Sugar Spun Programs

The tension in the clearing was gone. Carmen and Angie were at a table talking over a map. It was an honest to goodness paper map. The discussion was cordial enough as Carmen talked about locations and enemy forces.

For team Bloop, the elephant in the clearing was XMAN235’s body. It was still laying on the ground. Mike and Southaven were examining XMAN. More accurately they were messing around with his helmet and armour. They talked softly to each other as they did this and that. They may as well have been working on a computer for all the effect XMAN’ss corpse had on them. Of course, Mark thought, it’s only a game.

Heather sat down next to Mark. He was sitting with his back against a tree a few meter’s away from XMAN. A few meters on the other side of XMAN, six of Carmen’s men stood guard. More had vanished into the woods. How many soldiers does she have? Mark wondered.

“Be careful,” Heather said.

“Of what?” He looked around. He changed his grip on his weapon. Everything looked peaceful, but this was a game. There is supposed to be action.

Heather smiled at him and shook her head. “Nothing out there.” Her smile turned into a soft giggle. “Well, there is lots of stuff out there that wants to kill us, but that’s not what I mean.”

She paused. Mark prompted her. “What should I watch out for?”

“Sugar spun programs. A pretty face can hide an evil code.”

A small part of Mark went cold. “What?” Does she read minds?,

“You’re new to the game, and you’re Sarah’s kinda dad, so just some advice. That pretty face we call Miranda is probably a AI NPC.” She saw the look on his face and took a guess what the look meant. “An artificial intelligence non-player character. It’s probably some programmer’s vision of the perfect woman.” Heather gave a shrug. “I’m just surprised she doesn’t have boobs the size of watermelons.”

Mark looked at her. He had no idea what to say. The woman, Marina, was attractive. The kind of looks that made his knees weak. She was shorter than him by a few inches and sexy as could be. A hot snippit of code. Out loud, Mark spoke “you said probably. She probably is a piece of code.”

Heather shrugged again. “Sometimes they have real people, player characters play important parts in big scenarios like this. Even if Miranda is real, do you really think Guerrilla Barbie will have eyes for you? She probably sees a hundred players a day.”

Mark had nothing to say. His brain was trying to process.

“Different strokes for different folks, and I’m not gonna judge you, but you’re my teammate and my friend’s sorta dad and I kinda said I’d keep an eye on you.” Heather made a show of checking her grenade launcher.

Mark thought about it. “How can you tell who is real?”

Check the properties on gunman number 6 there.” She used her chin to indicate the last guard in line.

The first line of her properties read:

Bernardo. Guerrilla Fighter. Neutral

After that came some stats and a health bar.

“If they give a status of your relationship, its an AI.”

“I see.”

“The problem is, if its more than a run of the mill low impact NPC, its tougher to tell. Check out Carmen.”

The first line of her properties read:

Carmen

After that came some stats and a health bar.

“Just her name. No job, no relationship to me. Does that mean she’s a player?”

“No, it means she could be either a player or a more sophisticated AI.”

“And how do I find out which?”

“Figuring it out is part of the fun and I don’t want to ruin it for you.”

“Thanks,” he said with more than a trace of sarcasm. He wanted to say more, but Heather looked away from him. Angie was walking towards them. Southaven and Mike joined them too. It was a full-on team meeting.

After glancing around to see if any of Carmen’s people were within earshot, Mike reported, “Uh, we can get the chip. It looks a little damaged, and, uh, it’ll take some work to get it to play.” Southaven had a grim smile.

Angie nodded. “Good news.” She took a deep breath. Now she had to tell them the deal she made with Carmen. Angie began to explain, “here’s the deal...”