The Never Game

Shaw watched the action on the big screen for a while. Planets, rockets, lasers, explosions. In the booth fifty or so young people sat at stations and tried their hand at Knight Time games. In front of him a young woman wearing stylish red glasses, her hair in a ponytail, was intently playing Prime Mission.

“Well, that sucks.” A teenager was talking to his friend. Waiting for a Knight Time game to start, he was gazing at the ad and news broadcast window Shaw remembered. On-screen was a pair of anchors, two young, geeky men. They were reporting on the fact that a congressman had supported a proposal to tax users’ internet traffic over a certain number of gigabytes per day.

The gamer’s friend lifted a middle finger to the screen.

They both relaxed when the game loaded and they could start to shoot aliens.

Shaw wandered up to an employee.

“Got a question,” Shaw said to the man, who was in black jeans and a gray T-shirt, which had KNIGHT TIME GAMING across the chest. The letters began at the left in solid black, then dissolved into pixels, graying so that the final ING was hard to see. He noted that all Knight Time employees wore the same outfit.

“Yessir?”

The man was six or seven years younger than Shaw. About Maddie Poole’s age, he thought.

“I get games for my nieces — you know, birthdays and Christmas. I’m checking some out here.”

“Great,” said the man. “What’re they into?”

“Doom. Assassin’s Creed. Soldier of Fortune.” Maddie Poole had briefed him.

“Classic. Hmm, girls? How old are they?”

“Five and eight.”

This gave the man pause.

“I’ve heard about Conundrum.” He nodded at the screen.

“I was going to say, it’s a bit old for them. But if they play Doom...”

“The eight-year-old’s favorite. What about your game Prime Mission? They like The Whispering Man.”

“I’ve heard of that one. Never played it. Sorry.”

“Prime Mission’s good, right?”

“Oh, a big winner at The Game Awards.”

“I’ll take them both. Conundrum and Prime Mission.” Shaw looked around. “Where do I buy the discs?”

The employee said, “Discs? Well, we’re download only. And it’s free.”

“Free?”

“All our software is.”

“Well, that’s a deal.” He glanced at the impressive monitor overhead. “I’ve heard that the head of the company’s a genius.”

Reverence dusted the kid’s face. “Oh, there’s nobody in the business like Mr. Knight. He’s one of a kind.”

Shaw looked up at the screen. “That’s the new installment? Conundrum VI?”

“That’s it.”

“Looks good. How’s it different from the current one?”

“The basic structure is the same, ARG.”

“ARG?”

“Alternative reality game. In Installment 6 we’re upping the galaxies to explore to five quadrillion and the total planets to fifteen quadrillion.”

“Quadrillion? You mean, a player can visit that many planets?”

With geek pride, the man said, “Theoretically, if you spent just one minute per planet, it would take you — I’m rounding — twenty-eight billion years to finish the game. So...”

“Pick your planet carefully.”

The employee nodded.

“It’s been delayed, right? The new installment?”

He grew defensive. “Just a little. Mr. Knight has to make sure it’s perfect. He won’t release anything before its time.”

“Should I wait for that one, for VI?” Another nod at the screen.

“No, I’d get V. Here.” He handed Shaw a card:

CONUNDRUM

KNIGHT TIME GAMING

EVER FREE...

On the back was a link for downloads. Into Shaw’s back jeans pocket.

He thanked the employee and walked slowly past the players. He posed similar questions to a couple of other employees in the booth and got many of the same answers. Nobody seemed to know anything about The Whispering Man. He tried too to find out where Knight was presently and some things about his personal life. Nobody answered the specific questions, though the same message was often repeated: Tony Knight was a visionary, the paternal god atop the Olympus of high technology.

Smacked of cult, to Shaw.

He’d done all he could do here, so he headed to the booth’s exit, walking past a curtained wall. He was halfway along it when he startled as a hundred lasers and spotlights positioned around the twenty-foot monitors towering over the booth shot fiery beams toward the ceiling. Amid a deafening blare of electronic music, a booming voice cried, “Conundrum VI, the future of gaming... Ever free...” And on the screen, a death beam blew to pieces one of the fifteen quadrillion planets.

Everyone nearby turned to the display and the light show.

Which is why not a single person noticed when a flap in the curtains opened and two fiercely strong men yanked Colter Shaw into the darkness on the other side.

35

As he stood in a dim alcove, being expertly frisked in silence, he reflected on the flaw in his plan. Which had otherwise been a good one, he believed.