(A Virtual Room in NERV HQ)
“James, I just got off the line with one of the external
group. We’ve got some real-money traders in the game, trying to farm resources,
despite the fact that we made it about as easy to do that in game as it is in
real life. Hopefully it is just people with more time than sense, but we need
to check and make sure that they aren’t hacking or botting somehow.”
“Sure thing, Boss. You have a specific target? Because that’s
a big haystack to go looking for needles in.”
Isaac laughed, “You’re in luck. One of them got sloppy, it
seems, and left the guild name on the web site where they were selling in-game
credits. The guild is supposedly called ‘LegitimateBusiness’. Get a team
together, and go through their logs. Look for any ‘charitable donations’ or other
patterns. You know the drill.”
“Got it. Look for any large donations. Think they’re smart
enough to have a shell company?”
“I doubt it, but check anyway. They could be looking at
doing a bunch of small transfers to a central source if they are worried about automated
systems. So, if there are any patterns of donations, follow them. If they were
really smart, they would have set up two or three shell companies to move money
through. But, if they were that smart, then they probably wouldn’t have put the
guild name in the website.”
“Right. I’ll get right on it, Boss.”
As the game master shimmered and returned to their work
area, Isaac turned to the rest of the group, who were more focused on the story
and tuning elements of the game world. “All right, talk to me.”
“We’re tracking the fallout of the little corporate war. Well,
not ‘little’, by corporate standards, but by the scale of wars in the game
world, it was fairly minor. Obviously, Yathru was expecting to fight the war on
mostly economic terms and maybe a few surgical strikes.”
Isaac chuckled. “Yeah, they tragically misread their
opponent if they thought Black Star was going to work like that. Roy, have you
checked with the AI, made sure nothing was bugged out, there?”
The third GM shook his head. “We checked, but there was no
sign of bugs. From looking at the settings, I’d say that it is down to the higher-ups
in the corp not believing everything they were told. The stories did spread to Alliance
space, but at the high levels people mostly thought it couldn’t happen to ‘them’.”
Isaac sighed. “So, standard human (or humanoid, I guess)
thinking? Too caught up in their own affairs to believe the ‘propaganda’? I
guess that works. Check the scripts on other leaders, see if we can’t get the
controlling AI to tweak them enough to take the stories seriously.”
The second GM tilted his head to the side, considering, “But
why? I mean, sure, this fight was pretty one-sided, but it made for great RL advertising.
We’re sure to get more players from this.”
“Sure, it is, Ted. But only in the short term. We let things
go on too far like that, and it becomes a Goku situation, where the whole game
revolves around Black Star, and everyone else doesn’t really matter. That’s
great for a manga or anime, but crap for a VRMMORPG.”
“Right, I can see that.”
“Anyways, we want to nip that kind of thing in the bud
before it really gets started. So, I want to see if there’s anything we can do
to take the focus off Black Star for a bit, or at least not have any idiots go
provoking them like that. I don’t care if it is bringing up someone to take the
spotlight for a bit, or just keeping Black Star out of it for a while, but
either way, we need to keep things from focusing on them.”
“I think we can manage to keep anyone from ‘poking the bear’,
as it were, but that doesn’t mean the bear is just going to go in their cave
and hibernate.”
Isaac laughed, “I’ll take what I can get at this point.”
A fourth GM raised their hand, “Sir?”
“What is it, Sarah?”
“What about Maccara? Black Star’s Greenwave attack has
obliterated infrastructure and weapons on the ground. Worse, the underground
facility beneath Rak’kun City has already been compromised, and the test
subjects have escaped.”
Isaac took a breath, and said, “Well, I actually reached out
to our favorite beta tester and corporate raider, and asked him about that,
just after it went down. After all, he took such pains to sanitize all other
sources of the virus so completely, and yet he just released it to go wild on
Maccara? Didn’t make sense.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Basically? His hands were tied. The only possible way to
ensure a nonrelease of the bioweapon would be to launch a full assault and take
out the facility under Rak’kun City. He told me directly that he’s seen too
many movies and played too many games to think that could possibly end well.”
Isaac took a breath, and continued. “Now, there are things
he could have done, sure. He could have blown up the planet like he did in Tsk’neth.
But that would have violated not only the corporate war rules that he was
playing under, but also some pretty serious treaties. Basically, the whole galaxy
would be bound by law to try and destroy everything he built.”
Sarah nodded. “And there’s no winning that fight, even if he’d
probably make it hurt for anyone who tried.”
“Exactly. In Tsk’neth, the zombies had already spread
completely, and he used some legal posturing that he recorded and broadcast to the
appropriate bodies to ensure that it wouldn’t blow back on him. He didn’t have
that option at Maccara, it seems.”
Ted chuckled. “So, he punted, and left the decision to the
Alliance, all while Greenwave makes it impossible to get in there and get
samples. And it is too early to know just how far things will spread. Depending
on how easy it is for the virus to infect animals, the outbreak could even be
limited to a single continent. Without air power to move around the world, you dramatically
slow the spread of the virus, if nothing else.”
Isaac grinned. “Yep. And Maccara is too public for sneaky
weapons tests, since the Gateway is there, so blowing it up later on, when
people aren’t looking, isn’t going to fly. So, he dropped it in the Free Worlds
Alliance’s lap, and is letting them deal with the headache.
“Now, Terry, what have you got for me on Cagliostro?”
Previous Chapter Table of Contents Next Chapter
Be sure to read my published works!
Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37
Memoirs of a Supervillain - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R9NWS8J
Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X
Into the Black (Sci-Fi GameLit):
Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y
City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1
Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FBPF6HR
SCI Stories (Dark Supervillain story):
Book 1 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RL93VQN
Winterborn (Dark Fantasy LitRPG):
Book 1 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082S3S3K8
The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T
No comments:
Post a Comment