Lewis walked toward the three of them, his gun aimed at Jenna’s father. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Mr. Bateman. Seems a bit out of character for you.”
He held up his hand and said, “Please, call me Lance.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Lewis said, switching the gun to one hand and pointing the barrel at the man’s head.
Bateman chuckled. “You know Desmond, I’m sorry you had to get mixed up in all this. I truly am. It was never my intention. I mean, there was always the possibility that you were going to end up as collateral once Jenna went haywire, but that’s nothing personal.”
“What the hell is going on?” Zhao said, looking genuinely confused and backing away.
“Hey Victor,” Lewis said bitterly, still glaring at Bateman. “Guess your buddy Lance here didn’t tell you about his little brainwashing project, huh?”
“That’s not exactly how I’d describe it,” Bateman said. “But, I can see how that misconception would arise.”
“This wasn’t for knowledge or experimentation.” The gun wavered slightly in his hand. “It was a carefully orchestrated smear campaign against violent video games, wasn’t it? First, you identified prominent YouTube gaming icons, video game journalists, and e-sports competitors. Then you sent them copies of Rogue Horizon, a derivative sci-fi horror schlock-fest designed to make players’ skin crawl. Its focus wasn’t plot, gameplay, or character development like other games. No, its sole purpose was to disturb you with visceral, gory imagery, maybe with a little bit of subliminal imagery thrown in to spice it up.
“But in your early experiments, before you began sending out the game, that wasn’t enough to make them crazy, was it Lance? You went to all that effort, and all the test subjects came away with were some bad dreams. Turns out even deliberately violent, disturbing games don’t make people commit murder. There, your big question was solved.”
“It’s more than that, Desmond,” Bateman snarled. “The games might not cause mass shootings or violent behavior, but it’s societal degradation. The proliferation of bloody and explicit imagery, the mass devaluing of human life through the increased popularity of first-person shooters and criminal sandboxes like Grand Theft Auto…”
“But you didn’t stop there, Lance. No, you had dedicated your entire life to the anti-violent media crusade. You weren’t about to leave the arena empty-handed. So, you and your crazy fucking Family First friends decided to create something that would actually induce a homicidal rage. You spent millions of dollars creating advanced virtual reality neurotech so you could torture gamers’ minds until it had the desired effect.
“But you couldn’t move the Dream Machines around, so you had to bring the gamers to some remote location to brainwash them. You picked Las Vegas because it’s a popular destination and because it’s surrounded by desert, the perfect place to build an installation like this. You don’t have to worry about random people walking in and your security costs would be less. That’s why you had so few guards. In fact, I think Jackson is the only actual security guard.”
“I’m more than enough,” he grunted, his pistol still at his side.
“Wasn’t talking to you, asshole,” Lewis said. He turned back to Bateman. “Once this place was built and ready, that’s when you began sending out the Rogue Horizon copies with the subliminal ‘Arcadia awaits’ message. You sent them to people like Charlie Wong and Jake Miller, even your own daughter. You probably even paid someone to write that Atlantic article.”
“Didn’t have to,” Bateman said. “The author was a regular donor to Family First. We simply asked her a favor.”
“But then a couple things fucked up, didn’t they? First, Jake began investigating you after you sent him a copy of the game. He suspected something about this place before he even got here, but the day he died, you tried to snag him back at his hotel.”
“No,” Jackson growled. “The normal procedure is to kidnap them while they’re here during the day. He attempted to break in after-hours and I caught him in the main lobby. He managed to steal my gun and made it back to his car, which was parked in the desert just across the road. I chased him, but he got ahead and pulled aside at a gas station. I knew he’d have to take US-93 to get back to Vegas, so I ambushed him there. It worked better than I expected. I tried to ram him off the road, but he swerved off a hill without any damage to my car. Then I used a light rig to scare him and finished the job. Whole thing looked like an accident. We only ran a night op kidnapping you two tonight because you and your girlfriend left during the day before we could snag you – and Mr. Zhao was here.”
“I knew about none of this,” Zhao said, putting his hands up. He shot Bateman and Jackson angry looks. “They took my dream and turned it into a nightmare.”
“Stop trying to be poetic,” Bateman sneered. “You were a washed-up developer. We only picked you because of the serial killer simulator and the stint you did with the CIA.”
Zhao sighed, turning to Lewis. “The original version of Rogue Horizon was a test project for the government. After the subjects began having violent dreams, it was shut down. I managed to keep some of the files… I mean, I’d worked hard on that game! But we all agreed it was for the best to end it. It never became a twisted psychological experiment like this.”
Lewis directed his attention back to Bateman. “What kind of sick bastard sacrifices his own daughter for a social cause?”
He laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, Desmond. You misinterpret my motivations. I’m not sacrificing Jenna for a failing social cause; my wife and I are sacrificing ourselves to save Jenna.”
Now everybody looked confused.
Bateman continued. “I didn’t dedicate these past years of my life to this project just because I hated violent video games. I believe they’re a cultural cancer, but more importantly, they’ve irreparably damaged the mind of my daughter. They corrupted her innocence and distorted her brain, just like they did to the minds of millions of other children across this country, across the world. How many more parents have to suffer watching their sons and daughters devolve into violent savages, Desmond? How many more impressionable young minds have to be scarred by the violence of the media, and worst of all, violent interactive media?
“I knew Jenna was secretly buying violent games for her computer for many years. Patricia and I found them in a drawer. I played some of them myself while we debated whether or not to confront her about it. And you know what I thought? Some of them weren’t half bad. They were pretty well made, and I almost started enjoying myself once I got the hang of the controls – that was always the worst part. But then… I realized what they were doing to me, playing off my baser animalistic instincts. The games were rated M for Mature, but the developers knew they would be played by children. They knew exactly what they were doing.
“Ultimately, we did confront her. We grounded her, took the games away, and banned her from using the computer for several months. It was for her own good. But she went into withdrawal from those things and never recovered. By then she was off at USC, out of the house where we couldn’t control her. She got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but I don’t think the shrinks really knew what they were talking about. The mood swings, the sudden aggression… that had to be the games, Desmond. The games did it to her. There was no other explanation.”