The Starfighter Invitation

32 the interview

The sense of being rocked became a faded remnant of virtual yesterdays. I lay in bed, no longer sure why the discovery that Dio wasn’t Dio had felt like a cut support. Dio had already told me that most of the interaction in the game was handled by Constructs, and supplemented by Cycogs as needed. Had I just been surprised identifying the shift? Once I’d worked it out, I’d never forgotten that Dio wasn’t my Cycog. But te had been the Cycog who talked to me.

Pulling off my cowl, I turned over the idea of Dio-the-definite-NPC versus Dio-the-person. Well, they would both be non-player characters: one was just more a games master popping in to troll. The big question was, who was the games master?

When I climbed out of bed I felt the usual combination of refreshed and gluggy that came with returning to a body that wasn’t fine-tuned to a peak of fitness. And I wasn’t even so unfit that it was a real contrast. The news had provided a stream of tear-filled stories of players experiencing stock-standard physical ability for the first time. They, too, would wake to dissonance, to five hours of recovery time, so sensible and so cruel.

Shivering, I washed, then wandered out into the living room. It was dusk, real-time, and the house’s heat was low. I adjusted the temperature, then started cooking a simple dinner. My parents weren’t awake, so I worked on something that would keep even if they didn’t get up for The Interview.

"Hey, good timing," my father said, wandering into the kitchen just as I was dishing out. "Care to handle my revisions while you’re at it?"

"I thought you liked revising?"

"I do! But in a this is the easy part of work way of things, not this is pure, unadulterated fun. Anything interesting on the feeds?" He nodded toward the living room, and the muted screen.

"Just the fact that lead-up to The Interview is on all the main channels. A game dev has become Event TV. Oh, and traditional media reporters are very salty about the fact that gaming sites have more seats in the press pit than they do."

"Sounds like common sense to me." My mother, hair a tangle, started a pot of coffee, then wandered off to the bathroom. When she returned, she had changed out of her daily work clothes into night clothes. "I feel like I haven’t been on my rounds for an age," she said. "Even though I’ve been out today already."

"You’re so well-rested you feel like you should be up and doing," I said.

"Well, that and I’ve run up to my login limit, but don’t feel like going to non-DS sleep in the slightest. Perhaps I can do some midwinter spring cleaning after this interview is over."

"Sleeping too much doesn’t usually leave me full of vim and vigour," my father noted. "If I’d known this was the result of sleep-aid cowls, I would have bought one earlier."

"One of the many reasons they’re so popular," I said.

My mother kept an eye on the television while organising identification tags and restocking her day pack. Her current job involved surveying numbers of wintering birds in Drenthe: a variation on countless similar positions in a dozen countries since I’d been born. It was poorly-paid, often exhausting work, but she loved it. My father, writing travelogues and freelance articles, managed to supplement the family income just enough to allow occasional splurges on GDG cowls, but not enough, really, to indulge an adult child trying to start up a solo design business.

"Did Oma try the cowl?" I asked, as we settled in front of the television.

"When I checked on her around lunch, she said she’d never needed help to sleep." My mother sighed. "Now that I’ve seen what DS can do, I really want her to give it a shot. She doesn’t have to get involved in any of the Challenges if she doesn’t want to. I’d love to just walk along a beach with her."

"You should meet up with us in-game yourself, kiddo," my father said. "Do a couple of family group Challenges."

"I need zero-G practice, if you want to get together for that. I’m on Mars, though."

"We’ll schedule something when we get there, then."

We caught up on each other’s adventures while the news reports went over things we already knew about Dom Kinnen, Ryzonart’s sole named developer. Born in Bosnia. Parents migrated to Morocco during the Bosnian War. Current residence Zurich, Switzerland. A list of schools he’d studied at, and a handful of interviews of fellow students who barely remembered him. "Quiet guy, always writing stories." Then nothing, until Ryzonart began releasing games a couple of years ago. Very successful mobile games until, with no hint of it pre-demo, Dream Speed.

When Dom Kinnen finally walked out on the stage of the small lecture theatre used for The Interview, the reaction came in stereo from my father and mother: "Looks like an accountant."

I supposed a small-framed white man sporting rimless glasses might match the stereotype of accountants. He was wearing an earpiece mike, and an alert, amiable expression. Ignoring the noise his arrival had provoked, he surveyed the crowd, then said:

"Welcome everyone. Our servers are currently under a sustained DDOS attack, so let’s get through this quickly. You drew tickets for question order, so can I hear from ticket holder one?"

"Interesting accent," my mother said. "More Morocco than Bosnia."

"I’m sad that he’s a real person," I said. "Or seems to be."

The first questioner, bobbing to their feet, was obviously thinking on the same lines: "Rahal Amaldi, Gamers Daily. What are you, sir, human puppet or Cycog in a synth-suit?"

I—half the press pack—laughed. Dom Kinnen smiled.

"Human puppet. Next question."

"Jaq Shannon, MetaGamer. What clinical trials were undertaken to establish whether Dream Speed is safe for human use?"

"Guided dream cowls underwent years of trials before release," Dom Kinnen replied. "Dream Speed itself does not step outside the parameters of GDG, although it certainly takes the concepts to their limits."

"You can’t compare guided dreams to copying people’s memories back from the net!" Shannon burst out, but Kinnen had already moved on to the next question.

"Sato Hitori, xyz. Sir, you are the only contributor listed for a game with more content than works that involve thousands of programmers, writers, concept artists, voice actors, and musicians. Where is the rest of the development team?"

"Buried under non-disclosure agreements." Kinnen lifted his shoulders in the tiniest of shrugs. "I’m not solely responsible for Dream Speed, although I have been working on concept and story since, well, my early teens. The rest of the team is credited via hard-to-reach Easter eggs within the game itself."

"How many of them are aliens?" yelled someone from the back of the room.

Kinnen ignored that, saying: "Next number."

"Lu Chen, Game Scene. From the basis of processing power, Dream Speed is a game every expert insists is not possible with our current technology level. We make jokes about aliens and AI, but how do you explain a game that can perfectly render a zone with tens of thousands of characters without any sign of lag?"

"Dream Speed doesn’t render images. As we’ve explained, Dream Speed operates on the same principles as any other guided dream game, but instead of offering general prompts that a dreamer shapes, it feeds specific images and information. It allows for a shaped shared experience." Kinnen smiled. "We all carry more than enough processing power about with us to see twenty thousand people in a field."

"This guy lies as glibly as my Cycog," I said.

"How do you know it’s a lie?" my mother asked.

"Even prompting us with specific images, there’d surely be variation from person to person, and I’ve seen enough streams of gameplay to show that multiple people are seeing exactly the same thing. Unless he’s saying that they’ve turned player brains into a giant LAN." I stopped, struck by the coincidence of names. "I really hope that’s not what he’s saying."

"Lars Anderssen, EuroPlayer," the next reporter was saying. "Virtual reality on this level represents a profound shift in human interaction. Players are experiencing simulated injuries, sex, and death. They wear bodies not their own: a circumstance that will provide as much shock as insight. Does Ryzonart take any responsibility—does Ryzonart acknowledge the moral responsibility it must bear?"

Dom Kinnen inclined his head. "In designing Dream Speed, we have incorporated into every aspect of the game a push to minimise harm. The majority of the customer complaints we’ve received so far have been in relation to restrictions to interaction—and our free use of the Ban Hammer, which is likely the reason we are facing the DDOS attack now. Just as there is no technical necessity for forcing a five hour play shut-out, we’ve chosen to limit the amount of pain players can experience, and to honour codes of conduct expected in the non-virtual world. Ryzonart takes player safety very seriously."

That brought a little rush of questions, none of which Kinnen responded to, until finally the babble gave way to the next number holder.

"Battle Shroud, Ezy. What is Ryzonart’s response to calls in multiple countries to block access to Dream Speed?"

"It’s possible that will happen. A matter for those governments to deal with."

There was just a hint of amusement in Kinnen’s voice, and that didn’t surprise me, because no government would enjoy the backlash that would follow taking away virtual youth.

After that point, the interview devolved primarily into reiterations of questions already asked. Kinnen, the third time he was asked to prove he was human, wondered if anyone had brought along a hot wire and a petri dish, and a few of the visible reporters looked thoroughly inclined to storm the stage to take a blood sample. But overall, The Interview was a far less dramatic and momentous occasion most players had been hoping for.

For myself, I’d half expected to recognise Dio wearing a skinsuit, but Kinnen hadn’t felt at all like Dio. Instead, he’d come across as a fairly ordinary smart person who had produced a revolutionary but entirely possible game that he made no attempt to pretend was anything but fictional.

"Verdict?" my mother asked, after flicking through and then muting a spate of post-interview analysis.

"Well, I never expected him to get up before the press and say Take me to your leader," I said. "Short of an appearance from something clearly non-human, sticking to it’s all made up seems the only line they could take."

"The far future setting probably is fiction," my father pointed out. "Unless we really are dealing with time travellers, of course. But I’m entirely willing to believe The Synergis and Cycogs could be a part of an existing galactic community, and Dream Speed a softening process to get us used to their concepts before official first contact."

I thought about whether I was being softened. I’d certainly adapted far more quickly than I would have believed to having Dio as a constant presence—at least until te had turned into not-Dio. Which of them would be with me when I logged back in?

Only one way to find out.