Interlude 1: What a far'bak!

  Gar’nik the Effulgent looked at his monitors. He could not believe what he was seeing. He adjusted his spectacles with one tentacle, but the monitor did not change.

  “Lar’min,” he called out. “Look at this far’bak. I think the systems are on the blink again.”

  His colleague stepped over from his own console. “What are you talking about?”

  “Look at the error and history logs!”

  “I am looking… and?”

  Gar’nik wanted to growl. He had worked with this grash’buk for too long now. How Lar’min had been placed here he had no idea. The rumour was that he was related to the big boss. Everything had to be explained to him in painstaking detail – even the obvious.

  “Think, Lar’min. How are we getting any messages mind error messages when we haven’t even launched the beta test.”

  “Maybe someone is running a test simulation.”

  Gar’nik raised his tentacles in the air. “We are the ones who run the simulations.”

  After the problems they had faced during the alpha development and testing stages they had needed to completely overhaul the system as well as place other measures in place to support the users. During the first hour of the alpha test 50% of the participants had died. During the second hour a level 20 major boss had somehow been teleported into the beginner zone. It had been carnage and set them back hundreds of cycles in development.

  Even now Gar’nik and the development team were working on semi-autonomous systems that would interface with users to help them in the early stages. Gar’nik had called them IMPs – individual monitoring programs. These would essentially be a guide to the users as well as help monitor for further problems..

  They both started to run scans on the system.

  After a few more minutes Lar’min said. “If the beta has not been launched yet why does the register show five thousand users?”

  Gar’nik frantically pulled up log after log. “Five thousand initial users, starting with five who entered the beta system nearly a cycle ago,” he mused to himself. “Now only four thousand five hundred and ninety-seven are still alive.” He opened some more logs. “Four hundred and three users suffered permanent death before full induction took place.”

  He leaned back in his chair a look of horror on his face. “Ai grak bar! This is not possible. The protocols in place send the users straight to their allocated induction centres. How did they even get into Infernus in the first place?”

  He ran through as many analysis programs as he could think to use. None of them showed how the users had entered the system. All he could get was . Invalid access detected.

  “We need to tell the big boss.”

  Lar’min too now looked horrified. “Can’t we just…” He waved his six arms aimlessly. “Just…”

  “We can’t delete the logs, we don’t have access rights. Others may have seen this too now. There is no covering up this far’bak. We need to tell the supervisor. Whoever hacked the system needs to be stopped. We also need to put some emergency systems in place. These users will die if we don’t.”

  “But the IMPs are not ready yet. You know how glitchy they are.”

  “We need something. Look they are not even getting the beginner quests.”

  Gar’nik leaned back in his ful’men and thought for a few minutes. “Alright. For now, schedule the release of the beginner quests once the induction process is complete. Anything is better than nothing,”

  Gar’nik paused. He blew out loudly through his four nostrils. “And then get working on readying the IMPs. Strip the code down if necessary. A little support is better than nothing. Those poor souls have no idea what is out there.”

  “What are you going to do?” For once Lar’min looked agitated as if he could sense the true gravity of the situation.

  “I am going to go and tell the big boss and hope he is in a good mood. Otherwise, you are on your own.”

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