More hours than I liked later, I arrived home, showered, took something for the headache threatening to devour my brain, and curled up on the sofa in blissful silence. Apparently, all it took to drain my excess energy was a long day of trying to get my head around game code. I felt like I'd been stampeded, dusted off, and then run over by a steamroller. Sleep was irresistible.
I jolted awake about an hour later when Nat charged through the front door, calling my name.
"You're asleep?" she asked, bouncing into the room.
"I was." I pushed myself upright, telling my pounding heart to stand down. It ignored me, and the combination of adrenaline and nap brain was disorienting. I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand, trying to reconnect to reality, then regretted it. The headache was still prowling my synapses, though better than it had been. Maybe I needed food.
"What time is it?" My stomach rumbled as though answering the question.
"Nine-ish," Nat chirped, all bounce and enthusiasm as she circled the room, depositing her bag and checking the comp screen for messages.
Definitely past dinnertime. "You're home late." Late and dressed in what were, for Nat, very conservative clothes. Practically a suit. Where had she been?
"I had an interview. At Righteous."
That snapped me into focus. "For the tester position?" Dumb question. The smile on her face told me all I needed to know.
"Yes." She twirled into the middle of the room. "I find out in a couple of days, but I think it went really well."
My stomach sank. I’d been hoping it would take longer for her to go through the process. Nat working for Righteous could only complicate things. And, despite Damon’s reassurances, I wasn't happy about her taking a job as a tester for a company whose testers were currently having bad things happen to them. But it was also a big deal for her, so I just had to ignore complicated for now. "Congrats."
She wrinkled her nose. "You don't sound very happy for me. You haven't sounded very happy about this from the start. What's wrong? Afraid I'll muscle in on you and Damon Cutie-pie Riley?"
Cutie-pie wasn't the term that sprang to mind when I thought of Damon. He was beyond cute. Another realm beyond. I might not want to do anything with that fact, but I couldn't ignore it. "Hardly." Though the thought of Nat batting her eyelids at him did make my teeth grind a little.
"Then what's wrong?"
I tried to unclench my jaw. I couldn't tell her, couldn't warn her about the other testers. I’d signed that damned agreement, and I had to trust that Damon wouldn't let anything happen to her. In fact, I'd make sure he looked out for her. In the meantime, I had to do something to ease the hurt in Nat's eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm just tired. Long day."
Her eyes went to my arm. "Your chip? It's working? Chill."
"Very. But tiring. You wouldn't believe the amount of code I looked at today." Acres of code. Or miles. My head hurt too much to figure out the correct measure.
"Anything interesting?"
"Nothing I can tell you if you want any chance of landing this job."
She pulled a face. "No chill, Mags."
"Tough." I yawned. "What do you say to pizza for dinner? Or did you already eat?"
"I ate. But there's leftovers in the fridge. You shouldn't be eating crap. You just had surgery. You need good food."
"My wrist's all healed." I held it up so she could see. "The doctor said so. So pizza isn't going to hurt."
The expression on Nat's face told me she wasn't convinced by my argument. She headed into the kitchen. "How do you want your tofu?" she yelled back at me.
"Wrapped inside a pizza?"
"Fat chance."
The next morning, I descended to the depths of my cubicle at Righteous only to find a message alert floating on my screen. Damon, requesting my presence in his office.
"I've been summoned," I said to Eli. "Back soon."
I allowed myself a short detour to one of the cafeterias for a syncaf fix. Despite my exhaustion last night, I hadn't slept well. Which was my fault for napping. Napping never helped. My headache had taken another two doses of painkillers to vanquish, and, despite the drugs, it was hard to find a position that didn't make my wrist uncomfortable. Worst of all, every time I'd started to drift off, I'd thought I'd heard someone calling my name and jolted awake again.
"Here I am," I said when Cat ushered me into Damon's office. "What's up?" I tried not to feel happy to see him but couldn't stop the silly teenage glow that warmed my stomach.
He leaned back in his chair and stretched, like he'd already been working for hours already. Maybe he had. His greenish-blue shirt was wrinkled. The rumpled look suited him.
"I wanted a status report," he said.
Irritation zapped my glow as a familiar tension squeezed the muscles up my back. "I sent you one last night. If you want another one, then you have to give me time to do some more work first."
One side of his mouth curled. "Actually, I meant on you. How are you feeling?" He eyed the takeout cup in my hand.
Whoops. Maybe I should have asked for a triple shot. Then I might not have jumped to conclusions. Still, something like the glow returned at his concern, though it was immediately chased by confusion. He'd been there when the doctor had cleared me, so why was he asking how I was? Maybe he wasn't happy with the report I'd sent him.
"All chill," I lied, then drained the last of the syncaf. I needed my wits about me. "No problems."
"Nat told you about her interview?"
She’s Nat now? I nodded, pasting on a smile. "She's very excited."
"You're not? My HR manager says she's an excellent candidate."
I nailed him with a look. "That's not exactly what I meant. You have a game that's doing weird things. Why should I be happy that my best friend wants to volunteer to be potential cannon fodder?"
His shoulders squared and he gave me a look as annoyed as mine. "Nothing's going to happen to her. That's why I hired you."
If sheer force of will could guarantee her safety, then he'd be right. Unfortunately, I didn't believe the universe would organize everything so it turned out the way Damon Riley wanted.
"Can't you put off hiring her? Tell her you're all full up until the next game needs testing?" My grip tightened on my takeout cup, squishing it slightly. I hated myself for asking—Nat would kill me if she ever found out.
Damon shook his head. "Truth is we need testers. With things held up, once we sort this problem, we're going to need more of them than ever to complete everything in our usual timeframe."
Damn. I tried to think of another argument. Nothing. "So wait until we've fixed the problem, and then hire her."
"She has to complete our training before she can move onto testing, so she needs to start soon. Now. Don't worry, all the training is done on an earlier version. No one has had any problems after playing it."
Well, I'd tried. But his tone didn't exactly suggest there was any wriggle room. "Was there anything else?"
"Not at the moment. Keep me updated." He reached for a pile of datachips on his desk and slotted one into his screen.
"As soon as I know anything, you'll know," I promised as I stood.
He looked back up at me, eyes serious. "Don't push too hard. You're still healing from the surgery."
"You're not paying me to take it easy."
"No, but I'm not paying you to blow out your interface either."
Blow out my . . . ? I squinted at the tangle of gold and silver embedded in my wrist. "Can that even happen?"
One sharp nod. "So I'm told. We've never had it happen here. Don't be the first."
That was one order I was happy to follow. Now that I had the chip, even though I'd barely scratched the surface of what it could do, I didn't want to blow it up by being stupid.
"Yes, boss." I flicked him a salute and headed back to my cubicle.
"Hey, Maggie." Eli and Benji were hanging out by one of the testing chairs, scarfing bagels spread with something that smelled strongly of onions from a platter balanced on the chair’s arm.
I joined them. "Mind if I have one of those?" I needed to line my stomach so I could keep up the caffeine today. And there was no way they could eat all the food still on the platter between them.
"Sure," Eli said.
I reached for a bagel and my chip glinted in the light.
Benji's face lit up. He hadn't seen me yesterday. "You got a chip? Chill." Today his hair was blue and the face paint orange and red. It clashed. "Less wobbles with a chip." He jerked his head toward the chair. "You wanna try it out?"
Tempting. The game had been pretty damn good without a chip, so it would have to be amazing with one. But then I remembered the wobbles, my head twinging in pained recollection. And I remembered Damon's warning not to overdo things. "I think I'd better leave it a few more days."
Benji shrugged. "Best to get back on the horse when you take a header."
"Only if you need to keep riding," I shot back. "I don't really game much."
Eli actually dropped his bagel. Both of them stared at me like I'd just uttered something blasphemous.
Benji recovered first, blue hair flying around his face as he shook his head sadly. "Snap, Eli. We gotta work on her. She needs to learn the ride."
Eli nodded. "True. But she's right. Fix the horse first. Then we can worry about her piloting. Slick her right down."
Gamer jargon. Just what I didn't need.
"Eli's right," I said, hoping to kill the conversation. "So if you'll excuse me, I have a bug to hunt."
"Gonna need a very small swat," Benji muttered. "We've been looking hard."
I gave him my best pacifying smile. "I know. You guys do good work. It might not be a bug, per se."
"Then what?"
"I'll know that when I see it." I picked up my bagel and carried it back to my work station. Once I was settled, I clicked my chip into place on the dock.
:CONTACT:
I tried not to feel too relieved as Eli and Benji went away and nice straightforward code flowed up to surround me.
By midmorning, my headache started to creep back, an ever-tightening band of iron clamping my head from temple to temple. I decided another hit of caffeine—particularly when Eli had mentioned that some of the bigger cafeterias had real coffee—couldn't hurt.
But when I found the place, I spotted Nat at one of the tables talking to a guy just as cute and blond as she was. Damn. If she was back so quickly, they must've already offered her a test slot.
I pasted a smile on my face as I reached their table. "Do you come here often?" I said, hoping a joke would cover my lack of enthusiasm.
Nat's answering beam made me feel like a rat—a bona fide plague-carrying rat.
"I will be from now on," she said proudly. "Maggie, this is Ajax. He heads one of the testing teams. My team.” She beamed. “Ajax, this is Maggie. She's consulting here on some secret project for your boss."
I held out my hand. "Nice to meet you."
His handshake was strong. "You too. You're working on the wings issue?" He tilted his head at Nat slightly.
Wings. Right. Angels, as in Archangel. I guess as a head tester, he would know about the problems. But I wasn't going to confirm or deny without Damon's approval. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."
Nat snorted. "Sheesh. He works here, Mags."
I shrugged an apology.
Ajax smiled. "The D-man got your signature on one of those NDAs, huh?"
I nodded, then slanted a grin at Nat. "Have you signed one yet?"
"I'm doing paperwork with HR next," Nat said. "They wanted Ajax to give me a tour before I start my training."
"You survived the experience, I see. She didn't start drooling over the gear or anything, did she?" I eyed Ajax with consideration. Knowing Nat, the gaming rigs weren't the only things at risk of being drooled on.
Nat blushed. "Maggie!"
Aha. Score one for me. She definitely thought Ajax was cute. Nat was kickass in VR but tended toward stumbly around real-life guys she had the hots for. This could be entertaining.
"No more than usual for a newbie," Ajax said with a smile that suggested he thought Nat was pretty chill herself. "Only minor flooding."
I laughed. "I was headed to the coffee bar. Can I get you guys anything?"
Ajax looked at his watch. "I have a meeting. But, Nat, you have time to hang here with Maggie. You can find your way back to HR, right?"
I watched Nat look from me to him. Then she shook her head. "I'm not sure. Is it on your way?"
He looked pleased. "Sure."
"Rain check?" Nat said to me with a tiny smile. I got her “sorry, I'm going with the hottie” message pretty clearly. After sixteen years of friendship, we didn't need the words.
I tried not to smirk as I waved her after Ajax.
The coffee loosened my headache a bit. Enough that I could contemplate looking at a screen again without wincing at least. I returned to my cubicle, where I spent another frustrating day fruitlessly scanning through code, not seeing anything that made my spidey-sense tingle.
Even more frustrating was the fact that I had to keep taking breaks every few hours because of my head. The pain was beginning to bug me. I didn't know whether it was some strange adjustment process to using the chip or a bigger problem. The doctor’s ream of instructions hadn’t included anything about headaches. A sensible person would ask, of course but frankly, I didn’t want to find out.
By the time I logged off for the day, I was just as exhausted as the day before. So, of course, I arrived home to find Nat wearing her favorite club gear and boiling over with excitement after her first day of training at Righteous. Apparently it had gone well.
"Get changed, we're going out," she said, doing a little boogie to one of her ancient tunes in the middle of the living room. Her silica-silk dress let off tiny firework bursts of light with each hip shake.
My head throbbed at the thought of going anywhere near a club. I needed quiet and sleep. "Nat, I really—"
"Rule One," she said before I could finish.
"But—"
"No buts. This is definitely a Rule One occasion."
I pulled a face. "When we made up Rule One, we were thirteen."
She did another shimmy. "And it's worked well since then. Go on, get changed."
Going out was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn't fight Rule One. It had gotten us through heartbreaks, car accidents, all-night cramming sessions, and numerous other disasters. Rule One meant “drop everything and be my best friend.” Once it was invoked, there was no other choice but to go along with whatever the other person wanted.
Looked like I was heading out.
"No gaming," I said, watching Nat dance. "I'm still supposed to take it easy with the chip."
"Sure," she agreed. "I've played today anyway. They showed me Archangel." She raised her arms over her head like wings. "Talk about chill. Tonight I want to celebrate. Dancing. And Jammers."
Jammers were worse than Insomniacs. Perfect. The thought of booze made my head hurt even more. "I was a moron when I was thirteen," I muttered, but went to change.
I was wrong about the Jammers. Maybe it was the vodka, or the red lightning rum, but after Thai food and several cocktails strong enough to kill a horse, my head felt just fine.
"I told you this would be fun," Nat said to me as we pushed our way through to the bar at our third club of the evening.
I grinned. "Your round, I believe." Someone trod on my foot as we finally reached the bar, but in my current state, it didn't really hurt.
She nodded and pointed to the rear of the club. "Go look for a table."
The crowd didn't make it any easier to retreat than it had been to advance. As I dove through a gap between groups, I caught a whiff of incense and had to fight off an instinctive shudder, suddenly regretting that we hadn’t chosen a game club. Part of the reason I hung out with Nat and her friends at places like Decker's was I rarely had to come across a witch.
No witches meant no reminders of Sara. Or magic.
The smell caught my throat, and my mother's face, intent over a glass bowl full of dark liquid, rose in my mind.
I shoved the memory back and moved away from the scent, heading for the back of the room where there were less people. With a bit of quick footwork, I nabbed the last open table.
Luckily, Nat appeared with the drinks almost as soon as I sat down.
I downed half of mine in a gulp. "It's packed here. Are you sure you don't want to go to Decker's?" I couldn't smell anything other than too many different perfumes and too many bodies close together in this part of the club, but I couldn't stop myself scanning the crowd, wondering where the witch might be. Of course, it might’ve just been a drunken clubgoer who liked incense, but that particular blend had been familiar. Not the sort of thing that was easy to find.
Nat shook her head, clinking glasses with me. "You said no gaming."
"Yeah, but Rule One, remember? Your pick."
"I'm good." She smiled as she looked around the room. "This will be fun."
I smiled weakly. "If that's what you want."
She peered at me over the glass. "You okay?"
"Just tired." I'd mostly kept my feelings about magic to myself. Nat knew I didn't talk about my mother, but like me, she lived her life with tech, so the subject of magic rarely came up.
"Dr. Nat prescribes more Jammers. Then you'll sleep like a baby." Her gaze grew more intense for a moment. "How is the sleep lately?"
"I'm doing okay."
"Nightmares?" Nat had schlepped with me through multiple rounds of sleep therapy, normal therapy, hypnosis, and anything else the doctors thought might help chase away the monsters that stalked my nights. She knew most of it hadn't worked. She just held my hand on the really bad nights and never complained if I spent half the night pacing the apartment or slept half the day. For some reason, the nightmares came less during the day.
"Nothing out of the ordinary." In fact, better than normal, but I wasn't banking on that lasting.
"Sure?" She reached across the table and squeezed my arm.
I put my hand over hers. "Sure. Now what were you saying about drinks?"
In the morning, I regretted the Jammers. But at least I had an excuse for taking painkillers.
Eli and Benji took one look at me when I arrived and left me alone. Benji came back briefly to silently put a couple of cans of Afterburn on my desk. It didn't help much.
Wednesday and Thursday passed in a blur of repetition. Read code. Get headache. Take drugs. Read more code. Go home. Listen to Nat chatter about testing and Ajax and plans for her team’s next bout. Get some broken sleep. In between, I got to drag my butt up to Damon's office and give him status reports that boiled down to “I got nothing.”
Fun times.
Friday morning started in much the same way. Cat called down to my desk before I'd even finished logging on to say that Damon wanted to see me.
I hated to admit it, but as annoying as it was to report that I didn't have anything to tell him, I did look forward to the time I spent with the man.
He was easy to talk to when he wasn't playing his big boss man role. He did interested and attentive well. And he was smart. His brain and the way it worked fascinated me. His success hadn't been luck; it had been talent and hard work. I'd always been a bit of a sucker for smart.
And, as my hormones kept reminding me, he was exceedingly easy on the eye.
Not that I was going to let him know I thought so.
Nope.
I still had some sense.
Maybe, I amended as he turned to me with one of those brain-melting grins when I walked into his office.
"Morning, Maggie," he said. His smile went down a couple of watts in voltage as he studied my face. "You look tired. I told you not to push yourself."
"I'm not, I promise." Liar, liar. "Some idiot called my apartment at five this morning. Wrong number. But I couldn't get back to sleep."
He didn't look convinced. "Take an hour or so in one of the nap pods if you need to catch up."
The thought of crawling back to bed was nearly irresistible. But just changing location wasn't necessarily going to help me sleep, and I had no desire to risk having one of my nightmares—toned down though they'd been recently—and waking screaming in the middle of Righteous. That was pretty much guaranteed to get back to Damon.
I was trying to prove I was fine, not weird. So no on-the-job naps for me. Just more of his excellent coffee. "I will if I need to." I nodded at the silver jug on the tray near his desk. "Is that coffee?"
He shook his head. "Juice. A blend Ellen told me about. Good for energy levels. Lots of veggies and vitamins. Want some?" His voice held a challenge.
Veggie juice? Even Nat had given up trying to make me drink veggie juice. Was Damon another health nut?
For a moment I hoped it might be true. It would make him far more resistible. Then I remembered him chowing down on a roast beef sandwich and a donut the day I'd had the wobbles. I was pretty sure he was squarely in the omnivore camp like me.
So this was some sort of test. "Thanks, but I already ate." My stomach rumbled in protest at the lie and my lack of breakfast.
"You should try it." He poured a glass. Dark greenish brown and sludgy, it looked like it was made from compost, not vegetables. Possibly rancid compost.
I tried not to shudder when he held it out. "Honestly, I couldn't deprive you."
"Oh, there's plenty for both of us." His arm didn't move.
I arched an eyebrow. "Then you first."
He lifted the glass and drained it without a flicker of expression, then poured a fresh one and passed it to me.
I tried not to look too appalled. "Can I get it to go?"
He perched on the edge of his desk, arms folded. "You have somewhere more important to be than your employer's office?"
I would have if I drank that stuff. Like the bathroom. Throwing up.
I looked down at the glass and sighed. "Really, I've eaten already."
"Drink or go visit Doc Chen."
That I definitely didn't want to do. Any test Ellen ran on me would show the painkillers I'd been downing, and then I'd have to admit why I was taking them. Not a pretty scenario. Uglier, in fact, than the green sludge.
He had me. And part of me couldn't help being impressed at just how easily he'd won. Smart. Sexy. Competent. Funny. Maybe it was just as well that he was trying to force-feed me green sludge; otherwise, I'd forget why I was trying so hard not to like him too much.
"This is harassment," I muttered, then started drinking.
After surviving the sludge and convincing Damon I really was fine, I made it back downstairs with a quick detour to a cafeteria for yet another caffeine fix and something to take the taste of the sludge away.
"Maggie D," Benji greeted me as I came through the doors juggling coffee and pastries. "You up for a run with the angel later?"
I smiled noncommittally and kept walking. I'd been avoiding the guys' attempts to get me hooked back into the game all week, but I was running out of excuses and willpower. As much as I reminded myself that curiosity killed the cat, I really wanted to try again.
"Yeah, Maggie." Eli blocked my path, with Trisha, the third programmer on our team, not far behind him. "You still haven't tried your chip on something that can really show you what it can do. Aren't you curious?"
I backed toward my cubicle, shaking my head. "Right now I'm more curious about what I'm being paid to do."
Eli pulled a face. "It's Friday. Friday afternoon, we usually try out new stuff with the testers anyway. It's kind of a tradition."
"But we don't have new stuff," I pointed out.
"You have a new chip," he countered. "And there are some new testers. Your friend Nat will be there, I'm sure." His cheeks reddened. I'd introduced him to Nat at lunch on Wednesday, and he seemed a bit smitten. Unfortunately, Nat seemed seriously smitten with Ajax.
"Let me see how things go this morning," I said with a shrug.
Behind Eli, Trista said, "Yeah, Eli, give her a break. She's probably worried about getting the wobbles in front of everyone again."
I ignored the dig. So far, Trista and I didn't exactly get along. She was small, slim, and redheaded in a delicately pretty way that made her look like she should be decorating the top of a Christmas tree or something. For some reason, she hadn't taken the news of what I'd been hired to do well. I tried to limit our interactions as much as possible and keep things professional. Hopefully she'd figure out that I wasn't after her job and back off eventually.
I smiled tightly at her. "I'm sure I'll be fine. But like I said, I have to work. So we’ll see."
Eli shrugged. "Chill for now. But you're riding the angel soon."
:CONTACT:
I focused on the file icon as the now familiar sensation of the chip interface flowed over me. Cool. Clear somehow, like I'd taken a half step away from the emotional side of me. Not a bad thing at the moment.
:INITIATE FILE EXTRACTION:
The icon shimmered and blurred away, and code filled my vision. I set it to scrolling with a gesture, letting the lines flicker past, trying to absorb the meaning without reading, without consciousness.
Trying to feel if anything was wrong.
Line after line. Page after page. All too soon, my head started to throb. I steeled myself against the sensation, determined not to give up so easily, trying to lose myself in the flow of information.
It worked for a while, but the headache grew more determined until I felt like someone was pounding against my brain with a spiked fist with each breath.
Nausea rose.
I was going to have to disengage.
Again.
Frustration dug the fingers of my right hand into the arm of the game chair. That hurt too, as if the headache was making a move to take over my entire nervous system.
It was too much. Heat swept through me, and I started to mouth the words to stop the sequence when something in the code caught my attention.
:PAUSE:
The page froze, black text floating in the air. I tried to make sense of the words and symbols, but I couldn't see anything unusual. Nothing but the feeling that there was something strange about them. I'd learned to trust that feeling, but I needed help. Which gave me the excuse I needed to disconnect before the flares of pain nailing my eyeballs to the wall melted my brain entirely.
:ENGAGE:
:SELECT SECTION:
:TAG:
:CLOSE FILE:
:DISENGAGE:
I took a shuddering breath as the interface vanished. The pain throbbed once, even more viciously, then subsided a little.
I risked opening my eyes.
Bad move.
The light made me want to retch. I clenched my teeth against the sensation. I was not going to barf. I wasn't going to let anyone know I was still having trouble with the interface. Not when I might finally be getting somewhere.
I sucked air through my nose and waited for a minute or so before cracking my eyes just a fraction.
This time the pain was bearable. I leaned forward slowly, fumbling for the bottle of painkillers stashed in my purse.
The lid went flying in my haste, and I didn't bother with water, just choked down two tabs and put my head down on the desk, praying no one would wander past until the drugs kicked in.
As they spread through my system, the headache retreated to a manageable level, and I managed to sit up and chug half a bottle of water.
The liquid helped. I sipped more, fighting a running battle with my conscience as to when I was going to fess up to Damon or Doc Ellen about my little problem.
Part of me voted for never.
The rest of me wasn't so sure.
Damon wasn't going to react well if I kept hiding this from him and he eventually found out. It might just cost me this job.
Then again, so might honesty at this point.
By the time I'd drained the bottle completely, I decided to file the conversation in the “too hard” basket for now.
Because finally, after days of chasing my tail, I had the tiniest hint of a lead.
I pulled up the file fragment I'd saved. Projected on the perfectly normal screen in front of me, it didn't make any more sense than it had in the interface.
I pushed to my feet, ignoring the distinctly wobbly feeling in my knees, and went to visit Eli.
He wasn't at his cubicle, but I tracked him down near his favorite testing chair. Trista was hooked into the system, and images from the game—mostly of a female angel flying over the forest, endless trees below, and a blinding blue sky above—filled the huge screen.
Eli was tapping notes into a datapad with a look of focused determination, but he raised his head as I approached. "Hey, Maggie."
"Eli. I need some help with something."
His gaze sharpened. For once he didn't look like a seventeen-year-old game-freak but more like the twenty-something-year-old programming machine he was. "You found something?"
"I'm not sure. I need to know what some code I found does."
"Sure thing." He pressed a button on the back of the chair. "Trista, hang on. I have to go, but I'll send Benji over."
The angel paused midflight, then started doing lazy loop-the-loops in the sky. Watching the motion didn't make my stomach feel any easier.
"Are you okay? You look pale," Eli asked as we reached my cubicle.
"Just tired," I lied. Time for distraction. "This piece of code." I called up the snippet and increased the screen resolution. "What does it do?"
Eli frowned at the screen for a moment, but then his face cleared. "That's just part of the static."
"Static?" I had no idea what he was talking about.
"Nobody told you?"
I shook my head. "No. What is it?"
"Something Damon figured out back in the first game. It's kind of a distraction for the brain. For the logic centers that might not accept the VR."
Clear as mud. "How does it work?"
"This code produces a thread of junk. Well, not quite junk. Deliberate gibberish sort of. We use long sequences of numbers or letters, kind of like a DNA sequence or Pi. It's projected with the game, below conscious level—"
"Subliminal? Isn't that kind of dicey?" There'd been a whole hoo-ha about subliminals in the last election campaign when it came out that a candidate was using the tech to solicit contributions. The regulations had tightened considerably since then. All publicly broadcast subliminals had to be blockable, and most people screened them routinely. I wondered if gamers did the same. And how you might be able to use the code to influence someone if not.
"We got approval. There's no actual information in there. It's not going to make you crave a Superburger or give all your money to Riley Arts or anything. It just seems to deepen the experience. We haven't figured out why exactly yet. But we refine the filter with every new game."
It sounded harmless enough, but my gut told me I had something. "Okay. Does this static interact with anything else?"
"Everything, in a way. It feeds into the overall simulation, with the graphics and sound and sensory stuff. But it's not new. We've used static from the beginning. It's one of the things that makes our games more immersive."
"Have any of the other elements changed?"
Eli nodded. "Of course. All the generating engines get refined with every new game."
"Even the static generator?"
"Only minor changes. It's pretty simple code."
Simple at Righteous didn't necessarily fit anyone else's definition. "Can you show me how it talks to the other systems? And find me the code from a previous game as well?"
He shrugged. "Sure. Give me twenty minutes or so to finish with Trista, and then I'll get what you need."