A Trap for the Potentate Read online

  Trading skill increased to level 24!

  After making sure the trader understood the gravity of the moment, would find truly good craftsmen for me and not allow any of her acquaintances to fleece me, I bid farewell until evening and left the alchemy shop.

  The clock before my eyes was showing almost nine o'clock in the morning. I hadn't noticed that so much time had passed in Pirona Zealous's shop. I wanted horribly to sleep. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. But before leaving Boundless Realm, I looked for a quiet corner in the city of the dwarves, where none of the locals would notice me. And I started to uncork the vials of blood, tasting the vampire-tempting treats one after the other.

  Achievement unlocked: Taste Tester (44/1000)

  Achievement unlocked: Taste Tester (45/1000)

  ...

  Achievement unlocked: Taste Tester (50/1000)

  ATTENTION!!! Resistance to sunlight increased

  Sunlight will now cause damage at a rate of 800 HP/second

  ...

  Achievement unlocked: Taste Tester (60/1000)

  Regeneration improved to 7 HP/Minute

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  Achievement unlocked: Taste Tester (70/1000)

  Regeneration improved to 10 HP/Minute

  ...

  Achievement unlocked: Taste Tester (80/1000)

  Regeneration improved to 15 HP/Minute

  ...

  Achievement unlocked: Taste Tester (87/1000)

  I'd never before drank blood in such quantity, so the extreme intoxication that followed came as a surprise. My big-eared Goblin Herbalist was not able to stand firmly, which was to say nothing about performing complicated actions. It was absolutely impossible to play such an unresponsive character. Fortunately, I was already about to leave. After making sure Amra had no penalties against exiting Boundless Realm, and thirty seconds later the character would just disappear, I called up the game menu and chose “Exit Game.”

  New Hardships

  IT WAS LOUD and crowded on the tester floor today. A wave of newbies had arrived, completely green. Some of them hadn’t even set up their virtual reality capsules or generated their characters yet. Taking advantage of the fact that no one knew their work neighbor, I also pretended to be new, thus avoiding unnecessary attention. First off, I was too tired to talk with the ones who were having a gab fest in the hallway instead of quickly entering the game. Second, I understood perfectly that the trial period for this whole huge crowd would be passed by very few, and I simply didn't want to waste my time. And third, I had absolutely no desire to tell them about myself or my character. I really had quite a bit to hide, and understood Kira with her paranoid reserve more and more.

  After taking a shower and getting a quick snack and mineral water in the break area, I returned to my gaming room. My phone, which I'd left there to charge, had one missed call. The number was stored in my contacts under the name Voldemar KSM, but it took me some time to remember who that was. Ah, it was my former neighbor from the criminal neighborhood. A long time ago, a year and a half or maybe two, he and I had played Kingdoms of Sword and Magic together and talked fairly in depth. But then, Voldemar found stable work and left the game, then moved to a better neighborhood, and our friendship had come to an end. I'll be direct, it was an unexpected call from the past. We'd never been true friends, just acquaintances. What could he want from me.

  Now, I was deciding whether to call him back or not. Another call came in from Voldemar. I accepted.

  “Hello, Timothy! If you don't recognize the number, it's your old neighbor from the old 'hood. I'm calling to warn you. I had to drop by my old place this morning to ask a friend some questions. Anyway, I was stopped in the stairway by dangerous thugs from the Grave Worms gang. They interrogated me about you. Of course, I just said that I don't know shit and haven't seen you for three years. But, from the conversation, I realized that someone was willing to pay very handsomely to have you killed, and that they're looking for you actively. Timothy, the gangsters don't know where you live but, for some reason, they're sure you work as a tester for the Boundless Realm Corporation. They discussed ways of getting to you at work right in front of me. Like one of them was gonna call about the job advertisement and interview, then find you in the corporation building and take you out. And they even offered to let me join in. They promised me two thousand credits!”

  I whistled in surprise. For the criminal outskirts of the metropolis, two thousand credits was an unimaginable amount of money! Of course, I was no expert in the matter, but it seemed to me a typical murder cost a lot less.

  “That's what I'm saying,” Voldemar agreed. “I mean, out there, every other person is ready to cut someone down for a hundred coins, and if we're talking about a few thousand, then the line of takers would stretch to the horizon! I can't say for sure what you did to make them so mad, but you should know they're after you! Alright then, I warned you. Be careful, Timothy!”

  I thanked my old acquaintance for the warning, said goodbye and started thinking hard. I understood how the gangsters knew where I worked. It was probably from Jane, my old boss. But to be honest, I was expecting the unpleasant story with the racketeers from the Grave Worms to be left in the past after the gang got taken out by a special brigade of Boundless Realm Corporation soldiers. I didn't know how that special operation had ended, and didn't want to know for the sake of my own nerves, but I was counting on never again hearing about Jane, who turned out to be a surprisingly unprincipled slime-ball, nor her dangerous cohorts.

  My phone rang again, and I looked at the name of the caller on screen, shuddered in fear and nearly threw the phone across the room. It was Jane herself. After a moment of hesitation, I accepted the call.

  “Good morning, Timothy. Max Tohner is expecting you in his office on floor forty-four.”

  The voice of the girl on the line was young and pleasant, but totally unfamiliar. It took me a few seconds to realize I wasn't hearing Jane's voice, but that of the new director's assistant, calling from her work number. Wow, that put my heart at ease!

  What could I say? I was supposed to talk with my boss last night, so I went straight to the elevator shaft and pressed forty-four.

  * * *

  “Take a seat, Timothy,” the Special Projects Director pointed to the guest chair. “I know you're tired after your game session, but don't worry. I won't be keeping you long. I actually have an important meeting with marketing people about the next big update in ten minutes, so I'll be brief. I want to know about your companion Taisha. Tell me about her.”

  Yet again... Every one of my bosses had brought up the advanced NPC thief and, for some reason, thought that I was the one who should know the answers to all their questions. So, I had to explain for the umpteenth time that I had a very weak understanding of what was contained in the next generation NPC’s algorithms. Also, I said Taisha had been made by the very same team of programmers that had earlier worked on intelligence algorithms for the Gray Pack, and they had worked on the basis of an assignment given by my former boss Alexandro Lavrius. But the thing was that all of them, both my first boss and his programmers had turned out to be mixed up in a scandal selling intellectual property of the Boundless Realm corporation and were fired.

  “Yes, I was already told that part of the story yesterday at the director's meeting, as well as the fact that no documentation on that project was retained,” Max Tohner agreed, but his curiosity was already sated. “I'd just like to find out more, something that goes beyond the bounds of simple words. After all, you've been communicating with Taisha for quite some time. You must have noticed some strange aspects of her behavior.”

  “Strange?!” Here I couldn't hold back and laughed uncontrollably. “Yeah, everything about Taisha could never be called anything other than strange! Let’s start with the fact that Taisha can now approach player respawn stones, which mobs are not supposed to be able to get near. Without any noticeable exertion, she can get right past magic barriers made to hold NPC’
s at bay. Taisha can make whole regions of Boundless Realm freeze up, requiring insanely huge computing power if she is presented with a complicated or unsolvable mission. Although... that was all fairly long ago. The programmers must have fixed that bug already.”

  “It isn't totally fixed yet but, as far as I know, they're working on it actively,” the director told me. “Some of the most obvious processes leading to memory outflow were discovered and fixed. But the programmers discovered that Taisha's code is very trickily encrypted, and they cannot get through to her logic core. Attempts to copy every file associated with Taisha and move them to an isolated 'sandbox,' in order to figure out her behavior algorithms met with great difficulties. Her program, like a computer virus, artificially hides parts of itself on various cluster servers, doubling important fragments of its body many times, constantly checking the integrity of its files and not launching if it doesn't see Boundless Realm around it. And starting recently, this strange program even learned to communicate with the real world. It can activate external libraries and services that are totally outside the virtual game, so tricking it and locking it in a sandbox is practically impossible.”

  “Yes, Taisha was always interested in the world of the 'undying.' She has a passionate desire to become like a player, constantly asking me to tell her about our world, and yesterday she even called me on the cell phone...”

  “That's exactly what I said, just in other words,” the director snorted, none too pleased. “It was actually because of that call that all this boiled over yesterday. I think, Timothy, that you must understand perfectly that no computer program, even the most advanced and perfect imitation of human behavior, should act like that. A report about that incident reached the president of the corporation Thomas Heywood, and he took it very seriously. He came back early from vacation and went straight here, immediately calling an emergency meeting. Our experts see just two options. First: we are dealing with a live player or even an organized group, that managed to log into the corporation's servers and is skillfully leading us by the nose. Second: we have come up against something fantastical and previously considered impossible...”

  The watch on the director's arm beeped, so Max Tohner broke off and didn't finish his sentence.

  “Damn! I'm already late to the meeting. Gotta run!”

  The director stood up from the huge leather seat and spun around in front of the mirror. After that, he demanded in an upset tone that the new long-legged secretary tie his tie and fix his haircut.

  I'll admit, I had been eying this unknown doll-faced girl since I got here. She had a model's looks and purple hair in a complicated haircut. She must have been the one who called me a few minutes ago. On the director's orders, the girl sat calmly in the assistant's chair, looked at the screen of her computer and pretended she had absolutely no interest in our conversation. And yet, the director's assistant must have been totally inactive for a few minutes, because her monitor screen was now off.

  “Is Taisha an artificial intelligence?” I tried to guess the end of my boss's unfinished sentence, but he didn't confirm or deny that theory.

  “Timothy, I didn't say that, and it's too early to judge. There are certain facts that prove both possible hypotheses. In any case, don't let your companion Taisha get away from you and observe her carefully. And as for the telephone call...” Here, my boss abruptly turned and stared me stubbornly right in the eyes. “Yesterday, a tester employee asked our In-Game Security Service about that. And so, the direct and extremely unambiguous answer, which the president of the corporation himself ordered sent on to all our departments and official figures is this: no, such a call did not happen and never could! NPC characters are not capable of making phone calls to the real world, period! And I also demand that you stick to that official version of events until the end of the investigation! Consider than an order!!!”

  With those words, Max Tohner, taking another look at his watch and spitting another curse, grabbed his tablet from the table and hurried off to a meeting. And although I had a ton of questions for him and, more importantly, objections about keeping Taisha's phone call a secret, I didn't risk stopping my boss. Now was not the time, and it couldn't bring me anything but more problems.

  As soon as the doors closed behind him, the purple-haired girl called out, offering to get me a coffee. I was planning to leave the boss's office, but stopped. Coffee was just the thing I needed to perk me up after the sleepless night.

  “My name is Tina,” the girl introduced herself, even though I didn't ask. “Before this, I worked for the company for three years as a travelling employee. I was a model at all kinds of events. I handed out ads and souvenirs at gaming industry exhibitions, stood at Boundless Realm stands and attracted visitors. I went all over the planet in those three years. At first, it's interesting but, soon, you get sick of it. And now, I wanted to switch to a more relaxed position without all that moving around. And although there were thirty-five people who applied to be the director's personal assistant, Max Tohner chose me. Here's your coffee, Timothy. Do you want anything with it? Crackers? Pastries?”

  I asked for pastries, and Tina practically ran out of the office to fulfill my request. I'll be honest, I wasn't used to having a peer act so deferential to me. It was even a bit awkward. What was more, I didn't understand why a girl I barely knew would tell me her whole life story, bend over backwards for me, and so obviously attempt to get to know me better.

  It could hardly be simple politeness. Tina didn't treat her boss like that. Also, it wasn't part of the job requirements for the assistant to the director of special projects to wait hand and foot on the normal testers. In fact, the director's assistant was supposed to be deeply indifferent to average employees, given that her personal career and salary didn't depend on that whatsoever.

  There was the possibility that Tina just thought I was cute, but I didn’t consider it seriously. Such a remarkable beauty probably had a steady man already, and maybe even a whole line of admirers. And even if I was wrong about Tina being taken, such stylish model girls knew their own value and would never be seeking relationships with guys they'd just seen for the first time in their life.

  “Really?” an internal voice acridly reminded me of Kira, but I immediately found a hundred differences between those circumstances.

  At that moment, apologizing for the delay, Tina returned with a tray of pastries. I noticed that, while the girl was gone, she had time to make up her lashes and put on a different, brighter lipstick. Mhm... This was looking less and less like simple politeness.

  Probably, a gallant gentleman would express a sense of tact and diplomacy in such a situation, and give the lady a few compliments, take the opportunity for a pleasant chat and get to know her better. But after the sleepless night, I just wanted to finish my business quickly, go home and sleep until my next gaming session. So, I asked Tina a very direct, probably tactless question, asking why she was trying so hard to make me like her?

  It came out a bit rude, and I even thought the girl would get offended. Tina froze and looked at me for a few seconds, before she lowered her gaze in shame and answered my question with a question:

  “Is it really that obvious?”

  I just smiled in silence, which embarrassed her all the more. Tina even went slightly red, then decided to admit it:

  “Alright, Timothy, it would be dumb to deny it. I heard about you many times and saw promo-clips about the Goblin Herbalist and his flying wyvern. And yes, I really was trying to catch your gaze. No matter what, it isn't every day you meet a millionaire, who is also a handsome young man, and not married. For me, for example, this is a first in my whole life. So obviously, feminine instinct kicked in.”

  “What can I say, thank you for the frankness, Tina. But I'm not a millionaire. Not even close,” I tried to convince her. “I was not allowed to sell the Royal Forest Wyvern, and my character doesn't have anything else quite that valuable. Yes, I got decent payouts for taking part in the Great Hunt,
but that wasn't anywhere near a million, unfortunately...”

  The director's assistant shook her head in disbelief and smiled:

  “I heard something totally different this morning in this very office. Max Tohner was told by the higher-ups that your character has a strong influence on the NPC Taisha, and that it would be absolutely impossible to unravel her computer algorithms without your help. The Goblin Amra is the only character in Boundless Realm Taisha truly trusts, so it is principally important that you be satisfied with your work and remain an employee. The boss was told to treat you as delicately as possible and they said they were afraid that, if you were unhappy, you might simply sell your virtual property for real money and quit, and that the money you could get for that would be enough for the rest of your life. I even heard someone say 'potentially, he's a multi-millionaire, and could easily get by without working here.'“

  What could I say? Today, my boss's behavior really was unlike yesterday, and for the better at that. But as for me being a potential multimillionaire, I was totally thrown off and couldn't hide my incomprehension. After all, I had no idea of the total value of my items, but still didn't imagine it came to anywhere near one million. Even considering the percent from the corporation for selling the Great Hunt participation tokens, I still had no more than five hundred thirty thousand. Of course, that was definitely not bad for a person who couldn’t make rent just one month ago, but still it was not a million credits, and certainly not several million. I must have been missing something. In any case, the information Tina gave me was valuable and I thanked my new acquaintance for telling me.