Delia had to laugh at that, considering the continent-wide conflict that she understood was commonplace in most of the other ’cosms. Joss chuckled too. “Have you been into the game yet?”
“Once or twice,” Delia said. She had gone in on a staff Omnitopia account that the PR office had given her. But certain that the account was being monitored, and wanting to do a little sleuthing without being watched, she had also slipped in using a standard account bought online with an over-the-counter credit card voucher that belonged to a spare identity she kept for purposes of anonymous research.
“But you haven’t really gotten into anyplace specific long enough to want to spend time there.”
“Well,” Delia said, “I haven’t found where I’m really comfortable yet. I don’t know if I’m wild about the idea of casting myself as some kind of wizard or warrior.”
“No need to,” Joss said. “The system’s set up so that you can find out which ’cosm you prefer and choose a role from inside it. No one has to still be playing Otherworlds Campaigns if they don’t want to. That’s just a staging area for the other games now. Though we do get some players,” and he grinned, “who stay in the old central game world, in Telekil, and never go outside of it.”
That surprised Delia. “Don’t you find that a little frustrating?”
Joss shook his head. “To each their own,” he said as they walked past more and more office pods filled with people sitting in front of screens, standing in front of them, or walking around with headsets on, some of which covered their eyes as well as their ears. “But that’s the whole idea of Omnitopia: that there should be something for everybody. If you can’t find what you like, then just play long enough—or well enough—and you may get a chance to build it yourself.”
That, of course, was the heart of the attraction that Delia suspected was the true cause for Omnitopia’s wild expansion over the last few years. There was nothing like the hope of money, big money, to concentrate people’s minds. “How many people are doing that now?”
They came into a large semicircular work pod at the end of the building. Its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked a garden area, and through the trees and shrubs the occasional pink-biked cyclist could be seen passing by. In the middle of this space was a big semicircular desk with a phone, three flat monitors, a couple of comfortable chairs pulled up to the desk, and a statue of a lady in flowing Roman garments blowing a trumpet. A high, curved hardwood credenza stood against the wall. Joss opened a door in it, reached in, and came out with another plastic card. “How many?” Joss said, going to a cupboard in the credenza and opening it. “I haven’t seen numbers for this week, but last week it was—” He frowned, trying to remember. “Eight thousand? Something like that.”
Delia blinked at that. “Eight thousand other universes inside Omnitopia?”
“Well, I know it sounds like a lot,” Joss said, closing the credenza’s door, “but they’re not as complex or as resource- hungry as the Macrocosms. I mean, each of the Macros has had hundreds of people working on it, and in it, for years. In those, you’re talking about virtual landscapes that in some cases are nearly as big as the Earth’s. The Micros are a lot smaller, simply because MicroLevelers can’t spend anything like our kind of man-hours on them.”
He walked back to his desk and picked up the phone, hit a button on its dial pad. “Robbie? Yeah. Miss Harrington is here. Would you come on down and take over for me? Thanks.” He hung up the phone, then rummaged under his desk for a moment and came up with a sticky pad. He scribbled on it for a moment, then straightened and came around the desk again, fiddling with that second plastic card.
“Here,” Joss said, peeling something off it: a curl of plastic. “Can I borrow your thumb for a moment?”
“My thumb?”
“Your right one.”
Bemused, Delia held it out. Joss pressed the card against her thumb, then handed it to her. On the spot where Joss had peeled the plastic away, Delia now saw her thumbprint slowly fade in, developing in dark blue against the light blue of the Omnitopia omega and her printed name on the card. “This is your ‘enter all areas’ pass,” Joss said. “After you’re finished with your talk with Dev today, this is your key to the campus. Wave it in front of door readers to go into any public-access area of any building and some of the private-access areas like cafeterias. Show it to any staff member you want to talk to in order to establish your bona fides. Use it to step into any Omnitopian Macrocosm or open-access Microcosm, using whatever input-output method you like—keyboard, VR room, RealFeel setup. The staff will help you with I/O and anything else you need; all you have to do is ask. Don’t worry about returning the pass. It’ll expire either at midnight or as soon as you drive off campus, whichever comes first. Each day, when you come back, you’ll get a new one until I’m told your work here is done.”
Delia stared at the card, astonished. It had never occurred to her that she might be simply handed, on a plate, the kind of access to Omnitopia that this card entailed. This story could—I could . . . She shut that whole line of thought down for the moment. It was too soon to work out exactly what she could do. But the possibilities were staggering . . .
A beefy, sandy- haired man about six feet tall, dressed in a polo shirt and chinos, came into the room. “This is Robbie Wauhea,” Joss said as the man smiled at Delia and shook her hand. “He works with me on North American publicity for Omnitopia in general, but he’s also handling rollout-specific PR. He can answer all your questions about what’s going to happen in the next three days.”
“Pleased,” Delia said.
“So, if you’ll excuse me,” Joss said, “I have a couple of appointments myself this morning. But in the meantime—”
He picked up from his desk the sticky pad he’d just been scribbling on, pulled off the topmost note and handed it to Delia. It was omega-branded faintly in blue, and over the omega was a seven-digit number, like a phone number in reverse. “That’s the ID number of my own Microcosm,” Joss said. “Once you get into Omnitopia proper, stop in and have a look around. It’s a small thing, but mine own.”
Delia nodded at him. “Thanks.” And then something occurred to her as she put the note away. “You make a little extra off this?” she said. “Your percentage of ‘one percent of infinity’?”
The look Joss gave her was cordial, and very managed. “Any proceeds,” he said, “go to a nominated charity, the same as all the other proceeds from employee-run ’cosms. I favor the Innocence Project, myself.”
“Touché,” Delia said.
Joss nodded to her, visibly more as farewell than reaction. “Enjoy your visit!”
“I’m sure I will. Thanks again for coming down to get me.”
“Would you like to head on down this way, Miss Harrington?” Robbie said. “I’ll take you upstairs to our nerve center and you can sit down and start asking me questions.”
“That would be super,” Delia said. But in her pocket, where she’d slipped it, she could practically feel the second card burning a hole in her slacks, eager to be used. Carte blanche to Omnitopia, she thought. And to the story of a lifetime, if I can just figure out how to make the most of this—and find out where some of the bodies are buried.
Behind her, Delia was sure she could feel thoughtful eyes watching her go. She concentrated on giving no sign that she noticed, and, laughing and smiling, she went up a nearby flight of stairs with Robbie Wauhea, listening carefully to every word . . .
THREE
RIK MALIANI STOOD IN THE DARKNESS of his Microcosm in Omnitopia and gazed up at the glowing “neon” sign still hanging there unsupported in the virtual air.
His Microcosm in Omnitopia. The phrase wasn’t through giving him the chills yet. Rik had spent almost all of last night reading through the orientation pack that had come in an e- mail from Microcosm Management. Throughout it, through the dry details of security protocols and pro tem templates and the complications of the royalty agreement—especially the
royalty agreement, which included contingency plans involving numbers with more zeroes than Rik had ever seen or hoped to see in his checking account—he’d had to keep reminding himself, You’re not dreaming! This is real! But the belief kept wearing off. He wound up taking the laptop to bed with him, and he lay there reading on it until Angela put the pillow over her head to shut out the light of the bedside lamp. Living up to her name, she hadn’t even told Rik to cut it out and go to sleep, which was just as well, because he couldn’t. Finally he’d turned out the light and just lay there reading by the screen’s light until he at last fell asleep with the laptop still running.
In the early morning light leaking in through the bedroom’s venetian blinds, Rik woke with a start to find himself in exactly the same position, but looking at a black screen: the laptop’s batteries had run down. Angela was already up. Fortunately, he didn’t have to get up yet Last month the courier company had moved him onto a variant of what Rik’s colleagues on the loading dock called The Unweekend Schedule—in Rik’s case, Thursday through Monday at work, Tuesday and Wednesday off. Today being Wednesday, he could lie in for a little while, get up, take some time over his coffee, read more of the docs that Omnitopia had sent him.
Out in the hallway, Angela put her head in the bedroom door. He made a little “hi there” finger-wave at her. “I never mowed the lawn yesterday,” Rik said.
“That you’re even thinking about that right now tells me I have married a prince among men,” Angela said. “It’ll keep. You ought to have a little time to play with your new toy.”
“I have married a queen among women,” Rik said.
“So true,” said Angela, and vanished.
Rik got up, showered, dressed, had his coffee, and the first thing he then did, in the relative cool of the morning—since the weather people had been predicting an early-summer heat wave for the Lehigh Valley this week—was go out and mow the lawn. There wasn’t much of it: their little duplex’s front lawn, and the strips of back lawn on either side of their patio and alongside the garage, involved half an hour’s mowing at best. Still, having the job done left Rik in a domestic “state of grace” where he could afterward shut himself into the game room for an hour or so without feeling too guilty about it.
One of the links that had come to him along with the electronic in-game message from the Microcosm people, and the e- mail copies of the material, was an address for what the docs called his “Micro-Mentor.” Logged into his Omnitopia account again, Rik once more glanced through the material. Your Mentor, it said, is a picked Omnitopia employee who’s committed to helping you understand the basics of setting up your Microcosm. Please see the attachment for information on your Mentor’s name, location, and available hours—
Rik was sitting in the little virtual private eye’s office that was his in-game prep space—a beat-up desk and a couple of old chairs, dusty blinds looking down through fly-speckled windows onto a 1950s street in Los Angeles, and a glass- paneled door that had his name painted backward on the glass. Hanging in the air near the desk was his Omnitopia messaging panel, and now Rik scanned down it to see who this mentor might be. Jean-Marie Mellie, Shawinigan, QU—They were in the same time zone, anyway—that was convenient. And next to the lady’s username, the little green dot was flashing: that meant she was online somewhere in Omnitopia. But a female mentor? What’s Angela going to think about this?
That was when the virtual antique phone in Rik’s pre-game space started ringing, the signal that someone inside the game was trying to reach him. It’s probably Tom. Pissed off that I blew him off last night. Boy, wait till he hears . . . He didn’t bother checking the messaging panel for ID, just picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi there,” said a male voice. “Is that Rik Maliani?”
“Uh, yeah.” Rik sat there trying to think who the voice belonged to.
“Rik, sorry, I just saw you were online and thought I’d page you. This is Jean Mellie; I work for Omnitopia. I’ve been assigned to mentor you. Tell me if this is a bad time and I’ll call back later. I know you must be pretty busy right now.”
“Uh, no!” Rik said. “Jean, sorry, I thought—”
“I was a girl?” Jean laughed. “Happens all the time. Don’t sweat it. Listen, it’s good to talk to you. How’re you holding up?”
“All right, I think,” Rik said. “Kind of amazed.”
“Makes sense.” There was a pause. “Rik, I have some of your profile info, and I see you’re set up for telepresence via RealFeel. So am I. You want to meet in your new space, and I’ll talk you through some of the basic stuff? If you’ve got time right now.”
“Sure. Give me a minute.”
It took no more than that for Rik to shut down his office and exit into Omnitopia, this time not bothering with his normal route through Telekil, but stepping straight into that neon-lit darkness once more. A few breaths later, he heard a sound he hadn’t heard here before: a doorbell.
It was so prosaic that Rik laughed out loud. “Come in!”
A second later, another figure, lit by some sourceless illumination, was walking toward Rik through the darkness from underneath the “sign.” It was a tall man, maybe six inches taller than Rik: big, burly, and dark-complected, with shaggy dark hair and a long face. He was wearing a hooded navy blue Omnitopia sweatshirt and jeans. As he approached, he held out a hand to Rik. “I’m Jean. Thanks for having me over!”
“Hey,” Rik said, “it’s your universe!”
Jean shook his head. “Our universe, maybe,” he said, “but your world. Though it may not look like much at the moment.” He turned to gaze up at the THIS SPACE FOR RENT sign, then back at Rik again. “So. First things first. Are you in shock?”
Rik burst out laughing. “Absolutely!”
Jean smiled a wry smile. “At least you’re admitting it! Which is good. Being conscious that you’re off-balance right now will keep you from making decisions about your space that you might not really want to be making yet. You have any questions you want to ask me right away before we get down to the details?”
“Uh, yeah.” Rik gulped. “What happens if I screw it up?”
Jean nodded, but didn’t smile. “You mean, are we going to take this space away from you if it’s not an immediate success? No. The only reason we ever confiscate is if we catch somebody doing something that violates game terms and conditions after the player’s got their approval to go live-and-open. Yeah, there are some real idiots out there, and crooks, and people who think we’ve given them a blank check to do what they like. But they don’t last.” He frowned. “Maybe you caught some news stories a couple months ago about the Playground scandal?”
Rik nodded. A little while ago every news source he could think of had been full of the story of some Microcosm builder who’d converted part of his ’cosm into a secret haven for pedophiles and those who, for whatever sick and twisted reason, enjoyed catering to them. It didn’t seem to matter much to some of the news outlets that it was watchful Omnitopia security staff who had gotten wind of the nasty little pest-hole, shut it down, and called in the police in several countries to deal with the perpetrators. Angela in particular had been horrified, and had given Rik some trouble about “the kind of place where he was hanging out,” not completely understanding that the ’cosm in question was one Rik had never even heard of, worlds away from the places he played. “Ugly situation,” Rik said.
“It was. We have flying squads of people in the game who do nothing but hunt places like that down so we can eradicate them. Anyway, sure, you do get some ’cosm owners who discover that their worlds are too much work, or they just get bored with them and abandon them. But they’re rare. A lot more Levelers find that their original plans weren’t as workable as they thought, and they close them down to rethink or retool. Some of those relaunches are the most popular and successful Microcosms we have. You know about Mallomar?” Rik nodded: the newsfeeds had described it as “Candyland for grown-ups,” the kind of place
Rik felt it was probably smart for him to stay out of, as control of his weight since he got married was a hard-won thing at the best of times. “Mallomar was a fourth relaunch. So don’t freak. There are a lot of us here to help you, and a lot of shoulders to cry on if things don’t work out right the first time . . . or the second, or the third. This is a game, remember: ideally, it’s supposed to be fun for you. And anyway, it’s in our best interest for you to succeed, because if you make money, Omnitopia makes money.”
Rik nodded.
“Okay,” Jean said. “Here’s how it works.” Then he stopped, glancing around. “By the way,” he said, “do you mind if I load in a template for the moment, while we’re talking? So we don’t have to stand around.”
“Huh? Sure!”
“Just wanted to ask,” said Jean. “This is your world. It’s not nice to start moving the furniture around without asking permission.”
A blink later, the two of them were standing in a lush tropical landscape—a high-canopied rain forest festooned with long loopy vines and many bright-colored, exotic-looking flowers. There were some odd things about it, though. Near the base of a gigantic, many-rooted tree, was a picnic table with a big blue sidesaddle sun umbrella hanging over it. There was also the creature hanging upside down from one of the branches of the huge tree. It had pointed leathery wings, clawed feet, and little round black sharklike eyes, which it fixed on Rik and Jean.
“That looks like a pterodactyl,” Rik said
“It is a pterodactyl,” said Jean. “Kind of. Don’t look at Polly like that! He’s not going to do anything. This is a conference scenario. Nothing’s going to try involving you in some kind of gameplay.”
“That’s good,” Rik said. He had annoying memories of one of the “Lost World” scenarios over in the Public Domain Macrocosm—the pterodactyls over there had been demonically assertive. “Come on,” Jean said, “sit down, take it easy.”