Patch 17 (Realm of Arkon) (2 page)

"Hold your horses, sis. They need a professional. And I know video games about as well as a pig knows oranges. You probably need to know how to draw in 3D."

"Gosh, Roman, you can be such a dolt sometimes! Look, it says here in plain language—they want someone to create! The implementation won't be your problem at all!"

I didn't want to argue. Drawing fantasy-style scenery was indeed a hobby of mine. Sometimes, when reading a good book, I'd get absorbed and try to recreate a vision from it on paper. Only a few people knew about this hobby, however. That same day I e-mailed seven scans of my drawings to the address indicated on the site, and Alyona herself composed the e-mail. The response came three days later. And in another two weeks I was already in San Francisco...

The game's subscriber base kept growing, the world kept expanding, and my work was in hot demand. And they paid me well for it. So well that I didn't need to care about my daily bread, and could even send money to my sister back in the now-distant Moscow.

   For two whole years I worked like a dog, buying a car and a house in the suburbs. It was more than I'd ever dreamed of. I went back to Russia a few times and was even considering bringing my sister stateside when it all came crumbling down.

For the past several months or so, ominous clouds had been gathering over the company. Strange people would turn up at the office and summon employees for private conversations. The management would disappear at meetings for days on end. Rumors swirled that we were being bought out by the US government.

Our department was left alone—indeed, why bother the artists? The worst that could happen was that I'd get canned, and I didn't worry about that much, considering the project's prospects. These things normally went down as follows: a bunch of big shots in their ivory towers would do their dance and replace some or most of the management, which hardly ever impacted us mere mortals. Our staff was multinational and, shockingly, didn't include even a single American. We even jested that, after the sale of the company, a new American faction would appear on the Arkon map, its banner featuring a hamburger and a Coke vending machine.

The joke was grounded in reality—you could buy both Coke and Pepsi in the game in nearly every Erantian bar, though their art looked different from the real thing. There was also cellular communication with the real world, and priced accordingly. Just because your boss lost track of time leveling his Blacksmithing skill, that was no reason for the firm to go out of business. And it didn't end there—many companies and banks bent over backwards to establish in-game offices, petitioning to the authorities and bribing NPCs, buying up castles, powerleveling their employees and concocting all kinds of schemes to circumvent RP-17's requirements and import their real names and logos into the game. The in-game gold was worth roughly the same as its real-world counterpart. One gold coin—three grams in weight—cost around one hundred evergreen bills. Money could be officially transferred into and out of the game by paying the applicable taxes and fees. The limit were set at three thousand dollars per account to transfer in, with no limit to transfer out, thus preserving the game's currency. Though players kept earning copper, silver and gold for completing quests and slaying monsters, the restriction prevented oversaturation due to influx of real money into the game, and thus the demand always exceeded the supply.

Each account was limited to only one character. Sick of your druid and want a warrior instead? No problem—delete the druid and play the warrior all you like. Furthermore, you were not allowed to transfer real money into the game more than once, just as you weren't allowed to create a character of the opposite sex. When creating your first character, the game read your biometric parameters and stored them in the Sage's database. All of these "restrictions" could be easily bypassed by depositing money into some firm's real-world bank account: paying for consulting services regarding breeding gerbils in Antarctica, for instance, would result in gold being credited to your game account. The game and near-game world were experiencing a veritable gold rush, with people quitting their real jobs in favor of earning virtual money. The circulated amounts were astronomical. High-level clans would capture and defend areas of concentrated rare metals, where their miners toiled day and night to earn dough both virtual and real. Rangers were always on the lookout for new, undiscovered dungeons with the aim of selling any new information to various gaming communities. Many companies imported their whole businesses into the game. It was little wonder, then, that the government of the world's Foremost Democratic Power was expressing interest.

Toward the end of summer, the entire staff was taken on a company retreat aimed at promoting a corporate culture, filled with trainings on teamwork and fostering leadership. Held at a posh hotel on the coast, we were subjected to roughly five hours of brainwashing at various trainings daily; come evening, the folks would let loose and take to drunken debauchery. This went on for one whole week.

At the final party on Friday, after the brass gave their speeches and the final round of revelry began, I headed up to my room to change my shirt, whose sleeve had been smudged with some exotic sauce by a certain colleague of mine with soft lips and a C cup.

Walking past a door leading to the terrace, I heard a commotion and a woman's sobbing. Deciding to take a look and see if my help was needed, I came upon the following scene. Standing with his back to me about ten feet away was a man, holding the chin of a sobbing girl in a gown with two fingers of his left hand, and hissing lazily through clenched teeth:

"Do you realize who you're refusing, slut? On your knees, and start working off your debt." Lowering her chin, he slapped her hard across the face. "Now, bitch!"

Now, I'm far from a knight in shining armor, but I but don't like seeing women harmed. And I really, really don't like rapists. Putting my left hand on the bastard's shoulder, I spun him toward me hard enough that his chin came crashing head-on with my right fist. As he began to topple over, I sealed the deal with a left—purely on instinct. The would-be rapist collapsed to the floor. I was about to kick him in the gut for good measure (as I said, I'm far from anyone's version of a knight), but then I recognized the victim as Adam Cheney—a real asshole who also happened to be on the company's board of directors—and decided against it. That, however, turned out to be a mistake...

Cheney stirred, then scrambled up from the floor. His eyes were two pools of rage; he spat some blood on the white marble, and spoke in a tone of bitter frost.

"You're an idiot, Roman. Or rather, a dead man," he drew a finger across his throat, fixed his blazer, and was gone from the terrace.

An unpleasant course of events, to be sure, though I didn't regret my actions in the slightest. My time in this friendly country had clearly come to an end, since my employment termination was all but guaranteed. As for the dead man comment, well, we would see about that. We weren't in Africa, after all, but it would be good for me to consult with a certain someone who might have useful advice for my predicament. I turned to the girl.

"You all right?" I asked her.

Her mouth agape and big brown eyes opened wide, the girl shifted her gaze from me to the door into which Adam had disappeared with barefaced horror. Finally, seeming to arrive at a decision, she uttered:

"We have to get out of here! Can you give me a lift?"

"Meet me in front of the main entrance in twenty minutes. I'm Roman, by the way."

"I'm Jane. And, Roman... Thank you," she spoke softly.

We drove in silence for thirty minutes. I was in my thoughts, contemplating the road, while Jane was checking something in her mirror. She was a real looker, with huge eyes the color of chestnut, almost black, raven hair fashioned in a bob style, and a slender figure that even the denim pants and jacket she'd changed into couldn't ruin.

As for me, I was sulking over the fact that I really didn't want to go back to Russia. Let the nationalists curse me all they want, but I liked living here. Have you ever seen the mist envelop the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge? The feeling you get when observing the phenomenon from the bridge itself is indescribable. And then there were the Yosemite mountains with their glaciers and waterfalls, and the ancient sequoias in the Mariposa Grove! I wasn't particularly enamored with America as a country and its exorbitant ambitions, but Americans themselves were pretty decent folk.

But what could a simple graphic artist do? Even in the Realm of Arkon, a single character had incomparably more control over their fate. Perhaps that was why so many people were living their whole lives online?

"How does Cheney know you?" Jane's voice interrupted my contemplation.

"We met about a year and a half ago," I glanced at her concentrated face. "He was personally managing a project the details of which weren't disclosed to me. I designed the zone: a castle, ten or so villages, landscapes and environs. It was an unusual order—had to be a recreation zone. A lake in the middle, yachts and mansions, a woods, and the castle itself was nearly twice the standard size, clearly of the level ten variety. Cheney's assistant was all over me the whole time..." I creased my brow, trying to remember the name. "McLean, I think it was. See, there are certain rules. For example, RP-17 would never allow contemporary buildings in the game. Or making a zone that wouldn't be accessible by foot. I tried to explain these things to that shit-for-brains, but it was useless. In the end I gave up and did as instructed, then handed over the art to the designers. What should have been an easy job—an almost perfect circle twelve miles in diameter—turned into a nightmare. So much headache, you'd think I was drawing the Great Forest."

"McLean left the company seven months ago," Jane put the mirror away into her purse. "I'm scared, Roman! Very scared. Cheney is not the kind of man to forgive something like that. I don't want to work here anymore." She looked at me, alarm splashing out of her eyes. "I'm on vacation starting Monday. I'll mail in my resignation, lay low for a while and hope he forgets about me. The company is going through tough times—hopefully that will keep him busy."

"How did you end up there, anyway?"

"Because I'm an idiot! I needed some paperwork signed, and Adam hasn't been in his office for weeks, always traveling or in meetings. I finally caught him after his presentation, and he suggested we go up to his room and iron out some points of contention. When he started hitting on me, I slipped out of the room, but he caught up to me and pushed me out onto the terrace. It was stupid of me to go up to his room, wasn't it?"

I grunted. It was the eternal women's question, and if you answered it honestly, you could forget about getting any. And since I actually really liked the girl, I gave the politically correct answer: no, she wasn't at fault whatsoever, it's just that sometimes our circumstances overwhelm us.

We dropped by her place to pick up her stuff, then headed to a hotel she was planning on holing up in, unwilling to stay in her own home. Along the way she asked me to stop the car, got out and made a call to someone from a pay phone.

"My girlfriend will pick me up Sunday evening," said Jane, climbing back into the car. Then she added, "You're not going to leave a helpless woman alone, right?"

The weekend flew by. Jane ended up being a surprisingly pleasant conversationalist; we spent our days sightseeing, going to the movies and dining at cafés, and our nights making love. It wasn't love or anything of the sort—we simply had fun together. At least I thought so, even though our interactions carried a measure of tension. We made a tacit agreement not to bring up work or the incident from Friday. And it wasn't until Sunday evening, as I was loading her things into her girlfriend's Volkswagen, that she pressed herself to me and whispered:

"Promise me you'll leave this place. I have a... premonition."

I lifted her chin and kissed it, gave her a wink and said:

"Everything will be fine, darling." And then, for some reason, I added, "If anything happens, my character's name is Krian. The first two letters are my initials spelled backwards—easy to remember. Take care of yourself..." 

I didn't like parting on such an uncertain note. The whole story stunk, with its lack of a beginning and an ambiguous end. Would I ever see Jane again? I had no idea. And if I did, would we remember these two days fondly and want to rekindle them?

My musings were interrupted with a phone call.

"Hey, Ivan, I was just about to call you," I said excitedly.

"Hey, Roman. There's a French café right off Market Street, I'll tell you the address... It's about fifteen minutes from where you are. Give your name at the door and they'll take you to me. Hurry, I'm already here."

"Wait, how do you—" I started to say, but suddenly there was only dial tone.

It was all super weird. Ivan knew full well that I lived in the suburbs, and it would take me at least an hour to get to Market Street. Although... I glanced at the phone in my hand. Right, we lived in a world of high technology! Fine, then, this was even better.

I met Ivan Barnes a year and a half ago—exactly five minutes after I'd pulled his kid from under the wheels of a moving vehicle. His wife Sarah had driven up to meet her husband, and their son—four-year-old Sam, a facetious little guy—ran out onto the roadway after a soccer ball. I was just leaving the office and, luckily, happened to be nearby. No one got hurt, and later that evening I was having dinner with the family at their home. I found out that my new pal was named Ivan in honor of his Russian great-grandfather who had immigrated to Canada many years ago. We would get together on many occasions since, and had even gone fishing a few times. But when the company entered its stretch of turmoil, Ivan pretty much disappeared. It had been three months since I saw him last.