Chapter 4

Boston, Massachusetts – September 2061

Chris wasn’t sure what she expected on Saturday, when ‘her ride’ was supposed to pick her up, but it wasn’t a young guy in an electric VW. Dan, was his name, and he asked her if she was looking for a ride to 10. Her blank look led to the explanation that 10 was the total of the digits in 7120, so mostly people just shortened it from ‘SR7120’ to ‘10.’

Why not call it ‘two’ then? Chris mused to herself. That’s what I’d have done. One-Zero in binary was two in decimal, after all.

The ride itself took almost an hour, even though traffic was somewhat light compared to a weekday morning. Dan worked in the data center from 1100 to 2300, Thursday through Sunday, and lived with his wife in Boston proper, so this wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. Plus, he was getting double comp time for the extra hour he was putting in. Apparently, her ride home was going to be someone else. They arrived at the campus just before 1000 hours.

After doing some paperwork, Mac showed her to ‘her office.’ The office, about 10 feet square, had a small desk on one side of the room, a high end terminal sat on the desk attached to twin screens, four blank walls, a door that locked – although Mac said she had the numeric code to the keypad at the door – and surprisingly, a tiny toilet room pasted into the corner. A shower curtain wrapped around the toilet space. There was no chair.

“You can leave stuff here; nobody will touch anything of anybody else’s. Nobody but me has the codes to the offices, and I won’t use them unless there’s an emergency,” Mac said. “Come with me and we’ll see about getting you a chair.”

‘Yeah, ‘ Chris thought, ‘I’ll just bet that (1) nobody else has the office door codes and (2) that my stuff will be safe from search in there. It may be safe from theft but admini-tards are nosy. And securi-tards ... forget it.’ But she put her backpack on the desk, fumbled in the bag for a minute to extract her comm, and followed Mac out the door. Down two floors to the garage level, through another door, was the warehouse room. It had about 100 different chairs in various configurations. They all had dual joysticks just off the armrests and a plug for a visor at about head level.

Chris picked one that let her recline to about 45 degrees with a headrest, got comfy, then said, “Why two joysticks?”

“First of all,” Mac explained, “anyone might be left handed. Right now, the off-hand is to control which camera you use.”

“That’s kinda retarded. Why not make a natural interface, connected to the helmet? You turn your head and the camera angle just changes.”

“Yeah. Uh ... they’re working on that,” Mac said.

“Well, tell ‘em they ain’t gonna sell any if you gotta push a button to change what is in your virtual video screen. Shit. Downhill Skier has had that for years. Just license the software from them.”

“Yeah.” Mac seemed embarrassed.

“Where do I go to get fitted for the helmet?” Chris asked.

“Fitted?” asked Mac.

“Oh, crap. No helmets either? Listen can I bring my setup from home? I think I have better stuff than you do,” Chris said exasperatedly. They were walking back to the upper floors. “I almost hate to ask. You do have a standing and walking around rig, right?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m supposed to be flying a drone, right?” Mac nodded, and Chris continued. “How long are the missions? I’m used to playing for several hours at a time, more than just one or two. You can’t expect somebody to sit in a chair and not move for that long. So, you gotta have some kind of rig that you can pick up and move around. Didn’t the other testers ever mention that?”

“As a matter of fact they didn’t.”

“Hmmf. Must be robots from the Chair Force then. Even airplane pilots have to get up and walk around. That’s why there are copilots ... Well that and heart attacks,” Chris grinned at Mac. “And I have to have a food source, too. Mini-fridge, maybe a hot plate.”

Chris stopped in the hallway and looked at her superior. “Listen ... am I just blowing smoke or are they really going to make any of these changes?”

“I’ll pass your suggestions along.”

“Sounds like nothing’s going to happen. I was part of the beta on ‘Soldier of War.’ All the testers told ‘em they had to make some changes. Six months later nothing was done. We just stopped playing SoW, and the game never went live ... If this is gonna be the same ol’ same ol’: ‘We’ll get to it.’ ‘We have other changes on the boards.’ ‘It’ll be soon.’ ... I’ll tell ya, without some of these changes, I’ll stay for a month or so ... then when I have enough to buy a car, I’ll be gone. And I won’t be buying Red Flag. And nobody I know will buy it either.”

“No, no ... I’ll pass it along, and I think the design team will take your playability comments very seriously,” Mac replied, trying to soothe Chris’s outburst. She spent several minutes typing into her pad.

“Who the hell did you get for Alpha testers? Didn’t any of this come up?” Chris started walking back to her office, following the ‘map’ in her memory that led through the maze of halls and offices.

“We were mostly concerned with how the ‘drones’ ‘flew’...” she made little air quotes around the words. “ ... So we had former fighter pilots flying the missions.” Mac was somewhat nonplussed that Chris didn’t need directions back to the office.

“I see. They probably took orders. Sat where you told ‘em to sit. Prob’ly peed in a bottle too, huh?”

“Well, I didn’t ask, but...” Mac countered.

“No sistahs in the crew? Or I guess they just paused the game and went, huh?” Chris asked. “Or hit restart when she had to go. You sure didn’t have no preggos in there. They have to go, like, every twenty minutes.”

“No, we didn’t have any women testers. We were just working on the software.”

“Listen,” Chris said. She doubted that this was even a beta test. More like a pre-alpha test. “Most users are used to software that works. Gamers will insist on software that is really good. You sure this is ready for beta? How ‘bout if you call me in a few months when it’s ready to test?”

“Well, we’ve gotten good feedback from the testers. They said it was good to go. Just like the stuff they saw when flying for the USAF,” Mac countered.

“Okay. It’s your money. I’ll stay for a month anyway,” Chris conceded.

They returned to the office assigned to Chris, where a functionary was waiting with more papers for Chris to sign. She signed where indicated and the drone buzzed off to her cubby.

Chris smiled to herself. The backpack had obviously been gone through – obvious to Chris anyway. She turned to Mac. “Hope your sneak didn’t hurt himself.”

“What?” Mac was going to persist in denying it, it seemed.

“Just tell me why. What’s with the need to search everything? Is this a government shop?”

“Uh ... No. But we didn’t search...”

“Cut the crap.” Chris guessed that she’d have to show them. “The shoulder strap is a quarter inch out of place. The zipper is closed two teeth more than when I left it ... Eidetic memory, remember?” She opened the back pack and pulled a mouse trap carefully out. It was still set. “I’ll bet if I checked this for fingerprints I’d find some beside mine. Did he get his finger caught?” She tripped the mousetrap with a pencil. It closed down on the No. 2 with a loud ‘SNAP.’

Mac watched silently. She murmered, “Two teeth...” Then she touched the phone in her ear. “Results?” she asked. “Uh huh ... Uh huh ... Well the shoulder strap was a quarter inch out of place, and the zipper was closed two teeth more than she left it. You are busted. She wants to know how you did with the mousetrap.”

She touched the phone again; it was now off. “Caught two fingers,” she told Chris.

Chris nodded. “So, why?”

Mac replied, “Well, we have a lot of proprietary stuff here. Not just DSRF [Drone Soldier – Red Flag]. And our head of security is ... well ... a little anal.”

Chris wasn’t ready to give up yet. “So, let me get this straight. Every room is locked. There are cameras in every hallway. And I’m never going to be left alone. You thought maybe I smuggled in an invisible dwarf to steal the plans to a game. Right?”