kind of legislation is meaningless unless it’s internationally applied and enforced,’ Li said. ‘And you’ve
been aggressive in shutting down illegal operations worldwide.’

Oh yeah. We’re very effective at raiding back-street chop-shops in Beijing and Mumbai while ten blocks away their governments
have entire server-farms that don’t officially exist and about which we can do nothing
.

‘We make no apologies for how aggressive we’ve been in that sphere,’ he told her. ‘Once you’ve accepted DC for what it is,
you can see the potential for abuse is enormous. We’re the ones who let the genie out of the bottle, so we have to be the
ones making sure everybody is protected.’

‘It’s long been the case that the first modified application of any new technology is as a weapon. The military must have
been banging on your door, and must have been pretty frustrated when digital rights effectively locked it shut.’

Not as frustrated as I was, sweet tits. And they’re still banging on the door, letting me know they’re ready to deal just
as soon as a loop-hole can be found
.

‘Well, first of all I think that the first modified application of any new
digital
technology is usually porn.’

She suppressed a laugh, but it took some effort. He knew this because all the other indicators were reading hit, hit, hit.

‘We’re not interested in dealing with the military, believe me. We’re all about keeping people together, not helping armies
tear them apart. Never forget, we’re a company that built its reputation developing neurological scanning equipment for hospitals,
and that side of our business still accounts for over forty per cent of our turnover worldwide. But what the Memento Mori
project has taught us is that ultimately the parts of the brain that matter most to people are those governing memories and
emotions.’

And didn’t he goddamn know it. That was why the digital rights issue became an unstoppable juggernaut as soon as it entered
the public domain. Never mind the Bostrom simulation
argument and all that humbug about do unto others. People talked about the golden rule and the things they wouldn’t want happening
to themselves, but in truth they couldn’t imagine it. However, make them think about dear ole grandma suddenly finding herself
holding an M16 with a tank bearing down on her ass and it becomes a no-brainer.

‘That’s why it’s a mistake to think that the military would be first in line to exploit this,’ he said. ‘Or even the most
dangerous. Politicians, governments, any kind of opinion-forming or marketing entity would view it as the perfect tool.’

‘I know you won’t name names, but would it be accurate to say that they’ve made their solicitations?’

Oh my, hadn’t they just. He only had to look at the list of organisations and individuals that were staying in close orbit
despite the apparently intractable legal position to appreciate the influence Neurosphere might wield but for these cursed
laws.

It was so tantalising to know that all it would take was a few thousand to provide a wide enough sampling, then it could be
duplicated at will. A measly few thousand: was that so much to ask? Neurosphere had given the world an invaluable gift; didn’t
it owe them such a tiny little slice in return, especially as they were only talking about some ones and fucking zeroes?

So, so tantalising: a couple of thousand, maybe less. He knew they could have garnered that much cumulatively from the raids
on the aforementioned chop-shops, but it was way too risky. All it took was one leak, even an allegation, and the PR fallout
would be catastrophic. He’d have to fall on his sword and it would take years for his successor to repair the damage.

‘Like you say, I won’t name names,’ he replied, but he gave her a knowing smile by way of answering her question in the affirmative.

She shifted on her seat, her posture more relaxed, tucking one perfectly turned ankle behind the other. From the read-outs
he interpreted that he was giving good, straight copy so far, but she was about to take it into more frivolous, gossipy territory.

‘I appreciate the development of Memento Mori is highly classified, but is there anything juicy you can divulge about how
it all came about? You know, like, is there an antique hard drive
somewhere full of crusty prototypes? Did anybody almost burn the lab down one night when they stayed late with a bottle of
tequila?’

He drew upon decades of experience in order to maintain a neutral expression, concealing first a moment of heart-thumping
revelation and then a crashing wave of adrenaline-laced excitement and delight. All that the girl got to see was a mercurial
grin she would probably ascribe to him quickly censoring out some x-rated anecdotes from the old days before answering her
question.

This seemed scant reward, considering she had just handed him the keys to the kingdom.

It was still running, last he was aware, and, given everything that had been fought for, there was no way Baker would have
allowed it to be shut down.

It had been there all along, and only a select few at Neurosphere were ever even aware of its existence. Nobody outside the
firm would ever know, and the best bit was, even if they found out, his action would not be in contravention of any laws.

‘Or I guess that should be whisky, shouldn’t it?’ she went on. ‘Because, according to my research, the whole thing started
when you were working in Scotland.’

He nodded, channelling the warmth he was suddenly feeling into a single word.

‘Stirling.’

The canyon was a maze of narrow channels confined by high rocky walls that stretched twenty metres in near-vertical ascent.
He recognised parts of it, allowing for its real-life rendering, but even in its software form he had found large stretches
of it disorientingly indistinct. One brown section of rock tended to look a lot like another, especially in the blocky geometry
of the original
Starfire
engine. Here the stone looked shaped by geological forces and aeons of natural erosion, but the layout was just as he remembered.

There were parts that would take him along ledges, into caves and even through pools, something he really wasn’t looking forward
to until he started to feel the heat from climbing. Back in the day, there had been an odd glitch in the game that meant you
could do this double-jump trick on the edge of a rock that would propel you a height disproportionate to your efforts. It
was a handy shortcut to higher ledges that the level designers hadn’t intended you to reach without first negotiating other
parts of the landscape. Ross tried it when he reached a suitable spot, the impulse coming almost instinctively as soon as
he realised he was in a place he recognised. He succeeded only in repeatedly rattling his thankfully metal-clad shins off
the edge of a low outcrop and falling on his face a few times. If anybody had been looking, they’d have assumed his internal
motivational and guidance circuitry was on the fritz. Or that he was a twat.

Fortunately the only possible witnesses were Slurgs, the cave-dwelling enemies that infested this section of the game, and
they weren’t in much of a position to cast judgment. They were squat, slimy, troll-like specimens, as vicious as they were
stupid, and they were considered such a disgusting lower life-form that even
the Gralaks drew the line at processing them for body parts. They were long-armed and pot-bellied homunculi, cadaverously
pale but with thick oily black hair on their near-neckless heads and a permanent expression of confused indignation on their
venom-spitting faces.

They were annoying rather than particularly dangerous; proof that your heart really wasn’t in it that day if one of them managed
to kill you. Wading through their numbers made this section an ammo-depleting chore rather than a challenge, and Ross had
originally considered the canyon his least-favourite section of the game. That was until he was replaying the game in his
student flat one night and it suddenly struck him that the Slurgs all looked like Richard Littlejohn. He subsequently got
hold of some appropriate sound samples and hacked the game to replace the corresponding audio files. As a result, instead
of their limited repertoire of grunts and shrieks, they spouted Littlejohn’s limited repertoire of bollocks.

‘Guardianistas!’

‘Political correctness gone mad!’

‘You couldn’t make it up!’

That transformed it into one of his favourite sections, as blasting their revolting little populist-drivel-spouting bodies
to a squidgy pulp never got old.

They were ignoring him today though, scurrying away whenever they saw him coming. This, he presumed, was because he was in
Gralak form and not the lone-hero space marine whom the game had programmed them to attack on sight. From what he saw of them,
these incarnations didn’t resemble Littlejohn other than in as much as they were still physically repellent and clearly had
a strong bias towards the indigenous population.

This latter disposition was just as well, given that Ross didn’t have the ammunition to fight them all off if they decided
violence was the only language he understood. The read-out on his rifle was down to single figures, a depletion that owed
itself to his experimentation with the fabric of the landscape. He had encountered another crate and, still being unable to
open it, he’d decided to see how it responded to some blasting. The answer was not at all, as he belatedly realised had already
been demonstrated by his fight with the card collector. He had hidden behind a
crate during that battle, and no amount of volleys from the collector’s otherwise devastating weapon had had any impact.

Ross had fired a few shots into the canyon walls and the ground beneath his feet. His blasts failed to inflict the slightest
damage, nor did several hefty jabs with the butt of his weapon or the spike in his arm. Same as it ever was in
Starfire
, the landscape was non-destructible, with the presumable exception of parts that were designated so, such as the section
of corridor the fuselage crashed into and the occasional crack in the wall concealing a secret area.

It was when he put this presumption to the test that he discovered the greater price of his profligacy in firing off so many
shots into the scenery.

He came to a familiar fissure in the rock. The jagged crack looked more authentically like the result of stress and pressure
than a mere texture from the map-designer’s palette, but as Ross had just emerged from the longest of the subterranean pools,
it was exactly where he expected it to be. A sustained burst of fire caused a section of rock to collapse and crumble, revealing
a shallow crevice behind it where Ross knew he would find a double-barrelled shotgun and a couple of grenades. Sure enough,
there they were: the pineapples sitting on the ground and the shotgun rotating impossibly in the air. However, when Ross moved
to collect the items, he passed through them, just like the health power-up.

Denied.

The ‘secret area’ was intentionally hard to miss, firstly so that a new player would grasp the concept of revealing such hidden
caches, but just as importantly because it was a tough task to complete the level without the new weapon. It wasn’t the Slurgs
that were the problem: you could take them out with a blaster. It was that there was a long and exposed stretch of ground
just before the entrance to the hidden base, where a massive horde of Gralaks lay hidden in preparation for ambush. This didn’t
merely include the likes of Gortoss and Zorlak, but provided the game’s first glimpse of the more dangerous enemies to come.

What they lacked in AI they made up for in sheer numbers and in the superior power of their weapons. Ross remembered
many deaths and rage-quits during his early days, the gradient of the learning curve steepening dramatically for the finale
to this opening map. (The heightened difficulty was actually a hangover from the free demo released in advance on magazine
cover-discs to promote the game, the developers upping the ante at the end of the level so that you’d feel so pleased with
yourself for completing it that you’d be desperate to pit your m4d sk1llz against the full version.)

Ross approached the end of the narrow rocky channel on nervous feet. The canyon walls widened out before a small river, but
he knew that, from this perspective, the seemingly flush walls concealed several hidden passages, out of which the Gralak
hordes would come pouring when the player reached a certain spot. The big question was whether he, in his non-player form,
would trigger it.

He could see his goal now, on the near bank of the river, where a huge inlet pipe was covered by a damaged grille. A brief
sewer section (still acceptable in those days) followed, populated by a few last Slurgs, then he’d be up a ladder and into
the hidden base.

Several dozen reloads had taught him where that crucial point was, almost to the pixel, but it wasn’t so easy to gauge when
he was looking at real rocks, sky and dust. He slowed his pace as he neared the spot where he estimated the trigger line to
be. He feared his approach would be conspicuously tentative, then he realised such conspicuousness didn’t matter. Any Gralaks
spying from cover would be as oblivious to the purpose of his movements as had they been witness to his pointless double-jump
attempts back in the canyon. Actually, he hoped some of them
had
seen that, as it might put them off their shot if they were still pissing themselves laughing.

Forward he edged, short step by short step, but there was no response. He kept cautioning himself that this might be because
he still hadn’t come far enough, but eventually he turned around and saw that he was well inside what was normally the killing
zone.

He risked a glance to either side and from this angle could see dozens of Gralaks staring back, motionless but alert, from
their hiding places. He made brief eye-contact with one of the
big tank-class buggers, and even in its largely metal face it was easy to read the question: What the fuck are you doing?

In that moment, however, he realised he was safe. They wouldn’t advance, wouldn’t even acknowledge him, because they were
under orders to hold their concealed positions until their enemy arrived. In his Gralak guise, they would ignore him as long
as he ignored them back and quietly went on his way.

Deal, he thought, and kept going.

It had worked, just like he’d told Raven and Stone it would. Not counting his failed experiments at remodelling, he had made
it all the way through the canyon without having to fire a shot. Until, that was, a platoon of space marines came pouring
from the inlet pipe and began beckoning him towards them.

‘Are you the rogue Gralak?’ one of them called out, just in case the onlooking forces hadn’t quite caught the significance
of their entreaties. ‘We’re here to escort you inside.’

Oh, you utter glans.

‘Come on. This place is crawling with Gralak forces.’

Yeah, thanks for the exclusive, Ross thought. A fraction of a second later, the very ground was warping with bludgeon-pulses
from the tank-class Gralaks, scattering marines like bowling pins and making them even easier targets than usual for the infantry
to mop up with laser weapons.

Ross began sprinting back towards the narrow part of the canyon, randomly zigzagging to avoid fire. He was caught in the splash
damage from a bludgeon-pulse, sending him rolling like a tin can and his vision spinning in a dizzying blur. He managed to
climb to his knees and fire off his final few rounds, taking out a paltry two grunts, the rest of his blasts merely tickling
the tanks’ thick hides or missing altogether.

His trigger had barely clicked on empty before he endured that electrocution sensation of a direct hit from a laser weapon,
which knocked him flat again. Another hit came hard on its heels, then he felt the entire world suddenly halt. He couldn’t
move, the hordes ahead of him also being frozen like statues. Time was standing still.

This was it, he thought: the moment of truth. He’d been fragged, and death was upon him. Now the big question was whether
it really was the end, or would he be respawned? And if so, where?

Then he saw movement, like a dark curtain coming down in the sky. Oh, how unnecessarily bloody theatrical, he thought.

But it wasn’t a curtain, it was a console. Text appeared, printing out from left to right.

He still couldn’t move, not even his eyes, but to the left of his field of vision he now noticed the card collector, standing
there holding the game’s ultimate weapon. The player didn’t get access to it until the final few levels of
Starfire
, unless he brought down the console and keyed in some cheat codes, which was exactly what had just happened. In the blurb
it was officially named the GraxiTron Flow gun, a backronym created to explain (or excuse) its abbreviated handle: the GTF.

Two more lines of type flowed across the sky.

The curtain scrolled back up and the world came instantly back to life, the sounds of battle all the more ear-splitting for
the brief lapse into silence. The card collector stood in front of Ross, shielding him from further fire as he retreated towards
the cover of the rocky channels. Not that there was much fire to shield him from after a few seconds: the Gralak hordes had
been very quickly persuaded to GTF. It was a weapon intended for use against the colossal enemies of the game’s finale, so
its effect against this shower from the opening map was like that of a water-cannon on a litter of new-born kittens.

All things considered, it was quite a volte-face from giving him the finger.

‘Thank you,’ Ross said. ‘I owe you one. My name is Bedlam. Who are you?’

The card collector said nothing, seemingly implacable behind that visor.

‘Can you hear me?’ Ross tried again, waving in his face.

The card collector began sidestepping along in front of Ross, weapons and ammo arcing out from him like bunches of flowers
from a magician’s sleeve. It was one of the features that had made
Starfire
multiplayer such an enjoyable team game: you could toss spare weapons to your comrades, as good for bonding as it was for
controlling the resources of a map. Unfortunately, Ross was in no position to take advantage of the collector’s largesse,
as he demonstrated by standing uselessly in the middle of a rocket-launcher.

The console came down again, and this time Ross realised it was actually in his own field of vision, not the sky itself.

Soz? Brb? What was this, 1998? Had he gone back in time after all?

‘Press T to talk,’ Ross wanted to say, but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, could only watch.

He saw a blur of code scroll before his eyes, then the console retreated and he was released from stasis once more. In his
hands, his empty rifle had transformed into the rocket-launcher he’d been standing in. It was bulkier, the weight and substance
of it palpable, yet it seemed no heavier to his arms than the laser rifle.

‘Thank you,’ he said again, to no visible response from that blank visor. Ross then waved to the heavens and shouted it: ‘THANK
YOU. WHO ARE YOU?’

‘T,’ Ross shouted, making a corresponding gesture with his fingers once the console had unfrozen him again. ‘Don’t key your
chat messages into the console.’