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What’s going on, what did they do? Are we in trouble?
She spotted Var coming back from the opposite direction, looking wrecked, and the whispers pumped up to murmurs.
She let him go in ahead of her, then closed the door behind her.
“What’s Fantastical?”
The question was answered with shocked silence.
3
“I’ll get a warrant.” Eve tracked her gaze from face to face, looking for the weak spot. “And the department e-team goes through every byte of every file. And I shut you down while they do. It could take weeks.”
“But you can’t, you can’t shut us down,” Benny protested. “We have more than seventy people on-site, and all the others online depending on us. And the distributors, the accounts. Everything that’s in development.”
“Yeah, that’s a shame. Murder trumps all.”
“They have bills, they have families,” Cill began.
“And I’ve got the two parts of Bart.”
“That’s low,” Var mumbled. “That’s low.”
“Murder usually is. Your choice.” She held up her ’link.
“We can get the lawyers on it.” Cill glanced at Benny, then Var. “But—”
“Murder trumps all,” Eve repeated. “I’ll get my warrant, and I’ll get my answers. It’ll just take longer. Meanwhile, your friend’s in the morgue. But maybe a game means more to you than that.”
“It’s not just a game.” Passion rose in Benny’s voice. “It’s the ult for Bart, for us, for the company. The top of top secret—and we swore. We all swore an oath not to talk about it with anyone not directly assigned. And even then, it’s only need-to-know.”
“I need to know. He was playing it when he was killed.”
“But . . . but that’s not possible,” Cill began. “You said he was killed at home.”
“That’s right. With a disc copy of Fantastical in his holo-unit.”
“That’s wrong, that’s got to be wrong.” Paler now, Var shook his head. “He wouldn’t have taken a development copy off-site without telling us, not without logging it out. It breaks protocol.”
“He had it at home? He took it off-site, without telling any of us?” Benny stared at Eve with eyes that read betrayal as much as shock.
“She’s just trying to get us to tell her—”
“For God’s sake, Var, use your head,” Cill snapped. “She wouldn’t know about it if they hadn’t found it at Bart’s.” As she pressed her fingers to her eyes, a half-dozen rings glittered and gleamed in the light. “He was so juiced up about it, we nearly had it down. Nearly. I don’t understand why he’d have taken it out without letting us know, and why he didn’t log it. He’s pretty fierce on logging, but he was so juiced over it.”
“What is it?”
“An interactive holo fantasy game. Multi-function,” Benny continued. “The player or players choose from a menu of settings, levels, story lines, worlds, eras—or they can create their own through the personalize feature. The game will read the player or players’ choices, actions, reactions, movements, and adjust the scenario accordingly.
It’s nearly impossible to play any scenario through exactly the same way twice. It’s always going to give the player a new challenge, a new direction.”
“Okay, high-end on the fun and price scale, but not staggering new ground.”
“The sensory features are off the scale,” Var told her. “More real than real, and the operator has the option of adding in more features as they go. There’s reward and punishment.”
“Punishment?” Eve repeated.
“Say you’re a treasure hunter,” Cill explained. “You’d maybe collect clues or gems, artifacts, whatever, depending on the level and the scene. But you screw up, you get tossed into another challenge, and lose points. Maybe you’re attacked by rival forces, or you fall and break your ankle, or lose your equipment in a raging river. Screw up enough, game over, and you need to start the level again.”
