Creatrix

Chapter 20 - Synchronicity

‘Creatrix?’ Karen said out loud. It had to be a virus. She had spent the previous day running through the NPC programming to see if she could find out what was wrong with it, and found the word Creatrix among the original data for Kaldez. She tried to contact Richard before leaving the office, but he’d already left. His digi-com threw back a glib response when she called up to his office. 

‘I’m working at home, I can get more done there.’ It said. She’d tried calling him at home, but there was no reply. 

Karen had stayed at the office, working throughout the night. She was checking and rechecking the database, searching for Creatrix. She suspected it was some kind of virus; the data that came up on her screen was indecipherable. If she could have decoded it, she would have known why Creatrix could not be found in this way.  

Now Creation had crashed. Karen was panicking; she was supposed to take a group of regulators in to make sure the players didn’t come to any harm, but they were blocked, not just the NPC’s, but the regulators and characters too. Somasync couldn’t get access and the game was going ahead without any moderation. 

Several programmers sat looking at their screens, punching at the keyboard, trying to get the new sequence. This had to be the work of hackers; they’d been tampering with the basic codex for some time, and now they’d managed to crash the whole system. The game was still operating and there were over ten thousand people playing it, but no one from Somasync.

Karen was unable to get hold of Richard, and so she had to speak to Roger. His projected image flickered into the room. 

‘Right, what exactly is going on?’ he said, annoyed that he had been called to the programming suite.

‘I’m worried about these two players.' Karen told him. 'I’m supposed to go with a team to make sure everything is okay, but we can’t get access.’ 

‘I don’t understand. What two players?’ he asked.

‘We set up this quest for them, sent them after a Grimoald - It’s a team creature - Richard said to send them after one to see what happens.’

‘Why would he want to do that?’ 

‘Well we think that Durant kid had a run in with one of these Grimoalds before he went crazy.’ Karen went crimson; she had assumed that Richard had told their boss about this.

‘How did you find that out?’ Roger glared at her; she looked flustered. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Hasn’t Richard told you yet?’ Karen asked. She realized she had dropped him in it. ‘He’s probably preparing a report. He wants to be sure I suppose.’

‘Sure of what exactly? What made you think this kid had a problem connected with the game?’

‘Simeon tracked this information surge that happened when a player went to fight this creature.’ Karen explained. ‘It was strange, not part of the original programming, but it seemed to affect the game. We looked deeper to find out what it was and found out it had happened before.’

‘To the Durant boy?’ Roger asked.

‘Yes, well he was the only character around when it happened the last time.’ She hated being put on the spot like this.

‘And this time? Who was around then?’ 

‘There were two characters, Tyr and Anika,’ Karen had to tell him, ‘that’s who I am worried about now.’ 

Karen knew she shouldn’t have called Roger, but she had no choice, what else could she do if Richard wasn’t around.

‘They are the ones you have written this other programme for I suppose.’ he said.