Headshot: Two in the Head (Book 2 of a Zombie litRPG Trilogy) Read online

  “It’s grinding the damn thing to a halt, but yes.”

  “So here’s the deal, dad. You need to pretend that your players are locked in these helmets. They can’t see everything all at once. Our brains don’t work that way. And before you tell me that you know that, I remember that story he told me about how finding me in the room with my eyes close helped. But I think you didn’t learn as much from you as you thought. You’re still rendering too much.”

  “What do you propose?”

  She tapped her finger against her temple where it left a black smudge. “Get in there, somehow. Not too much. Just enough so that you can see where their brain is telling their eyes to go. You guys are making the program work too hard for details that may or may not be picked up. If the AI works out that the players are going to look left, only then should the stuff on the left get generated. And so on. It’s like this Diver. Ninety-five percent of the world could cease to exist, and he would never know it so much as the five percent that he could observe through these tiny portholes was bright and vibrant.”

  Exhibit C

  I could tell by the timestamps that this next scene was later the same day, but I didn’t need them to recognize that drawing and the fact that Blake was still wearing the same shirt. It was dark now. The house was quiet, and I watched through the years since the lens of an internal security camera as he pinned the artwork to his wall before grabbing a sharpie and carefully drawing thick umbilical hoses that extended from the helmet of the Diver up to the fictional surface at the top of the paper.

  But the hoses were made of words, and the words were Informational Pathway, Sound Design, Olfactory Hallucination, Cooperative Imagination and Uploadable Conscience.

  At the top of the page, he wrote Deep Dive with a trembling hand before sitting down and staring at the picture on the wall until the footage cut out a few seconds later.

  Chapter 9

  Watching all that made me feel like a peeping tom. The worst thing was that I couldn’t look away since the images were splashed across my brain and not thrown up in front of my eyes.

  It was clear that Blake Redhook had an ax to grind with the developers of Headshot. Unfortunately for them, he wasn’t going to go down quietly. Sasha had already worked out how to hack the current build of the game, and that meant that things were going to get weird quick, especially if the players were bombarded with incriminating footage like the highlight reel we’d just been shown.

  But Sasha wasn’t acting like she had a part in this. I looked over at her, expecting to see a victorious grin on her face. Instead of the joy of sticking it to the man though, she looked scared. Angry too, but I wasn’t sensing that whatever had just happened was part of her plan.

  If she even had a plan, that is…

  Obviously, the people that were currently running Deep Dive Studios had ruined her dad’s life. I didn’t know what sort of legal storm swirled in the background, but I doubted it was anything other than messy.

  Even so, the game world that surrounded us was so immersive I found myself just about willing to forgive whatever slights had occurred in the past. It wasn’t easy to do what those guys had done. If you wanted to break new ground like this, to create an environment so detailed that it tricks your brain into accepting it without hesitation, then there was going to be some hardship along the way.

  Massive leaps forward in technology didn’t come without a cost.

  Not for the first time I marveled at the sheer computing power they’d need to keep this place going. Sasha and her dad had been clever when they’d worked out a way to cut corners, only rendering what the player could experience and using the AI to keep one step ahead, but even so…

  I watched as Sasha shook her head to clear it and then took a couple of steps forward. When she did, a few stray shards of glass caught in the treads of her boot ground against the library’s polished floor. It was the sort of detail that could have been ignored, but the fact that it wasn’t told me that someone out there, for all of their faults, loved this game enough to make it perfect.

  Blake had poured his soul into this place, and once he’d gotten the Artificial Intelligence to implement the complex algorithms and custom coding, he’d been able to build a place that rivaled anything humans had managed to slap together in the past couple of hundred years, at least.

  I hoped that, despite his bitterness, he’d been able to enjoy at least a small part of his victory before he’d passed away.

  “Cut it out,” she muttered to herself, and I watched as her form stiffened. Her avatar’s face went slack, the eyes blank. It was a dangerous place for her to hop out of her body and try to accomplish another task, but at least she hadn’t logged out. I didn’t want to be stranded in that endless void again without her, and I felt like I was only just beginning to understand what made her tick.

  If she ditched me now, especially after that crazy security footage had invaded her mind, who knew when she’d come back.

  A couple of seconds later I felt her presence again, and this time she was smiling. “That ought to keep your little Pandora’s Box from opening up for a while. I’ve got to hand it to you, Dad. You knew how to code. I’m just going to need your little piranha programs to give me a little more time, okay. Sorry if I had to neuter them, but you’re going to get me killed. If that happens when the Guild’s near enough to get caught up in the broadcast, they’ll have a lot more questions than I have answers…”

  Hmm. That must mean the evidence had only blasted through her, and therefore me. It sounded like it was meant to blow the lid off of Deep Dive’s fuckery, but if that was the case, then Sasha was right. Unless there was a way to show everyone the footage at the same time, the developers would simply trace the source of the broadcast and stamp it out.

  Patience had never seemed like Sasha’s forte, but at least now her drive made a little more sense. Her Dad’s programs were constantly trying to force their way into the system. If she didn’t hurry, they’d blow her cover.

  Sasha scanned the area around us, looking for anything useful. When she didn’t find anything, she darted left and hurried to the main set of stairs that led to the second floor, intent on getting up to where it seemed like the good stuff was kept. I still didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but loot was loot. I figured whatever she grabbed she could at least use to trade for something else, and the fact that she seemed to be the first one her meant that there might be something special here.

  She was caught between playing the game and taking it down, and I didn’t envy her. I couldn’t pretend to know enough about the past to hate Deep Dive the way she did, but it was getting harder and harder to see both sides of the issue. From where I was standing, her father’s life work had been stolen, and he’d been both discredited and drummed out of the company he’d created.

  Nobody deserved that.

  But there was more to it than that. Sasha was alone in here. Sure, she had the Eternals, but it was becoming more and more clear that they didn’t know the truth about what was going on. She was a woman on a mission, and she wouldn’t stop until she dragged down the game that I was currently stuck in.

  Chapter 10

  There were fewer windows up here, and the ones that did exist weren’t well-placed to catch the moonlight. At least it meant that the sniper if he were still eying the library, wouldn’t get a good shot off at us. Sasha didn’t hesitate, and her confidence in the layout and the way she made a beeline for the reference librarian’s desk reminded me that she’d played through a lot more of these Survivor Sunday things than most people on her faction. Hell, she’d probably play-tested Headshot from its earliest incarnations, and that was the sort of practice that you couldn’t buy.

  Even though it was darker up here, she still managed to find a slice of spilled starlight by the desk. One by one and she unceremoniously yanked out the desk drawers and dumped their contents on to the floor where the illumination lay. Little trinkets and goodies scattered in
every direction, a treasure trove of items that were either useless or essential, depending on your skills and your ingenuity.

  This wasn’t the first time that I realized why the Survivors were willing to pay such big money for their subscriptions to the game in the first place. I wasn’t even really playing right now, at least not really, and I could still feel the adrenaline coursing through me unchecked. There was a real high that came with digging through someone else’s stuff, an act that society had made criminal long ago now regulated into a necessity in this virtual world of life and death.

  But the more I thought about it, the harder it was to decide what was right and what was wrong. After all, the reference librarian didn’t exist. I had to keep reminding myself of that as I watched Sasha paw through the fake person’s belongings, discarding some and pocketing others. How many people played this game solely for the chance to live life on the wild side like this? How many petty criminals and larcenous nut jobs were prowling Headshot right now, plying their trade?

  The answer was probably too many. But if this was enough for them then I suppose that it might be some form of therapy. For all I knew games like this were realistic enough for people to act out their urges enough so that they didn’t need to inflict them on others in the real world.

  And it wasn’t as if everyone was in it for the loot. By the look on Sasha’s face, she wasn’t taking any joy in going through someone else’s possessions. These items were just a means to an end. She had far more important goals, revenge foremost amongst them.

  She worked diligently. Playing Headshot was her job right now, and she took the task of assessing what she needed to progress seriously.

  I’d hung around her long enough by now that I could almost read her thoughts simply by looking at her face. Just like with the car, she knew that these drawers had been empty a split second before she’d opened them. It was a stupid way to think of it, but she couldn't help it. Obviously, the drawers didn't exist. Obviously, none of this existed except for the infinitesimally unstable quantum states that were running through the servers and being entangled with the rigs that we all wore on our heads. Just like her dad's drawing had shown, playing Headshot was first and foremost a cooperative experience. None of the things we did would be possible if any of this was tangible.

  But just because none of this existed didn’t mean that it was random. I was sure that there were countless tables and charts that specified the exact probability of any individual item being in these drawers, as well as anywhere else a character could scavenge from.

  A game this smart didn't just let a 9 mm pistol drop out of a reference librarian’s top drawer. Sometimes Sasha may wish that it would, but that simply wasn’t the way it worked. The harder something was to get to, the better chance that you’re going to find something worth holding on to when you got there. That, combined with a little common sense about the sort of object that would be stored in the location was all the game would require generating as much loot as you could find.

  And that made me worry about how the guy across the way had gotten access to that sniper rifle so fast. Sasha would know more about this that I would, of course, but judging by how surprised she had been that someone could take shots at her from that range already I knew I was on the right track with my worry and suspicion. Nobody in the game should have been playing for so short a time today and still get their hands on a thing that could deal death from a mile away or more.

  It wasn’t fair, and game balance was by far the most important thing to get right if Headshot was going to survive.

  I wished that I could ask her where she thought that guy had gotten the gun from. Well, I mean, I could ask her. I was just damn sure I wouldn’t get an answer…

  Something was different. She wasn’t a fool, and I’d already watched her be careful enough to trust her judgment. Sasha didn’t take stupid chances. Every risk that she was willing to subject herself to was only done after careful calculation. I knew just by the way that she’d been moving in the open before the shot had been taken that there was no chance of a weapon like that being in play already.

  Except, it was. And that meant that the rules had changed. If she couldn’t rely on her experience to get her through, she was going to have to trust her instincts. The knowledge that there were forces out there acting in ways they shouldn’t be was just one more thing for her to worry about.

  I tried to catch a glimpse of the bounty that Sasha had spilled onto the floor. None of it looked very useful up close. A stick of used Chapstick. A small box of paperclips. Nail clippers and a mirror, and then what looked to be a spare set of keys.

  Sasha didn’t have very much to carry around, and she had a lot of pockets, which meant that she didn’t have to be too picky right now. She found a place to stash the rest of the junk she found a in her coveralls, but those spare keys deserved a closer inspection. Her hopes were dashed when she saw they were nothing more than a mismatched, hodgepodge tangle. There was nothing professional about them, which meant that they wouldn't open anything in the library itself. Their backstory, if they even really needed one, was probably something as simple as the fact that the reference librarian kept a spare set in the desk drawer in case she locked herself out of her car.

  And, since there weren't any cars in the parking lot just now, obviously this fictional apocalypse had taken place outside of the library’s business hours.

  Maybe I’d been hoping for some big ticket item in the drawer, but Sasha refused to be so easily disappointed. It was too dark to go through the keys and inspect each one for further clues as to what It would open, but she and I saw it right away that there was a little LED flashlight attached to the key ring.

  It made it the perfect tool for a game set just after midnight in the middle of the power outage on a dark and not yet stormy night.

  Well, almost perfect. Sasha would still do well to remember that light sources are dangerous things in the dark. They're beacons, and light travels a surprising distance when there’s nothing else to overpower it. I smiled to myself in appreciation as she pressed the flashlight into the palm of her hand and used her flesh to smother all but a fraction of light. The illumination that spilled out between her clenched fingers sliced through the darkness enough to reveal enough of the bookshelves ahead of her for her to make her way towards them without tripping and breaking her neck.

  It’s funny what skills you can bring to a game like this. The Dewey decimal system is a strange and cumbersome beast. Probably the only good thing about it is that once you know it, the damn thing sticks in your brain for life. I’d had the misfortune of spending a couple of semesters stacking shelves in my local library to earn some spending money when I was a teenager, in judging by the speed with which Sasha navigated the row upon row of books it looked like she had a similar experience in her past.

  The reference librarian’s desk was nestled in a quiet nook over near the 800s, which was the dry and dreary oasis that was world literature. Next came the 900s, history and geography. I suppose that if you dug hard enough through some of those, you might come up with something useful, a map of the surrounding area or some little tidbit or factoid about a hidden Easter egg, but Sasha skipped them, and I was glad that she did.

  Time was of the essence. Even though whoever had taken that shot at us would still be a long way off right now, there was no point in dragging our feet. We needed to get in, get the good stuff, and get the hell out of here.

  I just about jumped for joy when Sasha made her way to the 600s. That was the Bastian of technology. If there was one subject in this place that was going to give her enough firepower to make it into the next week unscathed, it was the stuff on these shelves that was going to do it. Once she was in amongst the mountains of books, she loosened her hand and let the beam of light widen between her fingers as she played it along their spines.

  From even a cursory glance I could tell that there was a lot here worth grabbing, especially if all she had to do w
as skim the pages and unlocked the abilities held within. Sasha wasted no time, practically ripping off her backpack and unzipping it before stuffing it full of book after book. She moved so quickly that I could only catch a few of the covers, but I liked what I was seeing.

  Remote Systems

  A sense of self in the new information age

  Applied Sciences

  How to draw technical schematics

  And then, on the top shelf, a goldmine. Whoever had put it up there must have had some sort of death wish, because a book that thick should really have been called a tome. This one, in particular, was so imposing that Sasha needed both hands even to lift it. There was a chance that she’d be able to fit it in the backpack along with the other books she’d just stashed, but it would take some doing. Even then, the backpack would become a huge liability, an anchor strapped to her body that would both slow her down and make all of her movements into an unbalanced, ungainly ballet of awkwardness.

  Still, as she flicked through it and I crowded close to look at the blueprints and the technical specifications, I knew that there was no way we’d be leaving it behind. When she closed it again, the gold embossing of the cover gleamed up at us.

  A Technical History of Useful Ideas and Remarkable Patents

  My eyes just about fell out of my head. Whatever she had to leave behind to bring this with her would be worth it. Sasha had chosen to be an engineer and that meant that she was only as good as the things that she could either repair or create.

  This one manual alone could be make or break, and I could see by the look on her face that she knew it too. I had no idea how rare these things were, but the sheer speed with which she crammed into the backpack and then leaped to her feet and told me just about all I needed to know.