Artificial(ish) Intelligence

Chapter 113

Will clutched his stomach. His last three meals were expelled, but the sense of regret remained. This wasn't some game, it was real life with real lives. Could he have stopped that woman from dying? He had a feeling they'd met before, but he couldn't remember playing any games with her. Was she another victim of Josef Hydan's, left to die by starvation...and from the impact of a blunt object. OK, so the blood didn't really fit the story, but guilt is known for not listening to reason.

At least it wasn't Paige. But where was she?

He'd been left in a room with a desk and little else. An office, perhaps? It looked familiar.

He gathered his wits and tried the door. It asked for a voice sample and unique code. He mumbled something, just in case the settings were left open by default, but surprisingly his weak attempts proved futile.

Life may not be a game, but you could learn a lot by playing them. This situation would only be present in a strategy puzzle game, something with a superfluous storyline, a wife or kid stolen or killed, a protagonist with a single-minded desire to find or avenge them, to solve the mystery; the first step of which was to secure a way out. And you only did that with clues.

He scoured the room once more, this time with gamer eyes. Each object was a potential new inventory item to be used alone or in combination at a later date, highlighted or not depending on their value. With no ammo or med kits, or even photos in frames, the room was almost devoid of life. It felt lonely doing this in single-player mode.

Will tiredly ran a few fingers through his hair.

"Awww yeah, tussle that hair you hunk," said Barry White, hovering nearby.

Then he saw it. Another screen. I won't lie, his first thought was to play a game, a game within the game in his mind, but a program was already running. He was met with a pixelated figure, a face perhaps, if you squinted in the right way. He sat on the office chair and cracked his fingers. This was more his style.

He tapped on the screen, trying various gestures, but no additional interface controls popped up. What was the clue? There had to be a clue.

He looked around once more. The door had required a security code and--

"Hello?" he said, trying a voice command.

"Hiya," it said, in response.

Will jumped. Then smiled, leaning closer. "All right! This is easy. Who are you?"

"I don't know," it said, convincingly.

"Are you the company mainframe?" said Will, with too many old movies running through his head.

"I don't think so," it said. "But I can see you."

Will looked up and around for cameras. All he could make out was an old vent. He climbed up on the chair and, on tippy toes, stretched up and just...almost...nearly...fell to the floor. He tried again. The vent was covered with a metal plate, flush, with no way of gripping the face to slide it off. Rotating the metal didn't work, since it didn't rotate. He sighed and dropped back down, not too perturbed: unsuccessfully attempting a different technique didn't mean failure, it was just a way to learn more about the boundaries of the game rules.

"So can you open doors?" he said, only now realising the most obvious question. He waited, just long enough to begin a follow-up question, before getting cut off by the program's response.

"It seems like it, yeah."

"And...what about this one?" said Will, prodding.

He looked over at the door, only now making out the name written over glass: Josef Hydan. This was his office, the same they'd been in earlier. He looked up again. At least the metal plate meant he wouldn't be getting any surprises from a few overly diligent defencebots.

"Can you open the door to this office," he said.

"No," said the program, perplexed.

Will sighed. "I thought I was onto something," he said, sitting back.

The program made its own strange noise, not entirely unlike blowing hair from its non-existent face.