Demogorgon: The Awakening, by Luke Priestman

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.