Tales of the Parodyverse

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champagne
Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 04:22:09 pm EST
Subject
Champagne and the Accelerated Violence
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    The Tokyo Science Expo was thronging with people on all four levels of the glass and steel conference center. Buyers, journalists, scientists, engineers, computer nerds, booth babes, all crushed together around some of the most advanced technology on the planet.

    Champagne moved towards the stall of Spiral Games Software, where the demo machines were all offering a chance to play Ultimate Violence Smackdown III with the new accelerated hyper-real splatter graphics and the 3-D sensurround interface helmet. It was comical to watch the players dodging and swerving enemies seen only on their helmets but that new software breakthrough was going to earn Spiral tens of millions of dollars.

    If they could get it on the market first.

    “Have you got it for us yet?”

    Champagne turned round and saw the unpleasant bulk of Milo Morden looming over her. Next to him Shark-Eyed Viscotto watched everything with his beady gaze.

    “I’m on the job,” Champagne told them. “Go away.”

    “Only Mister van Druden is very anxious that you not welsh on your agreement,” Morden said. “Very anxious.”

    “That’s why he gave us a holiday to Japan,” Viscotto giggled. He was playing with a flick-knife that he’s carried past security for fifty bucks US. “To make sure you know how anxious Mister van Druden is.”

    It was a bad job and Champagne knew it. Van Druden wanted to accelerated graphics software, legally or not. Since Spiral wasn’t selling he’d contracted Champagne to acquire it for him by other methods, on a strict deadline. The billionaire businessman hadn’t got to be a billionaire by playing nicely with others. Or by taking no for an answer even from international jewel thieves.

    “I told your boss and I’m telling you,” Champagne said. “This is a tough job. I need to put things into place. There’s significant security to overcome. And you’re delaying me and making my job harder. Go away. You’ll have the program later today.”

    Morden handed her a key. “Room 9115. Don’t be late. Or we’ll have to come looking for you.”

    “And you don’t want to know how good Mister van Druden is at looking for people,” Snake-Eyes said. “Or what he has done to them when he finds them if they have failed him.”

    Champagne slipped away from the unpleasant duo and skirted the Spiral stand. She knew about most of the security there but there was other stuff that complicated the situation more.

    And there was the other stuff, in a conservative two-piece business suit and frilly blouse, talking to a potential investor. The most dangerous person at the convention, including Druden and Snake-Eyes.

    Her security tag said she was Helen MacAllistair, Software Engineer. It had taken Champagne three hours of very covert digging on the web to get past that ID and come up with another name: HALLIE.

    The efficient young designer of the accelerated hyper-real splatter graphics and the 3-D sensurround interface helmet didn’t look like a hologram generated by an artificial computer intelligence. Then again, given how good she was at virtual reality modelling she wouldn’t, would she? And to complicate matters, Hallie was contracted by the superhero team the Lair Legion, who probably took a dim view of people stealing things.

    Right now the assistants on the stall were having a bit of difficulty with two of the clients. Their computer identities had just met and blown each other up in a derelict army base flooded with zombies and each was blaming the other. Right now they were tussling on the floor, slap-fighting as only nerds can. The helmets they were wearing were hampering even that attempt at fighting.

    “Stop that! That helmet is a prototype worth thousands of yen!”

    “Son of a sow! You took my life points! I was only nine kills off a level up!”

    “Lover of goats! I had the boss in my sights until you stupidly used your hyper-bomb!”

    The crowd pressed round to watch the new entertainment. Hallie sighed and touched the terminal in front of her. The two nerds started screaming and clawed their helmets off to get away from the angry thing that had just threatened to eat them if they didn’t behave.

    In the excitement somebody managed to drop a milk-shake onto the server running the games consoles. It went fizz then crack then crashed. All the Ultimate Violence Smackdown III players found themselves back in the real world.

    “Wonderful!” snarled the booth manager. “Security, throw those idiots out. Somebody get the back-up server running.”

    This was the second near-riot at the stall today, and far less amusing than the booth babe costume malfunction that had caused the rush earlier.

    Hallie pulled out the spare computer from its secure case under the counter. She keyed in the unique thousand digit security code and replaced the fused server with the new one. The booth manager fielded complaints from players whose games had been lost.

    “They might not be,” Hallie said helpfully. “I can probably pull them off the crashed hard drive and transfer them across. Milk shake isn’t the worst computer problem I’ve ever had to face.”

    She ducked through the curtain into the back space, twinkled into her more usual green-skinned hologram form, then jumped from her hologram emitter into the broken server. She had to do a bit of clever navigating but it was easy to grab the nine games-in-progress and copy them.

    Nine? There were twelve interface helmets. The nerd brothers had ended their games before the fight – that was what the fight was about. But what about the twelfth game? Where had it gone? Why wasn’t there a twelfth game being played on the twelfth helmet?

    Hallie poked around a bit more. They’d recorded all the games as beta tests. There were records of twelve games up to about an hour before. Then there’d only been eleven games.

    She jumped to the new server. Twelve games were playing very happily.

    She uploaded the retrieved save-games and puzzled.

    Meanwhile Champagne got to room 9115 and knocked on the door. Snake-Eyes let her in. She entered reluctantly.

    “I got it,” she said.

    Morden took the compact disc from her and fired up a laptop. Champagne noticed a satellite uplink module firewired to it. Nothing but the best for Mister van Druden.

    “How did you get it?” asked Snake Eyes Viscotto.

    “Trade secret,” Champagne told him.

    The thug flicked his knife round in his fingers. “You can tell us.”

    Champagne shrugged. Things were going bad, just like she’d feared. “Well, what I did was…”

    “What happened,” said Hallie down on the expo floor, talking to the Spiral staff, “was that somebody arranged things so the program could be stolen.”

    “Stolen?” worried the manager, checking the hardware. Everything was in place, even the fused out milk-shaked primary server. “They tried to get the accelerator? How?”

    “Not tried, did,” Hallie said. “The first stage was with the booth babe. That was no accidental wardrobe malfunction.”

    “That wasn’t a big boob?” snickered one of the techs.

    Hallie scowled at him. “While everyone was… distracted, the person on helmet number twelve did a switch. Swapped out his helmet for a non-working replica. That’s when game twelve went off-line.”

    “Stole a helmet?” said the manager. “But we have them all here, working.”

    “They didn’t want us to know there’s been a switch. They could copy the accelerator program from the stolen helmet, but then they needed to get it back so we didn’t suspect. And that’s when the nerd-war began. And while everyone was busy with that…”

    “That’s pretty clever,” Milo Morden admitted, back in room 9115. “So your stooge put the helmet back and sneaked off with the fake.”

    “And then the milk-shake accident required the reboot that integrated the helmet back into the system,” Champagne said. “Voila.”

    The satellite uplink was now up. Lucius van Druden’s face appeared on the screen. “Excellent work, Champagne. I’m impressed. I’ll need to verify the data, of course, but then I’ll transfer your fee to you account.”

    “It’s the real thing,” Champagne said.

    “And if it is,” van Druden continued, “I have more good news for you. From now on you’ll be working for me full time. On staff, as it were.”

    “I’m freelance. Always have been.”

    “Not anymore,” Morden said, standing up while Snake-Eyes covered the door. “Now you belong to Mister van Druden.”

    “And us,” said Snake Eyes. His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

    Van Druden checked the uploaded program. “This is the real deal. And so is she. Welcome to the team, Champagne.”

    “Go to hell,” said Champagne.

    Morden and Viscotto came at her. The door crashed into splinters.

    Hallie came into the room. At the same time a computer spike wiped van Druden’s international databanks except for the back-up copy dropped into the Lair Mansion hard drives. “You people have something that belongs to me,” she said. “I’m here to collect.”

    Snake-Eyes went for her with his knife. She sent an electrical pulse down it and sent the nasty little man shivering to the carpet.

    Morden punched her but his hand went straight through her hologram. Hallie could switch off the force-field that made her solid whenever she liked.

    Champagne hit him over the head with his boss’ laptop. After that he lost interest in the fight.

    “Accelerated hyper-real splatter graphics and a 3-D sensurround interface,” Champagne said to Hallie, dropping the bits of laptop onto the fallen goon. She picked up the stolen computer data disc and gave it back to its owner.

    Then there were police, and questions, and bad men being led away in handcuffs.

    “I’ve got enough to tie von Druden to the theft as well, thanks to the satellite uplink,” Hallie said. “He’s not going to be a very happy man for a while. His lawyers are going to be busy.”

    “Don’t just arrest us!” called out Morden as he was dragged away. He pointed to Champagne. “Arrest her! She was behind the whole thing! She masterminded the theft!”

    “Champagne?” Hallie smiled. “By the time I’d worked out what happened the cops were already on their way. She’d deduced the whole thing just from watching what happened and had already reported the theft. And whodunit. And how.” Hallie had done a database check and had found out how often Champagne had solved mystery all over the world.

    “But she… She…” Shark-Eyes objected as he was stretchered from the room.

    “Thanks for the help,” Hallie said. “If I hadn’t been there when those customers started complaining about their lost games then I’d never have guessed about the theft in time.”

    That’s why I paid them to complain, Champagne didn’t say. “I’m glad you were there to rescue me,” she said instead. “Thanks a lot.”

    “Lunch?” asked Hallie. “I don’t actually eat but I enjoy watching others do it.”

    “Great,” agreed Champagne.

    Lunch was just what she needed to give her time to plan. After all, she’d technically delivered the merchandise as agreed to Lucius van Druden, which meant he owed her a $7m collection fee. It would take a bit of planning to work out how to get it off him.

    Soon.




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