Chapter 15 - Find the Devil

College apps are done.

Finally.

I spent the past few months writing and rewriting my personal statement and collecting letters of recommendations and a portfolio of accomplishments to send to colleges. Filling out the college application wasn’t that difficult, the hardest part was the essay.

I talked about my dad, and how he inspired me to go into programming. Winning programming competitions, making my own game, creating my own company. I also talked about World of Eden briefly.

I don’t pretend to be a great writer. But I am a good, if not great, coder so I made an AI program that edited my essay so that sentences flowed better. It’s not cheating if it’s not plagiarism.

I was tempted to use AI to write my whole essay for me. But the little romantic childlike part of me wanted my essay to be me or as me as I will let it.

I think it’s good. I know it’s good.

I hope colleges think so too.

I’m applying early decision to Columbia. I haven’t changed my mind on that front. Rod’s applying early action to MIT, which I was surprised about because I thought he was a military man. But he’s a really good programmer and did some research over the past few summers at MIT so I won’t be surprised if he gets in.

If he does, we’ll be going to different schools.

Whatever. We’re just friends anyway.

Rod and I haven’t talked much about that project we randomly thought of last Halloween. In fact we haven’t talked at all. I thought about it later and wanted to wimp out as I thought the project was too ambitious, even for me. And I didn’t want to get closer to Rod than I am already.

We’re too close for comfort.

Plus, I have a ton of other things on my plate. With college applications removed, I still have my internship at Eden Realities to worry about, my Age of Atheos game to refine and market and sell, and my many unfinished quests and responsibilities for World of Eden.

I’ve finally managed to earn some money playing on the platform. That took ages, pun intended.

It started like this.

Gabriela never replied to my hastily written message wimping out of her quest. But later, I got half a dozen other messages from players who wanted me to kill monsters and find loot for them. They all offered real money for me to do so, and while it isn’t a lot, I managed to earn a couple of pennies.

The irony though? I ended up not using any of the money I earned, and instead I donated the money to the Metaverse’s charities site. I didn’t feel that great about spending the money, it felt kind of like dirty money. And I get decent cash from my internship, which is a way more respectable way of earning income.

I actually dropped out of the Fallen Angels guild. I messaged the Angel in charge about potentially quitting, and they said I could leave free of charge, my loss. I can keep the silver cross they gave me though, so that’s a plus.

Always a Demon Slayer for life.

Actually though, I’m thinking of dropping out of Demon Slayers as well. I’m not into the whole questing thing anymore, and there are obligations when you’re part of a guild that I don’t want to do. I haven’t been questing as much due to my other obligations.

Also on the messaging board, a lot of people in my guild have been annoying me. Their blatantly sinful talk about sex, drugs, and entertainment has been pissing me off, and I feel dirty every time I log into the messaging board.

I even started getting intrusive thoughts. My anxiety is at all time peak levels, and I can’t think straight sometimes. I’m getting massive OCD symptoms. Lines of code have been clouding my mind, and I fixate on the smallest details. Sometimes I look at a semi colon for 10 minutes, trying to figure out if it belongs there. I delete it, then put it back. Delete it, and then put it back. Rinse and repeat. 

I’m considering taking medication for it, but I don’t want the meds to affect my brain in other areas as well. I need to contemplate this situation a bit more before making a decision.

I think it’s because I have too much on my plate. College apps are done at least. But work is stressing me out, and Rod is too.

I didn’t tell Rod about dropping out of Fallen Angels. Our partnership is based on that fact that we were both Fallen Angels. But the whole episode in Hell scared the shit out of me. I still has the sword Ephesian on me, but I don’t want to be part of a guild that send me on Hell-bound missions that could end up getting me killed.

Sometimes I hyperventilate in a paper bag, remembering what happened on that mission. My panic attacks have been getting worse.

I should check my profile to see if I’m still partners with Rod. If I’m not, it’ll probably be polite to tell him, instead of having it slide under the table. I don’t really want to talk to him, I get too many anxious thoughts pop up in my head whenever I think about him or talk to him, and it’s been inhibiting me in so many ways.

I don’t want to cut him out of my life. I don’t have that many friends, and Rod’s been a great one. I have to figure out how to manage my anxiety around him.

I’ll just do this one thing and call it for now.

I open the World of Eden website on my laptop and log in. Going to my profile, I check my Friends page.

Huh.

The status between Rod and me still says Partner.

But the weird thing is, when I check his profile page, it says he’s not a Fallen Angel anymore either.

Do we share the same brain or something?

An endless torrent of question wash over my mind. Did he drop out of Fallen Angels too? Why are we still partners then? Does he still have Elysium? Are we still dragon riders?

Should I message him? Ask him what happened to Fallen Angels? Because it’s really bothering me, and I need some clarity into the situation.

I decide to message Rod. Might as well break the ice and address the pink elephant in the room. I’m not surprised he hasn’t messaged me about it yet. For a military guy, he sure is passive.

I’m composing a text to him.

“Hey, did you drop out of Fallen Angels? Like, why?”

Or

“Hey, I noticed that you’re not part of Fallen Angels anymore. We’re still partners though. Go figure.”

I’m debating what to text him, when he pings me out of the blue.

Talk about mental telepathy.

We operate on the same brain frequency way too much.

“Hey Buffy. Decided to drop out of Fallen Angels yesterday, sorry for not telling you. Doesn’t impact our partnership any.”

Sorry for not telling me? That didn’t sound sincere. He sounds kind of distant, and I feel there’s something wrong. But before I go down this rabbit hole of obsessing over what Rod is thinking about me, I put up a mental stop sign in my mind.

Stop. Thinking. So. Much.

I’m not going to reply back. I have a lot I’m dealing with, and it’s hard enough dealing with all my obligations and my mental health issues as well.

So I’m hitting pause on this relationship.

I know Rod and I were planning on world domination and forming a programming partnership together. But I’m just going to let it slide under the rug. There’s way too much on my plate.

At least college apps are done.

But now, I’m going to do some work on my game Age of Atheos. Take a break from World of Eden.

Playing my game gives me a serious case of imposter syndrome. I can’t sit back and relax and experience the game from a player. As its creator, I’m constantly thinking of improvements that can be made.

Every little thing sticks out. The color of the trees are all wrong. The dialogue is too gimmicky. The player’s movements look out of sync.

In my game, the players get to pilot artificially intelligent spaceships called Angels. The concept seems to be taken straight out of Neon Genesis Evangelion, the first anime I ever watched, but the Angels here aren’t bad; they’re good. Players fight demons with them, and the AI Angels can do a lot more too.

I’ll show you.

Titania.

I say in my mind. Titania is the name of my Angel, and she’s a beaut. She’s embossed in silver and blue, gold and scarlet. Taken from my two favorite Hogwarts houses: Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.

Yes, master.

Show me the map of Gravos.

Yes.

After a heartbeat, Titania projects a digitally rendered holograph of Gravos, the capital city of Atheos. Gravos is known for its oceanic views and soaring skyscrapers. It’s modelled after Manhattan, from its grid like system to naming streets and avenues. One thing that it doesn’t share in common with is its modern transit system. Unlike the subway system of NYC that is still the most antiquated thing ever invented, Gravos has a modern, sleek, pod system that allows commuters to travel from point A to point B in a matter of seconds.

What I love about making my own game is how I can implement my own ideal vision of how the world should look like and make it a reality. World building is the most satisfying hobby I ever had, and I wouldn’t trade it for the real world.

I skim through the map, pulling up pins of different locations in Gravos. I’m checking out the neighborhoods I’ve built, making sure each one is unique and has its own flavor.

All right, this looks good. Next I need to check on the players.

There’s 12 other Angels in this game, and each one has its own pilot. The point of the game is that the player will pick his or her own pilot. Each pilot has his own gifts, skills, talents, and weaknesses.

I’m the mod in this game, and I don’t play unless I inhabit another pilot’s body. Titania isn’t reserved for fighting unlike the other Angels. I built Titania to be like a supreme lord ruler of this Atheos universe. Not God, because God doesn’t exist in Atheos, but like a monarch of sorts.

The coolest thing about this game is that you can see yourself fighting other Angels and other enemies in 3d on your projector screen. It’s not just you being situated in your own seat and seeing things through your limited 2D vision. You get to fully visualize yourself in 3D. It’s spatial projection and perception at its grandest.

I’m pretty proud of myself for having built this feature in the game. When I was a kid, I used to do this thing when I would look at something and then in my mind, picture it in 3D, from different angles and different perspectives. I used to want to be a surgeon, briefly, when I was a kid, and I thought doing that would help me visualize the anatomy of a person’s body better, to prepare myself for when I do get to be a surgeon.

Sadly, that dream went to the grave. I don’t give a shit about being a doctor anymore. Programming earns way more money, and I’m a damn good programmer.

Do what you’re good at, not what you wishfully think you are good at.

I left wishful thinking behind around the time my dad died.

My dad encouraged to be a programmer like him. My mom wanted me to be a doctor and get a MD/PhD. She didn’t want me to be a college professor or go into math. Says it’s a dying field, she used to joke.

I don’t get it. Medicine is a dying field too. People use robots now to perform surgeries and diagnose people and prescribe medication.

Obviously, my dad was right and I should go into programming. It’s the future, baby.

My phone beeps. Shit. I lost track of time. I take off my headset and am pulled back into reality.

It’s from Luke.

“Close to getting this virus squashed? Raj is back from the hospital, by the way. He’s back on the team, we need to schedule another playthrough. Shoot me your availability.”

Shit. Luke’s been on me about this virus. Can’t forget about it. I haven’t been getting any news on it affecting any of the other players, and Sai doesn’t care about it, so why should we? I was hoping Luke would just sweep it under the rug, but he’s persistent.

But he doesn’t know my secret.

That I put a virus in the game on purpose.

Oops.

It was an experiment of mine. Call me an evil genius, but I was hoping to bring an end to World of Eden and replace it with my game Age of Atheos. I’ve been planning this takeover since sixth grade, when I first discovered this game.

When I learned something that flipped my world upside down.

Sai Tanaka killed my dad.

And I want revenge.

That’s why I wanted to work at Eden Enterprises. To learn the inside out of the workings of the evil mind that is Sai Tanaka. A corrupt brain pulsing with sin, fueling the operations of the dark side.

Luke doesn’t know. At least I don’t think he does.

How am I supposed to fix a virus that I engineered in the first place?

But on cue, my phone starts ringing. Luke’s video calling me.

I sigh. Putting an innocent face on as if butter couldn’t melt in my mouth, I answer the call.

“Hey Buffy! How’s your weekend going?”

“Fine. You?”

“Going great, gave a talk on AI at a convention in Texas. Flew there yesterday.”

“That sounds cool.”

Ugh, I sound so deadpan. Hopefully he chalks it up to my lack of caffeine.

“So Buffy, how’s the code fix going? Any breakthrough?”

“Um, about that. I found some bugs in the legacy code that might be contributing to the virus and I’ve been working on a ticket to fix them. Should be done by the end of the day.”

“Awesome! Productive as usual, Buffy. I still can’t believe you’re only in high school. Any chance you’ll want to drop out of college to work at Eden full time?”

No chance in Hell.

I smile sheepishly.

“Maybe…”

Luke looks at his watch.

“Shoot, I have a meeting in two minutes. Have this fixed by lunch and you’ll be looking at a promotion!” Luke logs off and I’m left staring at a blank screen.

Sweet. A full time job offer before even getting my high school diploma? The stuff dreams are made of.

I could possibly work here full time while taking classes at Columbia. Would be a great way to earn extra cash while working towards my degree.

I’m planning on majoring in computer science and economics. A dual degree is well worth the full ride that I’ll be getting.

That is, if I do get accepted into Columbia.

Sigh. I just submitted my application to Columbia last night and I’ve been ridden with anxiety since.

Work takes my mind off things. And gaming.

But sometimes I feel like a hamster on a wheel, running on a never ending cycle of activity. A rat race to the finish. What would it be like if I just slowed down and dropped all of my commitments to the ground?

Would I be a failure? If I stopped my forward motion?

Or would I be a happier person, at the end of the day?

Food for thought. Or Existentialism 101.

Something I’ve been doing in the mornings is reading my Bible. Until last week, I haven’t opened my Bible since middle school. It just collected dust on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. But my conversations with Rod have been enlightening me and influencing me to do something about my faith. Which I’m slowly returning to, at the pace of a snail.

I’m starting with Genesis. The story of Noah and the ark is my favorite story, thus far, but I’ve always wondered how the carnivores survived without eating all the other animals on the ark. Like, wouldn’t the lions have decimated the gazelles already?

The saga on Noah is a chapter in World of Eden. I’ll always remember how breathtakingly gorgeous the views of the ocean were. It reminds me of the time my family and I lived in California, when sunshine and surfing were the norm. We would go to the beach on the weekends and soak in the California sun while burrowing our toes in the sand and collecting sea shells on the shore. We would set sail on sailboats, a kind of Noah’s ark for the modern wanderer.

But I digress. I’m supposed to be working on fixing the virus now, or else Luke will fire me from his team. But the thing is, I don’t want the virus to be fixed.

Instead, I want it to do what I intended it for.

I pull up my program on my augmented reality screen. It’s called ELISA and it’s supposed to be keeping track on my virus. Giving me data on the “patients” it’s been infecting. Lines of data flood my screen, showing statistics and information.

My virus has infected around 523 people. Around 800 million people more to go.

Shit. My virus only has an infection rate of 0.25%. At the rate it’s going, it’s going to take my whole lifetime before all the players get infected.

Too slow. Way too slow.

I need to go faster.

BB bobs over my head, chirping,

“I have an idea!”

“Not now, BB.”

Giving him no attention, I start coding. I need to increase the efficiency of my algorithm. And possibly add more parameters.

And retrain my model.

I pass in the data I gathered from the patients into my neural network. It took about 8 minutes for the model to train the new tests. I’ve added parameters such as geographical location and tracking, which tracks the coordinates of the player throughout the game.

All right, it’s trained. Now, I crack my knuckles, is where the magic starts.

Using the data I gathered on patients’ geographic location within the game, their average sin and virtue rating, and their level and other biographical information, I’ve calculated that my virus will be able to spread to players around the world and not be limited to NYC through battle. In WOE, there are player-to-player battles and I’ve programmed my virus to infect the loser of each battle.

I’m trying to infect players that have the most battles with other players and also hopefully I’ll be able to add a feature so that the virus can spread to players they initiate a conversation with.

Ready for take off.

I push my code to production and within a few seconds, WOE updates. In the next patch update, players will be using the version with the enhanced virus.

“But Buffy. Aren’t viruses bad?”

BB hops on my shoulder and I look at it, fondly.

“BB. There’s a lot you don’t know about the game, the world Sai Tanaka created”

I’ve been playing WOE for about 5 years now. And what I realized about the game is that after a prolonged period of playing it, I start to act differently.

My movements seem extrapyramidal, not controlled by my conscious thought. I act strangely, words and phrases I don’t even know spew out of my mouth. One time, I even accosted a robot and started giving it a speech about the perils of fascism to feminism. A speech that I to this very day do not understand.

And I’ve narrowed it to a couple of options.

1.      I have a mental illness that needs to be addressed.

2.     I’m recovering from grief.

3.     I’m stressed from school.

4.    My mind’s getting hacked.

So.

After considering the options, I’ve deducted.

Yeah, I’m getting mind-hacked.

I tried talking about it with Xander but he insists that I’m being paranoid. But I noticed strange behavior coming from other players too.

So I hacked into the WOE codebase.

And discovered this.

Eden Realities is trying to hack our minds using brain computer interfaces.

NeuroLink, the company that manufactured the gaming headgear that Eden Realities later acquired, can control our brain wave frequencies. In the codebase, I’ve discovered that programmers were commanding players to act and talk according to their code commands.

It’s the most fucked up thing I’ve ever witnessed about this society.

Demons.

They weren’t just in the game.

They were in the real world too.

And I’m going to find the Devil and eradicate him and the demons.

“Why not enlist Luke? You can’t do this alone Buffy!”

That’s an idea. Enlist my megalomanical sociopathic bipolar boss to embark on a journey to dethrone his uncle from the position of lord ruler of the overworld, and stop a mega corp from literally brainwashing millions, potentially billions of people worldwide, and still manage to be an executive of the very same mega corp that is trying to hack into our minds and bodies?

“How likely is that, BB?”

“Very likely!”

I was being sarcastic, but apparently AI can’t detect sarcasm well.

But that gets my mind whirling on wheels.

I pop open my sporty phone and dial Luke’s number. In mere seconds, his face shows up on my screen.

“Buffy! What’s up? Did you finish the bugfix?”

I took a deep breath.

“Yeah… about that. I have a confession to make.”

“What is it?”

“So you know the virus that I accidentally unleashed in the game?”

“You mean the one that we’ve been working on fixing for the last month and half? Yeah, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Haha. So about that. I’m thinking, maybe it’ll actually be okay if we leave the virus in the game for now?”

Luke raises an eyebrow.

“Why is that?”

“I was doing recon and noticed that the virus actually improved the player’s mobility and reception. They were more attuned to their physical kinematics and were more synchronized with their brain wave frequencies.”

Technically, not a lie. The virus protected players from the mind hacking and brainwashing of the evil Eden Empire.

“I see. It took you that long to figure out?”

“Sorry. I was busy with college apps.”

“Fine, whatever. For now, we can keep it. The players haven’t been complaining of side effects, and I think Raj had a diabetic episode that day he was hospitalized, it wasn’t because of the virus.”

I grin.

“Awesome! And I’ll start working on updating you on other features that I’ve been working on.”

“Cool, sounds good. See you on Tuesday.”

Luke logs out and I’m left feeling victorious.

I knew better than to reveal all my cards to Luke. If I disclosed to him the true reason I unleashed the virus, I would be fired in less than a minute. And that would sabotage everything I was working towards.

Now, time to find the Devil. The real root cause of the brainwashing.