“Yeah. Yeah, I will. Listen, thanks—”
The guy waved at him and actually ran off toward the Magister’s Pavilion. For a moment, Arnulf just watched him go, amused. But he remembered how excited, how completely blown away he’d been the first time he saw the Ring and realized what it meant to his future gameplay.
Hope he does survive,
Arnulf thought as the noob vanished into the Pavilion.
So: there’s my good deed for the day. Time to get moving, though.
He headed across the circle toward the Ring. The actual transit was a simple matter. As you got close, the Ring protocols checked your game status and points balance, looked to see if you had enough gold, valuta, or other game credit to pay for the transit, and then noted whatever destination settings you’d laid in at the beginning of this session. All you had to do was find a portal that wasn’t occupied with an incoming transit—those were easy to identify, as they grayed themselves out with swirling, iridescent fog—salute the Ring, and step through.
Arnulf got in the shortest line in front of one of the portals on this side of the Ring—though it was hardly even a line, just a group of ten people. There were about ten people in it, all dressed like contemporary Arctic explorers in parkas and furs. Some of them were hauling “hybrid” sledges on wheels, the runners clipped up at the moment; others were trying to control two leashed sets of excitedly barking huskies, and mostly succeeding. In front of them, as they raised their hands more or less as a group to salute the Ring, the massive portal went from starry darkness to a ferocious obscurity of blowing snow—whiteout conditions that made it impossible to tell what ’cosm they might have been heading for. At the sight of it, the dogs barked with joy and plunged through. The players went after them in haste, vanishing into the screaming whiteness, then the portal went dark and starry again.
Arnulf Manyfaced stepped up to the doorway, spending only a moment gazing into the endless depths. Then he raised a hand, saluted the Ring, and stepped through—
—And found that there was something very wrong. It was completely dark all around him, and the hill-town vista surrounding the City of Artificers on Langley B was nowhere to be seen.
What the heck?
Cautiously, Rik turned in a slow circle, wondering whether he’d run into some kind of game glitch associated with the upcoming Great Rollout. But then he caught the faint glow off to one side. Blinking a little in the darkness, he turned toward it.
All around him, and all around the source of the glow, that utter, bottomless blackness remained. But the vague warm light hanging in the sky slowly got brighter and brighter, like a very localized dawn. Suddenly Rik realized that the glow was coming together, coalescing into letters, then finally into words. And in shocking pink and blue, the words said:
THIS SPACE
FOR RENT
Rik’s eyes went wide, and the breath went right out of him as he realized what he was looking at. Standing there, looking through Arnulf’s eyes, it took some moments before he could even summon enough reaction to activate the “player services” control in the game software and bring up his account info. A little graphics window popped open in the darkness next to him, glowing with basic information: his lifetime score history, acquisitions, game gold balance, overt karma, professional in-game associations. And there, by the cross-and-wand logo of MediMages Without Frontiers, he saw something he had never expected to see, never even considered possible: a symbol that looked like a golden apple.
Oh . . my . . . God!
In the master info panel, the little envelope logo for his in- game messaging inbox was flashing. “Go to mail,” Rik whispered.
The window cleared, showed him the messaging pane. One new message, from Omnitopia Microcosm Management to R. Maliani.
“Open message,” Rik said.
Dear Rik,
Congratulations and welcome! Your game status average and other criteria have qualified you for entry to Omnitopia’s Microcosm Development Program. Attached to this message you will find introductory materials and links that will allow you access to . . .
He had to stop and get control of his breathing: he was actually starting to hyperventilate.
Oh. My.
God!
“Game on hold,” Rik said hurriedly. The big pause symbol superimposed itself over his control window and began flashing on and off. He stared up at the glowing words hanging in the empty sky. They didn’t go away.
“Save position and exit game!” Rik said.
“Game position saved: exit recorded at seventeen fourteen local time,” said the dulcet Omnitopia control voice. “Thank you, and come back soon to Omnitopia!”
Between one blink and the next, the darkness vanished. He was lying on the couch in the game room, with the RealFeel goggles and headset screening the rest of the room from view. He pulled them off, still breathing hard. Acoustic ceiling, coffee-colored walls, bookshelves, slightly tatty rug, everything was perfectly normal.
Except for what just happened. Not normal, not at
all.
Maybe we’re finished with normal as we’ve known it . . .
He leaped up from the couch, yanked the game room door open, and ran down the upstairs hall. “Angela?
Angela!”
No answer. Rik reached the stairs in the middle of the hallway, grabbed the banister, swung himself around on it, and went down the stairs as fast as he could. At the bottom of the stairs, eight- year-old Mike, about to head up to his and Davey’s room, had stopped and was staring wide-eyed at his dad. “Mike, where’s Mommy?”
“Out back, Daddy—”
Rik plunged past his son and ran around the corner and down the hall that led to the kitchen and the back door. “Angela?”
She had been sitting out on their little concrete patio reading a book. Now, though, almost certainly having heard him shouting upstairs, she was on her feet, heading toward the back door. He caught her halfway in a bear hug, swinging her around and around.
She stared at him. “Rik, what is it, what’s the matter?”
“Absolutely nothing!” he shouted. “Everything’s great!”
After a moment or two Angela dug her feet in and stopped him from twirling her around. “What?” she said. “What is it? Did we win the lottery or something?”
“Better than that!”
She gave him a strange look. “What? What could be better?”
“I just got a message from Omnitopia. They’ve elected me to the Microcosm program! I’m going to have my own Microcosm!”
She blinked at him. “And this is good?”
He swallowed, trying to calm himself. “Honey,” he said, “how many people play Omnitopia?”
Angela shook her head. “I don’t know. You’ve told me once or twice, but I have to admit I probably wasn’t listening. Fifty million or something like that?”
“Two
hundred
million,” he said. “That company makes about a million bucks a minute—”
“At least one of them off you,” Angela said, giving him an amused look.
“Nothing like that much. But don’t you get what this means? They want me to come build a world for them that’ll run
inside
Omnitopia! And every single time somebody comes to play in it—
we get money!”
He hugged her hard. “They call it ‘one percent of Infinity.’ If this works out—we could make . . .”
She looked at him with suspicion, though it was tinged with interest. “How much?”
There she was, Mrs. Practicality again: but right now Rik didn’t mind. “I don’t know. It depends. But it could be a lot! There are some Microcosm builders who’ve made a million bucks in their first year!”
Her eyes went wide. Then the caution showed again. “Okay. And how many?”
“Not a whole lot. Okay, a handful! But you don’t have to become a millionaire from it for it to make a big difference! It could mean a few thousand extra bucks a month for us, and for quite a while. A few less of those double shifts for you and me. Maybe even that new kitchen you’ve been wanting . . .”
“Wow,” Angela said softly. “You really think it could make that much of a difference?”
“It could. It could. If I’m smart about what I do. If . . .”
And there the knot in the balloon tightened down hard, without Angela saying a word. “If I can figure out what to do,” Rik said. “I’ve never thought about this before! I never thought this had the slightest chance of happening to me! Somebody’s handed me the world on a plate, I can build my own universe, and I have
absolutely no idea what to do!”
And Rik broke out in a cold sweat of sheer terror. But after only a moment or so he had to find room for some surprise as well, for Angela was simply standing there and smiling at him. It was an unusual sort of smile, one he didn’t see often enough to suit him, but which delighted him when it turned up: absolute pride.
“You will,” Angela said. “You’ll figure it out. And you’ve finally succeeded in convincing me that the people who run that game are worth something. Because it looks like they’ve realized that
you
are.”
She took him by the arm. “Come on,” Angela said. “That other bottle of Cold Duck in the fridge from my birthday party? Let’s go pop it and celebrate.”
His pulse still hammering in his ears, Rik let Angela lead him back into the kitchen. Everything was going to change, if he could just get this right, and the change would be far bigger for him, for the whole Maliani family, than anything that was merely going to happen inside Omnitopia in three days’ time.
If I can just get this right,
Rik thought as he sat down, dazed, at the dining room table.
If I can just keep from screwing it up!
The bottle went
pop!
Rik barely heard it. A few moments later, Angela pushed a supermarket champagne glass into his hand. “To Omnitopia!” she said.
Rik nodded. “Omnitopia,” he said. “And Dev Logan!”
They clinked their glasses together and drank.
And jeez,
Rik thought,
do I wish I had him here right now, so I could say to him: okay, smart guy, what the heck do I do now?
ONE
T
HE EIGHTH RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD LAY VERY STILL, not really sure he wanted to open his eyes.
Did the alarm go off? I didn’t hear the alarm go off. Did I forget to set it? Impossible. Today, of all days, that wasn’t going to happen. I must have just been really tired . . .
From his side of the bed, in a whisper, the broadband radio box was saying, “. . . indicating that Typhoon Lupit has weakened to category two and may have shifted track enough to miss the Philippines. Russia today deploys the first of its new Sergey Gorshkov class frigates, a move that State Department sources says carries significant implications of a change of Russian defense strategy and power projection in the Middle East. And the state of Arizona gets back the capitol building it sold off in the depths of the Great Recession with help from a prominent citizen who describes his move as ‘all just part of the game.’ It’s Friday, June 19, 2015, and this is
Morning Edition
from NPR . . .”
Dev opened one eye, turned his head. On the far side of the bed, snoring gently as usual, was Mirabel. She lay on her side, the pillow all bunched up under her, one hand under her chin in that little-girl way she had, the way that always made Dev wonder why she didn’t sleep in some more comfortable position.
Dev quietly rolled over in her direction and experimentally opened the other eye. He’d left the bedroom blinds across the room open when he’d come to bed, intending to have the morning light wake him, ideally before the alarm went off. But it was still too early for that. The only light visible was the very faint blue glow from the mood-light submerged in the water feature out in the garden. The sky was still dark.
And I got exactly how much sleep?
Dev wondered, rubbing his eyes and moaning softly to himself.
Today when I need it most. Oh, never mind . . .
On the other side of the bed, Mirabel stirred and muttered a little in her sleep. Dev leaned back against his pillow for just a moment more, looking at her with an affection so deeply ingrained that after ten years it seemed like it had been there forever. The blonde hair, straggling across the pillow, heading for the endless tangle of knots which she would later curse as she teased them out one by one; that pretty little round face with the buttony nose—eyes seeming almost purposely squeezed shut, as if with an effort. Dev could remember the party where Phil—ages ago it seemed, when their company had first hit its stride—had said to him, and not entirely in jest, “Miri’s not the usual kind of wife for somebody on the Forbes Five Hundred list. You’re supposed to have some kind of trophy babe.” Dev had found himself staring at Phil as if he’d just fallen into that party from some other planet. The casually dropped line had told Dev more, maybe, than he was willing to know about Phil at that point.
Not that I wasn’t already having my suspicions . . .
Dev grimaced to himself. This peaceful and unfortunately brief interlude was not one to be cluttered up with such thoughts, which wormed their way into too many of his daylight seconds as it was. Dev spent a few moments more just looking at Mirabel, watching her breathe. Then he pushed the covers back, yawning, and got up as quietly as he could, intent on not disturbing her. Carefully Dev pulled the covers back into place, waved the broadband radio off, paused to hunt for the briefs he’d dumped on the floor last night, pulled them on, and then softly headed over to the window.
Down in the courtyard, two stories below, nothing moved except the ripple of water from the cascade that ran down into the central rock pool, glittering in the glow of the blue accent light at the pool’s bottom. Dev yawned again, stretched again, and turned away from the window. The master bedroom was relatively small because Mirabel liked it that way. Outside it, though, the size and openness of the master suite’s private lounge area more than made up for the relative coziness of the bedroom. The picture window that ran the full length of the room was smart glass, frosted over and grayed down at this time of day. “Clear up,” Dev said to the room’s control system. The glass cleared, revealing its view down into the central compound. Flagstone paths worked their way among patches of lawn and ornamental shrubbery; in the dimness, a single household cat, one of the gray tabbies, strolled about its business.