The Deadliest Game

“Now why would I do a thing like that?” Rodrigues said, looking at Leif strangely.

“I have no idea,” Leif said, “and I don’t believe it myself. But…” He shrugged.

“Well,” said Rodrigues, “as for that, the game servers keep track of me exactly the way they do of everyone else. You can never tell, I might go crazy and try to sabotage the code.” He made that ironic “fat-chance” expression that seemed to appear on his face about once every couple of minutes. “The server logs will confirm when I was in here…which frankly is most of my waking hours. If I’m not doing maintenance on bugs, which contrary to popular belief pop up constantly, then I’m in the game itself, walking up and down to see who’s naughty and who’s nice. There’s fortunately no way to forge that information.”

Megan looked at Leif, and Leif looked back. They both wondered just how true that statement was. Then they turned back to the task at hand. “You know,” Megan said, “we were talking about a more structured way to conduct our search.” She took a few moments to explain to him the roundabout train of logic they had been following. “But there’s a possibility here,” she said. “The logs.”

Leif looked at her. “The server logs,” Megan said. “They keep track of everybody who’s playing, everybody who’s in the game. But also — by process of elimination — they’ll show you when everyone who’s a player is not in the game. And the bounces — the physical attacks on equipment, and in Elblai’s case, on people — happened when the player committing the attacks was physically not in the game. If we could run a search through the computers…”

Rodrigues looked at her a little sadly. “Do you know,” he said, “how many hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of people might be out of the game at any given moment? You’re going to have to find some other criterion to sort by, and cut down the size of that sample.”

“We’ve got several other sets of criteria,” Leif said. “In fact, we’ve got one six-name list I’d really like to run against the server logs.”

“Which six names?”

“Orieta, Hunsal, Balk the Screw…”

Rodrigues shook his head. “Where do they get some of these names…”

“…Rutin, Walse, and Lateran.”

“Huh,” Rodrigues said. “All generals and war-leaders, huh? How did you get interested in these particular names?”

Leif told him.

“Well,” Rodrigues said, “those six we certainly should be able to check.”

“Do you have all the times of the actual attacks?” Megan said.

“Oh, yes, believe me.” Rodrigues laced his fingers together, leaned his chin on them. “Game intervention.”

“Listening.”

“This is the boss.”

“Verified.”

“Access the real-world timings of attacks on bounced players.”

“Accessed. Holding in store.”

“Access server records for game usage for the following players: Hunsal, Rutin, Orieta, Walse, Balk the Screw, and Lateran.”

“Accessed. Holding in store.”

“Compare.”

“Comparing. Criteria?”

“Identify which players were outside the game at the times of the attacks.”

Leif and Megan held very still.

“Walse, outside at attack one, attack three. Orieta, outside at attack five. Balk the Screw, outside at attack seven. All other players were in-game at all times of attack.”

Megan and Leif looked at each other.

Leif made a face. “That didn’t work — I was hoping for something a bit more clear-cut. All the others were playing.”

“So the computer says.”

“What are the chances it could be wrong?” said Leif. “Or that its programming or its logs could have been tampered with?”

Rodrigues laughed softly. “It’s a nice try,” he said, “but you have no idea how stringently controlled our system is, or how ruthlessly access to it is managed. The computer itself writes code. We have no human programmers handling that anymore. The machine’s plenty heuristic enough to handle it, and besides, there’s umpty billion lines of code to deal with. No number of humans, monkeys, or other primates chained to keyboards could possibly work fast enough to meet the system’s needs. I just tell the machinery what’s needed, and it does it. No one else has access to code, or to the server logs, except a couple of people at the parent company. And there’s no way they’d be involved with this…they handle the logs only for archival purposes. Everything’s encrypted anyway, the same as the private-play keys and so forth.”

“So there’s no way that those could be tampered with.”

“No. Believe me,” Rodrigues said, “we have a lot of interest from other parties who’ve used Sarxos, its code and its basic structure, as a testbed for other kinds of simulations, ones which aren’t public. We keep our operation tight as a drum because of those affiliations.”

“But those people who were out during the attacks,” Megan said. “There’s no telling where they were, then —”

“Well, there is, to a certain extent,” Rodrigues said, “because you can check the logs and see how soon they came back in again. Game intervention.”

“Listening.”

“Look at excerpted logs. Note if any of these players was absent from play for more than…one hour.”

“Walse. Absent for four hours thirteen minutes.”

“And returned to gameplay again.”

“Yes.”

“There’s only one problem,” said Rodrigues, getting a slightly unfocused look, which suggested to Megan that he was looking at some kind of display in the air that he could see and they couldn’t. “The first attack was in Austin, Texas, and Walse lives in Ulan Bator. Even a nearspace transport isn’t going to be able to get you from Outer Mongolia to Texas in four hours. For one thing, there’re no direct flights. Think how many times you’d have to change.” He shook his head. “No, that won’t work.”

He sat back, folding his arms. “It’s possible,” he said, “that the line of reasoning you’re following isn’t really a valid one.”

“It’s all we’ve got,” said Megan.

“Listen, I’m not trying to put you down,” said Rodrigues. “I haven’t got anything better. I’ve tried processing this data every way I could, and I’m stumped. I’m really hoping that your Net Force people can do something for me now, because I’m at my wits’ end. I’ll tell you, though — when we catch whoever this is—”

“When,” Megan said, and smiled a little. She liked the sound of certainty…but all the same it made her sad. She kept thinking of Elblai.

“Have you heard anything about Elblai — Ellen?” she said.

“She’s out of surgery,” Rodrigues said, “but she’s still not conscious. She’s on my mind.” He sighed. “Listen, though. I have to thank you two for wanting to help, for trying to make a difference. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Megan shook her head. “Not at the moment.”

Leif said suddenly, “We could use some extra transit allowance. I’ve blown a lot of mine on this.”

Rodrigues chuckled. “You’re going to keep working on this problem?”

They nodded.

“Uh, consider your accounts open-ended until this is sorted out. Game intervention—”

“Listening.”

“This is the boss. See to it that characters Brown Meg and Leif Hedge-wizard have open accounts from this time stamp until further notice from me.”