Direct evidence, p.10
Direct Evidence, page 10
It was comfortable and cozy. Instead of hard plastic or wooden chairs in the lobby, there were beanbags.
Maybe a little cheesy, maybe trying a little too hard, but comfortable, nevertheless.
Tony was waiting in the entrance, taking this all in and allowing the air conditioning to do its work, when a man approached him.
“Jake Hollister,” he said with a perfect grin. Jake had shaggy blonde hair, and instead of a suit, he was wearing a black T-shirt and dark jeans with white running shoes. Classic comfortable chic. “I’m the head programmer here at Valley Games. Now, Tony—it is Tony, right?”
“Yes,” Tony said, swiping his palm on his pants to dry it before shaking Jake’s hand. “Tony Metcalfe.”
“Thought so.” Jake suddenly turned serious, and Tony thought the worst. He’d been intercepted and was about to be told that there had been a mistake, that he wasn’t qualified, and they were sorry, and blah, blah, blah. “Look, I know that you were supposed to meet with HR for an interview, but… I’m going to be honest. I hate HR, with their rules and all that nonsense. I just want to know one thing, Tony: can you code?”
Tony was taken aback and said nothing, even as Jake slipped an arm over his sweaty shoulders and guided him deeper into the building. They passed a large glass desk behind which stood a pretty woman with almost natural red hair tied up in a bun that contrasted with her pale features.
“Morning, Janice,” Jake said cheerily.
“Good morning.”
Tony gave the woman a polite wave, and she repeated the greeting to him, as well.
Jake led them to an elevator and finally took his arm off Tony’s shoulder, for which he was grateful. He imagined Jake’s forearm just dripping in his sweat.
The elevator pinged and they got inside.
Jake pressed 16.
“It’s a short ride, but maybe you can tell me a little about yourself, Tony?” Jake asked when the doors closed.
Tony cleared his throat.
“Now, I-I don’t have any formal education, but I have been programming for years. We’re talking about starting with Turing and then Visual Basics… yeah, all the way back then. I’ve done everything from working on websites to making my own games. There was even—
Tony stopped himself.
He was about to say that he’d created the base code for one of the most popular mobile games of the last ten years.
Before they fucked him. Before that piece of shit company had bent him over and fucked him right in the ass.
Took everything. Gave him nothing.
Jake waved a hand dismissively.
“I know about your accomplishments, Tony, and your history. You sent us all that stuff, remember? Let me ask you something else… what do you know about Happy Valley games? Have you ever traveled into the multiverse?” Jake said this last part with an air of an afternoon game show host.
“O-o-of course. I have a subscription to Happy Valley games… I-I-I love the multiverse.
“So, you’re a fanboy?”
“I-I-“ Tony didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to come across as too eager, but he didn’t want to insult the lead programmer either.
“Oh, come on.” Jake rolled his eyes. “Tell me what you really think. I’m not soft, I can take it. We want people who have ideas for improving the metaverse, not yes men. It’s a fickle business… one day we’re on top, the next, another company puts out a better, more realistic, multiverse, and our membership tanks overnight. So, Tony, I’m going to ask you this just once: what’s wrong with our multiverse?”
Oh, shit. This is a trap. I’ve walked into a trap.
If he hadn’t been dripping with sweat already, Tony’s entire body would have broken out in a slick, greasy coating.
What do I say?
“Tick-tock, Tony. Tick-tock.” Jake laughed and pointed at the digital display telling them what floor they were passing.
They were on eleven now.
He had to say something. He had to.
This was his chance.
His only chance.
“The uncanny valley,” Tony blurted. This was the truth. This was the problem with Happy Valley Gaming and all the other multiverses he’d tested.
Jake looked at him.
“Go on.”
Fuck it, Tony thought. I’m just going to roll with it. It’s too late to take it back now, anyway.
“The faces of the NPCs, you know? The non-playable characters? They look good, but not real enough. Like they just… well, they make me uncomfortable. Hell, even the other players, their faces? They’re not right, either—they’re too good to be robots but not good enough to be human. It just makes you cringe a little, and that takes you out of the multiverse. It’s supposed to be completely immersive, you know, like, it’s supposed to make you forget what’s real and what’s just a game? But it’s those faces and reactions… emotions…”
Jake stared at him with an intensity that Tony didn’t know how to read.
Then the man burst out laughing.
“I know what the uncanny valley is, Tony, my man!” He slapped Tony on the back, which made an awkward sloshing sound. “But you nailed it. Fucking nailed it. I’m like you, I want to be so invested in the game that it’s more real than real, you know? That’s what I want. But we can’t do that with these characters with plastic features and—“ he pointed his fingers in front of his face, one going to the left, the other to the right, “—wonky eyes when your virtual reality wife is supposed to be sad. Or horny or I don’t know, dead! So, can you help us? Tony Metcalfe, ye of no formal education, can you help us break through the uncanny valley?”
Tony stiffened.
“I can,” he said confidently. Then he repeated the claim. “Yes, I can.”
Jake smiled again, revealing his perfectly white teeth. The elevator chimed and the doors opened.
Standing in the doorway was a man with silver hair and a deep tan. He was in his mid- to late-fifties, Tony guessed.
“Ah, what timing!” Jake said cheerfully. “Always one for the theatrics, hey, Stu?”
The silver fox grinned.
“Who’s this?” he asked, indicating Tony with his chin.
Jake stepped to one side and waved his arms.
“Stu Barnes, CEO of Happy Valley Gaming, meet Tony Metcalfe, the man who is going to finally help us break through the uncanny valley.”
Chapter 22
Chase had plenty of time to think about what had transpired with Brian during her flight from Nashville back to New York.
Would she have killed him? If Terrence hadn’t shown up when he did, could she have really shot and killed an unarmed man? Even if said unarmed man was responsible for so much of her, and others’, suffering?
No.
Maybe.
What wasn’t in question was whether Chase would have fed Brian the Cerebrum if she hadn’t dropped it.
That was a hard yes.
But now the pill was gone. As were Terrence and Brian.
Chase pulled into Louisa’s driveway but didn’t get out right away. She could see them inside, Louisa and her two boys, Brandon and Lawrence, and of course Georgina. They were playing some sort of game together and laughing.
They were happy.
This made Chase angry, and it also made her want to turn around and leave, to just go home. Maybe she’d grab her drone and fly through the fields, zoom through the flowers, and just let—
“No,” she said out loud. “No.”
It made no sense to run. If she ran, Brian would be able to gain custody of Georgina uncontested. And then what?
Chase couldn’t even fathom what the monster would do to her.
There was a custody hearing in two weeks. Chase would either be there or wouldn’t. In either case, Georgina would be by her side.
Louisa, who was miming either something terribly inappropriate or acting like an elephant glanced out the front window and their eyes met. To her credit, Louisa barely missed a step. She just kept going with the routine.
I don’t deserve her, Chase thought.
And she really didn’t. Louisa had been through nearly as much as she had. Like Chase, she’d been taken by Brian and Tim and had gotten away.
Louisa hadn’t left a sister behind, but she was haunted by demons, as well. But whereas Louisa had put most of her bad habits behind her and had thrown herself into her family life instead of just cycling from one coping mechanism to another, Chase continued to struggle.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair to Louisa.
Chase made up her mind and got out of the car. Louisa must have noticed because she opened the front door and Georgina rushed out.
The girl was smiling so hard that her cheeks were like cherries when she embraced Chase.
“I missed you,” Chase said. She hugged her niece so hard that the girl grunted with discomfort. “I missed you so much.”
“I missed… you… too,” Georgina managed. She wriggled free.
“Welcome back, Chase,” Louisa said from the doorway.
“Thanks.” She put her hand on Georgina’s head. “Let’s go inside.”
Louisa’s house was larger than Chase’s but not by much and it shared the same homey feel.
Brandon and Lawrence both said hi, and Chase tousled their blond mops.
“How’s school?” Chase asked Georgina as Louisa poured her a cup of coffee.
“It’s school,” Georgina said, rolling her eyes. “How do you think it is? Booooring.”
“So boring,” Brandon parroted.
Chase laughed. This was good. Boring was good. Excitement was bad. Excitement meant that someone found out who Georgina really was.
“She’s doing great,” Louisa said, noticing the change in Chase’s face. “Really. I spoke to both her teachers, and they only had good things to say about little G.”
Chase spent the next twenty minutes catching up with her niece, which proved difficult. Prying information from the girl was perhaps as challenging as getting a suspect to admit their guilt.
This too was also normal.
Chase did manage to learn about some of her friends and her classes, including her Science teacher, Mrs. Bina, who was categorically meaner to Georgina than any of the other kids.
When it was clear nothing else was forthcoming, Chase hugged Georgina again and told the kids to go on, to go play.
“How are you doing, Chase?” Louisa asked when it was just the two of them.
Chase was dangerously close to telling her friend the truth. She almost blurted that Brian Jalston was out of prison, that he was seeking custody of Georgina, and that she’d been so incensed that she’d put a gun to the man’s head.
But where would this outpouring of truth end? Would she tell Louisa how one of Brian’s wives had tried to kill Chase, but then, in a twist of fate, sacrificed herself to save her?
Would she offhand mention that this poor soul could have been either one of them if they hadn’t gotten lucky and escaped?
No.
Chase refused to give in.
Louisa had put this behind her, and bringing up the man’s name alone might be enough to send her back to the dark place that had landed her in Grassroots to begin with.
It wouldn’t be fair. Knowing that Brian was free would haunt Louisa.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Chase lied—she had no intention of telling the truth. At least, not all of it. Not nearly all of it. “Things aren’t great. No—no, it’s not that, it’s not drugs.”
“But you’re not gonna tell me what it is, are you?” Louisa swirled her coffee.
“Not now,” Chase admitted. “The last case… well, it was tough. Really tough. And now?” she sighed. “I hate to do this. I really, really hate it. If there is another option—“
“Did you practice the speech?” Louisa asked with a smirk. “It sounds rehearsed.”
Chase had.
“I’m trying to be serious here, Louisa.”
Louisa became serious.
“I know you are. And I know what you want. The answer is yes. It will always be yes, Chase. Always.”
Chase looked at her coffee, suddenly feeling ashamed. She’d rescued Georgina from Brian Jalston only to hand her off to someone else. The comparison wasn’t fair, of course, but it still felt wrong.
“Why?” Chase asked, eyes still locked on her drink.
“Why? Because she’s an amazing kid, Chase. You know, I always tell Brandon and Lawrence that I don’t want them to be perfect, that perfect is boring, and making mistakes is fun. But when they act up? When they push things too far? Georgina is the one who brings them back to earth, who helps them regain control. And they look up to her—I know, silly, right? But they do. She really is a great kid. And she has you to thank for that.”
Chase scoffed.
“Me?” She shook her head and finally raised her gaze. “That’s ridiculous. All I do is run away. You’re the only one I can count on. Without you… I… I…”
Chase’s emotions threatened to get the better of her and she aggressively wiped her cheeks.
Louisa came over and comforted her.
“You’re a good person, Chase. You just have to forgive yourself.”
Chase’s fingers on her face were wet now.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Something that Brian had said echoed in her mind.
Who’s looking out for you?
Chase hadn’t known how to answer that until now: Louisa.
She hugged her friend tightly for several minutes before finally letting her go.
“Two weeks,” she said.
Louisa nodded.
“Take care of yourself.”
Chase left without saying goodbye.
It would’ve been too hard otherwise.
Two weeks was all she needed. In two weeks, she would either come for Georgina and they would head to Nashville for the custody hearing together, or Chase would grab her niece and run.
Chapter 23
Happy Valley Gaming was like no other company that Tony Metcalfe had ever worked for, of which there had been many. Nobody cared that he didn’t have a fancy degree—no one even asked him about it. All they cared about was productivity.
More than that, he liked the people, and they liked him.
But the real prize at HVG was Jake Hollister. The man was smart and one of the best programmers that Tony had ever met. Not only that, but Jake was able to quickly identify what people were good at and let them have at it. In other companies, being new meant that you would have to perform the tasks that nobody more senior wanted to do, mainly debugging endless lines of code.
But not at HVG.
At HVG Tony was pretty much left alone and allowed to work.
And he was good. But his problem was a big one.
The uncanny valley.
After a hard day of work, when people came home, slipped on their virtual reality goggles, and grabbed their controllers, they were transported into a different world: the metaverse. The irony was that the more like the real world that the metaverse was, the more people enjoyed the experience despite it being designed as pure escapism. There were tens of thousands of people who populated HVG’s metaverse, known as one of the most realistic, and they were physically located around the world. But the metaverse was vast, potentially infinite, and that required an equal number of participants. In time, Jake and the rest of the HVG crew were convinced that with millions of players, the world would be self-sufficient. But if you were a shift worker who decided to slip on your VR gear just before lunch while most other people were working? It could be an empty, lonely place.
Enter the non-playable characters, the NPCs. New AI tools, especially large language models, have made these computer-generated characters more believable and made their dialog generative, intuitive, and interesting, but there was still the problem of the uncanny valley. This pertained to the models that people used to represent themselves, which were infinitely moddable, but gamers had more patience when dealing with other players as opposed to NPCs.
HVG’s NPCs weren’t half bad. Tony thought they were actually some of the better ones out there. When he was playing and came across these characters, he would initially think that these were other real players. But invariably, something would be amiss, and he would clue into the fact that these were actually NPCs. It had something to do with their expressions. They were good, but not great. Everyone has heard of the creepy guy whose smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. For normal people, a smile wasn’t confined to just lips or cheeks, it spread everywhere, to their eyes, hell, even their ears moved.
And when Tony realized that the character wasn’t a real person, that he’d been almost duped, it made his skin crawl. Gamers like him got uncomfortable and when they got uncomfortable, they didn’t want to play anymore.
And that was the challenge that Tony faced. Make the NPCs so real that no one could ever tell the difference.
This was more crucial for HVG than for the other companies that had their own multiverses because their business model relied on it. Whereas others charged a membership fee, it was free to play HVG’s platform. Instead of charging players directly, they relied on sponsorships and in-game product placement, coupled with optional character ‘upgrades’. They also sold digital land to companies and players alike.
IRL, you didn’t pay to live, you paid to stay alive. That was HVG’s platform. And when people got squirrely from the uncanny valley and logged off, HVG stopped making money.
“Hey, Tony, you doing okay?”
Tony pulled his headphones off and rubbed his eyes.
“Yeah, fine,” he told Jake, who was resting on the partition that offered him some semblance of privacy.
The truth was that Tony was exhausted. Today had been a long day—fourteen hours and still going. This was coming on the heels of an eighteen-hour session fueled by energy drinks and Grappleberry vape juice.
“Any progress?”
Tony felt a pang of guilt and an inclination to lie. They were treating him so well, paying him even better, and what did he have to show for it?
An elevated heart rate and a mechanical keyboard that was starting to fail.
