Anthony, Piers - Killobyte

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Killobyte by Piers AnthonyPiers Anthony
Killobyte
CONTENTS
1 — NOVICE
2 — BAAL
3 — PRISONER
4 — HERO
5 — POLICEMAN
6 — PRINCESS
7 — SORCERER
8 — ONSET
9 — INTRUSION
10 — HELP
11 — PHREAK
12 — BEIRUT
13 — ISRAELI
14 — PATCH
15 — POTPOURRI
16 — PURSUIT
17 — SHOWDOWN
18 — WHEELS
Author's Note
0001
one
NOVICE
"Draw, tenderfoot, or I'll plug you where you stand!" Walter Toland blinked.
There before him stood a gunslinger straight out of false western American
history: broad cowboy hat, leg chaps, low-slung holster and all. The man's right
hand hovered near his six-shooter. Could he be serious?
"Look, mister," Walter started. "I don't know what you think you're—"
The man's hand dived for his weapon. He was serious! Walter threw himself to the
side, behind a barrel of nails.
The gun fired. Glass shattered behind Walter. He scrambled on hands and knees,
trying to get away from the vicinity without exposing himself.
"You lily-livered coward!" the gunslinger shouted. "I'll rout you out and lay
you away! Stand up and fight like a man!" The gun boomed again, and there was
the thunk of a bullet hitting the barrel.
Walter cowered behind the barrels. But there were only three of them, and
nothing beyond. They hid him, but he was trapped. What could he do?
"So you want it in the ass!" the gunslinger said, his voice rich with contempt.
There was the sound of his footsteps crunching the dirt as he approached the
barrels.
And that was just about where he'd get it, too, Walter realized, because the man
was coming toward his rear. Frantically he cast about.
Then he discovered that he too was in cowboy dress—and there was a gun at his
hip!
"All right, you sniveling snake!" the gunslinger said as his shadow fell beside
the barrels. "You're done for."
Walter yanked his gun out of his holster and pointed it at the shadow. Then the
body of the man appeared.
Walter pulled the trigger. The gun fired. It bucked in his hand, and smoke
puffed from its muzzle.
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The gunslinger stiffened. Daylight showed through a hole in his belly. He fell
forward.
Walter scrambled out of the way, so as not to be pinned under the man. He didn't
quite make it; the gunslinger's head struck his foot. It was curiously light.
In fact it wasn't a head at all. It was cardboard, flat and blank on back. The
whole man was cardboard!
A sign appeared in the air about six feet away. Walter stared at it, for the
moment not comprehending its nature or message.
PLAYER: Walter Toland LEVEL: Novice
SCORE: 1 OPTIONS
Then it registered. He was a player in a game! A computer game. He had finally
gotten the equipment to enter the most sophisticated class of games, the ones
that put the whole person in, in effect. The helmet, the gloves, the special
connections—it had happened so suddenly and completely and compellingly that for
the moment he had forgotten the reality and just lived the scene.
And what a scene it had been! It had seemed completely real, as if he had been
physically dumped in this little western set and made to fend for himself. Sink
or swim.
What would have happened if the gunslinger had plugged him? Then he would have
been out of the scene, with a score of 0. A real humiliation for one who had
once been pretty sharp on the primitive computer games, the kind where things
danced on the screen and had to be shot down before they got too close. Or where
things had to be collected to use to penetrate to the finish. But that had been
before the accident.
He shut that out and studied the sign. It identified him as the player. Fine.
His level was Novice. Okay, fair enough; this was a new game to him, and he was
just starting. And his score was 1. That must be one kill. But what were the
options? How did he invoke them?
Then the sign faded out, leaving only the scene. Walter got up, dusted himself
off, holstered his gun, then lifted the cardboard. It was a mock figure, painted
on the front with the clothing, gun, and menacing face. There was a hole in the
right side of its abdomen, where his bullet had torn through.
Walter shook his head. How could he have been fooled by that? A cardboard
cutout! Yet it had spoken to him, challenged him, and advanced on him. It had
shot at him, too! There was the broken glass of the store window, and there was
the slug in the side of the keg of nails. Those had been real bullets, not
cardboard ones.
That reminded him of his own weapon. The gunslinger's gun was now cardboard, but
his own was not. He drew it again and looked at it. It was a solid six-shooter,
probably of authentic design; he knew modern guns, but was no expert in ancient
ones. Whoever had crafted this game could readily have done the necessary
research. So this much, at least, was probably real. Within the framework of the
game.
Something else bothered him. Since when did a bullet in the gut kill instantly?
If that man had been alive, he would not have died; he would have staggered back
in agony. So this was a game thing too: any score on the torso was fatal, by
definition. It didn't have to be through the heart. Novice-level marksmanship.
He reholstered the gun, set the cardboard figure down, and walked across the
street. The far side turned out to be a painted backdrop: tavern, horse hitches,
and scenery. Even the sun: a bright yellow disk against the blue background. He
touched it, and it was room temperature. Absolutely unreal.
Then what had cast the shadow, when the gunslinger had approached the barrels?
He walked back to where he had started. Behind the broken window was a dark
wall; there was no chamber there. Now he saw that directly behind his original
location was a door. The store was a façade of wood and glass, but the door was
real. It was in a sturdy frame, and it had a brass knob. He must have stepped
through it to enter this scene, though he didn't remember doing it.
So was this also the way to leave the scene? In which case, would he be out of
the game with a low score? He wasn't ready to quit, yet. It was obvious that he
had a lot to learn about this game, and already he was feeling the fascination
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of it. It was a lot more intriguing than his outside reality.
So if he didn't use the door, how should he move on? There had to be a way to
encounter new challenges and rack up higher scores. But he couldn't do it
against cardboard figures.
He walked down the street to the left of his original stance. It ended twenty
feet along, in another painted backdrop: a picture of a street continuing
through the town.
He tried the other direction, which he thought of as south. This ended
similarly, twenty feet away, in a painting of a few more houses and then the
open country beyond town.
He was in a chamber about forty feet long and twenty feet across. He was unable
to touch the top, but ten feet seemed reasonable. Wait, he could check it. He
took a nail from the keg and threw it up into the sky. It struck almost
immediately, scratching the paint of a white cloud. Ten feet had been a good
guess.
So it seemed that there was nothing more to do here. Unless he wanted to smash
down the scenery, he would have to use the door. He had made his score, and this
scene was done.
Still, he did not quite trust that door. It might be a decoy, or the exit for a
quitter. Like the escape key on a computer keyboard: hit it when you're in over
your head and just want to get out. The challenge was to figure out how to
control his destiny within the game. How to get into the next scene.
He walked across the street again and put his hands on the painting of the
tavern. He tried to shove it to one side or the other, but it didn't give.
He went to the kegs of nails and tried to lift one. It was either too heavy to
budge, or bolted to the ground. He tried to twist it, as if it were a big knob,
but that didn't work either. So he started taking out the nails, in case there
could be something useful hiding among them. But the nails turned out to be only
an inch deep; they were another kind of façade. Below was just a panel, painted
with more nails.
This was curious. Why hadn't the kegs become cardboard too? Since this was all a
game set, it should have been easy to do that. The nails must have been left in
their "real" state deliberately. So that a novice like him could use them to
throw at the ceiling and scratch the cloud? That didn't seem sufficient.
What else offered? There had to be something. Some devious key to the next step.
If he could only find it. He cursed himself for being rusty on games. It was
probably obvious; he just didn't have the right mind-set. He didn't see the
simple way out of the locked chamber.
Then he heard something. The ground was shuddering. He looked around—and there
in the distance, where the street left the town and wandered into the prairie,
were shapes. Big ones. Many of them.
In fact those were cattle—and they were stampeding. Already they were funnelling
into the town and thundering down the street, directly toward him. A cloud of
dust was roiling up behind them. He had to get out of the way or he would be
trampled in seconds.
Trampled? By animals in a picture?
But the gunslinger had fired real bullets at him.
Those cattle looked excruciatingly real. So did the setting, at the moment. In
fact the cutout of the gunslinger now looked like a body—and there was a pool of
blood beside it. He heard music from the tavern across the street.
He took another nail and threw it at the sky. It flew high, arcing well below
the cloud, and landed in the street. The bright sun cast shadows.
The set had come alive again.
The first steer outdistanced his companions and bore down on Walter. The thing
looked dangerously real. The hide was flecked with dust and foam, and gouts of
dust leaped from the striking hooves.
Walter drew his gun and aimed at the animal. But he hesitated. That was merely
the first of dozens of steers, and he had only five bullets left. Or so he
hoped; he hadn't checked the remaining chambers of his six-gun. Even if any hit
on the body instantly felled the animal, five was all he could take out before
he got trampled. The gun could not save him, this time.
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Meanwhile the creature was looming frighteningly close and large. It was a
juggernaut. A picture? No way! This was real.
Walter dived for the door. He felt the wind stirred by the first animal as he
grabbed the knob and turned. He yanked; the door opened; he threw himself
through.
As he left the scene, he thought of something, too late. He could have taken
those loose nails and scattered them across the street. Or maybe driven them
through boards and set them out with their points projecting upward. That well
might have stopped the stampede. Maybe such a ploy wouldn't work well in real
life, but he suspected that by game rules it would. It explained why the nails
had been left solid in an otherwise painted scene: to allow the player to
prepare for the next challenge.
He was in the next scene. It was a jungle. Literally. The air was dark and
steamy, and the trunks of tall trees were shrouded by clinging vines.
There was a growl. Walter looked—and there was a tiger crouching as it oriented
on him.
He whirled, lurching back through the doorway. But there was no doorway there.
Only a solid tree. He could not retreat. Once he had used the door, he had
committed himself irrevocably, it seemed. Unless he had thought to do something
like jamming a nail into the crack to stop the door from closing behind him.
The tiger pounced. Walter hurled himself to the side, as he had before when
attacked by the gunman. The tiger landed where he had been, snarled, and turned,
reorienting. The thing was massive, and certainly capable of killing him.
Walter grabbed for his six-shooter. But now it was a snub-nosed rifle. He
wrenched up the muzzle as the tiger sprang again, and fired.
The tiger screamed with pain and dropped to the ground. The landing was light:
it was a paper tiger, literally. With a hole through one shoulder. The sign
appeared:
PLAYER: Walter Toland LEVEL: Novice
SCORE: 2 OPTIONS
No big surprise there; he had scored again. He was still a novice, and still
didn't know how to invoke the options. He had ascertained that the door did not
lead out of the game, but to the next setting. And that the scene turned unreal
when the action was done. And real again when more action came. He had had about
ten minutes between actions, so wasn't unduly rushed, but when an action did
start, he had to act within seconds. The rules were coming clear. It seemed like
a well-designed game.
He got up and inspected the new setting. The trees turned out to be cardboard
mockups, the vines painted on them. The tree behind him was painted on a
wall—and there was now a door in it. Yet all of it had seemed real before the
kill. Surely it had been real, in the context of the game. For the game could do
that. It could animate its settings and creatures, making them almost as
tangible as reality. That was the appeal of this class of game. Its realism.
What was known as virtual reality.
Walter's living body was sitting in a wheelchair, with a sophisticated helmet on
its head. Goggles and earphones connected to it, providing three-dimensional
sight and sound, and wires were attached to skin patches at strategic locations.
There was even limited odor emitted from a noseplug. Gloves and boots picked up
the attempted motions of the extremities, so that his game body moved as he
willed it to. It was, literally, like stepping into another world.
It had taken him a long time to arrange this, because this class of equipment
was expensive. In the interim whole new classes of computer games had evolved,
prospered, and faded back into relative oblivion. It didn't matter; they
remained the most popular genre available. Because they represented vicarious
experience which was so close to direct experience that the distinction blurred.
He had heard that there were sex programs that some claimed were better than the
real thing.
But sex was not his object, here. Sex was gone from his life. He wanted
diversion. So his first game was a hard-hitting adventure. He hadn't even
bothered to read the instruction manual; those things were always way too big
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and obscure to make much sense. It was more fun just to wade in and learn by
doing.
So he had ten minutes before another challenge came for him, in this jungle
setting. He intended to use it, because he didn't want to take the easy route,
door to door. He wanted to discover the more devious aspects of the program.
Because this was the one game he had for rental, this week, and he wanted to
make the most of it.
He lifted the paper tiger and used it to prod the ceiling. Still ten feet. He
felt the walls on all sides. Still a twenty-by-forty-foot chamber, though the
painted walls made it look larger. It would have been nice to check it while the
full animation was on, to see whether then he could really travel miles through
it. It seemed impossible, yet this was not reality, but an emulation that
approximated a chosen situation. So the game could make a jungle seem to extend
for miles, if it was programmed to—and perhaps it was. He wanted to find out how
to explore the parts of the jungle that the makers of the game didn't intend
players to reach. Maybe he could do that, if he could just find the way to
extend the setting while it was in its "real" phase.
He found a number of sticks on the ground, and realized that these must have
been fallen branches when it was animate. Was there a reason for them to be
here? Just as those loose nails in the top of the keg, in the western scene,
might have been used to stop the stampeding cattle? Maybe these sticks had
something to do with the next challenge.
He picked one up and hefted it. It was actually a fairly solid length, possibly
serviceable as an aid to hiking, about six feet long. Others were shorter, but
thicker. He also saw several lengths of cord strewn across the mock trees;
probably those were vines during animation. Not much use at the moment, though.
Something changed. The trees became real, and the cord did indeed become vine.
The set was coming alive again! Sooner than the other one had, unless his
perception of time was distorted. There was a rustle. He looked, and saw a
snake. A big one. A python, slithering toward him. No doubt of it: the next
challenge was starting.
He backed away from the creature—only to realize that one of the cords had
become a serpent in a tree, now lifting its head to strike at him. He ducked,
avoiding it, but more were appearing on the ground. He recognized rattlesnakes,
water moccasins, and what were probably exotic pit vipers. If any of them bit
him, he would be dead, and out of the game.
Walter still held the stick, which was now a black staff. He used it to fend off
an advancing cobra.
He had to get out of here. But he had foolishly allowed himself to be caught
away from the door. The space between him and it was filling almost solidly with
a river of snakes. All of them surely poisonous.
A tiny snake tried to score on his toe. Walter knocked it on the head, and it
hissed and fell back. What had it been, during the null period? A piece of
string? If he had gathered up that string and tied it in a knot, could he have
stopped the snakes before they got started? He had foolishly frittered away his
time, and now was in trouble.
Three more snakes slithered purposefully toward him. He knocked them back with
the staff. But there were too many; soon they would overwhelm him. He was sure
that just one bite would wipe him out, by the rules of the game. But how could
he reach the door without stepping on the myriads of snakes which now blocked
the way?
There was rustling behind him, and to the sides. Then Walter got a notion. He
pointed the staff ahead, took two running steps, and jammed the staff into the
ground, heedless of what it might land on. He heaved himself up in a crude pole
vault, passing over the massed snakes. He crashed into the door, scrambled to
wrench it open, and fell through to whatever lay beyond.
He found himself in a car, speeding at about a hundred miles an hour. He had no
idea where it was going.
Then a brick wall loomed ahead. He was on a dead-end drive. He stepped on the
brakes—and his foot plunged to the floor. The brakes were gone!
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But the wall did not extend beyond the pavement. He could veer off the road,
crash through the wooden barriers, and roll to a stop. He turned the wheel.
The wheel spun in his hand. The steering was also out. This car had really been
pied.
But Walter had been in trouble before on the highway, and his reflexes were
fast. He used the clutch and jammed the gearshift into low. Thank God racing
cars didn't use automatic shift! The low gear made the motor drag on the wheels,
and the car slowed. But not enough; he would still hit the wall. So he grabbed
for the handbrake, and that slowed the vehicle further. He did reach the wall,
but only nudged it.
The seat collapsed under him. The cardboard could not sustain his weight. Then
the sign appeared: SCORE: 3. He had gotten through another challenge.
He pushed aside the cardboard side of the car as the sign faded, and climbed to
his feet outside. The wall was the only solid part of this set, and now he saw
the door in it: his entry to the next scene. But again he didn't take it; he
wanted to explore while he could, to see what other avenues offered.
He was in another chamber, of course, with the scenery all around painted on,
including the blue sky above. There was no way out except the door. Maybe this
was a straight-line game, with no real choices along the way. If so, it wasn't
much. The effects were marvelous, and he loved having the full use of his body,
instead of being confined to his wheelchair. But largely mindless adventure
would not entertain him long. He remembered the three or four types of conflict,
from a long-ago class on literature: man against nature, man against man, man
against society. And maybe man against himself. This was really man against
nature, even when it was against a man, because the gunslinger had been
programmed for attack, not interaction. The car had been much the same as a
beast; riding a tiger would have been similar. So this was pretty simple stuff,
and pretty readily handled. The right reflexes were all that was required.
So what would the next challenge be here? Not a speeding car, because the only
way it could threaten him was to try to squish him against the wall, and it
would smash itself in the process. Even if it tried, he could simply step off
the road to the side, avoiding it. In any event, he still had several minutes to
prepare.
He checked the painted chamber, but it was tight. If there were secret buttons
to push, he didn't find them. He went through the cardboard car, but there was
nothing special there either. That was an interesting device, turning things to
cardboard once the challenge was done. But the novelty of it was already wearing
thin. The computer could do whatever it wanted, and realism was as easy to
program as artificiality, with the equipment available. Which suggested
indifferent programming. He hoped that this wasn't the limit of what the game
had to offer.
Because Walter was looking for high-powered diversion. He had what amounted to
no life at all, in the real world. His legs had dwindled to ugly sticks; he kept
them constantly covered not for warmth but for shame. Once he had been athletic.
Now he couldn't walk at all, and even sitting up would have been a pain except
for his intricate harness. The doctor, with an attempt at humor that hadn't been
effective, had informed him that they had patched up the lower half of his body
so that it worked, but not to put any weight on it. So a game like this was the
only place he could move normally. He could walk, here, because the boots picked
up the feeble efforts of his legs to move, and translated them to directions for
the game-figure legs. Obviously his game figure didn't have to do much
balancing, because it remained erect without his effort. That was nice.
But what was the point of poking around a closed painted chamber? As virtual
reality went, this was a virtual prison.
There was a honk in the distance. Walter looked, and saw that his own car was
now alive again: metal instead of cardboard. The next threat was coming already!
It had hardly been five minutes.
In the distance a shape loomed, growing rapidly larger. It was a semitrailer
truck. It was so massive, and coming with such velocity, that it was evident it
would not be able to stop if it wanted to. It would smash him and his car and
the wall, and hurtle on through regardless. So much for his notion of safety.
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He ran to the side, and banged into the painted wall. He had forgotten that the
scenery wasn't real. He couldn't step off the road—and now he saw that the truck
filled the entire space. He could not avoid it. The damned set was coming only
partly alive: the part that would kill him.
He dived for the door. As he wrenched it open, he realized that he had missed a
bet: he could have thrown himself to the pavement in the center, and let the
truck pass over him. There had to be enough clearance, in a vehicle that size.
He could have bested it.
But he was already passing through the door. He saw the grille of the truck
looming close.
Then he was in a square roped enclosure. He was wearing sneakers and white
shorts. Big soft padded gloves were on his hands. Boxing gloves.
Uh-oh. He caught his balance and peered ahead. Just in time to see the other
boxer closing in on him. The one in black shorts.
The other threw a roundhouse-right punch. Walter wanted to duck, but didn't have
the time. He wanted to draw back, but his inertia was wrong. So he did the only
thing he could: he threw himself forward, into the other boxer. A clinch was the
first refuge of the incompetent. He wrapped his arms around the man and hung on.
"Get off me, jerk!" the man sputtered. "Stand up and fight like a man."
But Walter knew that if he did that, he would get knocked down or out. Because
he had discovered in the course of his job training that he was not cut out to
be a boxer. He had learned how to duck a punch, and that was his most effective
ploy. What he didn't know about this sport would fill an encyclopedia.
"One. Two. Three. Four." There was no visible referee, but Walter heard the
count, and knew that he had better stop clinching in a hurry, or be penalized.
So he broke and staggered back, holding his arms up to try to protect his head
and upper torso.
It wasn't much good. The other boxer was boring in, battering his shoulders and
sides. Walter didn't feel pain, exactly, but he did feel the impacts, and knew
he couldn't protect himself long. Each time the other scored on his arm, the arm
dropped a bit lower, and Walter couldn't bring it up again. It seemed that the
game had ways of forcing the issue. His face would soon be open to attack.
So defense was no proper ploy. He had to take the offense. Even if he wasn't any
good at it.
He aimed a right at the other man's face. But the man simply moved aside, then
caught him on the ribs with a solid counter-punch. Walter realized that he had
laid himself open, and it had been an elementary matter to capitalize on it.
But maybe he could use his brain. The other man was a figment of the game
program. He would probably react the same way to the same situation.
So Walter set himself and aimed the same punch again. But this time he was
planning on counterpunching the counterpunch. He swung, the other countered and
scored on the ribs again—and Walter let fly at the man's face with all the power
his left fist could muster.
He scored. His white glove flattened the man's nose and rocked his head back.
The man fell—and it was a cardboard cutout that landed on the floor. In life a
single punch would have been unlikely to end the fight, but this was the game.
The sign appeared. SCORE: 4. OPTIONS.
Suddenly Walter got a notion. He poked a finger at the sign, the cardboard glove
sloughing off. He touched OPTIONS.
The sign changed. Now it read:
NOVICE OPTIONS:
HELP
FORMAT
REPLAY
QUIT
Walter feared that the sign would disappear in five seconds, as before, so he
quickly touched the FORMAT option.
The screen changed again. Now it offered him three of what it considered to be
formatting options: VELOCITY, SUBSTANCE, and BOX. What did those mean? Again, he
was afraid to wait, so he touched BOX.
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New words appeared: SIZE LOCATION DURATION ITEMS.
Aha! It was referring to the information box. Since he wanted time to consider,
he touched DURATION.
The new words were what he wanted. DURATION: SECONDS 0-60 MINUTES 1-10 PERMANENT
DEFAULT 5 SECONDS.
So he had noted. He touched PERMANENT.
The prior information appeared. This time he touched SIZE. This enabled him to
make the box smaller, so it wouldn't obscure his view of the action. LOCATION
let him move it to a corner of the chamber. ITEMS let him specify what he wanted
it to cover, of the choices he had already seen. He decided to leave that alone
for the time being.
But now the next challenge was upon him, only about two minutes after the boxer.
The game was squeezing him harder, and it seemed that postponement was not one
of his options. Unless VELOCITY covered it. But right now he had to focus on the
threat.
This turned out to be a martial artist in a white jacket and trousers, tied with
a black belt. Karate, probably. Walter knew just enough about it to know that
black was the master level. He didn't want to mess with this man!
The man faced him and made a little bow with his head, not taking his eyes off
Walter. Walter turned around and found the door he knew would be there. He
turned the handle and stepped through.
He was high up on a chilly mountain. He was in mountain-climbing gear, with
spiked boots and heavy gloves. A rope was anchored to a heavy harness around his
body, the other end connected to a piton just above him. His fingers were
clinging to a tiny ledge. Below him the mountain sloped steeply, until it
converted into a vertical drop-off. He was evidently making his laborious way
across one of the bad spots, inching toward a larger ledge that would allow him
to walk, carefully.
A stiff gust of wind tugged at his body. The fingerhold ledge gave way, and that
jogged his boots loose. Walter slid abruptly down the face of the mountain, his
horror making the slide seem slower than it was.
Then the safety rope went taut. He hung there, just above the drop-off,
scrambling for purchase. His heart was thudding in his ears. This was almost too
much realism!
He felt a vibration in the rope. He looked up—and saw that the anchor piton was
starting to give way. It wasn't quite tight, and was nudging down. In a moment
his weight would pull it out of the rock, and that would be all.
Walter looked wildly around. There was no other person near. The rock within
reach was a flat face, offering no purchase at all. All he could do was watch
the piton slowly change position.
Maybe he could hammer in another piton! He felt around his body, but found only
a hammer. If he had any other pitons, he couldn't find them in the few seconds
he had.
Then he had a better notion. He braced his feet against the steeply slanting
rock, closed his gloved hands about the rope, and walked himself up the face.
The effort was easier than it would have been in life, as the game responded to
the muscular twitches of his real body. In a moment he was up within reach of
the piton.
He drew his hammer, set himself, and pounded the piton back into the rock. In a
moment it was firm again, and he was in no danger of falling. Now he had only to
find new handholds, so that he could complete his traverse and put his feet on
the ledge ahead.
But there turned out to be no need. The mountain became cardboard, and the box
in the corner said SCORE: 5.
It now appeared that the drop-off was only the painted floor. It had certainly
looked realistic a moment ago! And where had that wind come from?
Walter made his way to the ledge and sat on it. He couldn't follow it on around
the mountain, because that too was a painted scene. So he reached for the score
box and touched OPTIONS. He might as well make use of his time to learn anything
that might improve his chances in the next challenge.
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He didn't want to quit yet, and he certainly didn't want to replay that wild
swing above the abyss. That left HELP and FORMAT. He didn't want to ask for help
yet either; that seemed too much like cheating. So he touched FORMAT, and then
VELOCITY.
It turned out that he could indeed adjust the time between challenges. He could
make the second challenge in a setting come immediately, or he could delay it
the maximum: ten minutes. The default was ten minutes for the first challenge,
eight for the second, and so on down to two for the fifth. So he hadn't been
imagining the shortened time!
Then the mountain shuddered. The abyss below took on the semblance of reality.
The second threat was upon him.
Walter looked up. Something was stirring up there. An avalanche was starting!
Already the first small stones were plunging past, bouncing off the slope and
disappearing beyond the dropoff.
He didn't hesitate. He grabbed for the door in the mountain and wedged himself
through before the main part of the avalanche passed.
This time he was in a comfortable waiting room. He looked nervously around,
alert for the next threat, but saw none. Instead the opposite wall became a
screen.
CONGRATULATIONS, NOVICE! YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE CHALLENGES AND ARE NOW A
JOURNEYMAN PLAYER. YOUR NAME HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE ROSTER OF PLAYERS ELIGIBLE
FOR THIS LEVEL.
A list of names appeared. There was a considerable number, filling several
columns of the screen.
Walter hadn't anticipated this. He had thought this was a stand-alone game, but
evidently it was multiple-player, with each computer serving as a separate
input. He should have realized that before, because it required a modem: a phone
connection to the central game authority. Well, that was all right, though it
did seem to make for some crowding.
He looked at the list. He recognized none of the names. His was the last. The
next to last was BAAL CURRAN. Funny name! Walter wondered what the man looked
like. Not that it mattered, since the player would probably appear in the game
in the image the computer dictated, rather than the real one.
WHEN YOU ARE READY TO PLAY, TOUCH YOUR NAME.
Good enough. Walter touched his name.
0010
two
BAAL
Baal Curran stood in the Journeyman anteroom, reflecting on the experience she
had just had. By all accounts, Killobyte was a fantastic game, but her
experience made her doubtful. So it had threats coming at her thick and fast; so
what? All computer games did that, unless they were the dull intellectual kind.
So that was nothing new. Still, that scene with the shark coming at her in the
water had really frightened her, and as for the jump from the airplane when the
parachute didn't open...
It also had good realism. But it was just one of a class of games a person could
play with the helmet and wrappings. Virtual reality, they called it: making you
feel you were right there in the scene. That aspect was pretty good—only then it
turned everything to cardboard, so you knew it wasn't real and never had been.
Of course you could turn off the cardboard with the OPTION FORMAT SUBSTANCE,
making it into sponge rubber or gray blankets or something. But what was the
point? It was still dreadfully unreal.
However, it was supposed to get better as it went. Of course they had the Novice
stage simple and pretty obvious, so that new players like her could learn the
ropes without getting killed. The Journeyman stage was supposed to be a
considerable step up in sophistication. So maybe that would give her a better
taste of what she really wanted: death.
Well, not death, exactly, but the experience of dying. Death didn't seem so bad,
but she was afraid of dying, so she wanted to know more about it. Not the pain
of it, because she had a just-about painless way, but the larger experience of
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it. The feeling, the finality, the wholeness—she needed to get a better glimpse
of that, before making the commitment.
She wasn't suicidal, really. It was just that death just sort of seemed like
maybe the best alternative, now. Oh, she knew her folks wouldn't agree, and
maybe they were right. Here she was, eighteen, a high school graduate with good
grades and a good record, maybe bound for college in a year or so if she decided
to, with supportive parents who were still married to each other. She was an
only child, even, so hadn't had to fight with siblings. Half the kids of the
world would be satisfied to trade places with her, except for one thing.
But what a thing that was. It had ruined her life. She had thought she had it
under control, emotionally as well as physically. She had thought she had a life
ahead. Until it fell apart.
But it was pointless to let herself be diverted by that right now. She had a
game to play, and with luck it would distract her from what she couldn't change.
Baal gazed at the array of basic characters. They were naked and uniformly gray,
as if carved from nondescript stone. There was True Blue, who was the all-around
good guy, and Doodoo, the all-around nothing. In between was Joe Blow, who was,
appropriately, in between. There were also three female types, similarly spread:
Royal Lady, Lone Woman, and Bad Girl.
Obviously subtlety wasn't the strong point of this level. Well, she still
appreciated having some choice of character, since there had been none in the
Novice level. She would take the top male character. Maybe the time would come
when she could settle for an in-between, but right now she needed the top of the
line. And she didn't like being female right now, and it was all right to take
the other sex. That kept her anonymous, pretty much, even in the context of the
game. Anonymity was what she needed. Because she was ashamed of what she was in
real life.
She selected True Blue. He was a little statue, and when she touched him, a
screen appeared behind him. The first choice was COLOR. She touched that, and a
color palette appeared, ranging from white through shades of yellow and brown to
black. She considered, then touched it at light brown. In real life she couldn't
choose her color; this could be interesting.
The statue turned brown. That did make it more intriguing.
The next choice was HAIR. She touched it, and a more limited palette appeared.
She extended her hand to make her choice—and a bell rang.
For a moment she was disoriented. Then she recognized it. The doorbell! Way back
in real life. She was alone in the house, so she would have to exit and attend
to it.
She reached to OPTIONS on her regular screen, and when the subscreen appeared
she touched QUIT, and then SAVE. She would return to this at the same place as
soon as she could.
The scene went dark. It took her a few seconds to reorient. It wasn't just that
she was now out of the game and back in the real world, it was that the helmet
and gloves and boots locked into place during the game, effectively anchoring
the player, so he couldn't react to things in the game and wave his limbs
wildly, hurting himself. The game paused while processing a player out, getting
the setting saved.
Then the fastenings released, and she was able to draw her hands out of the
gloves. She reached up and lifted the helmet from her head. The earphones and
goggles and chin cup retracted as she did, letting the sound and light of
reality in. She still wore the huge boots and attachments to her body, but those
could remain. Now she wished she had decided to play the game while her folks
were home, so that one of them could have answered the door. But she had been so
eager to start that she hadn't waited. Anyway, this was a rental system, so she
had to use it while she could. She could never have afforded to buy anything
like this!
She touched the door intercom. "Yes?" she inquired.
"Delivery for B. Curran."
"Delivery? I didn't order anything."
"From Carto Enterprises. The order date is six weeks ago."
Now she remembered. She had ordered something over a month ago, to be delivered
file:///F|/rah/Piers%20Anthony/Killobyte.txt (10 of 164) [1/23/03 5:24:02 PM]
摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Piers%20Anthony/Killobyte.txtKillobytebyPiersAnthonyPiersAnthonyKillobyteCONTENTS1—NOVICE2—BAAL3—PRISONER4—HERO5—POLICEMAN6—PRINCESS7—SORCERER8—ONSET9—INTRUSION10—HELP11—PHREAK12—BEIRUT13—ISRAELI14—PATCH15—POTPOURRI16—PURSUIT17—SHOWDOWN18—WHEELSAuthor'sNote0001oneNOVICE"Draw,tenderfoo...

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