2

Everything in the jail cell smelled like bleach, dust, and old piss–including the painfully thin mattress Alex was trying to get some shuteye on. Sleeping was the only thing that helped him pass the time and forget how royally fucked he was, but given how busy and noisy the place was, even that was a luxury.

“Hey, Rulin!” a voice called from the other side of the bars. A guard. “Wake up. You’ve got a visitor. Your lawyer’s here to see you.”

“Tell him it’s my day off”, said Alex, still groggy.

The guard rolled his eyes.

“I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that. Chop-chop, I ain’t got all day.”

Alex was no mama’s boy, but jail definitely did not agree with him. The cells were shitty, the food shittier, and as for the company… Well, let’s say it wasn’t exactly the kind of people you’d expect to find in an Ivy League gala. What annoyed Alex the most, however, was the boredom. The sense that he was just sitting around with nothing to do but piss his life away, wishing he hadn’t been stupid enough to end up in there in the first place.

Well, if wishes were horses.

Alex didn’t have two pennies to his name to rub together, so he had been assigned a public defender. The guy was a sweaty, over-anxious muppet; Alex knew he was screwed the moment he first saw him stumble through the door of the jail’s visitors’ room a couple of days earlier.

The guard took Alex to that same room–a depressing affair with worn carpeting, fluorescent lamps, an old table, and a couple of mismatched chairs. His visitor was already there, waiting.

“No shenanigans, Rulin. I’m going to be right outside that door. Don’t make me come in here. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure” said Alex and took a seat by the table. The man sitting across him, however, wasn’t the same guy as the last time.

No.

The man sitting across him was something else entirely.

He must have been well into his forties, judging from his iron-grey hair and short, well-trimmed beard. The first thing Alex noticed was the suit. He didn’t know jack about suits, but that one looked expensive. Dignified. Nothing like the off-the-rack monkey suit you’d expect a public lawyer to wear. The second thing he noticed was the eyes, and how the man’s polite half-smile didn’t reach all the way up there. There was something predatory in the way he looked at Alex. Not hostile, not necessarily, but predatory–like the way a bored, not-really-hungry-right-now lion would look at deer at a watering hole.

He also smelled of a rich, woody scent–aromatic pipe smoke.

“Hello, Mr. Rulin.”

“Uh… I thought you were someone else.”

“I am someone else”, the man said. Under normal circumstances, Alex might even have laughed at that. Yes, the man was someone else alright.

“Do I know you?”

“I’m afraid not. But I know you, and you’re not someone who should be spending his time in here paying for a momentary lapse in judgment. My name is Grimm. I want to represent your case in court.”

Alex had no idea what was happening, and his first instinct was to seem disinterested and bail out as fast as he could. Still, the man had a kind of magnetism he just couldn’t off-handedly dismiss. He had an accent Alex couldn’t quite place and the kind of rich, smooth voice that was usually reserved for professional voice actors and late-night FM DJs.

“Thanks, but, uh, I already have a lawyer.”

“That public defender?”, the man said, sounding amused. “Yes, if you can call him that.”

“What do you want exactly, mister?”

“Let me cut through the proverbial crap, Mr. Rulin”, the man shook his head and went on. “Alex? May I call you Alex?”

“Sure.”

“Alex, I want you to listen. Really listen, because this is important.”

“I’m listening.”

He really was listening. Why not? It wasn’t like he had anything to lose. As far as the law was concerned, he was already pretty much fucked six was to Sunday.

“I want to make you an offer. It’s the best one you’re going to get in here – in fact, it’s the best one you probably ever will have. It will literally open you a door to a new life. ”

“Look, if this is about money, let me stop you right there. I don’t have any.”

Grimm’s amused half-smile widened.

“Remind me, Alex. Why are you in here in the first place?”

“I used a stolen credit card number to order a pizza,” Alex said, more than just a little embarrassed. It was sad, really; he’d just lost his job that night, he was feeling blue, and just wanted to munch on some double cheese pepperoni and forget. Someone had given him the credit card number in exchange for helping him with an elite quest. Alex had never intended to use it, but damn – that was one particularly shitty night.

“Exactly. I’m well aware of the charges you’re facing, Alex, and well aware of the fact that you’re, to put it mildly, flat broke. You wouldn’t make that purchase if you weren’t. It was a stupid move-though I suppose it has a desperate Jean Valjean kind of charm to it. No, my proposition won’t cost you a dime. In fact, if you play your cards right, you may actually end up making some money. Real money – and a hundred percent legal, too.”

“Go on, then.”

“Here’s what’s going to happen; you’re going to plead guilty to all charges. The court will convict you to a year or so of jail time, and allow you to spend your sentence in a private penitentiary establishment owned by a party I represent. Minimum security, your own private room, better food, better everything. So, how does that sound?”

Alex might be a college dropout, but he wasn’t an idiot. His smarts were the one good thing his late father had left him. “You gotta learn how to think, bub”, the old man used to say, and then emphasize that axiom by flicking his young son’s nose. He never won any blue ribbons for parenting, the underachieving, Coors-Light-guzzling asshat, but at least he’d gotten that right.

The other axiom he lived by was “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, and Alex had taken that one to heart, too. If something sounded too good to be true, it probably was, and Grimm’s proposition so far had sounded like sweet music to his ears.

Suspiciously sweet music.

“What was your name again?” Alex asked, trying to hide the fact that he was lightly sweating all over his body.

“You can call me Grimm.”

“Like the fairytale guys?”

That made the man chuckle.

“Exactly so–only my offer is the real deal.”

“So, what’s the catch?”

Because of course there was going to be a catch.

“There’s not much of one”, said Grimm. “What you have to do in return is playtest Elderpyre, a virtual reality game. You’ll play like you normally would, and let the party I represent–a group of developers–collect data and use it to improve the experience. Anonymously, of course.”

“And if I decide to say no?”

“Then I’ll shake you hand, clap you on the back, and wish you good luck.”

“Simple as that?”

“Simple as that.”

Alex had to scoff.

“Come on, man. I’m not stupid. Why me? Why don’t you get some actual playtesters? Hell, you can call it a beta or an early access version or some other shit and even have people pay you for it.”

The man pursed his lips and stared at Alex, as if trying to make up his mind about something. Alex tried to keep his poker face up and stare back, but found that he couldn’t–not for longer than a few seconds.

“Good point” he finally said. “Let me be straight with you. This game? It’s… special. Nothing like you’ve ever played before. Everything about it is kept under wraps. Thing is, playtesters have an unfortunate tendency to blab to the wrong people, non-disclosure agreement notwithstanding. What can you do about it? You can’t keep them locked up in a cell… or can you?”

Well, damn.

It made a surprising amount of sense, Alex realized. Professional playtesters were paid shit, but they still were paid. And, if history was any indication, nothing spelled "cheap labor, no questions asked" like the prison-industrial complex.

“Okay, I get it. Why me, though?”

Grimm shook his head, but the half-smile didn’t leave his face.

“It’s not just you, Alex. It’s a program.”

“Yeah, but still. Why me?”

Grimm rubbed his chin with his perfectly manicured hand, pondering his answer.

“A variety of reasons. Trivial criminal offense, not much of a family, underachiever, college dropout, gaming background, and, to be frank, you’re not going anywhere too fast. No offense.”

“None taken. I’m used to people in fancy suits looking down on me.”

“I’m not looking down on you. Quite the opposite. Would I still be making you this offer if I didn’t recognize your potential value?”

Alex rolled his eyes and said nothing, still trying to act disinterested. The sweat was making his jail uniform stick to his clothes. The fluorescent light flooding the depressing little room was making him feel like none of this was real. The smell of dust and old sweat permeated everything, assaulting his nostrils. A couple of rooms down the corridor, someone–a guard, probably–was shouting at someone else, though Alex couldn’t make out the words. It was as if he was living inside the world’s most depressing still life painting.

“I’m afraid time is of the essence, Alex”, said Grimm, not missing a chance to add a hint of scarcity and urgency to what he was peddling. “You have to make up your mind fast. What will it be, in or out?”

Alex let a tired sigh and rubber his eyes with his fists.

“It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?”

“Son”, the man said, and for the first time he sounded completely, totally honest. “You always have a choice.”