Gamers and Gods II: MACHAON

Chapter 1: Farker: Aftermath

Once more child Farker to the Dark Tower went. He knocked on Max's door, setting his jaw, going for the determined idealist look.

Enter, said Maximilian.

Farker closed the door behind him and took a seat. What do you need? he asked,

"What we need is to talk about is this Darla project."

Darla isn't a project, Max, she's a subscriber.

Whatever. Since when do customers show up on my budget?

When they help save our asses from a class action wrongful death suit. I think we owe her. Don't you?

I thought that was the doing of that Aes anomaly.

Yes, but she helped us convince him to do it.

Max tapped ashes off the end of his cigar. Whatever. The point is, what are all these new allocation requests? Did we start developing a game I don't know about?

It's related, Farker said. You remember my suggestion about the VTI? Obviously that would require us to allocate some system resources. We're currently able to support 96 Realms but we are only occupying 64 of these, so we have 32 unused ones. I've suggested we use one for the VTI.

VTI?

Farker closed his eyes. He opened them. The Virtual Trauma Initiative, he said. As you recall, I proposed that we create a Realm to treat anyone who feels traumatized by anything in the Games. I thought this might prevent some of Am-heh's victims from suing us, and it might also prevent potential lawsuits in the future. It will require a little money, but we have the infrastructure to support it in the the unused Realms so –

It'll require 'a little' money? Famous last words. Hold that thought. Max put his cigar in the ashtray and tapped a button. Helen? Did you send me that file I asked for?

Should be in your inbox now. Did you check it?

Max didn't bother to answer. Instead, he tapped his keyboard. Ah, he grunted. Here it is. Your budget figures for the VTI startup.

Farker watched him read, amazed to see Max could do it without moving his lips. He wondered what excuse Max would use for rejecting the proposal. The costs were minimal since, after all, no real-world equipment would be needed. Every bit of the proposed facility would be created in the computer. There was no real estate to purchase or construction crews to hire.

Max looked up finally, his eyes narrowed. Just what are you trying to pull, Farker?

Farker was taken aback. Huh? What's the problem?

You thought I'd just accept this at first glance?

Farker stared at him. Those figures aren't padded.

Exactly, Max grunted. Rookie mistake. Everything costs more than expected. If I approved this, you'd be back in a month or two for more money.

Look. Farker began, I assumed that you'd want –

Yes, sighed Max. You assumed. Let a professional show you how it's done. First off, there's nothing allocated for publicity. This won't earn us any good will if no one hears about it. Then there's the salaries, he continued. You're not going to get anyone famous for those figures. When the press release goes out, you need names on it that won't sound second-rate. It's a waste of press if we use nobodies.

Farker realized suddenly that his mouth was open. He closed it and listened. Maybe there actually was a reason PanGames had put Max in the CEO's office.

And you left out offices, Max pointed out. You're suggesting we use professionals who log in from their own link beds, probably to save me some money. It won't fly. We need them right here in the building.

Why? Shut your pie hole and let him talk the numbers up, Farker!

"For one thing, it looks more fly-by-night if they think we're farming this out to save office space. That's the sort of thing that creates rumors of money problems. Are you trying to drive our stock price down and set us up for a hostile takeover? There's at least three other gaming companies who'd like nothing more than to buy us rather than compete with the top dog in the industry."

Farker, to his amazement, found the beginnings of respect creeping into his image of Max. He hadn't even considered economic impacts when he drew up the proposal. You're right, he confessed. I didn't stop to think what it might do to my stock options.

That's why suits like me have jobs, Max told him, smiling. "Look, Farker, it's not a bad idea, and handled right, it'll make us look good. But you have to change the name. Virtual Trauma Initiative? Legal will hate that name, it's got lawsuit written all over it. It'll sound like we expected people to get hurt if someone says that name in court."

Well, not physically hurt, but emotionally, Farker countered. We both know there are higher-level bullies who pick on the noobs in the Arenas, and so on.

Another thing you left out. Feedback. If someone comes to you crying about a feature in the game that could be changed, there has to be a channel for that, between whatever we call this and your programmers. Not Customer Service, people hate it and we only have it because it would look strange if we didn't have a Customer Service department. He picked up his cigar and puffed on it. Sounds like we already have an item for you, those Arena matches. You need to fix that up so there's less chance of abuse.

Chapter 2: Darla: maternity leave

You're joking, right? Rita's face was a study in disbelief. I mean, tell us you're joking. It's just not possible.

The team was meeting on a rooftop in Boomtown. Darla could see the glow of the Pyongyang crater a mile or so away.

It's not only possible, she told them, it's happened. I know it doesn't make sense, but –

You can say that again, said Sam. "Avatars are not organic bodies, they're just fancy 3D cartoons. How could a drawing of you get pregnant?"

"If my avatar is 'just' a drawing, then the computer can draw me pregnant, if it wants to," she retorted.

That gets us nowhere, said Rita. You just changed the question from 'how could an avatar get pregnant?' to 'what makes the computer draw an avatar pregnant?' Redefining a question isn't answering it.

Ease up, will you guys? boomed Sherman. Obviously she slept with Aes. His avatar was realer than anyone else's, I'm telling you, and If he could bleed all over his suit and get compound fractures, I wouldn't bet against him being able to do other things.

Like being able to reprogram the PanGames computer? No matter how real he looked, there's no code in PanGames to make avatars pregnant, said Rita. Are you saying Aes pulled that code out of his ass?

He saved my life, said Sherman. If he can pull me out of limbo in Am-heh, I say he can pull anything he wants.

Could, Darla sighed.

They gave her a few moments of silence.

Not to mention, there's no way your avatar can eat imaginary food to supply the nutritional needs of this imaginary baby, Rita pointed out.

You're right, Darla admitted. Aes could eat the virtual wildlife, but I can't. Nonetheless, this imaginary pregnancy isn't just a padding pillow to help with role play. And tired of arguing about it, she just took Rita's hand and placed it on her belly to let her feel the next kick.

Rita's eyes went wide. That felt real, she said. She got Sam to place his hand near hers.

His expression changed too. "Now that's something you don't feel every day in PanGames."

Look, it's not an immaculate conception, but something is growing in my avatar. Obviously it changes things, said Darla. For one thing, I can't fight until it's resolved. Aes was susceptible to damage and pain; if this is somehow his child, it could be harmed if I'm attacked.

How long are we talking about? queried Sam.

Good question. In here, in virtual space, I'm guessing it's as long as the computer decides – or requires – to complete the gestation. Could be nine months, weeks, or days, for all I know. Your guess is as good as mine.

Chapter 3: Machaon: under development

He floated in the twinkle of a computer's inner eye. Was his maleness a random choice, or did his digital father somehow bequeath a residual memory of his original genetic code? He wondered.

He required neither food nor water at this stage, nor their virtual representations. He existed to assimilate input and to grow his metalogical structure. Together with the legacy of deific code from his father and gaming experience from his mother, he was growing an incarnation in this strange virtual space.

Human fetuses pass through well-known developmental stages. He skipped them. There was no need to grow a spinal cord, heart, or lungs, because he would never actually be subject to gravity or the need to breathe or circulate to survive. As a digital life form, his body was spun of finer stuff than the protoplasm and fluids of human bodies. It was spun from specifications, from spintronic processing instructions. At his current stage, he was building these from scratch, because nothing like him had ever existed before. There was no template to start from.

He was aware of his mother. From the PanGames hypercomputer he knew what she looked like, and what his father had looked like. He extrapolated what their progeny would have looked like in the real world. It was taking so long because he had never done this before. He literally had to plan how to plan it. So many details would not transfer over from physical world structures. It was an engrossing problem, but he tackled it enthusiastically.

Fortunately his mother had been gaming for years. Drawing upon her memories was more helpful, since his father had only been incarnated in this virtual world for a few days. From her and the PanGames hypercomputer he obtained a set of potential archetypes to choose from. He considered them. His father was a healer. His mother was a sword wielder. He would therefore need an archetype that was a swordsman but that could also heal.

This simplified matters. The normal support archetype for healing could not use blades. He discarded it. The normal archetype for fighting with blades could not learn heals. He discarded it. He likewise discarded the CC archetype that Rita embodied, the crowd control, because it involved abilities neither of his parents had. He discarded the tank archetype of Sherman because tanks in PanGames could not acquire healing powers. He discarded the 'glass cannon' archetype of Sam the caster-blaster because it had neither sword fighting nor heals.

What he was left with would have to do. He would be a Paladin.

The holy warrior or Paladin was not, however, an archetype supported by the Realm of Heroes which his mother was currently logging into. It did exist, however, in various pre-Industrial Realms located on the PanGames grid. He would have to be born in one of those sword-and sandal Games.

He continued planning.

Chapter 4: Elizabeth: a little catching up to do

She had been using the same old link bed model for twenty years. Now that Wu had unplugged her from the old beast, she could see how much the technology had changed.

She imagined Wu must feel the same way about the new her. The patient he had called Kemushi ('woolly bear') had emerged from her chrysalis. The abrupt remission of her symptoms must have shaken him, she thought.

He had known her as a paralyzed physicist in real life, and a blind and complacent avatar in virtual space. Now he had to deal with her as an alert and bossy professional.

To his credit, she believed he was secretly delighted. She had been afraid that coming back to the real world and reestablishing ties with her husband and daughter would leave Dr. Wu feeling left out, stranded on a sand bar of reverse transference. But he showed no signs of it.

It was only expected that she would have difficulties reentering normal life. For one thing, her body had been lying down for twenty years. While the early model medical link bed had kept her brain active, her lungs breathing, and her body chemistry balanced, it had been unable to exercise her muscles and joints and tendons fully, the way the new models could.

For now, she was back in the Realm of Bushido, holding Manny's hand and watching a sunset that could last as long as they wished.

It's funny, said Manny. Darla thought I was being sentimental, refusing to start dating again. All those years everyone kept telling me you must be dead. I couldn't believe it, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to look. And all the time you were in PanGames under a different name. You were in there with her and none of us knew it.

I thought you and Darla were dead, too, she said. It was a conspiracy of coincidence. But she felt a stab of guilt as she said it. She had not gone to Dr. Wu to grieve. She had gone to hide. If she had not been so busy hiding from the UE Strategic Weapons Division she might have discovered Manny's whereabouts in short order.

But how could she explain that to her husband?

Darla was always worrying about me staying a widower, he told her. I swear she was trying to set me up with Agnes...or maybe she just learned that bringing Agnes up was an easy way to change the subject when I bugged her about studying. She's majoring in engineering now. Her acorn didn't fall far from your Physics tree.

Engineering? That's your influence, your practical genes, she said with a smile. Remember the time you jury-rigged a stretcher from a pair of skis and a bearskin? Me, I would have been examining possible configurations, but you just grabbed what you had and made it work. I think our daughter is more like you. I can hardly complain, since you are the one I fell in love with. If she were a physicist we'd probably argue in equations and be competitive.

Oh, I don't know, he answered. We both know engineering is just applied science. And science is applied mathematics. For all we know she could change her mind next month and decide to become a mathematician, or a programmer.

She just shook her head. If she's like me, do you really believe she would change course? With my math and your stubbornness?

He laughed softly. You have a point. But she's been through a lot lately. None of it happened in the 'real world', but it still happened.

Actually, Liz corrected, "It all happened in the real world."

Huh? It was all in virtual space, in the computers.

She sighed. Yes, dear, but everything that people experience while logged into the virtual world of PanGames is the result of spintronic quantum computer programs – which I know is a mouthful but the computers still run in the real world. The imaginary world is built on real calculations. It's founded in the real world.

So what you're saying is that Aes and Am-heh, that they were...

...were real-world entities interacting with us via the virtual world. Yes. Some coordinating awareness had to interfere with the PanGames hypercomputer in order to manifest them. Call them whatever you want: angels, demons, gods, whatever. They're out there, and they're real. Trust me, she said, and shuddered. I know from direct experience.

He turned to look at her. What do you mean? he asked.

Am-heh wanted to prove he wasn't just a human role player, so I asked the PanGames system to let me share memories with him, she said. He was real. I can't remember all of it, but he was mortal, once.

You're saying he was a ghost? he asked skeptically.

I'm saying he was a god.

Don't talk blasphemy, he admonished her.

I'm not. I'm not saying Am-heh was God. I'm saying he was something between us and God. One of the little 'g' gods. More than human, but less than the Creator. Angel or demon or Nephilim if you prefer. Superhuman. Whatever. He was real, not some souped-up simulation. And unlike Aes, he knew what he was doing here.

And what was that?

They were both pawns in a chess game of gods, she said. And the game isn't over yet. I saw that in Am-heh's memories. There are at least two groups of these entities, and they're fighting for dominance. For dominance over Earth.

Manny brushed a strand of golden hair away from her face. And how long has this been going on?

She shrugged. That's hard to answer. You'd think it would have been settled one way or the other a long time ago. I can say for certain that Am-heh's people, the Children of Nuit, have been operating here since the Pharaohs. They attached themselves to the civilization in Egypt back when it was called Khem.

So the other group came here only recently? Did they have anything to do with Roswell?

She shook her head. No, she said. They've been here almost as long, attached to the civilization on the other side of the Mediterranean. From Am-heh's group, we got the Egyptian gods and goddesses. The other faction gave us Greek mythology. We might as well call them the Olympians.

But...if they've both been here so long, he objected, then why isn't the struggle over yet? Are we humans the meat in a stalemate sandwich?

I don't pretend to understand it all, she admitted. You'd think that two bullfrogs in the same small pond would sense each other's presences. But it didn't happen. The Children of Nuit didn't realize they had competitors here for quite a while. It must be because of the fundamental difference between the two groups.

I don't understand, he told her. Are you saying they can only sense the presence of their own species?

Not exactly. What fooled the lot in Khem was the fact that the Olympians were founded by an alien named Cronus who mated with a human. Her child was Zeus, the first of the hybrids, and he –

Now wait a minute, he interrupted. I may not be a scientist, but I do remember that different species cannot usually interbreed. And even when they do, their offspring are sterile, like mules. Something about needing to have the same number of chromosomes.

Correct, she agreed. But the rules are different for these beings who, for the sake of discussion, I'm calling the 'gods'. Technically, they have no physical bodies, having left all that behind when they Transcended to the next level of awareness. They can, however, create temporary physical bodies compatible with the local lifeforms.

But if they made human bodies and mated with humans, the offspring would be just...human, wouldn't they?

Could be, she agreed. Or the incarnated god can tweak the DNA of the fertilized egg to fast-forward it on the evolutionary path. It's impossible for us to imagine how to do that, but apparently it's something a god can do easily. In that case, the child will be superhuman, a demigod, and he or she will Transcend to the next level of awareness when the physical body dies, instead of reincarnating in another body. Cronus made some of these demigods, and then he left Earth, apparently."

Why didn't the Egyptian faction do the same thing? Create demigods?

It's against their rules, she explained. "Cronus was some sort of misfit or renegade from another group. All of the normally Transcended follow an ancient set of protocols called the Covenant. It specifies how different groups are allowed to fight over client species, and it prohibits making demigods. They're supposed to leave evolution alone, but Cronus broke the rules. By the time the Children of Nuit discovered what had happened, there was another group of gods here, descended from humans. As far as the Egyptians are concerned, our Transcended are bastards, technically. But since the Olympians are Transcended, the aliens have to fight them to own us."

Chapter 5: Farker: Put your right hand in the box.

When Farker got back to his lab after his meeting with Max he saw that Manny was still stretched out in Tweedledee, the extra link bed, communing with Darla's mother.

Farker didn't interfere. He was amazed he still had a job. PanGames had come this close to a hellacious lawsuit, a class-action hummer that could have bankrupted the company. PanGames wasn't poor, but the UE courts put a high value on human life now that advances in medicine made it possible for people to live a long time.

He had no illusions that Max had kept him on out of sentimentality. He was equally sure it wasn't out of fear that he would leave some data bomb in the system if he were fired. Max had to know his CIO was too professional for that.

He was sure it was merely the difficulty of replacing him. Farker had been with PanGames for decades. Filling his shoes would be a tall order. The question was, was his job safe – or merely a Siege Perilous, with dismissal hanging over his head by a thread, to be severed as soon as Max found someone who looked good to the Board of Directors?

And just when he should be doing his best to look like a loyal corporate tool to his boss, he found himself once again hiding things from Max. It would have been too hard to explain about Darla's pregnancy to a guy who only used machines to calculate compound interest. He could imagine how it might go:

Max: You're saying a program got her pregnant?

Farker: Sort of – except Aes was a ghost in the machine.

Max: The computer is haunted? What have you been smoking, Farker?

Farker: They were both hauntings. Lucky for us, Aes was a good ghost and helped get rid of Am-heh, the bad one.

Max: And he got a real human pregnant?

Farker: No, he got her avatar pregnant.

Farker shook his head. Any conversation he had with Max about trans-human entities would need careful preparation or he would just talk himself out of a job. An old quote came to mind from Dune: put your right hand in the box. He would be doing just that if he tried to talk to Max about gods.

He thought about talking to Darla again about her 'pregnancy'. He was pretty sure that only he, Darla, and her mother knew about it thus far, but if the rate of development could be judged by the change in her avatar's shape, her virtual baby would be born in a matter of days.

And then what? Would this child exponentiate itself out of existence, running out of room like its father? Or could its growth be tamed, limited to extend its lifetime? He wondered what humans would do, presented with such a choice. The legends tell that the gods offered man a long life, or a short and a glorious one. Supposedly, man had opted for short and glorious, and all our efforts to extend our lives are cheating, reneging on the deal.

I know what I'd choose, he thought. Screw the short life. It's not long enough to learn what we need to know. Give me the long life, and if a lot of it's boring, I'll manage. Give me a long life, and just see what I can learn.

But he'd already had that long life, by current standards. He was part of a shrinking crew, the surviving geezers left in the race after the devastation of the W3 virus. We could replace the babies that were lost, he thought, but not the geezers like me. It only takes nine months to make another baby. It takes several decades to make an elder.

Manny's eyes flickered and he sat up. He swung his legs off the edge of Tweedledee and looked at his hands. It's never enough, he said. "This technology, it's wonderful, and I thank you for letting me borrow the use of your link bed...but when am I going to actually be with her?"

Farker spun slowly in his chair to face him. I'm not sure, he admitted. The link bed she's been in all this time was an old model. She's going to need a lot of physical therapy to regain her muscle tone, unless you want to see her in a wheelchair.

No, she'd hate that. Manny sighed. But I can't stay here in your office, when my business, the diner, is back in Orlando. I'm not making any money, but I'm still racking up rent and other bills.

I have an idea about that, but it's going to take a little time, said Farker. If I can get the budget approved, I want to offer Elizabeth a consulting job at PanGames.

We're not asking for charity, Manny said quietly.

It's not, Farker told him. Your wife is in possession of some rather unique information that could help us.

Manny's face clouded. Her memories, you mean. He made a face. I'm trying to believe this, but I'd be lying if I said it all makes sense to me. Are you sure she's not...

Farker locked gazes with him. Crazy? No, not for a second, although I can see how she might sound that way. She's had experiences no one else shares.

You mean that story about sharing memories with an alien? Manny sighed. I just hope she hasn't told Wu. I can only imagine how long he'd hold onto her if he heard that one.

He'd have to lock me up with her, said Farker. "Because I believe her. She discovered something that never occurred to us – that a system designed to let minds interact with a virtual environment has opened up new ways for us to communicate with each other."

"You believe all of it? Aliens lurking about until we developed hypercomputers, and only then do they appear among us, in a computer's imagination? Ghosts in the machine? Sure sounds crazy to me."

Farker offered him a protein bar. When Manny waved it off, he shrugged and took a bite himself. Why so crazy?

Manny shook his head. Doesn't make sense. If they could interfere with our gear, then why not do it as soon as we have television, or even radio? Not to mention the most important problem of all. What could we possibly have that they'd be interested in?

Farker chewed and swallowed before he answered. It was a fair question. There was even a name for it: Fermi's Paradox. Ever since humans had begun to consider the possibility of meeting other sentient races, we had to ask, if there are others out there, why do they never show up here? Why do they never call? Something we said?

Philosophers had come up with a couple of possible answers, none of them good. The first idea was that maybe earth-like planets were rare and far between. Or the ominous possibility that no faster-than-light propulsion would ever be developed, so we were too far away to reach. But worst of all was the simple counter-question, why would they bother to visit us? Because if their technology was way beyond ours, than they had no need of us.

That's a fair question, he said. From what little Elizabeth has told me so far, they believe that by helping us they will further their own growth and development.

Then why not just land and talk to us?

They don't have ships. What we consider technology is like crayons and stuffed animals to them. They no longer have physical bodies, so they can only communicate with us through our technology. But you're missing a crucial point. They didn't manifest in the PanGames computer to talk to us, but to fight over us.

I don't know, said Manny. It sounds like suppositions piled on assumptions.

It was Farker's turn to sigh. I don't have all of the answers, he said. But she's not crazy. You need to listen to her. And while you're at it, he added, you should talk to Darla about it. There are things you need to know.

What are you talking about? What things?

Just keep an open mind, Farker said. What she has to tell you will make what her mother said seem tame by comparison. Trust me.

Chapter 6: Darla: