For now, not in a mood to wait or die, he studied the terrain. There, he decided. A good place for a diversionary explosion or two. And there, an even better spot for waylaying the enemies who must come to investigate.
He crept forward to lay an ambush.
For all Travis’s progress, the objective still lay far ahead. It was all about the mission now. When, inevitably, he “died” from time to time, he returned through enemy lines with ruthless efficiency. Deaths were the price of advancement.
He disabled tripwires, bypassed sensors, and dispatched enemies, all with casual ease. A trail of bodies littered his wake. The bots learned, but not as quickly as he. If they could, this would be one hell of a game. But they were so much cannon fodder.
Soon, he would reach the target. He would destroy it. Just like in Lord of the Rings, Travis thought. No matter the odds, no matter who tries to stop me, I shall prevail.
Only why did he feel more like some cyborg terminator than like Frodo?
A bot lay at Travis’s feet. Sure, they were wily—much more so than when he had begun playing. He had learned, too. Natural intelligence still ran rings around the artificial kind.
Apart from some bruises and the rivulet of blood that ran from his torn cheek and down his neck, the prisoner looked familiar. Why wouldn’t he? The game software would have only so many faces to put on bots. Travis must have seen this face again and again.
And killed it again and again.
“You’re going to talk,” Travis said.
“No, I’m not,” the prisoner said. Hands tied behind his back, he struggled to sit up.
When he had almost succeeded, Travis planted a boot on his captive’s shoulder and knocked him down. “I need to know the route ahead. You’re going to tell me. If I come across anything that looks even the slightest bit different than what you describe”—Travis unsheathed his commando knife, its double-edged blade a wicked seven inches long—”I’ll be back.”
“Who cares?” the prisoner snapped. And then—
In a puff of smoke, he vanished.
Travis loped upslope, gliding between the trees, skirting an enemy outpost on the valley floor. His mind churned.
Bots disappeared all the time—after you killed them. Removing them was merely fancy graphics and practicality. Dead bodies everywhere would clutter the playing area and waste computing cycles. But for a live bot to vanish? That made no sense.
Unless that character wasn’t a bot.
If it wasn’t a bot, that made it… a player. A gamer. A person Travis had threatened to torture! And if one enemy was a real gamer, more would be.
Travis skidded to a halt, chest heaving, within a small stand of trees. How many gamers had he casually slaughtered? How many repeatedly?
Sure, technically he only killed software. Knowing some of his victims had people behind them felt different. Felt wrong.
It was time for a break. First thing, he’d apologize to the gamer, assuming he could track down who that had been. There must be log files on the game server. Only then did Travis realize—
He had no idea how to get out of the virt.
He sat on a fallen, mossy log, on the edge of a small clearing. Faint noises drifted his way: enemies hunting for him. He hoped they could tell him the way out.
He knew one way that did not work: dying. He had died in the game… he could not remember how many times. Or how long he had been playing. He remembered planning to check his watch when he reentered the game. He hadn’t. He glanced at his wrist.
The watch was broken. Maybe it always started that way.
He tuned out the hunt, struggling to concentrate. Exiting the virt should be a simple matter of opening his eyes. Raising the lid of the VR tank.
But his eyes were open. Here, anyway. He closed them and extended his arms into the dark. Groping in front of him, then overhead, then all around him, he felt… nothing. Beneath there was only the rough bark of the log and the cool dampness of moss. No hint of a VR immersion tank.
A part of Travis still needed to struggle onward. How else could he reach the objective? How else could he complete… his… mission?
He twitched. What, exactly, was the mission? He had no idea. He wondered if he ever had. The game, like this computer-generated valley, might go on without end.
Leaving should be the reverse of entering. He had played many VR games, in many such tanks. Only he had no recollection of getting into a tank this time. Odd.
It was surprisingly difficult to retrieve memories from right before the virt. They seemed distant, as though he had been playing for a very long time. His last pre-game recollection was, was, was…
A computer lab. VR tanks. A tall, moon-faced man, standing. It all felt less real than the virtual log on which Travis “sat.” He frowned in concentration. That man. Cav something. Cavender? Cavendish?
Cavanaugh! That was the man’s name. Alan Cavanaugh. He was Travis’s host and the company’s creative director. Cavanaugh held a helmet, dome down, like a hardhat lined with tiny silvery Lego blocks. Sensors, of course. Lots and lots of sensors. EEG on steroids.
Cavanaugh said, “I’ll explain the game in a minute. For the best experience, we’ll configure the tank especially for you.” He offered Travis the helmet. “Put this on. This will read out your ideal settings.”
Travis remembered thinking that a personally calibrated VR tank would be awesome. He remembered taking the helmet out of Cavanaugh’s hands and setting it on his head—
And appearing, dressed in camo, pinned down by enemy fire, amid a jumble of boulders.
Travis sat tailor-style on the ground in the center of a wooded glade. His hands rested on his lap, palms up and fingers interlaced. His rifle, well beyond his reach, its ammo clip removed, leaned against a jagged stump. “Let me out,” he said to the air.
No one answered. Nothing happened.
He waited, looking harmless.
Enemy troops eventually rushed into the clearing. Most were expressionless: clearly bots.
One shot Travis faster than he could ask the way out.
Out of the boulder field and across the meadow, into the woods and deep into the valley, Travis had once again left bodies in his tracks. The mayhem had nothing to do with a “mission” and everything to do with his need to hide. He had to disappear, to make the enemy spread out hunting for him.
Now he hugged a hollow in the ground, beneath a thatch of torn, tall grass. A scout approached, circling inconsequential bumps and dips in the terrain with the telltale algorithmic fussiness of a bot. Travis let it pass. Eventually a second appeared: another bot. Travis allowed it, too, to go by unmolested. And then—
Nuances of motion and stance said this was a gamer. When the prey turned his back, Travis burst out of hiding. The enemy scout stiffened as a rifle barrel prodded him in the back.
But this wasn’t an enemy, only a link to the outside world. The enemy was whoever kept Travis inside the game.
“How do I—?” Travis began to ask. Only no speech, no sound at all, came out of his mouth. The programmers had been busy again.
He was too surprised even to notice what killed him this time.
Amid a too-familiar jumble of rocks, bullets zinging overhead, mortars blasting, ground trembling, Travis considered. There was much that he remembered only imperfectly. The tastes of foods. The colors of a sunset. The clothes he had worn to the “test” session. The names of the game and gaming company were completely gone.