Bella opened her eyes and sat up sharply. She looked around.
"Welcome back," greeted her Jasper.
He was sitting on a chair next to her cot. He held a notebook and a pencil. It seemed like he was in a middle of work when Bella woke.
She noticed that it was quiet all around. Too quiet.
"Where's everybody?" she asked.
"Edward's on patrol and Alice is in her day job. As for Rose and Emmett, well..."
He pointed with his thumb. Rose and Emmett were lying on the floor on beach mats.
"They are turning!" she exclaimed. "When? Why?"
"Well, about a day after you started, the rest of us had a meeting. The bottom line was that you and Edward being able to do more work wasn't going to help us much unless Emmett and Rose were similarly upgraded. And since your change was progressing the same way as Edward's was..."
"Huh," murmured Bella as she processed this. "I didn't think that Rose was willing to give her human life up. Think about what she's going to miss out on now."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Like having children. Isn't that what most women want? Not me, obviously."
Jasper stared back at her.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," he replied finally. "Don't women need, you know, a boyfriend for that kind of things? And you know, do all sorts of unsavory stuff with that boyfriend to get, you know, encumbered?"
"Point taken. What about you and Alice? Are you planning something similar?"
"Well, someone needs to stay human, at least for now. Also, the two of us don't really need to change. Rose can handle texturing as well, Alice will just provide artworks. And me, I'm kind of afraid that the change might impair my imagination."
"True."
"However, if there are people out there who want us dead, then we might have no choice."
There was a moment of silence.
"So, do you want to get to work right away?" asked Jasper.
"It's not like I'm going to forget what I want to implement. I'll get to it later, after I discuss it with the rest of you. However, I want to try something else. Give me a differential equation example. A hard one."
Jasper furrowed his eyebrows but he did as he was asked. He went over to a computer and searched for: difficult differential equations examples. Once he found something particularly scary, he moved the window down so the solution wasn't visible.
"Here," he announced and turned the monitor.
"That's easy," snorted Bella and told him the solution straight from her head.
"Wow. I've never really learned how to solve these."
Because they didn't know when was Edward coming back, they started to discus Bella's DEVS idea.
"Here's the thing," argued Jasper. "You can't make a high fidelity simulation of a world for this kind of a game. Because in the real world, you've got the chaos theory and the butterfly effect and other things like that. Can you imagine a tiny action of a player completely overturning the course of events somewhere else? We can't possibly implement such a thing because it's infeasible from a technical point of view."
"Do you see butterfly effects with your naked eyes in your everyday life?" shot Bella back. "Maybe I misspoke before my change - DEVS is not a simulator in the way you understand it. It's just a methodology which tells us how to make DEVS models. Think about it like a declarative programming language. Then it's only up to us what kind of a model are we going to build. A volatile one can contain butterfly effects which can change its entire state in a single re-computation. We are going to have a more stable one where side events can create localized ripples but those won't progress far. In the end, we'll have a more organic feel of the events around the player. As for the player's failures, either direct or indirect, the model can try to recover from them and if it fails, it's game over."
"So, you'll make some declarative language for Emmett and he'll use it to create a model which will be loaded into your machine at a beginning of a new game."
"Rather not, what we have already should suffice. It will enable us to insert new data into the model in run-time. Also, I don't want to introduce another language. Not that Emmett wouldn't be able to handle it but we will probably like some community content later on, right?"
"Maybe. We'll see how people like it."
When Edward returned, he found Bella working on a computer and Jasper drawing some storyline diagrams in his notebook.
"Are you doing OK?" he asked Bella.
"You've been through this so you know the answer already, I think," retorted Bella. "Do you've got something to report?"
"You bet. They've sent another."
"You saw another drone?" asked Jasper.
"No. But I ran across its scent trail. I believe the drone is spying on the Cullens."
"Do you think they are in danger?" wondered Bella.
"Possibly," confirmed Edward. "Maybe they are waiting for us to contact them or vice versa."
"That would suggest that they can't detect the means of communication we have utilized so far," concluded Bella.
"Can you two take the drone out?" proposed Jasper after a moment of pondering.
"If we can attack in a coordinated manner, yes," avowed Edward and pulled an USB stick from his pocket.
"This again?" exclaimed Bella.
"If it ain't broken, don't fix it. It's a different virus though - freezing instead of crashing."
"How do we know that it will work?" doubted Jasper. "What if they took precautions?"
"Why would they? They probably don't know how the first one was destroyed. Maybe they think that it malfunctioned and destroyed itself. However, we'll take a laptop and see if those things have wi-fi."
"Very well then. Let's do it."
Edward asked Bella to give him her USB stick. While he was formatting it and cloning his own onto it, he asked, "Should we discuss Bella's idea with DEVS before we depart?"
"Well, Emmett is incapacitated at the moment and he's the one who will end up using the system, so I'll guess we'll wait for later," replied Bella. "However, Jasper and I have talked about it and he isn't opposed against the idea so far."
"So far," emphasized Jasper.
"Are you going to implement it from scratch?"
"Well, I found an interesting open source implementation. However we can't use it."
"Why?"
"It's in C++ and it doesn't support run-time building of the model. Also, it was created by an university professor to be used in his students' school projects."
"I see."
Jasper wasn't paying much attention. He was thinking about the main storyline and ways of bringing the player to its beginning. So far, he didn't have any ideas.
"Very well, we are prepared," announced Edward and handed Bella her stick back.
"OK, good luck," replied Jasper automatically, his mind on the project.
"Let's go," whispered Bella and they left.
"By the way, what are you going to do about your job?" she asked when they were out on a street.
"I made a little charade for them. First, I pretended to work while being sick and finished the issue they e-mailed me about. A week-worth amount of code total. Then I went silent and Alice stopped there and told them that I got worse and that my doctor forbid me from even looking at a computer screen."
"Are you still going to resign?"
"It's the only option. I wouldn't be able to explain to them why I look differently. However, I'll finish everything I've ever worked on."
"That will make them miss you even more," commented Bella with a grin on her face. "You are so evil!"
"I know, I know."
Back in the basement, Jasper struggled. He knew what he needed to do: Stop seeing the story as a single line but rather like a string woven of many fibers. Moreover, those little fibers weren't static, they were dynamic. That was difficult. He understood the concept but bringing it into reality was something different. The problem was in maintaining an organic feeling to it all. Many open world games had a problem with feeling like a set of incohesive modules. It was definitely something he was going to discuss with Emmett.
He stole a glance at Emmett and Rose. He remembered that both Edward and Bella had utilized their changing time quite usefully. Maybe it would be same with him, maybe he would finish the "screenplay".
Jasper shook his head. Such thoughts were premature. He returned to his sketching.
The dragon watches the village burn from a mountain in the center of the island. There's a crude black ship floating in a bay. Raiders are all around the place, killing indiscriminately. As it's almost evening, the reddening sunlight complements the flames and creates a picturesque vista.
The dragon has been observing the village for last two planetary cycles. Yet, he feels no special kinship or desire to intercede. He's an observer, not a participant. Besides, there isn't anything he can do.
Or is there? He hears people running in the jungle. Two of them. Closer inspection reveals that it's a local woman running from a raider armed with a wooden baton. Perhaps the dragon could allow himself one strike. He has never killed a human before and he would like to test his ability to do so.
Moving from tree to tree, the dragon moves over the pursuer. His upper body is now proportionally larger and stronger so being airborne is not such a problem as before.
The women doesn't have a line of sight on her pursuer at the moment so the dragon descends on his victim. His talons pierce his neck a split of a second before his legs make contact with his lower back. The man dies choking on his own blood, unable to call for help. That's good. While the dragon has grown, he still isn't strong enough to face multiple armed humans in direct combat.
He doesn't bother with dragging the corpse away and hiding it because he knows it would take too long (not to mention that it would also leave an easy to follow track). The man's comrades aren't far away so the dragon takes to trees again and makes himself scarce.
He returns to his previous observation post. The mountain creates a long shadow reaching all the way to water. That's his cover. He dives from a cliff and glides with an occasional beat of his wings. Even if somebody looked up, he would be hard to spot against the darkening sky.
However, if anybody did see him, he would possibly wonder how the dragon manages this at all. Yes, he started from a high point, and yes, his wings do look like they can be used for gliding. The problem is that his descent ought to be much steeper. Instead, his rate of loosing altitude is rather mild. Furthermore, there's no counter wind. It seems that his ability which helps him to stay airborne has strengthened.
He flies over a beach and once the water under him is deep enough to conceal him, he folds his wings and drops head-first into the waves. He swims underwater to the ship and attaches himself to it by his claws.
Some time after sunset, the ship raises the anchor and deploys oars. The dragon guesses that they intended to stay overnight originally but finding one of their men killed by an unknown animal changed their mind. They row for a while before catching wind. The ship heads roughly west, back to the continent.
The dragon chances sneaking above water. He hears voices. He recognizes some of them as natives from the island. He knows their language. The raiders always bark at them sharply. He doesn't know the language, obviously, but he assumes that it's an order to shut up. Sometimes, there's crying followed by similar barks.
The dragon takes a quick peek through an oar opening. The natives are being tied to oar-posts by ropes and leather cuffs. It seems like the raiders can't afford bronze chains.
There's a native who stands out. He isn't bound and the dragon doesn't recognize him from the village. He believes he recognizes his dialect though. He's from another tribe from another island. The two tribes belong to the same ethnic and linguistic branch. They engage in trade sometimes.
The man speaks to the captives and tries to explain the situation. He tells them that if they behave, they will be able start new lives once they reach the city. This catches the dragon's interest. He wants to see this city and learn more about it.
Most of the crew go to sleep once all captives are secured. Guards remain behind, prepared to kill anybody who would fiddle with the ropes. The man from another village starts teaching the captives basics of their captors' language. Mostly simple commands like forward, backward, raise oars, and lower oars. The dragon listens intently.
At dawn, the dragon retreats underwater. He tries to listen through the hull throughout the day but without much success. The only event of importance is when a villager is thrown overboard. Maybe he didn't heed the interpreter's advice to behave. The dragon considers eating the unlucky guy briefly but he isn't willing to take the risk of letting go of the hull.
When he emerges again that evening, he feels like he has missed a lot. The captives are more advanced in the new language than him. Moreover, only a very short "lesson" is held before the captives go to sleep as they are too tired from a day of rowing.
The dragon has a dilemma. On one hand, he doesn't wish to do anything that would interfere with the ship - because he wants to reach the city the interpreter was talking about. On the other hand, he can't ignore this opportunity to observe the inter-human mechanics unfolding on the ship, especially when two different cultures are involved. He can't resist and doesn't retreat underwater next morning.
He thinks he can stay out of sight but he fails. A cook comes to a window on the side of the ship on which the dragon is hiding and dumps a bucket of garbage in the ocean. He spots the dragon and drops the bucket in shock. While the cook is surprised, the dragon reacts instantly. He hooks the man by his claw and pulls him overboard, wounding him mortally at the same time. The man manages to let out a short scream before hitting the water. The dragon retreats underwater quickly.
The cook's scream was heard and his absence is discovered. It leads to quite a commotion. The ship stops and there's an investigation.
The captain suspects that one of the captives is responsible. But how can that be when they are all tied to their posts? There's a head count but the raiders aren't sure how many slaves are there supposed to be. The interpreter is suspected as well. After all, he's got more latitude than the others.
Executions start. Three bodies are dumped overboard before the men urge the captain to stop wasting their profits. The interpreter keeps repeating that the captives say that they know nothing about the cook. The captain calms down finally but the interpreter is chained along the others.
The dragon stays out of sight in daytime after this incident. He has learned a valuable lesson - one's actions do have consequences.
They finally reach the city. According to the dragon's orientation sense, it's far to the south from the place where he hatched but probably on the same continent judging by all he knows.
The city is overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. It's relatively big, old, and full of people. It has Sumerian-like look and feel but without any significant landmarks such as fortifications or palaces. The dragon feels appreciation for the amount of work it takes to build something like that, especially when it withstands a test of time afterwards. However, the city is also dirty and it stinks of rot and other things.
After thorough but quick consideration, the dragon decides to tag along with the ship all the way into the city's harbor. The ships lands and the slaves are offloaded.
When darkness falls, the dragon emerges from the water and climbs a mast. Main streets and passages are lit sparsely and light is also coming from many windows but everything else is in shadow. What's most important, the roofs are completely dark.
The dragon glides to a nearest building and lands as softly as possible. Keeping to darkness, he observes the citizens. They are like the city they live in - old but dirty. However, the locals aren't what the dragon is interested in at the moment. He seeks where the slaves are imprisoned.
They are kept in large cages in a district dedicated to slave trade. At this time of day, all is quiet there. Slaves are trying to sleep, guards are patrolling. There are two men talking in low voices. One of them is showing the other a roll of parchment. After a few moments, the dragon understands that the first man has conducted a cataloging of the new slaves. He leads the second man to a cage which is filled by people estimated not to fetch a good price next day. It's aside from all the others.
The second man dismisses the first one and then sends an aide with a message. Some time later, a wagon pulled by a donkey arrives. It's escorted by a group of guards but they don't look like the city ones or the ones working for slavers. The slaves in the cage are woken quietly and moved to the wagon. They are scared because they have no idea what's going to be done with them but they have no way of knowing whether it's anything out of ordinary.
The slaver is paid and the wagon leaves. The dragon follows. The destination is a two-story building in one of the worse parts of the city. It's larger than most houses around but not too large. The dragon can spot through windows that it's filled with more people like the ones escorting the wagon.
However, the cargo isn't meant for them. The wagon pulls in a back alley behind the establishment. There is an inconspicuous entrance to a cellar and the captives are led in there. The dragon surmises that the buyer doesn't wish the slaves to be seen entering the building.
The dragon contemplates what to do. He can't go in there, that's for sure. It's too risky and there's no telling what's down there. Instinctively, he makes sure that his aura is pulled in as tightly as possible.
He's got a strange vague feeling that this is important. It's barely palpable but it seems connected to his unknown connection with this world. Maybe this is some kind of a threat? Another possibility is that he's imagining it, as strange as it would be for him.
Seeing no other course of action, the dragon retreats and observes from distance. Nothing happens for the rest of the night. He flees at first sign of dawn.
The area is arid but far from lifeless. There are some rocky hills nearby so he hides there. He catches a few desert rodents while he waits for evening.
When night falls again, the dragon stakes the building out. Alas, nothing comes in or out of the back entrance for the whole night. The same goes for the front entrance, with the exception of the occupants of the building.
The dragon contemplates this. It's logical to assume that if those people want to keep their activities from public knowledge, they won't use a single entrance. What if the cellar is connected to a larger underground? After all, the city does have a rudimentary sewer system which is probably mostly dry.
True enough, he finds a sewer exit at the coast, right outside the city's premises, close to the coast. A closer look reveals wagon tracks and suspicious smells. He doesn't dare to venture in though.
A few hours before sunrise, a wagon arrives from the city. The same one which transported the slaves two nights ago. However, it's manned by one guy only.
His buddies arrive soon enough from the sewer. They carry several dead bodies. Once those are loaded, the wagon heads away. Half of the men accompany it while the rest returns to the city.
The dragon follows the wagon to a ravine. It's quite a distance so it's morning when they get there. The dragon has to be careful to avoid detection.
They stop at a place covered by ashes and charred pieces of something. There's a smell of burned bodies all around. Those pieces are probably body parts.
The men start offloading the corpses. The dragon recognizes them as the slaves from the island. It seems like they have been drained of blood.
They make a large fire and start chopping the corpses to pieces and feeding those into the fire. Once all the bodies are burning, the men take pickaxes and spades and start enlarging a nearby ditch. They must have dug it previous night. It's empty at the moment but the dragon wagers that they'll bury the ashes and unburned pieces of bones in there once everybody in the last group is processed, whatever the "processed" means.
As the fire starts to dwindle, the men leave. However, they leave one behind to guard the area, just in case. That's the dragon's chance. He sneaks behind the man, leaps on his back, and chokes him out. After he checks his vitals, he searches him and binds his hands.
The dragon turns his attention to the burning remains. There's nothing to be found by direct search of those. He takes a look around and when he sees that the coast is clear, he lets his aura unfold and touch the charred pieces. He recoils back after a moment. There's some dark residue. He doesn't know what it is but it feels bad. And dangerous. Certainly out of his league.
He decides to leave the area. He pauses over the captured man. Should he kill him and add him to the fire or should he try to drag him along for later interrogation? The man is heavier than the dragon which means a necessity to drag the man which in turn means easily followable tracks.
There's no helping it, he has to know what he's running away from. His lack of humanoid features (like arms) makes it difficult but he manages to roll the man on his back, raise him to a sitting position, and hoist his upper torso on his back. Hooking his fingers under the man's arms, he starts to drag him away slowly. He heads further down the ravine, away from the city.
After covering a small distance, the man starts to wake up from his legs being scratched by rocks. The dragon drops his load and positions himself so that he's between the man and the city. The man takes a moment to get his bearings and struggles to stand up with his hands bound. Then he sees the dragon. After a momentary freeze, he screams and starts running. As expected, he does the dragon's work for him and runs the intended way. The dragon lets him think for the time being that loosing him is possible.
Once they are out of the ravine and in open terrain, the man tries to veer back to the city. The dragon tries to herd him in the "right" direction but with only partial success. At a convenient spot, he decides to end the game and unfolds his wings. He catches up with his prey in a few jumps and descends on him. The man tumbles to the ground.
He tries to crawl away for a few moments. He stills when he feels the dragon's sharp talons on his throat. As seconds tick by, he realizes that he's still alive and that the strange creature isn't going to kill him any time soon. By pushing him, the dragon makes the man to sit up and then he walks in front of him. The man realizes that the dragon is probably sentient.
The dragon has to give it to the man, he isn't as afraid as one would expect him to be. The fact that the dragon keeps his aura pulled in contributes to this greatly but he wagers that the man possesses knowledge (or suspicion at least) of something more dangerous. It's also the reason why he needs to interrogate him.
That represents a small problem. The dragon knows much of the language of the island people and basics of the one used in the region. However, he can't speak and he doesn't know how to write (or read). He needs to find some other means of communication.
He starts by drawing a rough plan of the city. He clearly marks both entrances to the underground used by the traffickers. The man observes him in befuddlement. The dragon points at the one at the coast. The man doesn't understand. The dragon tries to convey his demand for information by mimicking human body language and, in limited fashion, facial expressions (his face is hard and scaly and he has almost no facial muscles) and he fails miserably. He points at the man's mouth to tell him that he wants him to speak but the man connects the gesture with "food" and "eat" rather than "speak".
"Do you want me to lead you there?" he asks finally and starts to stand up.
The dragon pulls him back down and shakes his head.
"Can you understand me?" continues the man. When he spoke before, he didn't really expect that.
The dragon nods.
"Do you want to kill me and eat me?" asks the man hopefully.
The dragon shakes his head. He doesn't intend to eat the man.
"Look, I'm not a right guy to talk to," pleads the man. "Over here," he points at the sewer with his foot, "are some smart people who can help you. Let me take you there."
He starts to stand again and the dragon stops him from doing so like before. It's becoming clear that a more direct approach is needed. He unfolds his aura and lets it touch the man who starts screaming immediately. The dragon leaps at him, pushes him to the ground, and forces his mouth shut.
Next, he does something he has practiced only on animals so far. It's similar to what happened with the goblin high priest but that was subconscious and required great dedication from the subject. He focuses his aura on the man's brain and makes contact with his mind. He starts pushing images of what he's interested in - the people who are led underground and return as corpses drained of blood, the unknown evil living under the city, and so on. The man is unable to respond but the dragon catches a few impressions from his mind. He knows most of it already. There's something dark and evil lurking there and they need blood of people to survive. The traffickers serve them.
The dragon doesn't know whether the man ever came in contact with those creatures or whether he simply fails to read more detailed information from him but he wagers that both is true. After all, he does look like a lower ranking member of the organization. It doesn't matter though because the man passes out from the stress. The dragon pokes him a few times with no result.
Well, it doesn't seem like he'll learn anything else from him. He can't let him go either so he snaps his neck. Dragging his corpse isn't easy but he manages to get to the sea before the end of the day. The man's comrades are never going to find out what happened to him. They are most probably going to think that he lost his nerve and ran away. The dragon himself has no intention of returning to the region in foreseeable future.
As the camera pans to a picturesque horizon shot of the sea and coastline, a voice-over (recorded in a bathroom like Connery's words before Highlander) sounds over subtle music playing in background:
"And so the dragon wisely avoided confrontation with a coven of undead blood-drinkers without them or their human thralls even learning about his existence. Failure to do so would have surely resulted in his death. They were, without a doubt, the most dangerous enemy he had encountered."
Jasper chuckled internally. The irony of introducing vampires into the game wasn't lost on him. He had no clear idea yet how exactly were they going to look but he was certain that he was going to go for creepy and ugly.
His earlier thought wasn't leaving his mind yet. He wanted to accommodate his friends and help them create the fully interactive experience they wanted to create. However, if he was asked to describe his calling in one word, he would choose "storyteller". A bad play-through of the game by a gamer unable to appreciate its qualities would result in a bad story.
Another thought occurred to him then. If the game was successful, he could start a follow up project - an independent animated movie based on his idea of a proper play-through. Such thoughts were premature though. After all, their lives were in danger.