“I . . . sure.” He looked flustered at the idea of going solo, but led the way upstairs to one of the glass-walled rooms.
“Don’t you ever want some privacy?” she asked him.
“Um.” He glanced around, as if surprised.
“Never mind.” She scanned his office. Cluttered workstation, multiple comps and systems, plenty of toys, a barstool in the shape of a tentacled alien. “I’m not altogether clear on who does what around here. The four of you were partners, but you must have each had specific functions, duties, responsibilities.”
“Well, we all worked on development. Depending on who came up with the concept, we each took different stages.”
He took a seat, turned off his headset. “Benny’s primarily research, Cill’s the organizer and I guess you’d say the mom when it comes to the staff. I target the marketing. But we all overlap. It’s loose. We like it loose.”
“And Bart?”
“Development, sure. He could always take a concept and make it better. I guess you could say he had a better head for the business of the business. Accounts and clients and the money details. The profit margins, development costs, that kind of thing. We all got into it, but he could keep a lot of it up here.” He tapped his forehead. “And he was sort of the public face of U-Play.”
“He got most of the media attention.”
“He liked to get out there, mix and mingle, talk it up.” He let out a sigh, rubbed a hand over his short hair. “Benny, he gets jittery with that kind of attention. Cill gets self-conscious and uncomfortable.”
“And you?”
“I like the quiet.” He smiled. “You know, the behind-the-scenes stuff, the figuring out, the in-house stuff. Most people who do what we do aren’t so good with outside. Bart was better at it. Do you want, like, a soda or something?”
“No, I’m good. Who’ll be the public face now?”
“I . . . I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. I guess we haven’t really thought about it.” He lowered his head, stared at his knees. “We have to get through today, and tomorrow, and the next.”
“Maybe you’ll bring in another partner.”
“No.” He said it quickly, firmly as his head jerked up again. “No, it’s ours. We’ll figure it out.”
“And your plans to launch Fantastical?”
“We’ll stick to the schedule. It was Bart’s baby.”
“I need that disc copy, Var.”
“We’re going to have it hand-delivered to Captain Feeney at EDD. It’s nearly ready. Um. We have papers that need to be signed. Confidentiality and all that.”
“Okay. Bart worked on the program quite a bit then. Testing it, playing various scenarios and levels.”
“Sure. We all did. It’s part of it.” His pleasant face turned earnest. “If we don’t have fun with it, why would anybody else? You really can’t market what you don’t believe in. Or you can’t do it really well.”
“Good point. So, did he have a favorite fantasy game, a scenario he liked to repeat?”
“He liked to mix it up. That’s the beauty of the game, or one of them. You can do whatever you want, depending on your mood.”
“Which ones did the two of you tend to play out?”
“Jeez, we’ve been at this for months now. A lot of them. Old West, Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe, Quests, Rescues, Gangsters, Wars. Name it, we probably played it at some point.”
“Who won?”
He laughed. “It was hard to beat Bart, but I got my share of points.” The laughter died. “It’s going to be weird, not having him in the holo. Not having him when we launch Fantastical.”
“I’m sure it will. Do you ever play with droids?”
“Droids?” Var blinked himself back. “Sure. We use them for testing, at different stages of development. Nobody keeps a secret like a droid. But in the final stages, it’s got to be human competition. We’re not selling to droids.”
“Sorry.” Cill stood in the doorway. “I saw you in here, Lieutenant. Is there anything . . . Is there news?”
“No, I’m sorry. Just a routine follow-up. It helps me get a clearer sense. I appreciate the time,” she said to Var, then turned back to Cill. “Why don’t we go to your office? I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”
“That’s okay. You can take as much as you need. Var, when the lieutenant’s finished with me, I think I’m going home. I’m useless here today. I’ve screwed up everything I’ve worked on, and had to back out. I’m just making a mess of things.”
“Do you want one of us to go with you?”
“No. No. I think I just need to be alone. I just need more time. You can let Benny know if you see him before I do. I’ll come in tomorrow. I’ll be better tomorrow.”
“I’ll tag you later and make sure you’re okay.” He went to her, gave her a hug that seemed both sincere and awkward to Eve. “Try to get some rest, okay?”
“Yeah. You, too.” Her bold, bright eyes watered up before she turned away. “My space is down this way, Lieutenant.”
Along the way, Eve glanced back to see Var standing behind the glass, watching them go, looking miserable.
“Do you want something?” Cill asked. “I’ve got power drinks, soft drinks, fizzies, diet and regular.”
“No, but go ahead.”
“I haven’t got a taste for anything.” Cill shoved her hands in her pockets, pulled them out again, twisted her fingers together. “You do this all the time. I mean, you talk to people who lost somebody. I was wondering if you know how long it takes before you stop forgetting you lost somebody, stop expecting to see them.”
“It’s hard,” was all Eve said.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be worse to stop forgetting, stop expecting. If it’s going to be worse when I remember all the time. It’s like . . . You look down at your hand, you don’t really think about it being there. It just is. And if you lost it, wouldn’t you keep expecting to see it there?”
“I guess you would. Grief counseling can help. I can give you a couple of names of people you could talk to, who might be able to help.”
“Maybe.” She shoved her mass of dark hair behind her shoulders. “I’ve never done therapy or counseling or any of that. But maybe.”
“You knew Bart a long time. The two of you must’ve worked on a lot of programming, a lot of games together.”
“Tons. We brainstorm. Sit around, get some pizza or whatever and just make stuff up. Then we get down to it. How do we translate that into a program? Benny’s point man on research. You dupe somebody’s game, you’ve wasted time and money and resources.”
“So you pitched ideas.”
“I guess you could say. We knock them off each other, spring-board them.”
“Who came up with Fantastical?”
“Ah . . . gosh.” She sat, brow knitted. “I’m not really sure. A lot of the concepts evolve through the brainstorming. I think . . . maybe Var had this idea for a fantasy game that offered user-controlled scenarios. Then I think . . . yeah, I think I said something about there being plenty of those already. What’s the next level? How about we take it holo, refine, seriously refine the imagery, the lag time.”
She looked away from Eve, stared through the glass wall of the office, where people zipped by. “Then, if I’ve got it right, Benny piped up with there were holo-games and programs along the lines already, and how Roarke’s company had the juiciest imagery out there. So what’s the next, next level?”
“Didn’t Bart have anything to say?”
“Oh yeah, he hangs back sometimes because he’s working on it in his head.” She rose, got one of the power drinks.
Moved well, Eve thought, thinking of the yoga classes. Strong and fluid.
“You sure you don’t want?”
“Yeah, thanks anyway.”
Cracking the tube, Cill sat, then after one sip set the drink aside. “I guess I don’t really want it either. I forgot where I was. Oh yeah, so we kept tossing
stuff around, back and forth like, and Bart says not just juicier imagery. Full sensory load, smart tech. Military uses smart tech for training. We apply that to the game, add the full sensory, go full-out on imagery.”
She picked up the drink, just held it. “It’s a big investment, of time, energy, and money, but he really sold it to us. He was like, ‘We don’t just offer a menu of choices for mix and match. We open it up.’ Not just user-controlled, but the user can literally program his fantasy, every element, or mix his elements in with default elements. We just kept kicking it until we had the basic outline. Then we had to do the roll-up-the-sleeves and figure out how the hell to do it all.”
She nearly managed a smile. “And we did. It’s going to be the ult of ults.”
“You’ve been testing it, playing it.”
“Oh hell yeah. The four of us, or whoever’s around and up, worked on it mostly after hours. At least at first. Lowdown on this one because it’s going to be big. That’s why we wanted to get Felicity to draw up some paperwork before we duped it for you guys.”
“Understood. What did Bart like to play best?”
“Oh, he mixes it up. But whatever he plays, he likes being the hero.
Who doesn’t? He likes scenarios where he’s fighting for a cause, or the girl, or his own soul. Best was that combo.”
“The program puts you into the scene, makes you work for it, right?”
“Wouldn’t be fun otherwise.”
“So was he good at the fight?”
“Better than the rest of us most of the time. Bart likes to watch vids on gun battles, sword fights, knife fights. He studies instructional discs, talks to soldiers and cops and all that. It’s important when you’re programming to know the moves, the strategies, so you can offer them to the player.”
She took another absent sip of the drink, stared out the glass again. “I guess most programmers aren’t all that physical, but Bart works at it. He likes to win—and he likes to play. He’s a hell of a gamer. Was,” she said, in a voice that started to shake. “He was. He was my best friend in the world. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I don’t know what any of us are going to do.”
Eve took out a card, wrote down a couple of names and contacts. “Try one of these names. It can help to talk, and to have somebody listen.”
“Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think I will. Is it a problem if I go home now?”
“No. Cill, do you know the Sing family?”
“Oh sure, sure. The kids are seriously sweet.”
“Var mentioned you were having a service for Bart here tomorrow. They’d like to come. If you’d let them know.”
“Yeah, I will. They’re on my list already, but I’ll take care of it right off. I’ll do it from home. I just think I want to be home.”
“Okay. Where can I find Benny?”
“He was in his office when I went by a little while ago. Mostly the three of us are just sitting around trying to get from one minute to the next. He’s probably still there.”
10
She didn’t find Benny in his office, which offered her the perfect opportunity to study his space. Open door, she thought, glass walls, implicit permission. Like the others, he had an office Friggie and AutoChef, a range of comps, a collection of toys and games.
More files, more clutter than Var, less than Cill, she noted, with active memo cubes stacked on his workstation, a mound of discs beside them. More discs filed by number on a shelf—and, as in Mira’s office, several photos.
She studied Benny with Cill and Bart as kids, all fresh faces and goofy smiles. Benny, tall and skinny even then, had an explosion of improbable red hair. He towered over his companions as Cill’s sharp green eyes sent out a wickedly happy glint, and the doomed Bart stood in the middle. In another they were teenagers at what looked to be the Jersey shore, sunshades, geek tees, windblown hair, mugging for the camera.
Still another had them dressed in costumes, with Cill in a fancy wig that had big rounds of hair at both ears, and a white flowy dress—with some sort of blaster in her hand. Benny wore a kind of space soldier suit, a smirky smile, and held another blaster, while Bart wore a white tunic and carried a glowing tubular sword.
No, light saber, she corrected. Sure, sure, the Jedi deal, the Star Wars thing—like his droid.
She took a closer look at the light saber, shook her head. It just wasn’t the murder weapon.
Other pictures included Var—older now, college time—shaggy hair, sloppy clothes, sleepy eyes. Then the four of them stood in front of the warehouse, with patchy snow on the ground. Each wore a U-Play T-shirt and mile-wide grins as they toasted the camera with glasses of what was likely champagne.
She filed it all away before wandering out. She scanned the area—the glass boxes, the open stairs, the clear cubes, and workstations. Not so much bustle today, but still plenty of movement.
She frowned as she watched the way the sun beamed down and flashed over all the glass—and threw certain areas into soft shadows.
That was interesting, she mused. Glass walls or not, at certain times of the day sections were glared to invisible by the slant of sunlight.
She stopped a guy with a half a million tiny braids before he could whiz by on airskates. “I’m looking for Benny.”
“Um. His office?”
“No.”
“Um. Maybe he went home. It’s a crap day. Yo, Jessie? Benny?”
“Um. I think he was going to Lab Three. Maybe.”
“Lab Three,” Airskate said helpfully. “Maybe.”
“And where is that?”
“Um. Third level.” He pointed east. “That way.”
“Thanks.” She wondered how many “ums” were dropped in the air on any given day.
She took the long way around. No one stopped her, asked who she was, what she was doing. People went about their business, or gathered in little groups with the slash of those black armbands like wounds on their bright colors.
Now and then she noticed someone actually using a swipe card, but for the most part doors remained open.
She spotted Benny through the glass of a lab, its outer wall lined with comps and screens. He seemed to be executing some sort of martial arts kata, mouth grim, eyes shielded by VR goggles.
Good moves, she decided. Smooth, controlled, quick despite his human stickman build.
This one did more than sit in a cube and pretend.
She hooked her thumbs in her back pockets, watching until he made the ritual ending bow.
He jumped when she rapped her knuckles on the glass.
When he pulled off the goggles, his eyes looked dazed and glazed and made her wonder how long he’d been caught in the VR.
He fumbled a little with the lock code, then slid the door open.
“Lieutenant Dallas. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were out here.”
“No problem. Good form. What level are you?”
“Oh, none.” There was an awkwardness to his shrug that hadn’t been there in the movements of the routine. “Not really. Virtually and in holo? I rock, but I don’t actually compete or practice or anything.”
“You should.”
He said, “Well . . .” And shrugged jerkily again. “Is there something new about Bart? Did you find out who killed him?”
“We’re working on it. Were you testing a new game?”
“Oh no. Not really. We’re always adding new functions and levels to our VR instructional programs. But mostly I was just . . . going away for a while. We should’ve closed today.” He looked over her shoulder, away. “I think we probably should have closed. But Var thought we’d all be better off here, doing something, being together. He’s right, I guess. I don’t know what I’d do at home.” He shrugged again. “The same thing I’m doing here, probably. Sorry. Do you want to come in? Or go to the break room? Something.”
“In’s good.” She stepped past him. “You do some of your testing here, some development?”
“Sure. Mostly VR an
d interactive screen in this lab. We’ve got others for straight comp, pocket games, and instructionals, holo. I use it for research, too, comparing on-the-market stuff with things we’re working on.”
“Must be fun.”
“Yeah, mostly it is. Bart . . . He implemented this policy early on. Everybody plays. It’s like part of the job description. Everybody who works here has to log in a certain number of hours on actual play. You can’t create games if you don’t play games—that’s his philosophy.”
“So, does everybody who works here get a shot at something that’s still in the development stage?”
“No. That would depend on their level and specific involvement. But we have all our on-the-market games available for employees, and a lot of our competition’s. Do you want to try something out? I can set you up.”
“How about the holo-lab? I’ll try out Fantastical.”
He winced. “I really can’t. I’m sorry. We don’t test that with the staff here. Not yet. We do weekends and after-hours. In a few more weeks, we’ll be ready. Bart’s already talking about the launch, and how . . . I mean—God. Goddamn it.”
Benny leaned back against a work counter as if his long legs wouldn’t support him any longer. “I can’t get it. I just can’t pull it in and keep it there. He’s gone. He’s really gone.”
“Bart had big plans for the new game.”
“Mega. He had a way of seeing the whole picture, taking it down the line. Having Plan B and C in place just in case.”
“You went back a long way. I stopped in your office, looking for you. I saw the pictures.”
“Yeah. I can hardly remember a time when Cill and Bart weren’t right there. Then Var.” He etched a square in the air with his fingers. “We clicked the corners and boxed it in. Four square. Oh Jesus.”
“It’s a hard loss. A friend, a partner. You shared a lot. The picture in the costumes. Star Wars, right?”
“Yeah, A New Hope. Episode four.” After heaving out a breath, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, then dropped them. “Leia, Luke, and Han. The summer before college, at Worldcon.”
“Bart must’ve been a big fan. The costume, his house droid.”