It was the task of the players-ostensibly working to assist Bond’s front company, Universal Exports-to tease out the hidden history of Operation Stunrunner, to locate the fleeing Bond and help him escape from his enemies. In the early days of the game the players had kept running across an ad for the Mystery Tour, a twelve-day journey across Turkey, with absolutely no itinerary given.
Within the game, there was a lot of hype given to the Mystery Tour. The players were always overhearing nonplayer characters talking about it.
There was a certain amount of suspense about this game element. Everyone wondered if players would actually fly across an ocean on just a few weeks’ notice, all in order to get on a bus with absolutely no idea where it was going.
Indeed they would. And they were joined by a lot of Turkish players who were deeply enthusiastic about such a large-scale game appearing in their country and in their own language.
Even though the work schedule was still frantic and though there were two live events after this one, Dagmar had felt a giddy sense of relief ever since the Mystery Tour’s passenger manifest had topped two hundred and then kept growing till the buses were filled with nearly seven hundred people. Nearly 2 million others were participating online.
The Mystery Tour players had witnessed a villain’s breathtaking helicopter escape past the great stone heads of Mount Nemrut. They had pursued clues through the canyons and spectacular stone chimneys of Cappadocia and tracked the killer of Semiramis Orga through the ruins of ancient Perge. Now they were hunting Bond through Ephesus while conferring online with others who were playing from their homes and offices.
This was another freaking great triumph for Dagmar and Great Big Idea, is what this was.
Give me a big enough budget, Dagmar thought, and I’ll convince millions of people that you’re cool.
And how much, she asked herself rhetorically, is that worth?
Lots, she thought. To certain people, anyway.
Her thoughts froze at the sight of a pair of armed police. They were ambling along the tree-lined road toward Dagmar and Mehmet-paying them no attention, grinning and bantering with each other.
But the machine pistols they carried weren’t banter. They were the voice of the new regime.
Maybe, she thought, these two weren’t supporters of the generals. Maybe they were just ordinary cops, not fascists or murderers. Maybe they hated the new government, the new restrictions, the new gangster paramilitaries who were strutting in the sun of the generals’ protection.
And maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were loathsome creeps who supported martial law and tortured suspects with cattle prods.
The point was that Dagmar couldn’t know what they were, nor could anyone else. She had no choice but to be afraid. It was the only rational option.
And the police would sense that. Even if they didn’t support the junta, they’d sense the fear and resentment of the population, and that would put the police and the people on different sides of a gulf that was going to get wider and wider as the situation went on.
The first thing that totalitarianism did, she thought, was equalize suspicion among the whole population. Anyone could be a suspect; anyone could be an informer; anyone could be a killer, in or out of uniform.
Mehmet protectively stepped in front of Dagmar as they walked, leaving the rest of the road to the police. The cops smiled and nodded as they passed, and Dagmar smiled and nodded back. She felt that they had to know that her gesture was clearly forced, clearly false.
The police passed and went back to their own conversation.
The tension trickled slowly out of Dagmar’s spine, the fear as it ebbed being replaced by anger.
Damn it, she thought. This was a lovely country. It wasn’t fair that she had to be afraid of the people who ran it.
Learned Chatter Scrambles Peen
Alaydin says:
6 Across. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus… WTF? Something after that?
Classicist says:
Imperator, maybe?
Alaydin says:
11 letters.
Hippolyte says:
“Ant Only Loses 1, Clips Her.”
Desi says:
Ant Only minus 1 is Antony. Was Mark Antony here?
Corporal Carrot says:
The Roman or the singer?
Alaydin says:
Elton J. was here.
Corporal Carrot says:
If you clip her, does that turn her into a he?
Hippolyte says:
7 ltrs.
Classicist says:
ARSINOE. Antony had Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe IV murdered in Ephesus. Right in the Artemisium.
Hippolyte says:
Thanks! Artemisium answrs 5 dn, btw.
Burcak says:
omg! 6 across! mithridates!
Classicist says:
How do you know?
Hippolyte says:
I’m standing right next to B’cak and looking at it. C Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus Mithridates. Inscribed on the biggest gate in town!
Classicist says:
There’s got to be a story behind that!
ReVerb says:
I’m standing next to a building marked “porneion.” Does that mean what I think it does?
Hanseatic says:
Hey! There’s a wreath on Arsinoe’s tomb! Semiramis Orga’s name is on the ribbon! I’m uploading a picture!
Culinary Institute of America, Initially
Dagmar and Mehmet walked through the gate of the ancient city into the parking lot, where tour buses and visitors’ cars were parked next to stands offering guidebooks, postcards, porcelain, soft drinks, Turkish delight, jewelry, apple tea, textiles, ice cream, hand-carved meerschaum pipes, brassware, and camel rides.
Dagmar hadn’t yet seen a camel in Turkey that didn’t have a tourist on it. But then she was here on the wrong day for the camel fighting, apparently another local attraction.
As Dagmar stepped into the parking lot she was immediately surrounded by hucksters offering their wares. Ten postcards one euro. Scarves genuine pashmina pashmina. Guidebook Ephesus, beautiful pictures. My place has everything but customers, please come in. Ten postcards one euro. Ten postcards one euro. Ten postcards…
Dagmar smiled at them all politely but otherwise didn’t respond. Not even to the sign that offered, with unusual frankness, GENUINE FAKE WATCHES.
One bus stood out from the others, with a telescoping antenna that towered as high as the nearby cypress trees. The antenna captured the live feed from Dagmar’s cameramen and relayed it to nearby Selcuk, where Lincoln’s technicians had installed a colossal IT structure that featured high-bandwidth connections to the Internet along with a satellite uplink. The rig provided many more baud than Dagmar would actually need, though she was grateful for the room to maneuver.
Dagmar knocked on the door, and the bus driver, Feroz, opened the door with a hiss of hydraulics. Dagmar bounced up into the interior, happy to be liberated from the hucksters and their polite insistence that she buy their tourist crap. Mehmet came aboard, and Dagmar made way for him as she looked around at a mobile headquarters that would have done Ernst Stavro Blofeld proud.
The side windows in the fore part of the bus had been blacked out. Flatscreens were everywhere, most of them carrying live feed from the cameras that were following the players around Ephesus. Others were turned to sites where gamers were meeting online and exchanging information, others to pages from the game that were due to receive updates.