Interlude 07: Gods - Glitch in the System

Jaime Sodlund was a very patient man. It was a rare event when he got angry. For instance, he never lost his temper when stuck in traffic, nor did he get irked whenever someone interrupted him in a conversation. He even kept his cool when being yelled at by annoying idiots. (Jaime used to work in retail while he was in college.)

The only thing that ever got him mad was when something went wrong with one of his games. Jaime was a game designer, you see; one of the best in the business. And he took his craft very seriously, so much so that he often sacrificed eating and sleeping to see his projects to completion.

So it was no surprise to anybody that Jaime would be right pissed when something unforeseen happened to his most current game, which was still in an alpha building state.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked testily as he stepped into his office.

Charlie Mann, the lead programmer on the project, was there waiting for him. “Something went wrong with the build.”

Jaime gritted his teeth. “Care to elaborate a bit?”

Charlie licked his dry lips before speaking. “Well, you see, uh, you know that undead attack on Darb village?”

“Yeah,” Jaime nodded. He should know, he wrote the event. “The one that’s supposed to free the Necromancer King and make that region an undead zone when the game ships. What about it?”

“Well, uh, you see,” Charlie stalled, trying to form words that wouldn’t get him fired. “It failed.”

Jaime’s eyes widened in surprise. “Failed? What do you mean failed? How can a set event fail?”

“Well, that’s the weird part,” Jaime took out his tablet and began scrolling through the data displayed. “According to the code… um, I don’t know how to say this, but… a player stopped it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I know!” Charlie sighed, shaking his head as he read the data on his tablet. “But that’s what the logs say. Apparently, there was a player in the zone and he managed to stop the event by killing the acolyte and destroying the Necromancer King’s skull.”

“That’s impossible!” Jaime repeated. “The game is still in a building state. There are NO players in the game yet.”

Charlie nodded. “I know. But the data can’t lie.”

Jaime fell silent for a moment. He began to pace his office as he thought things through. “Could we have been hacked?”

“No way,” Charlie said. “Our servers aren’t even connected to the outside world yet, just the company intranet. If someone did hack us, then it’d be an inside job.”

“Seriously? You think it was sabotage?” Jaime asked.

“It’s the only thing I could think of. We’re one of the most anticipated games of the year, after all. Someone in another department of the company might have been annoyed at that and decided to screw us. What better way to do that than to mess with our alpha?”

“Fine. Look into it,” Jaime told him. “Also, slow down the in-game time to match real-time. I wanna be sure that if there’s another breach, we’ll be able to do something about it instead of just reacting like we are now.”

Charlie gasped. “B-but turning the game time down to real-time will slow us down drastically! It could affect the release date!”

“I know!” Jaime barked. “But it’s the only thing we can do. If corporate complains, I’ll take care of it. What you should worry about is this breach. Find out where it came from and who’s responsible. If it is someone from inside the company, I’m gonna have their heads on a stick!”