Scavenger Read online

  “Then there’s Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Super Mario Bros. He was the first to give character motivation to the game’s hero. Mario navigates an underground maze, fighting monsters while he tries to rescue a kidnapped girl.”

  “A kidnapped girl?”

  “I can imagine why the parallel strikes you.”

  “Tell me more about these designers.”

  “John Romero and John Carmack developed the first-person shooter games like the one I played earlier: Doom. In contrast, Will Wright developed God games.”

  “God games?”

  “Like SimCity. It’s a cartoon version of a city. With all the problems of a city. Pollution. Deteriorating infrastructure. Slums. Poverty. Labor problems. The goal of the game is to make adjustments to the city in an effort to improve it. But the game player soon realizes that by making well-intended changes, sometimes disastrous things can happen. That’s why it’s called a God game. Whereas first-person shooter games are viewed from the limited perspective of a weapon’s barrel, the player of a God game has an omniscient view of everything—and total control.”

  “But unlike God, the player doesn’t know how everything’s going to turn out, right?” Balenger asked. “Unlike God, the player can make mistakes.”

  “Who says God can’t make mistakes?” Professor Graham’s face tightened. “I don’t understand why these pills aren’t working.”

  Balenger repeated her earlier comment. “An omniscient view of everything.” He gazed at the upper corners of the room.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Thinking about God.” With a chill, Balenger scanned the bookcases.

  “What are you looking for?”

  Balenger’s pulse raced. “When did Jonathan Creed send you this computer?”

  “Two weeks ago. Why?”

  Balenger leaned close and drew his hands over the monitor, examining it in detail. He suddenly felt off-balance, as if he’d entered the alternate reality they’d been discussing. “I know you want to continue playing Doom. But why don’t you let me buy you a cup of coffee somewhere?”

  “You’re right. I do want to continue playing.”

  “I think we could talk more freely if we went somewhere else.”

  Professor Graham looked baffled.

  “The monitor’s bugged.”

  “What?”

  “Look at the holes in the front and back corners. Miniature cameras. Probably microphones. We’re his private TV show! Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  LEVEL SIX

  AVATAR

  1

  The clouds thickened, darkening the valley.

  “We don’t have much time. Do what I tell you.” Viv swung to survey the ruins. Her gaze lingered over her husband’s body and his crushed, bloody face. Then she roused herself into motion again. “There.” She pointed toward a fallen building where the walls and roof had landed in a crisscross pattern that resembled a pyramid.

  Amanda hurried with her.

  “Help me pull the boards from the middle,” Viv said. “We need to make a hollow.”

  Amanda tugged the boards out, splinters jabbing her fingers.

  “Put the boards on top. Overlay them so they cover gaps. We’re trying to make a roof.”

  A cold wind pushed Amanda. Shivering, she glanced over her shoulder at the angry clouds roiling across the valley.

  “Quickly.” Viv layered more boards.

  Amanda worked harder. A cavity formed. As the wind nearly blew her cap away, she pulled and stacked.

  Grunting with effort, Viv deepened the hollow. “Do you know what hypothermia is?”

  “A drop in body temperature.”

  “In the mountains, weather changes rapidly. Feel how cold that wind is.” Viv crisscrossed more boards. “If we get wet and chilled, we’ve got three hours before our core temperature drops so low that we’ll die. Basically, we’ll shiver to death.”

  Amanda looked over her shoulder again, but this time not toward the storm: instead toward Ray. She saw him in an open area beyond the ruins, his green jumpsuit vivid against the dark sky. He stared down at something, obviously disturbed by it, but she couldn’t see what it was.

  Viv whirled toward the wreckage. “That door. Help me with it.”

  The door lay under part of a roof. It looked flimsy, three boards secured by cross boards. When they freed and lifted it, Amanda thought it might fall apart. The wind almost blew it from their hands. Struggling, Amanda glanced toward the open area two blocks away where Ray now faced the storm. He seemed so disturbed by what he’d found that only now was he reacting to the approaching weather.

  They reached the shelter. Amanda saw Ray hurry toward the ruins. Then flying dust obscured him. Rain pelted the ground. Chunks of wood sped past her.

  Amanda set the door flat. More rain hit the ground. She felt drops strike her back while she and Viv squirmed into the hollow. It smelled of mold and dust. She and Viv reached out and dragged the door in their direction, tilting it sideways against the opening. They left a gap on each end where they clung to the door’s edges.

  The wind whistled against the gaps. Cold rain struck Amanda’s fingers.

  “Don’t let go!” Viv’s shout was amplified by the small enclosure. Even so, the wind was so loud that Amanda barely heard. “Whatever happens, don’t let go!”

  A hand grabbed the door and tugged.

  “Let me in!” Ray yelled.

  “No room!” Viv screamed.

  “You’ve got to let me in!”

  “Go to hell!”

  Another hand grabbed the door. Ray yanked so furiously that he opened a gap at the top. His face leaned toward them: gaunt, beard-stubbled, eyes filled with rage. Rain streaked at him. Dust and chunks of wood flew past him. His gaze narrowed fiercely, suggesting he intended to drag Amanda and Viv out and take their place.

  He seemed to debate with himself. Unexpectedly, he released his hold on the door. As the wind strengthened, almost veiling him in dust, he charged away.

  Amanda got a tighter grip on the door an instant before the wind would have hurled it along the street. She and Viv pulled it over the shelter’s entrance. Rain struck the door’s edge, pelting Amanda’s fingers.

  “Do you believe in the power of simultaneous prayer?” the voice asked.

  “Shut up!” Viv yelled.

  “Suppose a woman is seriously ill, and her church prays that she’ll get better. Hundreds of believers, all praying at once. What if the church’s pastor contacts churches all across the country, and those congregations pray at the same time also. Hundreds of thousands of simultaneous prayers. Do you believe those prayers will have an effect?”

  The rain pounded the shelter’s roof so loudly that the Game Master’s words were faint through Amanda’s headset. Her fingers gripped the side of the door.

  “Some studies suggest that if the sick person knows about the prayers, the psychological effect is so powerful that healing can occur. Now consider the power of a massively multiplayer online video game.”

  “A massively what? You’re not making sense! Shut up!” Viv pleaded, gripping the door.

  “One of the most popular massively multiplayer games is called Anarchy Online. A player pays a monthly fee for the right to assume the identity of a character on the alternate-reality planet of Rubi-Ka. It’s filled with exotic creatures in a spectacular locale with a humanoid culture.”

  The rain became icy. When Amanda couldn’t move her fingers, she released her right hand from the door and blew on it, trying to warm it.

  “No!” Viv told her. “Don’t let go!”

  “Amanda,” the voice asked, “do you know what an avatar is?”

  “Leave me alone!” Amanda switched hands, blowing on her left while her right hand gripped the door.

  “Surely someone with a Master’s degree in literature knows what an avatar is.”

  Again, Viv gave her an angry look.

  “An avatar is a god in bodily form,” Aman
da answered.

  “Your education wasn’t wasted on you. In massively multiplayer games, the character a player assumes is called an avatar. An alternate identity. Sometimes a player wants to assume another identity because his identity in so-called real life isn’t satisfying. Maybe he’s overweight and has pimples, and he’s thirty years old, but he still lives with his mother while he earns a minimum wage in a fast-food restaurant. But when he functions as his avatar on the planet of Rubi-Ka, none of the other players knows what he looks like or how big a failure he is. On Rubi-Ka, he still needs to get a job in order to have a place to live and buy clothes and eat. But there, his mind is all that matters. He has a chance for a brand new start, nothing holding him back. Using his intelligence, he can improve his avatar’s life. Indeed, it’s amazing how failures in this life become achievers on Rubi-Ka, and it’s interesting that half the male players choose to switch genders and portray women.”

  Blowing on her numb fingers, Amanda felt sensation seep back into them. She understood now what hypothermia was and how she could die from it.

  “Anarchy Online is owned by a company called Funcom, which has an array of computers in Oslo, Norway,” the voice said. “They need enormous computing power because at any given time perhaps as many as two million people play the game. All around the world. Every country imaginable. Millions of people simultaneously assuming identities in an alternate reality, playing the game all day and all night, because their life here disappoints. A massively multiplayer online game. If studies show that there’s validity to the psychological power of massive simultaneous prayer, how much more validity is there to the force of a massively multiplayer game? Which is more appealing? The pimply face, the room next to his mother’s, the loneliness of masturbation because no female will go out with him? Or living an alternate reality as a female avatar in a virtual world where everyone has equal opportunities?”

  As the wind howled, a few drops of water seeped from the roof and landed on the hip of Amanda’s jumpsuit.

  “On Rubi-Ka,” the Game Master said, “avatars accumulate possessions the same as we do in our version of reality. Some are precious objects. Others are valuable tools or expensive dwellings. Players covet these. If their avatars don’t manage to gain these objects on Rubi-Ka, a player can sometimes buy them on eBay. In theory, these are imaginary objects, but they take on their own reality. On eBay, you can even buy and sell avatars, assuming new identities if the old ones no longer suit you. One reality merges with another.”

  Shivering, Amanda noticed another drop of water dangling from the ceiling. “It’s seeping through.”

  “As long as it doesn’t soak us,” Viv said.

  Amanda told the Game Master, “I’ve got news for you. This is reality.”

  “So you say. Perhaps this is a good time for me to tell you about Reverend Owen Pentecost.”

  “Who?”

  “The genius who created the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. You survived another obstacle. You deserve more information. Ray, can you hear me?”

  No answer.

  “Ray?”

  “I hear you.” Ray sounded bitter.

  “How are you getting along out there?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Not too cold?”

  “I’ve been through worse.”

  Ray’s anger was palpable through Amanda’s headset.

  “Well, as long as you’re comfortable,” the Game Master said. “Reverend Owen Pentecost. That wasn’t his real name, and he wasn’t a minister. His father was a minister, though, and after Pentecost was expelled from Harvard medical school, he assumed the mantle of a minister and left Boston, heading toward the frontier to spread the good word. He arrived in Avalon in April of 1899. There was a terrible drought, but Pentecost knew that it couldn’t last forever, so he encouraged the town to pray and keep praying! When the rain didn’t come, he told them it was because they hadn’t truly repented their sins. They needed to pray harder. Finally, when the rains arrived in June, they couldn’t thank him enough for helping to end the drought. But that was the only good news. The first sign of what was to come involved a shopkeeper named Peter Bethune, who was struck and killed by lightning as he ran from his wagon toward his store.”

  Something bumped against the door.

  Amanda flinched. At first, she assumed it was Ray making another effort to get in. But the bump was accompanied by a cluster of quick, guttural breathing. She heard numerous paws splashing through puddles and recalled the German shepherd that attacked the rabbit. But now it wasn’t alone.

  A snout appeared to the right of the door.

  “If they pull it down—” Viv warned.

  Amanda heard a snarl. “We can’t use our hands to hold the door. They’ll bite off our fingers.”

  A snout appeared on the left now, teeth bared.

  “They’re pressing against the door, holding it in place. But if they start pulling…”

  “Our belts,” Viv said. “We’ll hook them to it.”

  Amanda tugged at hers. “Mine’s sewed to the back of my suit.”

  “Tear it loose.”

  “No. We don’t dare rip the suits. Our boot laces.” Amanda freed one hand and squirmed to reach her boots. Fumbling with her cold fingers, she pulled a lace from one eyelet and then another.

  The snarls got angrier. The next bump made the door tremble.

  “I’ve got one free,” Amanda said.

  “So have I.” Viv tied the ends, making a circle.

  A snout shoved past the door.

  Amanda banged it with a chunk of board. “Get the hell away!”

  The dog jerked back.

  Viv looped the lace around the door’s middle board. As the dog recovered from its surprise and lunged, Viv tugged on the lace, holding the door in place.

  Amanda heard her own hoarse breathing. I sound like one of those dogs, she thought. She tied the ends of her boot lace, eased her fingers past the edge of the door, and looped the lace around the middle board. She yanked her fingers back just in time to avoid getting bitten.

  Claws scraped the door. Snouts tried to wedge it free. The lace cut into Amanda’s palms. She prayed that it wouldn’t break. Then she feared that the door would break.

  “We’re going to be all right for now,” Viv tried to assure her.

  “Yeah, we’ve got them where we want them.” Amanda laughed strangely, hysteria seizing her. “Not eating us.”

  “God help me,” Viv said, “what I wouldn’t give for something to eat.”

  Amanda stopped laughing, suddenly cold sober. “It’s right outside.”

  “What?”

  “If I need to, I’ll kill one of those bitches and make Ray build a fire with his lighter so I can cook it.”

  Viv stared at her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I never would have thought of that,” Viv said.

  The snarling stopped. Paws splashed in puddles. The dogs retreated.

  “Where are they going?” Amanda listened closely.

  “Maybe they’ve gone after Ray. Ray? Can you hear me?” Viv asked into the microphone of her headset.

  No answer.

  “Ray, are you safe?” Viv sounded angry. “Don’t let anything happen to you. We need your damned lighter.”

  The only sound was the patter of rain. Suddenly, the dogs started yelping insanely. They seemed to fight with one another, determined to get their share of the quarry, baying in a frenzy.

  “Ray?”

  One by one, the dogs became silent.

  Sickened, Amanda relaxed her hold on the lace. Her palms throbbed for several minutes. Peering warily through the gap in the door, all she saw was the rain.

  “Then a child drowned in a flash flood,” the Game Master said, “and a farmer fell from a hayloft and impaled himself on a pitchfork, and a family died from…”

  2

  “Hidden cameras?” Professor Graham couldn’t get over her shock. “Jonathan spied on me?” />
  “On us.” Balenger sat across from her in a coffee shop on lower Broadway, a few blocks from the university. “The son of a bitch wanted to monitor my progress in the game.”

  “Game?”

  “If he had cameras in your office, it’s logical to assume he put cameras other places as well. The theater. Outside the library. Outside your faculty building. In the building that was being renovated.”

  “But someone would have noticed.”

  “Not after 9/11. Anybody wearing a uniform marked SECURITY doesn’t get questioned. We take video cameras for granted. They’re next to traffic lights, above building entrances, inside stores and hotel lobbies—just about everywhere. That doesn’t include cell phones with cameras, many of which have video streaming. It’s almost impossible to walk down any city block and not get photographed. With careful planning, he could have followed my progress.”

  A waitress brought tea, coffee, and a ham sandwich for Balenger. Professor Graham didn’t have an appetite. Desperation had destroyed Balenger’s, but he warned himself that he was useless to Amanda if he didn’t maintain his strength. “Tell me how you met Jonathan Creed.”

  “He showed up one afternoon, standing in the hallway outside the open door to one of my classes. He looked so pitiful, all I wanted to do was help him.”

  “Pitiful?” Balenger knew the one thing Jonathan Creed wouldn’t get from him was pity.

  “Short, thin, geeky. Frail voice. Wispy blond hair. He reminded me of pictures of Truman Capote when he was young. He was thirty-five, I found out, and yet he looked like a boy. ‘Would you care to join us?’ I asked. He nodded, entered, and took a seat at the back. What attracted him to my class was its subject: the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires.”

  Hearing the name again, Balenger shivered.

  “I eventually learned that he’d suffered a nervous breakdown because of a new game he had in mind. Apparently he’d been catatonic for six months, with his mind trapped in what he called the Bad Place. He never described what it was, except that it was unspeakable. He said that, as he recovered, he decided to find Truth in anything except games.”

  “He spoke like that?”