Into the Black

(A Virtual Room in NERV HQ)

Morgan phased into the control room, looking nervous. She’d been hearing some things from the fan sites, and they were worrying her. Too much was going on all at once.

However, instead of the chaos she expected to see, what with everything going crazy in the game world, instead she was greeted with an air of calm. Not like the gamemasters were slacking, or had been enjoying some virtual intoxicants, and just weren’t paying attention. No, they were still at work, but there wasn’t any urgency there. Like people studiously doing their jobs in an air traffic control tower, but everyone was sticking to their flight plans, the volume wasn’t too high, and there wasn’t anything crazy going on.

That made her suspicious.

“Ah, Morgan!” Isaac called out, as he saw her. “Come on over. I guess you’re here about the upcoming event?”

“Upcoming event? What in the hell do you mean, Isaac? According to the forums, the game world is about to rip itself apart!”

Isaac shook his head. “Oh, that? They’re just overreacting, because things are moving all at once. But yes, we’re planning an event, and it is going to be big. Well, really it is like three or four events all rolled into one, but the players have gone about triggering them, so there’s really nothing we can do but try and manage things.”

Morgan made a continue motion with her hand, so he obliged. “Well, you know how there are four gods in Hellspace? Pride just woke up recently, and between that and people using FTL weapons and other nastiness inside Hellspace, the other three are well aware of the little corner of the game world known as ‘Known Space’. Pride is the goddess everyone is focused on right now, because of the Ihm, and they’re definitely going to be a part of this, but that’s only part of the plan.

“Added to this is the Chaos Brigade. Following clues left by the Pride goddess, they ventured towards the galactic core, and met a race of beings that were essentially uncorrupted X’thari. Driving through them got them an audience with the god of Gluttony, so the X’thari are going to be part of the coming festivities.

“The gods of Envy and Wrath have also sent their people out, exploring, and they’ve made contact with Known Space. And by contact, I mean they wiped a couple colonies off the map. But the important thing is that they made contact, and they’ll push to the new destination, where everything’s going to go down.

“Of course, they aren’t the only players. We also have the Cryptworlds of the Norcen, that have been starting the slow process of awakening ever since the Eye of Despair opened. They are situated around the galaxy, but one of their cryptworlds is near the center of the action, so they can easily get involved.”

Morgan narrowed her eyes at Isaac. His look was entirely too jubilant for her liking, like a cat that caught the canary. “What aren’t you telling me? I know that look. What did you do?”

Isaac gulped, the smug look leaving his face in a hurry. “Uh, well, first off, I want you to know that this is much the AI’s idea as it is mine. We worked on it together, to ensure that there were no loopholes.”

“What. Did. You. Do?”

“Well, one of the cryptworlds that woke up was Jagloth, and I thought it was a perfect opportunity to crush the last of our little legion-builder’s hopes.”

“Wait, that asshole is still around? I thought you basically nuked him into the ground, and then locked him there? Is he loose?”

“No, no,” Isaac waved his hands, trying to allay her concerns. “But the bastard has been under constant observation ever since Jagloth got the Exterminatus order, just to make sure that there wasn’t anything he could do to escape. And he did try to escape.”

“Oh, god.”

“Relax. Once he figured out that there was no way he could survive the trek to the next nearest bunker that hadn’t been blasted away, since Jagloth had no atmosphere, and he had no space suit, he stopped trying to look for a physical escape. With limited supplies in the bunker he was in, he turned his thoughts to uploading, basically turning his in-game consciousness into an AI.”

“That’s bad, right?”

“No, not really,” Isaac shook his head. “We figured he’d try it, since there was game lore about the process, and he was almost there already with his Legion network. He was not happy to find out that the lack of any communications systems meant he was still stuck in the bunker, and couldn’t transmit himself. He couldn’t even use drones or remote-piloted corpses, because there wasn’t enough ‘disk space’ to house himself in a drone, and the corpses couldn’t read any information he imprinted on the brains, making them useless. Once the door to the bunker closed, he’d be cut off from the drone, and unless he compressed himself so far that he was essentially a bigger moron than the people who say vaccines will give you autism, then he wouldn’t be able to have a local copy active, and the drone would barely be able to carry out pre-programmed actions.”

He shrugged. “We still kept an eye on him, anyways, just to be sure, but he didn’t do anything we needed to intervene with. Basically, after that he was trapped in the computer, trying to figure out a way to turn the tables on the company for the ‘disrespect’ we showed him. Entitled asshole.”

“So, what about the cryptworld? Will the Norcen free him somehow?”

“Oh, no. The moment the Norcen broke into the bunker to find out what was up with the power source on their planet, a hardware alert that had remained dormant and undetected until that point broadcast a warning to the Confederate ship in orbit. The first nuke was an EMP that fried his computer, and any nanites he had lying around, effectively killing him, and the second one burned him off the map, for good.”

“OK, so what does that mean?”

“Well, in game, it means that the only vestiges of Legion that remain is a few lines of corrupted code (custom written by us, not the asshole), which is a kind of plague with the cryptworld’s forces, turning some of them into psychotic killers who like to wear the flayed skins of their victims as ornamentation. In game, it is treated like it is his mental corruption, but in reality, it is just Norcen going crazy.

“Now, out of game?” Isaac whistled happily, “Well, let’s just say that we really nailed the bastard. Cited some contract clauses from the TOS, which he’d violated by hi repeated attempts to cheat or break the Game World, as well as the systems running it, and then deleted his account. He can no longer log into the game at all.”

“What about alternate accounts? Like, could he use a VPN to get around the ban?”

“Good question, and no, he couldn’t. We told him that it was his IP that had had been banned, when it was actually his brain scan. His brain scan is locked out of all NERV games, into perpetuity. The only way to get around it, would be to mess with the hardware, and try to upload fake scans. Unfortunately for him, we already considered that.”

“How?”

“How do we stop him from faking a brain scan like a VPN fakes the IP address? The simple answer is that the scan is at a hardware level, and the scanner is black-boxed. If anyone asks, it is an anti-tamper mechanism, at both the hardware and software level, as part of the safety systems. And it is true enough. Don’t want the scanner freaking out if someone has a psychotic break, or something equally nasty, so, for liability reasons, the entire brain scanning system will lock itself if the hardware cover is opened, and won’t unlock until they get a technician out to look at it, requiring codes typed in both in person and here at NERV HQ to unlock. If the hardware is actually removed and opened up, it bricks itself, and your pod is one big paperweight. If there’s a software problem, like the system detecting brainwaves that are different from what the scanning software says, then it locks the system into offline mode. All he’d be able to do is play Solitare or Minesweeper, and not the modern versions. I’m talking the Windows 3.X versions.”

“That… that sounds like it will work.”

“Oh, yeah. It will totally work. Anyways, that means that the Legion-builder is out of the game, completely and forever. Just in time to miss the event where all the forces are going to meet, and cause chaos.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? All these groups are going to be heading to the same planet, for plot reasons. Should have a nice seven or eight-way war by the end of it.”

“WHAT?”