The Steel Hounds Read online

  “You never told me what's in it for you,” I said, without trying to be polite.

  Despite the increase in my bank account, my feelings were mixed. It's like when you know that someone wants to screw you, but you don’t understand how just yet.

  "We need a person like you. A person, who is a quick thinker and doer. Most importantly, a person, who is able to get in any hard-to-reach place."

  "Yeah, I'm kind of a lawyer, not a proctologist."

  "Once again, you're flattering yourself. You've been kicked out of school six months ago."

  "What is this? The entire city of is aware of that now? Did you run a background check on me too?"

  "Absolutely! Our capabilities are as good as those of the police. Sometimes they even exceed them. For example, we also know why you are participating in all these dubious challenges."

  "Pfft. It doesn't require much wisdom to figure it out. Everybody needs money!"

  “I wouldn't say that you're suffering any hardships. Your parents are well off, and they help you financially. Besides, your channel earns you a stable chunk of money, I'd guess. That should be enough for a living."

  "It depends on what kind of living. Why don't you tell me what you want from me instead of beating around the bush? You want to offer me a job or what? In Obsidian?"

  "It's not directly related to the company. It's personal. Let's just say, our boss has a side project. Consider it a hobby. But he takes it pretty seriously. He is assembling a team. He needs people to rely on. There are already some excellent fighters, but we need intelligent support. Including a sort of... uh... a scout. And infiltrator. Someone who can act covertly and quickly. Think outside the box, so to say. We have already tried several candidates, but then we decided that it would be easier to arrange such a cast call and find a person who has good potential. Then we can train him."

  "Based on the description, it's something not quite legal," I squinted.

  "Not at all. It’s about the virtual gaming world. You've heard about Artar, haven't you?"

  This time, I must have failed to keep my emotions under control because GQ looked at my face and gave out a satisfying laugh.

  "Well, of course, you have. After all, that's what it's all about. The equipment to access the eidetic network is not cheap. Neither is the Artar membership. I doubt you'd want to ask your parents to pay for all this. Therefore, you are trying to get the money yourself, by any means possible."

  “How do you... ” I started, but stopped right away. It wasn't that hard to figure it out. All he had to do was look at what I post on social media.

  "So are you offering me a job... in Artar?!"

  "Precisely. We will supply you with an Eidos modem. We can even cover your first-month membership, if necessary."

  "What's the catch?"

  "There is none. We have one condition: you join our clan and work for us. At least until you work off the money invested in you."

  "And what if I won't work it off?"

  "I wouldn't worry about it. Starting in Artar is hard, but you seem like a capable fellow. Plus, we will help. We are interested in getting you involved as fast as possible."

  "Well, anyway. I have this problem... I'm not always a good team player. It's my damn personality."

  "Frankly, I couldn't care less about your personality, as long as you do your job. We want to give you a chance, Stan. Just try not to flush it down the drain. Keep in mind that no one is going to baby you. Do not think that you are the only worthy recruit we have."

  "Are you gonna give me a probationary period or something like that?"

  "Exactly. You will have a week to prove yourself. If you fail, we'll just give the modem to someone else."

  "What can there be done in a week? I'll be a complete noob. I won't have enough time to level up."

  "Game sessions in Eidos are between 12 and 20 hours of subjective time. So a week is about a hundred hours of gameplay. That’s plenty to prove whether you can be useful to us or not. Or at least that you have the guts for Artar."

  "What do you mean?"

  “You'll understand when you get there,” he grinned.

  He laid out a small cardboard rectangle on the table. It was his business card. A real one, not electronic.

  Wow, I can't believe someone still uses these.

  The business card was simple, unpretentious—only the Obsidian logo and a few lines.

  Leonard Terekhov. Head of Security. Contact number.

  “Okay, Stan, enough rambling. We can discuss the details later, and certainly not here. In case you are interested."

  Was I interested?! Damn it, I felt like a nerd from old books, who received an invitation letter to the school of magic. But I had to keep my face. So, trying my best to keep cool, I nodded casually.

  "I'll think about it."

  “Yes, think about it."

  The conversation was over and Terekhov headed for the door. But just before leaving, he lingered a little and looked over his shoulder, wide grin on his face.

  "By the way, the boss really likes his fish tank. You shouldn't have. The cost of replacing the glass will also be included in your balance."

  He seemed to have no doubt that I would accept their offer. My stupid defiant nature reacted to this with a wave of irritation and protest rising from inside, but I crushed this impulse before it had a chance to develop into something destructive.

  Who knows what rich people have on their minds. This is my chance of a lifetime. The chance to be in the game now and not in three or four months.

  That's how long I expected to be saving for an Eidos modem. That thing cost like a good car.

  "No problem, Leonid Vladimirovich."

  Terekhov nodded in satisfaction.

  “See you in Artar, Mongoose.”

  Chapter 2. Calibration

  The first samples of the neurocomputer interface appeared in the 20th century, and by the beginning of the 21st, models that were more or less accessible to ordinary users went on sale. The same happened with augmented reality devices.

  At that time, they were all far from perfect. They were either designed for the disabled, or were impractical and overly expensive toys that were very hard to handle.

  The real breakthrough came in the late 20’s, when massive use of quantum processors of the new generation began. They were ten times smaller than their predecessors, but at the same time, dozens of times more powerful. The language barrier between the human brain and the computer was finally overcome. People learned to imitate signals that are completely identical to the ones that the brain perceives from the senses.

  The rest was a thing of tweaking the technology.

  Massive and relatively inexpensive NCIs came out in just a couple of years. There were no external devices, rather small plates that were implanted under the owner's skin at the temples. These implants were as big as a coin and had a computing power comparable to supercomputers of the early 21st century. A network interface card with a bandwidth of tens of gigabits per second was also included. They connected directly to the temporal lobes of the brain with the thinnest electrodes made from a special polymer that does not cause rejection in the tissues and, over time, grows into the neural network of the user.

  There were no displays and all visual information was stored and extracted directly in the user's visual centers. These were so-called man-made hallucinations in full HD and 3D. With an NCI, you could, for example, project a screen over the entire wall anywhere you wanted.

  As far as music, you could listen to anything you wanted and it would sound only in your head.

  Communication was made easier too. If another person also had an NCI you could request their three-dimensional projection and there was no need to go across the city to see them.

  I've had an NCI since I was 15 years old. Frankly, I have little idea how people do without it. I realize that just 50 years ago we didn't even have mobile phones. People lived without them and were fine. I wouldn't be, though. It'd be like living without a hand or an eye.

  In fact, NCI is still not a particularly widespread phenomenon; although, it was available for purchase 20 years ago. Anyway, it's not like your typical mobile phone. Buying a gadget is nothing like plugging electronics into your brain—many people oppose this technology.

  In the meantime, this breakthrough was followed by another—the phenomenon of eidetic trance, ET phases, for short.

  This is a state of the brain similar to REM sleep, during the intervals of which we see dreams. As it turned out, in this state, in conjunction with the NCI, the brain was capable of incredible things.

  During the ET phase, virtual reality didn’t feel virtual at all, it felt totally real. That wasn’t the main perk, though. It turned out that during the ET phase, time was perceived differently because your brain got quite a boost. Subjectively, the perceived duration of time is much longer. It could be scaled too. I read that in a controlled environment, the brain could be accelerated to a timescale of 60 to 1. So, an hour in virtual reality took only a minute of real time.

  People learned to add hours to their days. In a nutshell, they gave themselves a second, virtual life.

  Rumor has it that the ET phase was also discovered around the late 20’s, but for a long time, this technology was highly classified. Eidos and the first publicly available VR appeared only less than five years ago.

  Eidos was a worldwide eidetic network. It was like the Internet, but worked exclusively with users who were in the ET phase. Through this network, users could connect to the virtual realities available to them, which were now actively being developed by VR designers.

  VR design and engineering demands were on the rise, but there weren’t that many complete worlds yet. Basically, most of them were like amuse
ment parks with rides, which could be test-driven by users to check out the possibilities of next generation VR.

  Most often, VRs were created for individuals or small groups of people. For example, once in a while, Hollywood came out with remakes of famous movies that allow complete immersion: you could become the main character and choose your own plot and an ending provided by the screenwriters. Of course, the porn industry reached new heights thanks to Eidos.

  There were also multiplayer VRs, which were not limited to a couple of people but allowed dozens and hundreds of people to be connected at the same time. Multiplayer VRs were used in different ways. Rumor has it that the first projects were designed for the military and special services training. Additionally, some large corporations started to set up virtual offices that allowed people from different parts of the world to collaborate.

  But, for me, the usage of this technology was ridiculous. You get an extra 10-20 hours a day and spend them working? Damn it, Eidos was designed for fun! People like me were looking forward to the emergence of a truly cool and large-scale project.

  Finally, Next Generation Games Studio announced the release of Artar—the first multiplayer gaming project, designed for tens of thousands of people online. Its world was over 400 square miles wide. It promised to have hundreds of thousands of computer characters, controlled by artificial intelligence, and an unimaginable number of all sorts of beasts and monsters. Also, there was going to be a whole continent for explorations and adventures inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic. The difference was that it was not a cartoon character that you had control over on the screen, rather it was you who was fully immersed into adventures.

  The creators of Artar are mostly responsible for the fact that I dropped out of school. Of course, students often have problems at school because of computer games. Maybe this has been going on since computer games were invented. But, in my defense, I didn’t even have time to play.

  My problem was the cost of an Eidos modem. In order to connect to Eidos, it's not enough to have an NCI. You need a specialized device that immerses the brain into ET phase, controls it, and transmits the data necessary to communicate with the VR. It costs about five thousand euro credits. That's more expensive than the installation of a neurocomputer interface!

  My parents gave me money to install an NCI a while ago—every reasonable person knows that NCI is a step into the future. A computer built into your neural network is a definite advantage in life, especially when most of the population has no brain at all. However, my father would never give me half a million to spend on a toy. Besides, he doesn’t have that much money.

  So, I tried to make money myself. Terekhov was right—I was doing fine with the money sent by my parents and a small passive income from my v-log. But it wasn’t enough to save for the Eidos modem. That's why I got myself into the challenge. I was taking a huge risk, of course. I was just showing off in front of the captain, telling him that it was a piece of cake to climb that skyscraper. In fact, it was probably the most desperate and most dangerous thing I’ve done in my life.

  At the end of the day, it all worked out!

  The installation specialists had just left, and I, like a kid on Christmas Day, was sitting there and staring at a brand-new modem mounted on the wall at the head of my bed. I kept looking at it, but didn’t dare to touch it.

  To be honest, there was nothing special to look at. The outer panel was glossy, white, and looked like a bulged ring, illuminated from the inside. Basically, I'd be sleeping with this halo over my head. A thick cable attached to the ring and was hidden in a silver lash. It might sound weird that in the age of wireless technologies, Eidos still uses a cable, but that’s because it requires a broadband connection to minimize any possible loss of speed.

  I lay down on the bed and activated the modem with an NCI command.

  “Greetings! I am an integrated operator of the world-wide eidetic network Eidos,” a pleasant female voice sounded in my head. "To connect to the network, you must first calibrate the equipment. It will take about one-and-a-half to two hours. If you interrupt the process, it can be resumed from one of the control points that will be created during the calibration."

  "Launch."

  When Eidos connects to the user’s brain, the modem does more than just transfer terabytes of information. It constantly interacts with the human neural network, becoming a customization code that works in conjunction with the NCI. Therefore, it requires precise calibration and adjustment.

  For the same reason, you can’t rent these modems by the hour. I checked and found out that only two places in the entire city opened a little while ago, but closed basically in days. It would be impractical to rent a modem for an hour and a half, which is the approximate time for a standard game session, because the modem had to be re-calibrated for each new user. As a result, the modem would work a maximum of 5-6 sessions per day. The technology, in fact, was so fragile that from such constant tinkering in the settings it would start to act up.

  Fortunately, the user didn’t have to sit idle during calibration, so I called Terekhov.

  Obsidian "James Bond" wasn't picking up for a long time. Finally, his 2D avatar appeared on the wall above my bed.

  "Is it something urgent?"

  "Hello, Mr. Terekhov," I didn't want to waste his time. "Just calling to let you know that everything's up and running. The modem was delivered and installed. The calibration is in process. What’s next?"

  "Get ready to go online at a quarter to midnight. We all get together in the game at this time. I will meet you in Golden Harbor. I'll call you with instructions before that."

  “Got it. Can I..."

  "No, you can't. Save your questions till this evening. Sorry, I'm busy right now," and he disconnected.

  "Save your questions till this evening," I mocked the security officer. "He's sooo busy."

  Okay, I'll have to wait. It's only 11:38 a.m. Damn, I still have all day!

  I cursed under my breath.

  Frankly, this situation with Obsidian was very murky.

  I called Terekhov the very next day after that memorable conversation at the police station. He said that he needed to discuss everything with the boss and promised to call back later.

  It was a long and nerve-racking day. I didn't know what to do with myself. I went to the gym and ran around the city a little, as much as my sore foot could handle. Then I hung out in my favorite coffee shop. Time dragged on and on, and I couldn't stop thinking about this deal with Terekhov. What if it didn’t work out? It would be such a bummer that I would just explode from disappointment, like a hamster from a firecracker.

  It was late at night when he finally called. Once again, he gave me no details. He told me to be home in the morning and wait for the modem delivery. The Artar membership for the first month has been already paid. But the equipment was registered under Obsidian, and if something didn’t work out, it would be taken back. Plus, I got a bill for eighty thousand for the replacement of the fish tank glass.

  I immediately paid the debt—good thing I didn't have time to spend the jackpot money that I won at the challenge. As a result, I had almost no money left, sitting at home with someone else's modem, which could be taken back at any time, and without clear instructions on what to do next

  I mean, I had the instructions—wait until the evening—but I was going to go crazy! I couldn’t handle another day of drooling over a chance to play.

  I went online to check something.

  There we go! The minimum recommended rest time between two full sessions in Eidos is at least eight hours. That is, I can play a session now, after the calibration is finished, and connect again later at midnight. After that, I'll follow the doctors' advice and play only a couple of hours a day.

  I wonder what Terekhov would think about it? He never said I couldn't play in Artar on my own. Quite the opposite, at the police station, he stressed that they need me to be involved in the game as quickly as possible. He gave me a week to show what I’m capable of.

  In my first session, there’ll be little use of me, anyway, so I better go through this humiliating stage myself. The time scale in Artar is one to eight, that is, one game session will last about 16 hours of subjective time. I can just check it out and get comfortable with the interface.