As intimated...
Nov. 25th, 2008 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerIt was no surprise to find my bike had gone, but that didn't stop me kicking myself as I waited for the bus home that night. Anyone who leaves a bicycle outside overnight, these days when it's the only form of private transport within the reach of most city dwellers, is asking for trouble, and trouble always delivers.
The machine had gone off twice more that afternoon, once annihilating a herd of sheep I'd been eyeing up, and once flattening a territory I was nowhere near but which had had a pool with fish in it. In order to get to the machine, I was probably going to have to claim a whole bunch of territories which had nothing useful in them.
Nevertheless, I had done reasonably well, and assuming I didn't come in tomorrow to find the entire map looking like Hiroshima on the day after, the settlement would still be doing okay.
Games, I mused as the bus drew up and I hoisted myself up the steps and into the warm, clean-aired interior, were designed to be winnable, unlike real life. This game, having presumably been designed to allow the shop to be kept stocked, must be biased towards fairness. There had to be a reason for the machine not to go off during the night.
Maybe it was solar powered. Assuming there was a sun in the game world. There were shadows, but they never moved, and it never seemed to get dark while I was playing. If it went dormant at night, that would mean I'd be safe.
But if this was a real world, with real people, as it must be, then how could it have rules? Real life out here had one rule; most people got stomped on, all the time, everywhere. Rules that were fair implied a rule-maker, and there was another shorter word usually applied to something of that sort.
Did the god of the game world live in this one? Who was he—or she?
The idea of going and living there had not entirely dissipated in the cold light of day, though I was now considering it abstractly, not as something that might happen to me. I didn't get that kind of luck. How would it happen? Some sort of TRON-like process, breaking down the atoms of the body and recasting them in the form of a sprite? Maybe you had to die in this world to live in the other. There were an awful lot of neurons in the average human brain. No single computer could duplicate even one person, let alone several hundred.
What did that say about the game people?
I almost missed my stop, and the driver muttered as I struggled to the door and back down the steps. They didn't like leaving the doors open for too long.
Back in the bedsit, I ransacked my desk for a panicky few minutes and finally found the little slip of paper which meant I could go back to the bike shop in the mall and claim a replacement. There would be investigations, the police would be alerted, and someone would come round ostensibly to ask me a few questions and in practice to make sure I hadn't still got the bike, but it was generally accepted that you needed one to get around the city, and nobody wanted to interfere with a citizen's ability to get to work; so, over shrill objections from just about everybody, the decree had gone out that a lost, stolen or damaged bicycle must be replaced immediately. And of course there were huge scams going on all the time, and millions of pounds must have been lost every month, and the price of a new bike was almost twice what it used to be as a result. But the man at the bike shop knew me by sight, and knew I wouldn't report a loss that hadn't happened, and so by tomorrow morning I'd have another vehicle. And next time I was tempted to go to the pub I'd take the damn thing with me and put it in a locker.
Fairness. In fairness there would have to be a way I could neutralise that damned machine. I'd tried going up to it, but it wasn't interactive just yet. Maybe I'd find something in another territory that would be a key, or something. In the meantime, I had stone walls going up around the settlement, but I couldn't wall off all my lands, much as I might want to. There was no high ground, the whole place was a damn level plain with no cover.
I could wall off the best of the territories. Assuming the machine didn't hit them while I was building the walls. Maybe two or three adjacent ones.
I itched to be going back and carrying on, even though I was dog tired, and even though I knew the twilight staff would be about their business now. I wouldn't be running out of stone, at least: the machine didn't affect quarries or iron mines. Just the things people needed to live.
Despite the nervousness, I was tired enough that I slept well and without dreams that night, and I was back bright and early. Steve wasn't on duty, and I wondered why; I asked the skinny red-headed chap in his place, but he didn't seem to know anything, down to and including where he was.
Escalator, Liliana, shutter, doors, lights, back office, computer, and off we go again. I selected the two territories I needed to keep safe, the ones with good food sources and lots of trees in them, and whacked a wall around each. I was just in time. The machine hit the western territory a moment after the final wall went up, and the walls shuddered, but held. I sent a guy out to repair the damage, thinking that if red's patches were getting hit that way, his walls might be a little more susceptible to, say, catapult damage.
If it came to it. I wasn't interested in picking any fights. But I was glad to have plenty of iron.
The machine had gone off twice more that afternoon, once annihilating a herd of sheep I'd been eyeing up, and once flattening a territory I was nowhere near but which had had a pool with fish in it. In order to get to the machine, I was probably going to have to claim a whole bunch of territories which had nothing useful in them.
Nevertheless, I had done reasonably well, and assuming I didn't come in tomorrow to find the entire map looking like Hiroshima on the day after, the settlement would still be doing okay.
Games, I mused as the bus drew up and I hoisted myself up the steps and into the warm, clean-aired interior, were designed to be winnable, unlike real life. This game, having presumably been designed to allow the shop to be kept stocked, must be biased towards fairness. There had to be a reason for the machine not to go off during the night.
Maybe it was solar powered. Assuming there was a sun in the game world. There were shadows, but they never moved, and it never seemed to get dark while I was playing. If it went dormant at night, that would mean I'd be safe.
But if this was a real world, with real people, as it must be, then how could it have rules? Real life out here had one rule; most people got stomped on, all the time, everywhere. Rules that were fair implied a rule-maker, and there was another shorter word usually applied to something of that sort.
Did the god of the game world live in this one? Who was he—or she?
The idea of going and living there had not entirely dissipated in the cold light of day, though I was now considering it abstractly, not as something that might happen to me. I didn't get that kind of luck. How would it happen? Some sort of TRON-like process, breaking down the atoms of the body and recasting them in the form of a sprite? Maybe you had to die in this world to live in the other. There were an awful lot of neurons in the average human brain. No single computer could duplicate even one person, let alone several hundred.
What did that say about the game people?
I almost missed my stop, and the driver muttered as I struggled to the door and back down the steps. They didn't like leaving the doors open for too long.
Back in the bedsit, I ransacked my desk for a panicky few minutes and finally found the little slip of paper which meant I could go back to the bike shop in the mall and claim a replacement. There would be investigations, the police would be alerted, and someone would come round ostensibly to ask me a few questions and in practice to make sure I hadn't still got the bike, but it was generally accepted that you needed one to get around the city, and nobody wanted to interfere with a citizen's ability to get to work; so, over shrill objections from just about everybody, the decree had gone out that a lost, stolen or damaged bicycle must be replaced immediately. And of course there were huge scams going on all the time, and millions of pounds must have been lost every month, and the price of a new bike was almost twice what it used to be as a result. But the man at the bike shop knew me by sight, and knew I wouldn't report a loss that hadn't happened, and so by tomorrow morning I'd have another vehicle. And next time I was tempted to go to the pub I'd take the damn thing with me and put it in a locker.
Fairness. In fairness there would have to be a way I could neutralise that damned machine. I'd tried going up to it, but it wasn't interactive just yet. Maybe I'd find something in another territory that would be a key, or something. In the meantime, I had stone walls going up around the settlement, but I couldn't wall off all my lands, much as I might want to. There was no high ground, the whole place was a damn level plain with no cover.
I could wall off the best of the territories. Assuming the machine didn't hit them while I was building the walls. Maybe two or three adjacent ones.
I itched to be going back and carrying on, even though I was dog tired, and even though I knew the twilight staff would be about their business now. I wouldn't be running out of stone, at least: the machine didn't affect quarries or iron mines. Just the things people needed to live.
Despite the nervousness, I was tired enough that I slept well and without dreams that night, and I was back bright and early. Steve wasn't on duty, and I wondered why; I asked the skinny red-headed chap in his place, but he didn't seem to know anything, down to and including where he was.
Escalator, Liliana, shutter, doors, lights, back office, computer, and off we go again. I selected the two territories I needed to keep safe, the ones with good food sources and lots of trees in them, and whacked a wall around each. I was just in time. The machine hit the western territory a moment after the final wall went up, and the walls shuddered, but held. I sent a guy out to repair the damage, thinking that if red's patches were getting hit that way, his walls might be a little more susceptible to, say, catapult damage.
If it came to it. I wasn't interested in picking any fights. But I was glad to have plenty of iron.