Into the Black

(A virtual room in NERV HQ)

Morgan walked in, carrying a stack of virtual papers. “Well, Legal just came through with an updated ruling on the ‘slave’ issues. The EULA and the Adult Content agreements had language in it explicitly protects us against any problems on that end.”

Isaac nodded. “Told you it would hold up. They were warned ahead of time, agreed to it, and then proceeded ahead, so bitching about the consequences isn’t going to work. Besides, the few players that have been enslaved mostly have regular collars or maybe Defiance collars. The only players to get the Stepford treatment are the two associated with our boy.”

Morgan nodded. “And he turned Cali’s Stepford protocols off. What happened with that other one, the thug that tried to mug them back on Choson Ring?”

Isaac chuckled. “She spent three days in the brothel, before her ‘friends’ stole her away. She was listed as an escaped slave, but the leader of the group then ‘captured’ her and paid the 100 credit fee to have her transferred to him. And he never got around to deactivating her Stepford protocols, so she’s his happy little slave whore when they aren’t fighting. We’ve got a pool going on whether she accepts it, tries to escape again, or drops the character as soon as she is able to.”

Morgan frowned. “And what is the data on long-term exposure to the Stepford protocols?”

Isaac shook his head. “No one knows. The limited tests we’ve done so far have shown some symptoms like PTSD or mental and emotional conditioning, but there are no definite patterns. We’ll keep an eye on it, and this is one of the things we did warn people about explicitly, so we should be fine.”

“And those Hunder-whatever nanites?”

Isaac shuddered. “We needed to set up a few big bads. The X’thari are there as an alien baddy. The Terran Empire is there as a belligerent superpower. And Hundeherstellar is set up as a moral/ethical nightmare.” He paused, and then said, “We haven’t had any players exposed to them yet. So far, we’ve decided that any player hit by those things will get an ‘eject’ button on their interface. If things are starting to get bad, they hit the button, the character is converted to an NPC, and they go back to chargen, ignoring the usual wait time between characters, and they’ll get bonuses to their new character, depending on the strength of the old one.”

One of the other GMs spoke up, “And we’ve also got scripts in place to let us know any time a player uses the things. Anyone cheating by getting friends to repeatedly get ‘converted’ into an army of minions and we’ll know about it. Both parties will get account bans.”

Morgan nodded. “All right, we can work with that. So, what’s he been up to?” There was no need to ask who ‘he’ meant. Mirikon had gotten something of a fan following in the control room, especially since he was one of the few players really living the game world, instead of trying to treat it like just another MMO.

“Well, he got hit hard by the Red Orchids, so he hit them back. Not sure how that’s going to fall out, exactly, but he took the boss’s family hostage. Then, when they were about to go through the gate, the Imperials showed up, and started scanning the ships.”

Morgan frowned. “The Imperials? How’d they know to go there, just when they were getting ready to go through the gate?”

Isaac sighed. “Our boy was smart enough to delay his broadcasts, but they’ve been in the same position for weeks, in game. Plenty of time for someone on the Imperial faction to get word to people in power. And they recovered the destroyer’s black box.”

“So how did he escape?”

“Ran through the gate the instant he could. Surprised the fleet, and they weren’t able to hit him hard enough, fast enough to keep him from the gate. Most of the fleet is arrayed to tackle people coming out the other end of the gate, after all.”

“Damn. So, he’s out of the Empire, now, huh?”

“Yeah, but the Imperials lost three frigates trying to follow him through. The Confederation was not pleased when Imperial missiles came through the gate and hit one of their corvettes.”

“Damn. Is this going to kick off a war?”

“Not on its own. The Empire and Confederation are itching to go at eachother again, but until the Imperial Civil War thing is settled, they’re probably not going to start launching preemptive strikes. But war is coming. Should make for some interesting footage, if nothing else.”

(End of Book 3.)