Dangerous Games

“You knew about him?”

“I met him too. He’s been turning up everywhere. What a creep.”

“So you knew about the noobs in the cottages?”

“Um. Well, yeah, I figured it out mostly on my own and then Raymond told me a little more.”

“And you’re fine with depriving little kids of their wages?”

“Anda,” Lucy said, her voice brittle. “You like gaming, right, it’s important to you?”

“Yeah, ’course it is.”

“How important? Is it something you do for fun, just a hobby you waste a little time on? Are you just into it casually, or are you committed to it?”

“I’m committed to it, Lucy, you know that.” God, without the game, what was there? PE class? Stupid Acanthosis Nigricans and, someday, insulin jabs every morning? “I love the game, Lucy. It’s where my friends are.”

“I know that. That’s why you’re my right-hand woman, why I want you at my side when I go on a mission. We’re bad-ass, you and me, as bad-ass as they come, and we got that way through discipline and hard work and really caring about the game, right?”

“Yes, right, but-”

“You’ve met Liza the Organiza, right?”

“Yes, she came by my school.”

“Mine too. She asked me to look out for you because of what she saw in you that day.”

“Liza the Organiza goes to Ohio?”

“ Idaho. Yes-all across the US. They put her on the tube and everything. She’s amazing, and she cares about the game, too-that’s what makes us all Fahrenheits: we’re committed to each other, to teamwork, and to fair play.”

Anda had heard these words-lifted from the Fahrenheit mission statement-many times, but now they made her swell a little with pride.

“So these people in Mexico or wherever, what are they doing? They’re earning their living by exploiting the game. You and me, we would never trade cash for gold, or buy a character or a weapon on eBay-it’s cheating. You get gold and weapons through hard work and hard play. But those Mexicans spend all day, every day, crafting stuff to turn into gold to sell off on the exchange. That’s where it comes from-that’s where the crappy players get their gold from! That’s how rich noobs can buy their way into the game that we had to play hard to get into.

“So we burn them out. If we keep burning the factories down, they’ll shut them down and they’ll find something else to do for a living and the game will be better. If no one does that, our work will just get cheaper and cheaper: the game will get less and less fun, too.

“These people don’t care about the game. To them, it’s just a place to suck a buck out of. They’re not players, they’re leeches, here to suck all the fun out.”

They had come upon the cottage now, the fourth one, having exterminated four different sniper-nests on the way.

“Are you in, Anda? Are you here to play, or are you so worried about these leeches on the other side of the world that you want out?”

“I’m in, Sarge,” Anda said. She armed the BFGs and pointed them at the cottage.

“Boo-yah!” Lucy said. Her character notched an arrow.

› Hello, Kali

“Oh, Christ, he’s back,” Lucy said. Raymond’s avatar had snuck up behind them.

› Look at these

he said, and his character set something down on the ground and backed away. Anda edged up on them.

“Come on, it’s probably a booby-trap, we’ve got work to do,” Lucy said.

They were photo-objects. She picked them up and then examined them. The first showed ranked little girls, fifty or more, in clean and simple T-shirts, skinny as anything, sitting at generic white-box PCs, hands on the keyboards. They were hollow-eyed and grim, and none of them older than her.

The next showed a shantytown, shacks made of corrugated aluminium and trash, muddy trails between them, spraypainted graffiti, rude boys loitering, rubbish and carrier bags blowing.

The next showed the inside of a shanty, three little girls and a little boy sitting together on a battered sofa, their mother serving them something white and indistinct on plastic plates. Their smiles were heartbreaking and brave.

› That’s who you’re about to deprive of a day’s wages

“Oh, hell, no,” Lucy said. “Not again. I killed him last time and I said I’d do it again if he ever tried to show me photos. That’s it, he’s dead.” Her character turned towards him, putting away her bow and drawing a short sword. Raymond’s character backed away quickly.

“Lucy, don’t,” Anda said. She interposed her avatar between Lucy’s and Raymond. “Don’t do it. He deserves to have a say.” She thought of old American TV shows, the kinds you saw between the Bollywood movies on telly. “It’s a free country, right?”

“God damn it, Anda, what is wrong with you? Did you come here to play the game, or to screw around with this pervert dork?”

› what do you want from me raymond?

› Don’t kill them-let them have their wages. Go play somewhere else

› They’re leeches

Lucy typed,

› they’re wrecking the game economy and they’re providing a gold-for-cash supply that lets rich assholes buy their way in. They don’t care about the game and neither do you

› If they don’t play the game, they don’t eat. I think that means that they care about the game as much as you do. You’re being paid cash to kill them, yes? So you need to play for your money, too. I think that makes you and them the same, a little the same.

› go screw yourself

Lucy typed. Anda edged her character away from Lucy’s. Raymond’s character was so far away now that his texting came out in tiny type, almost too small to read. Lucy drew her bow again and nocked an arrow.

“Lucy, DON’T!” Anda cried. Her hands moved on their own volition and her character followed, clobbering Lucy barehanded so that her avatar reeled and dropped its bow.

“You BITCH!” Lucy said. She drew her sword.

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Anda said, stepping back out of range. “But I don’t want you to hurt him. I want to hear him out.”

Lucy’s avatar came on fast, and there was a click as the voicelink dropped. Anda typed onehanded while she drew her own sword.

› dont lucy come on talk2me

Lucy slashed at her twice and she needed both hands to defend herself or she would have been beheaded. Anda blew out through her nose and counterattacked, fingers pounding the keyboard. Lucy had more experience points than her, but she was a better player, and she knew it. She hacked away at Lucy, driving her back and back,