Matilda reaches for her water glass but stops. “So, like musical notes. You can come up with an infinite amount of songs, but you’re still limited to only the twelve notes that exist.”
James slaps the table.
“Exactly! Rob and Sean used this thirty-six situations approach in their game. So, a user would create a character and go through the initial tutorial. Once they leveled up to a certain point, all their actions and decisions would be analyzed and would define their profile. Based on this data, the game would pair them with other players to go on raids and adventures. Meanwhile, the game would be tracking their decisions. This would help define the rest of the necessary data in order to develop a complete understanding of the player’s personality. Every raid and adventure would become unique, because the AI would create better, more precise and more engaging scenarios for the party – all of it based on their collective data. Essentially allowing the game to become the most fluid and amazing Dungeon Master imaginable.”
Matilda pushes the last remnants of her food around on her plate.
“I still don’t get where the social network part comes in.”
James pours himself another cup of coffee.
“Yeah, I don’t think they did either. Their focus was on making a phenomenal gaming experience, and subsequently, boatloads of cash. What they didn’t fully get was that they had built a context metaphorical engine that defined players based on their subconscious decisions instead of their conscious ones. The real value wasn’t in crafting the gameplay, but on collecting the data of what people responded to. The experiences were so immersive that people stopped thinking about lying. There wasn’t any payoff in it. They started providing real data that could be effectively analyzed.”
Matilda puts down her fork.
“Ahh, okay. I’m picking up what you’re putting down. It was getting people to tell the truth.”
James nods, snapping his fingers.
“My personal take on where Virginia got all this was when Constellation introduced personal domains for players – VR/AR hubs that would adapt and even re-build themselves due to player decisions in the game. You would own real worlds that you could invite other players to. Your personalized virtual world was created by AI, based on the data they had on you. These virtual worlds became more popular than real life, and everyone was spending their time in each other’s play spaces. Parents would create them for their kids, where they could go back and watch childhood memories. Eventually, this led to most people already having one before they were even born. It was overwhelmingly popular, and Fall Water acquired the technology and domains from Octogram in 2026 to build their next-generation social network. The one they called Neverland.”
Matilda looks back out at the children playing in the park.
James pushes his plate away from him. “Yeah. Sorry. Long story for a short question, I know.”
The food remaining on Matilda’s plate now sits untouched. “So, when did Virginia take this all over?”
James is surprised, even elated, at how much he is genuinely enjoying actually talking at length to someone, anyone. He can’t accurately judge how long it has been. The question brings him back around to their purpose here in Neverland. Speaking of such things only calls to mind the executive meeting back at Fall Water Lake, where Virginia had insisted on domain control.
“Virginia locked the central node for herself. What you see in here is a reality of her own construction. Her users willingly revert to these childlike avatars and allow their indexation settings to be changed, for the comfort she gives them.”
Matilda looks back at the park filled with playing children. “So… she’s pretty much feeding everyone lotus.”
James finishes the rest of his coffee. “Pretty much.”
James places credits onto the table and stands up.
“This has been nice, but we have a lot of work to do.”
Finding a safe house in the System isn’t too difficult for an engineer who knows where to look. Developers often leave artifacts behind when they build – like half-finished locations that were never deleted. As James makes his way through the streets of Neverland, he knows of at least one surefire, quick way to locate one, but the process of tracking it can be a jarring ordeal.
As they walk the cobblestoned street, Taciturn examines the coding around them, looking for the telltale signs of an emotion smuggler. Members of the Cyberside’s criminal underbelly, such individuals illicitly transport memories from one location to another. Many within the Cyberside compare e-smugglers to Taciturns, largely on account of their shared, active aversion to indexation. James hates the comparison. Taciturns may act as mercenaries, but at least many of their number wander the Cyberside trying to do some level of good. There is not a single quality typical of e-smugglers that James finds redeeming.
In dimly-lit gambling dens and taverns throughout the Cyberside’s seedier establishments, those desperate for credits can find the other face of the emotion-smuggling coin – the Extractor, the individual always ready to pay for a prime memory… if the seller is ready to part with that memory forever. Those down on their luck can always sell their remaining euphoric moments to an Extractor who, in turn, transfers the memory from the seller’s personal storage to the e-smuggler.
With the product in his own mind, the e-smuggler will transport the goods to wealthy clientele, who will pay handsomely to relive someone else’s most cherished moments. The market for positive experiences, especially those from the old world, are considered extremely valuable. The emotion smugglers’ business is always in high demand.
But their jobs are fraught with risks. In addition to avoiding all the hurdles of indexation, they also combat the System itself. The System views smugglers as malicious software, and it actively tries to delete them. To avoid the System’s defensive mechanisms, they use reality pockets in the code, where they can lay low when the System is particularly hot on their trail.
Activating one of his sensory filters, James walks through the streets of Neverland trying to find any trace of an e-smuggler’s recent incursion into this realm. Next to him, Matilda seems to be enjoying the scenery, but James is on edge. To successfully track where any given emotion smuggler has traveled, he’ll have to follow the transported memory’s wake – something James is reluctant to do. To James, it’s like tracking a drug dealer by regularly sampling the trail of cocaine he’s accidentally dropped in his path.
James is about to give up on this area of the city, when he suddenly registers the lingering trace of something in the code – a 40-year-old male, skulking from alley to alley, transporting the memory of a woman. Sighing, James turns to Matilda.
“I think I found what I needed, but if I’m going to do this, I’ll need your help. It’s going to look like I’m out of it, for a moment. Maybe longer. Just stick close to me, and make sure I don’t get lost.”
Matilda gives him a toothy grin.
“You got it, Gramps. I’ll make sure you don’t fall down any manholes.”
Rolling his eyes, James closes on the memory’s wake and connects to it. His vision changes, blurred as if he is suddenly viewing the world through scored, fogged glass.
James takes a minute to center himself and starts the paused memory.
It starts with a woman holding her son’s hand tightly. They are at a station in Babylon, waiting for the next train to arrive. The woman’s husband had been fighting in one of the proxy wars between Babylon and the Enclave. Word had arrived that his regiment was attacked by Enclave troops and almost everyone was wiped out. Devastated, she had cried for weeks, barely holding on. Everything changed with a single communiqué. It said survivors were found and were being transported back to the city. The tingling sensation of last-fringe hope fills her as she waits on the platform.