Sheentastic Voyage

by Gary D. Snyder

Chapter 3:

Libby awkwardly manipulated the buttons and joystick on her controller, watching the reactions of her player on the viewscreen as she did so. The results were far from impressive. Despite Libby's best efforts the uncoordinated actions of her figure gave the impression that it was suffering from alcoholic intoxication, epilepsy, or perhaps a combination of the two. Sheen's ongoing comments didn't improve things.

"Okay, Libby," he said, "spin around in circles a few more times. That's the way! Now miss the door completely, run into that wall next to it, and fall into the pit. Good job! Next –"

Libby gave Sheen a backhanded slap across his shoulder. "Shut up!" she said angrily. "I told you I didn't like video games. You could be trying to help me instead of making snide comments about what I'm doing."

Sheen looked as though he had been unjustly accused. "I tried to tell you," he replied. "To get through a door you move the joystick forward and simultaneously depress the right button and fire button. To climb you move the joystick forward and simultaneously depress the left and right button. To jump you do the same thing except you hit the left and right buttons in sequence instead of together. To pivot in place –"

Libby dropped her controller in disgust. "That's the whole problem. There are so many buttons and controls on this thing that I can't remember what does what. Can't they make the controls on this thing any simpler?"

"If they did, it wouldn't be as realistic. What do you want? A video game where a character just moves back and forth?"

Libby's voice was surly. "I never said I wanted a video game at all."

That was true and Sheen knew it. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "Look, I'll tell you what. How about if I go ahead and you just follow behind me and just imitate whatever I do?"

"I don't know, Sheen," she replied. "I appreciate your wanting to share this with me, but the truth is I'm just not any good at it. Maybe you should just do this alone."

"But you can't quit now! Not when we're so close!" Sheen's voice sounded more manic than usual. "How can you just throw away everything we've accomplished so far?"

"Sheen," Libby pointed out, "we're not even on Level 1 yet. We're in the Training Round. All we've really done is to type in our names so far."

"It still took a while to do that," Sheen answered weakly.

"Only because it took you ten minutes to come up with 'LUVMUNKY' for my player name." Libby gave Sheen an annoyed look. "I'm still pretty cranked about that, by the way."

"Hey, we could only use 8 characters!" Sheen protested. "I had to shorten my name as well!"

Libby casually tossed it off. "Like Stair Master was such a great name to begin with."

"That's Studmeister!" Sheen shot back. "Can I help it if I hit the 'R' instead of the 'D' and it came out 'STRMSTR'?" He began grumbling to himself. "Who in their right mind would put the 'R' next to the 'D' on a keyboard?"

"Whatever." Sheen started to say something else but Libby cut him short. "Seriously, Sheen, I don't think this was such a great idea. Let's just call it off, okay?" Upon seeing Sheen's crestfallen appearance she added, "We could go to the Candy Bar and share a banana split."

Sheen looked a little happier. "Well, I guess I could go for a banana split…split," he said.

Libby smiled. "Okay, then. Shut the game off and let's go. Just remember you owe me a mix CD, though."

"Done and done," Sheen answered. "Vox!" he called as he stood up to leave with Libby. "End simulation!"

Vox's response surprised both of them. "Unable to terminate process."

"What?" was all Sheen could say.

"Process has usurped primary system control. Unable to terminate while process is active."

"What does that mean?" asked Libby.

Sheen shook his head, looking worried. "I don't know. But it doesn't sound good." Libby pulled out her cell phone and began dialing. Sheen's expression changed from one of worry to one of alarm. "Who are you calling?" he asked.

"Jimmy," Libby answered.

Before Libby could finish dialing Sheen grabbed the phone from her and shut it off. "No," he said intently as Libby stared at him in surprise. "Let's not do that."

"Why not?"

"Because maybe there's nothing wrong. Maybe this is all perfectly normal. We don't want to bother Jimmy with something that might actually be nothing." Sheen looked nervously around him as though he sensed unseen demons closing in on him. "There's probably no problem at all. I'm sure that we can fix this ourselves."

"If this is isn't a problem, then why are you talking about fixing it?" Libby offered.

Sheen's answer was as bizarre as Libby's question had been logical. "Yes, exactly." After thinking a few moments he began pressing buttons on Libby's phone. "Let me call the people who wrote the program. They'll know what's going on." He put the phone to his ear and muttered, "Please be there, please be there, please be there…" He suddenly snapped to attention as someone answered. "Hello? Is this Ultimax Development Systems?"

Libby scowled. "They'd better be in my calling area," she warned.

Sheen paid her no attention. "Listen, I'm playtesting the Ultra Lord Ultimate Final Victory game for X Station and I'm having a problem with it." There was a pause as Sheen listened to the voice at the other end. "Yes, I had that problem initially but got around that. The problem is that I can't quit the program." There was another pause. "Really?" Sheen's face became unusually thoughtful as he listened to the voice for some time. "Okay, well, suppose someone was smart enough to build something that could run it while still being stupid enough to actually do it. What then?" Sheen's expression became indignant. "Well, I sure don't see anything funny about it." He listened again. "Uh-huh…uh-huh…I see. Well, okay. Thanks for the information. If anything else comes up, I'll let you know. 'Bye." He deactivate the phone and handed it back to Libby without a word.

"Well?" Libby demanded.

Sheen's voice was almost casual. "We're doomed. So, ready to hit the Candy Bar?"

Libby grabbed the front of Sheen's shirt with both hands and dragged him forward so that his face was only inches from hers. "What did they say?" she shouted.

"Oh, that." He appeared to search for an answer. "Well, they said that the game was a new type of game that they were developing for the next generation of X Station and that they didn't really expect anyone to be able to run it as a game. They just wanted to see if the technology was compatible with the current platform hardware."

This didn't satisfy Libby. "And?"

"Well, the new technology features artificial intelligence and something called genetic process modeling that allows the game to become more challenging and realistic as the system provides more memory and faster processing. That's how they planned for the game to never become obsolete. But they said that nothing available today that was advanced enough to let it to go rogue so there weren't any safeguards built into it. The system limitations would keep the game from getting out of control. But…"

Libby's grip loosened and Sheen straightened again. "But you told Vox to give it whatever it needed." She looked again at Sheen. "So what does that mean?"

"Well, it means that the program is now pretty much in control of Jimmy's system. That's why Vox can't shut it down."

"Can it be shut down?" Libby wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"Well, the person I spoke to said there were two ways. One way is to just shut the X Station off."

"But we're not running it on an X Station. We're running it on Vox's system. To do that we'd have to shut off Vox." Libby looked around uncomfortably. "And Vox controls most of the stuff in Jimmy's lab. The heating…the lighting…his experiments…" Her eye lit on the reactor. "And his reactor. Even if we knew how to shut Vox off, what would happen to the reactor? Would it explode or something?"

Sheen acted as though it were an unfair question. "Hey, I'm a playtester, not a nuclear scientist."

Libby shook her head. "Okay, that way is definitely out. What's the second way?"

"To keep on playing until we finish." Sheen sat back down in the front of the console and picked up his controller.

Libby looked at her controller with distaste. "Can we go back to considering the reactor thing again?"

Sheen pulled her down onto the seat next to him. "No. Definitely not. We need to help Ultra Lord achieve his primary objective to end the simulation."

This told Libby nothing, "And what is that?"

"Beats me. Vox!" he called. "What is Ultra Lord's primary objective?"

Vox seemed to take longer than usual to respond to the inquiry, but when the answer appeared on the viewscreen neither Sheen nor Libby were happy to see it. The words were simple, yet the message they formed seemed somehow sinister in its simplicity:

TO WIN THE GAME

End of Chapter 3

Author's Notes:

One of my favorite films of the '80s is John Badham's movie WarGames. As well as launching the careers of Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy it raised the question of what happens if the technology intended to serve us instead takes control. The last line of this chapter is taken directly from the film and is one of the two (in my opinion) classic lines from the movie.

Page 4 of 4