You by Austin Grossman Read Free Book Online Page A

the screen, and all at once her death animation began. She arched her back and then threw herself violently to the stone floor. Like any dead creature in a game, she spawned her inventory, a few coins and the sword, which promptly disappeared. Before I could stop myself, I shut the computer off, all the way off, powered down.
    I booted the computer back up and ran the editor. Both the king and the woman were flagged immortal. I ran the level again, three more times, with no trouble.
    It was remarkable, terrifyingly remarkable, and deeply uncanny, the way a broken simulation always is; something about it suggested a brain having a stroke, an invisible crisis in the machinery. It had lunged up momentarily from the depths of the code base, a flash of white fin and gaping mouth seen for an instant, then gone again.
    I was going to the kitchen to shake the whole thing off with a bag of Sour Patch Kids when Don’s voice came over the paging system.
    “Could I have everyone join me and Darren in the conference room for a second?”
    “Holy shit,” Matt said across the cubicle divider. “Darren’s back. It’s the new game.”
    We shuffled in. Don stood at the far end of a row of tired, puffy faces, bad haircuts, a long conference table populated with Diet Coke cans.
    At least half of us were wearing iterations of the company T-shirt; I could see four or five versions of the Black Arts logo. Lisa leaned against a wall at the back, eyes closed. She wore the company T-shirt, too, in a tentlike XXL edition.
    Don and Darren stood at the front. I hadn’t seen Darren for at least six years; he’d started wearing a sport jacket over his T-shirt and ripped jeans, Steve Jobs–style, but otherwise he looked exactly the same—sandy blond hair, wiry build, and slightly messianic stare. I remembered beinga little dazzled by him in an older-brother kind of way. It wasn’t just me; he had that quality for nearly everybody—he had this taut magnetism. I avoided his gaze. I didn’t think he ever liked me, even before I bailed on the game world.
    “Thanks, everyone. Thanks. I only have a couple of things to cover,” Don said. “Darren and I want to just get everybody oriented.” For a manager, he didn’t seem that comfortable as a speaker. He was used to Darren handling it.
    “Number one, we shipped
Solar Empires III
. It’s selling… pretty well so far, and CGW’s cover story is going to come out next week, which should give it a boost, and a little bird told me we’re a contender for the Best Strategy Game award from
Electronic Gaming
.” There was some cheering—people were still buzzed with whatever they’d gone through. Lisa didn’t bother clapping. Neither did Toby. He really did hate outer space now—planets, comets, gleaming battleships aloft on the solar wind like golden cities, the whole empty lot of it—but there was a much wider market for it than for fantasy.
    “Second thing. Darren and I talked this week since he got back from Nepal, and we roughed out a couple of big decisions for the company.
    “First off, we’re entering into a partnership with Focus Capital, which should stabilize things a bit after last year’s rough spot.”
    “What’s the next game?” Jared called out.
    “Right. The market for science fiction gaming is pretty good right now…” The room went a bit quieter. I saw Matt’s knuckles actually whiten on the edge of the table. The romance of simulated space exploration had palled over three months of eighty-hour workweeks. “But we’re going back to fantasy. We’re going back to the
Realms
. Darren’s working out the details, but it looks like we’re back to the Third Age. Darren?”
    Real cheering this time, and questions, everyone talking over each other, Dark Lorac, Endoria, conversation interfaces and hit location, something about the White City.
    Darren stood up. It was the first time I’d heard him speak in years. I wondered if he knew I was there; I felt the urge to