The Glitch Fiends

  The Glitch Fiends

  By: Belart Wright

  Copyright 2016 © Belart Wright

  Written by Belart Wright

  Cover designed by Kinohara Kossuta

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

  Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.

  The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  0 The Programmer

  A young programmer stood in front of his cluttered desk splitting his attention between the scrolling stats being projected via hologram from his monitor to the two men that stood in front of him, their eyes taking in every detail. The programmer, Edwin, was not handling the attention well. He read some of the stats to the dark haired man in the white lab coat standing directly in front of him—his boss—the director of the whole project—Fulton Milner. Edwin’s forehead was glistening and thin black strands of his hair clung to his fleshy face.

  “There are three-hundred and seventy three survivors currently in the Assassin’s Forest,” Edwin said. “Now forty-four of the testers have defeated the main boss of the area, the Will of the Forest. A forth of those are thanks largely to the assistance of the testers Sarem the Sanguine and Immortal Kalika, who’ve both put down Charity Signs so that other testers could summon them for the fight.”

  Milner, just stood there staring at Edwin blankly. The tall gray haired man next to Milner—who was outfitted in an armored jacket and openly brandishing a hip holstered pistol—just shook his head.

  “I am well aware that you can read a stat screen, Mr. Wagner,” Milner said dryly. “All I wanted to know was how many people were currently ready to move on from the forest.”

  “F-forty-four, sir.”

  That idiot.

  “Yes, I figured that out when you told me how many testers defeated the boss. I’m beginning to wonder why I even keep you around, Mr. Wagner.”

  Edwin winced and tried to play it off by adjusting his glasses. Edwin was not a small guy. He was much bigger than Milner in fact, but despite being a bean pole in a lab coat Milner had a deadly sort of composure to him, like the guy had some sort of death touch prepared if you ever tried something with him.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “I’m just kidding, Mr. Wagner. No need to be so nervous. I’ll be back later once I’m ready to begin. I’d rather oversee operations here for a little while, as you all set up the changeover for the new game systems.”

  Edwin nodded and watched Milner and his personal guard walk out into the hall.

  “Smooth, Edwin, smooth,” Thomas chided from his desk across from Edwin’s.

  Thomas was another senior programmer and Edwin’s near complete opposite physically. Thomas was slim, blonde, slightly shorter than average, and was told by all the guys he knew that he had a face made for punching. He chalked that last bit up to the fact that he couldn’t hide his disdain when talking to idiots.

  “I’d like to see you handle those two with a straight face, TJ. I nearly—”

  “Vacated your bowels? I know. I could see it in your face.”

  “Give me a break, man! These guys are serious.”

  “I kno—”

  Thomas heard footsteps approaching from behind.

  “Cut the chatter. You know the drill.”

  The guard walked past Thomas’ desk brandishing his compact assault rifle. Edwin gave Thomas a cursory glance before turning back to his monitors. Thomas let out a sigh and had a look around the room.

  The office was dim and filled with thirty men and seventeen women hard at work with different parts of the project's code, each illuminated mostly by their glowing computer monitors. Each man and woman's station was locked into Fulton Milner's local network; no one was given access to anything with more connectivity than that. Even so, the programmers here and in the other rooms kept the code for Milner's virtual world spotless.

  Thomas sat back and stretched. He was just recently back to his station after a short-lived appointed rest period. He was getting back into the swing of things when batshit Milner suddenly popped up and started interrogating Edwin. Now that Milner was gone again, he could get back to not doing work. There wasn’t much to do at the moment anyway. For now he just looked around at his captors, studying them from afar.

  There was a guard posted at the exit—armed of course—along with two guards patrolling around the room. They had an odd choice of coloring for their uniforms. Green, white, and red weren't colors typically associated with a protection outfit, PMC, or even terrorists. He had mostly associated the colors with one of the oldest churches in the world ... and Christmas. He was amused by the thought of connecting Milner's bloodthirsty Gestapo with the ancient church. It wasn’t the most far-fetched connection since Milner himself seemed to possess the same fanatical fervor as those leading the medieval inquisitions.

  The guard from before turned around and took notice of Thomas’ roaming gaze.

  That's the last thing I need.

  He quickly lowered his gaze and focused on the current status of the game. He saw no major changes from earlier, so he could hang back for a little while longer, at least until shit hit the fan during Milner's next big reveal.

  He wanted to dive deeper into the code while he still had some free time and glean more of the secrets Milner had hidden in the game. It was the whole reason he’d even signed on to work on this project, which had been rumored to have a connection with a game Thomas was intimately familiar with, The Death Planes.

  Thomas had spent years picking apart the code for that game during his teens. It became an obsession for him. He took pride in being the first person to post one hundred percent accurate damage calculation formulas, enemy statistics, and the most accurate weapons guide. He’d also been the first to reveal all the cut content in the game.

  Milner’s new game seemed to have used The Death Planes as a skeleton, even much of the code was remarkably similar, though updated for Milner’s VR system, including the code for the battle system.

  Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.

  Thomas opened the browser he used to view the code for Project DH and shrank the window. Milner had only allowed each programmer to access a tiny piece of the code specifically pertaining to their role, but Thomas had long since found a way around that limitation. He could now browse the entirety of the code at his leisure.

  He had already seen most of it, before the testers had even been brought in and had already known about the realistic pain feature and Survival Mode before Milner had announced it to rest of the staff thanks to his diving. He dived even deeper to get to the stuff that Milner seemed to want absolutely no one to see, the hidden section of programs.

  There were thousands of these programs, all written in a language that Thomas could not recognize. None of the translation programs he used recognized it either. What Thomas found most fascinating was that many of these programs, though illegible, were nearly identical to those found in The Death Planes. The same programs that vexed Thomas to this day in that game, were found here, but with some notable alterations to them. Thomas wasn’t sure what any of it meant, other than that Milner was an unrepentant code and idea thief.

  ******

  Thomas’ code browsing session was interrupted after about forty minutes by Anna K., one of Milner’s hot business attired henchwomen for lack of a better term. Thomas had first noticed the click of her heels approaching him which made him look up and take notice of her perfectly sculpted legs for a little longer than he probably should have. He grew concerned when she stopped in front of his desk and stood there. In his periphery, he saw her sweep a few strands of her dark hair to the side before clearing her throat. A persistent Thomas continued to unconvincingly feign ignorance of her presence.

  “Mr. Jackson—”

  “Thomas is fine, Ms.?” he asked as he looked up into her baby blue eyes.

  “Just Anna, Thomas. Everyone calls me Anna.”

  “That’s because no one knows your last name. Anyways, what do I owe this visit?”

  Anna smiled unexpectedly. Thomas was glad that she didn’t take his directness for rudeness like most other people seemed to.

  “I’m here to
inform you of your new role in the project.”

  “New role?”

  “Yes, Mr. Milner has informed us that several of the staff, mainly those with knowledge of the systems in the game, will be assisting the testers.”

  “Don’t they already have the designers helping with that? Why would they need more staff if the testers are dying off? That’s backwards, isn’t it?”

  There was a brief silence as Thomas and Anna just traded stares.

  “I don’t ask a lot of questions, Thomas; I just do as I’m asked, but the reason is obvious. Most of the designers and other devs have been working non-stop and they need the other staff to take their places, especially those who’ve been rested.”

  “So it’s temporary?”

  “My guess would be so. Since you’ve only been tasked with programming so far, we will have one of the other devs train you on how their systems work.”

  Thomas snorted.

  “I may look young, but I wrote most of those programs. What the hell can they teach me about them?”

  “That may be, sir, but we’ve still allotted time for you to be taught by them. If you already know the tools then I’m sure they’ll brief you on other facets of their duties. They are not wanting for tasks.”

  Damn it!

  “And we’re doing this now?”

  “Not at the moment. I’ll return once it’s time for the transition. I shouldn’t be gone for too long.”

  She took her leave of him and went around the office recruiting a few of his colleagues.

  “Shit,” he whispered as he tried to wrap his mind around this sudden change.

  Excluding Milner’s former announcement to include real life death for testers who managed to get a true game over inside of the project, this was the worst news Thomas had heard all day. He had no desire to go do a designer’s job or interact with any of the testers. It was difficult enough to find the free time he needed to dive into the code with his own job, but now he’d be forced to devote most of his time to needy testers most of whom would hate or distrust him anyway. It would be a complete waste of time, he just knew it.

  All he could do now was poke at as many of Milner’s hidden files as he could before Anna returned with his marching orders.

  ******

  “It’s time, Thomas. Please come with me.”

  With a long sigh, Thomas closed all his work and shut down his station before following Anna down the corridor to the enormous room that the designers called an office. It made the programmers’ office look like a closet. As if he needed another reason to hate the designers. The ones in this room looked about as stressed as everyone else, but they all seemed much more shaken than many of Thomas’ own programmer colleagues. He guessed that it was because one of their own was killed by Milner’s guard right in front of them, near the entrance of the room. That would spook anyone.

  Thomas had heard Randy’s yelling all the way down the hallway and he also heard the bullet that silenced him moments later, which had also assured the silence of everyone else on staff who had any doubts about Milner’s project.

  Anna escorted him over to the cubicle of another cute brunette, her hair long and wild. When she turned to see who was walking down the aisle towards her, Thomas could see that she was Latina. He could also see that she was probably subsisting only on caffeine at this point. Her eyes were red and puffy, clearly thanks to sleep deprivation.

  “Hi again, Alex,” Anna said as they approached. “I’ve brought your replacement, Mr. Thomas Jackson, with me. He’s ready to absorb everything you know.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Alex said somberly before turning to focus back to her projected windows.

  Anna quickly took her leave, leaving Thomas unsure of how to proceed. Alex remained silent and continued staring at the data for her three testers. She had a practical setup for viewing each tester’s performance and data simultaneously. There were six screens in total, three for viewing her testers’ current actions in the game and three showing their data, stats and all. On one of the screens, a sword wielding tester was engaged in intense combat. She had the fight projected out in front of her via three-dimensional hologram.

  “So, you’re going to teach me something?” he asked after the silence persisted.

  “I figure you’d already know how all this works,” she said still focusing on her holograms and monitors.

  “I do.”

  Once the sword wielding tester had successfully defeated all of his undead attackers, she turned her attention to Thomas who stood behind her. She looked up and searched his face with her eyes. Thomas hadn’t a clue what she was looking for. He decided to sit where he saw open space on her desk.

  “Good. I don’t have to waste either of our time then. I’d rather tell you about what’s happening with each of my guys inside the game. Are you familiar with the progression of this build?”

  “The progression? As in difficulty spikes, quest order, gear, and all that?”

  “Yeah that and are you familiar with the enemy placement and how the game looks and performs in action?”

  “Yes, I’ve kept up with all that. I mostly just look at the streaming data in real time, but I look at some in-game footage too sometimes.”

  “Well, that’s as good as I’m going to get considering. No offense, but I think they should’ve gotten another designer to take my place.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “These guys are going to need serious assistance out there and that’s difficult enough even when we are intimately aware of every blade of grass and tree designed in an area.”

  “I told you. I know the code. I know it better than anyone else here.”

  She sighed and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

  “I’m not saying that you don’t or that it’s not impressive, but there is a difference between knowing the code and knowing the world. These testers, they’re explorers and they need someone to help navigate them. What’s worse, we have to guide them without giving away too much or we place our lives and theirs in danger.”

  Get off your fucking high horse, lady!

  “I know the game. I know the tools. I know the job. Is there anything else you need?”

  “I need you to care. Right now, I just don’t get that sense from you,” she said staring at him as if she forgot how to blink.

  “Care about what?”

  “I need you to care about them,” she said pointing at the screens. “Those three guys are relying on me right now for their very survival. I can’t let them down and I can’t let you let them down either. So please listen to me and help me help them.”

  “Let’s just get started. We’re wasting time with the lectures.”

  She rolled her eyes and began discussing the layout of the next area of the game, the Stone Valley. It was a drastic change from the Assassin’s Forest she said, and there were several drastic spikes in difficulty throughout, especially from a few of the area’s bosses. She mentioned each of her tester’s specialties from Sarem the Sanguine aka Sam’s skillful use of his Rapier, quick movements, and multihit attacks to Corbine aka Dan’s reliance on hit and run tactics and other little tricks with his shortsword, bow, and throwing knives to JakThe_MonarchBfly aka Jacob’s aggressive mid-range sword fighting style.

  Next she went over the limitations of communication between developer and tester. There was an overwhelming amount of details that the developers were not supposed to share with the testers and if they did divulge such details accidently or not, both tester and developer would be put to death.

  “So what exactly is the point of what you do?” Thomas asked, heat rising to his face.

  “We are not in the business of being preventative, but we do make sure that each tester does not hit any non-pre-programmed snags. We fix any bugs on the spot and if you’re clever, you can share a good bit of information with the testers after they’ve made a few mistakes and discovered some things on their own. You can tack on little tidbits to what they’ve learned and even ask certain questions to get their minds wandering in the right direction. It’s not a lot but that can easily mean the difference between life and death.”

  “Maybe you’re giving yourself too much credit. Besides, I’ve read the code more times than I care to admit, and it’s as clean as clean can be. There’s no way any bugs are making their way through.”