Chapter ThreeThe Hall of Kings

Eleven years earlier Richard had sold his surgical robotics company, bought a house in Sausalito, and discovered he had no idea what to do after putting his son to bed. Lauren had been dead for two years. While she was alive he had worked late, imagining there would be time to make it up to her.

He played games. He took an old surgical arm apart and built a rig that let his hand close around things on a screen. At four, Adam would sit beside the printer for an hour, watching a new finger take shape. Richard sat with him. There was nothing to appreciate but the boy and the plastic drying.

He wanted a game they could play outside. He put monsters on a map, made spells answer to spoken words, and strapped a phone in front of his eyes. Adam walked into a hedge trying it. Richard moved the monsters away from the fence before letting him go out again.

He called the hand rig a Manipulator. Cheap to make, though it sometimes forgot to stop your hand when you grabbed a sword. He put the plans online with the Altered World beta. A few people might want to build one. A month later he couldn't keep the garage server up through an evening. He needed a company name, and went with Solenoid; he had enough of the things lying around. He moved the company into an industrial building in West Oakland, where there was enough power and, he hoped, enough room.

Max was a neurophysiologist and engineer who had worked on cameras at his old company. She called while visiting San Francisco with her daughter. They met for coffee on Nob Hill, and Richard missed his second cup entirely.

"... So let me get this straight. You're aiming right at their eyes?" Richard was excited.

"Yes," Max said.

"So when you say glasses..."

"They wouldn't need to have lenses, although they could be fitted with lenses for users who needed them. They would just need to be frames, big enough to hold the projectors."

"How big would the frames need to be?"

"Very small, actually. Enough room for a tiny motor and a little bit of fiber. A little compartment behind the ear for a battery on one side, Bluetooth and a microcontroller on the other."

"And you have a prototype?"

"It's a hack, a proof of concept at best, but yeah."

"I'm surprised you aren't making me sign an NDA," Richard said.

"Telling you what I'm doing is a lot different than showing you how I did it."

"This gives me a lot of ideas, Max."

"I was hoping it would."

"How long are you in town for?" Richard asked.

"Three days."

"If you're around tomorrow, why don't you swing by the office?"

"Sure. I'll have to bring my little girl with me."

"That's alright with me. You didn't by chance bring that prototype with you on this trip, did you?"

"I did."

"We've got some pretty cool stuff at the office that we haven't told anyone about." Richard smiled. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

That conversation was strictly business, but it led to a collaboration that had been wildly successful for both of them, and over the years it had made them something like family. Soph had asked her mom, more than once, why she had not married Richard. Max was evasive on the issue. She had known him when he was married to Lauren, and she still didn't think he had fully accepted that she was gone. What she never said was that she had already watched one man she loved leave the world by inches, and did not care to do it again.

That December, Atom honked. It was an ostentatious gesture– he could have just sent Soph a text to let her know that he was waiting outside, but he couldn't resist. He'd seen too many movies where the guy honked his horn when he came to pick up his girl, and he had turned sixteen in November and this was the first time he had a car to do it with.

Soph got in. "Really? Your dad gave you the Camry?"

"Yeah. He's a practical guy."

"Wow. I just figured, you know, he'd buy you a Corvette or something."

Atom laughed. "You don't know my dad, then. Hey, you look hot."

Company parties at Solenoid were raucous and exciting. To the observer it might look like a bunch of goggled-in tech geeks walking around a dimly lit and poorly decorated company gymnasium, but to the glowing paladins, eagle-eyed rangers and swashbuckling rogues in attendance it was a journey into the Hall of the Great Kings, where exalted warriors and great lords danced, drank and laughed together. Solenoid employees took the whole affair very seriously. RP points were a big thing.

Soph's outfit was a cross between classic steampunk and medieval barmaid. She wore her frames atop her flowing brown hair like a headband. Atom's brown boots and duster coat were equally ostentatious– subtle cosplay for an Altered World event. Altered World could superimpose equipment pretty realistically, but dressing in character was common among serious players, and the children of the founders had a certain reputation to maintain.

They arrived at the Solenoid campus already goggled in, and weaved through the crowd to where Max was clinking glasses of champagne with other members of the Tech Priests. Solenoid's divisions were organized into guilds, and as the head researcher at The Lab, Max was also the Guildmaster of the Tech Priests, who wore green.

"To fifty good years, Max," said one. "And a hundred more!"

"Ha! I should be so lucky," Max said. "Oh, Soph, Atom! Good to see you! Jeff, this is my daughter, and this young man is Richard's son. This is Jeff Matheson."

Jeff's cloak bore the blue insignia of the Artificers Guild, the developers of Altered World. "A pleasure to meet you both. I've heard many good things."

Soph blushed.

"Jeff's the head developer of the game," said Max.

"Greis the Valorous?" asked Atom.

Jeff smiled. "Ah, I should have assumed that you'd be on the forums. You are correct, although I'm afraid I'm too busy to play him very much these days."

"Man, I'd really love to pick your brain sometime."

"Perhaps, if I can pick yours. I've got a few projects in the pipeline that could use some QA testing by folks who really know the game. I'm not flattering you, you and Soph are really good. Have you thought about competing?"

"The Koreans would cream us." Soph grimaced. Altered World had effectively become the national pastime of South Korea.

"Nineteen of the top twenty players are Korean," said Jeff. "Number two is Rat. Canadian, apparently. Nobody seems to know much else."

"I thought you'd know," said Atom.

"I could look at the account. Doesn't mean I should." Jeff turned his glass by the stem. "I'd rather see how you two play against someone you don't already know."

They were interrupted by the ringing of a champagne glass. The room fell silent. Richard stood at a podium at the far end of the gym, outfitted in gold finery, six and a half feet tall in the frames and pointy of ear. His voice thundered.

"We are gathered here today for two very important reasons. First, it is Guildmaster Ehrlich's fiftieth birthday. Where is that old witch? Max, I summon thee!"

The crowd cheered. Max excused herself and walked up to the stage. Richard bowed.

"Priestess Ehrlich, I'm proud to have you with us. The Hall of Kings wouldn't be what it is without you. I am honored by your continued allegiance."

Max curtsied, badly. "Anything for the realm, Lord Lee." Laughs erupted from the crowd.

"And I have been informed that your Tech Priests have a new machine for the realm?"

"We do."

"Well then, to our second order of business. Priestess Ehrlich, you have the room. Bring out the machine!" Richard stepped away. The lights in the room dimmed. Two Tech Priests appeared from behind a curtain, carrying a platform with a workstation and a helmet like the one that Soph and Atom had seen at the lakehouse. This one had no wires coming out of it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is a glorious day for the world. We have developed the most holy of machines, one that can harness the mind." Max put the helmet on her head. She muttered an incantation, and suddenly a ghost-like clone of herself stood next to her. She turned to face the apparition. "Hello, Priestess."

The apparition turned too, and replied, "Hello to you, too, Priestess."

"This simulacrum is me just as much as I am. If I think a thought, she will speak. She will go where I wish her to."

The apparition disappeared. Max addressed the room. "Now, I apologize but I must break character for a bit."

"The device that I'm wearing is called the Link. Users who have one will be able to project themselves anywhere in the world where there are other users and see what they are seeing. In game, players with the Link will be a new class, called mentalists. A mentalist binds her mind to another player, and as long as she stays close to the player she is bound to she'll be able to talk, move and cast spells. She won't be able to grab another player's sword or touch their body. Inside Alius, our new training realm, everyone gets ordinary game collisions."

"Our company blends real world experiences with virtual ones. It is what makes us different. Why then, would we make a product that enables someone to be somewhere they are not, or talk with their mind and not their body?" Max paused for rhetorical effect.

"The honest answer is that we don't know, entirely. Not yet, at least. We see many applications for this in the future, and we hope that by releasing a platform our users might come up with some interesting ideas. We've created a sandbox server where users can develop their ideas and tap into the Link's API."

"Years ago I met with Richard for coffee on a whim. He didn't know it at the time but I had already made up my mind to come work for him. We talked early on about what the future of this company was. We wanted to make something more than an immersive game. To what end, I don't think any of us are entirely sure. But we want to make something that touches people deeply and improves their lives. The Link is just the first step. I leave it up to all of you to determine the path."

Someone in the Artificers raised a hand. "What happens if the player you're bound to goes into a bathroom?"

"The same thing that should happen if a camera goes in," said Max. "The wearer cuts the feed. We're making that easier to find."

The applause was interrupted by several people checking their own frames. Max stepped away and Richard took the podium.

"I have one last thing to say. Like Max said, we've just created an interface. It's up to all of you to figure out what we're going to do with it and, more importantly, to make sure that people buy them. Now let's drink and be merry!"

More applause and cheers from the crowd.

Atom was quiet for a minute afterward, which was unusual enough that Soph looked at him.

"What?" Soph asked.

"I don't know. It's weird. She just stood there talking to herself."

"It was cool."

"Yeah, but if I can be anywhere, why would I go anywhere?"

"You'd go wherever I was."

"Yeah." He put his arm around her. "Okay. I'd buy one for that."

Across the gym a paladin was already trying to bribe a Tech Priest for a dev unit, and Jeff Matheson, who had been watching the two of them over the rim of his glass, went to get more champagne.