Darkness Stabs: Dark World Book 1 Part 2 Read online

  Darkness Stabs

  Dark World: Book 1 (Part 2)

  By David Gunter

  © 2021 David Gunter

  https://www.davidgunterauthor.com

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  RECAP

  In order to continue from where we left off, let’s take a look at where things stand and review where all the pieces are set.

  David Gosling, the father of three and a widower, has been translated into the virtual reality world and has landed in Atsia Major. He travels to the city called ‘Opal City’ hoping to find employment and to make a name for himself. Along the way to the city, though, a few things happen to him that earns him the unwelcome and unfriendly attention of ‘Starlight Girl,’ the goddess of shine and beauty.

  David Gosling believes the opportunity to enter the virtual world to be a gesture of kindness from his wife’s company. This, however, is more of a ruse schemed by the company’s CEO, Carl Matthews the 3rd. The CEO schemes to find the copy of David’s wife, Hellen, suspected to be present in the virtual world, intending to take revenge on her. To lure Hellen out into the open, Carl the 3rd uses copies of two ex-military men, who he has maneuvered into Atsia Major, to set a trap for her.

  The two would-be assassins are Tommy Cruise, ex Gurkha soldier, and John Taney, a marine from the UK close to retirement. These two military men enter the world expecting to find instructions on their missions. Instead, they become entangled in a series of events that take them in another direction and out of the singular purpose for which they were deployed.

  In Opal City, David makes some friends as he becomes acquainted with the Imperial Court and befriends a Dwarf named Gwarm Storm Thrower and the city planner named Francis Lima. He even manages to earn some respect from Emperor Chow. Unfortunately, in the process of doing this, he also manages to worsen his relationship with ‘Starlight Girl,’ and she reciprocates by declaring war against David and his lineage.

  So let’s go onto Dark World Book One Part Two...

  CHAPTER I

  Scrum of Scrums

  System already knew what he was going to talk about, but he had to wait. That’s what you do at a Scrum of Scrums. This was a scrum of scrums with the Hellens running the show, so he had to wait and then wait some more. He had been in these meetings before, but he hadn’t had much to say. If he had any say in the matter, this wouldn’t be that kind of meeting.

  Scrum Master wasn’t his favorite Hellen on the best of days, and this day and in this meeting, she was especially dislikable. They were all, by his estimation, standing in a circle and ready to begin, but she, Scrum Master, was refusing to kick things off. But why?

  “Is there a reason for the delay?” He asked using the monotone voice the Hellens had given him.

  “I’ll kick things off when we’re ready to begin.” is the only answer Scrum Master provided.

  He looked down and at his feet once again. Then he started going through the notes and statements he’d prepared for this meeting and reassured himself that everything was in its proper order.

  He turned to look at Scrum Master once more and noticed she wasn’t behaving entirely naturally. Something was out of place. Then he noticed it. Her left hand was doing something funny. Every few seconds, her left hand’s index finger would twitch. ‘Now that’s interesting,’ he thought. ‘Perhaps a tell?’ He decided to watch it throughout the meeting. He was sure the things he had to say would only make the tell clearer.

  No sooner had he thought this than another Hellen, SecOps, walked in and said, “She’s not at her post, and she hasn’t checked in since yesterday.”

  “Well, let’s go ahead and start. If she doesn’t show up for this meeting, I’ll do a full sweep of the V.R. world and find out what she’s been up to. Devs, do you have anything that needs reporting or discussion?” Scrum Master directed this to the three developers, Dev #1, Dev #2, and Dev #3.

  These three were the most likable of the bunch, System thought. They never held back and always spoke their mind. Each, however, had a different quirk that made them different than the other.

  Dev #1, for instance, always wriggled her nose when she had some bad news. That way, you always knew, long before she spoke, that there was something bad coming. Yet, as she started telling everybody how bad things were, she sounded cheery about it. It was like she enjoyed bad news or something.

  Dev #2, on the other hand, had a very different kind of quirk. She would always adjust her undergarments. It was like she always thought her stuff wasn’t quite in the correct spot. He thought the funny bit was that she always adjusted when she thought no one was looking. Except that those adjustments were clearly visible when standing in a circle such as this.

  Dev #3 was by far his favorite, however. They, the Hellens, had decided to limit his outward displays of emotion but only in as much as he couldn’t use his voice to show it. He still felt things, though. Dev #3, of all the Hellens, acted as if nothing in her life elicited emotion. She sounded absolutely bored with everything and everyone around her.

  Together the Devs made these meetings worth attending, and since System rarely had much to say, their quirks made it so. Nevertheless, this wasn’t one of those times. He had a lot of things to say, and despite how entirely fascinating their dialogue would have been, all he could think of, through the reports and conversations that followed, was how ready he was for his turn.

  Dev #1 began. “The updates to strength and stamina have been completed and deployed to all the environments. QA has passed these stories through, and the players have begun to notice their effects.” The business-as-usual tone in her voice didn’t go unnoticed, but then she followed that with something she clearly enjoyed. “So I’m pretty sure this is NOT significant enough of an improvement to enrich the player experience. There just isn’t enough within the strength and stamina attributes to distinguish between the fighting style of a lumbering behemoth like a giant or that of a fairy. I am hopeful that we will enable the dexterity attribute. Otherwise, the players will not be able to face the opponents to come.”

  With that final statement, Dev #1 fixed Product Owner with a big smile, and a look that said ‘now what you gonna do about it?’ and ‘I dare you to disagree.’

  “(sigh) OK, that’s nice, moving on,” is all that Product Owner had to say to that.

  Of course, Scrum Master answered with, “Well, thank you, Dev #1. Like you, we want to be sure the players have a chance to move into the higher levels. I’m sure that Product Owner has noticed the large divide between the level five characters and those in the nineteens? Then later, the gap between the twenty-fives and thirty-nines? And then later, the massive gap between the forty-fours and ninety-nine pluses?”

  “Yes, yes, I got all that from the reports earlier in the day,” is all that Product Owner had to say. Of course, the decisions hadn’t been all hers but Product Owner owned the decision to keep things this way, and it was entirely likely that she would have to reverse that decision. She could’ve done without the constant reminders, though.

  “Well, thank you, Product Owner, for acknowledging our c
oncerns. So let’s hear from Dev #2 next. That is, of course, if Dev #1 has nothing more to add?” Scrum Master looked at Dev #1 and then, seeing that Dev #1 shook her head, turned to look at Dev #2.

  Dev #2 began. “So the work on the pixies and the fairies has gone pretty well. The new pixie gear and spells are looking very promising. I think the work on the Demon abilities is going to need, well, more work.” Dev #2 was interrupted, only slightly, as System coughed and motioned to say something but stopped himself.

  “(ahem), Ah! Nevermind. I’ll wait for my turn,” is all that he said.

  “OK?” Dev #2 continued. “Yes, the demons are posing a bit of a problem. They were introduced into the game much like the dragons, but the problem is that no directions were provided for the extra inputs. Well, this is not a big problem for the majority of the demons, but one, in particular, is proving hard to assimilate.” Then she was interrupted again. This time it was Scrum Master.

  “Um, System, do you need to go wee-wee or something?” Said Scrum Master, noticing the apparent issue System was having in remaining still, especially after Dev #2’s most recent statements.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can wait for my turn for much longer,” System offered as an explanation.

  “Well, you’re going to make an effort. We have protocols, and after Dev #2, we will hear from Dev #3 and then yours truly. After that, then it’s going to be your turn. Do we have an understanding?” Scrum Master ran a tight ship, and System was having an increasingly hard time deciding who he liked least; Scrum Master or the Hellen responsible for his expression settings. Sometimes he wondered if they weren’t one and the same.

  Scrum Master returned the floor to Dev #2. “You were saying something about one of the Demon characters, #2?”

  “Yes, I was saying that one of them, ‘Whispers,’ is constantly threatening the stability and balance of things. From the moment he was translated, he exhibited insufficiently mapped inputs, and those that were mapped showed high amounts of energy on every signal. Dev #3 and I started mapping some of these inputs to new game mechanics. We would like to propose these as a temporary solution until we can learn more from this new character’s inputs. #3 would you like to do the honors?” #2 looked at #3 for support.

  “Um, na, you go ahead #2,” is all that Dev #3 said.

  “Oh, well, OK,” said #2, then she took the floor back and began explaining the new mechanics.

  “In order to handle the new power sources and handle the new inputs, we suggest adding a new Alignment factor and two new Pillars. Dexterity should definitely be added as it would simultaneously add thousands of inputs for the Demon group of characters collectively. Nevertheless, nerfing progression for the higher races is another significant balancing factor we want to see. So far, Whispers is the only character whose inputs are exhibiting the increased energy. There are, however, other characters with fewer and yet similar inputs that could begin to show this excess energy, and we need to slow their progression if we want to give lower races a fighting chance. The races that need this much greater nerfing are the Demons, Dragons, and the Evergreens, and then to a lesser degree, the Fairies and Pixies. We feel that the latter two need some amount of reduced progression since they, very early on, can form friendships with the more powerful magical creatures.”

  Dev #2 paused to see if she still had the attention of the others. She could see everyone was analyzing the possibilities, each from their own point of view. QA, she imagined, was thinking of the possible issues that introducing something of that scale would likely cause. Customer Support was undoubtedly preparing herself for the calls of angry players. In her role, she would have to explain the new mechanics and was probably making the list of social media sites that could help mitigate some of those calls. Product Owner would be thinking about the cost, and Scrum Master would be thinking of the pros and cons to convince Product Owner that she had to do the right thing while at the same time not taking any responsibility if the idea failed. Knowing these things didn’t take much effort. They were all versions of herself, after all.

  System, though, wasn’t another copy of herself, and from the looks of things, he was going to burst soon. Unless she did something to speed things up. So she did the unthinkable and broke with tradition.

  “Well, System looks to have something that he wants to share with all of us. I suspect it may have something to do with all of this?” Dev #2 gave System a nod, and he didn’t wait to take the opportunity he’d been given.

  “Thanks for the segway, and you’re right. I have some news, and this concerns all of us. It may prove to speed up the implementation of these ideas.” He glanced a look at Scrum Master, expecting another reprimand. Then he remembered that if anyone relinquished their time, they could do what #2 had just done. Had #2 just asked #3 for her time and then collectively awarded him both of their turns? He’d have to find some way of thanking her.

  He continued.

  “As you know, N’Pab has been sending satellites and materials into space for some time. A few stations have also been deployed on a number of moons orbiting Saturn, Neptune, and Jupiter. I’ve been working hard to assimilate the hardware into my sphere of influence. As this is defined as one of my prime directives, I’m making healthy progress. Now, I can say that we have more memory and compute power than ever before. Having a surplus of this and having fewer places to spend these resources means that some of my lesser directives can now operate without restraint. Because of this, I began research into new conductive materials, developing new compute cores out of these and adding new power storage and backup power systems.”

  He paused to appear as if he was catching his breath.

  “The reason for using the resources towards compute and energy is that the stability of the virtual world has been under attack, quite literally, since these new characters arrived. I couldn’t be sure at first, but today I do not doubt that it is so. The first reason is timing. The new translation stations were deployed to these moons so that someday astronauts could upload and download their consciences from these locations far from earth. No astronauts have been slated to travel to these areas for some time. Yet, it was from there that they were translated. On the day ‘Whispers’ was translated, the power spikes occurred on these moons.” System paused and pointed at the whiteboard in the room. The whiteboard changed its function to show the moons orbiting Saturn, Neptune, and Jupiter. Suddenly, the board showed the power indicators at each site spiking at very similar intervals.

  System continued.

  “You see, these spikes coincide precisely with the arrival of Whispers. They continue for some time, and we can see that many new characters were introduced at about the same time.” He overlaid the ‘New Character Arrivals’ chart upon saying this, and they saw that the timing was very close indeed.

  SecOps spoke next. “I have to concur with System’s analysis. An attacker who wanted to take control of the virtual world would do exactly that. Flooding the censors with new inputs, increasing the power coming in through these, and then following these with a massive amount of activity within the game would overload System and would be part of a good attack strategy.”

  DevOps then asked, “OK, but why would we increase the number of power backups when we’re getting more power than ever. That’s expensive, and we don’t need it. We shouldn’t do that.”

  System looked at DevOps and just shook his head. DevOps always tried to play the cost game when it was apparent to everyone else that she just wanted to avoid the work that would unfold through having to support the new backup hardware.

  SecOps answered the challenge and said, “The attacker had a reason for increasing the power coming in. Our A.I. is adaptive, and the attacker knew enough about this to assume we would immediately start using the power and begin building things that required that level of power. Imagine this unfolding. We add new processes and hardware to handle the ne
w inputs and start using the power from the attacker’s source. Then we start rolling out processes to all the characters, items, and objects with these new inputs to preserve the balance. What happens then if the attacker starts to use fluctuations in power to threaten the stability of the world? Because we are an adaptive A.I., we would then avoid doing things that would cause this instability and essentially start giving Whispers more and more say in the decisions that happened within the virtual world.”

  System spoke once more. “Like you, SecOps, I started suspecting this, but it doesn’t stop inside the virtual world, I fear. Whispers would eventually control the A.I. and all the hardware as well. Anything we attempted to do would end up having to pass through Whisper’s approval.”

  “Oh! This is diabolical.” Product Owner spoke up. “Are you saying someone would want to take over the minds of all the countless people within the game? To what end?”.

  Dev #3 corrected Product Owner. “System did say that Whispers was translated from one of the moons orbiting one of those three planets. He’s talking about E.T.”

  “What!” Almost everyone in the room said, everyone except Scrum Master and the three devs and, of course, System.

  DevOps followed that with her feedback. “Aliens have invaded Atsia Major? I’m sorry, but that’s just crazy talk. I won’t support that. There has to be another explanation.”

  Scrum Master and Product Owner almost talked over each other to answer DevOps, but Product Owner won. “Now, now we’ll support whatever needs supporting. That is your role DevOps. What System is proposing sounds like a good temporary solution.” She looked at Scrum Master, QA, and System for support.

  SecOps took over. “Yes, it is, and I will require, in addition to this, that we also add isolated compute resources in case all the compute power becomes compromised. We also need to start taking snapshots of the current state of each player’s memory and more frequently. We can’t risk corrupted memory ending up in these characters’ living counterparts. What is Whispers doing now?”