The Deadliest Game

I should go out and do the cold-washcloth trick again, she thought, blinking.

And then she stopped, and looked at the graphs again: not the way she normally would have, but with her eyes squinted shut a little bit, as they had been before.

Lateran’s graph looked a lot like Wayland’s.

In the general patterning, the way the dashes and blank spaces fell…there were a lot more dashes, times “in,” than there were empty spaces. Lateran’s graph made Megan wonder a little more as she looked at each twenty-four-hour period and realized how much of it was taken up by gameplay. Most of it. A whole lot of it. And if you compared the end of one day with the beginning of the next — as often as not, they ran right into one another. Well, midnight. Peak game time, after all.

But that wasn’t it. Twelve-hour stretches. Fourteen, sixteen sometimes. The pattern repeated, cycling backward very slowly through the four-month period. Six hours in, twenty minutes out. Eight hours in, one hour out. Two hours in, an hour out. Five hours in—

The pattern definitely repeated. And Lateran’s timings were beyond “obsessed.” They were positively pathological. When does he sleep? Megan wondered. More to the point, when does he work? Even if you worked at home, you’d have a hard time keeping up a schedule like this. Without getting fired, anyway…

“Computer.”

“Listening.”

“User profile on player Lateran.”

“Your concessionary token does not allow that access. Please consult with Chris Rodrigues for further information.”

“What time is it for Chris Rodrigues?” Megan said.

“0242.”

He’s on the West Coast somewhere. I’m not going to wake him up at quarter of three in the morning. Unless… “Is Chris in the game at the moment?”

“No.”

I’ll have to wait. She looked again at Lateran’s server log. If this person has a job, it has to be done at home. But even if it is, it can’t be more than part-time…not with this kind of usage. And it’s not a child. Sarxos’s age limit, because of the violence, was sixteen and up. So Lateran has to either be in school or some kind of work…. She shook her head. The usage didn’t make sense.

And Megan looked down at Wayland’s usage. It really was very much like Lateran’s. Six hours on, two hours off…eight hours on, two hours off…seven hours on…And the pattern repeated, and cycled slowly backward through the four-month period. They’re a little out of synch. Not exactly alike, but… She shook her head.

But the strange way that Wayland had sounded this morning was still on Megan’s mind. A very peculiar suspicion began to grow in her. It was impossible, of course, because Wayland’s server log and Lateran’s server log showed them as often being on line at the same time…and you couldn’t play two characters at once.

Could you?

“Computer,” Megan said.

“Listening.”

“Maximum number of characters played by any one Sarxos user.”

“Thirty-two.”

“What’s the user’s name?”

“That information is not available to you with your present concessionary token. Please consult Chris Rodrigues for further information.”

“Yeah, yeah. Access the records of player Lateran.”

“Records accessed: holding in store.”

“How many other characters does the person playing Lateran play?”

“Five.”

“Is one of them ‘Wayland’?”

Silence for a moment, then: “Yes.”

Megan flushed hot and then cold with the confirmation. “Listen,” she said, as a whole group of horrible possibilities started opening up in front of her. Now her job was to start limiting them. “With this token, can I access Chris Rodrigues’s file of attempted and successful bounces on Sarxos players?”

“That access is allowed.”

“Access the file, please, and hold it in store.”

“Done.”

“Display the bounce periods on a similar bar graph. Star each one.”

The computer did so. Each bright star of a bounce “timing” was superimposed on a dark translucent bar corresponding to the graphs above.

“Pull down the graphs for Lateran and Wayland. Superimpose them on the ‘bounce’ chart.”

Obediently, the computer did so. All the bounces, including the latest one with Elblai, fell inside time periods when both Wayland and Lateran were reported to be in the game.

But it’s impossible, Megan thought, horror and triumph beginning to rise in her together. It’s impossible. Both those logs for Wayland and Lateran can’t be true. They can’t both be there at once. But if one of them was—

“Computer!”

“Listening.”

“Is it possible for a player to play two characters at once during the same game period?”

“Only sequentially. Simultaneous play of multiple characters has been ruled out by the designer and is illegal in the system.”

They’re the same player. They’re both there at the same time. They can’t be. And the computer hasn’t noticed, because it’s not trained to notice.

Someone’s found a way to fake being in the system.

“It’s too important,” she whispered. “Computer, I need to talk to Chris Rodrigues right now. This is an emergency.”

There was a moment’s silence, and the computer said, “Chris is not answering his page. Please try again later.”

“This is an emergency,” Megan said. “Don’t you understand me?”

“The system understands ‘emergency,’” the computer said, “but has no authority from a concessionary token of the type presently in your possession to contact him at this time. Please try again later.”

It’s him, she thought. The bouncer. It’s him.

Oh, shit…!

“Do you wish to leave a message for Chris Rodrigues?”

Megan opened her mouth, then shut it again as another thought occurred. “No,” she said.

“What other services do you require?”

Megan sat there looking at all those bar graphs. “Show me the other server logs,” she said, “the same period, for all the other characters played by the player who plays Wayland and Lateran.”

“Working.” Three more graphs appeared. The first and the third very closely matched the patterns of Wayland’s and Lateran’s. There were some minor differences in the timing, and the patterns were slightly more elaborate, but again, these characters spent too much time in the system to be realistic, and again, they cycled slowly backwards over the four-month period. Automatic, Megan thought. No question of it.

The middle usage-graph looked more real. Three hours in, twenty hours out. Four hours in, thirty-five hours out…a more scanty usage pattern. Not a dillie, but not obsessed either.

Megan let her eyes go unfocused again, a good way to make sure you were seeing the pattern you thought you were. The similarities were too strong among all the questionable graphs to possibly be a coincidence.