PopCo (8 page)

I’m watching Dan. He didn’t send the note. It’s not there in his face. Oh, fuck it, I’m not going to panic about this. I don’t even know what it says yet. It won’t take me long to work out, though. It looked quite Vigenère-ish to me. Ten-minute job, maybe a bit more, although there isn’t much text to go on. With anything Vigenère-ish, it helps to have as much enciphered text as possible, as you can see patterns in it more easily. The Vigenère method of cryptography was thought to be unbreakable for over 300 years but once you know how to unravel it, it is surprisingly easy, and very fulfilling to break.

It wasn’t a Caesar shift cipher, that’s for sure: you can tell one of those just by looking at it. A Caesar shift cipher is one of the most simple of all substitution ciphers, and involves one of two identical alphabets being simply ‘shifted’ one way or the other. If ‘a’, for example, is enciphered as Z then that’s a shift of minus-one. Every letter will be enciphered as the one just behind it in the alphabet. In this system, with a shift of minus-one, if you found a C in the ciphertext, you’d know it was actually a ‘d’ and so on. One of the most famous contemporary uses of a Caesar shift cipher is, according to SF geeks, in the naming of the fictional computer HAL from
2001, A Space Odyssey
. Taking into account a Caesar shift of minus-one,
HAL
of course reads
IBM
. I used to have a little Caesar-shift wheel, where you could set the letter A to any other letter in the alphabet and the rest would just follow from there. But I did so many of those things when I was a kid that I eventually didn’t need the wheel, and somehow became familiar with twenty-six different ways of, for example, spelling the word ‘and’.
BOE, CPF, DQG
and so on. It must have been when I was nine or ten, and my grandfather communicated with me almost exclusively in this way until I learnt more sophisticated methods of cryptanalysis, at which point he began using more complicated ciphers to leave me notes that said things like: ‘Gone to the shop for milk’, or ‘Back later’.

Another thing about Caesar shift ciphers, like almost all ciphers, is that they have their own little conventions that you can look out for. The text in my pocket starts with the letters XYC, if I remember correctly. Caesar shift ciphertexts don’t usually start with two consecutive letters for the simple reason that not many sets of two consecutive letters in the English alphabet actually form the beginnings of sensible, common words. You’ve got A and B, which are pretty rare together at the beginning of words; S and T, which are the main two to watch out for – but I’ve already done it in my head and it’s not S and T (the third letter would be X if it were); H and I, N and O, O and P, and of course D and E, which, rather worryingly, do start the word
death
. But, if this were a Caesar shift cipher and the first two letters were D and E, then the third would be I. Unless someone’s writing to me about a deity this isn’t very likely. The thing to watch out for, though, is that the Caesar shift could merely be the first layer of code and that when you look
at the beginning of a message you may actually be looking at the end. Sometimes people will write something out backwards and then apply a simple Caesar code to it. But this doesn’t feel like that.

The five most common words that begin coded communications are:
Meet, The, Take, Enemy
and
Go
. The ten most common words in the English language are
the, of, to, and, is, a, an, it, you
and
that
. The most common letter found in standard English language texts is always E, followed by T and then A, O, N, R, I and S (in various orders depending on which frequency analysis you read). The most common digraph in English is ‘th’. More than half of all English words end with E, T, D or S. The most common letters beginning words in English are T, O, A, W, B, C, D, S and F.

I wonder what the bloody message does say, and prickle slightly. I wish I had time to just crack it now. It could turn out to be nothing at all, which would make me feel so much better. Maybe it is from Dan but contains such a small message, or joke or whatever, that there’s no reason for it to be hidden in his face. Perhaps he has even forgotten that he put it there. He’s never written to me in code before, though. Why would he start now?
Don’t worry,
Alice. You just decided not to worry
. OK. I drink all my wine and accept Dan’s top-up. That feels a bit better. ‘Thanks,’ I say.

Dan’s putting a small red hardback notebook into his pocket.

‘What’s that?’ I say, more paranoid than usual.

He flashes me a weird grin. ‘This? This is the future, baby.’

‘Seriously. What is it,
baby
?’

He shrugs and passes it to me. Inside, on the first few pages, there are dreamy landscapes rendered in the same sorts of candy colours you see on Japanese toy websites: lemon, candyfloss pink, baby blue, strawberry, mint green and white. There are watercolours, pen and ink drawings and dark pencil sketches: thick dusty lines. I flick further through the book. There are various drawings of some sort of dome structure and some more or less illegible notes. Then more pen and ink drawings, in simple black and white, of people; characters, from the look of it, each one drawn from various angles, and in different poses. There’s a thin, scrawny girl carrying a rucksack, and an ethereal presence that seems female and in some way magical. Then – and I can see where this is going now – a kid with a big sword and a small pet lizard in the palm of his hand.

‘You’re doing the graphics for a videogame?’ I say.

‘Let’s see,’ Esther says, holding out a small hand.

‘They’re really rough,’ Dan says. And although he clearly doesn’t want to, he passes the book to her. He looks at me. ‘Not exactly,’ he says, answering my question. ‘It’s more … I don’t know. Research or something.’

‘What for?’

‘Hmm.’

‘
Hmm
?’

‘These are ace,’ says Esther. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use the word ‘ace’ for over a decade. ‘Really lush.’ Ditto.

‘Anyway, what’s
hmm
?’ I say to Dan.

He seems to be eating the red stuff rather tentatively. I’ve eaten most of mine. It’s OK, actually, and comforting, just as I had thought. There’s a nice-looking wedge of Stilton on the cheese board and I try to spread some on a hunk of ciabatta bread. It’s crumbly and ripe and bits keep falling off my plate and rolling under the table.

‘Nice hand–eye coordination, Butler,’ Dan says.

‘Yes, well,’ I say. ‘My life-meter has taken a battering today, what with all the sport and then strange military manoeuvres with Esther.’

‘Don’t blame me,’ she says, still looking through the book, but smiling.

‘I see,’ Dan says. ‘
Life-meter
. We’re using videogame metaphors now.’

‘Yes. We are. So …?’

‘All right. I’m designing a videogame. There.’

‘But you said …’

‘It’s not for work. It’s a side project.’

I drop my voice to a hiss. ‘For another company?’

‘No. It’s … hard to explain.’

‘What is? Come on, why is it hard to explain?’

‘My game. It can’t exist. It’s purely design.’ Dan exhales as though he’s just told his parents he made the next-door-neighbour pregnant or something. ‘So …’

‘Aren’t all games purely design?’ Esther says. ‘None of them exactly
exist
. It’s just binary code, isn’t it?’

Someone on the K table drops something and there’s a sharp crashing sound and then cheers and clapping. I thought they were supposed to be cool? You’d think they’d have sent out a trend-
spotter to find a more interesting way of responding to a crash in a pub/restaurant/cafeteria. Am I jealous of them? I don’t think so. Us three, here in the corner of the room, with no bright lights or spot-lights or anything: we’re a huddle. We could be huddling under an old canopy and the effect would be the same – unless it was a really bright or stupid canopy and then everyone would laugh at us.

Dan is smiling at Esther. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Exactly! It doesn’t exist.’

‘So you’ve basically done some artwork for a non-existent game?’ she says, but with a cute smile like the thin rucksack girl-sprite from Dan’s notebook. I notice that Esther has not changed her clothes since this afternoon but has changed her make-up. Now she has two very small spots of pink glitter at the top of each of her cheekbones, and two tiny blue smudges in the outer corners of each of her eyes. Apart from that there is no other colour on her face. I realise I am staring at her and glance down towards the end of the table instead. The guy in black seems to be staring at us/me but quickly looks away. He resumes a deep-looking conversation with his companion.

‘You go to a dome,’ Dan’s saying. ‘And the game is inside it …’

‘But …’

‘Hang on.’ He pulls a cheese board towards him. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this? You might think it’s a bit lame.’

‘Go on,’ I say. ‘I like domes.’

‘Yeah,’ says Esther. ‘I loved your drawings.’

‘The idea of the game … It’s like a thought experiment. Look,’ he pulls out the notebook and starts flicking through it. ‘Here’s the dome. OK, so you go to the dome and walk in.’ He flips to another page. ‘Everything changes. The climate is different, the vegetation, the light source … It’s like being on another planet, or maybe a simulation of another planet. Perhaps there are different moons and so on, which you can see at the top of the dome … I haven’t done much work on the sky yet. There are just a couple of images so far. Anyway, you walk into the dome and you’re wearing a special suit which is so skin-tight you could actually forget you’re wearing it. It could even be painted on. Hmm. Don’t know about that.’ He coughs. ‘Anyway, you wear clothes over this material, whatever it is. The clothes are probably classic role-playing stuff: leather armour, leather boots and so on, certainly to start off with. The dome is
huge, by the way, like half the size of Dartmoor or something, and you start wandering around waiting for someone – or something – to attack you or help you. You don’t have any money at this stage, or any good weapons, so the best thing to do is find a friendly encampment and offer to do work for them in return for shelter. Alternatively, you could lay traps for another player, or ambush them and take their money and weapons. So far, this is like any other RPG …’

‘Except that you’re literally walking through a real-time environment,’ Esther says. Dan nods enthusiastically. She frowns. ‘How do you fight and stuff?’

‘Ah. Good question. Well, the suit you wear is programmed in a particular way. This is where it starts to get a bit complicated. Your suit contains information about your …’ he flashes me a look, ‘
life-meter
and all your other stats. As you progress through the game your life-meter grows, so it can contain more life and you become stronger. Also, you have a certain amount of magical ability, and this, also, can grow if you put the effort in and learn a lot of spells and so on. When you battle, the suit registers any injury you receive …’

‘Like paintballing,’ Esther says.

‘Sort of. Except that if you take a blow to the leg, for example, you really can’t move your leg for a while – say until you have it healed, or rest, or take a potion. The suit stops you.’

‘God, I love words like “potion”,’ I say. I haven’t played any sort of videogame for a long time. I played a lot when my grandfather was in hospital and I’d come home and literally not be able to do anything else. I would spend every Wednesday night haphazardly setting the crossword he was supposed to be doing (they didn’t know until much later that it was me, although the people who actually did the crossword regularly had spotted the switch immediately), sweaty and pissed-off, and then for the rest of the week I would just let myself melt into the games the way I assume people melt into drug hazes or peaceful sleep. I don’t sleep peacefully myself; I never have. Anyway, it’s funny that from what are essentially memories of a bad time, good images occasionally do resurface – like the idea of potions – reminding me, I suppose, of what was comforting about the games in the first place.

Dan’s still describing his game. ‘There is a central hub, a bit like
a computer server or something, which bounces all the information backwards and forwards. All the people in the game are attached to it, like being on a network, and it updates your skills, life, magic energy, resources, relationships –
everything
– in real time. Maybe you find a healer to fix your leg. Well, the machine sends a signal to your body suit and your leg suddenly works and some healing energy is taken away from the person who has helped you. Oh – and you know how in games you have to sleep to replenish your energy? Well, in my game you really do have to go to sleep for that to work. The suit takes information from your brain and when you get into that deep state of relaxation – something to do with beta hertz, I think – it triggers a signal back to the central hub and your stats are reset to the maximum.’

‘So it’s basically a way to properly “live” a videogame?’ I say.

‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ Dan says.

Esther visibly shivers. ‘And the hub is like God.’

At the end of the table, the guy and the girl laugh. I glance over at them but they’re not looking at us.

‘I read this article in a science magazine,’ Esther says. ‘It really fucked with my mind. It was like … There actually are theories that our world is a videogame or simulation constructed by higher beings or – and I couldn’t get my head around this bit – by the human race in the future. Like we evolve to the point of being able to create artificial intelligence, so we do, and then we learn how to create worlds, so we do … We learn how to become Gods. We create a little self-sufficient world and then move on. Then the beings in the world we’ve just created, well they start progressing towards their
own
artificial intelligence projects and the whole thing starts again. Kind of fucks with your ideas about God. It would be … It’s basically your game. It would work in the same way.’

‘It wouldn’t, though,’ Dan says, shaking his head. ‘It can’t. That’s why the game is only a thought experiment. Where would the energy come from really? How would you generate all that power to run something like that? Who would build the hub? It’s insane. It’s why we don’t have magic, for one thing. Look at the laws of thermodynamics if you want to know how the world works, not crazy theories about artificial intelligence. Start with entropy; that’ll tell you all you need to know.’