Chapter 1

The Anomaly

 

 

Angela Harding, Director of World Simulation Development for Xperion, Inc., watched the team leads trickle into the conference room with coffee cups and laptops in hand for the Monday morning incident review meeting. The mostly young, scruffy-looking lot, indistinguishable from the college kids streaming into the classrooms of nearby Stanford University, was responsible for keeping the company’s wildly popular Metaverse simulations running for its hundreds of millions of customers, a task that often meant long hours and sleepless nights, especially over the weekends when usage peaked. They took their seats, SIM Devs, short for simulation developers, on one side of the table—Angela’s side—and simulation operators, the Ops Team, on the other. The Ops Team director’s chair was unoccupied. Maxwell Morris, as usual, was running late. They would hold the meeting for him, and as she always did, Angela would hold her tongue.

She was never late, no matter how little sleep she managed after the all-night troubleshooting sessions that had become more frequent with the company’s success. Angela was always the first one in the room and even the first one in the office, except for Marcus and Jasmine Day, of course. It was an unwritten rule—no one arrived before the company’s founding couple. The lights in their corner office windows, Marcus’s on the operations floor and Jasmine’s, or Jazz as she was better known, on the development floor, were the first lit before dawn and the last extinguished after sunset. Even on the rare occasions when Angela arrived before them, she would sit in her car and wait for the lights in the founder’s windows to signal it was acceptable for her to enter. Arriving before the Days would be like beating them at something, and the Days did not take losing well.

At 8:07, Maxwell Morris stepped through the door and after making his way around the table to acknowledge and exchange greetings with the attendees, he took his seat opposite Angela and flashed his knee-weakening smile. A tall, athletic man with gray-frosted blond hair and skin tanned and weathered from hours navigating his sailboat up and down the coast, Maxwell was as handsome as he was brilliant. He was also a company institution, the first employee not to have the last name of Day.

Angela returned his smile, all irritation with his tardiness gone. The son of a bitch was better looking at forty-five than he had been when she’d first met him ten years ago. It pained her to admit she was still as attracted to him today as she had been when she was a starry-eyed intern. Ridiculous, she thought, still pining for this man after years of nothing more than daydreams and lingering glances—hers, not his. Maxwell preferred men, boys really, and he always sailed with one or two twenty-something, hard-bodied deckhands.

“Okay, I think we have everyone. Let’s get started,” she announced and waited for all side conversations to stop. When the room was silent, she turned her attention back to Maxwell. “It’s all yours, Em.”

Maxwell thanked her, then addressed the room. “As everyone is well aware, the IPO is on track.” His smile turned into a wide grin. “I am looking at a roomful of soon-to-be millionaires. I expect to hear no more grumbling about working for worthless stock options.” Laughter and the claps from high fives filled the room. “I don’t have to tell you how important it is that we have no outages; nothing that can cause bad press before our ticker symbol hits the NASDAQ. I know your teams are all putting in long hours, but we must do even more to keep the SIMs online and performing.” Maxwell turned to the woman on his right. “Okay, Sangeeta, take us through the list of the weekend’s issues.” He turned his attention back to the room. “For every item, I want to know the resolution plan and timeline.”

Sangeeta tapped on her laptop, and the list of problems, crises, and near-calamities that had occurred with the company’s simulation systems since Friday evening filled the large monitors hanging on the walls above Angela and Maxwell. The review process was routine, and Sangeeta ran quickly through each item, calling on different individuals seated at the table to answer Angela’s and Maxwell’s questions. Hardware and system configuration issues were addressed by the Ops Team, while software bugs, including a nasty one that caused the new soccer tournament SIM to suffer a full-blown world crash and reset, were handled by Angela’s SIM Dev Team. It took Sangeeta forty minutes to go through every item on her list.

“That’s all of them,” she announced.

“Not too bad,” Maxwell said. “Overall, it seems like we had a relatively quiet weekend.” He fixed his gaze on a nervous looking Asian man. “Except the Soccer World crash. Is your team on top of this, Yen? We’re just beginning to see usage growth in this SIM. Hate to interrupt that. Especially now. You know? With all our financial hopes and dreams hanging in the balance.”

Yen nodded, his anxious eyes looking at Angela for help.

“We got it, Em,” Angela said. “Leave Yen alone. His team will have the issue resolved by the end of the week.”

Yen coughed and appeared even more nervous by her promise.

“Good enough for me, Angela.” Maxwell winked at Yen. “Anything else, Sangeeta?”

“Yes, sir. We have the other thing to discuss. The anomaly.”

At that moment, Jasmine Day appeared in the doorway and, like a curious echo, repeated, “The anomaly?” Every head turned to face her as if pulled by the same string.

“Good morning, Jazz,” Angela said, feeling her pulse quicken. Hers would not be the only heart in the room beating faster. A surprise visit from Jasmine sent adrenaline pumping through the veins of all who knew her.

Xperion’s cofounder scanned the meeting attendees before acknowledging Angela with a nod. She was a compact woman with dark eyes and long, jet-black hair that flowed down her back like liquid ebony. Age turned some women soft, but not Jazz. At fifty-two, she was as muscular and hard as twenty years ago when she had won the San Francisco marathon. She glided into the room with just the hint of a smile dimpling her high cheek bones and a hungry look in her eyes. Dressed all in gray and circling the table, she reminded Angela of a shark who had come upon a pod of seals in the bay and was looking for the tastiest one for her meal. The analogy was not unwarranted, as Jasmine Day was indeed a predator, though now part of an endangered species.

She and her husband, Marcus, were some of the last of their kind, the Californian Tech Entrepreneur, a species once prolific in the coastal plain nestled between the Santa Cruz and Diablo mountains, now all but extinct, lost to a drought like so much of the California paradise, not one of water, though, but one of something just as precious—venture capital. Like the wildlife that fled the aridification of the Southwest for lusher northern environs, the technical talent that had driven the innovations that created Silicon Valley had mass migrated to the Zhongguancun technology hub in Beijing, where investment money still flowed in torrents. This irony could not be lost on Jazz, whose parents had fled communist China for the opportunities of the American capitalist system, only to see the roles reversed a generation later with Americans now fleeing a stagnant entitlement system for the vibrance of the conquest-driven Chinese model.

“The anomaly,” Jazz prompted, coming to a stop behind Angela’s chair.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sangeeta replied.

“We’re talking about a player in the Land of Might and Magic that appears to have hacked the simulation,” Maxwell explained.

“The SIM has been hacked,” the gravelly voice of Jonathan Heinz, the company’s head of cybersecurity, responded. “There’s no doubt about it. Whoever this person is, they’ve found a way past our authentication systems and are either exploiting holes in our code or creating new ones.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” a senior development lead on Angela’s team named Rituraj objected. “This mythical hacker would have to get through the SIM security layers, and there’s no way to do that without leaving a trace. We’d see something in the logs, and we don’t.”

“He’s doing it,” Jonathan assured.

“You have no proof,” Rituraj shot back.

“Okay, okay.” Angela raised her hands to end the squabble. “What we know is there appears to be a character in the simulation who is bypassing the leveling rules, making himself...”

“Immortal,” Maxwell finished her sentence.

“Yes,” she said. “And by doing so, he’s wreaking havoc with other players. He’s killing everything he encounters.”

Jazz folded her arms across her chest and asked, “Why can’t we just remove the character?”

“Because we can’t see him,” Jonathan replied. “He’s figured out a way to evade the logging systems. It’s crazy.” Jonathan glanced around the room. “It’s got to be someone inside.” His eyes met Angela’s. “Someone on the SIM Dev Team.”

Rituraj slammed the lid on his laptop. “No way. We would know.”

“If we can’t see this anomaly, how do we know it exists?” Jazz asked with a hint of irritation in her tone.

Sangeeta tapped on her keyboard and a new list appeared on the monitors. “Customer complaints. Lots of them.” She read from the list: “‘My level forty character just got trashed by some fucking gray monster. He cut the heads off three of us. All high-level characters. No normal player could do that. We couldn’t damage him at all. It’s bullshit. We’re talking a lot of money to build these characters. Fuck you, LMM. I’m not coming back, and neither are my friends.’”

She read another one just like it and was about to read a third when Maxwell raised his hand to stop her. “We get the idea, Sangeeta. So far this hacker,” he looked at Rituraj, “if that is what he is, is just cheating.” He turned to Jonathan. “What’s your take on the security risk?”

Jonathan grimaced. “Could be huge. If he can get into the main simulation engines, what’s stopping him from getting into user profiles? Or financials?”

“Layers and layers of encrypted access controls,” Rituraj practically shouted.

Jonathan looked at Maxwell and then at Angela while appearing to avoid Jazz’s gaze. “If he figures out a way to shut down the simulation, he could hold us hostage.”

“You mean demand a ransom?” Angela asked.

“Yeah, probably a big one.”

Jazz made a loud “shush” sound, ending the speculation. She leaned on the table and slowly made eye contact with each of the team members. “LMM is our most popular SIM,” she growled. “Over fifty million users.”

Their attention upon her rapt, everyone nodded.

“You all understand what would happen to our IPO if LMM goes off-line, even for just a day, right? The Wall Street Journal and The China Financial Times would tear us apart.” She slapped the table, causing everyone to jump. “We’d list 75 percent lower than we’ve planned. That’s quite a pay cut—one I’m not prepared to accept, and neither should any of you.”

No one spoke; no one even breathed. Maxwell raised his eyebrows and smiled at Angela. His unspoken words were clear: she’s your boss, you deal with her.

Angela swallowed and turned in her chair to face the agitated cofounder. “Finding the anomaly is our top priority.”

“I should hope so.” Jazz took a deep breath and let it out slow—calming herself or preparing to strike, Angela did not know which. The predatory smile returned. “I’m sure your people are doing everything they can.” She glared at Rituraj. “Sometimes, though, we have to find help from those who can do more.”

Angela prayed Rituraj would remain silent and closed her eyes when he did not.

“No one knows the LMM simulation better than my people,” Rituraj snapped. “We just need time.”

Jazz’s smile turned dangerous. She had found her seal. “There is no time. I demand results immediately. I won’t tolerate complacency or mediocrity.” She stabbed her index finger into the table with a thud. “This valley is full of the rotting carcasses of mediocre companies.” Thud. “Xperion won’t be one of them.” Thud. “If the anomaly interferes with the IPO, I will reevaluate my technical leads, starting with you, Rituraj.” She spat his name. Then, Jazz turned her wrath on Angela. “I want you in my office in ten minutes,” she said and stormed out, leaving all but one seal relieved.