Finally, after a few more muscle spasms and minor hallucinations, an error box appeared in D_Light’s consciousness and a voice stated, You are unworthy of access at this time.
Having taken advanced security training, D_Light knew better. He replied, Being a demon does not bar me from accessing the code base.
The voice responded as another box opened. Correct. Under Rule #8939543, no one will be denied access to the code base or protocol databases due to profile status, past or present.
D_Light was dumbfounded. Then why in the hell don’t you give me access? he shouted in his mind.
You are unworthy of access at this time.
Unworthy! It was as though the monotone was taunting him.
Is it because I am upset? Is that why I don’t get permission?
You are unworthy of access at this time, the voice repeated.
D_Light tried several more questions in an attempt to understand what the problem was, but the voice merely answered him with the same “unworthy” statement.
While frustrated and furious, D_Light at least understood the Authority’s repeated, opaque answer. It was all about hackers. For someone trying to maliciously hack into a system, it was best to give him or her as little information as possible. If a hacker knew why they were being blocked, they would be better able to work around the issue.
After a second failed attempt to pass the deep scan, the DAPA forcibly terminated the blink and D_Light could not log back in. Again, this was a security measure to inconvenience hackers. He knew that he would not be allowed to log back in for twenty-four hours. It was at this point that a cold realization came to him. Soul, I’m a demon and I can’t fix it! What the hell do I do now?
D_Light was so exhausted from the physical and mental demands he had recently endured that he found himself unable to truly panic, or even to despair. For as long as he could remember, he had worked every waking moment to be the best player he could be so that one day he would become one of the chosen ones, one of the immortals. He worked hard to escape the endless darkness that waited at the end of every loser’s life. Now the dream he had held all this time was in peril, perhaps gone.
He let out a low wail. His eyes swelled, and he felt the formation of involuntary tears. A lump formed in his throat that made him swallow hard, as though he was stifling the uprising of a terrible internal monster. It was all so terrifying, sensations not experienced since he was a child. Sensations he had hoped to forget.
D_Light stopped dead in his tracks. There were people around, but he didn’t care. Lily may have been staring at him, but he wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. He did not look directly at her. Warm, runny snot started dripping from his nose. “Aghhh!” he cried out and quickly sniffed it back up. Then, without a thought to where he was going, he started running down the nearest side tunnel. He ran as fast as his already exhausted muscles would allow.
Smorgeous assured him that everything was going to be fine. The familiar reminded D_Light of difficult times in his past when he had managed to pull through. The mistake would be fixed.
Sensing, perhaps, that his counseling was not helping, Smorgeous repeated an offer for sedatives. D_Light ignored this and, upon finding an exit from the mounds, found himself in the morning sun. He immediately beelined for a nearby grove of trees, which was just dense enough to conceal him. Finally able to lie down, D_Light agreed to the sedative. As exhausted as his body was, his mind was overly active, spinning in a whirlwind of activity. He needed to calm his thoughts, and none of his trance mantras were working. Besides, D_Light had no reason to use drugs sparingly anymore because, as a demon, his health contract was null and void anyway. In fact, as a demon, he was no longer in the Game at all.
An electromagnetic pulse beamed out of the embedded chip at the base of D_Light’s skull, focused downward through his carotid artery. Some of the nanobots suspended in the area where the blood had been irradiated were then activated, releasing their payload of drug molecules into his bloodstream. D_Light felt the effects immediately and lay face down on the ground; a twig pressed uncomfortably into his cheek. He did not even bother to make himself more comfortable before he lapsed into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 17
A tight feedback loop-that is one of the primary components of facilitating flow in any grinder game you design. Even as I speak, your feedback on my performance is trickling in, affecting the points I receive. Ah, I see many of you liked that example. Another twenty-three points for me! Thankfully, you did not have to send this feedback explicitly, as was necessary in the past. Instead, your brain patterns, your BPs, offer the feedback, requiring no effort from you. Otherwise, how could you concentrate on what I’m saying?
Now, this constant appraisal of my work puts me into a state of flow. I’m not off thinking about what I’m going to do with my newly won points. I’m not planning what I will be doing in the next hour or the next week, or thinking about the funny story my brother told me less than an hour ago. There is only the here and now. In such a state of mind, is it any wonder that grinder games yield such high productivity from their players?
Takin’, whose name was short for “taking care of business,” was playing well tonight. He had a fleet of twenty-five cleaning bots under his command, and thus far his team was ahead of every other cleaning team in his zone. Of course, this was no surprise to Takin’, who constantly strove to live up to his name. He had studied his route carefully. He knew the high-traffic tunnels and chambers with the greatest likelihood of filth. He knew how to deploy his bots in just the right ratio so that the high-traffic areas were cleaned properly, but not with too many bots which might be better utilized elsewhere. This was important because quality cleaning was not enough to bring in the big points; you had to be fast at it, too.
Takin’ only owned five of the bots he was using. The rest were rented, so the faster he finished the more points he would net. Besides, the house that ran these mounds and was sponsoring this cleaning game factored speed into the bonus system. They wanted their clients to have to contend with cleaning gamers as little as possible. The best cleaning crew came through like a gust of wind-gone by the time you knew it was there.
Which brings up the third qualification for a high score-no customer complaints. Since logging a complaint was only a thought away, pissing anyone off, even just a little, meant your house would hear about it right away. Nailing all these goals was tough, but Takin’ enjoyed the challenge. And it sure helped that the game kept him constantly apprised of his progress. He had mental threads on all his bots that turned colors-red, yellow, and green-in accordance with the amount of grime they were picking up. Red meant that almost no cleaning was occurring, while green indicated it was keeping very busy with its work.
Takin’s goal was to keep at least a quarter of his bots in the green and the remainder in the yellow. If he kept up that level of performance, he would constantly get reassurances from his game genie, a smooth, young female voice. She said things like, “I liked that move,” or “Oh, yeah, you do that so well.” His favorite one that was reserved for when he was really cleaning up was, “Takin’! Oh yes! Takin’!” which the disembodied voice cried orgasmically. She had tons of prompts, and the AI improvised well.