Connection Unknown: Chapter 3 Part 2 of 2 (Patreon)

“How are you the calm one?”

“’Cause…” Stuart grinned. “We just climbed to over eighty thousand players and it’s still going. We have two hours till we cut the servers, but we’re paid up till the end of the month and oh, it would be so nice to screw over the companies shorting us.”

Brad rubbed his beard, thinking. He waved the hologram away, finding himself in another office cube. He jogged past Stuart to the screen and flipped back to the server information.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Seeing if I can shut it down.”

“Why’d you do that?” Stuart frowned. The alcohol had had some effect.

“’Cause we need to shut this down before it becomes a problem.” Brad winced, changed what he was looking at, and then went through another directory. “What the hell?” Brad muttered and kept going.

“What?”

“This code—it’s like they’re woven together. Shit, this is a mess. I don’t know how the hell to untangle this. This has been done on purpose, or they were ripping out all our code. Which means they must know it.” Brad clicked his tongue. “It must’ve been someone who worked for us—has to be, to know this much of our code, slice and dice it so that it still works. Hell, the game is running less graphically intense than Orion’s Belt though the bandwidth is high.”

“So one of our people made this? Damn, it’s better than our game.” Stuart peered into Brad’s stolen glasses, looking at more articles.

Brad leaned on the table, closing his eyes. He let out his breath in a rush. “Start buying up our shares, now.”

“Why?”

“’Cause the price is going to climb like crazy.” Brad squeezed his hand into a fist. “If this does become something, then we need to control Orion’s Belt one hundred percent or else the corporations are going to steamroll us. Second, we need to find out who the hell made that game, how they got it onto our servers, why they did it, and make sure that we give them back control—or we could get into deeper shit.”

“We could just say it’s not our game,” Stuart said.

“They might have done this for a reason. Look, if we say it’s not our game, then the first thing is we will get investigated. The second thing is that people are going to jump all over whoever made this. The corpos are going to get their fingers into them and they’re going to do the same thing to them that they did to us.”

“Shit.”

“And, whoever made this, must know us, to have ripped this much code and made it work. I think they’re on our side.” Brad’s voice softened.

“Who do you think it is? Pavel? Maria? Jess?”

“Not sure.” Brad sighed. “But they put their game, this masterpiece of a game, on a server that we’re supposed to close down tonight. If that’s not timing, I don’t know what is.”

“They could remove it from the servers tomorrow,” Stuart said.

“They might. No matter what, we need to control the company to make sure we can deal with things our way and they can’t push for legal action on whichever friend is trying to give them the middle finger.”

“Well, there goes the fourth and fifth home,” Stuart muttered even while he had a smile on his face. “But worth it to give the corpos an extra-large fuck you.”

“You don’t even have a second and third home,” Brad retorted. He had brought up a stock broker and was buying up shares rapidly. The stock market never stopped throughout human space.

“Hey, I like to be home light and game heavy.” Stuart was working on his glasses. “Want to get a kebab on the way home?”

“Best get two, or else Mary might end you.”

“Works in greenhouses all day, but hell if she doesn’t love her meat.” Stuart snorted.

“What?”

“We’re about to give the corporate overlords a big middle finger with their own game and we’re discussing kebabs. Fuck, sometimes life just gets me in its weirdness, you know?”

“You’re still a lightweight, you know that?”

“I’m cost-efficient.”

“Not with that Scotch you’re not. I’ve got thirty percent now. How about you?”

“Twenty-eight and I have another deal lined up. Should have a nice five percent more in a couple of minutes.” Stuart rattled off a few more gestures. “I have thirty-one percent, another five percent coming, and a much lighter bank account.”

“You just wanted one more percent.”

“Damn right.”

“Sixty-one percent—that gives us a healthy margin of control.” Brad sighed.

“So, leave the servers on?”

“Leave the servers on,” Brad agreed.

“Well then, that was a good prep for shutting them down. Kebabs?”

“Sure.” Brad rubbed his face. “You know this is going to be a shit storm tomorrow, right?”

“I am drunk. I do not compute future-Stuart problems.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Drinks at your place?”

“Sure. Crash in Felipe’s old room. Grab the beers. We’ll take an auto-car.” Stuart grabbed his bottle one hand on his coat. He turned his head to take in the room. He threw his jacket over the bottle arm, taking in a deep breath filled with memories. “Fuck, this was a great place to work.” He clapped Brad on the shoulder.

“It was,” Brad said softly, seeing the grays and whites in his friend’s brown hair, a few more lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and inches around his waist. He patted his friend on the back and grabbed his case of beers. The screen turned off as they walked toward the clear doors into the office.

“I’ve known you too damn long, making me old,” Brad muttered.

“At least you don’t have to see your old mug on my head.”

“I’m bald, not a mirror-smooth cue ball.” Brad sighed as they left the office.

Stuart shrugged. “You’re the one who said it. I was just—you know, insi-insinu-ah…”

“Insinuating?” Brad growled as they walked down the corridor.

“Yeah, that’s it! You know you get more drunk after you drink, like time after you drink, so like you don’t drink but you’re getting more drunk.”

Brad smiled as they walked through the building, every hall and room on that floor holding nearly two decades of memories.