‘Yes, we heard — ’
‘Right here, in my arms, Matt, and I couldn’t save her. And now I don’t know if she was killed, or who killed her. Don’t you think that’s more important than your petty worries about some upset in your perfect little family? Wake up, man. I’m your brother, not your keeper.’
Ben could feel the flush that had been rising from his neck into his face, the surge of unaccustomed rage seething through his veins. It felt wrong, but he couldn’t help himself. He saw his brother’s face change from shock to a grim hostility. He saw Kate turn and stare at him in horror.
‘I’d better go,’ he said. ‘Before I say any more.’
‘Yes, Ben,’ said Matt. ‘I think you better had.’
At home that evening, Cooper kept thinking, not about his own family, but about the Nields. There was definitely something not right about the father. He was hiding something, but it was impossible for him to say what, without more information.
The idea of Robert Nield being responsible for the death of Emily was starting to recede from Cooper’s suspicions. It didn’t seem likely. Besides, Dawn had been right there with the family on the bank of the river. There were some instincts that even centuries of civilization had failed to suppress. One of those was the ‘tiger mother’ instinct — a killing rage against anything that threatened her children. She would never have stood by and let her daughter die, if there had been anything she could do to stop it. So what had Dawn been doing while it all happened?
Cooper was finding that he couldn’t trust his own memory. And if he couldn’t trust his memory, he couldn’t trust himself. He no longer felt able to rely on his own instincts.
This frustrating ambiguity of his recollections was like the first stages of some degenerative brain disease. The events in Dovedale had happened only two days ago, yet they were beyond his grasp. On the other hand, when Diane Fry had asked him about his childhood, he’d summoned up perfectly clear images from thirty years ago or more. Was he becoming like those old people who could recite every word of some wartime song, but failed to recognize their own children from the day before? Or was this some short-term effect? He felt perfectly okay. But who knew when your mind might decide to play tricks on you?
As for Alex…well, Cooper suspected Alex was much the same sort of boy that he’d been himself at that age. His with-drawal took a different form, that was all. These multi-player online games hadn’t existed when he was growing up, in the days before broadband access and game servers. It seemed decades ago now. Well, he’d played Doom and Myst, but those were essentially solitary games. This ability to meet, befriend and bully other online users was a fairly recent development — but it had drawn in millions of players all around the world.
Cooper switched on his laptop and idly googled for references to multi-player online role-playing games. He was sure there would have been some analysis of the effects the games had on participants, or the types of person they attracted.
And indeed there was. In one sociological study, it was found that just over one in five gamers said they preferred socializing online to offline. Significantly more male gamers than female said they found it easier to converse online than offline. It was also found that fifty-seven per cent of gamers had created a character of the opposite gender — an online female persona providing some positive social attributes that individuals lacked in real life.
He came across something called the Bartle Test, which had classified multi-player RPG players into four psychological groups. There were the Achievers, who preferred to accumulate points, levels, and equipment as measures of success in a game. On the other hand, the Explorers liked to dig around, discover new areas, and create maps to put their world into some kind of order. Many were Socializers, who chose to play for the social aspect, rather than the actual game itself, gaining enjoyment from interacting with other players, and making online friends. And then there were the Killers, who thrived on competition, preferring fighting, carnage, action, and destruction. They were the individuals who liked to depart from the norm of being ‘the good guy’ and play on the side of evil.
Cooper found a link directing him to the major online games, including War Tribe. It was the easiest thing in the world to click through and find himself on a page urging him to sign up and start playing straight away. Well, why not? Perhaps it would be a way of discovering that other side of Alex Nield, the one his parents never saw.
He soon figured out the basics of the game. It seemed to be all about building up your cities, making your defensive wall strong and training as many soldiers as possible. Then you could go out raiding, plundering the resources of neigh-bouring cities or conquering them with your chieftain. With many thousands of players signed up, the permutations of the conflict were endless. You could experience betrayal and conspiracy. You could make friends, enemies, have spies and allies, take part in wars, destroy and pillage to your heart’s content.
Cooper could imagine the sort of messages that must go back and forth via the instant messaging function. Vicious arguments, threats of destruction, the curses of the destroyed. He supposed there would have to be some in-game rules to control the abusive language and threats of real physical violence. He felt sure it would be that serious. If a fraction of the players put as much time and commitment into the game as Alex Nield did, they would have a huge emotional investment in their cities.
When his city was created, Cooper switched to the map view. He saw all the Turks on the edge of Continent 34. Aggressive and well organized, those Turks. And there was never any point in trying to talk to them. Oh, well. He didn’t expect to last very long in the game. A few battle-axes would finish him off.
Then he found Alex’s cities on the map and clicked on his profile. The artwork on his profile page was dominated by a huge sword created from multiple ASCII characters — slashes, back slashes, hash marks, and some symbols that Cooper didn’t even know the name for. It must have taken hours to get that right. And an awful lot of patience, too.
There was a screed of text below the sword. Cooper picked out a few expressions and acronyms. i just took ur city wtf u goin to do?
That was pretty clear, if you knew what WTF meant, which Cooper reckoned he did. But there were other lines he was baffled by, like: im s0 1337 taht i pwn ur @ss n00b!!!
The last word looked a version of ‘noob’, the derogatory term for a ‘newbie’ — or a new, inexperienced player who didn’t know how to play the game properly. Someone like him, in fact. An idiot who asked stupid questions, made mistakes all the time, and was easy prey for the more experienced player.
There were plenty of threats, too. That was to be expected, he supposed — your profile was all about bravado and pretending that you were a tougher guy than your neighbours. if u dare to touch my cities u wr born wrong, and u must die!!!!!!
Lots of exclamation marks featured pretty much everywhere. A minimum of six at the end of every line. That made the threats more scary, perhaps.
Alex’s log-in name was SmokeLord, but his cities had strange names. They ought to have been called Smoke Screen, or Smoke and Mirrors. Oh, and Smoke on the Water, of course. Those would have been Cooper’s choices, if he was going for a cool theme.
But Alex Nield hadn’t done that. Cooper scrolled through the list. His city names included Engine House, Dutchman, The Folly. His capital seemed to be Engine House, the biggest of his cities by the number of its points, so its walls were probably high level and almost impregnable, the numbers of defensive troops stacked up. That made sense, he supposed. It would be the engine room of his expanding empire.
There was a lot of repetition of symbols in the profile. Cooper couldn’t make head or tail of some of them. In fact, he wasn’t sure whether they had any meaning or were just for decoration. One sequence of characters was repeated several times. It said:?0$7
Some kind of money obsession? Though how much?0$7 was, he had no clue.
Beneath a representation in ASCII characters of a sort of cartoon baby face, the sequence occurred again.? 0$7?0$7?0$7?0$7 R1v32
And finally at the bottom, Alex’s profile ended: brb kk??
He was in need of a translator. Like other police forces, Derbyshire Constabulary spent many thousands of pounds every year on translation services, to help deal with suspects who had a poor command of English. But he didn’t think this particular language would be offered by the translation service. It could only be described as geek.
Cooper had always thought of himself as pretty technically literate. He knew about iPods and iTunes, and
