Metropolis - Lower 56th Prison Conference Room

Tuesday, May 5th, 2089 | 3:37pm

“H-How!?” was Rin’s muffled response.

“I’ll figure it out,” Chris said with more strength in her voice than she had in the rest of her body. “All you have to do is wait and… don’t tell anyone what happened,” she said, holding Rin close and stroking her hair. “Don’t talk about it with anyone, ever. Just say you were in the park for a walk when it happened, or studying, or at a friend’s… no. Not a friend’s, don’t tell anyone, not even your friends.”

Rin nodded mutely with tears still streaming down her face.

“I’m so s-sorry Chris…”

“It’s okay. Shhh, breathe. Everything is going to be okay.”

Rin curled up into a shivering, sniveling ball. Chris comforted her, running her fingers through her sister’s hair trying to dismiss the fact that her own hands were trembling and she had no one to lean on herself. Shaking her head, Chris comforted and then tried to distract her sister until Suerte came for Rin again. By the time he showed up, Chris had managed to get Rin coherent again. She’d even managed to get a smile from her after recounting her last three days in prison. When it was time for her sister to leave, Chris didn’t want to let go. If everything went according to plan, Chris wouldn’t be seeing her sister for a very long time.

After Rin left, Chris walked back to her side of the table in a daze. The pieces of her new reality were falling to the ground, piece by piece, revealing what her new reality was going to look like. It wasn’t pretty. Slumping down into her metal chair, Chris looked at her trembling hands before looking up at Suerte. He saw them too. Straightening her back, Chris tightened her hands together to keep them from shaking. Knowing that Rin was responsible had changed everything. Chris saw thousands of possibilities disperse into nothing. Her life had just been determined for her and the future tunneled down to one possibility, she was going to plead guilty. In order to keep her sister out of jail, in order to guarantee Rin got the future Chris had taken from her six years ago, in order to let her baby-sister have a better life, she would sacrifice ten years of her life.

Chris lifted her chin and stared Suerte straight in the eyes, now the only question remaining was how to go about. She couldn’t give Rin’s secret away, she needed to find a way to keep it from him. If he found out, she’d be handing over the whole deck, jokers included. Chris let out a slow measured breath trying to keep her emotions from showing on her face. She had no way of knowing it was all for nothing, not until Suerte spoke his next words.

“Well, that was a most interesting conversation,” he said, watching the blood drain from Chris’ face. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I th-thought that was a private conversation,” Chris said, chin still up.

“Now,” he said, “what would make you think that?”

“I’ll try to give you as much privacy as possible…” she said, mocking the tone he’d used when he’d said it. It was false bravado and they both knew it, but right then and there she had nothing left.

“I said I’d try, and well…. It simply wasn’t possible,” he said, giving her one of his trademark smiles.

Chris cringed.

“So,” he said, pretending he hadn’t noticed her reaction to his smile. “You ready to take on the job now?”

“Do I have a choice?” she asked, her tone dry.

“No,” he said simply. “But we can talk adequate compensation after you sign this document…”

“Another?” Chris asked.

“Bureaucracy,” he said with a shrug, “never can be too safe.”

Chris read it over twice. It was the most binding piece of literature she had ever read without going into any details about the work whatsoever. Chris signed it and handed it back to him. Suerte took the document and looked her signature over before depositing the file into the neat pile.

“So… Are you going to tell me who your… Our real employer is now?” Chris asked before Suerte could start going into the page he pulled out of the next folder.

“FieldGreen In—”

“Don’t give me that.” Chris cut him off. “That might be what you’re selling with the letterheads and business cards, but there is no way a company I have never heard of before has so much pull.”

Suerte looked at her in assessment, she could swear that he smiled but his mouth didn’t show any evidence thereof.

“You are right. FieldGreen is a front. My employer wishes to remain anonymous, both for his own protection as well as your own.”

Chris wasn’t satisfied with the answer, but decided to move on to the next point in the conversation. Something about his demeanor made her certain that this man wouldn’t reveal anything he didn’t want to. “What do you mean ‘adequately compensated’ And why do I have to plead guilty?”

“We know that asking you to go to prison is a high order, but we are willing to more than make it worth your while.”

“Worth ten years of while?!”

“Your sister.” Suerte said, immediately cutting off any rising frustration she was feeling, leaving Chris chilled to the bone.

“Wh-What about her?” Chris asked, her voice breaking.

Suerte and Chris both knew how important Rin was to her, there was very little Chris wouldn’t do to keep her save. If Suerte wanted to he could make Chris do whatever he pleased and they both knew it. Chris’ face was ashen as she waited to hear what Suerte had to say.

“Will need to be taken care of,” he finished.

His words were ambiguously discomforting. Chris didn’t know who Suerte meant by “taken care of”, but if his mysterious backer was somehow involved, she wanted Rin to have no part in it. Chris knew how blackmailing worked and if she fell into the trap now, she’d be their slave for the rest of her life and that’s if they didn’t decide to use Rin as well.

“Not by us,” Suerte said as if sensing her thoughts. “Don’t worry. We will merely provide the funds to place her in a nice home with caring people. Her school, as well as any other necessities she might have, will be taken care of. She will be graduating in two years won’t she? College will also be taken care of.”

This caught Chris off guard. He had poked at the thing which she had secretly worried about for years. College. Chris knew that Rin was incredibly smart. She never saw the girl study, but she still managed to somehow ace all of her classes, even after spending so much time with the wrong crowd of people. It was one way in which Rin’s teenage rebellion manifested itself completely differently than her own had. She had rebelled in all ways possible, including grades. Chris had been an idiot, but Rin wasn’t. Chris knew that Rin wanted, beyond all things, to go to college, a good college. Chris also knew she would have no way of paying for one, she had barely been able to afford a loan for her own below average one.

Chris could only nod mutely in response.

“Now, let’s talk about the job,” Suerte said.

“The job?” Chris asked, wondering in what kind of world she was stepping into that referred to going to prison as a ‘job’.

“We need you to infiltrate Goldilocks Maximum Security Penitentiary.” Suerte said, breaking into her thoughts.

“... Infiltrate?! A max-sec!? Have you seen me!? How would I even… you’re asking the wrong person.”

“No, I am not. I don’t mean for you to dig an escape tunnel with a spoon,” he quirked an amused eyebrow. “My employer has two simple requirements.”

He gave her a moment to calm down, and absorb this information before continuing.

“Do you know Nova Era?”

“... What?” Chris asked, caught completely off-guard with the sudden topic change.

“The virtual reality game released five years ago,” he said. “It’s realism is at the maximum allowed government-dictated setting of 99%. Most people have at least—”

“Yes, I’ve heard of it.” Chris said, finally having caught up with the conversation. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

“Two years ago Nova Industries received a multi-billion government contract to integrate Nova Era into the penitentiary system.”

Chris was completely confused by the history lesson, but kept silent while he explained.

“The number of convicts has been steadily rising over the last fifty years. It has become an epidemic, with almost 5% of the population behind bars for one reason or another.”

Chris knew about this, everyone did. ‘One reason or another’ was code for company-policy infringements or inability to pay for their contracts. As a result there were countless people in prison paying off their debt by working gruesome 12-hour work days, unheard of in modern times.

“So even the penitentiary system is now privatized?” Chris murmured to herself, wondering when the ongoing charade where everyone pretended the government was still in charge was finally going to be over.

“So what does Nova Era have to do with… this?” she asked, gesturing between them.

“Our first requirement is that you play it, Nova Era that is.”

“You want to hire me to… play a game!? In prison?!” Chris asked, astonished.

Chris remembered Rin begging and begging to be allowed to play the same game, but after looking into Nova Era, Chris was forced to say no. Even if Chris wanted to let her sister play it, they didn’t have the funds to allow it. It was ridiculously expensive. Access to the game was already really expensive, but the capsule needed to log in was even more overpriced. Even second hand, it was thousands of credits beyond anything she would have been able to remotely afford.

“Yes.” Suerte said in his usual matter of fact tone, as if he was agreeing on the state of the weather. “But we expect more than just participation.”

Chris tensed.

“We want you to be good at it,” he said slowly, letting the importance of his words sink in. “My employer desires access to the best Era players available. We plan to recruit you to be one of them.”

“But… I know nothing about games. I haven’t even played anything other than… maybe solitaire on my cell-link.”

“We know.”

Chris didn’t like that.

“Is there something you don’t?” Chris asked.

Suerte answered her with one of his grins before he completely ignored her question and continued with the last part of the conversation.

“You might not be good now, but we believe that, with the right resources, you have the potential to become an incredible player.”

“... right.” Chris said, not believing it for a second.

“Most of the players in Goldilocks are above average. After all, they are linked in most of the day.”

“Most of the… day?”

“Yes,” Suerte said. “Although the government only dictates a minimum of two hours of virtual rehabilitation a day, Goldilocks plays most of its convicts all day.”

“Wait, wait a second,” Chris said, feeling an oncoming headache. “Virtual rehabilitation? I thought the main reason of supplying the penitentiary system with virtual capability was because of the aspect of time dilation.”

“Yes and it depends on who you ask,” he answered. “Nova Industries’ ‘proposed’ reason is to help convicts re-integrate into society. Their argument is based on the fact that 80% of the current convicts are repeat-offenders. They hope that by exposing them to ‘real’ human contact through the course of their time they will be able to adapt to society more easily when they are out and thus… not go back.”

“… I’m guessing Nova Industries isn’t our employer then.”

Suerte grinned but didn’t offer an answer one way or the other.

“But… That doesn’t really make sense…” Chris added after thinking about it some more. “I mean wouldn’t people want to get incarcerated… just to play?”

He raised a speculative eyebrow.

“You would sacrifice freedom in order to play two hours a day? And then have to work twelve hours at five times dilation… sixty hours a day doing all the work the rest of society has given up on? If the game was the only driving factor, you’d be better off working. After clocking in your twenty-hours you could play as long as you like…”

Chris nodded lamely.

“Alright,” she said, getting back on topic. “Why do you need me to be such a great player then? Can’t you just hire players you already know are good?”

“We have,” he stated simply. “You are not the first, neither will you be the last.”

His words were ominously threatening. When she thought she’d determined Suerte’s and his employer’s reach he would do or say something that made her reconsider those margins. Every time she realized she was playing with bigger and bigger fish. Chris was nothing but a sardine, an amoeba to these people. Suerte seemed to be trying to help her out for some unknown reason, but she still had to watch out. Everyone had ulterior motives and who was their employer. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became of the depressing conclusion that she was working for one of Top Five Companies. The mere thought had every instinct in her body telling her to run for the hills.

The Top Five were Nova Industries, Oolgeg, IcroMoft, Craig Consolidated and JasperSync. Chris doubted Nova Industries would need to spy on its own enterprise and she had no idea how any of the others could have a vested interest in the prison facilities. Then again, she really didn’t know if it was Nova Industries after all. Instead of worrying about something she wasn’t informed enough to work out, she should probably pay attention to the life-changing events taking place right before her.

“As for why, you do not need to know yet. All you need to know is, play. Become a good player, and form a guild. It would be great if you could get some other convicts involved. People who have more time to play tend to become better players. However, that is not a strict requirement. As long as all the other players in your guild are also strong, and they follow your orders, and you follow ours, it does not matter who they are.”

Chris was silent as she took it all in. Although she had never played before, she knew that a guild was a group of players who tended to play together to create advantageous situations for each other. She understood what was required from her, but she didn’t know why. Suerte was obviously not going to tell her, so she switched gears.

“Alright, so what is the second requirement?”

“You will be going into Goldilocks, their system is both more and less conducive to our task. Their warden has instituted a policy that is slightly different…”

Chris furrowed her brows in confusion.

“He lets good players play full-time. The ones he deems unfit, he uses for the upkeep of the prison. Out of the 5000 or so convicts, only about five hundred are needed for the maintenance and upkeep of Goldilocks.”

“Maintenance?”

“Laundry, meals, cleanliness… the tasks usually assigned to convicts. It would be very expensive, not to say dangerous, to have outside contract labor.”

“... Alright,” she said, realizing how little she knew about prisons. “But how is any of this different from other prisons? From what you have said, I am assuming you have convicts from other prisons in your payroll…”

Suerte smirked at her words, seeing her fishing expedition for what it was.

“Yes,” he said, apparently indifferent of her knowledge of the situation. “The government regulations call for each prisoner to play the game for at least two hours every day. It does not however, state a maximum of hours. Most prisons have the convicts rotate out at regular intervals. The warden at Goldilocks though… seems to be using players towards his own gain.”

“His own—”

“Profit gaming. Gold Farming,” he said. “Nova Era is played so much that the currency therein is almost interchangeable with the credits in the real world. The warden uses the best gamers to guarantee a profit. He sells items and money acquired in the game. However… this doesn’t interest us, so far it has not interfered with our goals. We just want to guarantee that it stays like that.”

“Alright,” she said slowly, taking in the situation as best she could. “So you want me to play the game. And… what else? What do I have to do with the warden?”

“We don’t want you to just play the game,” he said, his voice sounding tired, as if tired of repeating himself. “We need you to be the best.”

He closed the open folder on the desk and looked straight at her while speaking.

“We have tried to figure out what the Warden is doing and what his endgame is, but have so far been unable to. Unless you play better than the bottom five hundred, he will sit you out. And unless you are among the best, he will never come into contact with you. We need you to be in contact with him, we need to know if he’s a threat, a possible partner or a simple nuisance…so figure out what he is up to….” He said, “by any means possible.”

Chris gaped.

“D-did you just ask me… to seduce the warden?!”

Suerte raised an amused eyebrow and smiled somewhat mockingly.

“Not at all” he said. “I just asked you to use all of the means available to you…”

He steepled his long, yet very masculine, fingers in front of him.

“Are those the only means you possess?” he asked.

Chris just sat there with her mouth agape as Suerte calmly unsteepled his fingers and re-stacked all of his folders.

“Alright, that should be it.” He concluded. “Any questions?”

She just sat there in utter amazement until she found her tongue again.

“Do I have a choice?” Chris asked rhetorically.

He didn’t comment.

Chris sighed and regretted ever having taken the double shift on Saturday night. If she hadn’t, none of this would have happened. She would be coming back from her last final right about now. Chris had been ready for that test, she would have aced it and she would have graduated with honors, but now… now it would never happen. As of tomorrow she will be a convicted criminal for life. She could never go back to what could have been.

“Listen.” She heard her lawyer say in his honeyed baritone. Apparently he had been trying to get her attention, so she looked up at him. Chris saw compassion in his face, real compassion. “I know you don’t deserve this, and I can’t make any guarantees, but if you want to get out, there is a way.” He paused to ensure he had her attention before he continued. “Become the best player there is.”

“The best…”

“If you become the best player in Goldilocks and maintain that rank, showing my employer that you’re a valuable asset, I might be able to get you out.”

Chris could feel a crack in her shell of numbness, as hope for freedom was about to seep through. She had already resigned herself to her fate though, it was hard to trust in an escape from it. “... Might.”

“It’s the best I can do. You can take it or leave it. You don’t have to decide right now. I’m just letting you know. I want you to win. You don’t deserve this… It was just the bad luck of the draw.”

Chris didn’t respond. What could she say?

“Familiarize yourself with this as much as you can.” He said, handing her a transparent hand-sized tablet. It was the newest technology on the market, just as powerful as any computer.

“I might be poor, but I know what a tabl—”

“Not the tablet. The information in it.” He said as if he were talking to a child. “Your job for the foreseeable future will be to play Nova Era, don’t you think it is high time you familiarize yourself with it?”

He then succinctly got up, and winked as he closed the door behind him.

Chris looked up to see the camera was shut off, but then it turned on again.

Sitting there in silence for a couple of minutes, she waited for a guard to come and take her back to her cell. She doubted they would let her keep the damn thing and wondered if she should hide it, but decided not to since any of the other prisoners in her cell would be able to give her away at any time.

In the end though, she shouldn’t have worried. They took her to a bathroom with a shower and gave her fifteen minutes, more than enough time to make herself feel human again. She wondered if her new benefactors had set it up and her suspicions were later confirmed when they not only gave her clean new prison slacks, but also a ‘private’ cell.

The best surprise came when the mattress on her bed seemed to be brand new, and Chris wondered how powerful her unnamed masters really were. She was quite certain that the many ‘privileges’ granted to her that night were a direct powerplay, to show Chris just how far their influence reached. In the end, it was a not so subtly conveyed threat for her to follow their agreement… or else.

Before they closed her up for the night, they took her outside for the first fresh air she had breathed in days. She almost felt human again. It wasn’t a feeling that lasted long though and they soon locked her in her cell once more. The bars closed and she was behind them. She had signed a document that would keep her there for quite some time.

But not for ten years.

Determination flashed in her eyes.

If it’s a game that would get her out of there, it was a game she would play.