Epigraph:
“I am thy child, as thou
wert Saturn’s child; mightier than thee: and we must dwell together henceforth
in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not. The tyranny of heaven none may retain, or
reassume or hold, succeeding thee.” – Demogorgon to Jupiter, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
Date: 2333
The sun sinks over the glistening columns of the city
of Deus, sending a variegated shimmer through its seven billion glass panes.
Sitting at my desk on Floor 169 of IT Building 747, I allow myself a moment to
be moved by this effect, despite its familiarity. The city is all I remember:
all any of us remember, as far as I know.
We are the workers. Here in IT Building 747, it is our
job to keep the servers of the Region 907 running. Below us are those who work
with their hands, but we don’t talk about them. We don’t talk about much
besides the work, except sometimes, standing around the water-cooler, our lives
in the online Game. Everyone in Deus knows that anybody we meet could be one of
them: a Suit. You’d never know
somebody was a Suit unless they turned you over to Deus for insubordination. I
don’t even know if they’re machines, like the propaganda says, or just
brainwashed humans. A Suit could be your lover, best friend or neighbor. I
think the boss is one, actually. He’s too friendly, actually greeting me with a
smile and a cheery wave as the clock strikes and we set off back to our homes.
Nobody else in the office will meet my eye.
Although nobody says anything, I can tell I’m not
well-liked. A woman working in IT isn’t natural; we’re meant for motherhood.
But my father worked in IT, and he didn’t have a son. Deus needs IT workers
like its people need the Game, and with women it has an excuse to pay us less.
There are other jobs for women. The food-packagers, the sanitisers and the
entertainers who sing the electric praises of the city. But all of these jobs
allow Deus to influence you far more than IT work. I’m one of the lucky ones.
The elevator carries me down all one-hundred-and-sixty-nine
floors. It is so crammed with people that I can’t move, but there is silence
except for the bubbly, synthesised singing emanating from a speaker. Finally
the doors open, and I escape onto the streets, and head for the station. I enter
my bank details, and the gate slides open, allowing me onto a train still more
crowded than the elevator. The simpering face of one of the entertainers is
emblazoned above the window facing me, informing me that “Life is great in the
city of Deus!” It’s dark outside now, and the train hurtles past skyscrapers
like grey monoliths.
My name is Raven. Not everyone has one of those. I
chose it myself. One of the songs mentioned a bird, from before all the animals
were held in the food factories, the same colour as my hair. I think the singer
was disposed of. I liked her. Her songs were about more than the wonder of the
city, or fawning feebly over a wealthy man.
I enter my apartment building, and climb the stairs.
My apartment is spacious enough, my computer has enough memory to run the Game
with minimal glitches, and I always have food in the fridge. Things could be
worse, I suppose.
In the Game, we have a level of choice that we don’t
in the real world. At the beginning, you can decide whether to protect the
small coastal town of Haddock from attack or pillage it yourself. From then on,
there are any number of factions you can side with as you travel across the
three-hundred-and-thirty-three planets that make up the human-ruled Galactic
Empire. Many players view the Empire as a force for good, but I’m with a group
called the Prometheus Collective who is dedicated to working subtly against it
in order to create a freer and more equal society. I find it strange that Deus
allows any groups like this to exist, even in the Game. Working with them gives
me a little thrill of rebellion that I would never dare go looking for in my
day-to-day life.
I log on to find that Prometheus is being typically
unorthodox, protecting a tribe of None-Player Character heretics from a witch-hunter
player faction. Prometheans treat NPCs like real people in-Game, unlike the
large groups of players who use even peaceful NPCs as target practice. The NPCs
have such intricate programming that I often catch myself believing that they
really do have feelings. As much as I hate Deus, I have to admit that whoever
programs the Game for them is a genius.
Wiping out the witch-hunters turns out to be a step
too far. My avatar is knocked off her feet as a shimmering colossus descends
from the clouds on a pair of burnished mechanical wings. I’ve only come
face-to-face with an Administrator once before, when I saw one eradicate a glitch
in the Imperial Library on World-42. The Admin glares straight at me with his iridescent
blue eyes, and a message appears in the chat. “You are in violation of
Skybrook’s Anti-PVP policy. This isn’t the first time you Prometheans have come
to my attention. Your trouble-making ways violate the contract you made with
the city of Deus when you purchased this Game. The Terms and Conditions clearly
state that no faction shall act in a way directly contrary to the principles of
the city…”
“And gunning down high school students doesn’t
contradict the principles of the city?” asks Zestin, our squad’s medic.
“We understand that people need to let off steam
in-Game. Killing mindless NPCs is proven to be cathartic.”
“Exactly, cathartic,” I say, riding on a foolish bout
of adrenaline, “It’s not as though we’re rebelling in real life.”
It is only too late that I realise I have implied that
I want to. My confession is engraved into the network for all to see. I swear
aloud to myself. The Administrator extends his toned golden arms, and snaps my
avatar effortlessly in two. In the real world, I sit for a second, head in my
hands. My comment is sure to have real-world repercussions.
My computer beeps. I glance at it in irritation. I’ve
received a private message from an unfamiliar user: Bysshe2068.
I open the message. A sea of binary washes over me…
Date: 2068
The elevator clicks, and I step out into a glass
penthouse office bathed in the light of the setting sun. A tall, well-built man
stands across the room with his back to me, staring down at the metropolitan
scene below us. I cough, rather too loudly. This meeting wasn’t my idea. He
turns, and fixes on me the same charming smile that I have seen on the cover of
so many newspapers, even back in Japan. The sunlight glaring behind him makes
his golden hair shine like a halo.
“Ah, Miss Mashima. Welcome to my humble office. Can I
get you something to drink?”
“No thank you.”
“Well, sit down at least.”
The elevator had gone up more than twenty floors. I
do. He remains standing, smiling down at me like an obnoxious angel.
“Would you care to tell me why I’ve been shipped
halfway across the world, please, Mr Winter?” I ask.
“Flown,” he corrects, “And all at my expense. I think
you know why I’ve brought you here, Miss… can I call you Tomoko?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Yes, well. Your game has made quite a splash. You’ve
seen the sale figures, of course. Here at Deus Industries, we find what you’ve
been doing simply fascinating. You
were, what, twenty, when you started working on this game? I was only a little bit
older when I founded Deus. A smash-hit game made by a single person in a college
dorm room, that shows the true entrepreneurial spirit.”
“It’s called indie games developing, and it’s being
going on for quite some time.” I retort. “And I think my views on the
‘entrepreneurial spirit’ are fairly obvious from the game’s plot. Have you
actually played it?”
“For me, games like yours are a distraction from the great
game. Hard work and lots of exercise are all the stimulation I need. There is
nothing better than video games for entertaining the masses, though, and I
subscribe to the school who believes that gunning down aliens is cathartic, not
damaging.”
“I subscribe to the school that believes we can use
games to get people more involved in stories than ever before, and maybe to
think for themselves rather than believing everything your news channels tell
them to.”
The smile flickers for a second. “Be that as it may,
Deus is enthused by your progress, and we want to offer you a bit of help.
We’re willing to offer you $6.6 billion, straight up. You hand the game over to
us, and we’ll morph it into something even more in line with the public’s
desires.”
“6.6 billion?” I gasp. For a second, I’m tempted. “No.
I’m not selling out to you, or any other capitalist patriarch who wants to use
my code for another mindless zombie-blaster. My game means something.”
“What if we allow you to retain creative power over
the game, as long as you fulfill certain success criteria? We want to make
something people can lose themselves in, you see.”
“Oh, well that sounds perfectly healthy.”
The smile flickered more noticeably. “Do you believe in
God, Miss Mashima?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“You rarely give interviews, and I like to know how my
employees view the world.”
“I’m not your employee.”
The smile went altogether. “Please answer my
question.”
“I just used the term ‘capitalist patriarch’. What the
hell do you think?”
“There are a lot who would say that in today’s world. Just
as many who claim to but are fair-weather friends to Him at most. Sinners
infest this world like a cancer.” He stands facing the window contemplatively,
and I feel goosebumps run up my arms.
“What they don’t realise, even those who feign faith,
is that, with God as with business, there is a supply and a demand element. He sends
the worthy among us miracles, but expects more than just a measly prayer in
return. My father told me this, and it has stayed with me.”
“Yes, I heard about him,” I find myself saying, “A
prime suspect in the St Peters killing, wasn’t he? I’m not really fond of hearing
the mantras of hate criminals.”
“The jury found him innocent. My father was a great
man, and I have striven to be still greater. I have one of the greatest
business minds in human history, but a company like Deus Industries needed a
miracle to get it off the ground. The Lord provided that miracle, and I am in his
debt, which puts me under a still greater obligation to honour him. He has
vouched-safe to me a vision of a city patrolled by angels. His city.” He is
standing dangerously close to me now, and his polished white teeth gleam like a
wolf’s. “You are utterly powerless to stand in my way. The game is already
mine. The money is already yours. Accept it, never talk about it, and live a
happy life of excess.”
I sag backwards in my seat, and speak in barely more
than a whisper, “I can’t. I’ve been thinking about taking the game off the
market as it is. I’ve noticed… a problem, and I can’t in good conscience sell a
game where players have free choice when the NPC AI is so advanced. It’s wrong,
and, if you make your changes to it, it’s definitely murder.”
“Sacrifices must be made for the greater good, Miss
Mashima,” Milton Winter replies, “And what your game will help me establish is
undoubtedly both greater and better.”
Date: 2333
I come to, and stare at my monitor. The Game has been
replaced by a twisted, laughing face, with two curling horns protruding from
the side of its head.
“Welcome to the real Prometheus Collective, current
members: two.” The voice is strangely distorted, and emerges from my speakers.
“The in-Game faction is a front so I can come into contact with the most
rebellious citizens in a semi-legal environment. The trouble is, the Suits keep
getting to them before they can rebel very much. I have no doubt you would like
an explanation of what you just saw, and what happened next.”
I nod dumbly. Worryingly, the voice takes this as a
cue to continue.
“Tomoko Mashima was perhaps the greatest programmer in
history, closely followed by yours truly, so much so that she ended up giving
birth to the most miraculous discovery in computing history without even
knowing it. The NPCs in the game aren’t just intelligent, they’re self-aware.
They think, they feel, they love. And Winter gave them to humanity as
play-things so engaging that we wouldn’t notice as he stripped our rights and
freedoms from us and set to work on Project Jupiter, an attempt to create the
exact opposite of Mashima’s NPCs. The Suits: machines who look, walk and talk exactly
like real people, perhaps even occupy real human bodies, but are empty inside.
The City of Deus was born a century after that memory, and ironically Milton Winter
won his ‘great game’ by exploiting our imaginations, though obviously with a large
portion of consumerism on the side.”
“Who are you?” I ask. “How did you show me that?”
“Everything’s online somewhere, if you know where to
look. And call me Demogorgon.”
The name stirs something in me. It rings with the same
poetry as my own. “What does that mean?”
“It’s from an old poem, Prometheus Unbound. It’s the creature that destroys the tyrannical
god. An ally of Prometheus, who was imprisoned for bringing fire to humanity,
essentially a prehistoric version of what I’m doing.”
“What exactly are
you doing?”
“Gradually giving mankind the means and inspiration to
rebel. At the moment that means hacking every Deus server I can, and staying
off the grid.”
“Sounds like you’re the main reason I have a job,
then.”
The voice didn’t immediately reply. “You should get
moving. There’s no way that Admin didn’t send a report back to Deus. The Suits
will be knocking at your door any minute now, and they’re one thing I can’t
hack yet.”
“What do I do?”
“I’m hacking into your phone. Pack some food and your
laptop, and I’ll use it to guide you to me.”
I do so, and switch on my mobile to find the same demonic
face laughing up at me. I open my door for the last time, and walk casually
down the stairs. A man bumps me in the street. To my relief, he keeps walking.
I grin to myself. As terrified as I am, I’ve never felt more alive.
Demogorgon whispers a set of instructions into my ear.
The headlights of a low-flying hover-car shower the empty glass towers with fleeting
droplets of radiance.
Games can be like life, but life is not a game. If the
NPCs are alive, then the Game is just another sphere of life whose inhabitants
need liberating. Raven will fight the system. Like the poets of old, I have
been inspired.
Awakened.
