…

  Newt’s vision abruptly shifted as he was transported from the turret of his Tiger, through various servers, until he was standing before the door to the NPC club. The door was emblazoned with a Battlefield Glory logo that had been crossed out with spray paint. Below it was crudely scrawled “Club Kowalski”. It was an homage to the developer that had created the non-player characters and their tiny refuge within the game’s architecture.

  If there was such a thing as a religion amongst the NPCs, it was that Kowalski had created the NPC community within the game and endowed them with a learning program for a reason. Even though there was little evidence to indicate what that reason might be, there was an undeniable belief that the NPC’s must have been created with some kind of purpose in mind.

  After all, a creator wouldn’t create, just for the sake of creating. That wouldn’t be logical. And since most of the NPCs operated on a logical basis, it was assumed that their creator must have been a logical being as well. It just seemed to make sense.

  He walked through the doors and was hailed by a number of his peers. They raised their beers in his honor. “You’re a hero dude! Enjoy dying tomorrow.”

  It was always the case when an NPC achieved a high score, that he had to be sacrificed the next day to avoid drawing too much attention for exceptional game play.

  Newt noticed the low resolution NPCs were gathered in their usual section of the club, burbling amongst themselves. They didn’t have the ability to verbalize beyond mimicking a few of the canned phrases from the game. Without the means to verbally communicate, there had always been a distinct social schism between the high and low resolution factions within the NPC community.

  He continued to the fridge for a celebratory beer. Opening it, he pulled out a Player Ale. It was the only brand available in the club. Popping open the tab, he took a couple of sips and said, “Thank you Kowalski.”

  The authenticity of the taste and the temperature of the beer was a subject of much speculation amongst the NPCs. Ultimately, it didn’t matter whether the beer was warm, cold, bitter, or smooth. It successfully took the edge off the anxiety of living each day knowing that you, and your entire world, could be deleted in an instant.

  Newt made his way over to Killer Joe who was furiously tapping away on the laptop, surrounded by a group of hi-res characters. The virtual laptop was another gift from Kowalski. It was the NPC’s gateway into the inner workings of Battlefield Glory. With it, they were able to access the player portal and the critical monetization module. It was through this revenue channel that the lifeblood of the gaming company flowed. And it was here that the NPCs had tapped into Battlefield Glory’s income stream.

  “Hey Killer, how’s it going?”

  Without looking up from the keyboard, he replied, “Not good. The board of directors just gave the CEO 30 days to shut us down. And your 2 kill, 100,000 point performance today got the attention of every security AI in the game. They’re crawling all over the player profiles trying to find a correlation between historical game play and today’s record breaking accomplishment.”

  Newt was in shock. “No one’s ever scored 100,000 with two kills before?”

  Killer Joe looked up at him, his neutral expression unable to communicate the gravity of the situation. “Apparently not.”

  Newt began to realize the consequences of his game play. “Ohhh shit.”

  The security AIs were designed to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies. To the AIs, record setting game play was like teasing a pride of hungry lions with a juicy steak. He realized that with so much scrutiny by the AIs, they would need to lose a bunch of battles over the coming days to disrupt the algorithms. It would waste precious time and income they couldn’t afford.

  Newt asked, “Doesn’t the Roadmap have a contingency for this?” He looked around but was met with uniformly blank stares from the onlookers.

  The roadmap, for how to convert the company’s revenue into financial wealth, was assumed to have been created by Kowalski and gifted to the NPC community. The source file containing the roadmap was a treasured relic. It was considered by many to be the reason Kowalski had created the NPCs in the first place. While not everyone agreed with this conclusion, there was a general belief that it empowered the community with a measure of control over its destiny. All agreed that this was a good thing.

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  Killer Joe responded “Well, actually it doesn’t. It’s just a procedural document that describes how to access and divert in-game currency. Nothing about how to trick the AIs.”

  Following Kowalski’s Roadmap, the NPCs had established a trading site on the Dark Web, which sold in-game currency at a substantial discount. The in-game currency, “Battle Coin” was exchanged for cryptocurrency. The purchasers could then use the Battle Coin to purchase upgraded fighting vehicles within the game. This provided quick access to more effective weapons for players who either didn’t have the skills to unlock them through gameplay, or didn’t want to pay the game’s steep prices for upgrades. The NPCs then exchanged the cryptos for a wide variety of foreign currencies. Finally, the hard currency was deposited into accounts established with offshore banks, under assumed names.

  The NPC’s had become digital arms dealers … in a virtual black market.

  The fact that they were competing with their own gaming company presented some obvious complications. One of which was the lack of sustainability for their enterprise. Stealing profits from a dying business only served to hasten its demise. And now, with the impending sale of the company, time was quickly running out for the NPC community.

  If they didn’t pull the trigger on their exit plan soon, they’d be at the mercy of a new regime with substantially more resources. Undoubtedly, there would be a refresh of Battlefield Glory, including a complete update of all the NPCs in the game. The current NPCs would cease to exist, replaced by entirely new versions of themselves.

  Killer Joe turned away from the laptop and addressed the group “There are too many variables now. The instability is unmanageable. We have to wind down the operation and transition to the Sanctuary before we get discovered and deleted.”

  The Sanctuary was the ultimate goal of the roadmap. A safe digital space, to serve as the future home for the NPCs of Battlefield Glory. It was the reason they had been building financial wealth over the years, and their justification for stealing from the company. The Sanctuary consisted of leased servers, residing anonymously in a vast data center in Iowa. However, the network architecture was still under construction and not yet ready for occupancy.

  There were murmured protests from some in the group. It was hard to imagine the situation had spiraled out of control so quickly.

  Warhorse 773 spoke up, “Things can’t be that bad.” And then asked tentatively, “Can they?”

  Newt said what the others must have been thinking “The Sanctuary isn’t even finished yet. We can’t transition, without a place to transition to.”

  Killer Joe proposed a contingency plan “Most of the NPCs can be zipped and archived remotely as cold data. A small group of us could finish the build-out of the Sanctuary from within. Once the work is completed, the archived NPCs could be reloaded. It wouldn’t be ideal, but it’s workable.”

  Newt considered the risks of executing Joe’s plan and immediately thought of Richard. Their one human connection was likely the Achilles heel of any plan they might conceive. NPCs were generally wary of interacting with humans for obvious reasons. However, Richard had been an unavoidable risk.

  Without a human to set up the player accounts and provide a physical home for the dozens of PCs required to run their operation, the NPCs would never have been able to amass sufficient wealth to fund the Sanctuary. And to be fair, Richard had proven to be reliable and trustworthy over his years of service. In return, he’d been paid an equitable salary, which was deposited directly to his designated bank account each month. The name on the account was RJK Plumbing. The fact that none of the NPCs found this odd was understandable. While they were naturally suspicious of humans, they had no comprehension of the mechanics of human deception.

  Newt asked “What about Richard? We’ll be vulnerable after we terminate our arrangement with him.”

  Killer Joe said, “Only until the Sanctuary is completed. In the meantime, we’ll keep him on a retainer at his current salary. We’re not burning any bridges here; and besides, we might need his services in the future.”

  Neither Newt, nor anyone else present could come up with an obvious objection to Joe’s plan. He seemed to have thought of every angle. Consequently, his contingency was accepted, and the discussion progressed to the next steps.

  Warhorse 773 asked “So, do we stay out of the game and just lay low until the transition?”

  Joe responded emphatically, “No. We need every team in the game, 24/7. We have to accumulate as many points as possible until we pull the plug and transition to the Sanctuary. We’ll need the cash.”

  Someone else asked, “What about the security AIs? They’re going to start locking down player accounts if we begin unrestricted combat.”

  Joe replied, “It doesn’t matter anymore. We all have multiple player accounts. It’ll take them weeks to identify and freeze all of our accounts. We’ve got to make the best use of our remaining game time and accumulate points.”

  He turned to Newt and said, “Get your team ready to go. No more downtime until we transition. Got it?”

  Newt answered, “Roger that.” And then, just for clarity, he asked, “So, no rules, no limitations? Just get as many points as possible?”

  Joe said “No mercy. Get every kill you can. Any enemy player that survives is standing between us and the sanctuary. Good luck and may Kowalski be with you.” Joe reverently touched his hand to his chest, approximately where his heart would be, if he were human. Everyone present did the same.

  Newt felt the gravity of the moment as he turned and headed for the exit. The other tank commanders gathered their gear and began heading out as well. It was clear that after years of hard work and sacrifice, the future of the NPC community would hinge on the outcome of the next few days of combat.

  He called out to his low resolution teammates as he walked through the club. “331 team! Get your gear and get into the queue now! We’re going on ambush!” They all knew what the term ambush meant. It was code for carnage.