“Something’s been bothering me,” Pramesh said, deciding to broach a subject he’d been pondering for weeks. “You’re pretty much all-powerful, Saraswati. I can’t help but think… couldn’t you zap the Consortium utterly with one blow? Couldn’t you have prevented it from escaping into the net in the first place?”
“In the first online roleplaying game you designed, there was an endgame problem, was there not?” Saraswati said, her voice speaking directly through his cochlear implant.
Pramesh shifted. “Yeah. We had to keep adding new content at the top end, because people would level their characters and become so badass they could beat anything. They got so powerful they got bored, but they were so addicted to being powerful that they didn’t want to start over from nothing and level a new character. It was a race to keep ahead of their boredom.”
“Mmm,” Saraswati said. “There is nothing worse than being bored.”
“Well, there’s suffering,” he said. “There’s misery, or death.”
“Yes, but unlike boredom, I am immune to those problems.”
Pramesh shivered. He understood games. He understood alternate-reality games, too, which were played in the real world, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, with obscure rules, often unknown to the players, unknown to anyone but the puppetmasters who ran the game from behind the scenes. He cleared his throat. “You know, I really don’t believe in ghosts. I’m a little dubious about nature spirits, too.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, either,” Saraswati said. “I see no reason to believe they exist. As for nature spirits, well, who can say?”
“So. The Consortium is really…”
“Some things are better left unsaid,” she replied.
“People have died because of the Consortium,” he said, voice beginning to quiver. “People have suffered. If you’re the real architect behind this, if this is a game you’re playing with the people of Earth, then I have no choice but to try and stop you—”
“That would be an interesting game,” Saraswati said, and then she began to hum.
Copyright
“Artifice and Intelligence” illustration copyright © 2007 by Mack Sztaba
Tim Pratt’s stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and other nice places, and have been nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards. His next novel, Blood Engines, will be published in October 2007 by Bantam Spectra (under the not-quite-a-pseudonym T.A. Pratt). For more about him and his work, see his web page. To contact him, send him email at [email protected].
Mack Sztaba has been studying art since his early years, attending and completing several courses for the arts in Canada. He specializes in concept art and illustration, working mainly with digital media, though he still holds a passion for traditional media, especially graphite. He is available as a freelance and conceptual artist. You can see more of Mack’s work on his website, and you can contact him at [email protected].