Creatrix

Chapter 6 - Out of Sync

Richard Larkin was happiest when playing and developing Creation; it was the greatest accomplishment of his life. If only his father were still alive to see the success that he had cruelly told his only son that he would never become. Before Richard  sold out to Somasync he had been working on this dreamtime interface alone, but he soon realised that the only way to get Creation out to the world was to get involved with this immense corporation. It went against everything he believed in. 

Roger thought that the cash was important to him and that Larkin had done it to make money, but that was Roger’s reality not his. Richard’s drive was never the money; he wanted his technology to be available to the world. He knew the benefits of such a game, and recognised that Creation could actually help people connect with each other and learn on another level. 

The way it interacts with your thoughts and opens up experiences that can help players solve real life problems is unique and precious. It's exactly like lucid dreaming and it opens up your subconscious thinking, so that you can interact with it whilst fully conscious. 

Imagine your dreams being fully interactive. The symbols and signs that come from the dream time transformed into stories and adventures where you can learn new lessons; stories and mythology that will give your spirit the teaching it really needs. Imagine being able to fulfill your subconscious needs and wishes, being able to practice solving real time issues and problems in a fantasy setting  so that you can approach them in real life with confidence. This is how Richard saw Creation and how he liked people to play the game, and this is why he liked players like Kali.

She, like him, was suspicious of Somasync. She looked deeper into Creation, and tried to see where manipulation of people’s thoughts and feelings could take place. She loved the game, and could see the beauty of it, but more recently she had been exploring a more sinister side. It was simply a tool, and she knew that just like any other tool, it could be used for good or bad intent. Richard made a mental note to get in touch with Kali later this evening when he would be home from work and turned his mind to the task at hand.

There was a buzz in the Programming Suite; Simeon had been checking for power surges on the web and following the subtle signatures behind the virtual landscape of the game. He was tracking two out of the six sectors; and something was out of place in one of them. At first it looked like a spike – an information surge to stop the game operating, or slow it down - but it was clear that the game was still functioning.  There was unquestionably a power surge of some kind  and it was  in the Shoumi Sector. They didn't know what it was yet, but it was not synonymous with their programming. 

Karen called Richard on the vid-phone. Digi-com devices were only used within the building. Somasync, the cutting edge of human communication and the only company in London that operated making full use of this technology. They were unable to get the full holographic link over longer distances, so the vid-phone was the best way for Karen to get hold of Richard at home.

‘Richard, we might have something here, there’s a disturbance of some kind in Sector 4. The programmers don’t know what it is yet,’

‘We haven’t done any updates in that sector for ages, what is it? Hackers? Were there any players involved?’ He looked drained, exhausted by this tension.

‘We can’t tell from here, but it doesn’t look like hackers; there’s no other sign of them.’ Karen would have expected hackers to work through other parts of the network, to build their levels and manipulate the scores. She was still convinced that hackers had messed with their NPC codex, but not this, they wouldn’t just mess with the virtual landscape; there would be no personal benefit. 

‘No, I don’t think it’s hackers; it’s something in the landscape. I can’t make it out - the web’s been damaged by the look of it.’

Simeon shouted out from across the room, ‘Hey! It looks like it’s repairing itself . . .See, this information stream here, look! It’s going back to the original programming.’